For pvp hatred/serenity is still the worst class you can play on.

For pvp shadow tanks is the worst class you can play on. For pve it is the ONLY CLASS you can play on, otherwise you are hurting your team during progression.

Solution : REMOVE THE STEALTH FROM SIN TANK SPEC ONLY TO AVOID CHEESING MECHANICS. Buff sin tanks for pvp whatever they need.

This way 3 tank class should be balanced for pve. This is really and only solution for balancing 3 tank spec.

OK now deception/hatred PVE. Let me start telling you this:

1 - Sin dps now have 0 raid utility/buff since you remove stealth ress ( it wasn't a big utility to begin with).

2 - Deception has a position requirement (not a big thing but still there is)

3 - Hatred has tight energy management.

4 - Hatred has no armour debuff so it make more sense to bring jug than hatred on adds heavy fights since its way better on adds than hatred with 6.0 slam tactical.

Solution : UNLESS YOU CAN BRING REALLY CREATIVE SET BONUS ( I thinks it's little late for that) YOU NEED TO BOTH OF RAW DPS NUMBERS TO THE NUMBER 1. Other wise they lost all competitive advantage to other classes.

Mara :

1 - Number 1 parsing dps ,great op dps

2 - Best raid buff, best raid utilities

3 - Can leech dps and heal the party members

4- Best defensives

4 - No position requirements, energy management does exist but its a meh

PT :

1 - BEST DAMAGE IN THE GAME BOTH SPECS

2 - great raid utilities

3 - 10 metre range with no position requirements

4 - energy management does exist but mehh x 2 at best (not high risk high reward anymore with firefall heat reduction)

Honestly only downside for pt you can't stack 4 of them for self cleansing fights. ( actually you can do that with 2 sin tanks and 2 op)

You need buff sin dps numbers , take away the controlling abilities if you worry about pvp since we are reducing abilities.

P.S : PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD REMOVE THE SEVERING SLASH ABILITY. It serve no purpose for all of the specs and most of the playerbase didn't even put it on the quickbar.

Does the current combat rotation make this experience feel like you are playing a Shadow? Why or why not?

• Low level takes longer to get going - it feels like a low level shadow on live in that it lacks any defenses or mobility (which is a bad thing).
  
• High level rotations actually feel better than on live for the damage specs - both can get some fun ability resets going on and buffed force regen.
  
• However, this opens up room for potentially more interesting abilities for serenity as you do spam double strike just a bit too much and it does feel repetitive especially with the lower alacrity that's available with the currently unbalanced tertiary stats.
  
• Serenity could still do with some changes to its ability morphs (once again, death ray equivalent doesn't really add anything and is just worse than the other two morphs for e.g.)
  

As you’re beginning from level 1, do you feel you have enough abilities that keep gameplay interesting?

• Starting with 3 abilities at level 1 is nice and you quickly get access to force breach which is a cornerstone ability for all specs. Your first aoe ability could do with coming a level or two earlier but it comes quick enough at level 7.
  
• You do not get force speed fast enough and as such are left running around as a melee class for far too long.
  
• Also, for some strange reason you seem to only get taunt at level 23 despite Guardians getting it much much earlier. This all but prevents shadows from being tanks in any form of content until at least level 23.
  
• You also don't have any defensives at all for practically half the base game, which is mitigated in open world content by healer companions but leaves them very week in group content.
  
• I really miss having spinning kick and would rather have a buffed version of it than force sun.
  

Are you able to defeat enemies at a reasonable rate?

I had no issue dealing with enemies at a low level (which is to be expected).

Do all your abilities feel like they’re working together?

High level yes, low level could do with a host of abilities being granted far sooner than they are as right now, the disciplines feel pretty much the same up til level 23 which is 13 levels higher than it is on live.

Same issue with commando, some abilities are 10-20 levels too high like your one single baseline defensive and any form of mobility.

Infiltration feels really fun, serenity could do with a couple changes.

