Well, it's a little different for me since I run a high crit build in infiltration and the Force Mystic set bonus. Whenever I can I obviously make use of stealth, which paired with my large force buffer, gets me pretty far into a rotation. I usually go Project, FB, FiB, Shadow Strike (DS, if I am not in position), then either Project and/or SS and Spinning Strike if needed. That's about 198 force over 7 GCDs. Even at only 1 Profundity proc over this period and no Blackout/stealth, I have lost less than 150 force (198-66 from natural regen and a profundity proc).

You can still use the power relic and adrenal, if you stack crit. How are you getting 50-52% crit, if you aren't stacking crit?

You still have the downside of having to set up the burst with 2xCS and being able to apply that SS without delay. We are then looking at uncertain 3 GCDs within a 5 GCD window (2xCS, Project, FB, SS vs Project, FB, FiB, SS, DS). It really boils down to more predictable, a little more shaky and more efficient burst vs. less predictable, more on demand, more expensive burst. I prefer the ladder as I feel I am a lot less pressured into brawling and have to stay within 10m for only 2 GCDs most of the time, move out of battle with FiB and if needed go back in to finish the opponent with Spinning Strike or Project (at this point the opponent is not hitting back anymore usually and trying to retreat). Also in a 1vs.1 situation, I can go Project, FB, FiB, Low Slash, regen for 4s, SS, Project Spinning Strike. If I do that with a 31 build I usually have to forego the second CS build up, cause I don't want to break Low Slash for a single CS.

The short answer is yes (pretty much to everything you said including force synergy, which is 9% instead of 10% btw). Get your crit to 40% with the smuggler buff and you will find out that the pressure and the killing power you have will be superior. The facts are simple, really: - Your chance to land consecutive crits is massively increased (this is what kills people; pressure over 4-5 GCDs) - Your sustained and burst damage will be higher - Your damage/force ratio increases, as the damage you do per ability on average goes up and the force you spend remains the same (this is huge, as infiltration is really in bad shape once it's forced to fuel its attacks of force regen alone)

Can you parse a standard combat log of yours and post the results? Because, frankly, as I have posted and shown above, internal/elemental skills are not just limited in their actual presence but also limited by either being DoTs, low damage output or long cooldowns (or any combination of the three). When I parse my combat log, the kinetic to internal damage ratio is more like 90% kinetic vs. 10% internal in terms of damage.

That would be blatantly false. You may mistake force/tech attacks and internal/elemental damage. Those are two different things. There are very few internal/elemental damage attacks. Take our own class for example and compare the ratio between kinetic/energy abilities vs. elemental/internal and then look at the damage they deal. Most internal/elemental damage abilities are damage over time abilities, low on damage or have heavy cooldowns. Slow Time - Kinetic Telekinetic Throw - Kinetic Project - Kinetic Saber Strike - Kinetic Double Strike - Kinetic Clarivoyant Strike - Kinetic Low Slash - Kinetic Shadow Strike - Kinetic Spinning Strike - Kinetic Mind Crush - Kinetic Force Wave - Kinetic Force Stun - Kinetic Force Slow - Kinetic Spinning Kick - Kinetic Sever Force - Internal DoT Force Breach - Kinetic DoT 9s CD(Force), Internal low damage 15s CD (Kinetic), Internal 15s (12s talented) CD (Shadow) Force in Balance - Internal 15s CD Shadows are no exception. Most classes follow that formula in their damage. It's even worse for non-DPS trees, as they usually have pretty much nothing but kinetic/energy damage.

This line would be so much better, if you actually did two things: 1. State which defensive stat is superior to armor (and please don't be covering your *** by stating "in my opinion", because math has yet to become an opinion even on the internet) 2. Explain why yours is superior I am sure neither of those will happen, however, as you are either way too busy to reply or just too chicken to have a logical argument.

