I'm sure that Phase Walk having no CD when unused will bump PvE Sin DPS and Survivability up by 10% at least - those poor Concealment Ops tho...

ROFLAWL Yes, this IS a smaller, incremental Class Balance patch like I was talking about, you guys got that part right... ...problem is it took you 6 months instead of 6 days to come up with it. Earning your pay for sure Combat Team.

ROFL - GG, Bioware... You Win. Even I did not believe that you could look at 5 months of hard data demonstrating Shadow/Sin deficiencies in PvE (Tanking/DPS) without taking ANY corrective action. I figured, a major rebalance is coming with 2.4's new arena focus, they gotta be cramming all the painstaking class balance work into that patch. The summation of about 6 months of "hard" work behind closed doors for the class balance guy, I mean "team". It'll all be worth it someday, I told myself, as I plugged away on my BiS 72/75s DPS Sin, while my "Spare-Parts" 69/72 Marauder pulls the same PvE DPS numbers with half the effort. THIS folks is the fruit of 6 months of Shadow Class Balance labor: Jedi Consular Shadow•Phase Walk now only teleports the player when the ability is deactivated manually. All other methods of removing the effect (such as clicking to remove the buff from the effect bar) will simply end the ability without a teleportation. •Phase Walk now only goes on cooldown when the character successfully teleports. Absolutely Speechless...

Been about 4 months from 2.0 official release. In PvE, played to skill cap, Assassin DPS still comes up short compared to just about every other DPS option available. Tank is still the worst of the three. ZERO balancing adjustments for 4 months despite plenty of real combat data and parses for every boss fight. Is there some reason you find this acceptable, because I would like to hold the devs to their word to strive towards the goal of "all DPS specs within 5% of each other" as they previously stated was their target for class balance. All PvE DPS within 5% is a very do-able goal, if you had ANY regular balancing adjustments based on the data coming back from real life raids - or if the devs actually play-tested all the specs at high-level play instead of assuming RL performance off of sims. Every class should be for all intents and purposes equally viable as DPS in PvE - heck pure DPS could be the +5% vs the "standard value" that everyone else represents. Even if we were on the very bottom of the 5%, that would be acceptable compared to the 15%+ discrepancy that exists now. And NO, we're not falling for that "but, we have no armor pen and execute on the dummy" crap, we've seen the real numbers for real boss fights and they still don't measure up. The hold-up seems to be that while adjusting for balance in PvE or even PvP individually might be easy, adjusting both simultaneously has so many variables especially when you consider intangibles like DPS taunts. For example: Stealth, while a significant advantage in PvP, is pretty much useless when fighting PvE Ops bosses. If giving a class parity in PvE DPS would put them over the top in PvP - then they should consider giving each class a separate Expertise multiplier that would affect them in PvP situations only. Ex. 1.0 modifiers for mid-tier, 1.1 for lower tier, 0.9 for upper-tier - adjust further as needed.

I personally think 2.4 is going to make or break the game for a lot of long time players. They've shown that they continue to fine tune the game using a "wrecking ball" (bye, bye ranked WZs & FU to the players who enjoyed them) rather than a scalpel. Will they drop NiM OPs in an upcoming patch because only a small percentage of the player base is enjoying those and it takes more development time than its worth to support them? As arenas bring a brighter spotlight to class imbalance under an even finer microscope, assuming that they don't get everything "exactly right", are people willing to wait another 6 months until the next "adjustment" is made? Here's a recent quote from combat team member, Alex Modny: Q: If the test server finds that certain builds or classes are unwanted for Arenas, do you plan to address that? A: Of course! We are going to pay close attention to what builds and classes players are leaning towards and away from on PTS. If something comes up we will take appropriate action. Sound familiar somehow? Lets look at this March 2013 Quote from Austin Peckenpaugh "...I must mention that when we do our internal playtests against real enemies with real group conditions, Assassins are in fact hitting our DPS targets. Our tests aren’t perfect, however, and we don’t test every fight or scenario with every spec, so we will be looking forward to seeing the results players provide for us. If things really aren’t looking good for Assassins, we won’t hesitate to make the necessary adjustments." If the current Assassin/Shadow situation serves us as a guide, in 2.4 people are going to be waiting quite some time for the "appropriate actions" to occur, if ever. (PS - If interested see This post - for a discussion on more timely balance patches)