I like force cloak purging hostile effects, but resilience is still absolutely mandatory and removes any choice

I went to Lonndar Eadwinn, the guy labeled as <Implant Researcher>, but nothing happened once the conversation happened. I was a Jedi Knight/Shadow. I am assuming this is the guy that's supposed to give us the Legendary Implants with the set bonus?

Without the set bonus it is hard to get a full picture of Shadow/Assassin as it has the potential to change the playstyle. Also could we please get access to the conquest/flashpoint/operation gear for just credits? Without access to these, we still can't figure out the 'feel' for our character.

With PTS now live, you can help test the Combat Style for the Shadow.

 

Please answer the following questions:

 

 

• Does the current combat rotation make this experience feel like you are playing a Shadow? Why or why not?
  

Positioning requirements, stealth, basic attacks, so to an extent yes, but I normally level as a tank, and the total lack of defensive abilities other than medpacks and heroic moment feels a bit weak/absent in the first few planets.

• As you’re beginning from level 1, do you feel you have enough abilities that keep gameplay interesting?
  

As of level 15 or so and finished with Coruscant, no, not really. As a long time player it's not a big deal, as a new player it might feel a bit slow, but then again with the whole game being new territory there's a virtue in not overloading people with things faster than they can absorb them. I think it would maybe feel ok during a double XP event, but through normal questing it feels slow.

[*]

• Are you able to defeat enemies at a reasonable rate?
  

Yes, even when pushing the limits with things like Heroic quests still at Orange/Red difficulty level.

• Do all your abilities feel like they’re working together?
  

No, not really. Shadow by level 12 has force management issues. Upside is that you have to learn force management, downside is that your two hard hitting 40 force abilities are basically never available so you just spam the basic strike over and over and over and over. Actually, I take back that upside. For it to be an upside, people would have to generally actually read the tutorial and figure out resource management. That's a stretch even for a space-opera fantasy setting. More likely that people will think it's just bad design. It feels clunky compared to max level playing. Not sure if there's really anything to be done about it that would be workable in the time frame you have though. Max level on live plays very smoothly, even if you get pretty non-optimal and mess up the rotation. Low level PTS plays like important parts are missing, because until you level up they are missing.

Aside from feeling very spammy of basic attack though, it's not bad. Project and the back-stab do impressive chunks of damage, at least by Tython's standards, and that makes them feel pretty good. Good enough to want to use them often enough to run completely dry on force in just a few seconds. So, could be quite a lot worse I suppose. It's not like you don't have any buttons to press when the tank is empty.

I think the biggest difference vs. the level cap is that at level cap you tend to be cooldown and proc limited and there are always multiple buttons you could push once the "cool" hard hitting abilities are on CD. At low level instead you're easily able to blow through your force pool with just two abilities, and once empty there's really only one button left to push, which gets monotonous.

Speaking of monotony, building a full stack of force breach takes fooooooor - eeeeeeevvvvvvv- aaaaahhh. At higher levels you have so much other stuff going on that you don't notice it because you're too busy, but when you've used your force pool, are spamming basic attack, and there's nothing to do but watch for force breach to stack, you start seeing just how long it takes. It's probably fine for say level 50 and above, but at low levels there's a bit of a watching paint dry vibe in there.

Note, given the legacy class designs that you're trying not to mess up too much, I'm not sure there's a great solution for the "missing parts" syndrome. You don't want to overwhelm at the start, you don't want a 70 level ability granting drought, you don't want an ability that's super cool at level 9 that scales to oneshotting NiM Ops bosses at level 80, and you probably don't want the class to work in a significantly different way in an insect complete metamorphosis way: egg, larva, pupa, adult where it's like playing different classes every 20 levels.

So being both smooth and engaging right from the start may be out of scope. Tweak it to be better if you think y you can, especially in the 1-20 range, but don't lose sleep over it if it ends up being not much different than this current PTS iteration. SWTOR isn't really designed around the idea of a four ability rotation.

