2.0 PVE Shadow tank builds.

[Kitru]

PvE mobs have a 10% chance to resist Force & Tech attacks, which if you read the tool tips, is combated by accuracy.

 

In 2.0, some NPCs (re: operations bosses and some others) are being given innate Resistance chances (the number I've regularly heard is 8%), but it's still not enough to justify having any Accuracy, especially considering Shield has become *way* more valuable than it used to be: you'll still generate threat perfectly fine with the miss chance as it stands.

 

The bigger reason you're going to be using DS more often is because they drastically improved Shadow tank Force management: you can shield F/T K/E attacks (which means you'll get more out of DBSD and Elusiveness thanks to those attacks), they reduced the base cost on Project by 30% (so it's down from 39 to 26 thanks to Psychokinesis), and they reduced the cost on Slow Time to 20 (down from 30, but they also increased the CD to 9 seconds). As such, PTS Shadow tanks are currently drowning in Force, which means that they can spend all of that redundant Force on using Double Strike. It's not really because of any innate improvement in Double Strike or mechanical disadvantage of Force/Tech attacks with the inclusion of baseline Resistance chances for NPCs. It's because now we finally have the Force to spend on it more than 1-2 times per minute.

[KeyboardNinja]

2.0 is doubling the value of Expertise and removing the need to take feeder talents to get to the "required" talents in the other trees by putting those talents on the first tier. As such, I'm pretty confident that Expertise is actually going to be the best use of the final 3 points in a Shadow tank build.

 

Even so, until they finally make it so that Techniques finally start scaling with your stats (like *every other stance* in the game), anything that augments your Techniques is going to be pretty low value.

 

Given the extremely high use of Double Strike in 2.0 and the low damage (and poor scaling) of technique damage, I'm fairly certain that Applied Force is a better expenditure of talent points. My current thought is something like 39/3/4.

 

Spinning Kick out of stealth is super, super useful and hard to live without (I tried). Though, perhaps I would rather have 7.5% higher CT proc chance. I'm not sure. Shadow Wrap gives a significant amount of burst threat and synergizes well with the 2.0 rotation. Shadow's Shelter increases survivability by a very measurable amount *and* provides some nice raid utility. Upheaval is mandatory with the nerf to Slow Time and the buff to Project. Shadow Sight is optional, though it does provide a very measurable boost to survivability (more than Rapid Recovery). It's also a nice PvP talent.

 

The Endurance buff is an interesting talent to max out, and something that is definitely worth contesting. Endurance is worth a lot more in 2.0 due to a) severely high spikiness, and b) larger health pools. The endurance boost grants over 1k more HP in Arkanian gear with minimal Endurance, which is a significant amount of self-healing (especially since Harnessed Shadows comes faster due to PA usage). I'd rather have a larger healing buffer and better survivability than the marginal damage boost which comes from Expertise.

 

Honestly, there are two things I dislike about this build. First, I wasn't able to put both points into Rapid Recovery. I can very easily achieve this by swapping one of the points from Applied Force, which basically trades very little damage for very little healing. Trivial change.

 

The second thing I really dislike about this build is the fact that I wasn't able to take Force Synergy. This is a really really great talent due to Particle Acceleration (which we now use!). I tried shuffling things around so I could pick this up, but I just don't see how without dropping important things in the Kinetic tree.

Edited March 6, 2013 by KeyboardNinja

[Kitru]

Spinning Kick out of stealth is super, super useful and hard to live without (I tried).

 

It's useful in PvP and while smashing trash, but I really don't see how useful it is in in Ops where everything that you actually need to worry about is immune to stuns and movement effects. Even now, when I'm doing dailies, I barely touch Spinning Kick. I honestly see it as a PvP talent rather than the amazing omnitalent that Stasis was.

 

The second thing I really dislike about this build is the fact that I wasn't able to take Force Synergy.

 

As I said before, not taking Force Synergy really doesn't bother me the actual increase to damage from the increased crit chance to melee attacks is remarkably minute because crits just don't mean that much without a lot of surge. If we had a surge talent somewhere or tank gear started coming with free surge rating, I could see it being useful. As it stands, it's a minute increase to total DPS.

