Good day, I am leveling a PVP balance shadow right now, and thought I'd ask the advice of those who have gone before me. I see a couple of different ways to go on placing my talent tree points.

Biggest question...is it worthwhile to eschew Sever Force and instead go for Mind Over Matter in the Kinetic tree? Probably the #1 issue I have with this class so far in PVP is being knocked back and rooted, and the ability to purge the movement impairing effects would be quite welcome. Sever Force looks very nice, but don't know if it's worth taking if I have to give up MoM. A final spec along these lines might look something like this:

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#601bf0soZZcMfRrbkrfMM.3

If Sever Force is the way to go, just curious as to how folks would place the rest of the skill points. For me, it would look like you'd shoot straight for SF, then go up to 2/2 Misdirection in Infiltration (for the speed increase), and your last three points in Technique Mastery, since taking increased armor isn't all that useful in PvP. Final spec would look like this:

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#6010cZdrZcMfRrbkrfRR.3

Or I could be completely off, who knows. Look forward to hearing comments/feedback/suggestions. Thanks for reading!

Take Sever Force. With the automatic Rippling Force triggering, it deals a big chunk of damage. It also provide you some counter measure against enemy kiting. They snared you ? Root them. You just negated their attempt to keep you away.

You also may be interested into kiting your own enemies too with this skill. Wheither it be to reduce the output from a melee enemy because you're in need of heals, or wheither you just don't wan't to take unnecessary damage during a duel... There are some interesting thing to do with the root.

That aside, in one week with the disciplines, you'll be forced to have Sever Force, so... get used to it.

As for the remaining part... As long as you have Technique Mastery, almost everything else is flavoring in my opinion. I don't want to force a style on you just for one week.

Good day, I am leveling a PVP balance shadow right now, and thought I'd ask the advice of those who have gone before me.

Here's some; get a little self respect and roll something that isn't the most OP thing in the history of this game.

Take Sever Force. With the automatic Rippling Force triggering, it deals a big chunk of damage. It also provide you some counter measure against enemy kiting. They snared you ? Root them. You just negated their attempt to keep you away.

...

As for the remaining part... As long as you have Technique Mastery, almost everything else is flavoring in my opinion. I don't want to force a style on you just for one week.

Thanks Altheran, this makes sense. And yes, everything changing in a week, for sure.

Here's some; get a little self respect and roll something that isn't the most OP thing in the history of this game.

How about you hit that respec button and play something that requires even a minimal amount of skill. Tank shadows are suuuuper fun, and so is the middle tree. And guess what, they take a little skill.

Hahaha guys, thanks for the chuckle. In fact, this is quite literally the only class/spec combo that I have not yet tried. I run up against them so often on my Pyrotech/Vanguard that I wanted to get an idea of what makes 'em tick. So far I'm not all that impressed, I think a balance/madness sage/sorc is a lot more effective.

In fact Exosasa, one of my first and longest-played characters was a shadow tankassin. Once I stopped raiding though, he's mostly turned into my stimbot.

/snip

Oh sure, it's efficient. That's why all the bads play it. There's nothing to it. It's mindless damage with 0 skill involved.

Stick with something that reflects yourself well, not that ezmode shart.

Madness sorc isn't more effective. It does have an advantage in that it has range and kiting is so faceroll easy on a madness sorc, but madness sin's damage is a lot higher (its burst is extremely high for a "sustained" spec, not to mention the assassinate proc). Both madness are stupidly OP, but sorc has nothing on sin.

For example

1) 7k deathfield,

2) Discharge (And CT)

3) 8-10k assassinate

4) CrD w/ 4k initial hit

3) 3-4k thrashes

So "dotty."

Thanks again for the feedback, folks. It's fun to try out something different for a change, if nothing else.

Being balance is certainly not being different...

Yea, Hei and I hate madness >_>

It's fun to try though. Only a week left anyway, so might just as well go through all the things one has missed now.

As a reply to the original question, yes, take Sever Force.

Being balance is certainly not being different...

 

Yea, Hei and I hate madness >_>

It was hard to tell, you both bein' so subtle 'n all.

Playing the devil's advocate here, in PvP, if you don't know exactly what you are doing, a Balance Shadow will die.

LOL! Is this supposed to be a joke? Yeah sure, madness is a LITTLE squishier than deception (and by little I mean that deception has like 4% more damage reduction than madness, big f'ing whoop) but when you have burst that's nearly on par with a full burst spec and the highest sustained damage in the entire game, it really doesn't matter. I'm about as inexperienced with madness sin as you can get (I've played a total of 2 WZ's and maybe 5 duels with it in the entire 1.5 years I've had my assassin....) and pretty much just mash buttons (a slight exaggeration of course, but not too far off) and I completely faceroll people without even the smallest amount of effort. There really isn't much that anyone can do to stop my damage from melting them, except for juggs with ed, but that's the only thing that I even somewhat struggle with.

So no, a "noob" madness sin will not die over and over so long as they have half a brain cell.

LOL! Is this supposed to be a joke? Yeah sure, madness is a LITTLE squishier than deception (and by little I mean that deception has like 4% more damage reduction than madness, big f'ing whoop) but when you have burst that's nearly on par with a full burst spec and the highest sustained damage in the entire game, it really doesn't matter. I'm about as inexperienced with madness sin as you can get (I've played a total of 2 WZ's and maybe 5 duels with it in the entire 1.5 years I've had my assassin....) and pretty much just mash buttons (a slight exaggeration of course, but not too far off) and I completely faceroll people without even the smallest amount of effort. There really isn't much that anyone can do to stop my damage from melting them, except for juggs with ed, but that's the only thing that I even somewhat struggle with.

