What's a good DPS build for operation? Infiltration? Balance?

[seektravota]

Our operation team has a shadow mostly rakata/bh gear, but only doing about 1200 DPS. Wondering if that's a good number and what spec are you guys using for operations and what's your numbers?

[Shadenuat]

We have two infiltration shadows, and they seem to do more damage than sages, commando or gunslinger. The top goes to sentinel. Edited June 1, 2012 by Shadenuat

[Spliffy-TreesOG]

Just to clarify I'm infiltration spec (2/31/8) and just broke 1200 dps in 4 piece bh (ear piece, implant, offhand and chest) with the rest rakata and a wh augmented glove. Do other shadows think that Infil or balance is more suited for pve situations, or am I doing something wrong with my rotation? Hope to have some informative shadows reply soon :3

[Spliffy-TreesOG]

Just to clarify I'm infiltration spec (2/31/8) and just broke 1200 dps in 4 piece bh (ear piece, implant, offhand and chest) with the rest rakata and a wh augmented glove. Do other shadows think that Infil or balance is more suited for pve situations, or am I doing something wrong with my rotation? Hope to have some informative shadows reply soon :3

[mredders]

Realy for operation ether one will do it simply comes down to which you prefer to play.

Do you want a more aoe damage or more single burst damage?

 

My own preference for my OP shadow is infiltration (2/31/8) i find the burst against tougher enemies more useful then spreading the damage around groups.

[Hvezdy]

Where do you parse? Operation dummy with only self buffs? Im somewhere around 1200 with all speccs there (madness, deception and also madness/darkness hybrid (which parses slightly more than others, but is really boring - thrash, thrash, thrash etc.)). Sad is I can parse 1400-1500 on the same dummy with my marauder alt :-(.

 

Yes, Im an assassin.

[jphuynh]

I was also in the same shoes where my guild was doing 8man EC HM and we were simply hitting enrage timers so I thought I'd try a different spec from 7/31/3 to see if I can pump out more dps to help with that issue. Granted I don't have the combat log file as I occasionally clear out my folder due to build up, I did do a OPS test dummy just to illustrate my point. In real time raid of Denova, I was pumping out ~1500dps with Inspiration from our Sentinel as I watched on my Mox Parser. But attached here is just self buffed vs an OPS test dummy of around ~1420dps.

 

Overall, once I got the rotation down, I'd hate to admit it but Balance 7/3/31 did a lot better dps wise vs ArmP Infiltration 7/31/3, CONSISTENTLY. Attached too is also an OPS test dummy for 7/31/3 which I got ~1360dps (though I suspect it should be a lil higher bc I couldn't Force Cloak to get the regen as the parser wouldn't record that but instead logs it as 2 separate battles when I DO Force Cloak).

 

I didn't include 2/31/8 Upheaval INFILTRATION because I did even poorer than the other 2 specs @ 1250dps.

Also I'm all Rakata with ~5 Black Hole pieces. Stats following are under the Melee tab and Force tab.

MELEE:

dmg: 906-1101

bonus dmg: 517 (545 power)

accuracy: 97.76%

crit: 31.55%

crit mult: 77.12%

FORCE:

bonus dmg: 791.8 (545 power)

 

7/3/31 BALANCE 1420dps:

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/combatlo...=0,f=1,t=2,b=1

7/31/3 ArmP INFILTRATION 1360dps:

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/combatlo...=0,f=1,t=2,b=1

[jphuynh]

But OP, give Balance a try, i was hesitant at first bc rotations are totally different and keybindings are way different but once you master it, youll find it actually easier to manage a consistent priority list than infiltration AND you can heal yourself too!

And yes, I was consistently top DPS in my guild with a Gunslinger/Sniper and Sentinel/Maurader and our Infiltration spec'd Shadow/Assassin (who was always last) in our dps team makeup, with occasionally one of them passing me barely or matching me.

 

This is in EC Denova. Also. I'm sorry I can't back up my claim with logs as I delete my folder occasionally due to build up, but our guild runs Mox Parser and I'm always top as Balance.

Edited June 3, 2012 by jphuynh

[ragamer]

Here:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=4391900&postcount=14

 

Are a few tips on Infil Shadow DPS build for OPs (Including Gearing approach... Which is slightly different on what you need for Balance, for example).

 

Why it's hard to find a "best" Build:

 

- ALL EC fights enrage timers are beaten by single target DPS. AOE dps is nice to add some "boosts" to your average parser readouts but aren't effective to help your team beat the mark. Spend some time with a good parser to know who does what damage to what targets... Helps clearing up a few "myths" that parsers that pile up everything help create.

 

- Some EC fights include a burst Phase. Average DPS is not as imporant as to be able to apply controllable BURSTs on given parts of a fight. Infiltration has a vast advantage over Balance here. For example, the last boss encounter on EC is HIGHLY misleading if you use an average parser readout blindly. The real DPS bottlenecks there are the Walker Vulnerability Periods (20s bursts) and the Bombardier Kill Time... While doing AOE or multitarget is not particularly effective, even if they make some builds "score high". Something similar happens on Minesweeper combat.

