SWTOR Senior Designer on Infiltration Shadows

[dronepilot]

Its a sad fact, Bioware have neglected Infiltration for so long, in this game, then tell the players "your not playing it right" I have used every possible rotation, combination in Shadow Technique in the Infiltration spec, and nothing, constitutes to what this developer said.

 

If were supposed to play this a certain way, tell us the rotation, nothing I use works effectively. I end up being force starved in most rotations. Our force pool is so low, when it drops too low, we can't even use any decent melee strikes, and have to revert to our free saber strike. (Always misses more than it actually hits anything) thanks to the thing about accuracy.

 

Many of the skills are still broken, stealth, black out, cloak often are broken easily by NPC's not respecting stealth, or a stealth level, I have the highest possible stealth points, but NPC's just as players can, still see you. By then you click on black out.. but the little battle icon still shows, but your still in stealth, and have NPC's chasing you around. This would be amusing if wasn't so stupid ! - OFC, you should really use black out any way when passing by NPC's I only usually use that if I am actually right near them, though. (Plus I won't use Resilience unless I got dotted anyway).

 

Were described as a shutdown spec. Seriously, ?! how ? we don't have the resources for that, you nerfed our bursts, and didn't you also increase the force cost on some things too ? I know in 1.3 the same rotations I used in 1.2 are much harder to do. Unless you like wasting 5 seconds waiting for your back stab to become available, oh, wait ! - the NPC just woke up. ! Our low slash says it stuns for like 4 seconds.. I have seen the NPC wake up either instantly, or after 1-2 seconds on this. - But ! Thanks so much Bioware.

 

Of course, its my fault. How silly of me..

Edited July 23, 2012 by dronepilot

[Marisblood]

Same role as assasins or shadows have scoundrels / operatives. Hit and run. True, so far.

But operatives/scoundrels not only hit, they dont run, they hit, recuperate, dodge, stunlock, heal up...but dont run unless 2-3 goes on them. If assasin do that he dies. So Mr. Senior Designer: Make the class playable ( i am best shadow dps of my realm and i rerolled). In PVP you dont run far away but you help your team. Is all about burst/survivability thanks to you.

Powetech are far best dpsers, marauders are very close, operatives are fine and can take any class in many situations, sorcs (with the spec that blind whenshield brake or root on force wave) are best healers/kiters, snipers are simply destroyers, comandos and assasins are lol class atm. They need badly improvements.

My wish is to have recuperate like scoundrels every 45 sec, to have 2 stuns of 4 sec like they have, one aoe stun, and some healing stuff.

 

Cheers. GG. Assasin is a broken class in his dps tree.

[Skolops]

Honestly, I just see a lot of QQ in this thread much of which I completely disagree with. I played an Infiltration Shadow for a long time, and while I play KC now for utility and think that Infiltration is a little bit weaker than it should be, I certainly think that it ican be quite strong in PvP (and don't care whether it has a lot of use in PvE because I do not believe that every spec needs to be viable in both PvP and PvE).

 

Instead of wasting a lot of time going back through the whole thread, I just want to cite a few things from the two most recent posts and point out why I think they are erroneous, or at best showing some level of misunderstanding.

 

Many of the skills are still broken, stealth, black out, cloak often are broken easily by NPC's not respecting stealth, or a stealth level, I have the highest possible stealth points, but NPC's just as players can, still see you. By then you click on black out.. but the little battle icon still shows, but your still in stealth, and have NPC's chasing you around. This would be amusing if wasn't so stupid !

 

This happens if you have DoTs on you. If you really want to escape in stealth with a surefire chance of pulling it off, you need to hit resilience to clear out any of the DoTs - and you need to realize that not every DoT can be cleansed be resilience and will make an escape impossible. Whether this is fair or good or otherwise may be up for debate, but as it is its the way it works and I think its perfectly reasonable as a counter to the very strong vanish ability.

 

I can't really say I've ever had any problems getting stuck in combat WHEN I properly and successfully cleanse DoTs before vanishing - only when I do not. It may happen that if you have a companion out who is DoTted it may keep you stuck in combat - I'm not entirely sure.

 

You also mention low slash not working for the full duration. Well, again, damage ends this stun early. This means that if they catch an AoE, or, more likely, a DoT is on them, they will wake up, of course.