 

Also, have you done the math for Expertise's contribution? Considering they doubled the value, I'd be curious to see how it stacks up against Applied Force from a raw damage contribution standpoint.

 

P.S. You said Mental Fortitude is ~1k additional hp. Right now, for my gearing, it's worth all of 615 hp. In order to be worth a 1k increase to hp, hp would have to be upwards of 39-40k hp. I highly doubt that's actually right. The increases I've seen place hp at roughly ~32k hp, which would suggest that Mental Fortitude would provide about ~800 hp total, rather than 1k.

[DaftVaduhhh]

In 2.0, some NPCs (re: operations bosses and some others) are being given innate Resistance chances (the number I've regularly heard is 8%), but it's still not enough to justify having any Accuracy, especially considering Shield has become *way* more valuable than it used to be: you'll still generate threat perfectly fine with the miss chance as it stands.

 

The bigger reason you're going to be using DS more often is because they drastically improved Shadow tank Force management: you can shield F/T K/E attacks (which means you'll get more out of DBSD and Elusiveness thanks to those attacks), they reduced the base cost on Project by 30% (so it's down from 39 to 26 thanks to Psychokinesis), and they reduced the cost on Slow Time to 20 (down from 30, but they also increased the CD to 9 seconds). As such, PTS Shadow tanks are currently drowning in Force, which means that they can spend all of that redundant Force on using Double Strike. It's not really because of any innate improvement in Double Strike or mechanical disadvantage of Force/Tech attacks with the inclusion of baseline Resistance chances for NPCs. It's because now we finally have the Force to spend on it more than 1-2 times per minute.

People *always* say 8%, and it blows my mind how they come up with this figure.

 

On all DPS classes on PTS, I have seen resistance issues even with 99,97%/109.97% accuracy. All tanks should be aiming for 98% accuracy minimum. It makes complete sense that this applies to shadows given how much of the new tanking king, shield %, they have to play with.

Edited March 7, 2013 by DaftVaduhhh

[Kitru]

All tanks should be aiming for 98% accuracy minimum. It makes complete sense that this applies to shadows given how much of the new tanking king, shield %, they have to play with.

 

I really don't see how you can say that Shadows should be aiming for 98% accuracy simply because they have a lot of Shield, especially since there's a massive difference between Shield *rating* and Shield *chance* (you're essentially saying that because Shadows have high native chance they shouldn't bother with stacking more rating, which is completely backwards; the higher your native chance is, the more valuable additional rating *becomes*). More mitigation is always better and, honestly, more Accuracy isn't really going to do all that much to improve total threat generation: tanks on PTS have already shown that you'll generate all of the threat you need without using *any* accuracy whatsoever. If anything, I'm still pretty sure that Power is still going to provide a greater increase to your total threat generation than additional Accuracy will. Accuracy just doesn't do enough without a *lot* of additional DPS stats behind it.

 

The only *possible* reason that you could come up with as to why it's "necessary" to stack Accuracy as a tank is that, if Force Breach or Slow Time miss, they do not apply their debuff, which is a not-insubstantial loss to total mitigation. Even so, the chances of it happening are remarkably low so, honestly, unless you get *damned* unlucky, the actual difference in uptime is going to be almost completely unaffected. All of that Accuracy you spend cranking your Accuracy up high enough that you don't miss would actually be better served as mitigation stats.

 

Rather than having a major impact on tanks, the real impact of the additional of baseline Resistance chance to NPCs is for Force/Tech using DPS, like Sages and Assault VGs (a vast majority of an Assault VG's damage atm is Tech based so Accuracy isn't really all that useful considering), who now, rather than ignoring Accuracy, have to actually devote a similar amount of itemization to it as more M/R focused DPS. For tanks, it means almost nothing, especially since they cranked the living hell out of the value of Shield so that, even if Accuracy is more valuable, they made Shield *even more valuable* than Accuracy was improved to.

