SWTOR 7.7 Serenity Shadow PvE Guide and Best Builds

SWTOR Serenity Shadow PvE Guide (DPS) for beginners and more experienced veterans: Skills, Choices, Rotations, Gearing, Builds, Tips!

Introduction to Serenity Shadow

Serenity Shadows fend off legions of aggressors with a combination of overwhelming Force attacks and a double-bladed lightsaber that utilizes a Jedi technique to strengthen swings with the power of the Force. The discipline is in an incredible spot right now, arguably a bit overpowered. BioWare clearly put a lot of hard work into creating a ton of compelling discipline passives that provide powerful boosts to DPS and survivability while improving the overall flow of the rotation.

Serenity offers some of the highest sustained DPS in the game with the potential to increase it even further when adds are present thanks to its ability to bounce DoTs between targets rather than manually refreshing them. This discipline’s only real weakness is a complete lack of burst, but this is expected because Serenity is a DoT spec after all.

Serenity’s AoE capabilities are nearly unparalleled; their only competitor is Vigilance Guardian. All other disciplines are leagues behind what both of these specs are capable of. Their AoE damage is so strong that they can take care of some add mechanics completely on their own or only need help from a single other player. This enables other group members to focus their ability tree choices on buffing single-target damage output and not have to worry about AoE at all.

In terms of survivability, Shadow DPS remains strong at mitigating big hits but continues to struggle with sustained damage taken over a long period of time. That said, they do have enough mitigation to off-tank for a brief period. Serenity also has the capacity to significantly increase their survivability, but this comes at great cost to their sustained DPS.

BioWare will likely be making balance changes throughout the first few patches, so be sure to check back to this guide after each update. You can check at the top of the guide to see if the guide has been updated for the most recent patch.

Major Changes in 7.0

Utility points are gone! Instead, there is a new system called the Ability Tree. Each discipline has 8 choices where they pick 1 of 3 options. The options have several similarities across the Combat Styles:

• 2 choices buff a discipline-specific ability (2 abilities, 1 choice each).
• 3 choices which are just old Utility effects. These choices are almost always the same for all disciplines. 
• 2 choices where you’re picking between 1 ability or 1 of 2 passives. One of the ability choices tends to be an offensive cooldown (OCD). The other seems to be related to PvP balance, but there isn’t a clear pattern beyond the choice forcing players to decide which of 3 capabilities they want to keep.
• 1 choice where you’re picking 1 of 3 abilities. One of the abilities is always one of your primary CCs, either the 8s mez or 4s hard stun. Another of the abilities is the movement ability with the longest cooldown. The third option is less consistent, it seems to be there as an extra balance lever for BioWare since some abilities that got locked away are more impactful than others. The 3 abilities are almost always the same for each discipline.

This means almost all disciplines had 5 abilities locked away behind choices with the option for players to keep up to 3 of them. In addition, many extremely situational abilities were pruned entirely. Infiltration permanently lost access to 2 abilities: 

• Guard (now tank-only)
• Spinning Kick (now tank-only as choice)

Guarding is now a tank-only ability, which is the logical next step since the nerf to Guard for DPS partway through 6.0 was ineffective at stopping its ubiquity in PvP. 

Battle rezzes in general are now healer-only, but there is no longer a global 5 min lockout on those abilities, so it’s treated just like any other ability, albeit with a much longer cooldown. 

Group Composition Tips

In order to deal maximum damage, Serenity requires 3 other DPS debuffs:

DPS Debuff	Presence of debuff increases DPS by approximately
Armor	4.0%
Internal / Elemental	3.0%
Melee	1.3%
Total DPS Gain:	8.3%

Serenity is pretty average when it comes to group composition dependency. Thankfully, the buffs it needs are highly sought after, so as long as you’re shooting for a good group composition, you should be fine. It’s nice if you can try to get the Internal/Elemental and especially Armor debuffs, but I wouldn’t worry about the Melee debuff.

Serenity pairs extremely well with Juggernaut / Guardian DPS, especially Vengeance / Vigilance. Both Combat Styles provide 2 DPS debuffs that the other needs. Serenity receives the Melee and Armor debuffs while it provides the Force and AoE debuff. In addition, you’ll have an extremely powerful pair when it comes to AoE such that the other DPS in your group can typically get away with playing more disciplines and taking ability tree buffs that are oriented towards boosting single-target DPS.

Annihilation / Watchman also pairs well with Serenity by providing the Melee and Internal / Elemental debuff, though it isn’t a perfect match because Annihilation / Watchman doesn’t benefit from the AoE debuff in single-target situations and both debuffs that benefit Serenity offer less of a DPS increase combined than the Armor debuff.

DPS Mindset

How can I do as much damage as possible in each GCD (global cooldown, 1.5 second duration before you can activate another ability) given the constraints of the fight? Which ability do I use right now that will provide me the most DPS? How can I maximize my uptime? If I’m not activating an ability right now, why not? Can I finish this cast before I need to move? What happens if I don’t have time to finish a cast before moving? Can the healers deal with it without too much stress?  

Check out the SWTOR Damage Types and Damage Mitigation guide.

Abilities Explained

Please have the game open while reading through the next few sections. I will not be writing out ability descriptions and I will only be transcribing the components of discipline passives that directly relate to the ability and rotation. This forces you to read through what everything does so that you can understand what all of your passives and abilities do as well as locate these abilities in-game. Make sure you place all of these abilities on your bar in an order that makes sense to you. 

Single-Target Rotational Abilities, Attributes, and Important Procs

Force Technique

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target)
I’m going to start off this section by going over Force Technique, which is a discipline passive that used to be an ability a long time ago alongside Combat Technique (now exclusive to Kinetic Combat) and Shadow Technique (now exclusive to Infiltration). Force Technique is responsible for the visual effect you see on your saberstaff. 

This lightsaber charge passive governs how the Force Breach ability works for each discipline and makes it so dealing melee damage has a 50% chance to deal some sort of additional Force damage alongside some other effects unique to each discipline. 

Force Technique is the most basic of the 3 saber charges, but since it doesn’t have a rate limit and has a chance to trigger with each hit, melee attacks that hit multiple times have a greater chance to trigger the effect compared to attacks that only hit once.

Double Strike hits 2 times (shocking, I know), Saber Strike hits 3 times, and Whirling Blow can hit up to 8 times (though only once per enemy). The most notable impact of this is that it slightly shrinks the damage disparity between Saber Strike and Double Strike. Force Technique has 2 discipline passives and 1 proc associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Rebounding Force
When your Force Technique deals damage, it restores 5 Force. In practice, this makes your melee attacks slightly cheaper than they appear and allows you to regenerate even more Force with Saber Strike.

Mind and Body
The critical hit chance of Force Technique is increased by 50%. Normally I wouldn’t mention something like this since it doesn’t really affect your rotation, but I wanted to point it out since you might notice that Force Technique tends to have more than 80% crit chance in StarParse and wonder why.

Force Synergy
Dealing critical Force damage increases your Melee critical chance by 5%. Lasts 10 seconds. This proc applies to all Shadow disciplines. I’m pointing it out here because it’s a proc that applies to all of your melee attacks. It shouldn’t ever affect which ability you choose to use, but it will appear on your bar so I wanted to explain what it does. This can trigger from Force Technique in addition to actual attacks.

Force Breach

(Force/Energy/Periodic/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability functions completely differently in each discipline; the only things about Force Breach that remain constant between the 3 Shadow disciplines are that the ability deals Force damage and is instant.

In Serenity, Force Breach is an 18s DoT, nearly identical to Sever Force. It doesn’t have a cooldown, but you don’t want to clip it since that wastes DPS, so you still only want to use it once every 18 seconds on the same target. Force Breach is one of the few DoTs in the game that deals Energy damage as opposed to Internal or Elemental. This is especially odd because Force Breach deals Internal damage in the other Shadow Disciplines. 

The fact that Force Breach deals Energy damage means that Serenity is more reliant on having someone apply the Armor debuff than most other DoT specs and contributes to Serenity being one of the specs that relies most on the armor debuff out of disciplines that don’t provide it for themselves. Force Breach has 1 debuff and 2 discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation that I haven’t already mentioned:

Force Strike
Dealing damage with Melee attacks affected by your Force Breach grant Force Strike, finishing the cooldown on Squelch and making your next Squelch consume no Force. Additionally, activating Shadow Stride grants Force Strike. Force Strike cannot be granted more than once every 9 seconds. This proc makes it essential that Force Breach is active on whatever you’re whacking with your saberstaff.

Drain Mind
Force Breach and Sever Force steal life from enemy targets, healing you for 10% of the damage they deal. This component of the discipline passive offers a pretty small amount of additional survivability in single-target situations but can add up very quickly in AoE situations.

Aching Mind
Your periodic damage abilities (and Force in Balance and Squelch) deal 25% more damage to targets that have less than 30% health. This is the strongest sub-30% damage boost in the game and that’s on top of just Spinning Strike being enabled and dealing nearly double damage compared to your fillers. You basically get a massive damage boost on all of your most powerful abilities (Serenity Strike is buffed separately). The only things that don’t receive a damage boost are your garbage fillers.

