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Is shadow hard to play?


A_nonymous

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I rolled a Consular last night before I went to bed. I'm at like level 4 at the moment. I'm wondering already about what advanced class to play. I was kind of leaning toward shadow because stealth and a double bladed light sabre appeal to me. However the idea of a melee class in light armor just seems like a bad idea.
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Shadow is awesome...dps is good in balance...infiltration is decent now...kinetic combat is a great tree to tank...if you like to pvp do a kinetic/balance hybrid like a 23/1/17 or something like it...and you will be a BEAR in pvp. If you want to tank in pve do a 31/0/10 and you will be very hard to kill.
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in my experiences not really, they develop some really cool force powers so the shadow is not always in melee combat you do have alot of neat powers you can use from a distance and you can still use adaptive armor on the shadow i use it on pretty much all my characters so as far as armour goes i really never seen a difference between them i have a sith jug with the same armour rating as my shadow.. Edited by bobtheplumer
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My focus would probably be pure PVE/DPS. Which is better? Shadow or Sage? All my other toons are non-force users so I'm accustomed to standing back and blasting away at bad guys. Getting all up in their face in light armor is my main concern which makes me think Sage is better. But then if I go Sage, then I'm basically just doing the ranged attacking that I'm used to though I have the ability to melee as well which would seem to make it more balanced right?
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I rolled a Consular last night before I went to bed. I'm at like level 4 at the moment. I'm wondering already about what advanced class to play. I was kind of leaning toward shadow because stealth and a double bladed light sabre appeal to me. However the idea of a melee class in light armor just seems like a bad idea.

 

I haven't found it to be. Spec'd Balance and usually have Theran with me- am up to 41 with no problems so far (3 maybe 4 face-plants total). Barely touch my shields and it's a rare fight that I absolutely have to hit Heroic Moment.

 

The major downs I've seen is that you really have to watch your energy levels- they go both up and down fast so, most fights are: HIT- HIT- ping- ping- ping- HIT- HIT- ping- ping- ping.... (rinse repeat). Also, you're not a tank-type tank so, you want to take out the little guys first if the larger enemy doesn't have something you need to interrupt and there might be a touch of kiting (moving out of the way of the aoe). It does seem to be a touch pricier to repair your gear- not anything I can't afford but the numbers are still a little higher than my other toons. And, lastly, you have to do the bonus series in order to make up for all of those groups of enemies that you stealth by if your soloing.

 

Major ups? Not only does the Shadow have quite a few interrupts but so does your healer and he'll use them too. A lot. (Plot-wise he's such a sleaze but mechanics-wise? Why can't I have one of him for all of my toons?) Also, because your energy goes up and down so quickly, usually, by the time I've run to the next group, I'm already up to full and ready to go. And... Of course... Stealth.... Those areas where any other type of toon would have to be fighting every other step are just sooo much easier to get through! Yeah, you get spotted sometimes but that "panic button" is almost always handy. I don't remember the name of the power but it allows you to instantly drop out of a fight and stealth.

 

Which is all just a veeeeerrrry long way of saying: "Yeah, it's easily doable because if an inexperienced player like me (prefer healers/sorc/sage) can get a toon up there, so can anyone." Just don't try to play like you're a Juggy/Guardian and you should be fine.

;)

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I would say that a shadow is pretty easy to play at a faceroll level, but the results you get will be mediocre at best. If you are a skilled player, however, you can extract results from a shadow that put other classes to shame. They're phenomenal tanks, but their DPS is also quite outstanding. Very few classes can out-DPS an equally-geared shadow in the hands of a skilled player. (sentinels, vanguards and gunslingers are really the only ones) They also have a large amount of utility which makes for a good raid support character. Interrupts, stuns, stealth, etc. All of it is useful in competitive endgame PvE.

 

You unfortunately have a long and rocky road to get to that point though. Leveling as a shadow is pretty hard. Respect the people who find it simple! The way the shadow skill trees work, once you have all 41 talent points, you can spec yourself in almost any way imaginable and still be viable (at least in PvP). However, before you have all 41 talent points, no spec will be satisfying or complete. As an example, I leveled as a tank, and I felt *incredibly* under-powered and squishy until around level 45-46. Infiltration spec gets some decent talents early on, so it's probably the easiest for leveling, but even in that tree things kinda suck for a long, long time.

 

The other problem you will have is the stigma shadows carry (especially DPS shadows). We were FOTM for a long time, and so quite a large number of people rolled a shadow without having the slightest clue what they were doing. The consequence of this is that people simply assume that the shadow is a really bad class since the results they achieve are usually terrible (thank you, awful players). An intelligent raid leader is going to be aware of this and will judge you on your own merits, but you may not get that opportunity. Keep some videos handy of the top progression guilds using shadows/assassins for just such situations. :-)

 

Anyway, I do highly recommend rolling a shadow. It was my first (of many) characters, and I haven't regretted it for a minute. Well, actually that's only sort of true. I wish my shadow were an assassin, since their animations are dramatically better looking and their storyline is quite a bit more engaging, but we can't have everything. The class itself is phenomenal in any spec, and a worthy challenge for a player who likes to continually improve and develop his skills.

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Being only level 25 Shadow, I must say the class is very enjoyable! I'm aiming for the 23/1/17 specc and already having a blast in pvp (going KC tree first)! And also the story line is very amusing, I've seen many ppl QQ about Act 1 being lame but I quite like it! Not going to spoil anything, but Shadow is def an interesting class to play/discover/..