I'd like to echo the general sentiment that starting as a Shadow feels extremely empty on Tython compared to doing the same thing on live. This was already an impaired experience, but now it's downright barren. The new Shadow kit is extremely streamlined -- much more than any other class (except, obviously, Assassin) and it can afford to have 'missing parts' less than others as a result. Bringing Stealth or Force Stun a little earlier would help, but even if Force Wave is a mostly useless ability for the game as currently designed outside of PvP, it felt good to have and it was fun.

Personally, I'd bring Cleaving Cut online much earlier as a baseline ability and then give it substantial upgrades as an option later on: one upgrade to grant it the effects and additional animation of Force Wave (since it's already meant to be kind of a "grouping/space" skill) and the other to grant it the additional effects it gets per-discipline.

I wouldn't say no to getting TK Throw back in some tweaked form that moves it towards utility as we get higher (30m range but still its low damage?). Something so it's just not dreadfully barren as it is right now.

Playing on the PTS as a Traditional Shadow to level 6. Over the years, I have created several Infiltration Shadows to play with friends who were starting new characters. Playing with no stim or XP boost.

At level 6, I had not yet gotten any new skills. My level 1 skills: I have DoubleStrike, Project, Force Breach, and Saber Strike in case of low Force. I like having these starting skills as they are the Bread and Butter for Infiltration. We level up pretty quickly and I was 6th level before I knew it. Previously, on Live, I have felt that a person was getting abilities before a person could get comfortable with the previous ones.

Heads Up: I can't remember for sure, but I think I had to drag Force Breach to the quickbar, the other abilities showed up on the Quickbar on their own.

I just took Story missions so I was going thru content at a lower level. I was matching my targets level or be one lower. As I had done in the past on live, I open up with Project at 10m and then spam DoubleStrike. Even if I pulled another Mob while fighting the first, I never needed to use Saber Strike due to low force. The only time I needed to use a MedPak was against the Champion Bloodskin. At level 6, I died, but Bloodskin was down to less than 20%. I just spammed DoubleStrike against him. That was the most I damage I have done to Bloodskin at lower level ever. Still did not run out of force. Seemed like Bloodskin's knockback and missle attack mechanics have been nerfed, which was ok because only a Guardian with T2 was able to take him out on live.

Even keeping newish players in mind, I feel like the flesh raiders (past the Gnarls bridges) could be raised a level. With less abilities for a newish person to get confused and fumble around with, the content could be more challenging.

The amount of loot seemed just right, I was feeling the sense of reward and progress without feeling like they were "easy to get"/cheap.

Overall I am "Good" with how things flowed to level 6.

Good Morning,

Here are a few thoughts - to level 6.

Does the current combat rotation make this experience feel like you are playing a Shadow? Why or why not?

- Impossible to tell so far.

As you’re beginning from level 1, do you feel you have enough abilities that keep gameplay interesting?

- Not at all. Having no additional capabilities from 1-6 makes it feel slow and stagnant. In terms of pacing, this feels way off the mark. By this point, I would like to see a simple AoE and DoT capability to get me thinking about those possibilities later on.

Are you able to defeat enemies at a reasonable rate?

- Yes. But again, something besides saber and debris would be nice.

Do all your abilities feel like they’re working together?

- Sure.

I will try to put in a few more comments as I level up my Shadow.

Take Care,

Dee

With PTS now live, you can help test the Combat Style for the Shadow.

 

Please answer the following questions:

 

• Does the current combat rotation make this experience feel like you are playing a Shadow? Why or why not?
  
• As you’re beginning from level 1, do you feel you have enough abilities that keep gameplay interesting?
  
• Are you able to defeat enemies at a reasonable rate?
  
• Do all your abilities feel like they’re working together?
  

 

Please note your feedback accordingly so we can track it. Feel free to answer in as much detail as possible to help us understand your thought process and line of thinking.

 

Thank you!

