But don't a lot of skills says "requires double bladed lightsaber?"

Fewer than you might think, but they're pretty fundamental: Force Breach and Shadow Strike both require DBLS (activating your different Techniques does as well, but you'll stay in it after you activate it; you only really need the DBLS when you're changing stances and can just get rid of it otherwise). The spec least affected by the loss of the DBLS would be tank spec since tanks shouldn't be using Shadow Strike *ever* and Force Breach is the weakest of your attacks. The only major loss would be not getting the 5% accuracy debuff. Balance and Infiltration, on the other hand, would be pretty well screwed by the lack of Force Breach and Shadow Strike.

Fewer than you might think, but they're pretty fundamental: Force Breach and Shadow Strike both require DBLS (activating your different Techniques does as well, but you'll stay in it after you activate it; you only really need the DBLS when you're changing stances and can just get rid of it otherwise). The spec least affected by the loss of the DBLS would be tank spec since tanks shouldn't be using Shadow Strike *ever* and Force Breach is the weakest of your attacks. The only major loss would be not getting the 5% accuracy debuff. Balance and Infiltration, on the other hand, would be pretty well screwed by the lack of Force Breach and Shadow Strike.

I agree with most of this.....

Infiltration is broken with out force breach and shadow strike. Balance is do- able . I realize you will not be max'd out on DPS without force breach. But you can play and do a good amount of damage with out shadw strike and force breach in balance spec.

But you can play and do a good amount of damage with out shadw strike and force breach in balance spec.

Without Force Breach, you're not getting Force Strike procs (since it requires melee hits on a target affected by your Force Breach) which means all you're getting is Double Strike, Saber Strike, Sever Force, and FiB, which isn't going to be a lot of damage: Force Breach is your hardest hitting continual DoT, and Mind Crush is one of your hardest hitting abilities overall. Of course, with only a single DoT that ticks comparatively slowly, you're also going to have resource management issues as Balance because you won't be consuming Force Suppression charges fast enough.

Hm. My Tank spec Shadow uses Shadow Strike a ton in PvP and quite often as an opener in PvE.

If you've got Infiltration Tactics and the buff is up, Shadow Strike is a good attack. If you don't have the talent and the buff isn't up, it's pretty much worthless: it deals marginally more damage than double strike (though it doesn't proc PA so it's actually worse damage in the end run) and costs *way* more Force than anything else you use. In PvP, Shadow Strike can be somewhat useful since you can actually get to use it on a target beyond the opening strike. In PvE, it's worthless since you're not going to have the Infiltration Tactics buff while starting a fight (so it does terrible damage *and* gibs your resource maintenance) and enemies should be staring at you rather than showing you their backs for everything after the opening attack. You're actually better served just using DS, Project, or Slow Time as an opener in PvE (I generally open with Project on a single target or Slow Time on a group since it generates more than for less cost than Shadow Strike will while simultaneously generating an HS stack).

Force Breach is often used to stop groups of people trying to cap objectives, or to lay waste to hordes of weak enemies after a Slow Time. But, to each their own.

I never said that it would be *optimal* to use an Electrostaff rather than a DBLS. Force Breach *is* a useful attack, but it's not really all that big of a contributor as an actual attack since you've got Slow Time on a shorter CD that deals more damage. The biggest loss isn't from not having Force Breach: it's from not getting that 5% acc debuff.

Like I said, KC would be the *least* negatively impacted. It's still negatively impacted, but not to the same extent as either of the DPS specs.

I'll have to check on the damage when I get home. I wonder if there's a threat generation difference.

On my Shadow right now (I don't have Applied Force; if you have it, it looks even worse for Shadow Strike), Double Strike hits twice for 681-781 damage (1462 average pre-mitigation); Shadow Strike hits for 2177-2496 (2336.5 average pre-mitigation). In addition, DS has a 51% chance to make your next Project a guaranteed crit (which amounts to 34% more damage with Project, for ~290 additional damage) so it's really ~1750 damage compared to ~2340 damage. They both take a single GCD so, without Infiltration Tactics, Shadow Strike does ~33% more damage at the cost of ~4.6 times as much Force ((50-15.6)/(23-15.6); this is ignoring any situation where you might be dodge/parry/blocking and getting more Force back, wherein the ratio looks even worse for Shadow Strike; with 2 Force/sec more, Shadow Strike costs 6 times more). You're getting *marginally* more damage frontloaded, but you're costing yourself *way* more damage over any time frame afterwards because of the prohibitively high cost of Shadow Strike.

Honestly, I wouldn't use either Shadow Strike or Double Strike as my opener. The best way to generate threat, damage, and mitigation as a Shadow is to follow the Thrash/DS-less rotation: you would remove Shadow Strike from your bar completely, open with either Project or Slow Time (and keep them on CD), while only touching Double Strike 1-2 times a minute when everything else is on CD and you're above ~70 Force.

I love that we turned this into a rotation thread.

Project is probably the better opener, given how well buffed it is in the tree, and the range. I should swap my project and SS hotkeys. Mouse Button 5 is much easier for my hands than 6 (I have some issues with childhood injuries that make my left hand a bit inflexible).