One way to support a Competitive PvP game in 8-man, 4-man, or even for healthy PvE would be to issue anything resembling a balance update more often than once every 6-12 months. I don't see SWTORs future as bright if the devs don't get a hold of this very simple concept: Incremental balance updates (tweezers not hammers), substantially more often (monthly at the least), is better than sitting on your work for half a year, and then dumping it in our laps all at once. Ironically, the Cartel Market team has this technique down pat: armor/speeder palette swaps (small updates), regurgitated in a timely fashion (practically weekly), and it is apparently working out well for them (i.e. - propping the game up). A pity the combat team can't provide the same type of service instead of essentially completely uprooting the entire PvP and PvE paradigm whenever they decide it's finally time to double down on a patch. "Ranked PvP as you played it for the past year is NO MORE... here's some Arenas instead - hope you enjoy them. Also, Guardians/Juggs are now the Top DPS.... "I Win", a unique Healing skill that does not respect the GCD and has no energy cost, can now be trained by Snipers/Slingers at Level 10... and Marauders are nerfed to the very bottom of everything... (well except for Concealment Ops, we learned they must always be on the bottom or people will be stunlocked into unsubbing)." Seriously, would it be so difficult to include the player base in the continual process of incrementally improving the game? Why limit the idea testing to the 16 players on the internal test team. We understand that it is a perpetual work in progress, if an idea makes it past "alpha" - try it out on us. If something doesn't work out, you can roll it back. If OP becomes UP, or vice versa, you can adjust it again and again. Anything has got to be better than having the "Smash/Bubble-Stun fest" we endured for 6 months while the devs ironed out the details, behind closed doors, at a glacial pace. Ex. - Look at the top Ranked Civil War metagame over the past year (1st team to get a side cap wins, stalemate in mid to keep active as the clock slowly ticks down to the outcome dictated in the 1st minutes of the match. It took a year to finally try something "crazy" like "Let's see what happens if we take away those side speeders?" Did it magically "fix" the WZ? No - but it's surely a step in the right direction. If only we had more of these small iterative changes going on regularly, a little effort to address obvious issues with balance in a timely manner. If they didn't take months to implement simple things like CW speeders, or VS Walls, or address BubbleStun fest, or nerf Ops again.... I believe there'd be a lot more satisfied customers saying "it ain't perfect, but look they're trying" instead of "who knows what they're cooking up in the lab this year, guess we'll see in 6 months when they drop the 5.8 "balancing-bomb" patch on us".

One way to support Competitive PvP in 8-man, 4-man, or even solo would be to issue anything resembling a balance update more often than once every 6-12 months. I don't see SWTORs future as very bright if the devs don't get a hold of this very simple concept: Incremental balance updates (tweezers not hammers), substantially more often (monthly at the least), is better than sitting on your work for half a year, and then dumping it in our laps all at once. Ironically, the Cartel Market team has this technique down pat: armor/speeder palette swaps (small updates), regurgitated in a timely fashion (practically weekly), and it is apparently working out well for them (i.e. - propping the game up). A pity the combat team can't provide the same type of service instead of essentially completely uprooting the entire PvP and PvE paradigm whenever they decide it's finally time to chip in on a patch. "Ranked PvP as you played it for the past year is NO MORE... here's some Arenas instead - hope you enjoy them. Also, Guardians/Juggs are now the Top DPS.... "I Win", a unique Healing skill that does not respect the GCD and has no energy cost, can now be trained by Snipers/Slingers at Level 10... and Marauders are nerfed to the very bottom of everything... (well except for concealment OPs, we learned they must always be on the bottom or people will be stunlocked into unsubbing)." Seriously, would it be so difficult to include the player base in the continual process of incrementally improving the game? Why limit the idea testing to the 16 players on the internal test team. We understand that it is a perpetual work in progress, if an idea makes it past "alpha" - try it out on us. If something doesn't work out, you can roll it back. If OP becomes UP, or vice versa, you can adjust it again and again. Anything has got to be better than having the "Smash/Bubble-Stun fest" we endured for 6 months while the devs ironed out the details at a glacial pace.

