...I really hope you're not trying to do that without Find Weakness.

Telekinetic Throw: 2340 Crit: 38.03% Multiplier: 181.49% Average Damage per GCD: 1532.59 ADpG w/ Potency: 2123.433 If anyone's curious, those are the stats on TK Throw, meaning that as far as a damage ability, it's definitely effective for us barring its short range, immobility, susceptibility to interruption, and susceptibility to pushback. You might think that this makes it a bad ability, but situational is not the same as bad. As a casted ability, it baits interrupts from unfocused players that could go to more critical players in your team; when combined with Force Stun and Force Lift, you can guarantee getting it off more, and (here's the kicker), it doesn't give Vanguards/Powertechs more chances to activate their Stockstrike/Rocket Punch because it pierces defense and shields. Combined with the questionable utility of Project and the limited frontload on Mind Crush, it makes an excellent candidate for your Potency after Force in Balance. Balance definitely has the weakest uses of Potency overall, as you can only get in one usage of your Force in Balance during the duration of the buff. Even if you get interrupted, as long as it's after the first second of your TK Throw, you're making out ahead compared to using Potency with Project. It's sad, but true.

I think they're largely solid except for the DoT protection skill, which could add up with all the other defensive skills grabbed. I'm going to test one of these new specs today, and I think some horrid frankenstein of 2p Force-Master and 2p Stalker may be the ideal item set to pursue for Balance.

Project: It's one of our class' iconic abilities, using our surroundings to fight our opponent. Yet, it sucks. (Note: This is not the place for you to complain that you don't like the animation.) I just did some lengthy math that shows Project to be less than compelling to a Balance Shadow. It requires significant buffs in both a cost reduction and multiple damage increases for it to become the fearsome damage attack of the Infiltration Shadow. Kinetic Shadows breathed a sigh of relief with 1.1.2 when it meant we'd have to cast Project less, even though we have a guaranteed crit ability built into Project for our tree. It has absolutely no place in the damage rotations for any Sage, even though it might prove occasionally useful as a source of (expensive) no-activation damage on the move. This is one of our base abilities, yet it is terrible at base. Why? And that's not even getting into the fact that the Saber Skills are worthless to a Sage, and most of the other base abilities are completely useless to a leveling Shadow unless they spend skills improving that base ability. (Lift, Slow, TK Throw, Mind Crush, etc.) It's not like my Commando, where I can actually rely on most of my base class abilities.

