Full Power/Surge I would assume with absorb shield. Should I be so anal as to get high endurance mods and enhancements? It would cost a fortune. Endurance augments or still go willpower?

Is it Viable? DPS gear or tank gear? Thanks in advanced.

KBN thank you for your response. I will openly admit I don't run the numbers... I just play the game. And yes the over heal bubble would definitely have to expire and would definitely have to have a limit. There should also be a period after the bubble is either destroyed or expires where you can not have an OH bubble. It should also only be able to be applied when in combat... So you can't overheal your shadow tank in arenas before it even starts. What about a combination of the two? a little more health and the heal bubble? I would not be opposed to lowering shadow tank damage either. I believe they are ahead of the other 2 tanks anyways aren't they? Perhaps a lower defense chance as well... to make up for the extra health and/or bubble mechanic. I know its too late and the heals probably aren't coming back... I just believe there was a possible way to balance it. Also I think we are looking at 2 things differently... You want to fix spike. I want spike to be manageable. The shadow is a skill tank. Managing CDs, knowing when to use TKT, keeping up Kinetic Ward, were and for the most part still are a huge part in shadow tanking. We are however a light armor tank therefore spike should exist on a Shadow. We are suppose to be spikey. This is ok to me if the spike is manageable. The other thing we are looking at differently is the over heal shield... I think maybe you thought I meant it could always be present as long as we kept getting heals pumped into us basically raising our health pool without making the number bigger. I was thinking a mechanic some what like this. When the Shadow is healed over his max Health Pool he receives Shadow's Perseverance. Shadow's perseverance will activate 5s after he is over healed. Granting the Shadow a barrier of up to 10% (just a random number) of his max health. Shadow's Perseverance lasts for 10s or until the barrier is depleted. The effect can only occur every 15s and can not be granted by heals from Combat Technique or TKT or activated out of combat. In other words when you a shadow gets over healed there is a 5s window to dump everything you can into him to make the most out of the barrier. This does not reduce the skill cap of healers it increases it. It requires more coordination. More knowledge of fights etc. Spike could be manageable with the 130% armor from kinetic charge, an over heal barrier, and a higher health pool. The pvp issues you spoke of would exist with a higher health pool, so something would have to be done about that. We would still get hit harder than other tanks though so the health pool by itself wouldn't be such a huge problem. The problem shadow tanks in pvp has always been they have too much damage for a tank class. It needs to be toned down. 2v1 we would not be OP as our armor would not be brought up to the level it was pre 2.0. A coordinated group could shut down our TKT, as they do now and have always done. 1v1 we would still be the top class. The higher health pool and Shadow's Perseverance would give us tools to be a tank in the main fight also. Jugs would still be the best at that role due to there great utility and mobility, but we could compete. (I don't count the Assault Vanguard tanks as I think they are broken)

First off KBN thank you for all that you do for this gaming community but I strongly disagree with your stand point when it comes to shadow tanking. Self heals was very salvageable. It is possible to balance. When dealing with tank balance I assume the goal is that they are all close where dtps is concerned yes? Ok so you have a tank that has self heals. There are two different approaches that can be taken to balance the self healing tank with other tanks. One way, which would have never worked for the shadow, Is for the tank to have about the same DR from armor as the other tanks, but way less avoidance(shield, absorb, defense). Shadows are mitigation tanks so this method would not work. Second way is the way that shadows should have been dealt with. The tank must have less DR from armor, which they definitely have, good avoidance, and a massive health pool in comparison to other tanks. Let me clarify because I don't mean stacking endurance on gear at the expense of mitigation stats which is just bad. I mean that endurance simply has to scale way better for them than any other tank. So that when the spikes happen there is a buffer to recover from. 2.0 bioware nerfed shadow's armor, which should have been done with the buff to shield, but they nerfed it entirely too much. 130% from dark charge and MAYBE a 10% boost in the talent tree probably would have been enough. I understand some tanks have egos and would find a shadow walking around with 60k+ HP unfair, so the fix would be move the endurance talent up in the tanking tree, and Give it a higher value than the measly 1/2/3. The health shouldn't be way over the other tanks I'm thinking in fully optimized 78's it should translate in a 5k-10k difference in health which would be fair given the spikey nature. They would still be spikey. With a spikey tank comes over healing... so any overhealing done to the shadow provides a damage shield. Shield can build up to X% of shadows health. The extra health would mean better scaled healing from TKT. combat technique heal could have been redesigned to heal for x% of damage absorbed by shield. It could have been balanced, and it could have worked. I mean Bioware could have been creative with this class, but they chose to take an easy route. Before I get flamed I just pulled the numbers out of my ***. The point is that mathematically and in game it could have worked had an effort been made.

