No offence but id take chief over koozie, he has proven himself in high end ranked. Too much ego stroking in here anyway, being a big fish in a small pond means nothing. Everyone needs to just chill until we get to bastion

I would hope most ranked teams end up at the Bastion, there's alot of people who play on the US servers from asia and soon all the APAC pvp'ers will head to bastion because the only servers for us with decent ping are the west coast ones

So long as alphababe goes to the rp server we'll all be fine

Pinging 159.153.68.252 with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 159.153.68.252: bytes=32 time=161ms TTL=240 Reply from 159.153.68.252: bytes=32 time=159ms TTL=240 Reply from 159.153.68.252: bytes=32 time=158ms TTL=240 Reply from 159.153.68.252: bytes=32 time=157ms TTL=240 Ping statistics for 159.153.68.252: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 157ms, Maximum = 161ms, Average = 158ms Melbourne telstra cable here also - it's mainly the perth people who'll be feeling the high ping

Just had a look again, on bastion there are 5 50s wzs underway and none on the harbinger - plus obviously plenty of lowbies on both. Both servers are sitting at "Heavy" presently

Fair enough - but the fact that you'd consider these discussions says alot about how we're making the right decision.

Yeah, thats why core is going to the bastion. Harbingers top guilds are starting to reroll bastion just to get some decent competition in rateds - which is the end game for us pvp guilds. And check out the node guarders from the core 1 / ewok games we've been uncapped thus far

I really hope people see the light and roll bastion. It's the only competetive ranked pvp scene left, the top guilds on harbinger are already in the 'bored and doing balance ranked' stage - just refer to this thread http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=616604 For anyone valuing the PTS results (which i played on - class balance was quite poor when these guilds vs'd each other) you need to read the forums closer - bastion guilds like mvp only lost when they had by FAR the worse gear. Not only that Harbinger only has a couple of competitive guilds left in the ranked scene - both of which are bored and wishing they were playing on bastion.

i agree with the OP

I still think we need to goto Bastion for the best pvp community, regardless of hours. The dalborra guys will be fun to play against during normal hours but the real ranked is gonna happen vs the best teams at their hours and probably only once a weekend. I'd like to at least be able to Vs the best ranked guys once a week as opposed to playing with noobs 24/7 - plus with guys like the elite and a few other guilds who run at odd hours we'll have plenty to play with and probably have alot more fun in the process. Also remember that anyone who wishes to return to the game will find themselves on bastion away from all their old guildies / friends, we're trying to encourage apac people to come back not drive them away. People were happy to merge the apac servers together and have what would have been a crappy population with wzs only popping in the evening still - and now we're all getting greedy about how bastion only has a few wzs going at off peak times? it's still 24/7 there. We're only going to add to those off peak hours being even busier

Hey, I earned my mvp fair and square meds!

The current changes to balance are unacceptable - it was a borderline useable dps class as it was. If you remove the new 'rippling force' talent and replace it with the old 'sharpened mind' skill then the balance tree will still be very good. Tier 2 in balance also needs to offer something to hybrid builds instead of purely force technique abilities. Something like this REALLY needs to happen, balance needed a buff if anything. I'm an elite warlord shadow with alot of ranked experience and 40000 pvp kills since 1.2 - mentioning this to add a little weight to my comments.

Always interesting to watch, good work. I guess being a jack of all trades shadows find it difficult to know their real role in a wz, these videos go a long way to covering that. Also i've been using a couple of alternate specs you might want to try - this is a variation on the 0 27 14, the anti bubble stun spec. You lose a little burst but the force-to-damage ratio of a stock force breach is still good - you've always got 10m skills to use to pop those *********** bubbles. The extra point in double strike is because i use the stalker pve set, and honestly force in balance is still great force-to-damage if you hit two people with it. 38 force over the course of 15 seconds compared to 25 force, and having double strikes hitting harder all the time. It's not even a 1 force per second saving if you're constantly using force in balance. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#601ZfGrRkdbobZcMcRd.2 Another one is a balance spec that works as a more robust 'in the pocket' dps and surprisingly effective as a node guarder (high force regen in stealth for sapping, and stealthies cant get away from you when you dot them up). I'm generally using blackout for defensive purposes, and it doesn't hurt being able to open up on fights with some extra force regen, you can effectively throw out a free project to proc extra melee dmg. Also losing sever force isn't a great deal inside a ranked environment for a shadow dps / node guarder, all two dots will do on an opponent is make your force suppression charges run out way before you can get them up again - i've even tested the dummy and taking sever force out of the rotation doesn't impact my dps at all. Reducing 'setup' time for balance is the key to killing fast imho http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#6010MZfdb0zZfMbRrRkrc.2 Finally in regards to Full balance, i prefer this personally, but ymmv. The extra dps on double strike doesn't compare with 2 points in Celerity IMHO (seems like an OP ability for second tier to me). I'd like to point out i don't take upheaval because i'm generally going to use project combined with force potency, and having an extra chunk stealing a charge isn't ideal. I try to slow instead of using project for the most part - it's good force value, and seeing as i have a fairly high crit bonus (around 400 crit rating) i'm not worried about a slight melee dps increase usually. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#6010cZcMbZfMbRrRkrfz.2 I'd just like to add my thoughts on the infil changes, it is now a fantastic node guarder because of the defensive cooldowns and the force regen in stealth really helps sapping people. I've used it in ranked matches vs the best guilds on my server and it was just as good as a kinetic hybrid, stealing nodes was even better.

