A little help in gearing my infil. shadow

[MetalRN]

I love playing my shadow, it is the first class that I leveled to 55. In reading this forum, I know that there are many issues with this AC. That being said, I'd like to tough it out, since it is still fun to play.

 

About gearing, I was wondering what 2 arkanian relics are best for a infil. shadow? I currently have a boundless ages and a serendipitous assault. Would combining the SA with a relic of "dark radiance:30% chance to deal 241 internal force damage" or a relic of 'kinetic temptest:30% to deal 322 additional force damage" be better than the BA one, that is a click to proc.

 

My other question is about ear pieces, I have enough ultimate comms for one, which would be better for an infil. shadow?

 

My stats

Melee-unbuffed

Accuracy 100.48%

Crit Chance 20.11%

Crit Multiplier 67.38%

 

Force-unbuffed

Accuracy 110.48%

Crit Chance 19.66%

Crit Multiplier 67.38%

 

Melee-buffed

All are the same except

Crit Chance 25.11%

 

Force-buffed

Same except

Crit Chance 24.66%

 

My current ear: Black market force healer mk- 2 chip (raw stats w/o purple resove aug included).

159 end

159 will

77 crit

72 surge

 

I dont have access to UW yet, verpine ears seem (not too impressive, but still an upgrade) here are my choices:

Verpine force healers mk-1 chip (I know its for sage-heals, just wondering if i should take it for the power?).

190 end

159 will

88 power

79 alacrity

 

Verpine force lords mk-1 relay

190 end

159 will

88 crit

79 surge

 

My alacrity is currenty 0

Gear is all 72's, none of the arkanian set bonus armoring. Enhancements are mostly verpine level end/power/accuracy. Advanced Initiative enhancement 31 is in my saber (UW).

 

Last 2 questions, is it better to switch out all the 72 armor for the arkanin set bonus? What is the better UW ear (for those who have one).

 

Thanks for your suggestions, I tried to not make this wall of text a chore to read

 

BTW I do have adrenals and stims, but they were not included in the stats I posted.

[haksilence]

Never ditch a set bonus, expecialy with a set.bonus like the shadows set bonus. Also stear clear of alacrity. Mathematicaly speaking, in Kell Dragon gear you would take a very minimal amount of alacrity but it's just not practical. Sick with surge. Also in underworld gear your going to want close to 300 crit as infiltration. So you need to take a bit more

[thejollygreenone]

Never ditch a set bonus, expecialy with a set.bonus like the shadows set bonus. Also stear clear of alacrity. Mathematicaly speaking, in Kell Dragon gear you would take a very minimal amount of alacrity but it's just not practical. Sick with surge. Also in underworld gear your going to want close to 300 crit as infiltration. So you need to take a bit more

 

underworld bis crit rating for infiltration is 399 (according to the latest spreadsheets), and on a side note the set bonus is actually pretty bad compared to other classes imo. still worth getting asap though, didn't mean to take away from your point

Edited August 31, 2013 by thejollygreenone

[IronmanSS]

Even if some math equation somewhere says so, alacrity is detrimental to Infiltration because the pivotal Shadow Technique proc is on a fixed 4.5 sec ICD which is unaffected by alacrity even though your GCD is.

 

With NO alacrity you at least have a chance of ideally getting a proc every 3 globals (4.5s), but if alacrity speeds up your GCD at all, then the proc will only have a chance of occurring every 4th global if you're pushing APM to the edge.

 

Ex. If your GCD was 1.49s due to alacrity, then after 3 GCDs you are at t = 4.47s and Shadow Technique's ICD will block any chance of getting another proc on your next move. Your next opportunity to proc becomes available at t = 5.96s. Repeating that pattern over the course of a long fight leads to less total Shadow Tech procs, breaching shadows, and 3 stack breaches - which will offset any DPS gained by the alacrity's very slight boost to APM and force regen.

 

So with alacrity you can reduce the chance of Shadow Technique proccing ideally, by moving the GCD out of sync with its fixed 4.5s ICD - or you can not queue your next move and slow down your inputs to 1.5s avg to compensate, which kind of defeats the purpose of alacrity. So, yeah - alacrity... just say no.

Edited September 1, 2013 by IronmanSS

[thejollygreenone]

Even if some equation somewhere says so, alacrity is detrimental to Infiltration because the pivotal Shadow Technique proc is on a fixed 4.5 sec ICD which is unaffected by alacrity even though your GCD is.

 

With NO alacrity you at least have a chance of ideally getting a proc every 3 globals (4.5s), but if alacrity speeds up your GCD at all, then the proc will only have a chance of occurring every 4th global if you're pushing APM to the edge. Ex. If your GCD was 1.49s due to alacrity, then after 3 GCDs you are at 4.47s and Shadow Technique's ICD will block any chance of getting another proc until your next opportunity is available at 5.96s. Repeating that pattern over the course of a long fight leads to less total Shadow Tech procs, breaching shadows, and 3 stack breaches - which will offset any DPS gained by the alacrity's very slight boost to APM and force regen.