About my play-style: I play only infiltration (best class, not that I'm partial or anything....) and don't play Serenity or Kinetic combat, so I'll only address Infiltration here. I play very little PvP because I pretty much suck at it, and I'm just plain too slow due to a. arthritis and b. "life experience." The testing I did was to get to level 80 asap to see how gearing went and how the class played at end-game.

I was not able to gear beyond 318 (limited time in PTS), and I never got to try out the legendary stuff--hope to do that at some point. I was limited to flashpoints since there weren't enough folks on to try out an Ops. I tested vet flashpoints with a companion.

I main infiltration shadow/deception assassin and have for years. I play this class in the top 5%-ish of infil players and can pull very good numbers in vet mode Ops with it, despite the fact that this class is not the 'meta' or even remotely close to it. That's not to brag (I'd love to see more people beat me, because this is hands down my favorite class and seeing other people succeed at it also is very fun). It's just to give you perspective. The parse I did on the PTS is not the "perfect" rotation by any means since I wasn't going for a dummy parse and had to do a few mechanics since I was soloing the bosses. You'll probably be able to find better examples, definitely so with better gear and a legendary. https://parsely.io/parser/view/615865

I did not check 'known issues' so if any notes are redundant, well, then they're redundant. I don't have time to look at the known issues right now.

I missed being able to run around on fleet buffing random newbies with my force valor/force might/lucky shots/fortification since it got moved to a passive. While it's super convenient for me to have it as a passive since I have all 4 class buffs, it'll suck for party members in Ops who don't have all 4 yet. The difference between having some of those buffs and not can mean the difference between a wipe or not when you're running with groups who are learning VMops mechanics. 5% is a lot when your margin of survival is at the 1% mark during a tough boss fight.

To answer the questions:

1. Since very little was changed ability- and utility-wise, how the class played didn't feel much different at end game other than noticeable GCD change causing lower APM and thus lower dps, which I address below.

2. If you call throwing a rock and saber-striking ad nauseum at level 1 interesting, sure. I haven't been new to the game since open beta, so my perspective is skewed. Force breach early on helps, but of course the cooldown was longer than it took to kill stuff for me since I ran with a companion and my goal was to get to fleet asap to level to 80 anyway. The class doesn't really come into its own until you get Stealth, Shadow Stride, procced Force Breach, and procced Shadow Strike, and 7.0 certainly won't make that somehow better. The utility choices are either laughably simple (there usually is only 1 obvious choice for each utility point for someone who plays Ops with this class), or we're given the choice between 2 that are extremely useful in Ops that made the decision (relatively) tougher. That being said, I can live without Force Wave and the lift.

3. Defeating enemies at a reasonable rate: For the average player, probably yes. To my VMops+ standard at level 80? Going from a 1.3/1.4 GCD (with/without alacrity clicky) back down to 1.5 GCD rotation a la 5.0 sucks rocks hard. It feels substantially slower to me, and it will markedly decrease this class' DPS. The inability to reach 110% accuracy meant I had misses, and that noticeably negatively affected my boss kill time because those misses were on important DPS/proc-building skills like Psychokinetic blast and Shadow Strike. I didn't get to test out the utility that allows stacks to get used on more damage skills yet to see how much damage I could do with that. That was on my to-do list, although theorycrafters probably already have me beat to the numbers on that one.

4. Do the abilities feel like they work well together--eh, I can do the rotation without thinking about it a lot. Since you didn't add any skills and the utilities are pretty much just 're-arranging the deck chairs', it didn't feel different other than being noticeably slower. That being said, I didn't get to try some of the new utilities. Obviously, maintaining 2 stacks of Clairvoyance will be absolutely critical in 7.0, not 'extremely super-important' as it is now in 6.0.

Note: The utility "Maul Spike" needs to be renamed "Shadow Strike Spike" and any other maul references need to be updated to the Shadow counterparts.

