I only have pvp gear to contribute with, my PVE is a mix of rakata / BH but i've been bored with it lately and haven't even bothered to augment it. I'm wearing full WH augmented with the PVE stalker set bonus (im using 4 columi pieces with pvp mods). The following is using my rakata WP stim and fully raid buffed: HP: 19896 End: 1720 WP: 1800 Melee dmg: 933-1128 Bonus dmg: 544 (569 power) Accuracy: 99.36% (265 acc) Crit chance: 40.70% (418 crit) Crit Multi: 75.14% (265 surge) I find these stats pretty much optimal for balance and my PVE set has similar amounts.

8 on the opposition with stacks of these in ranked wzs.. it really sucks. There's enough cc in the game as there is

Just to post another benefit for 23 1 17 - If you're required to be defensive or guard a node, you can get away with using a shield and not gimp your dps too much, seeing as you're doing mostly weapon damage. As i posted above though it can be a double edged sword

I've always found 27 0 14 to be the best dueling spec as a shadow - just having the ability to cycle projects into a 1 stack tk throw i feel makes the difference, mainly because of skills like Deflection. If a hybrid attacks me and i use deflection, i know he's going to have a hard time proccing his shadow strike and particle accel - whereas i can still maintain most of my potential dps by cycling project into tk throw (tested on the dummy). This is just one example, but when im node guarding it's usually shadows who come after me. Using this trick you can get around some classses +defensive cooldowns and have a nice mix between force and weapon damage, plus you're not forced to be in 4m range to get your dps on.

Hey, this is just a build i've used for a while as a bit of fun. Using force technique, it might make it easier for a few to get into playing balance without having to worry about using FiB and dots to increase force regen, which takes a fair amount of micromanagement. Basic rotation is FiB --> force breach --> double strike until mind crush or infiltration tactics procs - It's quite a good spec for messing up healers with the spinning kick abilitiy too. The self healing lines up fairly evenly with the nerfed kinetic healing, minus the 10% from battle readiness. It might feel a bit strange without project, i suggest using force slow instead. Use force potency with FiB, and dont be afraid to use a charge with TK throw either. Note that full balance is imo our best dps spec, still this brings some interesting things to the table. Here's the link... http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/skills/shadow#732082le-6-12e7c2f

You count without kinetic ward. Shadows can get a stupidly high shield chance! i wish theyd fix the fact it only mitigates white damage.

Transcendence is crucial specifically in civil war and huttball. Our sents would routinely sit on the prac dummy before we entered a wz, and proc up his runspeed talents to maximum in the minute before the wz popped and it was a huge advantage for obvious reasons. In civil war ranked games involving the best teams on the server, the middle often never gets capped. This results in a stalemate where whoever capped their side node the first will be the winner, unless the team 'behind' can somehow win mid, or not let it go while trying to cap a side. In Novare, while not quite as crucial, if middle never gets capped (rarer than civil war) the same situation applies. In huttball alot of it is about momentum and control, having the speed at the beginning allows you to at least compete in getting that first ball when your opponent will presumably have their sent / mara doing the same thing. Then during the match having a couple of maras with it .. combined with your obligatory shadow and jugg tank - lol. Also voidstar it is very useful, especially if you manage to get through the first door and slow the opposition while your stealthers run ahead with speed boost. All of this isn't even mentioning the ability to have your entire team reinforce a node / point faster .. you get the picture. It's abilities like these which push all other DPS's out of their positions in RWZs.. and im pretty sick of it

I'm using orange belt / bracers with 58 armorings / 61 mods in them and that helps get my hp about to around 19200 unbuffed, which yields just over 20k buffed. I think this is the perfect amount for a dps, im using full augd WH with all resolve augments. If i'm playing as a tank, i'll pop my rakata endurance stim and have over 21k, and sometimes use a shield combined with the war hero relic of shield amplification to add a little extra survivability. If we're offense on voidstar or need to attack a node even though i'm a tank i'll generally switch to full dps gear

