I got the impression that we are "losing" the 50% arp effect and getting +30% base damage instead. I could be wrong, though. If so, damage done per SS hit isn't going to change all that much. It's still a gain though, because it's still a mild damage increase, slight improvement on SS intervals (~1s shorter), and has lowered force cost. The biggest part of it all is likely the resulting improvement in damage-per-force efficiency on the overall rotation. The price paid is more dependance on positionals, which can sometimes be unreliable/buggy.

Current ICD is 10s, and will be changing to 9s with 3/3 points in the skill. If you're talking average interval, 12s is pretty close to accurate. It's safe to assume that average interval will be reduced by close to 1s.

Infiltration is looking better for PvP... It will actually be a really good "short-window" spec with all the stealth mechanic changes. Players will be able to chain a lot of short term damage reduction and force regen together every 90s or so. The price paid will be having to save Resilience just to make Force Cloak work a lot more often instead of Resilience being a defensive/utility cooldown. The part I'm still concerned about is sustained effectiveness. When rateds are actually reasonably evenly matched, dps roles are usually are forced into fighting several minutes at a time and Infiltration will still likely be inferior to currently popular specs in those situations. Also, a player likely needs 36 points in the tree to get everything they need to be competitive and can only spare 33 max...still some rough choices to make. A talent making the opener more meaningful is nice, too. IMO, all the spec needs now is just slightly better sustained damage (maybe add more damage synergy to Saber Strike) and for Force Cloak to automatically clear dots or have a temporary enhanced stealth state that is not broken by damage taken.

~150 dps gap is pretty accurate for long-term sustained single target. Simcraft is good for taking all the bias and randomness out of it and at least getting ballpark. If the fights have opportunity for multi-target, the gap widens considerably with having an aoe ability already in the single target rotation and multi-dotting targets. I always liked Infiltration playstyle even for operations too, but objectively speaking it's just not on par. I could close the gap with other players with skill - even pull ahead the majority of players regardless of class - but it's not fair to compare unequal skill.

Lets say your early attack sequence in PvP includes Spinning Kick, Force Slow, and 2x Clairvoyant Strike. You'll normally have anywhere from 2-5 "force attacks" in there that can proc the talent between Kick, Slow, and Technique procs. (You would normally have 1 or 2 technique procs, occasionally 3 or 0, and winning a statistical lottery could get you 4.) If you run a decent crit rate, chances are the talent buff will already be up at this point if you even get just 1 technique proc. Then you probably go into a burst sequence with Force Potency and Project + Breach which would be extremely likely to put the buff up if it's not already. And now you're looking at hitting Shadow Strike and Spinning Strike to finish someone off...which is when you really need the buff and it would be statistically very rare to not have the buff available for them. In PvE, it's a non-issue because once you get rolling the buff is up nearly continuously.

I would also add that guard damage is currently bugged such that shield and defense stats don't work at all - even on attacks for which they are supposed to. If you're a real tank role and play like it, most of your damage taken is normally through your guard instead of direct attacks. Shield and defense stats have extremely low value in pvp, even for dedicated tanks. If you know how to find your attack buttons, dps stats are much more valuable. Endurance is still good an by far the best bet for PvP survivability. TLDR: Get endurance and dps stats for best results.

I've been finding the same thing. Seems like the huge drop in self-healing is the main reason.

