Jedi Shadow

You have to go into any SWTOR class with eyes wide open. It's a new game and from what I can tell by my experience with MMO games. Almost every class was made to accomedate a tank spec or OT spec. I know people want to rush through. Especially in the early release. But you have to stop and look at your class, It's spec possibilities and what professions pair with it to find an end goal for which you can make it. Just by Profession grinding Artificier I can see that there are Crystals and mods designed for 3 different goals. DPS, Healing and tank. Your gear, and how you Modifiy your gear and spec will reflect the class role you wish to play. Naturally Jedi Senitnels and Guardians(Can't remember their actually tank spec names) Thrive on crystals and mods that reflect a Str/Endurance heavy stat weight.

Shadow tanks I would see so far is having End/Forcepower stats weighed for them. More of their tricks rely on Force Power and their FP pool. You also have to look at every avalaible ability in their arsenal. Combat Stance/Guardian coupled with their force stun...run behind and saber attack from behind deals some of their highest damage and (Threat)! For sure Shadow Tanking will be the advanced players tank class/spec and since this game is new. Will require some research...L2P and not just basic but advanced understanding of gear/weapon and stat modification.

All I ask from new and seasoned players alike is. Have patience. We have to work from this new game from the ground up and soon given months from now their will be number crunchers, geeking it out to give most of us the best how to guides. But the best tanks, dps, healers for sure will be the dedicated players that had nothing to go by but the feel for their class and the game. GL to you all.

I had some issues with the class too but the problem you've identified isn't a problem at all.
The Shadow is a melee-range fighter. Their damage comes from a mix of physical attacks using the saber-staff and force abilities with various procs and effects that make each side dependant on the other.

My issues were almost entirely subjective, though I did find the lack of AoE to be quite an issue at times.

@hochas

You might find this a bit more useful:

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#601bIbckrskbsZZf0f.1

Force Focus is completely useless for tanking since you will use Combat Technique not Force Technique,

Rapid Recovery - this should have 3 points - if you are after self healing this improves the chance of Combat Technique to do a heal by 15%,

Applied Force - you are a tank, so you might find Double Bladed Saber Defense to be a lot more useful,

I hope this helps!

I'm a bit lost here. I'm trying to create a good tanking spec with sufficient self heals but it wasn't as easy as I thought.
So far I've come up with this:
http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#601MI0ckrskrsZZdMf.1

I'm not really sure that I'll have any use of Focused Insight in Combat Technique though, since Force Breach is a AoE-attack in the Combat Technique stance.
On the other hand, I can generate a lot of threat for multiple enemies and have decent resistances. Any thoughts? Someone that could help me perfect this?

I built my shadow crit/surge and am having great success with 7/31/3.
With columi (136 rating) and some rakata my base crit rating is 33% with 86% surge rating, with scoundrel buff 38, when force synergy procs (which is constantly does), 47% melee crit rating, with relic popped 51%, and the 4 set stalker gear gives 15% increased crit chance to CV strike giving it a total of 66% chance to crit (given that this is your bread and butter skill, its quite handy).

This build will give you big numbers in a long fight, but on stuff that dies quickly your damage will be more luck based until your talents start to proc.

I currently have a lvl 50 Shadow tank, http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#601rIbckbskbsZZf0cM.1, and with this build, I am a little worried about not having the 2% defense from shadowsight; however, as far as I can tell, I preform as well or better than the other tanks I've grouped with, especially with threat generation. The only obvious thing to give up for shadowsight is Applied Force, but I have a hard time doing that because both double strike and whirling blow are probably the most used abilities in the shadow tank's arsenal and it seems silly to not have that extra 6% damage there. Aside from slow time, project through particle acceleration is the best way to accumulate threat and double strike and whirling blow are the abilities that proc it. To me this says that that 6% damage combined with the proceeding project is a substantive amount of threat, and for my build it shows because I have no problems with losing or gaining threat, even to other tanks I've been grouped with while doing Heroics to their irritation--really, when I join a group that had already established that "so-and-so" is tanking, I literally have to back off because whether I'm using shadow strikes or procced projects, I'm always taking the aggro from them. I only use the taunts when the target is attacking a party member that is far away, or due to unexpected mobs joining the fray. I would just need to see how much difference that 2% defense actually makes before I would change my build. If it were more than a 2% difference to my defense chance, I would would probably switch; I however don't think it would be that significant. Shadowsight might only be worth it when a character has enough defense from high-end raid gear to make the needed difference. It's something to consider that applied force is better until a certain level of gear is obtained.

I've noticed that shadows differ from the other tanking classes in that their damage reduction is quite a bit lower (about 9-11%); however, their defense chance is quite a bit higher (7-12%: mine lacking the 2% from shadowsight is 22.5%, and other tanks I've compared with show anywhere from 13-15%). Shield chance and Absorption seem to be roughly the same, and that's why static barrier in that it can pretty much be constantly in effect is a big deal (in other word, you should make sure you renew it right away when it expires; it's not on gcd afterall, nor do you have to save it for special circumstances). This to me makes static barrier more desirable than bladeward because it's not just for special occasions, but I admit that BW will make a bigger difference in those crucial fights when the tank needs to stay up at a certain point no matter what. I also think the guardian's 50% damage reduction cd is superior to the shadow's 50% defense chance cd though the shadow's ability is still really awesome.

These comparisons are based upon similar gear in the contrastees (roughly mostly orange gear with the daily commendation armoring mods), so it would be interesting to see how much changes when comparing two characters sporting full-out raid gear.

So and what will be the primary attributes for a jedi shadow? willpower? strength?

and whats the best tree for PVE?