The problem is there are those who say Sentinel/Marauder will win in a 1on1, because of the factors x, y, z etc. and then there are those that say "Infiltration Shadow wins, 'cause I said so". Btw Boarg, a good Sentinel/Marauder will start with Cloak of Pain/Rebuke (because unless you don't intend on hitting the opponent for 5 seconds, which is easily 1/3 of the fight, it's going to be up 100% of the time). This alone is huge btw, since Marauders/Sentinel also wear medium armor. On top of that Low Slash is a non-factor (while Awe is), because the accuracy debuff + Saber Ward = guaranteed Low Slash miss (one of them already giving you a very high chance on its own).

I am talking about sustained single target dps. I am not talking about killing nor AoE.

How do you get to that conclusion honestly? Kinetic's sustained dps is at the very least as high as Infiltration's and both of them can get 400k+ without a single AE. I know because I have done it.

Wait...so the class was less played before they did this, BECAUSE they did this? WHAT!?

Don't second guess it. Torment is great and actually better than what you believe it to be, as the force cost reduction is being calculated after the reduction from Voltaic, so that your Shock will cost 17 force instead of 23.

Two clues: 1. I will never let you Low Slash me on my Marauder 2. I will have Cloak of Pain up for the entire fight

Compare a Scrapper Scoundrel and an Infiltration Shadow in terms of sustained dps then. The Scoundrel will be able to sustain a lot more damage than the Infiltration Shadow and has the option to spec for healing (which following the Marauder example should be an argument against this happening).

That'd be true, if Kinetic wasn't able to sustain higher damage than Infiltration (in fact I have a hard time seeing any other dps AC getting lower sustained dps than Shadow, but I guess we'll have to wait and see for this one).

And how do you counter Cloak of Pain or Saber Ward? I kill Marauders all day in PvP 1on1. I wouldn't ever die to an Infiltration Shadow on my Marauder and unless the Marauder was lobotomized to make the fight fair, nobody else should.

I initially worked on a solution along those lines. A month or so ago I suggested that for 1.2 CS had to receive a crit damage multiplier talent, simply because Double Strike gets one in the Madness tree, which makes it superior to CS damage-wise (even with the 30% damage to your next Project). After thinking about the issue some more I came to the conclusion, that buffing CS for the mere purpose of creating a filler attack and "fixing" sustained damage was way too restricting, because this not only would require 31+ points in Infiltration, but also completely neglect the fact that Shadow Strike is the defining Infiltration ability (not just because of its placement in the talent tree, but also because no other tree affects this ability at all).

Infiltration has several problems and yes, when looking strictly at its job as DPS, the rotation is one of them, because it is only good for 2 big hits. Infiltration lacks a filler attack. Once you have executed your Project + Force Breach, you are struggling heavily, because your only noteworthy filler attack above 30% is Shadow Strike, which has a hard conditional and ridiculous cost. So unless you can land that Shadow Strike after your Project + Force Breach combo and take that target into Spinning Strike range, you often feel like trying to kick somebody's *** with only one foot to stand upon. This feeling becomes all the more prevalent, when Force Breach is on cooldown and you basically have nothing else than Project on a 6 second CD, that can deal 3k damage (all other abilities are either not available on demand or just don't hit for more than 1.5k). Purely DPS-wise, Infiltration needs Shadow Strike to cost no more than 25 Force (and I am willing to bet that if the developers put this ability through their metrics system, they would see that it's underperforming, because attacks are either limited by cooldowns, resource cost or hard coded conditionals, while Shadow Strike is limited by resource cost AND a conditional on top of not even being a force or tech attack). I'd love to see Shadow Strike cost 25 force when under the effect of Shadow Technique with "Find Weakness" triggering no more often than once every 5 seconds (instead of 10 seconds as it is now). This AC is heavily dependent on a powerful attack as follow up to Project and Force Breach and that would turn Shadow Strike into that ability.

Yep, because we all know how awesome Low Slash performs at 30m. Wake up, unless the tank is bad, he won't let you interrupt TK.

The answer is simply no. The shadow's damage is a lot less on demand due to animation delay on several key abilities.

A Kinetic's damage to an Infiltrator is higher than what an Infiltrator can do to a Kinetic. Add the fact that Kinetic has got self healing and a 2s longer Resilience and there's no way a Infiltration spec'ed Shadow could ever win, when both opponents are equal in skill and gear. It's only on other, equal targets that an Infiltration Shadow will deal more damage than a Kinetic.

