Good idea, maybe for ignore all enemy armor/defense for 6 seconds after stealth ;p

Whilst all arguments are valid, like my previous post, what do we want for PVP and PVE? For PVE DPS, maybe buff balance to the extent that it is on par with sentinels? It would still be fluff damage in PvP, but at least that solves the problem with Shadow DPS in end game contents. For PVE Tanking, add a 50% damage cap of max health whenever Kinetic field is active. Simple solution, won't hurt PvP either. For PVP DPS, maybe move MoM lower down so we can break roots with Force Speed and get insta force lift lower on Balance tree? Should really stop asking to DPS as hard as a sentinel on a sustained level. The concept of highest DPS and burst for a stealth class is utterly OP and ridiculous. For PVP Tanking, TBH I have no idea.

I don't think we are that bad... but more or less brought in line with other classes for PVP. Or should I say, other classes were brought in line with us? We are still kings of 1v1, but need to work for it now. We are still good node guards, just not as hardy as before. We still rock in huttball, although other classes e.g. commandos and scoundrels have become just as influential. Our DPS in group situation still not as good as a slinger nor a sentinel, but that didn't change. We are still better than scoundrels. The biggest loss we had was the uber "hybrid build" which gave us both massive utility and burst, but we all knew that was gonna go at some point. I am not sure which direction is better to "fix" us in PVP. Do you want bigger burst and crappy sustained damage? Or do you want more sustained damage with existing burst --- making us sentinel-like but with stealth? (sounds OP) Maybe the best way is to give us back the utilities --- insta force lift, force pull, movement impair breaking force speeds, out of stealth spinning kick? I think PVP-wise we are very close to where we should be... but please do fix resilience, that is simply not working as intended. PVE is the sadder part of the story. Tank-wise, non-end-end-game is ok. We only have an issue with end-end-game NIM runs. TBH once that can be fixed I think we'd be ok though. Maybe add an attribute on kinetic barrier to make sure we cannot take damage over 50% of maximum HP in one-shot. PVE DPS is still subpar, that hasn't changed. Revamping the balance line to give better sustainable DPS is probably the best approach for right now.

Hi Shinarika, nice post. Have you tried 12/29/5? I find it superior to full infiltration due to Particle acceleration and Deep Impact. Also gives the 66% dmg increase Shadow Strike. 21/22/3 is quite nice as it gives us back Force Pull. But lacks the teeth on Projects. Have you managed to come up with any good hybrid builds such as the 23/1/17 in the old age? I just started playing again last weekend and was shocked to find my optimized PvP gear is now for PvE. Another month of grinding begins...

It seems to me the major nerfs were to our Kinetic hybrid 23/1/17 (or 27/0/14) and Balance hybrid 0/14/27 builds. But the Infiltration hybrid 0/27/14 got buffed. I wouldn't call it "horribly" nerfed, but more or less a change of play style. (excludes new Force Breach concept, which I am still unsure what that is about) Either way, seems like BW still forces us to stay hybrids to get the most out of our class except for the occasion of needing to tank as the ball carrier. On paper, we seem to have 3 clear mainstream hybrid choices in 2.0 (with some minor variations): From [23/1/17] or [27/0/14] to [23/21/2] or [27/19/0] http://pts.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/jedi-shadow/234/?build=022332001101023002100000000000000322230001112030001000000000000000020000000000000000000000000000&ver=20. We lose Force In Balance, Instant Force Lift (depends on spec), 50% critical strike dmg from Double Strike. We swap Spinning Kick with Low Slash (or you lose this completely depending on variation). We gain up to 50% dmg reduction in ~6s, nearly-infinite force, receive 30% less dmg from smash, and more Shadow Strike proc. From [0/27/14] to [0/29/17] or [0/31/15] http://pts.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/jedi-shadow/234/?build=000000000000000000000000000000000322230021102032021022000010000003022300012200000000000000000000&ver=20 We lose almost nothing. We gain Instant Force Lift or an extra Shadow Strike Infiltraiton Proc every 15s. From [0/13/28] to [0/14/32] or [0/16/30]. http://pts.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/jedi-shadow/234/?build=000000000000000000000000000000000322030021100000000000000000000003221302012220000122032002000000&ver=20 We lose some force regeneration and potentially Shadow Strike proc (depends on variation). We gain 15% more dmg to enemies under 30% health.