 

So no, a "noob" madness sin will not die over and over so long as they have half a brain cell.

Stop complaining, he has understood the game, play madness is right, because devs are incompetent, i play a madness inquisitors, both of them cuz is ridicuolous op, and i dont care, because balancing the game is a devs work, not mine, stop whining and play madness

A good deception sin beats a bad madness sin 9/10 times. It never ceases to amaze me how bad newer players can still be with OP spec's. Although madness/balance Sins/Shadows are without a doubt one of the strongest PvP specs in the game right now. If I liked melee casters I would play the spec on my Shadow, but I like to use my oversized saber a little more so I play deception mostly.

REALLY ?

how about a good dece vs a good madness ? u know for parity ?. I own almost all with madness and im dece geared, with gear bonus for deception, i haven't the self heal on cd, and im op the same, try to figure out, with the right gear...

I pvp far more less now, im tired to see wz with 6 shadow or 6 sages. no balance now wz = sins/sorcs madness TONS of veng juggs and stop, powertechs are growing btw

Playing the devil's advocate here, in PvP, if you don't know exactly what you are doing, a Balance Shadow will die. It will die and die over and over, almost as much as an Arsenal Mercenary. If you know what you are doing, it is a versatile and potent DPS, being capable of stealth, self-healing and possessing several defensive cooldowns. If not, you can be stunlocked and murdered before your resolve bar even fills, with Force Breach's DoT being your only damage source.

That is another thing I've noticed, once I'm out of stealth I better have an exit plan or any halfway decent team will stun and melt me in three seconds flat. I can't blame 'em though, you just don't want to let this spec hang around.

REALLY ?

how about a good dece vs a good madness ? u know for parity ?. I own almost all with madness and im dece geared, with gear bonus for deception, i haven't the self heal on cd, and im op the same, try to figure out, with the right gear...

I pvp far more less now, im tired to see wz with 6 shadow or 6 sages. no balance now wz = sins/sorcs madness TONS of veng juggs and stop, powertechs are growing btw

I can beat any "good" madness assassin or balance shadow you throw at me.

Stop complaining, he has understood the game, play madness is right, because devs are incompetent, i play a madness inquisitors, both of them cuz is ridicuolous op, and i dont care, because balancing the game is a devs work, not mine, stop whining and play madness

Oooorrrrrrrr I can just keep playing deception and killing FOTM madness sins. Just because something is OP doesn't mean you can't outplay the other person and kill them, and the reality is that when the majority of people playing an OP spec only rolled it because it's OP they won't have an understanding of the class like they would if they had played it for a long time, and that's something that you can easily exploit.

That is not to say though that it's not an uphill battle. Even with only an average player behind the controls, Madness pumps out so much damage that it's still a pain in the *** to take them down, and if I don't time my shroud perfectly it's basically GG me.

Here's some; get a little self respect and roll something that isn't the most OP thing in the history of this game.

Uncalled for much? And that fact that I'm feeling the need to say that is quite telling...

Don't bother with theise people and their personal vendettas OP, the spec is amazingly powerful sure.. but it doesn't beat Deception at what it does best. Anyways, I'm not exactly sure as to what kind of information you would be looking for.. It's pretty straightforward. Just be mindful of what you multidot, since the targets that you dot are no longer open to incapacitation effects.

Uncalled for much? And that fact that I'm feeling the need to say that is quite telling...

 

Don't bother with theise people and their personal vendettas OP, the spec is amazingly powerful sure.. but it doesn't beat Deception at what it does best. Anyways, I'm not exactly sure as to what kind of information you would be looking for.. It's pretty straightforward. Just be mindful of what you multidot, since the targets that you dot are no longer open to incapacitation effects.

Completely called for, if you ask me. I can count the number of non-madness sincs/sorcs I've seen in the last week on one hand, and to be completely frank, that's just ridiculous. The PvP community in this game is disgusting, so many of them spend their time playing nothing but whatever the overpowered specs are. It's annoying as hell and makes the people playing them look like A holes. And it's even more obnoxious when a certain "PvP" (those quote are there for sarcasm, if you can't tell) guild on my server runs 8m super queue's of regs with all of their dps being balance shadows. Nonsense gets really old, really fast.

The OP has nothing to do with that. You need to sit the f down.

Also, I don't know about you.. but I've been playing Deception since I started playing this game.

And the fact that I've been given the choice to take a break from that every now and then was quite a relieve.

The OP has nothing to do with that. You need to sit the f down.

 

Also, I don't know about you.. but I've been playing Deception since I started playing this game.

And the fact that I've been given the choice to take a break from that every now and then was quite a relieve.

Yes yes, because adding one more to the list of people playing the most faceroll spec in this entire game has "nothing" to do with the problem. Y'know, you sometimes have some really good posts, but sometimes I wonder if you even read the stuff you type before you click the post button.

You're overreacting. Massively.

As if it even affects you when another newbie specs madness and doesn't have a clue on how to approach it.

Worry about when you see me in Balance spec, instead of this guy who hasn't even got a Shadow yet.