With the Shadow - yeah, not many have Force Slow talented. I do, if I play dps role. 12s snare on 6s CD, 15m range. Plus all the other tools Shadow has - unkitable by KC. Many have tried; all have failed. If they try to fight me toe-to-toe they might win just from superior survivability, but if they try to run they're toast. Balance isn't easy to kite either if you don't let them use Force Speed to clear both root and snare at the same time...and the spec does more mid-range damage than KC anyway. Marauder - you neglect mentioning the many ways they have to gap close and then reapply the spammable one. It doesn't matter that the dedicated snare doesn't do much damage - you need it to stay on target and a good player will use it because it's the difference between destroying a kiter and getting kited. They will generally get on you initially and snare without using Leap and then when you use Speed to clear the snare they Leap back and snare again. If you clear again with Resilience or something, they can use Camo offensively to get back on target and snare you again. And their leap is a shorter CD than Speed. Carnage/Combat is popular in rateds now, and they add roots to the mix. If you're successfully kiting marauders as KC for extended periods of time, they are baddies. Their toolset allows them plenty of uptime on KC if they use it right. Operative - Their thing is huge opener and front loading. They'll kill you in no time if you don't pop Resilience. When you do pop it -> restealth -> reopen. In a WZ setting a really good one can kill you lots of times if they put their minds to it. They also have more >10m damage than you. Pyro PT - Yes, these are melee; they just don't have to be if they don't want to for much of their fight. They are kitable to a pretty high portion of total time, but they will vastly out-damage KC from outside of melee. They can generally get their melee range for the brief periods they want it with pull and essentially a close to spammable 10m 50% snare on a high damage attack. You just have to out-race these guys on damage while using things like Resilience and stuns to buy precious extra GCD's. Jugg - 10m spammable snare and gap closers, etc... KC can't kite these if they don't want to be kited. So basically, several of the melee are actually a disadvantage to kite - as in you're better off staying close to melee because you win the damage race faster. The dynamic of fighting Concealment isn't really about sustained fighting. There's only 2 or 3 left that you would even want to kite, which are the two Knight classes for sure and maybe Infiltration. Infiltration you can take out for sure as wasted effort. The two Knight AC's can't be kited for extended periods of time if the players are at least as good as the KC player because they have superior snares and enough tools to get on target and reapply. I can kinda get where you guys get this impression that KC kites so well... 90%+ of the players in this game are an easy kite regardless of class/spec. Frankly, most players in this game severely undervalue their snares. That doesn't mean you should be able to kite them, though. And there's also a lot of variables in WZ setting. If I play against experts on their class like folks in my guild, suddenly an easy kite changes into figuring out plan B. Realistically, if you were the one playing these Knight classes posting over in their forums you'd be saying, "lol those tanksin can't kite me" or something to that effect. If you're just node defending and trying to survive until help arrives...kite away. It definitely makes you live longer even just trying and it's a team game.

Hmm… A few comments, I guess. First, I agree that it seems some might be giving too much credit to Sentinels/Marauders between this thread and that other one. Yes, they are good. But they're not unbeatable, and a lot of ranked teams are running at least one Combat/Carnage of the group utility - and they are definitely beatable. They (back to all specs) do a lot of sustained damage, but they are not very bursty and not particularly front-loaded. A lot of specs can out-race them on damage by being more bursty or front-loaded. Even Infiltration can if they don't have a full compliment of defensive cooldowns to save them. They are also squishy without most of their cooldowns and regularly in vulnerable positions; it's not that hard to kill them in a warzone setting because they can't have their cooldowns available all the time unless you just let them by not putting pressure on them ever. A great ranked comp probably needs at least one on their team for utility, but it's not necessarily better off to stack them. They are just one of the good options from a teamplay perspective, and most of the teams that do stack them really are doing it to cover up a lack of teamplay. Also, when you look for classes that can compete with them 1v1, Kinetic Shadow specs are one of the best options in the game. Second, if you're looking using any of the Kinetic variations as a dps-role player in a rated comp, expect your group to be low on dps. It does not do killing level damage like a real dps spec - even when played correctly, which is large part melee range. If you like to stay more at 10m, burst and pressure isn't even mediocre for a dps role. Honestly, Infiltration really does work a lot better for this type of thing if you're good at it and use the 100% uptime snare to keep your damage and control up. What can work better in comps is using the specs in what would be one of the tank slots and then your team gets very respectable damage out of a tank slot. Running something like a Guardian and a Kinetic Hybrid as your tank slots can work really well with certain groups and team strats. It's also really good for the solo defender niche. Although, personally I think Kinetic variations are sub-par as stealth node attackers compared to Scrappers and Infiltration…just kills too slow. But, it's at least flexible…send your stealth off-tank over with your scrapper just to make sure the job gets done and such. Flexibility out of an off-tank slot really is the spec's main feature - especially 23/1/17. You can swap focus or jobs as situation dictates or per whatever opportunity the opposing team/comp presents. Need to just survive in front of a voidstar door? Start swapping guards like a madman and use LoS and break caps. Need to wipe the team off same door when on offense? Focus on killing and suddenly your team has 80%+ of a dps come out of a tank slot along with some potential clutch CC. Can't get that door with brute force? Combat stealth with your team's Scrapper and go nuke the solo guard on the other door. Your team can't afford to leave more than one person to defend left because the other team is selling out in mid? Ideal solo defender. Guardian is trying to run a huttball? Guard and protect him. So, the upside is just being competent at lots of different things and being the person that morphs your team from offensive to defensive to stealth/utility, etc.

