SWTOR 4.0 Infiltration Shadow PvP Guide by Kre’a

SWTOR 4.0 Infiltration Shadow PvP Guide by Kre’a

Intro to Infiltration Shadow

Infiltration Shadow is a rogue-like Discipline that specializes in short ranged combat. This Discipline excels at maintaining constant control over your enemies with your arsenal of crowd control tools while also supplying single target burst damage. You will want to play this Discipline over Serenity if you need extra control in Warzones, enjoy large objective based Warzone maps, want to perform a hard swap composition in Group Ranked, or if there is a large amount of Ranged DPS in the Solo Ranked queue.

Ratings

Single Target DPS: 7

AoE Damage: 3

Group Utility: 7

Difficulty: 8

*RNG Dependent: Yes

Burst: 8

Sub 30% Talent or Ability Buffs: Yes

Gearing and Stats Priority

Accuracy: 0

Alacrity: 0

Critical Rating: All of your tertiary stat points should be put into Critical Rating

Power: All secondary stats should be put into power

Relics: Serendipitous Assault &Devastating Vengeance

Set Bonus: 6 Piece Stalker’s Set

Technique: Shadow Technique

Augments: Overkill Augments (Power)

Gearing Overview

With the abundance of defensive cooldowns in PvP that increase defense chance, gearing for Accuracy becomes a moot point. On top of this, every point put into accuracy will lower your overall burst potential and Infiltration relies on the ability to heavily burst enemies down with the hopes of killing them to reset Force Potency to open up another burst window. Alacrity is a great stat for sustained damage, but as was previously stated, Infiltration is more about burst and Alacrity won’t help you accomplish this goal better than going purely into Critical Rating will.

Since 4.0, Critical Rating is now an all-encompassing stat increases both your Critical Chance % as well as your Surge (Critical Damage) % modifier. This is an amazing buff to Infiltration because it now allows us to have a large abundance of Crit Chance % without sacrificing any Power, which was the dilemma in the 3.0 era. This increases the overall burst of this spec by a large margin.

The Stalker’s set bonus is vital. The 15 second cool down reduction on Force Potency is a good bonus and the auto-crit on Shadow Strike or Spinning Strike is paramount to lining up a burst opener and a succeeding in a kill window. This set bonus is a must have.

Utilities

Utility choices will vary based on what type of PvP you’re partaking in and most importantly playstyle! I will go over 3 different utility load outs, one for Unranked Warzones, one for Aggressive Ranked play and one for Defensive Ranked play. Play around with all of these utilities to find which suit you the best.

Unranked Warzones

1. Skillful

Celerity – Cooldown reduction on CC breaker, Force Speed and your interrupt. Must have.

Misdirection – Stealth level increase as well as in-combat MS increase. Great for moving between nodes

Force Wake – Great utility for rooting multiple enemies. The amount of situational utility that this point provides is massive

2. Masterful

Egress – Root break on Force Speed and immunity to further roots/slows for the duration of Force Speed. This is a must have as a melee class.

Fade – 25% Cooldown reduction on your Force Cloak, this utility is infinitely more useful in Unranked Warzones since some of them can last anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes.

3. Heroic

Containment – Hands down, the most useful utility in this tier for objective based PvP. Most node caps require a 6 second channel. This is an 8 second mezz.

Cloak of Resilience OR One with the Shadows – Cloak of Resilience will give you access to a second Resilience on use of Force Cloak. This can be used offensively or defensively. One with the Shadows decreases your ability to be kited by allowing your Phantom Stride to be used while rooted and breaking all slows as well on use. Both are viable options but Cloak of Resilience has more situational use than One with the Shadows. Choose based on your play style.

Feel free to mix these utilities up to find what works best for you.

Aggressive Ranked Warzones (solo)

1. Skillful

Celerity – This utility is mandatory.

Snaring Strikes – Rotational 30% MS reduction on enemy players. For a hyper aggressive playstyle, this is an excellent utility.

Misdirection – Stealth detection in ranked can be circumvented by proper use of Blackout. The 15% MS increase is what’s important here. Combined with Snaring Strikes, it creates 45% MS deficit for any enemy you are attacking. This is very powerful.

2. Masterful

Egress – This utility is mandatory.

Kinetic Acceleration – Rotational 50% MS increase with 50% uptime. Combine this with Snaring Strikes to create an 80% MS deficit for your enemy target, equivalent to a Sentinel’s predation.

