It's based on the armoring.

You would think such an intellectual juggernaut would be able to find the recruitment forum.

Because Google exists, by your logic, every question not pertaining to mysticism or unanswered questions in science are stupid questions. "Easily" is entirely subjective. What's easy for you might not be so easy for someone else. For the OP, it should be quite obvious that they thought the best way to remedy their ignorance was to make a thread about it.

Expecting someone quite obviously incapable of reading tooltips to read tooltips is in and of itself... oh, what was the word... air-headed? There's no such thing as a stupid question.

Balance - I have to push how many buttons?

Truthfully, though, it's pretty minor. The main reason I use Sever Force first is simply because of the cooldown and its much longer range. At my gear level not using Project amounts to about a 50-60 DPS loss, iirc. It's minor things like this that make Balance to difficult to play. It's not so much using SS for MC procs as it is keeping above a certain Force threshold to be able to consistently cast FiB on cooldown/keep TD up. One of the things I'm working on is draining my Force down too low, using SS when FiB is off of cooldown to help recoup Force.

Please link me to some logs on boss fights where you pull sustained DPS over 1400.

I already tried it our first night in the instance. No dice.

I like Kitru's build but I would personally put the points in Shadowy Veil into Misdirection. Pretty much every single boss encounter in TFB has a lot of movement involved, and even with a 15 second Force Speed 15% movement speed would help to maintain greater uptime on targets.

Commando DPS caps out at around 1400 or so, so your sentinels are probably pretty bad.

So... let me get this straight: you're expecting to be able to do whatever you want and get comparable numbers with someone who optimizes? Do you not understand how absurd that is?

A few things. At higher gear levels, using Project to proc TD provides a DPS boost over not using it, simply because of how much power an optimized Campaign+ Balance Shadow has. Sever Force typically hits harder than Force Breach for me, largely because it deals internal damage rather than kinetic, which is mitigated by armor. I believe optimal Saber Strike usage is when you fall below 40 Force, as using it too much higher results in too much of a DPS loss.

What buffs did you guys have?

The other day, I was learning to tank by queueing up for some HMs, and there was a Shadow using a single-bladed saber not using any melee attacks basically using only Project and TK Throw. There most certainly is a way to do it wrong. I wouldn't mind seeing Infiltration get some DPS love, mainly because of how incredibly difficult Balance is to play. I put in much more work to play and put up less numbers than the Watchman Sentinels; very unrewarding.

If I had to guess, you would benefit by dropping some power and getting crit for sustained DPS. For Balance at least, crit is simming as better than power up to around 37-38% crit. I'm at around 36.5% melee crit fully buffed with ~650 bonus melee damage.

I'm inclined to agree that Operator IX is a bit too easy, but I don't think 25% more HP would make all that much of a difference. Less time between data deletions and/or less time to deactivate color circles would make it more challenging, I believe. We downed the boss our first time into phase two (while the boss was invisible and untargetable by two of our members, might I add) and it didn't feel nearly as hectic or stressful enough. As for whether X guild deserves Y epeen title, I couldn't care less.

95%. 5%. AoE is useful during the Writhing Horror and to a much lesser extent Operator IX during add phases. Currently, our Dirty Fighting 'slingers are topping the meters.

Thanks for the videos. Congrats on the kill; Kephess the Undying seems to be a ramp up in difficulty after WH/DG/O9.

Expository dialogue.

To reflect the fact that it's a cone with a longer range, as opposed to a circle with a short range.

Ah, didn't even realize there was a FP loss by using a generator. Shows how much I actually tank. The idea is taunting/stance dancing should a tank go down to give time for a battle/cheese rez.

So, for all you DPS Shadows out there, there is now absolutely no reason to use a focus over a generator, considering you can put DPS stats in a generator for those rare circumstances when you need to taunt/stance dance. That is all. Carry on.

The whole thing felt rather uninspired. But what I found most offensive was the overuse of expository dialogue. BioWare made the fatal mistake of telling me the effect I was having on the galaxy, rather than showing me. The fact that I am constantly being told by NPCs of my past deeds and how they have changed events was quite frankly insulting. It was especially bad during the encounter with the First Son (which was a major anti-climax in and of itself - really, a random cave is where my final showdown takes place?). On the other hand, I did rather enjoy the Rift Alliance portion, as I found the various personalities of the Rift to be a nice change of pace from the very formulaic first chapter. Still, I would've preferred investigating mysteries of the Force (you know, like the class story was described as) rather than being a gofer.

a) Force Strike procs from all melee attacks, not just Saber Strike. b) That's the priority list, not rotation, seeing as Balance is extremely proc-based.

I was under the impression that alacrity is of very limited use for companions, since they seem to be more limited by cooldowns than casting times. Therefore, I've been equipping Tharan in Enforcer gear because it tends to have the highest cunning/power.