 

So with alacrity you can reduce the chance of Shadow Technique proccing ideally, by moving the GCD out of sync with its fixed 4.5s ICD - or you can slow down your inputs to to 1.5s avg to compensate, which kind of defeats the purpose of alacrity. So, yeah - alacrity... just say no.

 

yeah this is pretty valid, i'm pretty sure the spread sheets don't include any alacrity in the BiS

[IronmanSS]

yeah this is pretty valid, i'm pretty sure the spread sheets don't include any alacrity in the BiS

 

I always thought it was kind of rough of BW to hand players Underworld gear with poorly itemized mods/enhs that you had to swap out repeatedly to get BiS to begin with. Here though, the alacrity enhancements aren't just non-ideal, they actually hurt your DPS, lol.

 

Guess its better than the Survivor gear coming with alacrity though: faster taunts anyone?

Edited September 1, 2013 by IronmanSS

[mmerry]

I always thought it was kind of rough of BW to hand players Underworld gear with poorly itemized mods/enhs that you had to swap out repeatedly to get BiS to begin with. Here though, the alacrity enhancements aren't just non-ideal, they actually hurt your DPS, lol.

 

Guess its better than Survivor gear with alacrity though: faster taunts anyone?

 

But if they just handed us the gear BiS it would take all the fun out of it.

 

/sarcasm off

[IronmanSS]

But if they just handed us the gear BiS it would take all the fun out of it.

 

/sarcasm off

 

Yeah, cause 8 weeks of farming the same zone (16 for relics /cry), is just not enough fun.

 

(And we get to do it all over again so very soon... at least it's not TFB for a 4th time. )

Edited September 1, 2013 by IronmanSS

[MetalRN]

Thanks for all you feedback, it's really appreciated. I now have a full arkanian 4-set. Just still wondering, besides the SA relic, what would be my other choice?

[IronmanSS]

Thanks for all you feedback, it's really appreciated. I now have a full arkanian 4-set. Just still wondering, besides the SA relic, what would be my other choice?

 

Depends a little on how much you want to micromanage. The Internal/Elemental Force Damage proc relic is good for when you just want an "equip and forget" damage boost without paying much attention to it (like SA). Internal bc we don't have the Armor Pen to take full advantage of the Kinetic one, and Force Damage not Tech, to take advantage of your much higher Force Crit %. (Edit: The Dark Radiance relic from Arkanian Tier on up to Kell "says" it's Internal Force Damage, but the damage type on the tooltip is inconsistent on some of the relics between tiers - so just read the tooltips before you buy).

 

That said, IF you know the fights very well and manage your CDs well, you can actually squeeze more performance out of the Boundless Ages relic. If you can use it's 30s power boosts at optimal times (with other offensive CDs and an uninterrupted 30s damage window), and have it cooling down when you can't do much damage anyhow (sitting behind a rock at Titan 6, waiting out immunity shields, etc.) - then it turns out to be more effective than the proc damage relic (which relies on 100% uptime to pull slightly ahead in overall dmg). While 100% uptime is guaranteed on the combat dummy, it's pretty rare on most newer content.

 

PS - It might be worth it to save up some PvP comms for the new Obroan PvP SA relic in case 2.4 goes live as is, especially if double stacking them in PvE is allowed again: "...looking at the relics on the PvP vendor it seems that the Obroan SA relic gives 625 power and is on a 20 second lockout. The Kell Dragon SA relic gives 595 power and is on a 20 second lockout..."

Edited September 2, 2013 by IronmanSS

[MetalRN]

Thanks for the tip on the PVP relic, I actually have saved up, the max amount of WZ comms (I think its around 2750, or something close), and 600 ranked. I find in intense fights with trash mobs, I sometimes forget to "click" the BA relic, unless its the start of a boss burn phase, like when Titan 6 goes all transformer-like, or other similar boss battles.

[mmerry]

Heres a tip for the BA relics.. They have the same cooldown as Battle Readiness so if you are generally good at tracking battle readiness and using it on cd its also a great indicator for the relic.

 

side note -The 2.4 PVP relic sounds interesting. I also saw Shin post about a new relic in 2.4 that boosts crit similar to the SA relics that we have now. This could be very interesting for shadows imo.

[IronmanSS]

Heres a tip for the BA relics.. They have the same cooldown as Battle Readiness so if you are generally good at tracking battle readiness and using it on cd its also a great indicator for the relic.

 

side note -The 2.4 PVP relic sounds interesting. I also saw Shin post about a new relic in 2.4 that boosts crit similar to the SA relics that we have now. This could be very interesting for shadows imo.

 

And the +Main Stat proc relics deserve a look too. Good thing we can "rent" them for a few hours at a time now.

Edited September 2, 2013 by IronmanSS

[haksilence]

underworld bis crit rating for infiltration is 399 (according to the latest spreadsheets), and on a side note the set bonus is actually pretty bad compared to other classes imo. still worth getting asap though, didn't mean to take away from your point

 

It may not seem all that great on the surface abd certainly other classes have better sets, but it is crucial to all dps shadow specs because of how much of your force Rehren relies on the 2 piece and 15% crit on your filer is also crucial as in both specs that filler will most likely be your top damage dealer if not very close