4p stalker or 2p stalker + 2p survivor. I like the shield given how many Sents and Gunslingers are running around now, but you can use the focus if you don't mind losing a bit of white damage mitigation. Going full tank gear is not a great choice as your damage will be completely ignorable.

As a Day 1 Ajunta Pall player and Swiftsure reroller, with multiple valor60+ characters on both servers, I disagree with this assessment. I have been in way too matches in Ajunta Pall where people insult and cuss each other out nonstop over /ops chat instead of focusing on the WZ. Every 3-4 matches, a bad player gets his feelings hurt and actively aids the enemy team (like letting people leap to them at Huttball, giving the enemy team the ball, and idling at cap points). I also saw far more 50s queueing for wzs geared in green 40 gear on AP, missing relics, etc. Given that Arasis, the GM of the best remaining PvP guild on AP (Mouretsu), has unsubbed, that's the final nail in the coffin for any decent PvP play on that server. Swiftsure is killing it with a lot of competitive PvP guilds running premades all night long, from Strictly Business and Slackerz, to Meatlumps and Crescendo. We've had a lot of good 2 premade vs 2 premade matches lately.

This is getting old. Fix it.

This is getting really old. Fix it.

Interesting spec. How much damage do you usually put out on a typical Voidstar?

You're thinking about the buff you get from Infiltration Tactics in the first row of the Infiltration tree. You can start putting points into it at lv10 once you choose your advanced class.

Flash Bang is the best mez in the game. Slip Away is money. Last but not least, Sleep Dart -> cap objective + wait for opponent to trinket -> Flashbang and simultaneously capping the node (if timed right, can cap a point before the opponent can retaliate) is pretty dirty. Shadows can theoretically do the same thing but they'd need to Force Cloak into Mind Trap, but that only affects one target and if you screw up, you can't do it out of stealth (plus the target needs to be out of combat, which is sometimes unreliable with Vanish), whereas you can keep trying the Flash Bang + cap during the same GCD trick while getting attacked and being out-of-stealth. Good example of tricks that are much easier to do on the Scoundrel:

Mmm... no.

You're not, especially considering that WH Mara likely has full augments on top of gear two tiers higher than you. Grind out a full set of BM. It takes less than a week. Join a guild and run with premades if you're not winning enough matches.

Yup. We already know who the top guilds and premades are on my server. I want to compete against new people, not the exact same people we've been playing against for months.

It's a bit of a trade-off. The Scrapper can front-load damage before the target can pop defensive cds or retaliate unless the opponent has their trinket ready. The Shadow has a slightly longer ramp-up time for the burst, and it's a bit troublesome when someone panics and pops their Resilience very early. The Scoundrel has more effective cc abilities, at the cost of not having Force Speed. I view the two as pretty interchangeable. A 31pt KC tank is the best 1v1 spec in the entire game, followed closely by the Sawbones/Scrapper hybrid and Watchman Sentinel. To use fighting game tier ratings, I'd put KC at S-tier, and the Scoundrel hybrid and Sent at A-tier. Gear, skill, and cds being even, you'll find it impossible to 1v1 a 31pt KC tank as Infil. Infil is still not too shabby 1v1, but it's more of a B-tier spec, occupying the same territory as a Scrapper Scoundrel and DPS Vanguard. Thankfully wzs aren't Street Fighter 4, but it would be nice to have a bit more 1v1 viability for an ambush class.

Mmm, I would say Infil is about on par with Scrapper, though I'd also say Sawbones/Scrapper hybrid has a leg-up on Infil on more scenarios than not. Like all things, it depends on the map and team comp. The Sentinel is better than both, though. Thankfully all the bads rerolled Sent/Mara, though I'm getting tired of bad pugs breaking my Low Slash whenever I see Guarded By the Force pop.

A real armor pen ability is Gore/Precision Slash. SS is a nice extra chunk of damage when Infiltration Tactics procs, but it's nothing compared to what a Combat Sentinel does with Precision Slash->Blade Storm->Master Strike. You're going to have a lot of fun when you discover how fast TTK is at 50 against top-tier competitive teams. Your sub50 wz experience is not really indicative of anything, contrasted against suiting up against teams with full augmented WH gear, 1200+ expertise, and proper comps.

Have you people even spoken to a GM in-game before? They will contact you through a special in-game chat window under the ticketing tab. They will not talk to you in /says. Some player made a character that sounds like a droid-name, and the camera was moved so the player wasn't in the screen, or the player was stealthed. This is so ridiculously fake that it depresses me how gullible people in this game are.