Mind over Matter* – This utility is mentioned because while it doesn’t give you a direct damage increase or move speed increase, it instead increases the duration of your Resilience by 2 seconds, on both the base skill as well as the Resilience that is applied through the Cloak of Resilience utility. For that reason, it can be utilized for aggressive plays where you want to increase your uptime on a target by extending the duration of your Resilience, which will prevent you from being stunned or controlled with force or tech based abilities. This utility point would take the place of Kinetic Acceleration.

3. Heroic

Containment – The utility of this skill outweighs any other utility in this tier. The ability to instantly mezz any target for 8 seconds is too good to pass up, especially when used in conjunction with Focus Target and the Focus Target Modifier keybind to mezz a player without actually targeting them.

Cloak of Resilience – The Resilience gained through using Force Cloak is affected by the Mind over Matter utility so if you want to take Mind over Matter then it would make sense to take this utility as well due to the synergy between the two utilities. This utility is great for aggressive gameplay by giving you an extra 4 seconds of Resilience, which translates to an additional 4 seconds of immunity to Force and Tech based CC.

One with the Shadows – Root break on Phantom Stride. Only take this utility if you also took Kinetic Acceleration in the masterful tier. If you took Mind over Matter, Cloak of Resilience has better synergy and will give you the greatest gain per point. This utility fits in with your Egress, Kinetic Acceleration, Misdirection and Snaring Strikes, by reducing your enemies’ ability to kite you.

Defensive Ranked Warzones (solo)

1. Skillful

Celerity – Once again, mandatory utility.

Shadowy Veil – 30% extra armor on this class equates to about 5% damage reduction. This utility also synergizes well with our Kinetic Field passive.

Force Wake – The ability to knock back and root enemies in solo ranked is beyond amazing. The usefulness of this utility is augmented further on multi-tiered maps such as Makeb Mesa Arena or Orbital Station.

Mental Defense – 30% Damage Reduction while stunned is great, but Shadowy Veil provides the 5% DR at all times. With the abundance of AoE flying around, Shadowy Veil will be used more and will save you from more damage than Mental Defense will. With that being said, if you want this utility, replace Shadowy Veil with it.

2. Masterful

Egress – Mandatory!

Mind over Matter – When combined with Cloak of Resilience, this utility effectively gives you 4 extra seconds of Resilience, double the normal amount that you would regularly have. Must have for Defensive play compared to any other utility point in this tier.

3. Heroic

Cloak of Resilience – Once again, combined with Mind over Matter, this makes for a great tool to reduce and mitigate a large amount of damage. Given that the damage profile in PvP primarily consists of Force and Tech damage, this is the best utility point in this tier for defensive play.

Containment – Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. The ability to instantly mezz any target for 8 seconds is amazing in that it gives you and your team 8 extra seconds where you are all taking 0 damage from an enemy.

Sturdiness – 4.0 brought a heavy nerf to this utility by cutting its duration down by 50%. In my opinion, this utility isn’t worth taking anymore, but to be honest, it was never really worth taking in Infiltration anyway compared to Containment and Cloak of Resilience. You can still be rooted and slowed while this utility is active, so its only real use is when you’re in the middle of multiple enemies that can throw out AoE crowd control, such as a Sentinel, Scoundrel, Vanguard, etc.

