I've had this happen like once out of eight or nine times I've done FE. He popped right back up so we knocked him right back done. No sweat.

I think you need to reread what you quoted...

I'm currently pvp'ing with around 100 expertise in mostly columi gear. Do I feel squishy? A bit. That being said, as I don't have to worry about dots as sharpshooter breaking my roots, it is fairly easy to kite 2-3 melee while los'ing any ranged dps trying to attack me, assuming the rest of my team is being useful. When they stop chasing me, it's not difficult to burst bm geared squishies (marauders/sorcs/dps assassins/other snipers/mercs/ops/dps powertechs, etc.) for 1/3-1/2 their life in 1-2 gcd's, depending on what crits. Attacking tanks with cd's up sucks, yes, but that's true even on my shadow. I can't speak towards sab or dirty fighting, as I haven't tried those at 50, but if you think sharpshooter damage is bad, or lacks burst, you're doing it completely wrong. That being said, if they have a couple ops on their team who know what they're doing, I can pretty much count on being dead most of the match, but that's mainly due to the joys of pvping with <100 expertise.

Don't, for example, interrupt diagnostic scan or the sorc channeled heal.

In a pve spec, balance uses shadow strike too. Played correctly, balance is much more difficult than infiltration imo. For those of you looking for the spec/priority list, track down the shadow's handbook and find the balance section, it is still basically the same.

Kiting as a gunslinger is fairly easy, especially against marauders/juggs as their gap closer can be avoided with clever use of roots/cover

They might not be useful for the companion though. You won't be able to use 8-10 belts/bracers as companion gear.

What precisely are the difficulties that you're having? Is the boss hitting enrage? Are the puzzle solvers dying from mines or getting knocked off? Are the tanks dying? We could probably offer better suggestions if we knew what your specific group was having issues with. Good luck!

That seems odd. Make sure you're changing the difficulty setting from your portrait and maybe try resetting the operation. Good luck!

I have no problem with using a focus as a dps in pvp. The large amount of extra force power works better for me than a small chance to shield an insignificant amount of damage from a small selection of attacks. Idk though, maybe I'm just not understanding your request.

For me, at least in pve, I find maximizing my dps to be more challenging than tanking or healing. If you're tanking and stay alive and held aggro, then you can feel pretty good. If no one died and you're healing, the same. If I'm dps'ing I always wonder whether I could of eked out a bit more damage.

I'd probably wear the columi over the centurion unless I had like <200 expertise.

Using TKT for the second charge of force potency works pretty well if you won't cap out on force either. If you're not using it for project to proc TD ofc.

As the poster before you explained, the proc will be mitigated in exactly the same way. Just like weapon damage, both kinetic and energy damage are mitigated by armor. The only thing that will change is that now the attack and be deflected/parried/shielded. With enough accuracy, you will only have to be worried about the shielding part, which should only happen against tanks.

He was probably kinetic spec (or w/e the assassin equivalent is). At three stacks of harnessed shadows their telekinetic throw (force lightning) becomes unable to be interrupted.