I play an infiltration spec shadow in a top-tier raiding guild. 1) Um, can we get a Sentinal instead? Or maybe a smuggler? Does someone have a ranged dps available? 2) In full Campaign gear I come in about 200 to 300 dps behind other similarly-geared players. My damage starts out strong, but in 15 seconds or so the other classes catch up and surpass me as my damage sputters down. We have enough dps in the raid to get the bosses down, but, obviously, the raid would be better off with another class filling my spot. Add in the squishiness, the lackluster aoe, and the fact that damage suffers even more in mobile fights, plus we bring no raid-wide buff or utility, and it's hard to make the argument for bringing an infiltration shadow over any other dps class. I love playing he shadow though; i just wish it wasn't so gimped. FYI -- I tried Balance spec for a while. It's not significantly better to make it worthwhile.

In PvE endgame (we're running HM EC), Sentinals out-dps Shadows by about 200 dps. Shadows have good initial burst, but as the fight goes on their dps steadily drops, and the sentinels catch up and eventually surpass them.

For PvE: Will > 100% accuracy > ~250 crit rating > ~250 surge > power. You'll be switching mods in and out trying to get the best stat balance as you improve your gear. As you do so, you want to maximize your will and power without gimping your other stats. So what I do is try to find a combination that keeps my stats near the targets above, while letting me stack as much will and power as possible. You want melee accuracy to be close to 100%, and no more. I feel it's ok to even be a little less, around 99%. This only affects Claivoyant Strike and Saber Strike. Everything else is a force attack and always hits. I'm currently running with 99% hit, and find that I pretty much never miss for an entire boss fight. Get crit to between 250 and 300. More than that and the diminishing returns make it a waste of points. Same with Surge. And then stack as much power as possible. 250 is good as you gear up. In full Campaign I've got 300 crit and 300 surge. My power is about 550, and Will is about 1875 self-buffed. With stims it's close to 2k.