Having the tanks blow both taunts right after Black Obtuse is just going to leave them out of taunts when he aggro drops and picks someone to Disinfect. When Black Obtuse ends whoever was previously tanking him will still have aggro. Exactly 3 seconds later, if OP IX chooses to Disinfect, he will drop all aggro and "target of target" will change to whoever is gonna get blasted. If the Tank taunts immediately after ToT changes, the lucky victim will only get hit once leaving them just barely alive. If the tank taunted too early (before aggro drop), or is too slow at getting him back, a 2nd hit will probably kill anyone. It looks like a 1 shot since by the time anyone's client registers the 1st hit, he's about to do a 2nd, which is why the target of target change is better to use as a "reaction cue" for taunt. It's faster and more reliable than waiting to actually see someones HP at 10% or using the clear audio cue (high-pitched squealing from a raid member). Summary: MT waits for Black Obtuse to end, 3 secs later Target of Target will change (indicating an aggro drop and targeted person taking a Disinfect) or Color Deletion will get called. If ToT changes, taunt immediately to save victim from certain doom on the next hit.

I don't think Xeno HM is any justification for Sin tanks being "just peachy". You do realize that in this ONE fight, all you need is a DPS with a taunt (Sin, PT, Jugg) to make your SIn tank obsolete. Wait 8 seconds after a "click the panels" phase - the DPS taunts, moves towards a pillar - Thermal channel begins (~10s) and is LOSed - then MT taunts back. Seems kind of crazy to be praising the Shadow/Sin Tank for this "gimmick" when any DPS with a taunt (including the former Sin Tank) can effectively accomplish the same thing. Heck, a DPS Sin can taunt, phase walk "zomg br0ke Thermal", cloak, and then return to doing something useful (like 1k more DPS) - without breaking stride. So, as usual just bring a Guardian MT and respec your Sin DPS to help kill cores/boss/adds faster. You'll still be able to do your "amazing Sin trick" for your cookie and your healers can have the real tank do the tanking: win/win.