From an Ops standpoint:

This class already suffers from limited raid utility--no raid buffs, and it's a spike dps class instead of DoT dps--you started to address that a bit in 6.0 by adding The Awakened Flame tactical which added the DoT, but none of the legendaries I saw had a DoT (although I might have missed something). The one big advantage Infil has was being able to stay alive with decent DCDs, Force Speed damaged reduction (dr), and stealth allowing us to able to reset the medpac, and the Death Knell set allowed quite good DPS. Not dirty fighting/annihilation/lethality levels of DPS, to be sure, but decent, and we could at least contribute a stealth rez.

Losing stealth rez and medpac reuse puts more pressure on the healers. Losing force speed dr, maul/shadow strike dr, and aoe dr to do stuff like mitigate NiM tentacle slams is also going to make it harder to stay alive in NiM. Couple that with mediocre, non-dot DPS? No regular NIM raid group will want to have any shadow dps in the group, especially if they're doing speed clears. It's already a problem now, and 7.0 will only make that worse.

This class is one that is HIGHLY dependent on being able to min-max stats to tweak the accuracy to exactly 110% so that you can get the required alacrity for the 1.4 GCD and then put the rest into crit to take advantage of the bonus crit damage to keep up with Anni and dirty fighting specs. Non-moddable gear is a nightmare for any class, but especially this one, and going from the freedom of completely moddable gear that I could min-max to my heart's content in 6.0 to non-moddable gear where I can't even exchange an initiative implant for an adept or nimble one of the same level at the vendor when upgrading is a design error of monumental proportions. I understand that this class is crazy powerful in PvP, but it's middling at best for Ops, and the design changes you're implementing with gearing is going to make that even worse for PvE. I've been asked before in 5.0 and less often in 6.0 if I can come to an Ops "on a different class that does more DPS and has more raid utility," and that's despite my parse numbers being pretty damn good. 7.0 is going to make that problem worse if this class is left in its current PTS iteration.

Since you're already moving set bonuses over to left side items and you have tacticals, if you're worried about PvP balance, instead of going back to the insanity of non-moddable, non-optimized stat gear, consider making PvP zones use PvP-only tacticals/left side items and use those to fine tune PvP dps and skill balance. Right now, you're tuning down the class to make it more on par with other classes in PvP, but you're causing a significant under-tuning for PvE in the process, unless you make some substantial improvement in PvE DPS tacticals/legendaries/utilities. You're also taking away some of the class' ability to stay alive during Ops boss fights and stealth rez on top of it.

Will I still play this infiltration in 7.0? Absolutely, because I love the spec. Will I be able to play it in hardmare Ops content? Probably not if it's left in its current form. Even playing it to perfection, I just won't be able to generate the same dps as other classes, I'll have a harder time staying alive with the dr skills being nerfed/eliminated, and I'll have even less raid group utility as a Shadow than I do now without stealth rezzing available. And with all those issues, no progression raiding group is going to want an infiltration shadow.

Heads Up: I can't remember for sure, but I think I had to drag Force Breach to the quickbar, the other abilities showed up on the Quickbar on their own.

This. I recall thinking (around level 10!) that I should have had this, given that the charges were building up, but didn't yet have it.

Apart from Taunt being too high a level, I don't really have too many complaints about playing as a low-level shadow.

Menitioning taunt reminded me that one of the problems in 6.0 was even with appropriate threat drop use on cooldown, I can easily pull threat off of tanks unless they play their class very well. That's partly a skill issue, but the threat table needs to be updated in 7.0 to account for the crit spikes that infil/deception can do. I've documented a nearly 100k crit spike on this class and have a friend who plays the class even better than me who's gotten spikes over 100k.

If infil/deception DCDs are being cut substantially, it is critical that the threat issue be addressed so that we don't get one-shot by bosses after a crit dps spike.

Just a few experiences...

Utility tree:

The utility "tree" seems to have a bug. I can select utilities, then when I close and open the sheet again, the utilities are different from what I selected. However, some utilities it says I have (which I didn't select) are not granted, so it could be that I got the utilities I wanted, but the tree shows different and has no effect on my original choices.

