Introduction

There are some players on these forums that would give you excellent advices about how to play different specs and even the kinetic combat one.

Shinarika has been long enough to be one of the most impressive reference, for exemple.

However, most of them would speak and show you a way to play the Kinetic Combat spec in an offensive way, using DPS gear and hybrid specs than increase the offensive potential of the spec.

I feel, for myself, than the survival gear and defensive orientation to be worth a bit of love, so this guide is going to speak of how you can play in such a way.

This guide won't speak of playing shadow as a "tank", because such a role doesn't truly exist in PvP unless when you are carrying a ball in huttball.

This guide is going to speak of a more specific role which truly exist for me in PvP and where the kinetic shadow shines in pvp, and even more with the survival gear: The disruptor

The role of a disruptor

A disruptor has for role to disrupt the opponent team strategy, interrupting it, slowing it, as long as possible in order to give to its teamates time to gather and reorganize so they can efficiently wipe them off.

It is the role of the disruptor too to spread confusion into the opponent team to create opportunities for your teams.

A disruptor don't aim to kill, even if killing happens while playing the role.

Killing is the role of DPS. So a true disruptor doesn't care much about his own DPS capacities.

Utilites and resistance are the key. Your attacks are only here to help you to regen and to scare opponents a bit.

Who can play the role?

A player that wish to play the disruptor role must:

- don't give a *********** damn to the scoreboard. Playing the role isn't rewarding for medals.

- don't wish to win duels. Most of time, you are going to puposedly "lose" and flee in order to fulfil your role.

- love to play with the opponent's psychology. You're going to do that a lot.

- have a good sense of analysis and be a fast-thinker

Idealy, the player must gather a full survival gear, enhanced with as many endurance enhancements he can.

If he's courageous enough, make a soldier reroll to have the soldier buff on his shadow is a good idea.

The aim is to reach the 26k hp. Because survival capacity is the second thing the most important after a good and fast sense of analysis.

Some other class could try to play as disruptors, but the kinetic shadow spec is the best of all for that.

You have both tanking capacities and fleeing capacities so you are the hardest thing to kill on the map if you decide to be.

You have speed to witch locations fast.

You have stealth to surprise people.

You have a ton of controls to interrupt people.

And you can screw the dps capacity of others...

There is no more annoying thing to have as single opponent than a defensive kinetic shadow who decided to turn you crazy instead of simply trying to kill you. And worst: it can do the two at the same time.

Basic disruption tactic: Numerical advantage control

One golden rule with a disruptor is to always keep an eye on the radar and the number of teamates and allies you can see.

Each time you are in a fight, see someone die, ally or ennemy, you must wonder "are we more numerous in this spot? less? even?"

The balance of the current fight and the way your teamates are spread on the board is a key factor to decide what you MUST do in the next seconds.

Many games are lost or won due to a numerical superiority being won or loss at a key moment, at a key place... and you're the one in charge to keep an eye to give opportunities to your teamates an opportunity for it, and deny the such opportunities to your opportunities

In defense: Numerical inferiority or equality actions

Situation: You are defending a spot that your team control, and the tide of battle makes that you have less allies than opponents in view.

First, if your team isn't aware of it, WARN. Tell where you are, how many opponents you see. Even if they are far, even if you think you can win, warn. Your team must know to organize themselves

Don't forget to say how many opponent you see. Nothing is stupidier than loose a game because you made 4 of your teamates come to deal with only 2 people and that another spot become in numerical inferiority for your side because of it

Once your team is aware, you must gain time. If you have some allies left, it's time to disrupt the opponent DPS capability: Ignore healers and tank, locate the DPS, guard your allies who are under fire, taunt, taunt again, stun, kick, bump, whatever lower the DPS total of your ennemies. Don't try to kill someone unless the target is already low in life. Make your teamates survive, even one more second... while doing this, you must ALWAYS stay at range of the objective and always turn your camera so you can see it and AOE every opponent trying to tag.

Your priority must be like this:

- Interrupt tags

- Survive yourself

- Disrupt the dps capacity

Yes, your own life is more important than protecting a teamate, even a healer. Because even if the healer is precious, if you die, the oppoenent team got rid of the most important hindrance to their plans: you.

