Recent return; last time I played 50 was max and pink crystals were rare and elusive. I've always been a KinCom Shadow (tanking in a dress!). I'm glad to see tanking has become a great deal less fiddly; the longer cooldown on KinWard is a huge quality of life improvement. I've read the guides on the optimal tank rotations (which seem to be Force Breach, Slow Time, and Project on cooldown until HS3, then Sandblast, with filler). What I want to know is: what about all the other abilities on my bar? Is it worth investing insta-cast Lift? Should we open with SpinKick from Stealth, or is it better to open with Slow Time to secure aggro on packs and get the debuff up quick? Is it worth slipping Shadow Strike into our rotation at 52, or is that dead space on our hotbar? Oh, and Mind Crush: just.... What?

Another resub; What is the best way to gear up a levelled character? My main is at 50 in pre-HC blues. I'd like to save my basic comms for 60/65 gear when I get there rather than blow them all on 50 Basic gear. She's a 400 Artificer if that matters.

Kitru, I think I have to disagree on your percentages. Even with Harnessed Shadows, Particle Acceleration, and One With The Force, I find I am still using Double Strike and Saber Strike a LOT. Maybe the RNG just hates me, but I have literally had times when I went five Double Strikes without a PA proc. And you yourself say that TK Throw is a once every 20-30 seconds ability. I'll admit that I don't have Slow Time yet, but evenso, I'd say saber attacks are a good 65-70% of my rotation. Further, in a levelling context, I find even with Harnessed Shadows, I'm using TK Throw once every three groups or so; by the time I have a 3-stack, everythings dead and I'm sprinting to the next pack so I can use it before it falls off. That's not even counting the drastically reduced PA proc rate from Whirling Blow, which is far more efficient/effective against packs of 3 or more. I'm sure your numbers are closer to accurate on long-duration boss fights, but if he's only contemplating a Shadow, those situation are a few weeks away for the OP.

If you can take an Elite, you're doing fine. I'm Kinetic, and if I see an Elite/Strong duo, I Mind Maze the Elite and burn the Strong first. And I'm able to take down a Champion in the right circumstances. Hybrid builds should not be a concern before 40; just go straight down your tree for Clairvoyant Strike first.

If there's at least 3 mobs in a pack, I like to toss in a few Whirling Blows as well. Frankly, I solo the same way I tank, which is the priority chain laid out in the Shadow's Handbook thread. Keep Ward up as much as possible, too; the Force cost is negligible, and it radically reduces downtime. Also, use a shield, NOT a Focus. Even if it's the crappy dinky one you got back at level 10.

For Theran and Qyzen, I find that going extreme lightside actually impairs affection gain to a degree. Scaleface gets annoyed when I spare bad guys (he got real upset when I saved Vivi), while Theran gets annoyed when I get philosophical or use Force Persuade to avoid bloodshed. Since I have a specific concept in mind, I pick what responses I want and they can just deal with it. Meanwhile, I'm only 500 away from Light4 at level 36.

Once I realized I could solo Champions, everything else was just cold meat. 4 Standards, 2 Strongs, even Elites are just meat for the grinder. Also, if you do all the sidequests, you will overlevel the planet quests fairly quickly. And that's with little rest (I specifically avoid logging in Cantinas or on my ship), skipping kill-count bonus quests, and not doing Bonus Series. Just wade in and thrash everything.

There are only three classes that can Stealth: Scoundrel, Shadow, Sentinel. That leaves 5 who cannot. Of those, the Sentinel's is more akin to Vanish; he has no sustained Stealth capability.

A note on interrupts: it's not always possible to "interrupt everything." In the class quest on Alderaan, you will fight an elite that heals and casts two attack abilities. Interrupt the heals; eat the damage. To the OP: I played City, and while you could level with a non-optimal spec, it took knowledge and research to maximize your capabilities, even there. Scrappers soloing AVs was the biggest rush ever. However, City did cater to the lowest common denominator; you could pick any abilities you wanted, slot whatever enhancements dropped, and still make it to 50, eventually. You're in a whole new world, now, and that's really not an option anymore. The good news is that 10 minutes with the Shadow's Handbook, linked above, will tell you everything you need to know. Copy it to Word, print it out, take it to work. Read it on lunch break. As for gear, I like being able to decide how my stats are weighted. I have a Cybertech guildmate, and I'm an Artificer. I have full-mod gear for head, chest, hands, legs, and feet, along with my Worn Double-Bladed Saber. I can fully customize almost all my gear by ordering up specific Armoring, Mods, Enhancements, Crystals, and Hilts. If you want a skill that will keep you in blue-quality gear, get some full-mods and pick up either of those two.