What you need to unlock is the power of reading. That thread on the assassin boards has me answering to the underlying question whether to go crit or power in a very detailed fashion. If you had read my post, you wouldn't be asking this question here as it is absolutely irrelevant whether you crit for 4k or for 3.4k. It's not like it's hard to figure out what is needed to get a max hit (the higher your damage bonus, the higher your hit, unless you managed to use mods and items that make you stay below 74-75% surge). Max hit is meaningless, however. Your goal has to be killing people. As Infiltration spec crit rating will give you much higher burst and higher sustained dps on most of your abilities for a long time (way past the 300 mark, that people like to throw around). No matter what route you go (power or crit), at no point will you be doing 3.4k crits while somebody else is doing 5k+ crits, unless you are a) heavily outgeared by them b) spec'ed differently, c) hitting targets that differ greatly in their mitigation values or d) do not have the same access to debuffs and buffs at the time of the hit. Damage bonus will give you higher hits, but you will obviously lose out on other stats that increases your damage in a less apparent way (stat budgets on items are dictated by item rank). Nonetheless, damage bonus will not add tremendous amounts of damage to your max hit, as even the very large amount of 200 extra damage bonus (extra 870 power) will, at most, add 618 non-crit damage (1081 on a crit with 75% surge) to your max hit on your hardest hitting ability (Spinning Strike).

Very few people will agree with me on this, but if you want to be useful as Infiltration in any other capacity than beating people 2 vs. 1, then stack crit as high as you can. Combine a high crit chance with the PvE set bonus that gives you 50 more force (for a total of 160 force with the talent) and you will be in the best spot you can be as Infiltration.

The spec is indeed crazy, as in it is a disaster and all over the place. You are using Combat Technique and wasting 2 points on Shadowy Veil, which only works if you are in Shadow or Force Technique. You also waste 2 points on Situational Awareness rather than boosting the crit damage on your Shadow Strike after you invested 3 points into Infiltration Tactics. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#601rcRozZhGrRkMrzp.1 - This is probably closest to what you actually wanted to achieve.

Really?

You may notice that I pointed out the clear superiority of crit in regards to burst damage in my analysis. The perfect sweet spot depends on the individual damage bonus coefficient of an ability. So you'd have to break down the distribution of your abilities by dps and then calculate the average coefficient in order to find the sweet spot.

It is the big downside to the spec, as I had mentioned. There is however no spec, that will deal as much damage in 3 GCDs for Shadows (especially if you use stalker set and Project for your 3rd charge of force potency). You are pretty much guaranteed 10k+ force damage, 7k+ internal damage with a potential 5-7k extra kinetic force damage and a subsequent Spinning Strike.

The obvious priority queue is Project and then Slow Time. The reason for this is not that you hope your DS resets your Project (when that happens, it won't matter whether you did Slow Time or Project first), but that you set your rotation up for the worst possible case, which is NOT having your DS reset your Project (in which case you'd build HDx3 a global sooner with the Project > Slow Time queue than with the Slow Time > Project queue), while at the same time maximizing your damage within a given 6s window (and the side effect of having your first Project and Slow Time hit in the same time stamp). I hope that clears it up.

Congratulations for inventing a word like "horribad" and then give an example of what it means straight away (like assuming Expertise will affect the calculation when the opponent is equally geared. You understand the game well).

Hell, no. That was actually the best thing he did in the entire huttball and it is absolutely necessary (in fact you should pop it 2 seconds before you grab the ball). With Resilience up you will make sure you grab the ball since they can't stun you and secondly you won't be pulled into the acid (if you look at the video, he resists the pull at the very beginning or he would have died in the acid).

Definitely, yes.

What numbers in my posts do you think are arbitrary, genius?

In any remotely logical environment, any stat that falls off due to absolute diminishing returns (as opposed to relative diminishing returns) is more powerful than a stat that does not. So Crit and Surge Rating, per se, are definitely more powerful than Power as a stat. However, as you described, there are different builds and mechanics that have to be factored in (like autocrits). This makes the whole balancing act more complicated. Without going into huge theorycrafting, I'd suggest stacking Crit and Surge over Power up to a certain point even for Darkness/Kinetic (the reason for this is that the class itself is force starved, so that we can not Thrash/Double Strike as much as we'd like to to get more energized Shocks/Projects.) Furthermore, Willpower should be preferred to Power as well (not that you run into many situations where you can exchange Power for Willpower point for point, though), because not only does Willpower offer a good amount of dps bonus (not as much as Power but not too far off either) and crit chance, it also gets amplified by our class buff, so that the more Willpower you stack, the more your buff will add.

Power as a stat does not have diminishing returns. The "relative" returns diminish, as they do for any stat that doesn't offer a dynamic +%increase. Example: You have 10 apples and you will be adding 2 more apples to your basket every day (2 apples representing your static gains in power). The first 2 apples offer you a 20% increase of your total apple pool, whereas each day, while your relative apple pool increases, the rate at which you add apples is stagnant, offering less of your total apple pool with each passing day. By the time your basket contains 20 apples, the 2 apples you add the next day, will only offer a 10% increase of your total. In order to not see diminishing returns, each day, you'd have to gain 20% of your apple pool, thus the earnings would have to be increasing dynamically (i.e. power would have to add more damage per point, the more you add).