This damage boost means that Serenity will perform considerably better in most burn phases, though their above-30% damage output is a bit lower than what the vast majority of Combat Styles are capable of. It also makes them a fair bit worse in burst DPS checks where it’s much harder to capitalize on the sub-30% boost.

Sever Force

(Force/Internal/Periodic/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability is extremely similar to Serenity’s Force Breach. The only major difference is that it deals Internal damage instead of Energy. Just from the tooltips, it may look like Sever Force deals less damage, but the fact that it bypasses armor while Force Breach doesn’t result in the actual damage you deal to enemies being nearly identical. 

Sever Force also applies a 2s root that has a 9s rate limit. In PvE, this is really more of a drawback because most enemies you’d want to root are immune and when you’re trying to DoT spread while enemies are running around, it ends up separating one from the rest of the group. Sever Force does not have any procs, discipline passives, or debuffs associated with it that I haven’t already mentioned that are relevant to your rotation.

Force in Balance

(Force/Internal/Direct/AoE/Instant)
This ability has the distinction of being one of the only rotational placeable AoE DPS abilities in the game and accounts for slightly less damage per GCD than each of your 18s DoTs. In single-target situations, the new ability tree buffs should be enough to barely close the gap in damage output to the extent that it doesn’t matter too much which one you use first in terms of DPS. Since Force in Balance is an AoE, this DPS priority concern goes away immediately when additional targets are present.

Force in Balance is much more expensive than your other attacks, costing 30 Force while most others cost 20 or less and you will feel it if you have to incorporate Double Strike or Whirling Blow into your rotation. Since it can’t trigger Force Technique, it feels even more costly because you don’t get the Force refund from Rebounding Force.

You might have trouble placing Force in Balance when you’re further away from large bosses if you double-click to place instead of positioning manually. The range on your AoE abilities is calculated based on how far away the center of the reticle is from the player while your distance away from the target seems to be calculated based on your proximity to the enemy model, so when you try to place your reticle on a large enemy when you’re close to 10m away, sometimes the center of the reticle doesn’t reach the center of the boss so you can’t double click to place.

In practice, this means that the effective range of Force in Balance can be significantly shorter than 10m. Force in Balance has 2 debuffs associated with it that are relevant to your rotation that I haven’t already mentioned:

Force Suppression
The next 15 ticks of your periodic abilities will deal 15% additional damage. This is a major contributing factor to Force in Balance’s high priority. These debuffs account for about a third of Force in Balance’s overall damage contribution. Even without this debuff, Force in Balance remains your strongest direct Force attack by a considerable margin, making it the best target for Force Potency.

Overwhelm
Force in Balance applies the AoE DPS debuff. This is widely regarded as one of the most useless DPS debuffs, second to only the Ranged debuff in terms of group utility, because many fights do not require any AoE and most combat styles do not have any rotational AoE where this would benefit them in single-target fights and no discipline has more than 1 rotational AoE ability. In order to somewhat compensate for these shortcomings, the AoE debuff increases damage taken by 10% rather than the usual 5 or 7%. Overwhelm is provided by the Prolific Justice discipline passive.

Squelch

(Force/Kinetic/Direct and Periodic/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability is a bit unique in that it has a fairly strong initial direct damage hit followed by a short DoT that deals about twice as much damage as the initial hit. Despite the DoT only lasting 6 seconds, you still end up dealing about the same damage as you would per GCD as you do with Force Breach or Sever Force (ignoring the bonus ticks from the Two Time Trouble tactical). This makes Squelch an incredibly powerful attack, so it’s essential that you proc Force Strike as often as possible so that you can use Squelch as often as possible.

It is worth noting that individual DoT ticks of Squelch deal about 25% less damage than individual ticks of Force Breach and Sever Force. This matters because you don’t have enough Force Suppression stacks to buff every single DoT spec, so it’s technically ideal to have as many Force Suppression stacks get consumed by your non-Squelch DoT ticks as possible. Unfortunately, it’s extremely difficult to capitalize on this because you have so many other considerations to make regarding which ability to use. 

Since Squelch is your only other Force attack besides Force in Balance, it’s inevitable that one of your stacks of Force Potency will be kind of wasted since it only increases the crit chance of the initial direct damage. Squelch has 1 debuff associated with it that is relevant to your rotation that I haven’t already mentioned:

Vulnerable
Squelch applies the Force DPS debuff, which makes the target take 5% more damage from Force attacks. This debuff is part of the base ability. In terms of group utility, it’s helpful to previously Warrior and Knight-exclusive Combat Styles (Juggernaut / Guardian and Marauder / Sentinel).

Double Strike

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This is your “strong” filler ability, it’s pretty standard as far as fillers go. Double Strike deals about 50% more damage directly than Saber Strike, but because it only hits twice, it has a lower chance to trigger Force Technique).

Depending on your build, you’ll be exclusively using either Double Strike or Saber Strike. You no longer have to worry too much about managing your Force in Serenity. If you do run into a situation where you are using Double Strike and suddenly can’t afford to use some of your non-filler abilities, you should switch to using Saber Strike until you are no longer running into that issue. Double Strike does not have any procs, discipline passives, or debuffs associated with it that I haven’t already mentioned that are relevant to your rotation.

Saber Strike

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Saber Strike is your “weak” filler, it deals extremely little damage directly but doesn’t cost any Force. Since it hits 3 times, it has 3 chances to trigger Force Technique. You only want to use this ability when you need more Force to use your stronger abilities on cooldown. Typically, this means Saber Strike should only be used when you have less than 45-50 Force. Saber Strike has 1 Combat Style passive associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Shadow’s Training
Endurance is increased by 3%. In addition, dealing damage with Saber Strike restores 1 Force (3 Force total per activation). I mention the Endurance thing because you may notice that your health is slightly higher than everyone else’s. The key part of the passive for Saber Strike is the Force regeneration. Basically, the Rebounding Force passive + a single GCD where you aren’t spending any Force + the 3 extra Force from this passive causes you to regenerate a ton of your resource with each activation. If you never use Double Strike, you’ll never run out of Force.

Serenity Strike

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability’s signature trait is that it heals you for as much damage as it deals, and it deals quite a bit of damage, though not as much as its ranged counterpart, Force Serenity. It’s worth pointing out that Serenity Strike deals Melee (and therefore Energy) damage, which is extremely uncommon for abilities with unique effects like the life steal. The key implication here is that Serenity Strike can’t benefit from Force Potency. Serenity Strike has 1 proc and 2 discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Atrophying Attacks
Dealing melee damage increases the critical chance of your DoTs by 20% for 10 seconds. In addition, Serenity Strike deals 20% more damage to targets below 30% health. The critical chance increase can be triggered by all of your melee attacks, so it shouldn’t ever fall off and you shouldn’t ever have to worry about it. The sub-30% damage boost makes it so that Serenity Strike deals more damage than Spinning Strike against targets below 30%. This ensures that Serenity Strike always has higher priority than Spinning Strike and helps to make Serenity even more effective in burn phases by increasing their survivability because Serenity Strike’s healing matches its damage dealt.

Drain Mind
Increases the life stolen by Serenity Strike (and Force in Balance) by 100%. Serenity Strike technically only heals you for 50% of the base damage dealt and this passive brings it up to 100%. It’s especially weird because you don’t actually get the ability until after this passive, so there’s never actually a point where Serenity Strike would heal you for 50% of the damage it deals.

Leeching Hunger
Serenity Strike deals 5% more damage and restores 4 Force for each of your active periodic damaging effects on the target. This passive provides an incentive to maintain high uptime on your DoTs. You should never use Serenity Strike if Sever Force and Force Breach are not on the target, but those will reliably have nearly 100% uptime. Squelch is not always on the target, but it isn’t worth delaying Serenity Strike until all 3 DoTs are present because the 5% additional damage always results in less of a DPS (and HPS) increase than not delaying Serenity Strike by a GCD. Even during burst checks, that GCD delay can be enough to make it so you only get to use Serenity Strike once instead of twice.

Spinning Strike

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability is normally only usable against targets that have less than 30% remaining HP. It deals a lot of damage and has a lower up-front cost than Double Strike and Serenity Strike. Most of Spinning Strike’s complexity comes from its proc, so we’ll go over that now:

Crush Spirit
Dealing periodic damage has a 30% chance to trigger Crush Spirit, which finishes the cooldown on Spinning Strike and makes your next Spinning Strike usable on a target with any health level. Cannot occur more than once every 15 seconds. Since you have such a long time to use Spinning Strike after being granted the proc, Spinning Strike has a fairly low priority against targets above 30% HP.

This changes against targets below 30% HP because you want Spinning Strike to be on cooldown when Crush Spirit is procced in order to get maximal benefit from the proc. In practice, it is difficult to accomplish this since so many other abilities still have a higher priority, but it’s worth striving for.

Finally, if both Stalker’s Swiftness and Crush Spirit are on the target, both procs will be consumed at the same time, so be careful about using Shadow Stride if it’s been a while since Crush Spirit has been procced and try to use Spinning Strike as soon as possible after using Shadow Stride.