Combat styles:

I also noticed that when I switched between my primary and secondary combat style (sentinel) a few times, it suddenly stopped working, so I was stuck with sentinel. Re-logging didn't fix it. I had to delete the character and re-copy it to the server.

Not going to copy over my Assassin feedback, as most of it is pretty redundant after playing around with Shadow/Sin for about 35 hours now. I'm going to go through each of the Serenity Shadow options one by one and concisely as possible:

Force Potency: I absolutely love the cooldown reduction on DoT crits. It's a very welcome compensation for losing a charge.

Force in Balance and its passives: Force in Balance is perfectly fine. All three passives are pretty decent. Balancing Field aka two charges of FiB is still a bit awkward to use in most situations.

Tier 1 passives: Shadow Spike doesn't mention that it also benefits Serenity Strike in its tooltip, otherwise it's good for PvP. Force Wave is still Force Wave, perfectly fine to put at this tier. Force Magnatism is a nice replacement for Mind over Matter. This tier is pretty balanced between its selections.

Squelch and its passives: Squelch is perfectly fine now, it previously suffered from relatively low damage in comparison to the other tools in our kit. Destruction Ray is fine, it seems to be a pretty niche passive. It's fun for trash mobs, but it really doesn't provide a lot of killing power in PvP, even though it turns into a burst damage ability. Ensue is by far the best passive out of the three. Free 10% crit for DoTs is incredibly powerful. Smite, after playing with it for a while, is pretty useless in comparison to the other two. 25% increased damage on the initial hit of Squelch, which is already pretty weak isn't anything special. Perhaps instead of priming an enemy for more Squelch damage, causes Squelch to leap to a target if said target dies (similarly to Plamatize on Vanguard). It might be pretty strong, so if that change was made, it could either have diminishing returns on its damage after jumping or just cap how much it can jump targets. Overall 2/3 are good, Smite is not in a good place.

Tier 2 passives: I won't go into detail, but this tier is incredibly well done. Battle Readiness, Longing Force, and Hallowing are all very powerful and I found myself jumping between all three.

Sever Force: It's good, same old 30m root and decent DoT.

Tier 3 passives: Same as Tier 2, all three are pretty balanced. Intangible Spirit is good for PvE, Sturdiness is good for all content since Serenity is super squishy, and Fade is very strong for PvP.

Serenity Strike: Same old Serenity Strike, it's in a good place.

Tier 4 passives: Kinetic Surge and Lambaste are both helpful as always, they're fine. Force Phase is also fine.

Ability Choice: For Serenity, the options of Resilience, Cleaving Cut, and Force Lift are all fine. Serenity actually uses Cleaving Cut as a stronger DoT spread, and with its minor lifesteal buff it has a reason to be chosen over Resilience. Force Lift is almost exclusively used in PvP. With the change to Force Cloak where it cleanses debuffs, it can viable to pick Force Lift over Resilience on certain maps.

Tier 5 passives: Stalker's Swiftness and Celerity both make sense being at this tier. However, Cloak of Resilience has almost zero reason to even exist anymore now that Force Cloak cleanses debuffs on its own. I would replace this passive with the old Restorative Shade utility from 6.X or something else that gives a defensive buff. 2/3 passives are good, Cloak of Resilience is almost redundant.

The Serenity Shadow specific passives are all pretty balanced. Force Surpession not being merged into Force in Balance from the start is pretty annoying, but if there was nothing else to fill that slot I guess it makes sense to have it be a separate passive.

Shadow in general seems to suffer a force-management problem for its first 20-40 levels or so, depending on which spec you play. Just something I noticed while playing a lot.

Otherwise Serenity Shadow is looking really good for 7.X!