[KeyboardNinja]

It's useful in PvP and while smashing trash, but I really don't see how useful it is in in Ops where everything that you actually need to worry about is immune to stuns and movement effects. Even now, when I'm doing dailies, I barely touch Spinning Kick. I honestly see it as a PvP talent rather than the amazing omnitalent that Stasis was.

 

Baradium Bomber. Also shield adds in F&S. The Baradium Bomber alone is reason enough to spec into it, though I suppose I could respec for just that one fight. It is super-nice for trash, no doubt about that.

 

Also, have you done the math for Expertise's contribution? Considering they doubled the value, I'd be curious to see how it stacks up against Applied Force from a raw damage contribution standpoint.

 

I haven't yet. Part of the hold-up is that I don't yet have StandardHealth values for level 55, which is irksome. (still digging through NodeViewer) I also haven't puzzled out the optimal rotation, which has a significant effect on the value of Double Strike and a slightly-less significant effect on the proc chance of CT (and thus the value of Expertise). My gut says that Applied Force is *probably* more valuable, since Double Strike is our main filler in 2.0 and CT just doesn't hit that hard.

 

P.S. You said Mental Fortitude is ~1k additional hp. Right now, for my gearing, it's worth all of 615 hp. In order to be worth a 1k increase to hp, hp would have to be upwards of 39-40k hp. I highly doubt that's actually right. The increases I've seen place hp at roughly ~32k hp, which would suggest that Mental Fortitude would provide about ~800 hp total, rather than 1k.

 

I have almost exactly 35k on the PTS with the talent and low-End mods/enh. 35000 - (35000 / 1.03) = 1019

[Kitru]

Baradium Bomber. Also shield adds in F&S. The Baradium Bomber alone is reason enough to spec into it, though I suppose I could respec for just that one fight. It is super-nice for trash, no doubt about that.

 

There are enough stuns/knockdown/etc effects coming from the raid as a whole that I don't particularly see the value in getting Martial Prowess for PvE. If you *do* need an extra stun from the tank, your raid group must have some really wonky composition or some problems with DPS using their stuns.

 

My gut says that Applied Force is *probably* more valuable, since Double Strike is our main filler in 2.0 and CT just doesn't hit that hard.

 

I'm still kinda questionable about this, especially considering how we're gonna be using Battle Readiness more often. Expertise is getting doubled, which at least demands a revaluation, though, once again, it's predicated upon actually having the numbers made available to us. We're also going to be using Shadow Strike and more Projects (thanks to PA procs and lower cost). DS is going to be the main filler, but I'm still not sure whether it's really going to be as massive as we might think.

 

I have almost exactly 35k on the PTS with the talent and low-End mods/enh. 35000 - (35000 / 1.03) = 1019

 

You're forgetting about the native hp. At 50, it's 2500 hp. Presumably, it's been increased at level 55, probably to ~5k or thereabouts. Factor that in and it's going to pull the contribution down.

[KeyboardNinja]

There are enough stuns/knockdown/etc effects coming from the raid as a whole that I don't particularly see the value in getting Martial Prowess for PvE. If you *do* need an extra stun from the tank, your raid group must have some really wonky composition or some problems with DPS using their stuns.

 

Emergency stun, for the most part. Also, I sometimes run in a group with two sentinels, a gunslinger, a commando and a guardian tank. It's a great comp, but the DPS only have a single stun. Without the healers pitching in (which they really can't do on the third bomber), we have to be pretty much perfect on stun priority and timing to *not* have him nuke someone at least once. Having a second short stun to cover mistakes is really handy.

 

I'm still kinda questionable about this, especially considering how we're gonna be using Battle Readiness more often. Expertise is getting doubled, which at least demands a revaluation, though, once again, it's predicated upon actually having the numbers made available to us. We're also going to be using Shadow Strike and more Projects (thanks to PA procs and lower cost). DS is going to be the main filler, but I'm still not sure whether it's really going to be as massive as we might think.

 

I'll snag the tooltip values for DS and CT today. We can do the math without actually needing to churn through the coefficients that way.

 

You're forgetting about the native hp. At 50, it's 2500 hp. Presumably, it's been increased at level 55, probably to ~5k or thereabouts. Factor that in and it's going to pull the contribution down.