@Kitru - not to derail this thread - but I wanted to give you an answer here. Being tied to the boss at 4m, with a behind the target provision, while ranged gets to park anywhere within 30m and free cast is probably one reason there's a large variation in Shadow DPS simply because of positioning and variations in skill managing it (uptime %). That said, both DPS specs can currently "do the job" but could use a slight nudge up to be competitive (why should any class settle for 2nd rate in any role available to them?). One thing Infiltration could use is a refinement of one of it's major 2.0 PvE additions - the use of Low Slash in PvE boss fights. It sucks to have a Talented Ability be a complete waste in Ops, so I assume that they probably added a 2nd "duplicity" proc on a separate timer with the intent that people would use Low Slash to get this proc. Problem is, due to its force cost it is not in the optimal 2.0 damage rotation. Outside of small burst damage windows (Kephess pillars, Kell Dragon part 2) using Low Slash bleeds your force faster and any burst damage you gained is offset later by a larger dry spell in force. Simple solution: Reduce the cost of Low Slash to 20 force. This would: 1) Make it part of the ideal damage rotation, requiring optimal management of the 2 separate 9-sec procs to be most effective (rewarding more complex play). 2) Increase potential sustained damage output of Infiltration by about 2%. 3) Not really have any noticeable effect on PvP usage or DPS output (which is why devs are so hesitant to buff Shadow DPS at all). It's probably not enough to "fix everything", but I'm a believer in small nudges towards balance and heck, you gotta start somewhere. Balance, the potential at high-end play looks decent on sustained fights (better than Infil.), but it could use a little nudge up as well. A complaint I hear often is without Duplicity it's boring as heck fishing for your proc after laying the dots (DS spam). Maybe if they just gave everyone what they wanted: Shadow Strike (Maul) back. I'm not saying Duplicity exactly - but Balance's own SS Proc - one that let's say has a force cost reduction more similar to the tank one, but plays off Balance's DoTs for potential damage somehow. Either way, something fun to do while fishing for proc. It would have to cost enough force (or long enough CD) to make it's use limited, but contribute enough overall to make things more fun/complex while bumping the overall damage up by 2%. (My Balance idea is less refined since I don't have a lot of familiarity with the spec - I'm sure someone can run with it) Also, there's room to explore a DPS version of Shadow's Shelter - so that Phase Walk has some more use in PvE. It would be limited in the same way the Tank version is (cast time, small area of effect, 66% uptime at best) - but this would be a great place to give Shadows/Sins a group utility buff so there's some reason to bring them even with slightly lower DPS. Maybe a +1% Crit to everyone near it for Infiltration or +2% to periodic damage effects for Balance. Something that helps you AND your group - that'd rock.

That would pretty much only save your bacon during your cooldowns (Resilience, 5 secs - Deflection 12 secs) which are currently used to basically achieve the same effect. In your proposed scenario, you're still playing the roulette wheel outside of those 17 seconds every 2 minutes. Less time praying to the RNG gods isn't good enough, we want Tank survival to be dependent on the skill of the drivers (tanks/healers). My fix would be changing KB stacks from Absorb bonus to an Armor or DR bonus. I'd also make it so that all KB stacks remain whenever KW is refreshed on the tank. It would take away a little of the high-end "play" in managing KB stacks and trying to keep 'em maxed by holding onto KW as long as you can, but in return you'd get a more stable Shadow Tank, who is still punished badly for bad play (allowing KW to fall off). You'd have to give something up here, since this would push overall mitigation even higher - so I'd probably go with less Self Healing since it's only effective some of the time. It's useless when you're topped off and also doesn't work very well when you're "floor tanking". It's beneficial only if you stay under 100%, which is exactly where healers know they cannot leave a Shadow. So losing this perk would not be bad in order to pick up more Armor or straight DR which is Always effective.