I'm afraid I can't agree. I love all the animations, including Double Strike and Project. Whirling Blow and Spinning Strike, along with Saber Strike, have the flashier animations (I'll occasionally WB against a single target because it looks so amazing). Honestly, if you want flashy, you want Sith. Jedi are conceived as warrior monks, and developed accordingly. "Look at MEEEEEE" and humble meditation don't really go together.

The saberstaff is the entire reason I rolled a Shadow. Have been immensely pleased with the entire experience so far.

I do have one request for the future debates on this topic, and I expect them to be legion: I'd really like it if we could tone down some of the ad hominem attacks. Outside of the numbercrunching threads, I really like the sense of community this game seems to be developing, so seeing accusations of idiocy, retardation, and noobishness being thrown around is somewhat disheartening. It seems that we are all in agreement that there are certain minimum "floors" for both threat and hitpoints. We also seem to be in agreement that the threat floor can be reached with Resolve mods and the HP floor with Force User. What to do with the "extra" stats is our only real point of contention. The stack WP camp says that more threat builds a cushion for DPS to cut loose and helps down a boss faster with more damage. The stack End camp says it gives the healers a better cushion for when, to quote the vernacular, "fecal matter eventuates." And then there's those of us who don't really know and plan to split the difference. The thing is, none of these are wrong. You want a high threat ceiling because DPS can't always gauge their threat. You want more damage because not all the DPS have their rotations down or their gear maxed. And you want HP because the healers (and us as tanks) are not entirely comfortable with our abilities or cooldowns and our gear isn't maxed either. We should be gearing in the way that, we individually feel, makes the most sense. As of now, we need to assume that things will go wrong. We'll mistime Deflection or Resilience. The Sentinel will accidentally Force Leap early. The healer will end up chain healing herself because the Focus interface bugged (I speak from experience). We need to plan and gear for these things not because we are playing with, or are ourselves, idiots, *******, or noobs, but simply because, two weeks from launch, we are all simply still new.

Psy, I'm not sure I agree. I can't empirically prove it without a combat parser, but I strongly suspect that tank damage in this game is significantly higher than usual for MMOs. This is based on gut feeling, completely anecdotal observation, and the fact that Combat Tech's threat multiplier is 1.5 (WoW Warrior's Def Stance is 2x threat). Combined with smaller groups/ops teams, and the tank's relative contribution to dps is higher as well. I'm not endgame, and won't be for some time, if ever, so dismiss me as a noob if you like. However, I'm thinking that a group with full 33% fewer dps per team means squeezing out a bit more damage, survivability being covered, is in no way a bad thing. That being said, though, I'm also certain that there are other surprises in store that none of us are ready for yet. I decided to slap around SD-0 on Coruscant for gits and shiggles with a guildmate the other day. Despite being 33, he was hitting me for a decent amount (roughly 4-7% of my hp per hit), so I suspect he scales rather than being a static level. Once I was down around 50%, he one-shotted me. Does he have a single, mega-stomp attack that he didn't use for the first 20 seconds, or does he have an Execute mechanic? I honestly don't know, but if it's the latter, it's certainly an argument for more End stacking.

I believe it is all a matter of mindset. I envision my consular as an archaeologist, scholar, and philosopher foremost, and a warrior by necessity. Even in combat, she strives to protect, not destroy (Kinetic Combat). Up until now, she has tried to use reason to defuse situations rather than manipulation, which led to a rather poignant episode on Alderaan when she was forced to kill three guards solely because she did not Force Persuade. If your Consular is supposed to be Billy Bigmouth, baddest Jedi on Tython, utterly callous to others, then you probably won't care for it much. If she is a humble servant, altruistic to a fault, who seeks to protect, save and redeem not only the weak but also the fallen, then Act I is an epic tale for the ages.

Honestly, I can't think of a time when my KC Shadow hasn't been fun. Dealing with packs was mildly aggravating until 26, but that's it. The storyline is epic (granted, not in a "save the galaxy!" kind of way, but I think the personal nature of the salvation is even better than the Planet Prison thing), and the playstyle is marvelously frenetic. I suppose you CAN play a Shadow with only 6 buttons. I'm trying to play a Shadow WELL, and I am sorely short on spaces on my primary 2 hotbars for abilities I need keybound. I plan to slap down Vivicar tomorrow. And then redeem him, if I can. So excited; been hunting that guy for nearly two weeks!