I think BW dev needs to be shot.

The concept of adding a shoulder cannon meant BW thinks PTs do not have enough DPS. As for alacrity, unless they increase the effectiveness of each point of alacrity, reducing your GCD from 1.5 to 1.3 (15% reduction) is seriously not that useful in PvP. If it goes from 1.5s to 1s, now that may become interesting.

I am making a guardian. They will replace assassins as the true unkillable 1v1 champions. They can now reflect your punches while smashing your face. Great buff to Commandos. If the slow prevents leaps and can be kept up indefinitely this will be fun. Otherwise, this will be the biggest joke in swtor history. My sentinel will enjoy her AE slow + 11K smash. I am anxious to see the rolling smugglers in huttball. I am now an even better node guard as a shadow. Yay. -,-" On the other hand, if any team dares to leave 1 person guarding their nodes in any game you are so $#$"#$#"$".

Stealth > Force Potency (3x) > FiB > Breach > Project (x1.5) > Low Slash That should be 50-60% of enemy's HP. A recruit would be dead. Can interchange low slash and project for good enemies. Spinning Kick is very situational, and not recommended for use for pure damage purposes.

Why do people always want to nerf ACs? I play 4 ACs and I feel they are all viable to certain extents. There are certainly things I feel should be done to buff certain ACs, but definitely not nerf others. The only thing that is irritating for me is bubble stun, but that's mainly implemented to counter smash. Overall, the mechanics now are fine.

^ Commando DPS is fine. It's their ability to have the slightest chance to survive wet noodle attacks that needs looking into.

I am surprised you can beat a shadow. Glad you are having fun! 3 fun equations I would like to add: (1) Putting orbital strike on yourself before engaging. That way you force them to use their resilience early. (2) Be wary of your position. If you put yourself against a wall, a good Shadow will attack you from wall side then will not fear your knockback. (3) Choosing between stun or knockback. If the Shadow ran up towards you cloaked or uncloaked but did not use sprint, use stun first.

For Civil War, I suggest you to switch to 0/27/14. If a sentinel is on your team, ask him to give you Trans so you can rush Snow. With FIB you have 99% chance to interrupt enemy cap and take the flag in 1v1 situation. From then on, just do what Shadows do best. Guard. For Hutball, you excel for firepit defense (if you respec to have pull) or last mile running. For Novarre Coast, you are best at guarding or harassing nodes. For Voidstar, you are best at guarding or stealth capping nodes. Shadows aren't really front-line material. But if you do go on front-lines, you serve 4 primary purposes. (1) Pull enemy to team for Focus Fire (which could be used for 1) (2) Harass enemy healer (3) Peel for healers (4) Taunts for dmg reduction This is the same whether you are pugging or doing ranked. Most of our "best" tactics relate with guarding because we are just so good at it. To be honest, shadows are best at 1v1 situations, but their sustained DPS is subpar compared to smashers, combat sentinels, gunslingers and even commandos (when left unchecked).

Infiltration is fantastic for leveling. Should go up infiltration tree first. You could also choose balance if you like dots. Shadow Tanking kinda sucks at low levels. And it doesn't really shine until you get close to lvl 50.

Exactly! i.e. We don't have slow abilities for kiting. Fire is linked to Full Auto, which means you are not kiting.... Sweltering heat is so unreliable its impossible to kite anything. My Scoundrel has something called "Tendon Blast", which applies 50% speed reduction for 12s. http://www.torhead.com/ability/hr9h3Qg/tendon-blast Albeit it's only 10m range, but why shouldn't Commandos have this at least? Slingers have cover to prevent leaps and interrupts. Shouldn't we at least have a slow so we could kite and fight? Sure they can spend their leap, in that case we have concussion blow to push them back once at least.