I'm finding the whole gearing argument pretty funny - but it's mostly because people don't know why Shadows are spiky and they don't want to look at the crazy in-depth math formulas proving it. So I'm going to make it very simple: Let's say a "properly geared" Shadow has 20% Defense, 50% Shield, and 50% absorb (these #'s aren't "right" but will work much easier to show what's up). So - simplifying this quite a bit - 1/5 times they take 0 damage - 2/5 times they take 50% damage (shielded) - and 2/5 times they take 100% damage (unshielded). The 2 of 5 (40%) unshielded 100% damage events are what's likely to lead to Shadow death. This is because a Shadow has much less "Armor Rating" compared to VGs and Guardians and "Armor" is the only mitigation by which the 2/5 100% hits are reduced. So Shadows take these unmitigated hits "Harder" than VGs or Guardians - hence the relative "spikiness". (Note: Relative overall damage taken here is roughly: 60%) Now for the sake of argument - let's give Shadows a "ridiculous" Stat budget and max Shield/Absorb instead of Defense. So 0% Defense, 60% shield and 100% absorb!!! Now (again simplified) they take 3/5 hits at 0 damage (shielded w. 100% absorb) - and 2/5 hits at 100% damage (unshielded). This Shadow is JUST AS LIKELY TO DIE as the previous one since the chance of Unshielded events is 2/5 (40%) just like the previous Shadow with normal gearing - despite giving them an "unattainable" Absorb budget. The relative overall damage taken with "redonkulous" stats is 40% - but that 40% is the 2 "full" unmitigated hits. THIS is the "spikiness" that cannot currently be prevented even with "off the charts" mitigation stats. Even if you gave the Shadow 40% Defense, 66% Shield , and 100% absorb - there is still a 1/5 chance of an Unshielded hit - and 2 of those back to back can kill the Shadow tank. See the issue? Despite RIDICULOUS stat budgets - they can still get creamed based on RNG. Chances of getting 2 back to back at 1/5 is 1/25 - which is going to happen several times over during an ops boss fight. The "real" chance of taking a full hit is much closer to 2/5 - which makes it even more likely in reality. TLDR: The ONLY stats that will decrease Shadow's spikiness are ARMOR RATING or Straight DR. Since there's no way to itemize for more, you can shift the other mitigation numbers all you like within the currently available stat budgets (even add Infinite Absorb) and STILL get RNG "2-shot" Shadow Tank death. Yes, you can stack Endurance to avoid 2-shot death, but that will just make your overall mitigation much worse than VGs and Guardians - PLUS you STILL get to be the "Spikiest" anyhow. Good job BW class balance team... I mean guy.

This here is part of the issue, but let me try to put this into perspective in another way: Let's pretend that 8 weeks from now, for their next "in-game event", BW is going to have a "DPS-Race Contest". Each account gets one-time access to kill a "special" Ops Dummy with 1 million HP only once. The result is recorded and the account that kills the dummy the fastest wins $1,000,000, epeen galore, the job as Head of Class Balance for SWTOR, etc. Let's just pretend for the sake of argument that this particular dummy has an armor rating of 0 - so that armor pen is no issue - and everything else anyone can think of as far as buffs/debuffs go is somehow made equal for all classes. The Dummy is placed in a separate instance that only 1 player can enter, so there is no outside help, no bugs, no cheating, etc, etc. (Pretend that tanks and healers get their own contest and aren't complaining - lol) With the game balanced as it is currently (2.2.1) would you: A) Try to win the contest with your DPS Shadow/Sin even if you are the max-geared, top player in the world. B) Use the 8 weeks to reroll a Slinger/Sniper, gear it, and learn to play it so you have a shot at winning. C) Complain to BW that since they don't have the DPS ACs within the same "time zone", the contest is unfair until such a time as all ACs can participate while having a remote chance of winning. Thing is, why do you need a imaginary contest to prompt you into taking the action you decided upon?

Unfortunately, when you try to take the Top 20~50 median on DPS Shadow or Sin HM parses - you get "Tank Overachievers" on the list since there's just SO MANY DPS Shadows/Sin playing endgame content. Maybe if there was some compelling reason to use one over a Sentinel/Marauder, more people would be playing them (maybe if there was a reason to play melee DPS in general, but that's another story). Sadly, aside from enjoyment of the playstyle/challenge, there really isn't one. So, it's just the die-hard fans like Aran and myself left playing them, managing to squeeze acceptable performance out of them, while other ACs can pull 10-15% higher with the same skill/gear. The rest of the population must have just used logic at one point and moved on. IF they want people to use Shadows/Sins for DPS in endgame PvE, then maybe they should work on the whole 1-2 "chosen ones" capable of producing acceptable numbers, vs. the "sub-par norm" phenomenon. It's pretty clear that despite my penchant for using it, the class is not accessable to the population at large and is being largely abandoned in endgame PvE. In a game consisting of Hundreds of Thousands of players is it a good thing if maybe a handful of players across all servers can produce decent DPS #'s on this class? Or perhaps that's a sign that these are "outlier players" (who would perform even better behind the wheel of any other AC) and the class itself does in fact need some work?