 

I have no intention of being rude or nasty to you in saying this at all, but it really sounds to me like a case of not understanding some very basic game/class/ability mechanics here and blaming unexpected results on the class, game, or developers rather than recognizing that you're simply playing incorrectly. Yes, in these two cases it does very well seem to be a case of your fault. Again, that isn't to say that the developers couldn't improve the spec or class somewhat, but you also need to recognize where the problem is simply that you don't understand how things are supposed to work before calling things broken.

 

But operatives/scoundrels not only hit, they dont run, they hit, recuperate, dodge, stunlock, heal up...but dont run unless 2-3 goes on them. If assasin do that he dies. So Mr. Senior Designer: Make the class playable ( i am best shadow dps of my realm and i rerolled). In PVP you dont run far away but you help your team. Is all about burst/survivability thanks to you.

 

This shows a lack of understanding about operatives. Operatives are incredibly stealth dependent - far, far moreso than Infiltration shadows. They must attack out of stealth to be completely effective and to pull off their signature rotation. Now, consider that like Shadows, they are able only to enter stealth when out of combat or once on a very long cooldown from within combat and you see why they are incredibly annoying at times during, say, a warzone, but rarely come close to topping the charts (unless they are playing lethality/dirty fighting, which is more like Balance than Infiltration).

 

The healing up ability is incredibly overstated, as it is, in the first place, not nearly strong enough to keep them alive when drawing fire, and in the second place, as long as they are healing, they are not attacking or being useful in any way.

 

Let me put it this way: you will not see a Concealment Operative consistently topping DPS charts in either PvE or PvP, but you will see an Infiltration Shadow, played well, near the top almost every warzone - at least of his own team - if played well. 350-450k Should be fairly easy for them. They are more healer dependant than some DPS classes, but then again they can take out a healer like almost no other.

 

On top of this, as a DPS class an Infiltration Shadow has by a wide, wide margin the best defensive cooldown in the entire game. As an Infiltration Shadow, I was even able to hold nodes against large numbers of attackers for a considerable amount of time waiting for help - not as much as I can in Kinetic Combat, but far longer than I ever could on my Guardian, Gunslinger, and likely any other DPS spec.

[Innocences]

Yes this has been a very good read and I approve the OP's message. It appears to be a very easy fix. This topic floors me, and I plan to un sub when it goes free to play. There is no reason for me to pay when I'll be leveling another class because BW refuses to fix something so easily fixed. Thanks BW, I've been playing since release and I'm tired of waiting. Edited August 30, 2012 by Innocences

[Leafy_Bug]

Interesting letter from the developer. Many thanks for taking the time to explain that infiltration is working as intended. Surely all the shadow players including myself must be doing something wrong if we dropped this spec. Due to the changes in 1.3, bursting down a target takes too long. The power adrenal really made a difference as you did not need to stack up fully to kill a target. I would like to point out that in many cases nodes are being protected by pyrotechs, marauders, mercenaries and not sorcs. Try to nukedown a 20k pyro in infiltration fast enough before backup arrives. The fun part is that you are dead before backup arrives. If i were to play the class ' as intended ' then I would lurk at a node until a sorc arrives to protect it. That is basically the only class that can be burst down fast enough in 1.3.

[Kajuana]

The problem with infiltration is that there is very little opportunity for 1v1 against low armored targets in WZs.

Currently, infiltration is too squishy for the burst damage they put out on high armored / guarded targets to be useful in group PvP. If you cannot burst down a healer in the first 10 seconds, you are going to die (spotted as easy kill) or become useless (out of force). DPS scoundrels are in the same shoes. Fortunately, both classes can re-stealth and run away.

 

Infiltration shadows can deliver incredible 20K damage in 5 hits:

Force Potency + Project (5K) > Force Breach (5K) > Clairvoyant Strike (2.8K) > Clairvoyant Strike (2.8K) > Project / Spinning Strike (5K)

 

But most of our PvP is done in WZs, and players are getting smarter and will guard healers even in pug groups.

This makes infiltration an incredibly difficult glass cannon to play.

Albeit, there is opportunity for infiltration to shine In world PvP, we just don't have much of that.

I don't think they should buff infiltration. Instead, I think they should encourage world PvP.

Edited August 31, 2012 by Kajuana