A disruptor can stop 5 people from capturing a point an amazing amout of time... I'm speaking about 20 seconds... but in a BG a lot happens in 20s, including the return of the dead healer.

So, you only protect your allies as long you feel confident you still can fly from a sudden death. A survival geared shadow can reach almost 26k of life. This give you some time before you leave your allies behind.

If you end to be alone, it's time for hit & run tactics. Move. Move a lot. Hide, disrupt LoS, vanish if you're in a pinch and regenerate in a corner when they don't see you.

Your main objective is to survive while staying close enough to be able to send an AOE every 8 secondes on the objective, preventing any tag to happen. Just that. Survive. And be stay able to aoe the target every 8s.

You don't care about anything else. You're buying time for your teamates to get back.

In defense: Numerical superiority actions

Situation: You are defending a spot that your team control, and the tide of battle makes that you have more allies than opponents in view.

If there is less ennemies than allies at this spot, this mean that the other opponents are scheming something somewhere else and that your allies could end in inferiority there. As a disruptor, you must be the first to get where they are acting to interrupt their wrong doings.

Do not wait for announcements and start to switch location even before the danger is identified. You must be the first reinforcement to reach the good place, because you are the best suited to gain more time for others.

In addition, if there is too much stealthiers in the opponent force, the annoucement could come too late to reach you anyway.

Look at the radar, find where the control of your team is the weakest.

Do some math to see if the numerical inferiority is huge or not.

If it is, go help there but look announcement in cas they finaly attack somewhere else.

If it is not, let say, like 3 vs 4, you can chose either to go defend or... attack somewhere else.

Why attack?

Because in this situation, the opponent spread his force. He has some on the old attack spot, some on the new attack spot... which mean the defense on the last one, assuming you play in Alderaan or Novare, is weak.

Attacking there will lead to a panic move, has it endanger the only place the opponents control, forcing them to send reinforcement there, lessening the forces on your control points, and spreading chaos in their organisation.

You have to figure how your own forces are set on the map to make the right move. There is not thumb rule. Try to figure the psychology of the oppoennent, the strength of the people usualy guarding their control points, and guess what would work the best.

Experience for this increase with time. Knowing your ennemies helps too.

Use force speed, and steath if needed to not be intercepted, in order to reach the spot you choose as fast as possible.

In attack: Numerical inferiority actions

Situation: You are near a spot the opponent control or no one control, and the tide of battle makes that you have less allies than opponents in view.

Usualy this situation happen when your team was trying to take over the control point and failed, of when a point was just took over. It can happen too if you decided to spread chaos by attacking a low-guarded target when the opponent forces are spread all over the map.

I told earlier than someone that want to play the disruptor role must be ready to purposedly die. This is the main case where this is true.

In such a case, you have respawing teamates in huge numbers, and probably fewer opponents guarding other places.

If your allies are intelligent enough, they will gather to attack one of those other places.

If your opponents are intelligent enough, they will start to send reinforcement to those places... this is your role to disrupt that and earn time for your teamate to take opportunity to strike back.

Your main action will be to "glue" the opponent where you are.

You are going to die, if fact, you are wanting to die... because each opponent working on that result is an opponent that is going to reach the other battlefield a bit later than he probably should

You must fight using all your defensive capacities to die as slowly as possible.

Once again: do not try to kill. Anyway, if they are more numerous than them, you are probably unable to kill somone before you die even if your try. And some people will reach the other battlefield even faster if you make them respawn in some case.

Harass and control.

You must keep an eye on all the opponents with you and stop immediately any of them trying to leave the field to move somewhere else. Force pull is your best friend. Stun, slow and bump are acceptable too.

Keep a very close eyes on consulars and inquisitor, because with their own force speed, they are the ones that can reach the other spot the faster, and when they will trigger it, they will get out of your range rather fast. So be ready to stop them as soon you see the speed effect appear on them.