If they are as good a player as you are, you're not running around unsnared. You generally have ST up on them, and they have a 50% snare up on you. Even if you clear their snare with Speed or Resilience, if they are comparable skill they are usually just going to get it right back up. Several melee specs also have +15% move speed. So if you're fighting me playing Infiltration for example, you're moving at 50% almost permanently and I'm moving at 85% most of the time. I can run circles around someone with that much speed difference. Occasionally you could use Force Slow, but I'm still going 65% to your 50%...and honestly most KC players out there forgot where their Force Slow button is because they don't seem to think it's worth using. (I agree it's pretty wimpy on value untalented, but sometimes you need it.) A KC can create some brief gaps against me, but there's no way they can actually kite me or prevent me from doing my damage. The marauder is a bit different, but they do have refreshable 50% snares and some of them have +15% speed. Trying to kite a good one pretty much amounts to trading abilities. You get away, they get back...rinse and repeat until abilities on both sides are gone or mostly gone. You can definitely frustrate and stall them, but a good one will get their licks in and eventually the abilities run out and their better snares take over. Bad marauder...different story. They're usually too busy trying to hit ravage at first available opportunity instead of staying on target. Easy to kite. But those same marauders generally aren't good enough to warrant serious kiting attempts. For me, the only ones worth considering kiting are the same ones that won't allow a good kite.

I usually work them over in the 5m to 10m range and screw with their facing as much as possible, too. As long as they aren't able to consistently get their 4m attacks they generally aren't accomplishing much. I take some hits here and there, but their health bar is going down much quicker than mine and I can usually negate a lot of what they would get with my own defensive cooldowns. I put as much pressure on them as possible without letting them have a clear target to melee on. If they light themselves up like a Christmas tree with cooldowns and I don't have teammate support, I'm generally looking to stall them with CC, stuns, escapes, or even a little temporary kiting/gap opening until things can shift back into my favor. Obviously we do it a bit different, but neither one of us is standing toe-to-toe trading hits.

I know moving works to break TkT because I do it to other people, and other people (usually on the really good rated teams) have done it to me when I play specs with HS. The ability has a range limit. I don't know why it's so hard for you to believe that ticks can be dropped due to range. Maybe you have much worse latency than me...I don't know. I play with 40 to 60 ms. For me it's pretty obvious on the screen. And it's really not a matter of of amazing reflexes at all...it's just already being in motion even before the channel starts. And you don't need to actively kite (as in run away and try to keep them from catching you) a melee dps as any of these PvP tank specs when you can just simply run all around them in an unpredictable pattern crossing that 4m line back and forth as it suits you. They can't hit you with most of their abilitys at 5m or 6m either - there's no extra advantage from being even further out. In fact, it's even better to be closer because then you're screwing with their facing too because your radial velocity going around them is drastically higher. Just because you're not "kiting" doesn't mean you're letting them hit you. And it's easier to stay offensive yourself and do max possible damage when you're not focused on stringing someone around the map playing keep-away. It also minimizes their snare advantage compared to conventional kiting. Just my opinion, and it works really well for me.

The downsides of full KC that we talk about in here mostly don't apply in a PvE environment, and it offers the -5% damage debuff (and if you're the tank in the group, then your group is normally relying on you to supply it on your own) and more self healing. And you don't really need instant lift or a 30m cap breaker in FiB. So, for PvE you're just looking at full Kinetic, no contest. You could generally make the hybrid spec work if you're not pushing hard on difficult content, but it's still clearly sub-optimal.

The taking turns winning has no place in any ranked system and it's commonly known as win trading. Pretty much anyone considers this cheating, and Bioware essentially considered win trading as cheating back in Ilum and dished out penalties for it. Fishing the queues to get the teammatchup you want is more cloudy. As long as both teams are honestly playing to win, then some would consider that just using the only thing available in game to get to play against your friends in 8v8 and both sides are doing honest PvP. A problematic part is how do you tell honest PvP apart from win-trading...not easy if they try to conceal it. A lot of games would consider it abuse of the matchmaking system for rating gain (and comms) and would call it queue dodging.

