How do shadows do in pvp?

[Boomer-]

I hear a lot of stuff. Some claim they're OP some claim they're broken. Not sure what to believe. I currently play a sage and believe Shadow is the perfect class for me because unlike sage its melee, and its dps/tank as opposed to heal/tank so I'll get some variety.

So how well do shadows do in pvp and how viable are they in raids both as main tanks and as dps?

[SvnStrSlm]

They are awesome in PVP. I cant talk for raid tanking but i know they are pretty good and their AoE makes agro managment easy. I myself play Infiltration in PVP because i like to hunt down healers. Balance is really good for taking out heavy armor classes. Right now there is theory debat over the best dps but balance and infiltration are pretty close. Kinect balance hybrid is great for leveling. Most will tell you shadows benefit most from a good player.

[Subatomix]

Spec kinetic and then gear for DPS. I'm taking my time leveling up and having a blast. I'm currently lvl 45 and spend every wz comm on pvp weapons with +expertise mods. Then I rip them out and put them into my own gear. Nobody < 50 does this.

 

I also have my gear set up for +willpower and +power. So I don't rely on crits much. IE., take gear with +willpower and +power over +crit. We have active skills to help with that.

 

I never lose a 1 v 1 fight and rarely lose 2 v 2.

 

You can get some orange gear (6 pcs) pretty quickly and start doing the same thing. I forget what level the first bit of +exp weapons are. But they're not hard to get. Just pvp and cash in at the vendor for the weapon(s) with the mods you need.

 

Also, you'll want to map many of your main abilities to custom keystrokes as we have quite a few special skills to rotate through.

 

You can easily build up +3 Harnessed Shadows, then lifetap, then execute. It's lots of fun. People don't know what hit them.

 

I love it.

[Philosomanic]

Shadow is a great class, as long as it fits your playstyle. I can't really say "Shadow plays like this", because each of the three is so different. So here are the three Shadow talent trees, and how they perform in PvP:

 

 

 

Infiltration

Infiltration focuses on mobility, single-target control, and large bursts of damage. You get +15% in-combat run speed, a really powerful single-target slow (-50%), and a single-target 4s disable (breaks on damage) with a 15s cooldown that does really high damage. Mixing Low Slash into your rotation results in almost no drop in DPS.

 

Infiltration DPS focuses on using melee skills to get procs, and then using the corresponding force skills for a massive burst of damage. Many of our skills are worthless without procs, but then incredibly powerful with them. For example, with a base cost of 45 Project is too expensive for Infiltration to include in their rotation; however, use Clairvoyant Strike twice and Project only costs 23 force, and does 30% more damage.

 

Infiltration's biggest weakness is it's relative lack of defense. You have a lot of control and decent CC against one target, but your survival relies on taking the opponent down quickly, before they can recover. You can take a lot of damage with your defensive cooldowns up, but after that you have very little armor and no self-healing. An Infiltration Shadow can take down any class, but some (like tanks) that are hard to kill will be much harder.

 

 

 

Kinetic

Kinetic is the tanking talent tree. Kinetic shadows have the highest amount of group utility; with guard, high defenses, and AoE slows and debuffs, a good Kinetic Shadow can go a long way to keeping their team alive. One of a Kinetic's best skills is Slow Time. It hits 5 targets, does decent damage, and debuffs them for -5% damage and -30% run speed for 15 seconds, on a 7.5 second cooldown. Additionally, you have the defenses to use your taunts and then stick around.

 

Kinetic DPS, especially against single targets, is the lowest of the three trees. This isn't to say that they don't deal damage; a Kinetic tank can still put out high DPS numbers. However, they do significantly less than Balance or Infiltration. Kinetics make up for their lower DPS with significantly higher defenses, and a lot of self-healing. Kinetic DPS also relies on procs; however, some of their force skills also build procs for other force skills.

