Go for Fade and enjoy laughing at LOLSMASH.

proc heal trinket proc absorb trinket

Power Reaper: The 1 point in Insulation isn't doing you any good, as you are (hopefully) using tank stance. Also, I would at the very least recommend pulling one point out of nerve-wracking and pick up Darkswell for another tank cooldown. I like it though

Because most of them choose to have 220ish power over any chance to shield absorb. If you don't wear a shield, then dark ward would serve no purpose. That isn't to say it's the only way though.

Nou quit your marauder!

I'd just like to welcome back ! Who's the sentinel we all will fear? ! Who's that dude with the big red beard? ! Who's puttin' sabe-rs in your rear? !!!

Because at 50, 23/anything/anything can do 80% of the damage, with 300% of the survivability.

I'm glad I found this thread. A little history: I recently (two or three weeks ago) came back to my shadow after not playing it for 5-6 months. I started with champion gear and the ilum daily/weekly (it had been that long). My inspiration was a shadow on my server doing more demand burst damage than my fully optimized war hero scrapper/concealment. The idea that they could do this in guard was astonishing, and after the 1.4 patch notes hit, I finally gave in to Bioware's determination and went back to a very powerful class. I've been enjoying PvP much more since then. What the above means, essentially, is that I am in the same boat you are atm. Nearly exactly, actually. I picked up my fourth piece of war hero gear last night, and have the rest in battlemaster with war hero enhancements. Everything is augmented with willpower, and I run the economical Biochem for the stims. I did plenty of research before committing to a build, and spent a great deal of my time of late deciding between 27/0/14 and 23/1/17. After finally deciding that harnessed shadows was too great to give up, even with the bugged/overpowered/easily exploited instant force lift + stasis, I settled in for the long haul. The damage and survivability were unreal. A couple weeks later, however, and after finally getting really comfortable with the class again, I started to take a look at all of the survivability that infiltration had to offer. I found that I was doing alot more actual 'tanking for a healer' and scoring up protection points than I was running around building up some burst. Here is what I found: 27/0/14 -3 stacks of harnessed shadows + force potency ----> into Telekenetic Throw, Force In Balance, then Project, at my gear level, can hit upwards of 10k damage, sometimes more. This is on demand burst with a 75 second cooldown. -Harnessed Shadows just does so much damage, if it didn't have self healing, it would still be great. -Force in Balance is the most amazing door/flag stopper in the game. -Spinning Kick +6% damage is not to be underestimated for focus targets. -Double Strike by itself crits for upwards of 2400. As the 'spam attack' combo builder, this is relatively impressive. 23/17/1 -With this build, you lose out on the amazing damage from Telekenetic Throw through Harnessed Shadows. TKT can do upwards of 4500 at this gear level in the previous spec, but now becomes a novelty item. -You lose the best door/flag cap interrupt in the game. -You lose big damage on double strike. What you gain: -Two seconds off your interrupt. -30 seconds off your cc breaker. -15% combat movement speed. -Additional force regen. -Shadow Strike *can* do good damage. -30% damage reduction on LOLSMASH, which is particularly punishing against tanks guarding a healer. This by itself is really hard to emphasis enough in adding to your survivability. -25% damage reduction on demand, which can be chained, at any time, for 18 seconds, 24 if you start in stealth. This is quite possibly the best 'mid-line' damage reduction in the game, essentially the amazing 'rebuke', without the damage reflection. Basically, the decision for me (I am still evaluating it) boils down to survivability (vastly higher in 23/17/1) versus Force in Balance. Harnessed Shadows simply allows far more damage to happen, far more reliably (less reliance on accuracy and crit, due to Force attack/Force Potency) when compared to the ramped up Shadow Strike.. Force in Balance adds to the burst string, hits plenty of targets, and is the most amazing cap interrupter around. On the other hand, *every* single time I come up against LOLSMASH, I wish I could field respec. To emphasis on this point, any time I am in a warzone with 'that one dps' that just destroys healers and tanks alike, the Kinetic/Infiltration hybrid wins the day, time and again. TLDR What you give up in Harnessed Shadows and FiB, you gain in spades with survivability. The next step is perfecting your character placement, so that losing FiB doesn't cost your team the match.

If you want to solo, and do heroic quests, take a tank/hybrid shadow/assassin with a healer companion. If you like to pvp, the utility they offer is incredible with guard and taunts, even in full dps gear. Mara is amazing if you only want to dps, but shadow gives you options, and you give the idea here that you want to 'stick with it'. Having options as a main is always a good thing.

That's pretty incredible. I always wondered why it felt like I was in the air 'forever'. I chalked it up to the 2 second after-stun in the balance tree, but even that felt like an eternity.

Step one: Fix energy management. It sucks. Spamming Rifle shot is not fun, nor creative. Step two: Give us short, in combat stealth, akin to mara/sentinel stealth. Have this ability cause the next hidden strike cost zero energy. Duration should be 3-4 seconds and increase movement speed by 50-60%. Step three: Fix energy management AND tactical advantage generation for lethality. Problems dps operatives have: Energy, Tactical Advantages, being punished for stealth. Juggling two awkward resources is not fun, Bioware.

Heroes can die. The hope of the rabble will follow. -IA Storyline, SWTOR MMO

Fair enough. The talent points aren't really what I was trying to show off. With, or without, 3/3, the itemization is still right on the dot for crit soft cap. That is the focus here, so the itemization works for any 31 point Concealment build regardless of what you do with the last 10 points, at least it should, if I did my math right.