Thanks Aran & Ino for your efforts in reviewing the math again. Math (without errors) FTW. Trust me, I was kidding when I suggested anyone hunt for the optimal #'s using infinite parse data. I think we put in plenty of time making and analyzing real combat data during Raids to be wasting any more of our free time playing with the dummy. I'm just glad to know I wasn't "crazy" when I was honing my stats and looking at the 250-300 range. I was about to abandon my intuition and try a few weeks @110 on your advice you %*^@%&!!!! haha PS - Looking forward to "playing with" the spreadsheet. It'd be cool to extrapolate data to graph the expected dmg output of each value of crit at a given budget. My guess is that aside from the jump at 0+, the output curve is pretty flat, which is why it was hard to find the peak from real data and why values relatively far from it weren't "astoundingly worse". Thanks again for making it available! (I also wonder if LS cost 20, would it instantly become viable in core rotation) **Update** Closest I could get without doing something funky: Crit Rating: 275, Melee: 24.84%, Force: 24.32% (Buffed w. Willpower @3094).

I found this phenomenon as well at lower crit ratings, the "Hero Parse" becomes available if you win in the lottery, but your overall results average lower and have a lot of variation to them, so the 0-100 crit thing wasn't working for me. @ 250-300 rating I was able to regularly reproduce my results within 100 DPS and just called it good enough for me. However, TORParse data clearly shows Sev's choice of 28-29% crit is also viable and more than capable of producing competitive #'s. I'd bet that the consistency of the parses continues to increase as you continue to go up in crit rating.... but it's soooo hard for me to let that "Hero Maul" go on Keph the Undying.... If there's nothing else really being quantified besides pure DPS output, it makes the entire range of crit rating we're seeing "viable" as long as they put up roughly the same #'s at the same gear level. Back in the day when Proc Dmg relics were in style, it favored the high crit side of the range, because the procs also benefited from the crit chance (if you had the right relic), and all things being equal, having your dmg proc crit more over several minutes was enough to give crit the nod. However, SA and BA beat the dmg proc relics for now - so without that... The range of crit ratings that can pump out competitive DPS seems to be quite large for Deception. While taking these values would destroy output for almost any other spec, Deception can continue to perform well deep into the crit curve. While I find this interesting, it sure does make finding the optimal value a PITA. Anyone wanna try my previous suggestion and stick it to us all?

Basically, the idea is always be doing something - so saber strike is way better than standing around waiting for things to come off CD or for force to recover naturally. It's also really good at bringing up a maul proc when one is due because you get 3 chances at it. That said, generally if you have anything else in the rotation that's available for use, you should use it instead.

Not sure "stable" is ever going be the hallmark of Deception spec - but with enough practice, you should be hitting about the same #'s consistently on each individual boss fight (I consider within 100 DPS of your "best ever" on that boss to be acceptable variance and a good effort). However, bosses have different mechanics which will either limit your output severely or allow you to achieve max uptime. So, your average #'s for each boss will be different depending on this. Additionally, you are melee which subjects you to extra mechanics like keeping 4m range, while standing to the side or behind the target (maul), and avoiding AOEs and KBs when possible - things that generally others may not have to even consider. Ex. - Dash'roode is a mix of stationary tank and spank DPS, with DPS on the move (between shields), Knockback avoidance/recovery, and if you're unlucky a 20 second "forced stop" when you get "lost". Your DPS #'s will vary wildly depending on if you get lost or if the tanks can control him well or not. Thrasher- assuming you aren't on the adds is pretty much just beat this thing sllly for 5 mins, so you should be more consistently able to repeat your results on that fight. Just keep at it, and as you gain experience working the spec, you'll find ways to improve your uptime as you learn what mechanics keep you from performing your best, and how to best avoid/mitigate them if possible.