I like the way GW2 is implementing this.. balancing all the skills against each other then letting you choose from a large array of them. Admittedly there will be these 'synergies' where certain combinations are going to be superior, but still. Swtor should really try to learn from this, i think their itemization system is too complex and the skills system is too simple - it should probably be the other way around and the casuals can still not feel overwhelmed like they do with the current mess of mods / augments / set bonuses / expertise etc. I couldn't tell you how many times i've had to explain to level 50s what expertise is, or even PVP gear / how to open up the mod page on an item and stuff like that. Either way, infil still needs some love

They should allow for more diversity within the one tree imo. People love coming up with new builds, it's something that kept me playing say, diablo 2 for ages. I dont mind being put into a certain 'role' for balance purposes - but i'd like to be able to tinker around within that and customize the strengths of different abilities. All we can really do is put a few skill points different here and there.. there are many non game breaking ways to implement something like this - i wasn't suggesting swtor try to imitate rift! like you said it has its own set of issues. I read through these forums.. so many threads and 'builds' coming up - even to the point people name them after themselves I actually enjoy this aspect of mmos.. it keeps me here for the long haul. What is sad is, over time these 'hybrids' are becoming worse and worse.. check out the recent 27/14/0 thread! For me personally its not about being individual, but the satisfaction of coming up with a combination of skills within the scope of the class that allow me to play a style i enjoy.

I've been a part of ranked games where our dps was superior and we still found ways to lose - it's obviously not the be all end all of it. A big part came down to who could capture said objectives first, and here's another case of the sentinel and transcendence being a massively important ability, on ALL wzs. Shadows still have their niche role of being node guarders / objective cappers - but thats what is happening, certain abilities are required for winning in the 'all or nothing' objective style of our wzs, and its only really our tank spec that provides them. But yes, the fact of the matter here is mitigation is done more effectively by guarding, taunting and using cooldowns than any armor, or shield absorb defense stats (which only mitigate white damage) - and combined with DPS being so effective at catching back objectives, i guess it's no wonder we see this situation.

Yeah, really it's the sad fact of the matter - i wish infil could do the job it was designed for. They also should encourage hybrids as it adds a lot to the longevity of the game, being able to play a bunch of different (and viable) builds. Rift has been able to do this quite well for instance

Yes i know, it was part of their forcing us up the one tree as much as possible nerf - and it came before 1.2 - my point was it was an update for the people invested entirely in one tree but not as much for a hybrid shadow who plays a role requiring alot of solo play in ranked wzs. Anyway it's not really a big deal

For full KC yeah, but it just served as another way to nerf hybrids. You could proc it with each USE, much like how circling shadows still works - even if someone used a cooldown such as deflection or an accuracy debuff you could still get the proc off. Not a huge deal but still..

Of course, these things are all great. That's why i have been able to enjoy playing a shadow for so long - but let's not get ahead of ourselves, ranked wzs aren't being won by stacking shadows. We're pretty much a jack of all trades master of none, so in that sense there's always room for at least one of us, but its generally as a tank. Shin you are obviously right regarding the utility and disruptor aspect of our class, but ranked games have been won consistently by having the superior dps / healer killing, stacking PT's and maras - which also provide plenty of CC. There simply isn't room for half of the AC's and even the ones that are useful are lucky to have even 2 viable specs. If you read around the boards, ranked is dead / dying on most servers with only the few top guilds playing.. honestly if you've got tanks running pure dps gear just because DPS is so important to winning then there's some fundamental flaws in the balance of this entire game. I don't want to derail the thread, but it does allow shadows to understand the current situation of the end-game pvp for our class, and hopefully if BW are paying attention they could see why all this stuff they're doing for balance is almost a moot point when certain aspects of gameplay are dominating ranked.

Yeah and although ive tried doing this as the maintank, leaving my healers alone just got them ***** by the PT's. At least the full KC build can be a viable tank for ranked even after nerfs.. its just frustrating that we're not as good as the aforementioned dps's in our OWN dps specs..

no doubt the full 31 KC spec is the best for maintanking and kiting the maras, and protecting the healers. killing them however, it stands pretty much no chance. The one good move you have against them they can vanish from, and if things ever heat up they can just pop the most powerful defensive cooldown in the game, guarded by bioware - they're straight back up again, and quite frankly maras in a good ranked game are harder to kill than most tanks within the main fight. So if you're arguing the KC is there as a dps and not the tank, that's never going to work its not enough focused DPS to make any difference.