AoE Damage

The formula for determining how much damage an AoE ability does per GCD such that it can be compared to single-target abilities is: (Damage Dealt/Number of GCDs) x Number of Enemies. An AoE ability’s place in the priority is as high as it can be until it reaches a single-target ability that deals more damage than the AoE will deal to all enemies in the GCD. 

AoE damage is considered fluff if the adds do not need to die immediately or if you are otherwise shirking your main responsibilities to deal more damage than necessary to adds. It’s pretty easy to tell what is and isn’t fluff, don’t be greedy, and don’t hurt your group’s chances of beating the boss. 

Whirling Blow

Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
This is your spammable AoE ability. Thanks to the Prolific Justice discipline passive, Whirling Blow (and Cleaving Cut) are your DoT spreads for Sever Force and Force Breach (you cannot spread Squelch). Since Whirling Blow doesn’t have a cooldown, Serenity is capable of bouncing DoTs between targets such that they can avoid manually reapplying them, resulting in a substantial single-target DPS increase from being able to dedicate 2 additional GCDs to fillers.

In order to bounce DoTs, you just have to apply the DoTs to the primary target, then use Whirling Blow to spread them to another target, and once the DoTs fall off the primary target, use Whirling Blow again to spread them from the secondary target back to the primary one. This can be done indefinitely, assuming the DoTs don’t fall off of all targets. It helps to wait a GCD between applying or bouncing DoTs and spreading again so you have more time before DoTs would fall off of all targets. If you apply DoTs to the first target and then immediately spread, you’ll only have a single GCD offset to bounce DoTs back from the secondary target before they fall off. 

Annihilation / Watchman is also capable of bouncing DoTs, but Serenity is far more effective at it. This is a huge reason why Serenity is regarded as being so strong in multi-target situations.

Besides DoT spreading, Whirling Blow’s damage per target is slightly more than half of the damage dealt by Double Strike, so it becomes the superior filler when 2 targets are present. When you have 3 or more targets, Whirling Blow has a higher chance of triggering Force Technique and deals more damage per GCD than Double Strike and matches Saber Strike’s chance to trigger it.

Thanks to the Rebounding Force discipline passive, Whirling Blow can quickly become cheaper than Double Strike thanks to its additional chances to trigger Force Technique. If you manage to trigger Force Technique on at least 7 targets, you’ll actually generate 1 Force rather than consume any, though that’s pretty unlikely. Whirling Blow deals more damage than the following rotational abilities if it hits at least the following number of targets, though I want to be clear that damage isn’t the whole story:

• 2 targets: Double Strike and Saber Strike
• 3 targets: Spinning Strike and Serenity Strike
• Never: Force in Balance, Force Breach, Sever Force

Again, there’s more to consider than just damage output. Force in Balance will always deal more damage than Whirling Blow, but if your DoTs are about to fall off of all targets or you have yet to spread them, Whirling Blow will take priority because you’d have to spend 2 whole GCDs to reapply them. Force Breach and Sever Force only need to be used if they aren’t present on any targets but should be applied so you can spread them with Whirling Blow.

Squelch is kind of a special case because it depends on what ability tree buff you’re using and what sort of targets you’re facing. I’ll explain Squelch’s priority vs Whirling Blow later on. 

Cleaving Cut

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
In order to make Cleaving Cut more unique, this ability now grants a unique buff for each discipline. For Serenity, Cleaving Cut heals you for 50% of the damage dealt. Dealing damage with Cleaving Cut also slows targets by 50% for 3 seconds, which helps it to synergize with the Severance Pay tactical item that I’ll explain later. 

Cleaving Cut doesn’t appear to have a cap on the number of targets it can hit like the normal 4 or 8 targets for all other AoE abilities in the game. It’s possible this was just an oversight in the tooltip description, but it could be that Cleaving Cut is only limited by the number of targets you can fit into the cleave area. The smaller cleave area does make it a lot harder to hit the same number of targets compared to Whirling Blow, which really hurts Cleaving Cut’s capacity to deal more damage than Whirling Blow. 

Offensive Cooldowns

All offensive cooldowns (OCDs) should be used as frequently as possible under the conditions stated here and should only be delayed if they need to be saved for a DPS check or burst window, but don’t start delaying them until you see that you have to. 

Force Potency

Force Potency now has an additional bonus effect that’s unique to each Shadow discipline. For Serenity, the unique effect is that critically hitting with a periodic damage effect reduces the cooldown of Force Potency by 2 seconds. It’s no longer possible to have 3 charges of Force Potency outside of Infiltration and since Spinning Kick has been removed, Force Potency is now pretty straightforward to use where 1 charge goes to Force in Balance and the other goes to Squelch.

Be careful when you have 2 stacks of Force Potency and multiple targets you can hit with Force in Balance because that ability will consume both stacks if it is used first, so always use Squelch as your first Force Potency stack if you’ll be able to hit multiple targets with Force in Balance. It amazes me that after 10 years, this bug still exists.

There are several ability tree buffs that trigger when Force Potency is activated, so make sure to factor those things in when activating the ability. It’s okay to delay Force Potency for a short time. It takes quite a while for delays to result in missing out on an additional activation of the ability. 

Force Cloak

This ability can offer Serenity a much greater DPS increase than it has in the past thanks to the Shadowcraft Legendary Item, which increases your critical chance by 100% for 6 seconds (effectively 4-5 GCDs) after using Shadow Stride from stealth. You won’t always be using Shadowcraft in Serenity because you don’t have consistent access to a strong enough 4-5 GCD window that makes this worth using every 90-120 seconds. In sustained DPS situations, it isn’t worth taking, but if you’re using the Quick Escalation tactical or doing solo content, Shadowcraft is ridiculously strong.

Force Cloak now behaves differently in Operations. It still drops your threat to 0, you just don’t actually exit combat anymore, so it’s more like a stronger version of Force Camouflage in that way. When Shadowcraft is not equipped, Force Cloak is just a threat drop. 

Battle Readiness

This ability offers both a damage and survivability increase, making it the ultimate cooldown for burn phases. It’s best to activate it right after you reapply Sever Force and Force Breach because that’s when you’re guaranteed to have 2 additional GCDs that could trigger Force Technique. 

The description of the buff is a bit confusing, but Battle Readiness doesn’t actually increase the damage dealt by Force Breach, just Force Technique.

Since Battle Readiness is locked behind an ability tree choice and both of the alternatives are significantly stronger, this ability isn’t used with Serenity anymore.

Adrenal

It’s best to activate the Adrenal immediately after applying Sever Force and Force Breach because you’ll get a full 15 seconds where you won’t have to apply those DoTs. It’s ideal to activate it alongside other damage boosts like Force Potency, and especially Battle Readiness and Shadowcraft and you should have it available for all DPS checks.

If you don’t have to worry about synchronizing it with damage boosts or using it for a particular DPS check, it’s beneficial to delay activating the Adrenal until the boss has less than 30% HP so you can benefit from your sub-30% damage boosts.

Since the Adrenal’s cooldown is so long, it’s hard to delay it for long enough that you end up missing out on additional activations, so it’s okay to delay your Adrenal to ensure that this happens, though avoid delaying the Adrenal for so long that you do miss out on additional activations.

Defensive Cooldowns and Mobility

Defensive cooldowns (DCDs) are not used just to stop you from getting killed, they’re there to minimize overall damage taken. For any Combat Style in any fight, your most effective DCDs should be mapped to the most damaging attacks in the fight while weaker DCDs should be used against weaker attacks. 

Don’t pop all of your DCDs at once or only use them when your health gets low. You should be attempting to mitigate as much damage as possible by using your DCDs against predictable damage.

In fights where you’ll be taking a high amount of sustained damage, it’s important to use your DCDs in the order that maximizes your overall uptime. If you can tweak the order that you use your DCDs where it allows you to get an extra use out of one of them over the course of a long burn phase, you should definitely do that instead of activating your potentially stronger DCDs first.

Resilience

Most of the hardest-hitting attacks that you’d want to mitigate are considered Force / Tech damage, and this ability provides complete immunity to them for a brief moment. Unfortunately, the Disjunction utility effect no longer exists, so your protection will only last for 3 seconds. Since Resilience provides complete immunity, you shouldn’t need to pair it with other DCDs unless you’re taking damage from multiple different attacks with different damage types at the same time, which is exceedingly rare as a DPS.

Resilience also purges all removable hostile effects when activated. Purges are a bit stronger than cleanses and can get rid of some effects that regular cleanses can’t remove. Since this ability is often your only DCD, be careful about using it as a cleanse if you know a big hit is coming up. If the total amount of damage dealt by the DoT is less than what you’d take from a big hit, definitely do not use it as a cleanse.

Unless a good chunk of the group is getting hit with the debuff at the same time, there’s a good chance that healers are meant to and capable of cleansing it themselves. You could actually be making your healers work harder if you prioritize cleansing weak DoTs over strong individual hits. 

Deflection

Defense chance is the chance to completely avoid the damage from an attack. When you successfully defend against an attack, you’ll see a little popup that says dodged / parried / resisted. Defense chance almost always only applies to Melee/Ranged damage, though there are a few exceptions. It’s important to note that defense chance is disabled while you are stunned (can’t dodge something if you can’t move). 