 

Base Health is 4k at level 55. I did forget about that. Compensating for both that and the endurance buff, the contribution is actually about 850.

Edited March 7, 2013 by KeyboardNinja

[KeyboardNinja]

Double Strike: 854-993 per hit. Combat Technique does 222 damage and heals for 356.

 

Minor note: 356 = 0.032 * StandardHealth

 

StandardHealth = 11125 (assuming tooltip values are accurate; they aren't on live)

 

Assuming Rapid Recovery, CT has a 65% chance to proc. Between Saber Strike, Double Strike, Project and Telekinetic Throw, we hit a bit over once per GCD in a single-target situation. Let's call it 1.3 hits per GCD. That gives us a mean proc rate on CT as the following:

 

4.5 + (1.3 * 1.5 / 0.65) = 7.5 seconds

 

Thus, CT contributes 29.6 DPS. The contribution of Expertise is thus 5.33 DPS.

 

Double Strike is harder, since we have to build in an assumption of how often we will be using it. We use two Projects per Telekinetic Throw and one Slow Time. The cooldown on Project is such that we can use it to get our last stack of Harnessed Shadows and it will be 1 GCD from coming off CD when we finish our TkT channel. Let's throw in a Saber Strike there for Force management (in practice, I didn't see this as necessary, but just in case). Then we fish for the proc on Project, which takes an average of 2 Double Strikes (we're just as likely to use a Shadow Strike after those two if it didn't proc, so this seems fair to me). That's our second Project and Slow Time is now off CD (assuming we used it *before* our last Project in the previous cycle; this order will continually flip back and forth).

 

That was two Double Strikes in a 12 second span. Thus, the DPS contribution from Double Strike is 307.83. Applied Force increases this value by 6%, which is a contribution of 18.47 DPS.

 

Thus, Applied Force is a significantly better talent than Expertise, just given my back-of-the-napkin calculations. As a sanity check, here's the rough rotation assuming Slow Time is 3 seconds into its CD:

 

• Saber Strike
  
• Project
  
• Double Strike
  
• Double Strike
  
• Project
  
• Slow Time
  
• Telekinetic Throw
  

 

Assuming we're being hit continually, we have a regen rate just shy of 16.4 / sec. The total cost of this rotation is as follows:

 

0 + 26 + 23 + 23 + 26 + 20 + 30 = 148

 

The total regen during this period is 172.4. Thus, this rotation is force-positive (yay bioware!). I'm sure we can come up with a tighter rotation given a bit of more precise analysis, but I think this suffices for now.

 

Even if my estimation on the number of Double Strikes per cycle is wrong, Applied Force is so dramatically better than Expertise that I simply can't imagine the final conclusion being affected by subtleties in the rotation.

 

Edit I did the rotation analysis on shadow tanking in 2.0: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5966242 If we abandon Shadow Strike, the Double Strike timing is exactly what I suspected. If we use Shadow Strike (which still gives us *almost* exactly ideal TkT timing), we end up using Double Strike once per cycle, which halves the DPS contribution from Applied Force. That's still about 85% better than Expertise though, so it's still the better talent to take.

Edited March 7, 2013 by KeyboardNinja

[Kitru]

Between Saber Strike, Double Strike, Project and Telekinetic Throw, we hit a bit over once per GCD in a single-target situation. Let's call it 1.3 hits per GCD.

 

Considering the lowest number of attacks/GCD of all of those attacks is 1.45, I find it strange that you arrived at it being *less* than that: Project w/ Upheaval is 1.45 attacks per use, DS is 2, TkT is 4 over 2 GCDs, and Saber Strike is 3. The only attacks Shadow tanks are going to use that is only a single attack are Slow Time and Shadow Strike and those use up the least amount of time on a comparative use basis of all of our attacks. Using your own rotation from before, the average number of attacks/GCD is ~1.86 ((3+ 1.45 + 2 + 2 + 1.45 + 1 + 4) / 8).