As I noted in the leveling experience thread here, I feel like the leveling experience as been painfully slow as a Knight/Shadow/Infiltration. I'm at no shortage of stats: I have all legacy datacrons and all four class buffs, an influence rank 50 T7 droid, and have kept my item rating at level. I'm using Victorious Pioneer's for the 7-piece experience set bonus, an XP buff consumable, and have the legacy perks for class stories unlocked. I'm level 21 and about to start Nar Shaddaa and really I've only done class missions and the exploration XP along the way.

Still combat is slow, I keep running out of Force and have to resort to using my basic attack. It takes forever to build stacks of Breaching Shadows. I have half of my toolbar open and I was really missing things like Mind Snap, and Force Speed which would have been standard at this point. Furthermore the painfully slow defeat of enemies might be more tolerable if I had Force Potency, which is also missing. Not that I need it, but Force Lift would also have been learned by this stage. I just feel very incomplete as a character.

I posted in the Vanguard one about this already, but the shadow/assassin specs are a perfect example of combat style that is missing a part of it's fantasy and it being linked to the same resource and some of the same abilities as the Sage/Sorcerer is a big part of what is messing with the fantasy of this class.

To me a Shadow/Assassin gives us the fantasy of being able to play with a double bladed lightsaber. The three specs, to me, should be a Tank spec where the blade is used defensively with conjunction with the force in the same vein as Satele or Darth Zannah. The second should fit the name of "shadow/ Assassin" and introduce a lot of stealth elements and backstabbing to the fighting. These two I feel are, at least somewhat, well represented with the current way Shadow/Assassin is. The Style that is missing is the third style, the Maul/ Savage Opress style of combat where they more overwhelmingly use the blade and aggressive quick strikes. Divorcing this fighting style a little more from the force side of the old inquisitor and Consular could go a long way to bringing that third fantasy to life for those that want it.

For context, I've been levelling for the past few days as a shadow tank. It's perhaps my favourite class/spec to play on the live server and has been for years, so I figured I'd throw some thoughts in.

Does the current combat rotation make this experience feel like you are playing a Shadow? Why or why not?

Not having Slow Time until level 51 leaves a huge hole in the rotation I'm used to. I don't think players unfamiliar with the class will notice, but anyone who's played Shadow/Assassin tank before will notice it's absence for the majority of their levelling. The same goes for Kinetic Ward, one of the core abilities for tank spec, being locked away until level 39.

To add to the above, I didn't feel like I was playing a tank until level 39. Until this point, the only thing resembling a defensive cooldown is the 30% absorption on Force Potency, and there are plenty of fights where I feel I have to either take a healing companion or be very, very careful with my stuns to get anywhere.

As you’re beginning from level 1, do you feel you have enough abilities that keep gameplay interesting?

This is a bit of a rollercoaster. The first 10 levels or so I remember being rather pleased. I was getting new abilities at a good rate, and Force Breach gave me a feeling that I was starting to get my tank toolkit. Then it just... stopped? Cascading Debris was nice to get at level 23, but there was a good 10 level gap where my rotation never really changed and none of the new abilities felt like they impacted my combat. Then there was another big gap until level 39 where I got Kinetic Ward and Deflection, and actually got to feel like a tank.

Overall, I think the early levelling got it right but then the remaining abilities are far too spread out over the other levels, and valuable defensive abilities (at least for a tank) are locked away until halfway through the levelling.

Are you able to defeat enemies at a reasonable rate?

As above, this changes depending on where we are in the levelling process. Until around halfway through Coruscant, things feel nice and fast, then stall. Things pick up again when I get the damage boost from Cascading Debris unlocking, then slow down again. The slowdown almost always coincides with feeling I have to switch my companion to Heal rather than Damage just to get through a fight, as the levelling seems to give me threat generation before I have survivability. Around level 39 this starts to turn around and I get to feel like a tank who can afford to take mobs without a healer companion all the time.

Do all your abilities feel like they’re working together?