Makes sense, I play Deception exclusively so I've been gearing for consistency in that spec alone. I found that when I dropped crit for power under 200 rating, that while you open the door to having a "Hero Parse" if RNG gives you your old crit % back for a few minutes, the chances of good parses occurring regularly goes down a bit. (i.e. bigger variance on parse range). Either way, I appreciate you swapping info here, I wish more of us did it regularly.

Thanks for sharing this info! I don't have Sammul's stats, but I do have my data on HM Thrasher which was ~50 DPS shy of his @ 2653 DPS. (I'm just a casual, but I feel it's decent since my raid group has no Sent/Mara). Crit Rating: 307, Buffed Melee Crit: 25.37%, Buffed Force Crit: 24.85% Thrasher Parse Overall Crit%: 36.32% Voltaic Slash Crit%: 49% My data lines up pretty closely with Sammul's (overall crit 37.26%, VS crit 50%) so I believe he was near or above my Crit rating for his parse. This is why I was remiss to offer a definitive answer at all. The problem is that due to the "plateau effect" near the optimal rating, even the top parsers are "feeling around in the dark" a bit. There's a range from at least 110-307 crit rating that can output competitive results (for Deception at least). It would honestly surprise me if Deception and Madness had the same Optimal Crit rating, but I can see the advantage of having 1 set of gear that can do the job well for both specs, especially if you play both specs in the same raid. Regardless, while I'm still tweaking to find what's optimal, I consider Aranelde an authority on DPS Sins and would defer to his rating recommendations.

I'll let someone else handle the specifics, but which spec is higher DPS actually depends on the type of fight: sustained or burst. In fights where it's tank and spank (HM Thrasher) and you have 100% uptime on the boss, and/or there's adds - Madness is very effective in the right hands. In fights where the damage windows open and close frequently, or there's a burst damage mechanic like 2-3x damage for a short time (HM Styrak), Deception does well. So the "Best DPS" option is to buy field respec, pack some alternate gear to swap stats as needed, and run both specs... but I'd just run what makes you have fun playing the game - lol.

Lucky for us, verifying advice credibility is as easy as checking TORParse. Since the goal of maxing your DPS is applying it to encounters that matter like HM/NiM Ops bosses, we should at actual combat data on real Boss fights. Let's take a peek at the top parses on a pure sustained DPS race (no burst windows) like: S&V's HM Thrasher (Sins) (defaults to 8-man SM, so click on the tabs to get to HM/NiM to get an idea of what #s top players are parsing at) This is the top HM Thrasher 8-man Assassin parse at the time of this post: http://www.torparse.com/a/244646/12/0/Overview What we can see from this log (2709 DPS), is that it's Deception Spec based on the attacks being used. Also, the crit % overall is 37.26%. On the "Damage Dealt" tab, let's look specifically at the VS crit% (50% here) which is affected only by set bonus (+15%) and Exploitive Strikes (+9%) but not recklessness. Even if they managed to keep up Exploitive strikes the entire time, that's 26% base crit (buffed) needed to get to 50%. There's some RNG involved here, but with 37% overall even if recklessness and set bonus can skew that % a little, I'm fairly certain that more than 57 crit rating was used to achieve this (I'd guess about 250-300). So, battle-tested Top Deception Sin's crit rating or Joe forum poster's - your call. Now, let's look at the top HM Thrasher 8-man Shadow parse at the time of this post: http://www.torparse.com/a/287892/14/0/Overview What we should note here is that Balance/Madness spec is in use based on the attacks used (and it achieved excellent effectiveness for our class: 2817 DPS). The overall Crit % was 30.7%. About 6-7% less than the previous parse. When you look at Double Strike crit (43.5%) - it's certainly using the +15% set bonus. So, even though there's always a bit of RNG involved, you can bet that less crit rating was used by this Balance Shadow (at least for this fight) compared to the previous Deception Sin. The takeaway is that you can learn a lot by analyzing top parses: different specs need different stats to perform at their best, the best Sin spec for a fight can depend on whether it's a sustained or burst fight, and no one should write off balance/madness. PS - The owners of these parses do frequent the forums and will likely correct me if I'm wrong