 

4.5 + (1.3 * 1.5 / 0.65) = 7.5 seconds

 

That's not actually the right formula. It's pretty obvious since, if you increased the number of attacks/GCD according to your formula, you would end up increasing the time between procs, which is just not true. If you plugged in my 1.86 attacks/GCD, you would end up with 8.8 seconds between procs.

 

It should be 4.5 + 1.5 * ((1 / x) / .65), where x is the number of attacks per GCD. For your 1.3 estimate, this would mean 6.275 seconds between procs. For my 1.86, it would mean ~5.74 seconds. At 222 damage per proc, factor in how it's internal damage (divide by .7 to "convert" into functional K/E damage equivalence in PvE; gets you to ~317 K/E damage equivalence) and divide out the proc rate (once every ~6 seconds) and you get to ~52.8 pre-mitigation DPS. 18% of that is ~9.5 DPS.

 

Applied Force increases this value by 6%, which is a contribution of 18.47 DPS.

 

I've never actually doubted that Applied Force is more valuable within the new attack use paradigm (you'll note it's actually part of the spec I linked before). My actual doubt is in whether Force Synergy is more useful than Expertise or Mental Fortitude. From a pure survivability standpoint, Mental Fortitude is obviously the best option since neither Force Synergy nor Expertise contribute to *that* in the least.

 

If we use Shadow Strike (which still gives us *almost* exactly ideal TkT timing), we end up using Double Strike once per cycle, which halves the DPS contribution from Applied Force. That's still about 85% better than Expertise though, so it's still the better talent to take.

 

If you actually account for the difference in performance of the relevant damage types and correct your proc rate formula, the 3 points in Expertise actually roughly equate the 2 points in Applied Force (this still means Applied Force is better) when you assume Shadow Strike use.

 

I'm actually more curious about Force Synergy. Assuming we're not stacking crit or surge at all (like any self respecting tank would be), using a flat 20% base melee crit rate (re: only getting main stat), the 9% additional crit from Force Synergy would equate to a roughly 4.16% increase in total melee damage dealt ((1 + (0.2 + .09)* 0.51) / (1 + 0.2 * 0.51)). Just based off of the math that we did before for Expertise (6% additional damage to roughly half of our total melee damage), I would say that Force Synergy *might* edge out Expertise, but I can't really be sure without getting new damage values for Shadow Strike and Saber Strike as well.

[slafko]

Baradium Bomber. Also shield adds in F&S. The Baradium Bomber alone is reason enough to spec into it, though I suppose I could respec for just that one fight. It is super-nice for trash, no doubt about that.

 

I always greet that guy with a Pull and a swift Kick in the face. No matter the team composition.

[Devilzyea]

Double Strike: 854-993 per hit. Combat Technique does 222 damage and heals for 356.

 

Minor note: 356 = 0.032 * StandardHealth

 

StandardHealth = 11125 (assuming tooltip values are accurate; they aren't on live)

 

Assuming Rapid Recovery, CT has a 65% chance to proc. Between Saber Strike, Double Strike, Project and Telekinetic Throw, we hit a bit over once per GCD in a single-target situation. Let's call it 1.3 hits per GCD. That gives us a mean proc rate on CT as the following:

 

4.5 + (1.3 * 1.5 / 0.65) = 7.5 seconds

 

Thus, CT contributes 29.6 DPS. The contribution of Expertise is thus 5.33 DPS.

 

Double Strike is harder, since we have to build in an assumption of how often we will be using it. We use two Projects per Telekinetic Throw and one Slow Time. The cooldown on Project is such that we can use it to get our last stack of Harnessed Shadows and it will be 1 GCD from coming off CD when we finish our TkT channel. Let's throw in a Saber Strike there for Force management (in practice, I didn't see this as necessary, but just in case). Then we fish for the proc on Project, which takes an average of 2 Double Strikes (we're just as likely to use a Shadow Strike after those two if it didn't proc, so this seems fair to me). That's our second Project and Slow Time is now off CD (assuming we used it *before* our last Project in the previous cycle; this order will continually flip back and forth).

 

That was two Double Strikes in a 12 second span. Thus, the DPS contribution from Double Strike is 307.83. Applied Force increases this value by 6%, which is a contribution of 18.47 DPS.