As I've alluded to already, during the levelling I feel like several of the abilities have been given too soon or too late. I'm given plenty of threat generation early on (and options for more) but constantly lack the survivability to go with it until I get my first defensives at level 39. I cannot understate the importance of having access to Kinetic Ward earlier. It's perhaps the most important ability for a Shadow Tank to work into their rotation from a survivability perspective, and I fear we'll instead have a situation where the Shadow Tank is a liability in group content at low levels simply because of how squishy they are until level 39.

As far as offence goes, the spec feels satisfying after hitting level 23 and getting Cascading Debris, which combos nicely with Force Potency, and I can imagine new players finding possibilities opening up in heroics/flashpoints as they unlock Mind Maze at level 19. It just lacks the tankiness for far too long.

[*]Does the current combat rotation make this experience feel like you are playing a Shadow? Why or why not?

For years, my rotation opener was: Force Potency - Spinning Kick

Now, for whatever reason beyond my understanding, you remove Spinning Kick? Why?

Every fight I just did while testing felt wrong.

What could possibly be your reason to remove Spinning Kick from Infiltration? It's not over-powered, and it's surely used by many players who are stealthing. Without Spinning Kick, I felt much less joy playing my shadow. I feel like it's a crucial ability for a stealther's gameplay.

[*]As you’re beginning from level 1, do you feel you have enough abilities that keep gameplay interesting?

I started testing at level 75. And even then I did NOT have enough abilities. From the way how I have my quickbars arranged on live, I lost 3 abilities from row 1, 4 abilities from row 2, and 3 abilities from row 3. That's 10 abilities less than on live. (I also don't understand how someone on page 1 claims that they had the same amount of abilities than on live. I don't. I guess it partially depends on the abilities choices you make in the skill tree.)

I have only one AoE left after making my choices: Whirling Blow. All other AoEs, as well as stuns like Force Stun are gone? Why?

Side note: A couple of abilities were gone from the quickbar, and I needed to add them manually.

[*]Are you able to defeat enemies at a reasonable rate?

I played KotFE chapter 16 and KotET chapter 9 with my shadow (in story mode). In chapter 16, I needed to put Lana as healer, because with both as DPS, the damage I received from trash (sky troopers) was too high. On live I play as DPS wigth DPS companion, and have no problems. With Lana as healer, fights took longer than before. However, at least on story mode, the fights were overall still very fast. Balance of bosses seems a bit off though. Some fell faster than sky troopers, others lasted (too) long for my taste.

Some boss fights were even buggy. That one sky trooper droid, for example, which casts a red plus and then lasers the room, kept doing that for 95% of the fight (except for the start and the very end). As a melee, I could only beat that boss very slowly with the help of the turrets, since I couldn't get close to him. Lana on the other hand was lying on the floor during the fight, refusing to get up or participate in any kind of way. So, the fight was basically: boss vs. turrets. Turrets won.

The Valkorian fight at the end of KotET chapter 9 took way too long without anything exciting happening. I barely got any damage thanks to Arcann's heals, and Valkorian only took very little damage from me, even though I regularly used the datacron and the green healing buffs to attack him. The fight has always been quite long, but I felt that it was even longer than on live.

[*]Do all your abilities feel like they’re working together?

What exactly does that question mean?

My main feedback is that without Spinning Kick, infiltration shadow feels incomplete. Please give it back.

P. S. I don't know where else to put this, but the cutscenes from KotET chapter 9 were completely out of range/focus (even when not skipping). My character and also Valkorion was most of the time so heavily zoomed in that you could only see the chest and chin of the character. That has never been like this on live before.

I'll be brief. Ability hand out is terrible. I grinded to level 40 in the Jedi Knight class story (through Hoth) as an infiltration shadow combat style. It was painful, and that was with an influence rank 50 companion, legacy datacrons, and keeping up with item modifications from the credit vendors on Fleet. I finally couldn't take it anymore and used the 80-boost droid on the fleet.

I continued to have significant Force pool problems up until 40, being forced to use my default attack. Ability roll-out is way to slow until finally at 35 it starts to pick up.

This particular leveling grind stinks.