Deflection works by increasing your defense chance by 50%, so with the 10% defense chance you get as a Shadow, your total defense chance becomes 60% while Deflection is active. This is fairly strong when it works, but you don’t normally take a whole lot of Melee/Ranged damage as a DPS, so it isn’t useful in every fight.

In group content, Melee/Ranged damage mostly only comes from basic attacks. Adds and trash almost exclusively deal Melee/Ranged damage and bosses usually have some sort of basic attack they use in between their mechanics, so if you get aggro on some adds or a boss, pop this right away!

Mass Mind Control

As a DPS, Mass Mind Control is your threat drop and the Intangible Spirit ability tree buff makes it so Mass Mind Control reduces AoE damage taken by 60%. All danger circles are considered AoE damage, but the majority of boss attacks are considered AoE damage as well, even if they don’t look like it, so this is one of the most powerful DCDs in the game for boss fights. It’s far less useful in solo content and PvP where AoE damage is far less frequent.

If you have to stand in a circle or stand in front of the boss, preemptively pop Mass Mind Control so you can mitigate the damage you might take from a cleave.

Serenity also has a discipline passive called Mind and Body that turns it into one of your primary DCDs where activating Mass Mind Control increases your DR by 30% for 6 seconds. This mitigation applies at the same time as Intangible Spirit, making you practically immune to AoE damage for the first 6s, though the 30% from Mind and Body works against all damage types, not just AoE.

The Mind and Body ability tree buff also passively reduces your periodic damage taken by 15%. Almost all DoT specs have some way to reduce the damage dealt by DoTs by 15-30%.

Medpac

Don’t save it for a rainy day because today is that rainy day! Unless you get hit by a one-shot mechanic (which you shouldn’t), you should never let yourself die while your Medpac is still available.

If everyone’s health is getting low or there’s a heal check in the current phase, do not hesitate to use your Medpac if you can take full benefit of the health provided or need to be above a certain health level to survive an imminent mechanic.

If you think Medpacs are too expensive, it’s time to get Biochem on one of your alts or even better, your raiding toon so that you can make your own or get reusables. Choosing not to use a medpac for financial reasons and subsequently dying is not a valid excuse.

Force Speed

I think this is the best movement ability in the game. It offers the best balance of speed and directional control. It’s also on a super short cooldown, so you usually have access to it whenever you need it. 

Shadow Stride

This ability instantly teleports you to the target. Use it whenever it’s available if you find yourself out of range of your target. I want to note that Shadow Stride does not cause a GCD, but there is a deliberate slight delay before you can activate it after activating another attack. This was done to mitigate a bug where people would sometimes be launched into the air after reaching their target. 

Crowd Control and Other Abilities

There are only a handful of instances in Operations where CC is required, so I will briefly go over what this Combat Style has at its disposal in addition to any other abilities I haven’t yet mentioned. 

Force Stun

This is your hard stun, meaning it does not break on damage. In PvE, this will generally only be used for specific mechanics since most things you’d care about stunning are immune. Be sure to pay attention when something is stunnable though because that often means you’re intended to stun it.

Some combat styles have their hard stun locked away behind an ability tree choice and often require them to give up something significant in order to take it. Since you get your hard stun for free, you should be prepared to handle a lot of stun mechanics.

Mind Maze

This is your primary mez. It can only be used out of combat, but this is really an advantage in PvE because it doesn’t force you to pull as soon as something is CC’d like most other mezzes. 

Mind Maze can also enable your entire group to sneak past trash pulls since enemies affected by Mind Maze don’t notice you or anyone else even outside of stealth. In order to maximize your chances of having everyone sneak by, try to CC the add that is furthest away from the others or the one that is closest to the edge of the group. 

If you’re progging a fight, it’s often more efficient to just defeat the trash instead of trying to sneak past it after every pull, especially if you have group members that are prone to accidentally aggroing things. Also, don’t forget to enter stealth before you walk up to an enemy to CC it. 

Force Lift

This is another of your mezzes. It has the old Containment utility effect built in now, so it’s instant and stuns targets for 2 seconds after being broken early. In PvE, there’s little use for an 8s mez. Many enemies are often immune to mezzes even if they are vulnerable to being hard-stunned or interrupted. 

Force of Will

This is your CC break, use it when you are prevented from DPSing by a CC.  

Force Slow

This ability applies a slow and deals a tiny amount of damage, though it does have a 10m range, so if you can’t use Squelch, Force in Balance, Force Breach, or Sever Force, you can technically use Force Slow to deal a little bit of extra damage. I don’t think you’ll find yourself with too many instances where you’re at 10m range and Squelch is unavailable unless you already used it and are unable to get closer due to some mechanic. 

Force Wave

This is your conal knockback. The only fight it’s important for right now is Styrak in NiM where you have to knock back the Chained Manifestations. It now has Force Wake as a built-in feature. Also, please do not ruin everybody else’s day by using this ability for its AoE damage. 

Mind Snap

This is your interrupt. For a melee DPS, the cooldown on your interrupt is a little on the long side. Without the Celerity ability tree buff, its cooldown is equivalent to Sorcerer / Sage and Sniper / Gunslinger interrupts. If you really want to be a clicker, I highly recommend you at least keybind this ability or you will have trouble with some of the shorter casts that need to be interrupted. 

Stealth

This is a toggle ability that lets you enter stealth when out of combat. You are effectively invisible to enemies unless you get super close. If you try to walk through an enemy even while stealthed, you will typically aggro them. 

Keep an eye out for Stealth Detection and Super Stealth Detection buffs on enemies. Those make it so you can’t sneak past them in Stealth. 

Mind Control

This is your Taunt. It forces your target to attack you for 6 seconds and puts you at the top of the threat table. Only use this if a tank or raid lead specifically tells you to use it or if the boss is running rampant because one or both of the tanks are dead. Make sure that you have a DCD ready or there isn’t too much of a point to Taunting as you’ll probably get killed pretty quickly. If you’re going to use Mass Mind Control, make sure you activate it right before you Taunt so you don’t accidentally lose aggro after 6 seconds. 

If one tank dies in a fight with a tank swap mechanic, a common strategy is to have a DPS Taunt and hold aggro only for enough time to get the stacks or get hit by the attack that forces the tanks to actually swap and then have the actual tank take the boss back immediately after. This isn’t always possible, but it’s important to be aware of. 

Ability Tree Choices

Level 23 Choice – Force in Balance Buffs

Serene Balance

• Effect: Force in Balance restores 5 Force and reduces the cooldown of Force Potency by 5 seconds for each enemy it hits.
• Recommendation: Take this in PvP only. In practical terms, this should only be taken with the Quick Escalation tactical and Hallowing to compensate for the loss of the cooldown reduction to Force Potency from Two Time Trouble crit ticks. Outside of that specific situation, one of the other options will offer higher DPS.

Pervasive Balance

• Effect: Force in Balance deals 15% more damage and grants Pervasive Balance, which increases your armor penetration by 12.5% for each target it hits. Lasts 10 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in Operations. It offers the highest overall damage potential and enables Hatred to deal additional single-target damage in multi-target situations.

Balancing Field

• Effect: Force in Balance gains an additional ability charge. Killing an enemy or activating Force Potency generates 1 charge of Force in Balance.
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content and Flashpoints. This option lets you spam Force in Balance and maintain 100% uptime on Force Suppression stacks even in single-target situations. In sustained DPS situations, Force in Balance is too expensive to use as often as it becomes available and you can only afford to use it in conjunction with Longing Force. You should only use it right before you’re about to run out of Force Suppression stacks. This limitation is mostly irrelevant outside of boss fights where you can mostly afford to spam Force in Balance to your heart’s content.

Level 27 Choice – Force Wave, Shadow Spike, or Force Magnetism

Force Wave

• Effect: Grants the Force Wave ability, which deals a small amount of damage, knocks back up to 8 enemies within a 15m cone in front of you, and immobilizes them for 5 seconds. Direct damage dealt after 2 seconds ends the effect prematurely. Standard and weak enemies are additionally knocked down for 3 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in specific situations only. Force Wave is nice, but it’s not useful all the time, and the alternatives can be quite compelling. I tend to prefer Force Wave over the alternatives in PvP, but you do you.

Shadow Spike

• Effect: Dealing damage with Serenity Strike from stealth stuns the target for 2 seconds. Standard and weak enemies are knocked down instead.
• Recommendation: Consider taking this in PvP only. It improves the reliability of your Shadowcraft window by stunning the target for long enough to get your first 2 GCDs off. Its usefulness to you in PvP depends on how often you exit and reenter combat.

Force Magnetism

• Effect: Force Cloak increases your movement speed by 50%. In addition, Force Speed lasts 1s longer and slows all enemies within 5m by 75% for 2.5s when activated.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this in PvE. The movement speed boosts are nice and it’s difficult to make use of the other two options in PvE. Remember that the slow will aggro enemies, so make sure you don’t use Force Speed too close to enemies you don’t want to aggro, like the Birthed Larvae in the TFB fight.