 

Thus, Applied Force is a significantly better talent than Expertise, just given my back-of-the-napkin calculations. As a sanity check, here's the rough rotation assuming Slow Time is 3 seconds into its CD:

 

• Saber Strike
  
• Project
  
• Double Strike
  
• Double Strike
  
• Project
  
• Slow Time
  
• Telekinetic Throw
  

 

Assuming we're being hit continually, we have a regen rate just shy of 16.4 / sec. The total cost of this rotation is as follows:

 

0 + 26 + 23 + 23 + 26 + 20 + 30 = 148

 

The total regen during this period is 172.4. Thus, this rotation is force-positive (yay bioware!). I'm sure we can come up with a tighter rotation given a bit of more precise analysis, but I think this suffices for now.

 

Even if my estimation on the number of Double Strikes per cycle is wrong, Applied Force is so dramatically better than Expertise that I simply can't imagine the final conclusion being affected by subtleties in the rotation.

 

Edit I did the rotation analysis on shadow tanking in 2.0: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5966242 If we abandon Shadow Strike, the Double Strike timing is exactly what I suspected. If we use Shadow Strike (which still gives us *almost* exactly ideal TkT timing), we end up using Double Strike once per cycle, which halves the DPS contribution from Applied Force. That's still about 85% better than Expertise though, so it's still the better talent to take.

 

it's seems that u actually know what u are talking can u pls make for me a pvp kinetic build pls ?

[Moonheart_S]

Actually, we can see it this way:

 

Kinetic tree: 36pts need to be spend, 32 are no-brainers since they makes us tankier (more mitigation, or more force)

We need to decide how to spend 4 points between: Applied Force, Expertise, Force Break, Martial Prowess and Shadow Wrap.

 

Other trees: 4pts are no-brainers (jedi resistance and psykinetics).

The 6 leftover points are to be decided between: Force Synergy, Upheaval and Celerity.

 

Choices are going to be different for the 10 "leftover" points we have, but are not going to change a lot, whatever we choose. Calculations are needed to know what are the best damage skills, with Force Break and Upheaval as favorite bets.

 

 

 

 

This is naturaly my own opinion, but, however, I personnaly always play the "hardcore tank" way, taking every little chance to even mitigate even 1 pts more damage, whatever the cost is for that.

While it could be arguable as a choice, my PvE teams always feel confortable knowing I will ever, ever, ever do the max possible in this game to reduce the damage incoming and not give focus any thoughts on damage.

 

This leads me to this build currenly: 36/6/4

 

I took Force Break in Kinetics because it doesn't ask me to spend any force point more to do damage like Shadow Wrap would. If I have 25 force points to spend, I'll throw another Double Strike to have more chance to proc Particule Acceleration, which charge my Harnessed Shadow faster, rather than a Shadow Strike anytime.

I'm not the one that is in charge to deal with the enrage timer. My role is to make the role of healers as simple as possible.

 

I took Martial Prowess because their is a lot of boss that have some trash adding and even the little damage spared when I kick one is damage less to heal. This is situationnal I agree, but everything else in the tree doesn't give me any more mitigation anyway.

 

Then, for the 6 points in other threes, I took Celerity because there are boss that attempt to control you slightly faster than your normal Force of Will cooldown (I think about Toth, here, for exemple) in hard modes. Here again, this is situationnal, but this is the only skill that relate of being tankier: when you're controlled, you don't regenerate.

 

Between Force Synergy and Upheaval, my bet is Upheaval does better damage and there is nothing I find of use in the 2nd row of the balance tree anyway. So I put 3 of the 4 last points in it.

 

The very last point was the really hardest to choose: was it anything I could take to make me tankier?

With some regrets, I've put this last points in Misdirection because movement rate can have its use : if you get even 0,5s sooner in range of something to taunt or force pull, then it's 33% chance it will land his first blow on you instead of someone else.

But really, it's a twisted way of thinking, even for the hardcore tank way.

Edited April 9, 2013 by Moonheart_S

[Devilzyea]

why wud u take a shadowsight? it's not rly useable in pvp i mean im new in this game but don't make me 2 much sense... can u exp it pls ?