First I understand why everyone doesn't want low slash touched, but would a force cost reduction on it be terrible? As it stands now its not even in a pve rotation making deception sins the only spec, to my knowledge, that doesn't use an ability they get from their tree. Second deception should not be able to proc assassinate. Their initial burst is already great... throw an assassinate for free in there and it would be op. I think Iesnbold was on the right track talking about deception, but I don't think surging charge procs need a shorter icd just a higher proc rate. A higher proc rate means more discharges which would be great. Also a talent needs to give deception some crit chance either across the board or on discharge, shock, and maul then deception would have a dps gain and be way less susceptible to bad RNG. The higher proc rate on surging charge coupled with an extra maul from low slash and some crit could boost deception closer to where it should be dps wise without terribly affecting pvp. If you add the assassin's assault talent on my wish list then I believe that deception would be right where it should be which is behind maras on dps but with more raid utility, (a buff from phase walk, stealth rez if you didn't just burn it for recklessness, and an off taunt which isn't really much good a deception sin can't really "play tank" for very long.) Third Iesnbold you said my madness talents were too low making hybrids a problem, but I didn't say where those talents would go just that I would like them and looking at the tree the assassination proc can be added to bloodletting. Devour should not be a talent at all... parasitism should do that by itself its stupid to have 4 talent points for miniscule heals on dots... so replace devour with a talent that does the force lightning things and as for assassin's torment I don't know where it should be but I would really like that for phase walk to bring some raid utility. The maul proc can just be added to raze. Also the madness changes would take care of madness force issues. Force lightning is a channel that is great for force regen, and would make thrash cheaper. Maul would be able to proc raze, and on its procs would be cheaper than a thrash anyway, its also a dps increase. Assassinate procs would be a free hard hitting melee attack which again could proc raze, so with all that I think the force regen would be fine. As for darkness I'm getting used to the changes, but I still wish the heal was salvaged. Also why does phase walk have a cast? We can plant it in stealth, therefore if we want to plant it you can't stop it. so take that damn cast time off please.

DPS needs a buff. They have good opening burst, what else? Oh yea we can stealth out mez and run like a ***** H2F then come back for another opener. A carnage mara can do just about the same burst phase and can have 4k dps over a 5min period. Sins aren't even close to that. I was not clear enough I didn't mean like electronet in the sense that it can't be charged or stealthed out of, but a stacking dot on a 15s cd would be op. As for you wanting to keep the stun fair enough. I was just spitballing. Thok what you said in your post was true about the defensive CDs, so I was wrong about Juggs having superior Cool Downs which means every assassin shouldn't have out of stealth blackout. Everything else you said is true as well, and I think that is the problem I'm having now. They are too much alike. only difference is Sins have a tighter window on their rotation which has always been the case getting off force lightning asap and getting full channels has always been top priority. Its the feel that has changed though. We went from being too spikey (we actually weren't that bad off the 130% armor increase on dark charge without the change to swelling shadows could have been enough) to now as you said we take damage almost as smoothly as a heavy armor wearing Jugg.... That doesn't sound right to me at all, but I guess that is what a lot of people wanted so meh... I'm just disgruntled lol.