An armor debuff or armor penetration ability for Infil? It'd be like Christmas in TOR. The force regeneration issues are troublesome for sustained combat, and is one of the large black eyes against the spec against an evenly matched team where people aren't dying. After you blow through your initial Shadow's Respite, Blackout, then Vanish, you're back down to 8force/s, and Profundity does not proc nearly enough to be meaningful. I'm sure Profundity was calculated across 5minute+ boss fights in ops, but that does not really apply to PvP. Scoundrel/Operative healing is rather nuts now, and I rarely see good Scoundrel healers drop below 70 energy. At least with a Sage, you know you have a kill coming up when their Force drops below 150-200. When Blackout and Vanish are down and I can't stealth up, I need to regularly use Saber Strike because CSx2->Project costs too much. Tbh, the survivability aspect of the spec isn't bothering me as much as it used to, though it may be because so many people are playing tanks and healers now. I'd be happy with better force management tools or more damage. Sentinels are easily critting 5k on Merciless Slash, on top of having all their dots and Zen up extremely frequently. Our sustained DPS is a step down, so you'd imagine we should be able to burst a bit harder than we do on full WH targets. My gut tells me that my Sent serves as a more effective DPS in my premade, but Shadow is more fun to play. I've been doing less dpsing as time goes on and mostly focus on objectives these days, which Infil is not bad at, but KC is clearly better.

I really like this idea. There was a ton of server pride on BG9 (Tichondrius, Blackrock, Silver Hand, etc.) and each server was extremely proud of their top PVP guilds and PVPers. I know people on Swiftsure who'd like a crack at Fatman, and I'm sure the elite guilds on Fatman would appreciate the competition. Honestly, due to the way the game's designed, I feel no animosity to imps or pubs on my server, likely because I have characters on both sides. I'd rather beat up on people on another server.

The hybrid sawbones/scrapper works well in small-scale combat, but isn't quite as useful in huge brawls. Meanwhile, it's easy to keep taunts on cd while doing whatever it is that Shadows do. I usually find it easy to get the Paladin medal on my Infil Shadow in a normal match, unless I'm focusing only on objectives, which happens quite a bit. Infil's well-roundedness 's not as good as KC, but it still is a pretty good jack-of-all-trades in all the wzs, from holding solo objectives and pressuring/stealing nodes in stalemated matches, to ball running and zooming through a Voidstar cascade failure (when an attacking teams keeps the defenders perma-snared without killing them, freeing a Shadow to zoom ahead unmolested). I still recommend watching Wohast's videos on YouTube for a laugh. I think Infil Shadows can appreciate these videos more than any non-Scoundrel class.

Shadow tanks are better at 1v1ing people. Guardian tanks are better at everything else: keeping guarded targets alive, mobility, controlling the battlefield, and sheer durability. Skill and gear being equal, if I'm bringing a tank into my premade to support 2dps/1heal, I'd choose a Guardian tank over any other tank without reservation. Vanguard tanks fall somewhere between the two.

No, they said they don't believe in cross-server. This is really disappointing, as cross-server rivalry on WoW was a lot of fun and generally had quick bg pops. http://www.swtor.com/blog/community-qa-may-25th-2012-%E2%80%93-special-edition-game-update-1.3

They're telling us server transfers will be the magic bullet. I'm skeptical.

Your math is good

Awesome. We get to continue queueing against the exact same people we're already queueing against, except the WH commendations grind will be faster. Any mention of ELO? Will we continue getting pugs with 11k hps and no expertise queueing in 50 rated? Will there be a valor60 minimum requirement to queue for rateds?

I'm sure these walls of text will result in people realizing how horribly wrong they were, apologies and hugs all around, capped off with an adventure to Candy Mountain.

Good post. This mirrors my experience on Swiftsure and Ajunta Pall. Republic side has much better teamwork and coordination, and people generally use vent/TS more actively on pub side. The trash talking extends to both factions, though I tend to see mouthier imps. I see a lot more new 50s on imp side than pub. It'd be interesting to get a stat on whether new players hit 50 on their first toon as an imp or pub.

How long do you think this will go on for before OP actually links to a Torhead spec or an Ask Mr. Robot armory post? I'm glad I found this thread, because I would never have figured out how awesome Ahebish is at TOR. I wonder why Ahebish even deigns to speak with us plebs when Bioware has him on speed dial for IA class insight.