[DarthSpekulatius]

why wud u take a shadowsight? it's not rly useable in pvp i mean im new in this game but don't make me 2 much sense... can u exp it pls ?

 

Shadowsight: 2 stealth detection 2% defence chance

[Eternalnight]

why wud u take a shadowsight? it's not rly useable in pvp i mean im new in this game but don't make me 2 much sense... can u exp it pls ?

 

Do you even read the tooltips ever? Seriously, is reading the tooltip that difficult?

 

For actual tanking Shadowsight is one of the more important skills that you absolutely must have put points in.

2% defense chance.

[Devilzyea]

ops didnt wathc it sry btw is anywhere on severe some server clock or i have 2 spam on forum 2 see how much clock it is?

[Flyluke]

Great diskussions about the Skills required. In my opinion the Operations and personal favours will show whats the best to go with.

 

For the beginning I chose to go with this:

37/5/4

 

I am thinking about changing Shadow Wrap to Applied Force, is there anyone who can do the math between the "enhanced" DS and Shadow Strike. Since proc for Shadow Strike is on a 10sec internal CD we can use it, by my guess, max every 15 seconds. So we use DS much more and the 6% boost might actually outperform the use of Shadow Strike and would make the rotation more straight forward again. Force won't be the problem with this in my oppinion.

 

While writing this one more thought. Is there allready some knowledge and disscusions about stat weights for the Shadow Tank? I'm ready for the first 2 66 pieces and I wonder which stats to hunt for.

 

Regards Luke

[Assillius]

obvious ofc 36/3/7

 

http://pts.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/jedi-shadow/234/?build=020332001121023002120203120200100300000000000000000000000000000003220000000000000000000000000000&ver=20

[TralyanSavo]

Great diskussions about the Skills required. In my opinion the Operations and personal favours will show whats the best to go with.

 

For the beginning I chose to go with this:

37/5/4

 

I am thinking about changing Shadow Wrap to Applied Force, is there anyone who can do the math between the "enhanced" DS and Shadow Strike. Since proc for Shadow Strike is on a 10sec internal CD we can use it, by my guess, max every 15 seconds. So we use DS much more and the 6% boost might actually outperform the use of Shadow Strike and would make the rotation more straight forward again. Force won't be the problem with this in my oppinion.

 

While writing this one more thought. Is there allready some knowledge and disscusions about stat weights for the Shadow Tank? I'm ready for the first 2 66 pieces and I wonder which stats to hunt for.

 

Regards Luke

 

I'm using this build and so far its working. Holding threat is not an issue right now so I like the extra combat technique trigger over the extra critical chance or utility from other talents. I like shadow strike in the rotation.

 

For optimal stat distributions, I would check this thread:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=616779

 

As for me, I think its too soon to be worrying about that because I'm just trying to get into all 69s at this point. That's kind of like worrying about stat distribution when you're in Tionese and still trying to get into full Columi.

[Simmerr]

Any viability to taking Celerity for the lowered interrupt, cc break, and force speed cd's? Seems like a great way to increase our mobility during cc heavy boss fights, as well as interrupt heavy fights. After that you have one point to throw away, witht he added abilities of T2 middle tree being reachable for one point too. Edited April 13, 2013 by Simmerr

[Flyluke]

Reducing the cooldown of Force speed is one of the things I take everyday. In the new operation there are "many" ways where this is really usefull.

[Devilzyea]

btw mind crush is no more useable on kinetic shadow right? i mean u can use it but u lose more then u get ?

[DarthSpekulatius]

btw mind crush is no more useable on kinetic shadow right? i mean u can use it but u lose more then u get ?

 

what's mind crush? must be something related to balance , if so, leave that to the sages, balanced shadows what a laugh .

all joking aside, yes pretty much a balance only ability.

[dio_free]

Hello all, thanks for this thread!

I am new to swtor but have played many mmos.

 

Can someone get me started and summarize this thread with a strong tank build I can use? Also a basic rotation would be wonderful!

 

Thank you!