Abilities and Rotation

Abilities

Force Breach – While in Shadow Technique, this ability is a flat burst damage ability. It does more damage based on how many Breaching Shadow stacks you have. Only use this ability at 3 stacks for maximum burst. This ability will also debuff your enemy, causing them to take 5% more force damage for 45 seconds from all sources. Shadow Strike – Only use this ability when you get the Infiltration Tactics passive proc, as the proc will increase its damage and reduce its cost. Any use of this ability outside of the proc will leave you severely force starved, which will hurt your overall DPS and burst capabilities. This ability also debuffs your enemy’s armor, reducing their armor by 20% for 45 seconds. Psychokinetic Blast – This ability can do more damage than your Force Breach if you get the Upheaval passive proc. This ability is very high priority and should be used off cool down. It’s best to use this ability when you have two stacks of Clairvoyance, to ensure that Psychokinetic Blast builds an additional Breaching Shadow for your Force Breach. Clairvoyant Strike – Filler ability that replaces Double Strike. This ability should always be used to build two stacks of Clairvoyance as well as to maintain the Induction passive to help with Force management. Generally speaking, Infiltration has little force management issues in PvP and this ability augments that pretty well. Spinning Strike – Your sub 30% execute ability. Use this ability off cool down when trying to kill an enemy player. If you push a player into execute range and your 6 piece set bonus proc is available, always use it on Spinning Strike over Shadow Strike, even if Shadow Strike is buffed with Infiltration Tactics. ASpinning Strike auto-crit will do more damage than a Shadow Strike auto-crit even when buffed by Infiltration Tactics. If you use Spinning Strike and it misses and your target receives healing of some type to take them out of execute range, then use the set bonus proc on Shadow Strike. If Shadow Strike or Spinning Strike misses, it will NOT consume your 6 piece set bonus proc. Whirling Blow – benefits from all the same buffs as Clairvoyant Strike AND benefits from the Skillful 30% slow utility, making this ability an AoE 30% slow. Definitely use this if you can hit multiple targets. This can also be spammed before going into stealth to buff your Psychokinetic Blast for 10 seconds. Mind Crush – Only ever to be used immediately after a Low Slash or Force Stun and only if you will NOT be interrupted, hindered, or suffer any ability pushback while casting it. Low Slash – 30 meter ability that has a 15 second cool down. Incapacitates your target for 4 seconds, with the mezz portion breaking on damage. This ability is the staple of Infiltration and the sole reason that it is known as ‘the control’ spec. Use this religiously with Focus Target and Focus Target Modifier to essentially take an enemy healer or DPS out of the fight for 4 seconds every 15 seconds. Can also be used as a single target gap closer, but that’s less useful than Low Slashing a healer or even tank on cooldown, especially in a ranked match. Force Lift – 30 meter ability that mezzes the target for 8 seconds. As Infiltration, this should always be an instant cast. It has the same uses as Low Slash as mentioned above. Mind Maze – Also known as “sap”. This ability is only useable from stealth and will mezz the target for 8 seconds. Try to get to the enemy before the fight engages in order to sap one of them to create a short advantage for your team. Mind Control/Mass Mind Control – Use these abilities always, they should never be available and should always be on cooldown. Taunting reduces the damage your enemies do to your allies by 30% for 6 seconds. Be a team player, use your taunts.

Rotation

This is Player versus Player. There is NO real rotation. You adapt based on your surroundings! However, some versatile openers are listed below.

The most generic opener for PvP is to open with a Spinning Kick from stealth >Force Potency, Clairvoyant Strike(VS)>Force Breach>Shadow Strike>Psychokinetic Blast.

OR

Spinning Kick from stealth >Force Potency, CS>Shadow Strike>Force Breach>Psychokinetic Blast

This is 5 global cooldowns. The reason for popping Force Potency as soon as you Spinning Kick is so that the cooldown timer can start counting down quicker. This way, if your target dies, you can reset Force Potency even quicker since you used it at the beginning of your opener instead of using it right before you use Force Breach. You want to use Clairvoyant Strike before Shadow Strike so that it is an auto-crit. Whether you use Shadow Strike or Force Breach first will depend on how your target reacted. If, for example, your target is a Shadow and pops Resilience, it wouldn’t make sense to use Force Breach, so you would use Shadow Strike instead with a follow up of Clairvoyant Strikes or Low Slash until the Resilience wears off. If the target is a Sage and has bubble stun, you will want to open with Force Breach from 6+ meters away so that you don’t get caught in the mezz radius of the bubble. PvP is dynamic, and as such, your rotation should be altered based on what’s happening at the moment. With that being said, if the situation allows it, put a higher priority on rotation 2 as it will debuff your enemy’s armor and allow the rest of your moves to hit a little bit harder.

After the initial opener cycle through Clairvoyant Strike filler, use Psychokinetic Blast whenever you can but preferably when it is fully buffed by Clairvoyant Strike as to not delay your Breaching Shadow stacks, and only use Force Breach at 3 stacks. Only use Shadow Strike with Infiltration Tactics procs. Use Low Slash on cooldown on your Focus Target. If you’re in a single target scenario where you without a doubt will NOT be interrupted or hindered, Low Slash the enemy and hard cast Mind Crush and immediately spam either an Infiltration Tactics procced Shadow Strike, Psychokinetic Blast, or 3 stack Force Breach. The long cast time will take up a little more than the space of a full global cooldown, allowing you to stack the damage of the initial hit of Mind Crush with that of your second ability, which is a lot of burst damage.