When people say "kite" I usually assume they mean their strat is to constantly outrange their opponent and maintain space. Like a Frost Mage or an old school Hunter in WoW. In this game, a Sorc is a very likely kiter, although they aren't going to be entirely successful at it for extended periods of time because game mechanics in this game are a lot different. None of the real ranged classes are designed to be able to perma-kite and melee classes have a lot more ranged/mid-range attacks available. As any Shadow spec, ideally you're going to be floating in and out of 4m and extending as far as ~10m depending on your ability sequences and just never stop moving. Although, I wouldn't really call that kiting; it's just working within your range envelope and presenting yourself as a difficult target. In the specific matchup against the marauder, if they pop cooldowns, yeah you're looking to make them waste their cooldown time with a combination of kiting, CC, and possibly even just combat stealth out and wait for the cooldowns to run out. But if they don't have their cooldowns up, pressing the attack is a winning proposition for the Shadow because their durability is so much better. That doesn't mean you stand in 4m constantly and facetank everything they do when you should be floating out for using 10m abilities like I said earlier, but that's not really actively kiting someone. If you did go for a full kite strat, KC doesn't have the tools for kiting a high skill marauder. They can definitely create temporary gaps, but it's not maintainable when marauders have a superior snare, gap closers, an array of CD's, and even 15% more runspeed in some specs. A KC can't even kite my Infiltration Shadow that runs 2/2 Subduing Techniques. If a KC tries to kite me as Infiltration and chooses not to embrace their 4m attacks, I will melt their face off easily, I promise - and I shouldn't even be able to win that matchup on paper. A really good marauder is even harder to kite. I suspect you just mean staying out of 4m unless you have a reason to be there (like fish for a PA proc or something) which is perfectly sensible and a unspoken given for playing a Shadow with me, so it's probably probably just a difference in what the word means to us.

Sometimes I just don't know what to say to stuff like this... Kiting, as a melee class tank, really isn't something you should be looking to do very often for a multitude of reasons and situational realities. I could spend half a day explaining why, but... And as for providing protection for healers and stuff, there's really not much difference on a whole. Both specs have pretty much all the same basic tools. Where there are differences, instant Lift is actually a lot better in an emergency because Slow Time's utility generally can't actually "save" someone since it's usually just a minor reduction in pressure. And actually killing someone is pretty good protection usually, too. The pros and cons mostly cancel each other out at least. If you want real actual differences that win matches, run a Guardian.

There's no reason you can't run 23/1/17 as a main tank role (priority to guard & disrupt) in PvP if you want to, and it's not really significantly worse off than full 31 KC builds for it on a whole. It comes down to a tradeoff evaluation for your team and what's better. 31 KC offers: 5% damage debuff (also available from other classes) -30% AoE snare (teams that rely on this for snaring usually lose because you really need 50%) TKT heals (unreliable in clutch situations and against good teams) 27/1/17 offers: Instant Lift 30m cap breaker that can defeat LoS better / more reliable damage in high pressure situations Personally, the higher up the skill level into rateds I go, the more likely I am to take the hybrid spec over full 31 even for dedicated tank roles. Although, at the same time it's also the more likely I am to kick Shadow to the curb and take a hybrid Guardian instead.

It has nothing to do with how many stacks you have...it's just about being able to outrange a channel. Although if you don't use it at 3 stacks you are generally just hurting yourself because you'd be better off just using DS + Project. The ability doesn't actually stretch beyond 10m once started. It just appears to because of server-client issues and the mechanics of the ability. There's a little bit of tolerance there just to avoid buggy behavior, but it's not much. When you involve players who have really good connections on both ends, that stretching thing happens less and less and it just breaks channel. Even moving at 3m/s, it just takes 1s of running to outrange if they are out at the edge when they start and it's just a matter of how fast the server can sync and register it to break channel. Against a bad, they might be standing still when you start channel - in which case there's so much time before their client displays to them that they are getting channeled and then to have their response to outrange you sync up - at least half the ticks already happen regardless of what they do. Against a good who is already running when you start channel, the server assumes continued movement from the start even without resync and it can register a channel break pretty quickly. That sort of code is part of why stuns and roots and things like that are so powerful. Forcing someone to hold still even for a little bit starts making the net code work against them.

Instant Lift + stun ender is really, really good in top end rateds. You just have to use it in the right places and not do dumb things with it like slapping it on a huttball carrier that's about to go through fire traps. In this setting your teammates are also good/smart enough to not stupidly break your CC. And of course Lift is good enough to freecast in some situations, but it's not "better" that way. In a few situations if you use it badly, yeah, you could argue that the penalty of misuse is slightly higher. The reality is it's much more usable as an instant and usually the stun is a good thing instead of bad. In high end rateds, getting those freecasts off can be very difficult and in clutch situations is not reliable at all. It's really wasteful when some marauder interrupts your attempt or someone range interrupts your capper in the 2s it took to complete the cast bar.