Level 39 Choice – Squelch Buffs

Smite

• Effect: Whenever a target affected by your Squelch dies, Smite is applied to the nearest target. Smite deals damage equal to the initial hit of Squelch and makes that target take 25% more damage from the next application of Squelch.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Theoretically, Smite would be a DPS increase in some cases, but it’s just too inconsistent and hard to use to be worth using in any context. In solo content, regular enemies are gonna get globaled by autocrit Force in Balances or survive for far longer than Squelch’s duration. In group content, it’s difficult to track and doesn’t necessarily go to the target you want.

Destruction Ray

• Effect: Squelch now deals all its periodic damage over 1 second.
• Recommendation: Take this option in solo content and PvP. Destruction Ray is super fun to use and synergizes really well with frequent cooldown resets that are caused by other ability tree buffs that will really only occur in solo content and PvP.

Ensue

• Effect: Dealing damage with Squelch applies Ensue to the target, increasing the critical chance of your periodic effects by 20%. Lasts 10 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this option in boss fights. When you can’t benefit from Smite or don’t want to bother, this is your best option. It provides a much smaller DPS increase, but its usefulness is more consistent. Ensue should also make it easier to maintain Hallowing in single-target situations. With Ensue, Whirling Blow should be used before Squelch if you can hit at least 4 targets. It’s technically worse than Smite in AoE situations, but I like that I don’t have to worry about following the debuff or swapping it out for bosses.

Level 43 Choice – Hallowing, Longing Force, or Battle Readiness

Hallowing

• Effect: Defeating an enemy or activating Force Potency reset the cooldowns of all melee attacks and Squelch and grants Hallowing, which increases their damage dealt by 10%. Stacks up to 2 times and lasts 20 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this option in solo content and PvP. Hallowing is the strongest option in this tier, but it has some limitations that prevent it from being viable all the time. You’ll quickly end up dealing less sustained DPS with Hallowing if you let the buff fall off more than once or twice over the course of the fight. It’s only possible to maintain 100% uptime in pure single-target situations with the Dynamic Force Legendary Implant and extremely high uptime on the boss, along with some other way to reduce the cooldown of Force Potency, and in single-target situations, that will come from either the Two Time Trouble Tactical or Serene Balance ability tree buff. It’s easier to maintain in multi-target situations since your DoTs will be ticking (and critting) on multiple targets at the same time and you’ll be defeating adds. Hallowing actually enables you to have 100% uptime on Squelch (under ideal conditions in boss fights) and allows you to spam against trash mobs.

Longing Force

• Effect: The critical hit chance, critical damage, and life reclaimed by your periodic effects is increased by 10%. Whenever you reclaim life, you generate 2 Force.
• Recommendation: Take this option in boss fights. Longing Force directly boosts your DoTs and self-healing while dramatically reducing the number of Saber Strikes required. You can technically do a static rotation with Longing Force, but since it doesn’t offer as much sustained DPS, I think it’s more prudent to just use the priority system it enables instead.

Battle Readiness

• Effect: Grants the Battle Readiness ability, which immediately restores 15% of your max health, increases the damage dealt by Lightning Charge by 50%, increases its chance to trigger by 25%, and heals you for a small amount whenever their effects are triggered, though the healing cannot occur more than once per second. In addition, abilities reclaim 50% more life while Battle Readiness is active.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Hallowing and Longing Force are much stronger.

Level 51 Choice – Intangible Spirit, Fade, or Sturdiness

Intangible Spirit

• Effect: Activating Mass Mind Control grants Intangible Spirit, which reduces your AoE damage taken by 60% for 15s.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this for boss fights. The vast majority of damage dealt by bosses is considered AoE damage, even if it doesn’t look like it, so in group content, this is roughly equivalent to 60% RDT (reduced damage taken), and because it is active at the same time as the 35% DR from Mind and Body, you’ll be nearly immune to damage for the first 6 seconds. Make sure Intangible Spirit is active whenever you anticipate that you’ll be hit directly by the boss, typically whenever the boss is facing you (or if you’re standing in front of the boss).

Fade

• Effect: Reduces the cooldown of Force Cloak by 30s and extends its duration by 5 seconds.
• Recommendation: Always take this in PvP and solo content. Stealthing out is super valuable in PvP and useful in solo content if you bite off more than you can chew. In boss fights, you can’t fully exit combat and have to give up AoE RDT, which is a big no-no.

Sturdiness

• Effect: Activating Deflection grants Sturdiness, which makes you immune to stun, sleep, lift, and incapacitating effects for 6 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this as a DPS. The other two options are far better. It’s not even close. Even if you ignore the other options, 6 seconds of uptime every 2 minutes makes it hard to extract meaningful benefit anyway.

Level 64 Choice – Kinetic Surge, Force Phase, or Lambaste

Kinetic Surge

• Effect: Increases your movement speed by 15% and your effective stealth level by 10. Activating Eradicate increases your movement speed by 50% for 9 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 18 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in fights where you aren’t using Whirling Blow at all. The additional movement can result in a sustained DPS increase in fights where the boss is moving a lot because it enables you to get back into range more quickly, though you’ll probably get a greater DPS increase from Lambaste.

Force Phase

• Effect: Force Speed and Shadow Stride grant Force Phase, which purges all movement-impairing effects and grants immunity to them for 2 seconds.
• Recommendation: Always take this in PvP and solo content. Force Phase improves the reliability of your movement abilities and makes you much harder to nail down in PvP.

Lambaste

• Effect: Whirling Blow deals 25% additional damage.
• Recommendation: Take this in fights where you use Whirling Blow. Serenity is able to make frequent use of Whirling Blow to spread its DoTs and maintain them indefinitely. This buff enables Whirling Blow to surpass Double Strike in terms of DPS at 2 targets instead of 3.

Level 68 Choice – Cleaving Cut, Force Lift, or Resilience

Cleaving Cut

• Effect: Grants the Cleaving Cut ability, which deals moderate damage in a frontal cone, slows targets it damages by 50% for 3 seconds, and heals you for 50% of the damage dealt.
• Recommendation: Consider taking this in solo content only. I’m happy that BioWare decided to give this ability a unique effect for each discipline so that it’s less garbage. In solo content, you may find the self-healing that Cleaving Cut offers to be more useful than Resilience.

Force Lift

• Effect: Grants the Force Lift ability, which mezzes the target for 8 seconds. If the effect ends prematurely, the target is stunned for 2 seconds. Strong, Elite, and Champion enemies heal rapidly.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Assassin | Shadow Force Lift only lasts 8 seconds against trash mobs. In PvE, things almost always need to be mezzed for longer than that, so there is practically no benefit to taking this as a DPS, especially not when Resilience is an alternative. The Resilience part is important for PvP as well.

Resilience

• Effect: Grants the Resilience ability, which purges all hostile removable effects and increases your chance to resist Force and tech attacks by 200% for 3 seconds. Does not break stealth.
• Recommendation: Always take this in group content. Resilience is often considered the best DCD in the game because it grants complete immunity to the vast majority of the most damaging attacks in the game; it’s quite rare for Melee / Ranged attacks to hit harder than Force / Tech attacks. With the complete removal of Force Speed DR and the loss of resetting your Medpac upon stealthing out, this is now your only real DCD. Technically, you still have Deflection, which works fine against trash, but most of the damage you take in group content, especially damage that you need to mitigate, will be Force / Tech.

Level 73 Choice – Reapers Rush, Celerity, or Cloak of Resilience

Stalker’s Swiftness

• Effect: Shadow Stride grants Stalker’s Swiftness, allowing your next Spinning Strike to be used on any target, regardless of remaining health. Lasts up to 10 seconds. In addition, if the target of your Shadow Stride is killed within 10 seconds of using Shadow Stride, the cooldown of Shadow Stride is reset.
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content and for specific fights only. In fights where you have to focus down one add at a time, like the droids during the clock phase when you fight Brontes, this option is absolutely AMAZING because you get to Shadow Stride to each one and whack it with Spinning Strike. You can do that to just about any trash mob too. In group content, I don’t think Stalker’s Swiftness is worth taking just to proc Spinning Strike because there are other strong options in this tier and the DPS increase from those extra Spinning Strikes is quite small. Furthermore, you’ll typically have a bunch of GCDs that have a higher priority whenever you switch targets during which Crush Spirit can proc, so it’s hard to utilize the Spinning Strike at a moment’s notice.

Celerity

• Effect: Reduces the cooldown of Mind Snap by 2 seconds, Force of Will by 30 seconds, and Force Speed by 5 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in specific fights only. Only take this in PvE if you wanted to use Force Speed or Force of Will but couldn’t use it because it was still on cooldown and the cooldown reduction from this option would have made it available. In other words, don’t take Celerity just because you want to use these abilities more often; only take this option if it would make abilities available when they otherwise wouldn’t be.

Cloak of Resilience

• Effect: Activating Force Cloak grants 2 seconds of Resilience.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this in group content. Most of the time, Serenity doesn’t have any need for Resilience in PvE, so it’s just sitting around off cooldown when it could be used to mitigate additional big hits or cleanse an extra DoT. I think this benefit usually outweighs the tiny DPS increase from Stalker’s Swiftness, sometimes even when you are able to make use of the cooldown reset component.