 

- Dummy Parsers have a problem... Dummies DO NOT parry/dodge. That means the results of 2 weapon wielder classes is artificially boosted against them. Also, having low Accuracy is not penalized as much as in EC (Were mobs have a natural 10% defense) meaning the DPS you do against them will not match on-the-field performance (Particularly affecting classes that have attacks and powers mixed). They are good to meassure the evolution of the same build at different gear levels/attack strategies (With the remarkable comment about Accuracy) but comparing DIFFERENT builds/classes on them is not reliable at all.

 

- ALL EC fights come with small interruptions for any Shadow Build. The strategies you use to deal with this interruptions with your chosen build are the key (And they are totally different)... And staying hours spamming perfect rotations on a dummy will not help you at all.

Edited June 3, 2012 by ragamer

[dronepilot]

Never played, but I know some one in our guild, who plays balance, seems to be a good spec apparently ?

[MaliksKid]

Our guild normally runs with a vanguard as tank, which to me seems to hurt infiltration shadows. I'm in a mix of columi/rakata/bh and was only getting 1171 dps on the training dummy, where our sage was getting 1400 with slightly worse gear. So we were trying to work out why that would be, I found that first off, while the sage could do higher dps my top attack (project) was hitting for over 7k. Then he suggested maybe a lack of debuffs was hurting me as a melee character which seemed pretty fair since stuff like clairvoyant strike wasn't getting near target. Then our vanguard said he'd debuff the dummy for me, but he didn't have anything that reduces the targets armor. I don't have a vanguard so i don't know whether this is correct or he just hasn't seen that ability, looking at his skill tree would suggest they don't. So we are now wondering, are shadows better paired in groups with a sent and guardian (for extra dps + reduced armor) or does the vanguards protection based stuff balance it out.

[Aetou]

Your group, especially for Ops, should try to have at least one character who can stack armour debuffs but there is no reason that needs to be the tank. A Marauder or Commando can do the job just as well.

[Tyresog]

I was also in the same shoes where my guild was doing 8man EC HM and we were simply hitting enrage timers so I thought I'd try a different spec from 7/31/3 to see if I can pump out more dps to help with that issue. Granted I don't have the combat log file as I occasionally clear out my folder due to build up, I did do a OPS test dummy just to illustrate my point. In real time raid of Denova, I was pumping out ~1500dps with Inspiration from our Sentinel as I watched on my Mox Parser. But attached here is just self buffed vs an OPS test dummy of around ~1420dps.

 

Overall, once I got the rotation down, I'd hate to admit it but Balance 7/3/31 did a lot better dps wise vs ArmP Infiltration 7/31/3, CONSISTENTLY. Attached too is also an OPS test dummy for 7/31/3 which I got ~1360dps (though I suspect it should be a lil higher bc I couldn't Force Cloak to get the regen as the parser wouldn't record that but instead logs it as 2 separate battles when I DO Force Cloak).

 

I didn't include 2/31/8 Upheaval INFILTRATION because I did even poorer than the other 2 specs @ 1250dps.

Also I'm all Rakata with ~5 Black Hole pieces. Stats following are under the Melee tab and Force tab.

MELEE:

dmg: 906-1101

bonus dmg: 517 (545 power)

accuracy: 97.76%

crit: 31.55%

crit mult: 77.12%

FORCE:

bonus dmg: 791.8 (545 power)

 

7/3/31 BALANCE 1420dps:

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/combatlo...=0,f=1,t=2,b=1

7/31/3 ArmP INFILTRATION 1360dps:

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/combatlo...=0,f=1,t=2,b=1

 

Any chance you can repost those links? I am very very interested to see your balance rotation. I re-specced balance tonight since my ops group is stuck on tanks in EC HM and wanted to see what I could do better. On ops dummies first time ever touching balance im only getting 1260, self buffed no adrenals/force potency/battle readiness. Wondering if its in line

[AelixVII]

Ops question: I've just spec'd Balance and I'm finally getting the hang of dot and proc watching, but I've just had a thought about something that could cause me difficulty.

 

In raids, I've only had to cast an eye over to the boss's debuffs to check whether my Commando's Grav round is stacked at 5, it was easy to spot being bright pink but I forgot roughly where it showed up on the debuff area.

 

There's always so many things stacked on the boss so I'm worried I might not be able to spot my Force Breach and Sever Force running out. Do they get added in the same place each time or is it dependant on when they were added?

Edited June 23, 2012 by AelixVII

[Deathstroke]

Ops question: I've just spec'd Balance and I'm finally getting the hang of dot and proc watching, but I've just had a thought about something that could cause me difficulty.

 

In raids, I've only had to cast an eye over to the boss's debuffs to check whether my Commando's Grav round is stacked at 5, it was easy to spot being bright pink but I forgot roughly where it showed up on the debuff area.

 

There's always so many things stacked on the boss so I'm worried I might not be able to spot my Force Breach and Sever Force running out. Do they get added in the same place each time or is it dependant on when they were added?

 

 

 

Dependent on when they are added to your target

[AelixVII]

Dependent on when they are added to your target

In that case, I'll quickly watch where they go when I apply them and remember the place, I can roughly guess when they're going to drop off in my rotation now that I'm used to it. Thanks very much.