After reading over a few threads for the last week or two, and checking out Vyel's recent askmrrobot.com profile, I decided to do some tinkering. Twenty minutes in, I couldn't seem to come up with his numbers, and I shortly realized that a campaign barrel wasn't in the cards for me. Given that a few skill armoring crafters have cropped up on my server though, and taking some tidbits from his 'armory', I did some tweaking, and I think I've come up with the optimum gear setup for any concealment operative, bar a few points you can throw around in the talent tree. My only complaint is that it feels a little light in the HP department. Here it is, please feel free to pick it apart. I'll be itemizing towards this now, without wasting time on rerolling a third time eh?

I don't know about you, but when I was 101% tech accuracy, every backstab I missed was 3k damage or more and it made me very upset. On top of that, you trade surge for accuracy, nothing else, and at this level of gear, you are already so far beyond the surge soft cap it's less than half of a percent of surge.

Perhaps instead of having the talent increase our crits by 30% on abilities that use the vibroknife, it could simply be changed to increase the baseline damage those abilities do by 30%, so that we don't hit like wet noodles and aren't crit-dependant being left with no reliable way to generate said crits. (The talent, that is)

Hah! I didn't even consider... I thought that was a given! Definately grab 2p shells in either rakata/columi/tionese, then put BM armorings in them, and WH mod/enh, just as was said above. You lose 6end 6cunning and gain 15% crit chance on backstab.

The most unfortunate part about +5 energy is that our prime energy regeneration is at 60%, not 60 energy. That being said, the +5 energy doesn't actually give us 5 energy wiggle room to play with/make mistakes/breathing room, it's more like 2. Aside from the 2 piece bonus, we've got a bunch of garbage

The 20% defense chance (giving you 25% defense chance against ranged weapon type attacks total) only occurs to attacks that occur when the natural cover is between you and the target attacking you.

Most definitely. I'd like some clarification myself. Last time I saw the return curve on expertise, there was such an even gradient, it was hard to justify 'stopping at ####' expertise, with any real way to back up the claim. I'd also like to hear/read something to support the idea of orange belt/bracers, but I also agree that enforcer set does it's job well in those two slots. Much like you cut corners to increase damage, I cut some damage corners to gain survivability, and question where the best corners are to cut at times as well. There's been some good information in the last few days. I hope it keeps going!

Love this post. Thanks for putting this up here. It's good to know I can find another 100 bonus damage. The most immediate thing I recognize here is the 1% chance you will always have of missing any of your tech attacks against any class that has +2% defense (and thereby resistance) from talents. Shadow/Sins, Vanguard/Techs, and Jugg/guardians that have their tanking talents, and any Op/Scoundrel with the 'shifty eye' or equivalent talent will have +2% melee/ranged defense, as well as +2% resistance. Against your 101% tech accuracy, this will become 1% resistance, and equal a 1% chance to resist your backstabs, hiddenstrikes, debilitating strikes, etc. The good news is that you can trade your already overly high surge directly for accuracy in an enhancement. The other option is getting 1% through augment slots, but I wouldn't encourage that route. TLDR: Get one enhancement that is Power/Accuracy to get to Tech Accuracy >= 102% Also: I'm curious why, with your 1% crit bonus from companions, your 5% class bonus, and your 3% from talents you didn't shoot for ~39% crit before focusing on power? Correct me if I'm wrong, but without bonuses, that leaves you at ~25% base crit. The 100 bonus damage you have over my not completely optimised operative is delicious, but I'm curious if it wouldn't do you better to reach for that crit softcap first? What does everyone else think?

^ This. I'd definately go up to shiv and then go med, or visa verca for leveling, at the very least until level 40.

Well the question is, players have a base defense chance of 5%. Defense is measured against weapon damage attacks. Players have a base resistance of 0%. Resistance is measured against tech/force damage (special attack accuracy). The logic here is that my attacks hit 100% of the time against 0% resistance, exceptions being 2% resistance from tank talents, bringing a -zero miss- accuracy to 102%. Is this true or false? Are there other instances where players have higher than 2% resistance such that we would need to have higher than 100% special attack accuracy in order to reduce it to/below zero so that we do not miss? This question applies to all force/tech users, particularly sages that don't use any accuracy at all.

I can back that up. You only get the 20% ranged defense bonus if you are behind natural cover as an operative. Outside of it, you get some pretty amazing bonuses (for pvp, that is) for being in cover... bonuses I didn't realize until way late in the game

Perhaps, over a few other changes to our overall talent trees to make them feel less awful, and our energy system to make it feel less awful, we could have a talent that allows us to enter stealth in combat, maintains combat (does not drop combat), has a short cooldown (20-30 seconds), has a 3 second duration, and increases movement speed by 60% for it's duration. It is off the global cooldown, and causes the next hidden strike to be free. In addition, we make explosive prob from a 30 second cooldown to a 20 second or 18 second cooldown to bring it in line with sticky grenade/assault plastique, and either make it not cleansable, or make sticky grenade and assault plastique cleansable, as they are relatively similar effects and should atleast be treated similarly when in respect to cleansing abilities. Hidden strike still has a 7.5 second cooldown. There would be no HS, HS, HS. This increases sustained DPS. It gives us a short distance gap closer, which many operatives are using the talented Disappearing Act (or whatever it's called) once every two minutes or so in order to close small gaps. Two problems solved at once. It's not terribly overpowered. It doesn't increase operative burst. It doesn't buff healers or dirty fighting. It gives concealment a lore-friendly 'gap closer' that is already in line with a longer cooldown 'gap closer' that we already use. It gives us another ability (that we already have) to use in our rotation, that doesn't destroy our energy reserve. It's simple, elegant, and beautiful. Add that to explosive probe and I think we'd have atleast a step in the right direction, and unless my gut feeling is way way way off, I doubt we'd be trumping powertechs or marauders as FOTM either.