Gearing and Stats Priorities

Tactical Items

Two Time Trouble
Effect: Sever Force has a 100% chance to tick an additional time when you deal damage with Spinning Strike and a 60% chance to tick an additional time when you deal damage with a melee attack.
Recommendation: This tactical offers the highest sustained DPS in both single-target and AoE situations, though it doesn’t offer as much burst or survivability. Note: Two Time Trouble currently has an advantageous bug where Thrashing Terror (Force Suppression) will tick again after if it consumes the final tick of Force Suppression because it’s just 2 “when” trigger effects rather than being something like an “if, else” dependency.

Quick Escalation
Effect: Increases the critical chance of Serenity Strike by 25%. Critically hitting with Serenity Strike resets its cooldown and grants Hungering Blade, increasing the critical chance of Serenity Strike by an additional 25%. Lasts up to 6 seconds. Hungering Blade stacks up to 3 times and is removed after Serenity Strike deals damage at 3 stacks.
Recommendation: This tactical is optimal in PvP and can work in solo content, but it doesn’t offer as much sustained DPS as Two Time Trouble, making it a poor choice for boss fights.

In our Catalog of all Tacticals in SWTOR you will find information about all other Tacticals that we didn’t list in this guide. You may find something adequate that is also cheaper and easier to obtain for your needs while you work on getting the recommended one for your combat style and build.

Legendary Implants

BioWare has removed set bonuses from the game and replaced them with Legendary Items, which are just implants with old 4 or 6-piece set bonus effects on them, so rather than needing to collect 4 pieces of a gear set to get the 4-piece set bonus, or 6 pieces for the 6-piece, you’ll get either a 4 or 6-piece set bonus effect on an implant. 

This was done to improve customization (now you can mix and match set bonus effects), make them easier to obtain, and consume less inventory space. Here are the Legendary Items you should use as a Serenity Shadow:

Dynamic Force – The cooldown of Force Potency is reduced by 15 seconds.
Force Training – Increases Force and Melee bonus damage by 3%.
Shadowcraft – Using Shadow Stride from stealth grants Shadowcraft, increasing your critical chance by 100% for 6 seconds. Force Cloak resets the cooldown of Shadow Stride.
Second Wind – Defeating an enemy heals you for 20% of your max health and sets your movement speed to 175% for 8s. Cannot occur more than once every 8s.

The combination of implants you’ll use depends on your build. You have a lot of options because Assassins have access to some of the strongest and weakest implants in the game and will need to swap them out situationally.

Dynamic Force is by far the weakest, but you must have it if you want to use Maliciousness.

Force Training is just kinda there as a secondary implant if you can’t make use of Second Wind.

Shadowcraft is one of the most powerful implants in the game, but it only offers the damage boost once in boss fights because you don’t fully exit combat when you stealth out.

Still, Shadowcraft is so much stronger than Dynamic Force and Force Training that the single activation is enough to keep it competitive even in longer fights.

I have a guide on Legendary Implants in SWTOR 7.0. It explains how to unlock Legendary Implants and a full list of all currently available in the game.

Stat Priority

As a DPS, you’ll need to care about 3 different stats: Accuracy, Alacrity, and Critical Rating. There are thresholds associated with Accuracy and Alacrity, so you need to prioritize reaching those thresholds to get the full benefit from each stat point.

1. Accuracy to 110.00% – Before investing in any other stats, make sure you hit 110% Accuracy because attacks that miss deal 0 damage, and no other stats matter if the attack doesn’t land. Furthermore, many procs require you to actually deal damage, not just activate the ability, so you can mess up your rotation if an attack misses. You need 110% Accuracy in PvE and not just 100% because bosses have a 10% chance to dodge/resist player attacks, and any percentage over 100% reduces this chance. Anything over 110% is not helpful in PvE, so you do want to go over 110%, but with as little excess as possible.
2. Alacrity to ~7.5% – Once your Accuracy is above 110.00%, it’s time to think about Alacrity. It has the second-highest priority because you do not get the full benefit of the stat unless you surpass one of the GCD thresholds. It’s less important than Accuracy because your attacks still need to hit. You need 7.15% Alacrity to get from the 1.5s GCD to the 1.4s GCD. However, as you approach 7.15%, you actually start getting a mix of 1.4s and 1.5s GCDs, resulting in an experience that feels clunky and inconsistent. You need roughly 0.4-0.5% more Alacrity past the exact threshold to effectively eliminate those 1.5s GCDs.
3. Critical gets the rest – After you’ve got your thresholded stats sorted out, you can start investing in crit. To be clear, Critical Rating is still valuable; it just has the lowest priority because it does not have a threshold associated with it that you need to meet to get the most out of each point of stat as the other tertiary stats you care about do. Critical Rating increases both your Critical Chance and Critical Damage. If you have a single effect that increases your Critical Chance by 100% all on its own (it can’t be from multiple effects combined), all of the Critical Chance percentage for that attack gets added to your Critical Damage percentage, causing the attack to deal supercritical damage.

Find out which mods to purchase from Hyde and Zeek in SWTOR on the Fleet to minimize spending and optimize your build. The dedicated guide contains tips for all roles in both PvE and PvP.

Augments

Augments allow you to put additional stats on every piece of gear except tactical items. Since the stats come in much smaller amounts, augments allow you to fine-tune your gear to provide almost as much of each total stat as you want.

To equip an augment, you must first use an Augmentation Kit that matches the crafting grade of the augment (ex. Grade 11 augments require MK-11 Kits).

The 296, 302, 310, and 318 iRating augments released with 7.6 and 7.7 are BiS. The higher the iRating, the more stats they offer and the more expensive they are to make or buy, though most of the benefit is provided by having augments at all, and the base-rarity blue 296 augments are the cheapest.

Almost everyone should buy the blue 296 augments because they provide the greatest bang for the buck, but you do have multiple options:

• Gold 318 augments (Superior [Type] Augment 86). These are overall best-in-slot (BiS) and offer ~25% more stat than gold 300 augments, which is roughly equivalent to 4 additional gold augments. They’re extremely expensive and completely unnecessary for all content in the game, so I only recommend them to the wealthiest individuals. 
• Purple 310 augments (Advanced [Type] Augment 86). They offer ~13% more stat than gold 300 augments, which is roughly equivalent to 2 additional gold 300 augments worth of stat. They are cheaper than the gold 318s, but they’re in the same price bracket in terms of affordability, so there’s no reason for anyone to use them at this point.
• Blue 302 augments ([Type] Augment 76) are the mid-tier augments. For all intents and purposes, these are equivalent to the gold 300 augments from 6.0. I only recommend them if you’re close to a stat threshold or don’t already have gold 300 augments and want something a bit better than the blue 296s.
• Blue 296 augments ([Type] Augment 83) are the most basic tier of augments for level 80 players. They are pretty cheap as only the schematic comes from the associated lair boss, Propagator Core XR-53. You don’t need any Corrupted Bioprocessors to craft these augments.

Check out our 7.7 Augments Guide for everything you need to know about augmenting gear!

Earpiece

Which Earpiece you use will depend on what specific tertiary stats the rest of your gear and augments provide. Typically, you’ll need to use either an Accuracy (Initiative, yellow icon) or Alacrity (Quick Savant / Nimble, green icon) Earpiece.

Crystals

Advanced Eviscerating Crystals are the best. They are the only type of crystal that increases one of your tertiary stats. Since the stat pool for tertiary stats is much smaller than that of primary or secondary stats, adding 41 is a more significant upgrade than it would be if you were to add 41 to one of the primary or secondary stats (mastery, power, or endurance).

Relics

I recommend the Relic of Focused Retribution (FR) and Relic of Devastating Vengeance (DV) for all PvE content. Each relic offers a proc; FR’s proc boosts your Mastery, whereas DV’s proc increases your Critical Rating. Compared to the third option, Serendipitous Assault (SA), Devastating Vengeance is superior because Critical Rating offers a greater DPS increase per point specifically for this discipline.

Biochem Items

I recommend the Advanced Kyrprax Proficient Stim, Advanced Kyrprax Medpac, and Advanced Kyrprax Attack Adrenal for all PvE content. Grade 11 Biochem items from the crafting tier released with 6.0 remain BiS. Since they haven’t been updated to level 80, their effects are weaker than they should be, though they can still have an impact.

You should use the Proficient Stim as a DPS because it provides 2 tertiary stats that you need, Accuracy and Critical Rating, and tertiary stats are harder to come by and what you build your gear around. You should use the Attack Adrenal because it provides Power, which typically provides the greatest DPS increase, though it’s also more consistent, which is what you need for DPS checks.

Regarding the Zeal Guild Perk Alacrity Boost

If your guild uses the Zeal (cyan) guild perk set bonus, which gives a passive +5% Alacrity boost, you won’t need nearly as much Alacrity stat to reach your desired Alacrity threshold. My recommendations do not factor in these boosts, so if you have one, you’ll need to pay attention to percentage thresholds rather than the stat amounts. Just keep adding one augment at a time until you reach the desired percentage.