At first it seems like you're trying to disagree with me, but if I carefully pick through the double negatives and such it looks like you actually said the same thing I just did. I'm confused...lol. The thing is, people are going to use all their tools for disrupts and everything against you regardless of your spec and TKT. You're not costing them anything they weren't already going to spend. The choice is just up to them whether it's more beneficial to utilize those tools at whatever they would normally consider an optimal time or if using them in reaction to TKT is even more opportune. If they are a good/great player, they are going to make good decisions and you channeling TKT in their face just gives them extra opportunity to beat you that they don't have available against most other specs. Again, if they do nothing at all and just facetank every single TKT you're pretty much performing just on par with 23/1/17 in most cases. If you want to play games with trying to bait them into fake opportunities to beat you worse...that's okay. It's a fun game to play, and it's a little like how James Harden holds the ball out when he drives the lane to bait defenders into taking a swipe and putting him on the line. Although, in this case I think the opportunity cost of doing so compared to more ideal play and usage of stacks is too high to normally come out as a net positive in the end even if you succeed in baiting.

That's just not true. Lets say you start to channel on someone who is at 8m range. If they simply run either away or perpendicular to your target vector (or anything in between) then they will outrange the final two ticks even with the 50% snare on them. TKT snare is no better than all the other 50% snares in the game; it doesn't ensure people stay within 10m. And if they are just running random direction, thats roughly 180 degress out of 360 possible that puts them out of range. Against good players, them running is a given even if they aren't paying attention to you directly. That means you can't just start channeling someone at the edge of your range and expect all the ticks to land because half the time they will outrange you without even trying. You have to go get in in their face first to make it so they have too far to run. If you pick someone that's actively targeting you and running towards you, then you have a good player thats actually paying attention to you and has any number of things they may choose to do to stop your cast or reduce your damage. Against random pugs that stand still, move dumb directions, have bad connections...it's not that big of a deal, but against top teams where it matters most, TKT channeling is an anchor on the spec, almost literally.

This is that mentally juking yourself out type thing again... People stop the channels in 1v1 because it's a net advantage for them, even eating the cost of doing so. It's an entirely viable option for them to facetank TKT. If it were actually better, they would - and in some situations they do. Them electing to facetank only puts HS specs on par with non-HS specs; it doesn't make them suddenly amazingly good. If they chose not to facetank, you are then at a disadvantage compared to non-HS specs.

You're kinda looking at it wrong. When you get deep enough into the analysis, Slow Time on its own doesn't even keep up with DS + Project combo for single target damage. If you don't use HS stacks and TKT, you stop using ST completely if you're trying to max dps. TKT is what makes Slow Time worth using for single target damage. When people tried to make max parses with 31 KC, they had two choices to get max damage: use nothing but DS, Project, and Saber Strike or they go full harness shadows management and keep the rotation as tight as possible. Typically, the simple method usually worked out better just because it's so easy to execute for a real player. Hybrid KC does more damage using that simple method just because it has Adjudication and the other spec doesn't. Then you add two extra attacks which raise average dps slightly with Find Weakness procs and FiB. Those two attacks have both high enough damage per force and damage per gcd to improve overall dps in the rotation, Slow Time by itself does not because it does less damage than either of those attacks and costs 30 force instead of 25.

You get 4 columi pve items that have the force mystic set bonus. They're purple, so you add the augment kit to get an augment slot, and then strip out the armoring, mod, and enhancement. You're left with an item "shell" that has nothing but the set bonus and empty slots. Then you plug in Battlemaster armoring (so that it won't override the set bonus on the shell) and war hero mod and enhancement and a resolve augment. Now you have a PvP item essentially that has a PvE set bonus, on the cheap. The alternative is using Campaign armorings, but those are a lot harder to get as well as ending up with less expertise so it's not necessarily even better.

Standing still in PvP is never-ever-never-ever..... ever never a "plus." Moving is always better no matter what. There's no better way to ensure that all the opponents have zero latency/lag/desync/range/facing/LoS problems to prevent them from nuking you as fast as possible than standing still. Having an ability that forces you to stand still is a bad thing, period. You can't mentally juke yourself out into thinking it's somehow good or advantageous to be forced into not moving by game mechanics. If game mechanics allowed us to move during TKT channels, we would (because its better) and would ridicule people on the forums who stood still to turret.