First off let me say that I like being able to tank operations without having to worry about RNG deaths so thank you for the changes. Also thank you to all the number crunchers who pointed out to bioware with real data that a change was needed. That being said... The losing self heals in darkness and the pitiful excuse for a damage buff was not enough. pre 2.0 I liked the way all the tanks played. PT smoothest damage taking tank. Their cooldowns were meh but that's ok because they were bullet sponges. Jugg was in the middle good mitigation good armor and the best cooldowns in the game. Sin decent armor great mitigation and the cooldowns were not to shabby. We were spikier than both but we had self heals to make up for it. After 2.0 they nerfed our armor into the ground and decided they wanted the bosses in the operations to hit differently and then we had the outcry that they needed to be fixed... even though content was being cleared with them. If I'm not mistaken numbers even suggested that they required the less healing of the three tanks too, but in 16m the spikes were crazy. The life of a sin tank was more difficult than it should have been, so here we are. Any way I miss the self healing of the sin tank... I wish that Bioware would have made both the dark charge heal and the heal from force lightning scale something like when dark charge procs the sin is healed for X% of damage taken over the last 3 seconds. And force lightning with three charges of harnessed darkness heals the sin for either 2% of his health or X% of damage absorbed over last 12s depending on which value is higher. I also believe black out out of stealth for 25% DR should be an assassin thing not a deception thing, madness could use the survivability buff too. Armor from dark charge should have been 130% all along. I don't think the increase in armor on swelling shadows was needed, but a 4% DR buff for 18s could have been tied into maul with the conspirator's cloak talent as well as having maul autoproc when exiting stealth. I also think it would have been cool if force cloak reset our cooldowns for super sticky situations. If this wasn't enough then the other idea I've all ways liked is over healing the assassin results in a damage buffer. The buffer can only reach X% of sins total health. I'm not a number cruncher I don't know what the values of each should be, and I don't know if they would have even worked. I just want self heals on my sin because now I just feel like a jug that doesn't jug well... I have higher mitigation then a jug yes. On the flip side I have less dr, no self heals, and my cooldowns are not as good. I know the numbers suggest that jugs need a buff, but those are ignoring what makes a jug a jug... his excellent bag of cooldowns. A jug that pops the right cooldowns at the right time is superior than any other tank right now in my opinion. Deception I want the energy needed for low slash to be lowered and a 6s dot to be added. Take off the soft stun and make it dot and slow. The dot should be like electro net in that the more the target moves the higher it stacks, but it should definitely be cleansable. This increases pve dps with another maul proc and a dot. the darkswell talent should make blackout also increase melee damage dealt by X% for Ys a new talent called Assassin's Assault should make use of Phase walk It increases the assassins melee damage by X% and when phase walk is deployed it increases the melee and ranged damage of all with in 5 meters of it by Y%. Madness Instant whirlwind would be nice it should only be able to be used in lightning charge though. Force lightning should be able to proc Raze. New talents: 1. Force Lightning increases melee damage dealt by X% as well as reduces the cost of thrash by Y for Zs. 2. Crushing darkness has a X% chance to grant "insert cool name" which reduces the cost of maul by X. 3. All dots death field have a X% chance to proc a free assassinate that can be used regardless of targets health percentage. 4. Assassin's Torment: increases the assassins force damage by X% and when phase walk is deployed all players with in 5 meters of phase walk receive a Y% increase to their force and tech damage. I know this will never happen its just a wish list even still let me know what you think. Would this make Sins OP? Would this bring us in line with other classes dps wise? And while I understand what we got in 2.5 was a buff it doesn't feel right and the way a class feels to a player should matter for something.

Hello all, Betrayl/Trayya here GM of <Rofls and Pwncakes>. Who are <Rofls and Pwncakes>? We are a small group of friends who met playing SWTOR. Some of us are RL friends, and some of us have become RL friends since we met online. We enjoy running operations as well as pvp'ing. We may occasionally troll gen chat or talk some **** in pvp... "/e **** your couch Spliffy" also "Bag of *****". If you don't understand it's ok you will one day if you get to know us. Why should you join? You mean other then the fact that we are super entertaining? If you aren't sensitive, an elitist jerk, and you do have a decent sense of humor you will fit in great with our guildies. We all have alts at different levels will be taking advantage of double xp weekends, so if you want someone to level with we can do that. I think all of our members enjoy pvp'ing on their 50's, so if you want to pvp we do that. If you are looking for a group to run ops with we do that as well. My goals for the guild! Lately I will be honest I have been slacking. I've just had a lot of RL things going on and our numbers have dwindled because of it. It is my fault but RL has always been and will always be first for me and for my members. I actually even thought about disbanding the guild and putting in an application to a more distinguished pve guild on the server or transferring servers all together, but I had a long talk with Sheen, our other GM/my best friend, and we decided <Rofls and Pwncakes> was going to make it. That being said here I am and I am dedicated, We aren't going anywhere. So here are my goals... 1. First and foremost to have a large active community. I want to be able to log on at a given time and see a fair amount of guildies online preferably helping each other. a group of 4 leveling. Some 50's running a flashpoint together. Pvp groups going on. Of course there better be hilarious chatter in guild chat as well. 2. Form both a legit 8 and good 16 man progression ops groups. I want these groups to work well together and talk to each other to get through content. Self aware players who take and give constructive criticism well. I like people who aren't afraid to say "this isn't working because when this happens I can't see blabla to heal him can we try tanking him somewhere else." just an example but you get the point. Dps who know what is going on around them and don't just mindlessly enter their rotation. Groups that get through content. I still want jokes to be thrown back and forth during these ops though. This is after all a game. It should be fun. 3. Some kind of Ranked PVP Team. I will not be an elitist and say "you can't come because your class sucks." That is not and will never be me if that means we get steamrolled so be it... I firmly believe that in the right hands any class can be deadly/effective maybe it won't put up the beast numbers that doesn't mean the team won't win. Sorry tangent, but yes I want a group of guys who are interested and geared for running RWZ's. So this being said... Who are we looking for? well we are recruiting players of all class and level as long as they plan on staying active. To accomplish what I want to accomplish we will need a large community so we are recruiting anyone and everyone. If you are interested in Running Ops what we really need right now Is 2 RDPS preferably at least one sniper. possibly a healer need to see if a guildy is committed or not. I would like for them to have some raid experience and be ready to jump into TFB HM however I have no problem gearing up a good aware player who plans to stick around. For a 16m team we need all roles. As far as pvp'ers go... if you are looking for RWZ's right now... this isn't the place for you. If you want to pvp with a fun group of players while you develop your skills and get your gear straight while we build a ranked team come on over. If you have any more questions or you think this may be a fit for you then please whisper me in game on either Betrayl or Trayya. You can also whisper Sheen'kid. Or just /w Rofls and Pwncakes and ask if you can get in touch with an officer. You can also just pm me on the forums, or reply on this thread. You can put in an application at our website as well http://roflsandpwncakes.enjin.com/. Sorry in advanced for the website. I need to get on that. Any ways look forward to meeting some new players/friends and hopefully picking up some pvp'ers and raiders. Also... "We're here to **** **** up!"