GFreeGamer's post in another thread about using a traditionally Sage item set for Balance made me decide to rethink some of the ways I approached things. How much damage does Twin Disciplines add, anyway? Devoid of any skill points, I have 364.6 bonus damage. Let me emphasize devoid of any skill points; this means I lack Applied Force, which would increase Double Strike's performance by 6% below. Ability Damage: Double Strike: 569-658x2 (1227 avg) Spinning Strike: 2372-2745 (2558.5 avg) Ability Damage w/ Combat Technique (346.4 bonus damage): Double Strike: 555-645x2 (1200 avg) Spinning Strike: 2316-2689 (2502.5 avg) Combat Tech reduces bonus damage by 5%, and Twin Disciplines increases bonus damage by 10%. Extrapolating from the above, then, gets us that with this gear, Twin Disciplines would have me add 54 damage to every Double Strike activation, and 112 damage to every Spinning Strike. That's roughly equivalent to a 4.4% damage increase on Double Strike and Spinning Strike. This is less than the damage increase on Applied Force to Double Strike, and requires casting Project. Project deals 1176-1240 kinetic damage (1208 avg). Upheaval gives it the ability to deal an extra 50% damage with a 45% chance. This averages out to an extra 271.8 damage, or 1479.8 damage. This would initially put it a slight bit ahead of Double Strike, but wait! There's more; there's the math on Adjudication and Force Synergy. For simplicity's sake, let's just assume Force Synergy is up, because it can proc from DoTs and thus should be up almost always for the Balance Shadow. We'll look at cases of both 5% and 10% enemy defense. All cases will ignore enemy armor, because they are all equally affected by enemy armor. Ability Damage: Double Strike: 569-658x2 (1227 avg) Crit: 38.03% Multiplier: 231.49% Accuracy: 96.41% Average Damage (Perfect Accuracy): (760.37)+(1080.2)=1840.57 Average (Non-Consular, Non-Tank): 1682.47 Average (Consular): 1590.44 Average (PvP Shadow Tank): 1480.00 Average Peak Burst: 2841 (Chance: 10.7% versus Consulars) Spinning Strike: 2372-2745 (2558.5 avg) Crit: 38.03% Multiplier: 181.49% Accuracy: 96.41% Average Damage (Perfect Accuracy): (1585.50)+(1765.89)=3351.39 Average (Non-Consular, Non-Tank): 3063.50 Not going through the rest, its relative superiority is established. Average Peak Burst: 4644 (Chance: 33% versus Consulars) Project: 1176-1240 (1208 avg) Crit: 27.86% Multiplier: 181.49% Average Damage: (750.65)+(610.80)=1361.45 Average Upheaval: 1361.45*0.5*0.45=306.33 Total Average: 1667.78 Accuracy: 100%, not affected by defense. Average Peak BUrst: 3289 (Chance: 1.7%) After Project, you have 20 seconds to melee with Twin Disciplines. 1.5 seconds are taken up by your GCD for Project. Assuming that you have already cast Force in Balance, Force Technique and Sever Force prior to Project (reasonable) and that you never need to use a CC and have 100% uptime on the target, this leaves you with room for 12 attacks afterwards. One will have to be Force in Balance, because it should be used on cooldown. Two attacks will be Mind Crushes in our optimal scenario, and you will never recast the earlier DoTs. This leaves nine attacks. Eight will be Double Strikes, one will be Spinning Strike. In our ideal scenario, Project has added 700 damage in addition to its own average, so that a single casting grants you about 2370 damage. In terms of Force, it is still marvelously inefficient - it comes about 320 points short of the damage that'd be necessary for it to maintain parity with Double Strike for efficiency against a Consular target. These calculations have also not included the higher chance for Force Tech to activate on Double Strike, because I should sleep sometime tonight. In terms of possible spike damage, it is also less than effective - you will see more consistent spiking with Double Strike. It is a notable DPS increase, but only in a sustained damage situation, and every GCD you have to spend on something besides beating on people is a GCD wasted. tl;dr? This could be the sleep deprivation talking, but Balance Shadows in PvP may want to completely avoid the Upheaval and Twin Disciplines skills and attempt to minimize use of Project. This means that basically, based on whether you prefer to tangle with positional requirements or not, you're looking at a possible 7/2/32 Balance spec or 5/5/31 or possibly even a 2/8/31 or 0/10/31.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=280887 <-- my views on Balance currently. =)

Instant Lift is powerful, but mostly for holding people to prevent a cap or for a 1v2 situation. It synergizes poorly with Stun, Spinning Kick and Pull, and the 2s secondary stun on it is just often not enough to make up for the way DoTs fly wildly everywhere. It also has nowhere near the burst of 31/0/10, nor the survivability. Two things: 1) Every class has attacks that are not weapon damage, so you will never have the full benefit of defense. About half of all attacks in PvP bypass defense. 2) If an attack is a critical hit, your shield will not work, sharply reducing the value of shielding to about 2/3 of defense further.

Yeah, Boarg. As usual, we seem to be on the same page here.

I think it's a beautiful build, with a fair mix of survivability, damage, and support utility that is now one of the best designed specs in the game. Powerful, but not overpowered (though probably one of the strongest dueling specs in the game). I'm currently running the PvE standard spec (though I do not use Kinetic Ward in PvP, I just spec for it for when I PvE.) You can find more details about my opinions in the class sticky.

I think your points are very well made; I agree with you very strongly. Ilum is boring, and I don't want a serious PvP alt at 50 because I don't want to do Ilum again. I like WZes, I don't like Ilum.