There are a multitude of situational “rotations” in which you could cycle through your offensive and defensive cooldowns. They cannot all be listed however, because in PvP, no two fights will be the same, there is always some slight variance which will change the outcome of the fight in the long term. It’s up to you as the player to determine when your chance to strike is and when you should sit back in stealth for a bit longer. These situations will be easier to identify with time and practice. With that being said, I will go through a brief and very basic use of defensive cooldowns.

Defensive Cooldowns

Deflection – As Infiltration, you probably don’t have the Sturdiness talent. Without the talent, this is only of any use against a class that deals mainly Melee/Ranged (M/R) damage or a hybrid of M/R damage and Force/Tech (F/T) damage, such as Shadows or Sentinels. Pop this when you predict a large amount of white damage coming your way. For example, if you see a Gunslinger casting Charged Burst but you can’t break LoS, or if you see the enemy Infiltration Shadow has no Force Breach stacks but has an Infiltration Tactics proc ready. Or if you are falling into the execute range and fear the impending Spinning Strike, Quickdraw, or Viscous Throw coming your way. Resilience – This ability is best used to either a) avoid large amounts of Force/Tech damage or b) avoid Force/Tech based stuns and crowd control. Because of its rather short cooldown, it will more than likely be used before any other DCD. If you can predict when an enemy will stun you, pop this milliseconds beforehand to counter it. The same goes for if you can predict a large Force/Tech based damaging ability coming your way, such as a Vanguard’s Cell Burst and/or Assault Plastique. Blackout – I like to use this ability in conjunction with my Warzone Adrenal to mitigate large burst that I have no means of resisting due to other DCDs being on cooldown. Battle Readiness – This is a good heal that I use after popping Blackout or my Warzone Adrenal. Note, the self-heal portion of this ability does not proc from Force damage. It only procs when your Shadow Technique procs and Shadow Technique will only proc off of melee damage (excluding a buffed Psychokinetic Blast). Phase Walk – This ability can be used while stunned. THIS ABILITY CAN BE USED WHILE STUNNED. This is vital because it has a fairly short cooldown and will save you from having to use your bigger defensive cooldowns. Use this whenever you predict that you will take fatal damage or a large amounts of damage that will be difficult to recover from. After you’ve used it, run away from the fight so that you naturally break combat and heal to full. This saves you from having to use Force Cloak to break combat. Force Cloak – Your bread and butter skill. This should be the last ability you use and is your ‘worst case scenario’ ability. Hold on to this for as long as possible UNLESS you are going to use it offensively to use Spinning Kick from stealth. Only ever use it offensively if you are more certain than not that it will result in a kill that would put your team in an advantageous position. For example. If using this ability offensively would lead to your team getting a kill on the enemy DPS, but you die in the process, it might not be worth it. However, if using it offensively results in killing the enemy Healer and you die in the process, that’s situation might be more worth it. Judge these things on a case by case scenario. If you are trying to break combat to heal to full, use Phase Walk FIRST followed by Force Cloak. This prevents you from being pulled back into combat from AoE taunts or abilities.

Peeling

Infiltration Shadows have a large array of crowd control. First and foremost, use these abilities to peel for your team, especially in ranked. Peeling will put your team at an advantage and once you have that advantage, you want to push it further and turn it into a victory. Setting up that advantage starts with you as an Infiltration player, to use your mezzes, stuns and plethora of utility to lock down as many enemies as possible to keep your team alive and establish situational control over the enemy team. Peels and team play wins games. Farming damage does not win games.

Maps

This section will show you key locations on each map to use for line of sight, various locations to drop your Phase Walk offensively and defensively, as well as locations where you want to force fights to happen.

Orbital Station

This map is one of the best for a Shadow player. Use the red marks for offensive Phase Walks, green for defensive. Try to initiate the fight by getting a stealth knockdown on as many enemies as possible. Force the fight up on the catwalk and use your knock back to force imbalanced fights for the enemy. If you set your PW up top and have focus fire on you, jump down. If the enemy chases you, PW back up and you have now forced a 3v4 in favor of your team.