Made me put away my Marauder, wich I started since pre launch :p!

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Between Keyboardnija's wise words and the OP's concerns lets simplify some of this.

The infiltration skill tree on the first set of skills has a ability that makes light armour as good as medium armour in terms of mitigation. So if you roll a DPS shadow you will be way tougher than smashers( sentinals). All shadows get two defensive cooldowns that are argued best in the game. Deflection and Resistance.

Shadow DPS is considered some of the best in the game, a Balanced spec'ed shadow will pull easily 1600+ in top gear. The infiltration spec will pull higher numbers but is harder to sustain than the balance spec.

Shadow tanking is godlike. Shadows are endowed with some of the best tanking utility of all the classes. Where other tanks will just have to take the attack for what it is worth a shadow can negate it . Doing so requires a active knolledge of your recieving damages type and your abilities usefulness. Shadow tanks maybee light armoured but require the least amount of healing of all the tanking classes. Shadow tanks don't lose threat.

While I love the sage , there is a few drawbackS. Yes the light armour doesn't off anywhere near the protection that a shadows light armour does. As a ranged class you are kinda a turret. The ranged is very nice except their dps is the worst of all the classes. The sage is widely considered the best of the healing classes. Leveling to 50 is easier on a sage. The reason of what order you get your compainions is set up for sage not shadow in the consular story line. It's frustrating doing class quests as a durable melee character with no healing untill lvl24.

Maybee this helps, I recomend you read some of keybordnijas other posts on shadows and read kitru's take on our class.

A Brother Shadow.

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Well, you all have convinced me to go Shadow. We'll see how it goes. I'm still a bit skeptical and haven't had a chance to really play that toon. I'm just looking for an alt to play while my other toon is resting. I got a little ahead of myself, skipped a couple of planets and managed to get to the planet I'm on like 2 levels below my class quests. So I'm trying to take advantage of rest xp to catch up.
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It depends what game you have come from.

 

I came from LOTRO, which i found simplistic, but this entire game is mind-numbingly simple in comparison. rotations, specs, setup, combat mechanics, everything in TOR is 100x easier than in LOTRO! So, from my point of view, absolutely everything in TOR is very, very easy.

 

However, I have heard that WoW is even easier than TOR, so if you came from WoW and found WoW challenging, then i guess the shadow might be tough to play!

 

 

As to how the shadow compares against other TOR classes, it depends on the spec.

 

1) Infiltration.

 

This is the easiest spec to play whilst leveling, but the hardest to reach high performance. You only actually use a small number of skills to damage enemies:

 

Clairvoyant Strike

Shadow Strike

Spinning Strike

Saber Strike

Project

Force Breach

 

So, in that respect, its extremely easy! I mean, how hard is it to use 6 skills? Sure, you have a few other things to deal with (stealth, cc, buffs etc) but the majority of the time you're just gonna be blasting through mobs using these skills. However, reaching high sustained DPS is hard as infiltration. You're proc management and force management needs to be perfect to even reach the same league as other classes. You're utility is actually terrible: no group buffs, no in-combat cc, no heals and you're off-tanking is crap (light armour). It takes real skill to pull off good sustained DPS at endgame.

 

2) Balance Spec

 

This spec is all about DoTs. It is now the squishiest spec for shadows and pretty terrible for leveling due to the DoT nature. However, at 50 this is our highest DPS spec. Its all about managing DoTs, so be prepare to spec a lot of time watching DoTs ticking off and watching your own procs. Rotation is thus a bit more complicated. Still rubbish utility for raids.

 

3) Kinetic Combat (tank) Spec

 

Again, tanking in this game is child's play compared to LOTRO. It is seriously easy no matter what tank class you are. However, shadows are the alpha tanks in 99% of scenarios: we have highest avoidance, highest self-healing, usually highest health, highest DPS, highest threat, highest AoE....only thing we lack is armour! So, which leveling this may be an issue due to low avoidance but at 50, you're avoidance will be so high that you are gonna be better than everyone else.

 

Rotation for tanking is also very easy. When playing with progression DPSers it can sometimes be a bit challenging to hold aggro so you'll need more precision on rotation, but until then it's very easy (just remember that most tanks can't hold AoE aggro well, so just focus on tanking the most important mobs in an AoE situaiton).

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I came from DCUO so I found TOR to have a really high learning curve. You can plug an Xbox controller into your computer and you feel like you're playing a console game. The control scheme is very, very simple. Maybe because the target audience is not the hardcore MMO fan. TOR relying on purely keyboard and mouse and having much, much more abilities and powers to manage made things harder for me. DCUO basically forces you to pick X number of powers. Then you choose which ones you spec at any time and everyone can be dual spec. So you have a certain set of powers/abilities. if you're in tank mode you may have one subset of those powers and in DPS mode you might have a different subset of powers. You also have the ability to equip different weapons. So, I've got a toon that is mainly a healer. If I'm running w/a group in healer mode I use a bow. It's a ranged weapon and I can stay away from the big, bad, bad guys 'cuz in healer mode my healing abilities are boosted, but my DPS isn't so I'm kind of squishy. If I'm solo questing or in a group that already has a healer, then I'm using a staff as I like to melee and my DPS powers are suited for that.

 

So TOR where you basically pick one role and spec that role is a bit different to me. I suppose I could use quickbars to equip different abilities based on my group role.

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