Guild leaders, I recommend using the Fortune (yellow) guild perk set bonus instead. It grants +5% Critical Chance and also boosts the Critical Rate and Time Efficiency of all Crew Skills by 2%. The reason for this is that you don’t have to change the way you gear in order to benefit from the effect.

Neither effect works in MM raids or PvP, so if you or your guild members do either of those activities, you’ll need to tweak your gear to reach the desired threshold depending on the activity, which I find super tedious. Even if your guild doesn’t do those activities, leaders still need to actively maintain the set bonus because your gear will become suboptimal on top of losing the bonus, whereas it’s not a big deal if your crit is a little lower for a bit.

The Alacrity boost is much stronger than the Critical Chance boost. Still, PvE content isn’t balanced around these guild perk set bonuses anyway, so I find it better to have a smaller boost I don’t have to worry about than a larger boost I have to manage.

Best Serenity Shadow Builds in 7.0

These are the builds that I recommend for different types of content and situations. The Build Essentials are what I consider to be the core components that make the build viable. Without them, the build no longer accomplishes its primary function. Build Essentials can include important ability tree buffs, a tactical item, and even legendary items occasionally.

The ability tree buffs that aren’t listed as Build Essentials can be changed as needed without compromising the integrity of the build, though I have included a full set of default choices that will be most consistently helpful in accomplishing what the build sets out to do.

Check out How Ability Trees Work for more information.

Serenity Boss Fights Build

This build is meant for use in boss fights, particularly where uptime is a concern. You’ll see Hallowing topping the charts on Parsely, but it loses to Longing Force if Hallowing ever falls off.

You need high uptime (or a lot of adds) to maintain Hallowing using a pretty unforgiving static rotation, and you’ll have a hard time doing that unless you’ve already mastered your Serenity and the fight itself. Longing Force enables you to use a priority system instead.

In boss fights, Intangible Spirit and Resilience are essential for survivability, but you can take whatever you need at level 73, though it’s not worth taking Stalker’s Swiftness if you aren’t using it primarily to reset the cooldown on Shadow Stride.

Serenity Solo Content Build

This build leverages the cooldown resets on enemy kills from Balancing Field, Hallowing, Stalker’s Swiftness, and Shadowcraft to enable you to spam autocrits of your most powerful attacks, including Force in Balance and Squelch on each group of trash. You’ll only need to apply your DoTs and DoT spread against stronger enemies that you’ll find in heroics.

In my opinion, this is one of the most powerful solo content builds in the whole game. However, the high damage output offered by this build is extremely short-lived and unsustainable because it consumes a ton of Force and relies almost completely on you constantly killing enemies and exiting combat. 

The key idea is to Shadow Stride in from Stealth (required to get 6s of autocrit from Shadowcraft) and then spam Force in Balance until you run out of them. Finish off individual enemies with Squelch, Spinning Strike, and Serenity Strike and use Force in Balance as it becomes available again.

Your choice of tactical item doesn’t matter much at all and I think there’s an argument to be made for all of them, including even Severance Pay and Chant of Regeneration, so play around with each of them and see which you like best. If you’re using Severance Pay, make sure to take Severing Slash and Force Magnetism.

Serenity PvP Build

Quick Escalation with Shadowcraft is the cornerstone of Serenity’s PvP build. You can reliably spam 4 Serenity Strikes out of stealth that deal increasing supercritical damage.

While optional, taking Shadow Spike means that you’ll be able to stun your target for the beginning of Shadowcraft, enabling you to land the first 2 GCDs more consistently without disruption.

That being said, Force Wave and Force Magnetism are also compelling choices. Since you only benefit from Shadow Spike while stealthed, you’ll get far less mileage out of it compared to the alternatives. Play around with each of them to see which you prefer.

You also have the freedom to choose any Force in Balance buff you want. I strongly recommend using Serene Balance because Force management adds an unnecessary hassle at times, even if you always use Saber Strike instead of Double Strike.

Serene Balance also reduces the cooldown of Force Potency, which enables you to maintain 2 stacks of Hallowing more easily, fire off your Destruction Ray more often, and have more controlled spike damage.

Still, Pervasive Balance improves your armor penetration, meaning more of your damage bypasses their mitigation, and Balancing Field offers greater AoE potential, which everyone adores.

Hallowing is important to use with Quick Escalation because Serenity Strike is a melee attack and you’ll be spamming it as much as possible.

While not essential, at level 73, I recommend taking Celerity in PvP because the alternatives are too situational. You have a lot of other important abilities to use after Shadow Stride and will likely waste the free Spinning Strike. You aren’t guaranteed to land a kill within 10s of activation either.

Cloak of Resilience is far less important now that Resilience purges debuffs as a baseline effect, so it only reliably protects you from getting ripped back into combat by specs that can spam Force/tech damage with an AoE attack, which mostly means skilled Sorcerers | Sages.

Even with Cloak of Resilience, you’re still particularly vulnerable to Snipers | Gunslingers and Mercenaries | Commandos as well as some short-range melee AoE attacks.

Serenity Hallowing Boss Fights Build

This build will get you the highest parses on the dummy, but it requires unrealistically high uptime to maintain 2 stacks of Hallowing. You’ll need both Dynamic Force and Two Time Trouble to maintain 100% uptime on Hallowing.

Hallowing and Stalker’s Swiftness (and Balancing Field) all offer cooldown resets on kill, so using them together enables you to perform better in situations with adds or trash mobs, making it ideal for Flashpoints.

You can use Balancing Field instead of Pervasive Balance and Shadowcraft instead of Force Training. These alternatives are quite competitive, but it’s significantly harder to manage your Force and the way you use Squelch rotationally is a bit at odds with a Shadowcraft opener.

Openers, Rotations, Priorities

Rotations and Priorities

Serenity can exclusively use (mostly) static rotations that differ based on whether you’re using Hallowing or Longing Force, though I advocate for using a priority system with Longing Force since I only recommend using it when uptime is low and static rotations are inherently difficult to execute.

To be clear, there are other perfectly viable rotations that can perform better in specific situations, but for the sake of simplicity, I have only included 2. I have also opted to explain the rotations and priorities first because the openers aren’t all that different.

If there is downtime during a fight, remember that you can precast things and often place your DoTs on shortly before the boss can actually take damage. You won’t get the full damage of your DoTs but you also won’t have to spend a GCD to apply them when the boss is vulnerable, so you will end up dealing more damage.

The key to being a great DPS is to always be DPSing. Using any damaging ability is better than just standing there not doing anything. Some DPS is better than zero DPS. Even if you mess up, keep doing the rotation! Unless there’s a mechanic that prevents you from dealing damage or forces you to stop DPSing, you should not stop DPSing. 

If a tank is telling you to stop DPS or hold off for a few seconds because they can’t keep aggro, don’t listen to them, they’re the one that doesn’t know the proper way to keep aggro. Tell them to git gud and read a tank guide!

Hallowing Rotation

The main sustained build for Serenity uses a mostly static rotation that’s structured around having 100% uptime on your DoTs, especially Squelch, as well as using Force in Balance, Serenity Strike, and Spinning Strike as often as possible, though not quite always on cooldown.

This rotation is basically what would happen if Virulence | Dirty Fighting and Advanced Prototype | Tactics had a baby.

You have a core essential ability you’re using every 4 GCDs just like Cull | Wounding Shots and somewhat like Rail Shot | High Impact Bolt, and what you use in between is governed by which high-damage abilities are available and filler usage is determined by how much Force you have. 

As a result, the Serenity rotation fits into a couple of fairly constant blocks like Virulence | Dirty Fighting has, though there’s a lot more complexity to filler usage that’s more reminiscent of Advanced Prototype | Tactics.

Also like Advanced Prototype | Tactics with Rail Shot | High Impact Bolt, part of those actions in between Squelch activations must be dedicated to enabling Squelch either by resetting its cooldown with Force Potency or getting the Force Strike proc from dealing melee damage. 

There are 2 blocks that don’t really change and have high priority where you’re doing your most powerful attacks and then a third block that’s melee fillers.

DoT Refresh

1. Squelch
2. Sever Force
3. Force Breach
4. Melee Filler Priority (procs Force Strike)

Force in Balance

1. Squelch
2. Force Potency (finishes cooldowns on Squelch and melee attacks)
3. Force in Balance
4. Melee Filler Priority
5. Melee Filler Priority

Serenity Strike should be on cooldown when you activate Force Potency, and try to delay Force Potency until before Force in Balance if possible, but sometimes Hallowing is about to fall off and you can’t wait any longer.

Your most important goals with Force Potency usage are to maintain Hallowing and finish the cooldown on Squelch. You need to be able to do both with the same activation.

If you can’t do that consistently, you should practice more on the dummy or, especially if it’s only happening during a specific fight, consider using Longing Force instead.

To be clear, it is ideal to use Force Potency to reset the cooldown on your melee attacks as well as boost Force in Balance’s critical chance, but it is essential to use Force Potency to reset the cooldown on Squelch and prevent Hallowing from falling off, so you may need to use Force Potency at a different time to guarantee this.

If you’re using Balancing Field instead, you’ll have to treat Force in Balance as a high priority Melee Filler. Your goal is to have 100% uptime on Force Suppression, not use Force in Balance on cooldown.