Makeb Mesa Arena

The green circles indicate places you want to place your Phase Walk to ensure that you do not get popped out of stealth if you decide to Phase Walk and use Force Cloak to heal to full. The red circles indicate common locations that a ranged or even melee class will run to kite you or to escape being focused by your team. If you place your Phase Walk in these locations, you can often teleport behind your enemy when they go to run or escape.

An amazing trick that is severely underused is setting your Phase Walk on the top bridge and jumping down when you’re focused. I will make a video showing this mechanic, as it will make more sense when it is seen. Essentially, if you are being focused, you will want to jump down off of the bridge to the ground level. If you jump at the appropriate time (about 50-60% HP range) you enemy will 8 times out of 10 attempt to chase you down for the kill. This is when you will use Phase Walk to teleport you back on top of the bridge. This creates an extremely favorable position for your team, as you have now secluded 1 or more of the enemy team on the ground level, forcing their team to fight a 3v4 or even 2v4 if more than one person chases you down.

You will want to communicate with your team that you want to force the fight on the bridge. The reason is that you were a superstar and decided to take Force Wave/Overload root. When the fight is just starting, the enemy will more than likely do 1 of 2 things. 1) Huddle together around the base of the bridge, near the LoS rock. Or 2) Rush the bridge to claim the high ground. This is your time to shine, you will use stealth as your gap closer and use Blackout to increase your stealth level so you can get in undetected. Initiate the fight by properly timing your knock back to knock as many off of the bridge as possible, creating an imbalanced fight for the enemy team, and giving you the advantage as now, whoever was knocked down will have to use movement increasing effects to try to re-engage into the fight, effectively wasting their time and reducing the overall damage your team will take. If you can help it, always try to force the fight up top. The only exception to this is in Tank/Heal/2 DPS matches, as attempting to fight up is just a waste of time. In Heal/3 DPS matches, you will still want to fight on the bridge, even more so, because if you can knock the healer down, you put yourself at a very large advantage towards winning the round.

Corellia Square Arena

Green squares indicate places to place your Phase Walk defensively. Red squares indicate offensive positions to potentially cut off a running enemy. This map plain sucks for Shadow/Assassin players. It is the widest open of the 4 maps, and as such, is terrible to play on when you are facing a multitude of ranged DPS classes because it makes it difficult to Line of Sight. There are a few LoS objects, but they are situated in such a way that you will not be able to always continue to DPS while LoS’ing. The best thing you can do in a map such as this is to wait for the enemy team to engage on your terms, by simply waiting around a LoS object and attempting to attack from behind it. This strategy actually works well if the enemy team has at least 1 melee DPS, as they will be forced into the center of your team, allowing you to both DPS the Melee enemy while simultaneously LoS’ing the ranged DPS. With practice, this becomes easier.

Tatooine Canyon

The red indicates places to place your Phase Walk offensively, to catch someone kiting potentially. The green indicates locations that are generally safe to heal to full from. This map is really good for Hatred players. The small size of the map forces fights to be in one centralized location, which is optimal for DoT spreading. There are also a large sum of LoS objects for kiting purposes. A small trick that many don’t utilize is using the outer edge of the pit to LoS players who are on the top of the ledge of the pit. The angle is just slight enough that players will be unable to see you if you hug the wall inside of the pit, effectively allowing you to LoS ranged classes with ease. Knock back root is best utilized here by rooting someone behind one of the 4 inner pillars, or knocking them into the pit when the fight is happening on the top level. Make sure that as a melee DPS, you do not find yourself DPSing your target with your back to the pit, as you will inevitably be knocked in, which is a hassle considering there is only 1 focal way to escape the pit and get back to the fight, depending on which side of the arena you are playing on.

About the Author

Special thanks – Special thanks to <Clickers> of the Bastion/Harbinger. Te’fia of Harbinger, Aelanis of Shadowlands and everyone on the Assassin/Shadow forum. Also, a special thanks to No’Touchy of Harbinger, check her out at Twitch.tv/NoTouchyTv.

Hey guys, I’m Kre’a! I’ve mained an Assassin/Shadow for about 3 years now. In season 4,I achieved 2931 ELO, placing me as Rank #2 overall across all advanced classes and Rank #1 for the Shadow/Assassin advanced class. In season 6 I was Rank #3 for the Shadow/Assassin advanced class. You can check me out at Twitch.tv/Kreea.