The server lost a lot of good players, swtor as a whole did. That doesn't mean there isn't a smaller portion of quality players left - in fact i've seen alot of the guys who were considered 'the best' back in 1.2 era playing again. As for the mentoring i wouldn't want to put my name down as i find it hard to get the time to play regularly, but any shadow is welcome to pick my brains about specs / tactics if they see me around.

It sure is a team game, but there are times when you're in a dueling style situation - especially as a shadow! It improves your game alot to learn how to deal with each class and possible build in a 1v1. I remember all the guys from Core hanging out on tatt and dueling alot, good times

I vote for no stun nades in competitions. There's enough stuns in the game as is! It'd make things more interesting imo

*********** PTs and maras man. So profeshional

i just came back out of boredom come be bored with me noob

Your point? if you read my posts i'm clearly discussing the validity of a madness assassin in the main fight of a ranked wz, and compared to the other preferable dps's theyre not as effective. My point is numbers aren't important and there's really no need to discuss them - you should head over to that records thread instead. So back to the original point of the thread, i think with these new changes infiltration can be the 'node guarder' as well as a kinetic balance hybrid, with a slight edge on offense. It's certainly not the worst class in the game, and can be quite game changing at times.. provided you choose your targets and use cooldowns wisely. Sadly shin i don't think we'll ever get away from the node guarder or tank roles. even our tanking got a hit in 1.3 so it's really unfortunate because i love dps'ing in the bulk of the fight. The sad fact is other classes just do it better and bring more to the table in that situation

Okay mate, you can say what you want. Noones winning by stacking madness assassins

I know the class just fine, balance has nothing on vanguards in a dps role within the main fight. The combination of their abilities has proven this time and time again within ranked matches

Another big issue for me with infil is getting rooted. It would go a long way to fixing the playstyle if they had the ability to remove roots on using force speed as opposed to the damn tank tree having it - or even some sort of shadowstep ability (getting abilities added is obviously wishful thinking at this point). Another one i can add to the pile is that it's difficult to keep the 9% melee crit bonus up - kinetic obviously has accelerated projects, and balance dots tick crits all the time. Infiltration shadows rely almost completely on crits hitting for good dps yet they have the lowest crit rate of all the builds, the kinetic field talent really should be adding +2% crits per stack instead of +2% damage reduction or something along those lines.

I've returned after a period of inactivity also, last time i played was patch 1.3. I've had a chance to play the new changes to infil and i have to say it's probably as good / better than kinetic for being a node guarder - it also has the added advantage of being the best at assaulting a node. This guy saying infiltration is better off attacking the whole time and being visible is missing the idea of the spec entirely, this role is done better by balance obviously - which still pales in comparison to the sent / vg's with their debuffs and utility to go with the dps. Sadly there's still really no place for a balance shadow in an optimal ranked team, full 31 pt kinetic can serve as a decent maintank, and the kinetic/balance hybrids are still great for node guarding - now with some competition from infil. PS welcome back shin

whats the need if i dont have any resolve? theres enough crap in the way as is

The damage u take when guarding doesn't take into account your armor / defenses.. so the dps we take from guarding is the same as the other tanks. I agree though, they shouldve nerfed the tanking trees dps and left our survivability alone, off cooldowns we're the easiest tank to kill - but having said that our (very) effective cooldowns make it really hard to kill us in ranked when we get switched to. We've even got a vanish to use for a last resort.. you just need to do alot of kiting / peeling and stay near the heals