Pure Melee Filler

1. Squelch
2. Melee Filler Priority
3. Melee Filler Priority
4. Melee Filler Priority

Filler Priority

1. Saber Strike (if you can’t afford anything else)
2. Whirling Blow (for DoT spread or against at least 2 targets)
3. Spinning Strike (only if sub-30%)
4. Serenity Strike
5. Saber Strike (if you need more Force)
6. Spinning Strike (with Crush Spirit proc)
7. Double Strike

Your goal is to prioritize using your most damaging melee attacks as often as possible while making sure you have enough Force to last until your next opportunity to use fillers.

The idea is to only use Saber Strike when Spinning Strike and Serenity Strike are unavailable so that you have enough Force to use Force in Balance and your DoTs. When you have enough Force and nothing else available, use Double Strike.

Against targets that have less than 30% HP, Spinning Strike will supplant almost all of your Double Strike activations and has a higher priority than even Serenity Strike in order to maximize the total number of activations. 

So long as you have over 50 Force, you should be fine to use Double Strike, but definitely do Saber Strike if you’re on your last filler slot and below ~45. Conversely, avoid using Saber Strike if you have more than ~65 Force.

You can squeeze out a few more Double Strikes, but so long as you never hit 100 Force or dip so low that you can’t immediately afford to use your next attack, you will end up triggering enough ticks of Sever Force to where Force Potency comes off cooldown in time to refresh 2 stacks of Hallowing, even in single-target situations.

To be clear, maintaining 100% uptime on 2 stacks of Hallowing is the objective here. Remember, in boss fights, Hallowing is primarily granted and refreshed by activating Force Potency, defeating enemies is just a situational bonus, and the cooldown on Force Potency is reduced whenever you critically hit with periodic damage, so you need to make sure all your DoTs are ticking as often as possible, which means using Double Strike over Saber Strike as much as possible.

If you’re using Quick Escalation + Serene Balance instead of Two Time Trouble + Pervasive Balance, the additional cooldown reduction on Force Potency will be derived from Force in Balance rather than Two Time Trouble DoT tick crits while the damage output (and survivability) will come from more frequent Serenity Strikes as opposed to additional DoT ticks from melee strikes.

Longing Force Priority

You can technically use a static rotation with Longing Force, but you still need high uptime to keep abilities synchronized and Hallowing offers higher DPS assuming you can maintain it, so there’s not much of a tangible benefit to using a static rotation with Longing Force unless you find it a lot more fun. I think it makes more sense to just use a priority system with Longing Force. 

1. Squelch (unprocced)
2. Proc Force Strike (for Squelch)
3. Force in Balance
4. Squelch (with Force Strike)
5. Whirling Blow (only to refresh DoTs on primary target)
6. Sever Force ▶ Force Breach
7. Spinning Strike (only when sub-30%)
8. Serenity Strike
9. Spinning Strike
10. Whirling Blow (if you can hit at least 2 targets)
11. Double Strike

Since Squelch is so powerful, you want to use it as often as possible, including proccing Force Strike as soon as it comes off its internal cooldown. Do not use Squelch if the DoT component is still ticking.

You can delay it for up to 3s (2 GCDs) without missing out on any procs, so you only need to make sure to activate it if the Ensue debuff isn’t on any target, meaning you can delay Squelch if Force in Balance is available.

If Force Breach is not on the target, you’ll need to use Shadow Stride instead of a melee attack or reapply your DoTs first because melee strikes only proc Force Strike while Force Breach is active.

If Shadow Stride is unavailable and your Force Breach isn’t on the target, you’ve made a mistake and you should reapply both Sever Force followed by Force Breach and then use a melee attack to proc Force Strike.

Force in Balance does technically deal less direct, single-target damage than your DoTs, but it provides other buffs and deals AoE damage that will compensate for this discrepancy.

In addition, if you don’t prioritize Force in Balance over refreshing your DoTs, you’ll end up in a situation where Force in Balance gets stuck behind reapplying your DoTs and becomes perpetually delayed. Prioritizing Force in Balance greatly reduces the frequency of this event. 

If Force in Balance and Squelch are dealt with (and they usually will be), your next step is to check if Sever Force and Force Breach are on the target. If they are falling off, you need to manually reapply or bounce them back with Whirling Blow.

I recommend always applying them back-to-back because it dramatically reduces the overall complexity at only a small cost to sustained DPS in select situations that you are unlikely to encounter when it is optimal to use this priority system. 

I suggest using Sever Force then Force Breach because you get an extra GCD if you need to proc Force Strike, though you will not benefit from Two Time Trouble in these instances because Sever Force will have fallen off. 

If you are refreshing DoTs via bouncing from another target, make sure that both DoTs actually get refreshed. Depending on the exact timing, both Sever Force and Force Breach can get refreshed by the same Whirling Blow or require 2 Whirling Blows depending on how much time is left on the DoT durations. 

It’s a DPS gain regardless of whether it takes 2 Whirling Blows or 1, but you just need to be aware that sometimes both DoTs won’t get spread if there’s still a final tick on the recipient or one of the DoTs has fallen off the donor.

After you’ve taken care of DoT applications, all that remains are melee attacks and the order I list will ensure that the most damaging ones are used as often as possible.

Since Longing Force causes you to regenerate Force, you shouldn’t ever need to use Saber Strike as part of the normal priority system. The only time you might need to use it is right after you’ve been battle rezzed. 

Openers

An opener is the rotation you use at the very beginning of the fight and for burst DPS checks. It can be a little different than the standard rotation because everything is off cooldown, including your OCDs and relic procs. It’s important to get as much damage as possible while all of your damage boosts are available to maximize their impact. 

For Serenity, both openers are basically just implementations of the rotation or priority system.

Hallowing Opener

1. Squelch (unprocced)
2. Sever Force
3. Force Breach
4. Adrenal
5. Serenity Strike
6. Squelch (with Force Strike)
7. Force Potency
8. Force in Balance
9. Serenity Strike
10. Spinning Strike
11. Squelch (unprocced)
12. Double Strike
13. Saber Strike
14. Double Strike
15. Squelch (with Force Strike)
16. Rotation

This opener doubles as a sample of the (mostly) static rotation you’ll be doing with Hallowing. Squelch should be used first because it’s basically a free activation of a powerful ability (though it still costs Force). If you use it after Sever Force and Force Breach, you’ll have to delay or clip the next activation, and Squelch ▶ Sever Force ▶ Force Breach ▶ Serenity Strike is already one of the rotational blocks. 

The Adrenal is used immediately after DoT application because the Adrenal will be active for the full duration of Sever Force and Force Breach, falling off right as you need to reapply them. Force Potency should be used after your second activation of Squelch in order to reset the cooldown on it (and Serenity Strike).

Usually, your melee fillers will be Double Strike ▶ Saber Strike ▶ Double Strike unless you’re using Quick Escalation or need to DoT spread, in which case you’ll be spamming Serenity Strike or Whirling Blow respectively. 

If you’re using Stalker’s Swiftness, you can incorporate Shadow Stride ▶ Spinning Strike as the first slot. Do not use Shadow Stride past the first slot because Crush Spirit will likely proc again partway through the first Melee Filler Priority slot.

Sometimes, it can even get procced in the first slot if you get “lucky” and Crush Spirit procs ASAP. This is why I typically don’t recommend using Stalker’s Swiftness with Serenity.

Longing Force Opener

1. Phantom Stride (from Stealth)
   ( Shadowcraft begins)
2. Force Potency
3. Squelch
4. Force in Balance
5. Serenity Strike
6. Spinning Strike (if available) OR Double Strike (if not)
   ( Shadowcraft ends)
7. Sever Force
8. Force Breach
9. Adrenal
10. Double Strike OR Spinning Strike (procs Force Strike)
11. Squelch
12. Double Strike
13. Double Strike
14. Serenity Strike
15. Force in Balance
16. Double Strike (procs Force Strike)
17. Squelch
18. Spinning Strike
19. Force Potency (or whenever available)
20. Double Strike
21. Sever Force
22. Force Breach
23. Serenity Strike (procs Force Strike)
24. Squelch
25. Priority

Squelch should be used first because it’s basically a free activation of a powerful ability (though it still costs Force). If you use it after Sever Force and Force Breach, you’ll have to delay or clip the next activation. 

The Adrenal is used immediately after DoT application because the Adrenal will be active for the full duration of Sever Force and Force Breach, falling off right as you need to reapply them. Force Potency should be used after your first activation of Squelch in order to put it on cooldown ASAP, but if you do it before the first Squelch, you’ll end up missing out on using one of the stacks on Force in Balance.

Serenity Strike is used before Force in Balance in order to proc Force Strike because that is available. Since you always want to use Sever Force and Force Breach back to back AKA “keep the family together”, and Force Strike can only be procced if you deal damage to an enemy affected by Force Breach, you need to wait until after DoT application to proc it.

Force in Balance is used next because Squelch can be delayed for up to 2 GCDs without causing any issues when you aren’t using Hallowing. Your transition into the priority is just using melee attacks until something else becomes available.