You can use latency to counter this and Shadow Strike without being directly behind your target, just give a try. The trick is to strafe to the opponents side and then snap back into the opposite direction while hitting Shadow Strike. With good movement, you can land Shadow Strike whenever you need it, though this move requires the full gcd, which makes it impossible to chain two SS back to back this way (you can, however, get 2 SS in back to back, if you actually get behind the enemy after your first maneuver (good players won't allow that to happen very often).

Accuracy definitely not only affects Saber Strike. Whoever started that rumor, has never logged onto a shadow.

For what? That's so arbitrary and lacks any basis. With 94% you will still miss 6% of your attacks on targets with 0 defense. There are classes that have way more than that passively and very high cd related defense, that, given 94% accuracy, will basically make them defend more than 2 out of 3 of your melee attacks for the duration (deflection lasts for 12 seconds for instance). Now the question is, how much is accuracy worth in term of stat allocation compared to other stats. Pre-1.2, surge is the stat you pretty much get regardless of which route you may pick (be it crit or power), thus putting you a fair amount over the "softcap" where diminishing returns are really bad. 1.2 will acerbate this, so that foregoing surge for accuracy and those maximizing your damage will be the way to go, as long as you stay at around 74% surge.

With the diminishing returns on surge, it is actually smart to invest into some accuracy. People forget how we rely on both force attacks and melee attacks and that our melee attacks are quite powerful. Whenever I see a parried Spinning Strike or Shadow Strike, I find myself raging, because I wasted a GCD, force and 3k damage on average.

Interestingly enough I thought the same when I read the info. There's also the whole range aspect affecting the aggro cap, which is another feature introduced by EQ1 at the time. I am intrigued.

I laugh at people who try to scare others away from their class with this kind of ********. As infiltration shadow I have more abilities than I have quickslots (yes, quickslots, not keybinds) and I rely on pretty much every single ability that is keybound to each of the 48 available quickslots, I have to watch for procs, positionals that require me to be very aware of how many times I press the key in order to actually trigger due to bugged animations and cooldowns, yet the class/spec has half the potential of a sentinel due to its absolutely underwhelming defense compared to the class we see in this video (just look at how many times those defensive cooldowns save his behind). If I was to re-roll, I'd laugh at the "difficulty" of playing Sentinel/Marauder and be a lot more dangerous than I already am on a shadow. Luckily, I am not fotm re-roller and stick to my own class.

Who doesn't agree. There are a ton of threads on this, but there has been no statement in regards yet.

The problems with infiltration Shadow's burst is that: 1. It's 2 GCDs worth of burst, of which one is mitigated by armor 2. 50% of your two GCD burst relies on a 45% chance talent to trigger 3. We have no armor penetration worth speaking of 4. It has a 1-1.5s animation that tells your opponent: "Hi, I am gonna try and burst now, get ready!" 5. Outside of 1 vs. 1 we aren't locking down the target reliably before applying this burst, which makes it poof more often than not Still, as always the time people take to record and post videos is appreciated.

For those having issues with FiB and fortunate enough to play with any device that allows macros, I would advise to create a macro for this ability to make it as reliable as any other ability (almost as reliable, as camera spinning will still make it impossible to turn the camera and place your GTAoE root in a spot 30m behind you.) If you have a naga, belkin (razer nostromo or whatever you wanna call it) or any other similar device (simply keyboards with a macro function work as well), just add both FiB and a left click (no delay inbetween) to the macro. You can then simply trigger FiB in any spot you wish by clicking that one key once. There's no delay, no hassle and no need to press the ability first, move your cursor then and left click subsequently anymore. Hope that helps. As far as the thread goes, I pretty much posted the same concerns as Powerr. The truth is pretty simple for Shadows in their current state: Shadows are generalists, who don't excel at any one thing. Specialists will always shine when the competition is high, while generalists shine in pugs. I wouldn't worry too much about it, though, especially given the changes coming in 1.2. I personally believe that adding an on-demand defensive cooldown will solve most problems for Kinetic and Balance. Infiltration needs the cooldown and Clairvoyant Strike to become a real upgrade to Double Strike. Not all that much, if you think about it.

If you disagree with the level of play being lower on a PvE server than on a PvP server in regards to actual PvP, then say so. I have a hard time believing that.

I can see how that can work on a PvE server.