Necro thread, but I /sign and support. We should sticky this. DOTA Illum would be so awesome. If BW/EA puts this tested winning formula into their world MMO environment, they will definitely get a stream of new subscribers. A few suggestions to the plan: - Illum DOTA should be a "queue-able" WZ Reason: Severe population imbalance can be fixed with multiple Illum instances like Alterac Valley - Illum DOTA WZ do not need equal number of players on both sides to start Reasion: Some population imbalance can be fixed with more NPCs or even heroic NPC spawns - Illum DOTA WZ should provide cosmetics rewards for completion Types: PvP Ranks, special titles, uniforms, weapon looks. Reason: Player incentive and game balance - Illum DOTA WZ should be made only queue-able from Illum Reason: Create a pool of PVP players who can gather in one place and do world PVP while they wait for queue - Illum World should have PVP Daily Terminals and PVP Vendors Reason: To make life easier for PVP players to gather. Also gives players something to do that potentially involves PvP when waiting for WZ. - Illum World should provide benefits for world PvP Types: (1) New PVP dailies that include item acquisition objectives (but spread out unlike before) that provides commendations upon completion (2) PvP experience buffs for DOTA WZ Reason: Player incentive. - Illum World should provide real-time heatmaps to help users locate/avoid each other Reason: Allows farmers to avoid zerg to farm, PvPers to find zergs to PvP, gankers to find lone farmers to gank

I always wondered... why don't we have a range slow / root (e.g. leg-shot) ability? The only problem I see, is that we cannot kite due to the lack of a slow ability. If I could slow someone from 15m range then when they reach me I can knock them back. They then have the choice to disengage or use their cooldowns to reach me again. This would give me a small window to do a little more damage than before. Simple to implement, not overpowering, and fits the Star Wars theme.

Sticky grenade (3~4K) > Grav Round (3~4K) > Demolition Round (4~5K) > High Impact Bolt (4~5K) When timed well, the delay of sticky grenade, grav round and demolition round go off together. You follow up with the HIB. To the person who takes the damage, it seems like 1 GCD. This is similar to old Project + Force Breach on Shadows, but to a greater extent. To be honest, I see snipers and commandos on par from range. Both get shutdown in melee range as well, so I don't see the difference. As Sentinel/Shadow/Scoundrel, I have no problem with snipers and usually kill them faster than commandos unless they managed to put an orbital strike on themselves (which I can ignore as Shadow). As Commando, I don't really seem to lose to snipers, but then again I rarely get into range to be facing off with snipers either. They are on par. Tranquilizer dart + Flashbang versus Mind Maze + insta-Force Lift. I do feel more comfortable with 1v1 fights on my Shadow due to resilience, but I don't lose much on my scoundrel either. Low slash is not a stun. The split second you and your teammates hit, the healer is active again. The Fallanassi use Force Immersion to achieve invisibility. Have a look! (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Fallanassi) Imperial operatives in the game use invisibility generators I suppose. Tank Shadow Hybrid usually refers to 23/1/17. In DPS gear, they are as squishy as sentinels with only force/tech based Guarded by the Force. 27/1/13 or 28/0/13 lose out on insta-force lift, which make them much weaker cappers. They do have better sustained DPS but pebble throwing can be stopped too easily.

There are specific combinations of class/specs that are somewhat less feasible for PvP, but in reality overall balance of classes is actually much more balanced than most would like to admit. In addition, the developers did a great job to make each AC more or less in-line with the Star Wars lore. Play a few more ACs, and you'll see the grass is greener in some aspects for every class. I'll give you an example. Take Commando for instance. Everyone cries they suck in PVP. Really? I can make 18K of your HP go away in what would seem like 1.5s for you. You leave me alone, I'm going to blow a hole in you and your team. But you put a glowstick me? I'm pretty much dead unless another glowstick comes to save my ***. Sounds very Star Wars to me. You don't like this play style? Go heals or roll another char. Scrapper scoundrels? I can cap objectives better than anyone with my tranquilizer dart and flash grenade. I can devastate an entire team with Fly-by while they try to secure objectives. I can stun a healer every 30s for 4s. No I can't beat any glowstick in 1v1 from full health. But if they are down to 14K HP, they will never survive. I just have to be patient in stealth. Sounds very Star Wars to me. You don't like this play style? Go heals or roll another char. Tank Shadow Hybrid with DPS gear? 1v1 champion thanks to high burst for 10s (2000dps) and single target CCs. Cap-staller / capper Great "last-mile" ball carrier Quick finisher using obstacles (fire pits, bridges) Downside? Very squishy. Dies immediately once CCed or focus fired. (any Tank Shadow Hybrid you find hard to kill are wearing tank gear, in which case, they should not be able to kill you) Horrible DPS after 10s.