Wait, so are you capped on number of kills you get credit for before you die or something?

Wasn't entirely sure from poking around at other threads.

Kingg, I'm really sleepy but I'll look at your post later. The other question is easier to answer: I play Kinetic at the moment and it's my favorite, but I try out Balance and Infiltration from time to time and would probably make Balance my dual spec if and when that feature is implemented.

It is not bugged, just poorly described for someone not very used to MMO terminology. Pushback: Not the same as knockback, pushback refers to an unexpected delay during the activation of a non-instant ability, or causing a pulse on a channeled ability to fail. Pushback is caused by taking damage from any hostile source during the activation of the ability. Several skills mitigate or remove pushback on specific abilities. Knockback: Not the same as pushback, knockback refers to a character being forcibly moved by another character (usually backwards).

For those reasons, I think it is effective. It just doesn't feel natural or coherent to me.

These changes don't even compare to the ones in WoW that precipitate a talent refund. Those get refunded when things do not even resemble the talent they used to be, or entire talents are gone. I'm getting tired of the hyperbole, here.

The redesigns appear to have been made with primary consideration for Balance performing more effectively while leveling up and in flashpoints - where the short range is not a real issue and neither is the lack of synergy going from the DoTs to your melee attacks. Basically, I feel like it's a very effective... euh... support DPS. You can DoT the hell out of everyone, but only as long as they're within ten meters and I think that's my biggest issue with it. Taking Force Breach off of CD means that your most effective method of damage and self healing is to close with everyone, but you still don't really have the reliable burst damage to go toe to toe with someone. FS Mind Crush is more reliable than before, but not reliable enough to depend on occasional meleeing if your focus is DoTing. So you can't really 'vulture' with the spec, which is the way it feels like it should play in PvP with a no CD Breach - pressure everyone down and then deliver sick burst damage on the last third of their health. You do a lot of damage but you need babysitting to be at your best moreso than the other two Shadow specializations. Is it better? Yes. Can you play it effectively? I think so. The spec just doesn't feel very polished, though, like these changes were not really thought out with the same vision in mind as the original design for the tree. I feel like more substantial changes need to be made to make the tree feel more integrated, and I feel like it has a lot to do with the fact that the active ability Force Strike was taken out of the Balance tree fairly late in the development cycle because they didn't want Sages to have a melee attack. (Force Strike was a melee attack, caused the same effect on Mind Crush as the proc currently does.) There's no real synergy going from your force attacks to your melee attacks now. The connection was already tenuous and very gear-dependent before the redesign of Force Strike (Crit --> Force Synergy Melee Crit --> Mind Crush), and now it's just non-existent. They're two unrelated mechanics sharing the same tree.

Hi shagatha! - Moving backwards is non-productive, because you move slower than while walking. I turn the camera and side-strafe instead. - Yes, I use the Focus window for observing and click. - Slow Time supercedes Force Slow in terms of usefulness and it's honestly not that useful without Subduing Techniques, IMO.

The damage increase doesn't work, period, at any rank.

Yeah, I favor crit moreso than power because Potency TK Throwing at near 100% crit is amazing. And I don't always wait for Particle Acceleration to Project.

Not really, no.

You... got that the other way around. Shadow's Training is bugged. PAPotency is no longer bugged, and was listed in the notes.

I agree it's lackluster with Spinning Kick, especially if the SS animation is too slow to take advantage of it. Haven't checked. I get good benefit out of bursting with it and stun though - Stun, pop CDs, TK throw gets 2 of its ticks off with the increase.

I'm looking forward to trying it out. Doubt I'll stick to it because I love Guard a LOT, but it looks pretty fun. I'd like to add that I don't think Kinetic's any simpler than Balance or Infiltration if you're actually playing control and support (because you are a tank) and not just as DPS.

That's certainly worth a note. It's amazing how much more flexible the spec plays with Slow Time as a builder now.