<Rofls and Pwncakes> is still a new guild on the Harbinger we only have about 12 active members at the moment and are recruiting more for a 2nd ops team and some 16 mans. I will have no problem personally helping you gear up your toon as long as you are willing to learn your class/rotation after all gear is nothing without knowing your class. We are looking for all classes and rolls. In our first 3 weeks our progression sits at 3/4 EC HM. Hope to down Kephess next week and start rolling into TFB HM. My current wish lists includes a sniper, PT pyrotech, 2 sorc healers(one for each op group), but all classes are welcome. Need Tanks for our 2nd ops group as well. We are a pretty laid back crowd. We joke and laugh and have fun running operations. We will progress and it may get serious from time to time. I myself am extremely competitive and will down these operations in time. So PM me with any questions and/or visit our website http://roflsandpwncakes.enjin.com/. Also other than occasional random General Chat trolling we try to stay classy and treat other players with respect.

Glad they were good experiences for you man, and I think we still have that spot yes. Sorry I've been busy and haven't gotten around to talking to you in game. If you haven't all ready PM me your schedule and we'll talk.

Nyro that would be awesome thanks for the offer. If you have the time to do that I would give you free rain to make the sight awesome. Davis that sounds great too we will be starting progression probably after new years so if you could just list your toons names and i'll friend them all in game and we can go from there.

New Guild! Looking for 1 rDPS for progression group. Progression Group will be starting on HM EC. So if your a geared merc/sniper and your looking for a semi-serious ops team to be a part of than either whisper me in game, Betrayl, comment on this thread, or visit our sight http://roflsandpwncakes.enjin.com/. We are recruiting all other classes and roles as well eventually multiple teams will exist. We casually pvp pretty much ever night, but most importantly we are a good fun group of people who enjoy to joke and have fun while not sucking at SWTOR. So if you want to just have fun with a good group of people and down some operations while doing it look us up. As long as you can handle mature humor that is.

As we all know the Immortal Tree for the Juggernaut is a joke. (just because you can tank fine on it by spamming taunts doesn't mean it isn't broken) I've been doing some serious thinking and i can't figure out how bioware, who on the whole has kept the game balanced, can be ok with the tree the way it is, so I have come up with some suggestions. 1. The other 2 tanks have a pull. I don't want a pull don't think jugs need a pull but what i do think we need is a talent ( add it to heavy handed maybe) That makes saber throw generate a good snap threat from the start. that would be balance. The pulls generate a lot of threat why can't saber throw. 2. Either move the talents in vengeance around so we can reach unstoppable while staying full immortal or find a way to put merge that talent with one in the immortal tree. 3. CD on backhand needs to be at cut in half! what other tank has a high threat move on a minute CD? that's insane. I would like a damage boost to it as well (nothing ridiculous) but i would be fine if it did the same damage and just had half the CD. 4. Deafening Defense... how is this not an Immoral tree talent.. enough said. 5. FIX CRUSHING BLOW!!!!! I believe there are 2 options here. 1 Up the damage by a fair amount to make it worth the rage and actually cause enough threat to make it better than impale, or 2. leave the damage and lower the CD to 9s or so and drop the rage cost to 3. personally I would rather the damage just be upped. Actually i would really like them to change the mechanics of the attack. Maybe something like with for every stack of sunder armor crushing blow's damage is increased by 10% on just the main target, after 3 stacks of sunder armor it can hit up to 3 targets and after 5 it can hit up to 5... making the move worth its rage better for aoe tanking and all that good jazz. If you add these changes to the tree I believe it would be fixed. Juggs would still be the lowest dps tank which is fine because our defense is sick. AOE tanking would be better still harder than it is for an Assassin which is fine. This would make the TANKING tree, Immortal, better to tank with than a hybrid build, which is how it should be. It would also solve some threat issues which if we are honest with ourselves jugs have. I agree it's a manageable issue with taunts, but trust me as dps's gear increases it will become less and less manageable. Let me know what you guys think/give your own suggestions and what not.