 

Playing as a Kinetic Shadow is a lot less reliant on luck than Infiltration. One of Kinetic's talents gives some melee skills a chance to make the next Project automatically crit. They rely less on high single hits, and more on sustained damage with lots of self-healing thrown in. You'll be the most valuable shadow for keeping your team alive, and you'll do really well in 1v1s, but some people find the class to play too slowly.

 

 

 

Balance

Balance is, in my opinion, the most interesting Shadow tree. Balance's power comes from a multitude of DoTs that they can stack on several targets at once. Balance also has a few powerful skills with a 30m range, making them the best of the talent trees at long distance. They're still not nearly as powerful as when they're in melee range, but being at a distance doesn't entirely cripple them.

 

Balance DPS relies on DoTs, and is far more reliant on force powers than the other two. Also, Balance has far less of a reliance on procs than the other two builds. Balance only has one proc (from a melee skill) to watch for. Balance also gets several buffs to melee damage from force powers. However, these are up almost constantly and don't really affect rotation.

 

Balance has defenses in between Infiltration and Kinetic. Any time one of their DoTs crits, the Balance is healed for 2% of their max health. With DoTs ticking away on several targets at once, this results in a steady stream of decent self-heals. They won't be enough to survive focus fire for any length of time, but the heals give a significant advantage in 1v1s.

 

Balance's weakness is burst damage. They don't have the burst damage to take down a healer by themselves, and they don't have the defenses to survive burst or focus damage for any real length of time. However, they can hold their own in almost all 1v1s, and they can put out devastating amounts of damage by putting their DoTs on multiple targets. Although they have the worst burst damage, they have the highest overall DPS output of the three trees.

 

 

tl:dr:

 

Infiltration: Single-target burst, control, low defenses

Kinetic: AoE Control/debuffs, tanking, high defenses

Balance: DoTs, decent range, moderate defenses

[rakuenCallisto]

Shadow is a great class, as long as it fits your playstyle. I can't really say "Shadow plays like this", because each of the three is so different. So here are the three Shadow talent trees, and how they perform in PvP:

 

 

 

Infiltration

Infiltration focuses on mobility, single-target control, and large bursts of damage. You get +15% in-combat run speed, a really powerful single-target slow (-50%), and a single-target 4s disable (breaks on damage) with a 15s cooldown that does really high damage. Mixing Low Slash into your rotation results in almost no drop in DPS.

 

Infiltration DPS focuses on using melee skills to get procs, and then using the corresponding force skills for a massive burst of damage. Many of our skills are worthless without procs, but then incredibly powerful with them. For example, with a base cost of 45 Project is too expensive for Infiltration to include in their rotation; however, use Clairvoyant Strike twice and Project only costs 23 force, and does 30% more damage.

 

Infiltration's biggest weakness is it's relative lack of defense. You have a lot of control and decent CC against one target, but your survival relies on taking the opponent down quickly, before they can recover. You can take a lot of damage with your defensive cooldowns up, but after that you have very little armor and no self-healing. An Infiltration Shadow can take down any class, but some (like tanks) that are hard to kill will be much harder.

 

 

 

Kinetic

Kinetic is the tanking talent tree. Kinetic shadows have the highest amount of group utility; with guard, high defenses, and AoE slows and debuffs, a good Kinetic Shadow can go a long way to keeping their team alive. One of a Kinetic's best skills is Slow Time. It hits 5 targets, does decent damage, and debuffs them for -5% damage and -30% run speed for 15 seconds, on a 7.5 second cooldown. Additionally, you have the defenses to use your taunts and then stick around.

 

Kinetic DPS, especially against single targets, is the lowest of the three trees. This isn't to say that they don't deal damage; a Kinetic tank can still put out high DPS numbers. However, they do significantly less than Balance or Infiltration. Kinetics make up for their lower DPS with significantly higher defenses, and a lot of self-healing. Kinetic DPS also relies on procs; however, some of their force skills also build procs for other force skills.

