This topic only applies to force breach for shadow tanking.

 

Force Breach is a nice attack in that it decreases accuracy and is an AoE, but at the same time the tooltip is misleading. If you use force breach in order to hold threat on operations bosses, then I'm afraid that you've been mislead by reading 'Generates a high amount of threat'.

 

I've studied my combat logs and found that, on average, force breach generates less threat than double strike. The tooltip for slow time also reads, 'generates a high amount of threat', yet on average slow time generates three times the threat that force breach does.

 

Believe it or not, mind crush, which I'll use every now and then while off-tanking a boss like The Writhing Horror, generates more threat than force breach.

 

I'd like to read the opinions of other shadow tanks on force breach and whether or not it is a big part of your rotation. I almost never use force breach now and I have no trouble holding threat.

Edited January 22, 2013 by SamuelAU

I only use it in situations where AoE damage is needed. Never used it to build threat on bosses.

It isn't misleading. When the tootip says "This ability generates a high amount of threat" it means that the amount of threat generated by the ability is multiplied by 1.5 (pretty sure) not including your passive threat increases from being in dark charge. The reason why puts out less threat, is because it does way less damage. Threat= damage x threat boost + healing x threat boost. It does significantly less damage than double strike, so it puts out less threat even though its threat has an extra boost. It should be used in your rotation only to keep refreshing the debuff. Edited January 22, 2013 by bbare

Yeah. High threat just means that you get more threat out of that attack than you would from a non-high threat attack with equivalent damage. If you dig through your combat logs, you can clearly see a linear relationship between damage done and threat. All of the regular attacks will fall on one line and all of the high threat attacks fall on a separate line. The high threat line has a steeper slope. Edited January 22, 2013 by -Sirus-
correctness

You pretty much only use it for the debuff on bosses.

As a shadow tank you will use force breech not as a damage dealing or threat generating ability in PVE but as a accuracy debuff. Only use force breech when the debuff is about to drop.

 

Also as a shadow tank you will *never* use double strike and you will NEVER use mind crush. The only damaging abilities you should be using is your basic attack, slow time, force breech and TK throw. Every other attack is just wasted force and global cool downs taking you away from your rotation and your self healing. As well a fully proced TK throw will do most of your damage as a shadow so you want to get that off as soon and often as possible. And you do that by cutting useless moves like double strike and mind crush out of your rotation

Also as a shadow tank you will *never* use double strike

 

That's not *explicitly* true. Even if you use the DS-less rotation, you'll still use DS at least 1-2 times per minute. It's not a *huge* amount, and you're only using it conditionally when you've got nothing else to use and the Force would be wasted otherwise (re: above 70 Force and everything else is on CD), but it's not really accurate to say that you'll *never* use it. Of course, for someone just getting in to Shadow tanking (at 50), it's easier to just say "never use it" than "you'll use it under some very stringent conditions that don't really pop up all that often".

 

While you're leveling, however, DS is you're gonna spam the hell out of it. It's only when you get HS at 2 stacks (level 36) that you stop using DS much.

Edited January 23, 2013 by Kitru

So what your saying is u dont spec into particle acceleration which increases the damage of project which also makes the talent that increases the damage and threat of project im a main tank for my guild and i use DS when i have move than 30 force to get PA procs to use project

So what your saying is u dont spec into particle acceleration which increases the damage of project which also makes the talent that increases the damage and threat of project im a main tank for my guild and i use DS when i have move than 30 force to get PA procs to use project

 

The highest damage and threat a shadow can generate comes from a rotation that prioritises telekinetic throw with 3 stakcs of HS.

 

The rotation that generates 3 stacks of HS the quickest basically avoids DS except when u have lots of spare force.

 

My rotation kind of has 2 parts to it, and looks something like this:

 

1) Project

2) Slow Time

3) Force Breach

4) Saber Strike

5) Project

6) Telekinetic Throw

7) Slow Time

8) Project

9) Saber Strike

10) Saber Strike

11) Slow Time (or project, depends which one comes off CD first at this point but its pretty much the same)

12) Telekinetic Throw

 

So, whilst I am missing out on the guarunteed crits from project by not using DS, I am generating 3 stacks of HS as quick as humanly possible, I keep the boss debuffed 100% of the time and I always have force available to use slow time, project or telekinetic throw. This maximises DPS, self-healing AND threat.

 

I probably haven't got the rotation quite right yet as only recently moved to a DS-less rotation, but I've seen my DPS rise by a marginal amount but my self-healing rise by quite a bit, and thus my threat by quite a bit.

As a shadow tank you will use force breech not as a damage dealing or threat generating ability in PVE but as a accuracy debuff. Only use force breech when the debuff is about to drop.

 

Also as a shadow tank you will *never* use double strike and you will NEVER use mind crush. The only damaging abilities you should be using is your basic attack, slow time, force breech and TK throw. Every other attack is just wasted force and global cool downs taking you away from your rotation and your self healing. As well a fully proced TK throw will do most of your damage as a shadow so you want to get that off as soon and often as possible. And you do that by cutting useless moves like double strike and mind crush out of your rotation

 

I'm going to assume you just forgot about Project. Would be tough if you were only able to get 3 stacks of HS every 22.5 seconds (time required to use 3 Slow Times) =3

So what your saying is u dont spec into particle acceleration which increases the damage of project which also makes the talent that increases the damage and threat of project im a main tank for my guild and i use DS when i have move than 30 force to get PA procs to use project

 

You'll take PA even if you use the DS-less priority. It's just not nearly as important as most people seem to think it is. As I said, you'll still use DS 1-2 times per minute and Spinning Strike is the top or near top priority attack whenever it's able to be used so you'll still get *some* PA procs. Even if you completely stop using DS, Spinning Strike can still proc PA so it's still benefiting you there.

I'm going to assume you just forgot about Project. Would be tough if you were only able to get 3 stacks of HS every 22.5 seconds (time required to use 3 Slow Times) =3

 

 

yes i did thank you. also kintru im aware that you would use doubl;e strike only when above 70% force IE on your opening. but it is much easier to tell people not to use it.