It's accurate because in the ranked games i've been a part of, the stacking of maras and PTs were beating us. The best guild on our server ran with and ONLY with their stacked team of fotm builds. 2 heals(usually scoundrels), 2 maras, 2 pts, 1 full 31 sin tank, and a jugg. No matter what makeups we used we simply couldn't compete until we countered them with guess what.. the same type of lineup. It came down to a few things.. but the main offenders were maras having OP cooldowns, stupidly fast healer interrupts combined with the OP damage of the pts was simply GG. I'm speaking very situationally here, but there was no room for a hybrid shadow on top of 2 tanks in this team. we tried, and it didnt have enough dps, we didnt have enough interrupts, healing debuffs or armor penetration to compete. And on another note, the above reasons are why we didn't particularly enjoy ranked. People couldn't play because they didnt have the right class, and alot of us were pigeon-holed into roles we didn't enjoy. Before ranked went live we were considered the guild to beat, and we were when we had our lineup - but most of the time we just played with who was online. This led to a further issue, people got pissed off at losing to FOTM games all the time, and as of now we haven't queued ranked in over a week, and the guilds essentially dead.

As much as i like what this spec brings to the table i just cant see it being superior in the main fight to an equally played mara or pt (if you're taking the place of a dps). The abilities mentioned in the post above are all done better by these two classes.. i mean maras have a 6 second (talented) interrupt, and most important of all to ranked a healing debuff. All we have compared to this is a 12sec interrupt. This only leaves the maintanking role, which is better served by a guardian or full KC. Having said that, hybrid shadows are still by far the best node guarders and stealth allow us to be the best node cappers - probably their reasoning for giving us very little in the way of debuffs.

In my experience, the best maintank is a guardian. Having said that, a fantastic 31 x x player will be better than just a good guardian tank - my rated team has run a full KC maintank with great success and from pure results it seems to be very much down to who is the better player. OTOH, if you're going to be an offtank or node guarder, hybrid is imo the best option. You can have more burst and single target dps to handle the incoming attacks and if you have to assault another node effectively. EDIT : sorry i just realized you were asking in a purely pve scenario. Boargs given some good info below on this Honestly if you're going to be respeccing every night it will cost way too much, find yourself a build that works for both. In your case, i'd go for full KC in ranked and pve

Yeah, a little time spent reading through the other classes guides goes a long way towards understanding why it's a good idea to prevent say, a marauder building rage on you by mindlessly staying in melee range trying to outgun them.

I guess the meaning can be subjective, but when i refer to kiting melee and specifically maras - i think 31 x x has the edge over hybrid in their ability to do damage at 10m and prevent the mara from building rage, and just killing you faster. Being able to cycle slow time into project then into 2 stack tk for good dps is a godsend in dealing with them. Obviously you're going to head into 4m to do such things as spinning kick, 'fish' for a particle accel proc when you've got potency ready, etc. An interesting note is i have great success 1v1 maras with balance, using sever force and slow are the real keys to this (i dont think enough shadows use slow. it's of most use to hybrids / infil). I can keep them at bay until i WANT to enter the 4m range, whereas they're constantly battling to keep you there.

These are just stat priorities for endgame and you should try to retain a fairly even amount of shield absorb and def while you're getting there. An optimal endgame geared tank will have 50%+ on both shield and absorb, with defense up and over 25%. These are mostly revolving around pve, in pvp tank gearing becomes a whole new ballgame. There's a bunch of helpful tanking threads floating around you should look up

Interesting.. also sadly out of date as a bunch of the skills have been changed since this was created.. the particle acceleration is from pre 1.2 days and it was a bit more powerful then too you could proc it regardless of if the opponent had melee / ranged defense cooldowns active. I wish they'd do something about the spec already

And like mentioned earlier, infil is just so damned predictable. As balance or kinetic i can simply wait for those two clairvoyants and resilience = gg. I dont know what bioware was thinking with this class honestly it just reeks of something that was given up on a while ago and thrown on the backburner, yet they justify it in some recent Q&A as being not a team class? give me a break..