Sure! With 23/1/17, Project + 2xPsychokenesis = 45 - 6 = 39 Force Double Strike 2xPsychokenesis = 25 - 2 = 23 Force Standard rotation: Double Strike > Double Strike > Project in 4.5s (3x GCD) ~8,300 damage (1200x2 + 1200x2 + 3500) 40 Force used over duration [85 Force used (23x2 + 39) - 45 Force regened (10 x 4.5)] Therefore, 8300dmg per 40 Force. EWH/WH fully augmented min-maxed you stand around 20,000 hp. With the above, you reach 21,400 dmg in 12s for 100 Force but 10.5s for 150 Force. If you are lucky and get procs after each Double Strike, you can reach 20100 dmg in 9s with 150 Force, but would require 11s for 100 Force. (1) i.e. you pull in 1 GCD ahead. In the lucky case, at the 15s mark, you reach 28400 dmg with 150 Force, but 23600 dmg with 100 Force. In actual combat, you are surely not going to crit all your Double Strikes, not going to proc Particle Acceleration every time, and the enemy is certainly going to dodge / parry / absorb / mitigate your attacks. (2) i.e., you need that extra attack to complete the kill. That is the difference. I can assume this will all change once the health cap goes higher with the oncoming expansion.

I don't see the problem with smash. It does big AOE damage, but that is Focus tree's 1-trick pony. Any changes to it would make the focus tree unusable. In 1v1, there are higher burst damage class/tree combos. In MvM, smash is dps king, but you could always pay more attention to try not to stack on top of your teammates. Pugging? Well you are losing to a well coordinated team or against a good player. Makes perfect sense to me. 3 people jumping on you to smash? Too bad, every class will die when you get focus fired by 3 dps ACs. 5 people dying at the same time? Why would you guys stand so close to each other? Every class / tree is meant to be different. This brings more variation to the mechanics in PvP. Smash is fine as it is. At least you can control your character when you go up against smahes. Bubble stuns on the other hand.... ughh....

^ made me laugh. I like laughing. Thanks! As for OP, please roll bubble stun spec. You will be extremely difficult to kill in 1v1 situations if you know how to kite and will add a huge amount of utility to your group.

I think so too. In Civil War, FIB shadows (with the help of a combat sentinel) are the only way to 100% ensure that the right side flag does not get capped immediately at start. It's quite game changing.

23/1/17 can be run in DPS or Tank gear. In DPS mode, I usually use a focus because my tank stats are a bit low to justify for using a shield. But it's up to you. In Tank mode, use a shield and keep Kinetic Ward up. For DPS, I would recommend the PvE Mystic 4PC set (+50 force). But PvE Stalker 4PC (+15% crit to double strike), PvP Stalker 2PC / Survivor 2PC (+5m to slow/interrupt and -5s on spinning kick), or PvP Survivor 4PC (-5s spinning kick & +5% dmg) are all viable. For Tank, PvP Stalker 2PC / Survivor 2PC (+5m to slow/interrupt and -5s on spinning kick), or PvE Survivor 4PC (+5% shield chance and +2% damage reduction) are recommended. I am lazy so I use the PvP Survivor 4PC. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Xin, I watched your video like 10 times. Nice video btw, always a pleasure to watch your videos. (I like your old video versus the sentinel where both of you were near death and you force cloaked to get the upper hand. Been doing that ever since against the really good sentinels/marauders. ) But in this video the Sentinel / Operative just stood there with you in range then got CCed to death when you got close..... -,- I can think of too many ways for the sentinel and operative to have immobilized you to get close!

Agreed. I cannot accept using 23/1/17 w/o +50 force. Running out of power in 3 projects means you will never manage to kill that PT fast enough. Btw Xin... when do you actually kite stuff? In my experience, Focus guardians and sentinels just zealous leap and smash you for 5K... Combat sentinels have 2 roots and a longer slow, making them unkitable unless they are REALLY bad... You can't lose to Watchmen sentinels unless you are watching TV. Non-focus guardians are just irritating and unkitable unless they have push on cooldown. Scoundrels dps are .... exactly what they are... scrap. Everything else you don't really kite.... except for Shadows... which we all know is not really kitable 1v1. TBH the only time I use slow... is when they try to kite me!