 

Playing as a Kinetic Shadow is a lot less reliant on luck than Infiltration. One of Kinetic's talents gives some melee skills a chance to make the next Project automatically crit. They rely less on high single hits, and more on sustained damage with lots of self-healing thrown in. You'll be the most valuable shadow for keeping your team alive, and you'll do really well in 1v1s, but some people find the class to play too slowly.

 

 

 

Balance

Balance is, in my opinion, the most interesting Shadow tree. Balance's power comes from a multitude of DoTs that they can stack on several targets at once. Balance also has a few powerful skills with a 30m range, making them the best of the talent trees at long distance. They're still not nearly as powerful as when they're in melee range, but being at a distance doesn't entirely cripple them.

 

Balance DPS relies on DoTs, and is far more reliant on force powers than the other two. Also, Balance has far less of a reliance on procs than the other two builds. Balance only has one proc (from a melee skill) to watch for. Balance also gets several buffs to melee damage from force powers. However, these are up almost constantly and don't really affect rotation.

 

Balance has defenses in between Infiltration and Kinetic. Any time one of their DoTs crits, the Balance is healed for 2% of their max health. With DoTs ticking away on several targets at once, this results in a steady stream of decent self-heals. They won't be enough to survive focus fire for any length of time, but the heals give a significant advantage in 1v1s.

 

Balance's weakness is burst damage. They don't have the burst damage to take down a healer by themselves, and they don't have the defenses to survive burst or focus damage for any real length of time. However, they can hold their own in almost all 1v1s, and they can put out devastating amounts of damage by putting their DoTs on multiple targets. Although they have the worst burst damage, they have the highest overall DPS output of the three trees.

 

 

tl:dr:

 

Infiltration: Single-target burst, control, low defenses

Kinetic: AoE Control/debuffs, tanking, high defenses

Balance: DoTs, decent range, moderate defenses

 

Great post.

[Philosomanic]

Great post.

 

Thanks! I think I'll just copy-and-paste it to all of the "Which tree do I use?" threads .

[Kumakichi]

Shadows aren't OP and I dont know what you meant by broken. They aren't what people expect. Yes they are melee but they also rely on force spells heavily. Its not a traditional rogue type of class. This really disappoints some while others embrace it. If you like playing a sage you might be disappointed in the tradeoffs playing a shadow.

[barreness]

Make sure to chk out "Powerr's"shadow pvp tank guides.. and vids for that matter..

 

There are many great guides by lots of really good players for shadow jedi's (in respect to some of the other classes I've checked out)

 

Best shadow-kin points I've found.

 

- The kinetic shadow does great dps, and can easily kill an opponent in 1 rotation. (31 0 10)

 

- can stay alive till help arrives , denying imp cap.

 

- stealth tank.. (What's next , flying tanks..)

 

- cc wizard.

 

Rolling with 2 survivor and all else stalker is the word on the street. With mods swaps you may find a piece with way more wp and choose that. Implant for example. So be it.

 

Some like the 4 piece survivor, (mods swapped) for the The 5 % DMG to all members.

awesome, since you should always be guarding...

 

Having the stalker set makes respec easy to infil... So it's not to bad to have to grab 2 sets.

[Ferkles]

I've only been infiltration shadow so I can't say much about the other classes.

We do AMAZING burst dps. Literally incredible, but we have to build up exit strategy procs, circling shadow procs, find weakness procs before we can lay that out.

The procs are worth it though. I'm not even full champion geared (far from it in fact) and I can do 10k damage in an instant. Not with a single attack mind.

 

If you stack up Force Breach with your delayed damage on project, using your crit and surge relic and force potency and a surge adrenal, you crit and you crit HIGH. I'm trying to get a little video together, but Powerr's video is a very nice display of what we get at battlemaster.

 

Also, as a little add-on, I have a few guildies who are shadow tanks, and, just saying, but the guild's healers prefer them over most other class tanks.