Star Wars: The Old Republic - Infiltration Shadow Guide (6.3)

Though not as tanky as the Kinetic Combat discipline, you're definitely not squishy when playing Infiltration with the right gear. This is a highly versatile spec with viability in capped PvE, uncapped PvE and PvP situations. Gearing When gearing your Infiltration Shadow, something to keep in mind is that stat-wise you'll start pouring all of your available points into critical rating after you've achieved, or gotten reasonably close to, 1590 accuracy rating and 1213 alacrity. Naturally, the first thing you need to do is reach Item Rating 306. Items Once you've achieved that coveted IR of 306, it's time to fine tune your gear to bring the best performance out of your Infiltration Shadow. The best set bonus for this spec is Death Knell, a set exclusively worn by Consulars and Sorcerers. With Death Knell, two pieces grant you a 2% Mastery boost, and 4 pieces reduce the cooldown of Force Potency while also granting you up to 3 stacks of Potent Critical. This essentially guarantees a critical strike on your next activation of Shadow Strike or Spinning Strike.

The main attraction here however is the 6 piece bonus, which grants you up to 3 stacks of Audacious Potency whenever you consume one stack of Force Potency - which you will be doing a lot. Audacious Potency will boost your melee damage by 10% per stack for 30 seconds. The ideal Infiltration Shadow rotation - which we cover below - will keep you in this state for the maximum amount of time during any encounter.

Since you have 7 item slots but the Set Bonus you're gunning for maxes out at 6 pieces, you can use that 7th slot for any piece of the Amplified Champion set, which grants a potential damage amplifier - though you'll likely have to roll for the ideal one.

When it comes to Relics, stick to the Sha'tek Relic of Focused retribution and Sha'tek Relic of Serendipitous Assault so long as you are completing level 75 content, granting you Mastery and Power. This will increase your combat effectiveness more so than the clicky Alacrity Relic or the Critical Rating relic, as your set bonus will already be pushing those stats to the maximum. You can swap them around for level-capped content, since sub-75 caps will remove any benefits you get from Mastery and Power Relics.

Things get a bit complicated with the ideal Infiltration Shadow Tacticals. This isn't a clear cut (ha!) situation like the Vigilance Guardian, where once you get Cut to Pieces you're good to go - no, the Infiltration Shadow will need to keep three Tacticals on hand depending on the situation. For PvP situations, your best bet is Two Cloaks, which adds an extra charge to Force Cloak. Enemy players will absolutely hate you for this, as disappearing mid combat is a fantastic strategic advantage both from a damage dealing and survivability perspective. You can unleash your heavy-hitting stealth-only attacks, or slink away to safety should a duel prove too difficult.

When you are facing down PvE encounters, you'll still need two other Tacticals to get the most out of your character. When you know you will be facing single targets, like during boss encounters, you need to use The Awakened Flame, which will cause your Psychokinetic Blast ability to impart a Damage-Over-Time status to your target, vastly increasing your long-term damage output.

May Cause Injury is the Tactical to choose when you are doing PvE content that throws multiple enemies at you, like Heroic missions where clearing out trash mobs is part of the objective. When using this Tactical, if you activate Force Breach following Cleaving Cut, it will hit up to 8 enemies, and you can pre-buff your Force Breach since Cleaving Cut can be activated without a target. Amplifiers Your overall damage output will get the most benefits out of the Armor Penetration Amplifiers, of which you'll get an extra one due to the use of the Amplified Champion armor piece. This is best combined with The Awakened Flame, giving a huge damage boost to the Damage-Over-Time effect your Psychokinetic Blast imparts on the target, since that DoT relies on Armor Penetration damage. Utilities Example of our preferred build

Infiltration Shadows have quite a bit of flexibility when it comes to their Utility layout - they aren't as rigid as some other classes where there is one single clear-cut best distribution. That said, some builds are still better than others.

Our preferred setup consists of the following:

Skillful

Masterful

Heroic

You may notice the lack of One with the Shadows, which might confuse you if you were an old-time Infiltration player coming back to the game and checking this guide for a refresh. Following the merciless (though arguably justified) nerfing of both Jedi Shadows and Sith Assassins in 6.0, this formerly essential Utility isn't really that great anymore - though it isn't useless either, and can be worked into a build.

Situationally you might want to swap a few of these out, or to experiment with Utilities that better fit your playstyle. Some other viable options include stuff like Avenging Grip, Sturdiness, Misdirection and Egress. Rotations The Infiltration Shadow is one of those funky classes that relies on a more complex opener than its main rotation - another stark contrast between this class and the Vigilance Guardian, but we digress.

Your opener will largely depend on your exact Utility build, but the one we describe below works perfectly with our model Utility build seen above. Opener Force Potency Force Breach Force Cloak Shadow Stride Force Breach Battle Readiness Psychokinetic Blast Vaulting Slash Shadow Strike Spinning Strike Psychokinetic Blast Force Breach Clairvoyant Strike Clairvoyant Strike Psychokinetic Blast Switch to Main Main Force Breach Psychokinetic Blast Vaulting Slash Spinning Strike Shadow Strike Clairvoyant Strike Repeat until target dies