Think twice (but fast) before doing anything of this:

- chasing a stealth user: not sure you are going to grab his collar and you could lose some precious time trying

- hitting force cloak: if your opponents don't see you, they are probably going to leave for the other battlefield, so don't use it unless you think you can do something quick just after to keep your attention. Mind maze is a good move there, usualy, if you put it on someone who try to leave.

- running away: if you run away, you give opportunity to other to leave themselves. So think about it carefuly. And never run toward the other location, because it shorten the time your aggressors are going to need to switch location after you fall down

Once again, use LoS to your advantage, use controls, use your defensive cooldown.

Even 1 second more of life for you is 1 second more of numeric advantage for your team on the other spot.

In attack: Numerical equality and superiory actions

Situation: You are near a spot the opponent control or no one control, and the tide of battle makes that both camps have the same amount of players here

As a defensive tank, you are a low priority target for the opponents, as they don't see you as a threat

You must keep a close eye to how opponents are placed and which way they are looking. They don't usualy survey you, so you'll have more opportunities to attempt a capture than others.

Also, if someone else of your team attempt a control, try to keep away oppoenents from them.

While waiting for those opportunities, you must disrupt their dps capacity with controls, guard and taunts.

Aoe each time you can, that's the only way you will do decent dps and additionnaly, it lowers the overall dps of ennemies even more.

Another action you can do is to disrupt healing. A kinetic shadow has a lot of tools for that: mind clash, stun, kick, but also bump and force pull, as forced moves interrupt castings.

As long the resolve bar is not filled, you can prevent a healer to cast any spells having a concentration bar. Once filled it is a slightly harder, but you will be able to reduce it as you do some dps anyway so the healer will have to heal himself.

If you play perfectly, you can prevent any heal to be done on the other opponents comming from the healer you are harassing, so it is a good disruption move.

Finally, you must keep an eye to how the attack is going. If the situation appears to stall (you do not kill faster than they respawn), it can a good moment for some chaos seeding, by suddently vnishing, moving to another spot and lead a suprise attack there (look at your radar to not attack where some ally is already, you just would weaken your team without doing more chaos than there is already)

The goal is to make the defender call for help so some of the respawn will come to you instead of joining again the main battlefield, so take your time to fight the defenders. Try to make a suprise tag so they will panic more. You want them to scream for help. Really.

More disruption tactics

There are lot of situational disruption tactics you can set up with a kinetic shadow spec.

Setting aside the special case of the huttball where you can tank and use specific tactics set for this battleground, here is some little ideas you can work on to spice up your usual management of the field:

- push people out of the bridge in voidstar, healers first

- intercept and slow people on the travel between objectives on almost every bg (I suggest you to mind maze the healer of a group while they travel between places ^^)

- guard two doors at once in voidstar by positionning in stealth where you can see both of them, and hitting sprint + force pull each time you see a capture attempt that your teamates are probably going to miss

- force pull people staying on their respawn point in alderaan when you control the middle (tricky, but doable)

- forbid the opponents to tag their side turret at the start of the game in alderaan and novare

- slow the opponents in the tunnels of voidstar, between objectives

- force pull a single defender far, far away from his objective when an allied stealthier is near of it

We have an incredible toolbox, probably the best of the game, in order to mess with opponent plans.

With some imagination, there is almost no end to the dirty tricks you can invent with this spec.

Like... force pull and bump someone over the edge of the field in novare, so the game make him explose because he's out of the battlefield?

Tricky, but so fun to do. ^^

One final word

Some people will say that an hybrid shadow or/and a kinetic shadow with stalker gear will be able to do the same role, while killing more people.

It is somewhat true, but not fully.

A defense kinetic shadow disruptor spread an awful amount of chaos in opponent strategies, and kill some people

A offensive shadow disruptor spead some chaos in opponent strategies, and kill more people

That just a matter of balance between the two roles: disruptor and dps.

However, I find the disruptor role more subtle, more fun, myself than doing what 80% of the specs of the game can do well... killing stuff.

That doesn't mean one of the two choice is superior to the to other.

They are two differents and valuables ways to use the kinetic shadow spec.

Each player has to see if they feel more like a tactician or an assassin and pick what suit them the best.