I'll have a hard time finding a dictionary which explains the word "example" as "using meaningless numbers so they fit my argument". I am going to educate you once again. If you are arguing with a friend about which car is more economic (your Mustang versus his Land Rover, using real values for fuel efficiency over a set distance would be the way to go in an example (and from there different examples can be elaborated that might have different outcomes based on different premises). Claiming your favorite Mustang has twice the fuel efficiency than any other Mustang out there and thus Mustangs are more economic is not an example, because your claim is simply false). Just for your information, even at 22% crit chance for 870 crit rating, the crit build pulls ahead of the power build by 1.1% dps. Reading a line like this makes me wonder what's going on in that little brain of yours...what does that even have to do with anything at all? This is a dps comparison between a power build and a crit build. It's not assuming crits of one build vs. non-crits of the other build. It's simply comparing damage per Shock and the resulting dps.

http://knotor.com/skills#AgoAHgstSlFia3KCiZGZqrrCytKJq7rL0gAA You can switch things around in tier 1 and 2 of infiltration obviously, though the link contains my preference. The idea is to Project, Force Breach, FiB for burst that is a) greater than CS buffed Project + Force Breach, b) has better mobility and range (nothing like dropping FiB behind you as you move out of the fight and finishing the target off with it) and c) having burst that is 2/3 internal damage and thus great against armored targets.

The bug with FL is kinda annoying and obviously really overpowered, when it occurs. I suggest you try the Infiltration hybrid with FiB instead of CS, as that's the highest burst spec we currently have (and the reason why KC hybrid seems so bursty). The ability to drop two consecutive high damage abilities that deal internal damage vastly outshines the extra damage from CS (on top of that, it is a) more subtle, as you don't need to jo-jo twice before applying your damage and b) gives you the opportunity to drop that burst as soon as you decide to without having to use 2 GCDs on preparation). The downside to this superior burst and assault spec is obviously the force management (though coming out of stealth, this is bearable), as FiB is really expensive and if you decide to burst without circling shadows, you will be dry afterwards.

Force Lift is only one option for the hybrid build. If you don't value the utility, you can always spec into Adjudication and see your damage increase substantially.

I told you to stop posting for a reason. You use terms like dps and lump it in with max hits. You are a logical nightmare. Also the numbers presented by the other poster above are absolutely meaningless, as they do not reflect in-game values in any way. 2500 non-crit Shocks turning into 3300 non-crit Shocks due to stacking power instead of crit chance? What planet do you guys live on? Look at your tooltip values. Those tooltip values show non-crit pre-mitigation values. No power in the world is going to make you get 3.3k non-crit (let alone the power you can exchange for crit and post-mitigation values). So just to make you guys understand what power really does: Take an ability like Shock/Project. This ability has a damage bonus coefficient of 1.55. This means that every point of force damage bonus will add 1.55 damage to your Shock/Project. Now aim really high for how much power you gain over somebody that stacks crit instead and you'll come up with less than 800 probably. I'll be generous and make it 870 (this is roughly 200 damage bonus, as each point of power adds 0.23 dps bonus). So at best 200 damage bonus translate to 310 extra damage on your Project/Shock (non-crit) over somebody who stacks crit instead. We now take this value of 310 and multiply it by 2.25 (75% surge and crit modifying talent). Going all out on power stacking will net you a pre-mitigation increase of 697.5 damage per Shock on crit over somebody stacking only crit. Now 870 crit rating will translate to ~25% higher crit chance. Assuming your crit chance in the power setup is 20ish%, your crit chance in the crit setup will be around 45%. Assuming a tooltip damage of 1500 for Shock for the crit build and 1810 for the power build, the crit build's Shock will deal 3.59% more damage than the power build's. This calculation does not account for power adrenals which are going to be used by both builds exclusively, driving the base damage up, thus making power less attractive (relative damage that power adds diminishes the higher the base damage gets), it does also not include the damage buff from Voltaic Slash, which would slightly favor power, but still see crit pull ahead and most importatly it does not factor in the burst difference that is heavily favoring the crit build. So, in essence, for deception/infiltration, even a crit build that runs heavily into DR is mathematically producing higher dps than a power build, unless you only want to fight every 75 seconds and count on 3 charges of force potency killing your target.