Hi all,

 

It's been ages since I modded my gear and a very helpful chap advised me earlier after I'd blurted out that Power was the way to go with mods is that I should focus more on alacrity to about 15% or thereabouts, is that now the way to go?

 

Any further information worth taking onboard since I'm addressing the mod situation; I run Overkill augments and tend to aim for power > everything else as I run a DPS Infiltration Shadow more than I do Kinetic Combat.

 

Any advice is welcomed, but please elaborate alittle I don't fancy just chucking in any old mods - I'd rather understand the reasoning behind it.

 

Many thanks!

 

PS. Any Kinetic Combat advice would be welcomed, mods and stat choices really.

Edited November 1, 2017 by Farstrider

For insta-cast classes like shadow, you want to hit certain thresholds with alacrity and then stop investing unless you really like not having to worry about force regen.

 

0-702 Alacrity = 1.5sec GCD

703-1859 Alacrity (7.15+%) = 1.4sec GCD (1.39991)

1860+ Alacrity (15.41%) = 1.3sec GCD (1.29971)

 

So aim for whichever one you feel most comfortable with. The second threshold is slightly better in PvE but significantly worse in PvP, so if you like PvP'ing you may wanna go with the first one.

Oh, welcome back

 

As Eli pointed out, there is in fact three threshold for alacrity. As far as I'm concerned, you'd want to stick to the 15% if you're only about PvE, otherwise for PvP both are viable (the 15% could also be better, since it reduce the cooldown of your hardstun and other various ability). You'd want to avoid putting nothing in it, since it will make you way slower, hence reducing your efficiency by a lot.

The reason we focus so much on alacrity is because the game rounds up the gcd in a weird way (it rounds up to the upper .1 ), so by putting a bit more than 15% alacrity, we gain an extra ability every 13 attacks, instead of every 14. This does not seem like much, but you'll end up with a 4 or 5 apm increase, which is definitely worth taking in PvE.

Critical is a less important stat for melee in the current meta, because we have a lot of passive or relics who gives us some auto-crit. (we have at least 40% chance of crit, investing 400more points to just earn 2% more isn't worth it, we prefer to use these points in alacrity due to the huge payoff).

 

 

You don't really need to invest in Power augment because a full 248 gear gives you enough power and mastery (there is some new augment planned for GU 5.6 who gives power as an extra stats too, you definitely won't need to invest in more power than you already have). The three main stat you'll play with are Accuracy (110% is a must have), alacrity and critical. As a side note, you'd wanna be using eviscerating crystals for your saber and focus, as well as a mastery/power relic duo.

 

 

As for KC, it depends your playstyle. Peoples can run with a heavy endurance build, to soak in a good amount of spike damage, other peoples will prefer investing a lot in absorb and a bit in shield (KC has a big bonus to its shield stat, making it less important to increase due to the Kinetic Ward ability, which must have 100% uptime).

 

Overall, I found that peoples who tend to refresh KW when the buff is about to expire won't need as much absorb as the ones who refresh it when it is available, this is mainly due to the Kinetic Bulwark passive, which increase your absorption whenever you lose a stack of KW.

Anyway, what peoples often agree for tanks nowaday is that you'd want to throw out your Warding Mod (the defense mods) and invest in some Lethal B Mods. This is due to the fact that few ennemy in PvE uses Ranged/Melee attacks as a burst attack, so you won't need the defense bonus given by the "BiS" mods. We often use Lethal B Mods because they give a lot of Endurance (good stat, very important for PvE and PvP) along with a bit of power.

As I said earlier, peoples tend to invest a lot in Endurance for Tank Shadow, because in PvE it allows you to survive some damage spike who hits for 130k or more, and in PvP it allows you to have a bigger health pool, hence making you able to guard your team longer.

 

Hope this helps you !

Edited November 1, 2017 by supertimtaf

From testing my guild found that the low alacrity (711) was better for infiltration and the high alacrity build (1866) was better for serenity.

From testing my guild found that the low alacrity (711) was better for infiltration and the high alacrity build (1866) was better for serenity.

 

It really depends tbh, every high parse on Parsely for Deception are using the high alacrity build (they all have more than 52APM). Although it tends to work better with Serenity, for sure.

From testing my guild found that the low alacrity (711) was better for infiltration and the high alacrity build (1866) was better for serenity.

 

My testing showed the opposite, I tried both with full 248 and got better results with high alacrity. My parse is still ranked no.4 for infiltration and everyone above me is also using 1.3 GCD.

 

That said, this is just for parsing and actual combat is different with some encounters favoring burst over sustained. My issue with that however is that Deception/Infiltration is already great at burst and doesn't need any extra help in that department in PvE. With the 1.3 GCD threshold you can swap between the DoT/Burst specs and not lose out on any DPS.

Edited November 1, 2017 by Eli_Porter

How you gearing high alacrity-spec? How many enhancements and augments?

How you gearing high alacrity-spec? How many enhancements and augments?

 

On my full 248 Shadow I use:

 

1582 Critical (3xE, 6xA, 2xC) | 1866 Alacrity (6xE, 5xA) | 759 Accuracy (1xE, 3xA, Stim)

Edited November 1, 2017 by Eli_Porter

Thanks a lot for all the information guys, I appreciate the explanations aswell.

 

I'm not to 248 gear yet, but I've tinkered with my gear keeping the stats near the recommended thresholds where possible, I am already seeing the difference with Alacrity in PvE.

 

Thanks a lot, great community spirit!

Thanks a lot for all the information guys, I appreciate the explanations aswell.

 

I'm not to 248 gear yet, but I've tinkered with my gear keeping the stats near the recommended thresholds where possible, I am already seeing the difference with Alacrity in PvE.

 

Thanks a lot, great community spirit!

 

You're welcome

Feel free to ask if you have some more questions, or don't hesitate to say hello in game if you happen to be on The Red Eclipse, it's always nice to speak or play with other players

Will do - soon we'll be on the same server, Progenitor here.