I wish I could give you a definitive answer on this, and I'll likely get flamed for even trying, but here goes: In PVE, I've found that you probably want a minimum of 200 crit rating in this spec at L55. So start there, prioritizing Willpower and adding as much Power as you can pack in after that. Then you can tweak it by swapping in/out 50-100 crit rating and reparsing until you find your "happy place". Problem is that within a certain range of the "optimal" rating given a certain stat budget, the RNG on parses makes them all look very similar. Someone could probably hit the dummy with BiS 72s and do a few hundred 15 minute "perfect" parses swapping in 1 more Crit aug/mod 1:1 with Power and repeating for every possible Crit rating from 0-1000 (probably won't have to go that far) then observe the range where they plateau and all start to merge - then call the median of that range the "peak". That person would become a Sin/Shadow "Hero". I'm personally not that bored - lol.

Looks like you are probably going to want to prioritize some Crit and PvE Set bonuses as you gear up - but on the whole you have the general priority idea: Discharge (3 stacks only) Shock (2 stacks VS+Induction) Maul (proc) Voltaic Slash Saber Strike Max the Recklessness benefit by using it on CD at 0 Discharge stacks or immediately AFTER firing off a 3 stack Discharge if you have stacks built. Just make sure you cash in a full 3 stacks for free. Adding in the Low Slash + Maul proc will dry you out faster in sustained damage like Dummy parses, but has some uses in "Burst Windows" featured in many recent Ops boss fights. Meanwhile [blackout ---> Force Cloak (spike+maul) ---> Blackout] maintains your force regen and resets the recklessness CD. Probably some other tips I'm missing, but others will chime in I'm sure.

While I understand your frustrations - I think this here is where you and KBN went wrong in attempting to bring this issue to light in the eyes of the devs and playerbase: You buried these posts in the "class forums". I'd be willing to bet that 90% of the players - don't visit the SWTOR forums, and if they do they basically see that there's a PvP forum, a General forum, etc. All of them quickly bring you to one specific forum on the topic of choice... then there is the "Classes" forum. Click there and you have a sort of general purpose forum, or you can choose to specify a "role" or "Basic AC" (Consular). In the Roles forum and in each of the Basic AC forums there's yet ANOTHER general purpose thread area and the option to continue to more specific forums for Tanking or a specific Class (Shadow). A myriad of poorly organized forums within forums: THIS is where you guys attempted to bring attention to a pretty important balance issue. To get to the Shadow forums you'd have to click 3 times from the main page and that's more APM than the devs can manage. Also, some experienced forum hunters (not naming names) didn't even know there WAS a Tanking forum for about the first 12 months of the game. TLDR: If you want to "get the message out there" - the General Forums, Bug Forums, and even PVP forums seem to get ALOT more attention than the Class forums. Maybe a thread title like "My Shadow's Dying ALOT- and it's all because of BOLSTER!!1! (not really)" or "Revan's Armor STILL doesn't look Right!!! (Shadow Tank math inside)" would do the job. Maybe even a Cartel Market suggestion like: [Character Unlock: Shadow - Improved Viability] ONLY 5000 Cartel Coins All this aside - if you do leave - thanks for consistently trying to better inform the community on regular basis, it's thankless work. Also, know that the true power of your "Unsub" lies in the "direct feedback" parting message you can shoot them when you've confirmed that they aren't getting your $$$ anymore. Similar to taking the name of a teenager who got your drive-thru order wrong and calling the District Manager to complain, you can rest assured that you will bring some unwanted heat to the devs when EA sees they are costing them potential $$$. Of course they may just end up firing some more devs and hiring more visually-challenged high-school photoshop students to increase the rate at which terrible looking pallette-swapped CM "junk" can be churned out for an even bigger profit. Who needs game balance when you can have a pink speeder, right?