Concealment Operative PVP + PVE Beginner Guide (SWTOR Patch 7.5)
A Beginner Guide to the Concealment Operative Combat Style for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Including the best gear, stats & builds for PVP and PVE, as well as gameplay tips and tricks.
This is up-to-date for Patch 7.5
The video version of this guide is available on my YouTube channel here:
About this Guide
While I have been playing SWTOR since launch, Concealment is one of the classes that I never really played much of. So this is a guide for beginners because I'm a beginner at this class myself. So while I’m certainly not the best Concealment player in the world, I have played it quite a bit over the last weeks and I am happy to share what I learned with you.
As opposed to my previous guides, I will not only focus on PVP, but try to explain how the class works in general, and how you can play it in PVE as well.
About the class
Concealment is a melee DPS class that offers some of the best burst damage in the game. On top of that, it has access to stealth and one of the best mobility skills in the game, which also lets you avoid all incoming damage as you roll and shortly after. This combination makes Concealment very hard to kill 1v1 and one of the best classes at playing the Warzone objectives. They simply have the annoying habit of forgetting to die.
In PVE, your gameplay will revolve around doing mostly single-target damage, so you will focus on taking out high-priority adds that need to die quickly. But you can also do great sustained boss dps because your build will give you an insane critical hit rate, so if you can stick to your target, you can compete for top dps.
Concealment is relatively easy to learn with a quite straightforward rotation, but can take some time to master because you need to learn to use your roll before you take half of your health bar in damage.
Latest Balance Changes/Meta ranking
As of patch, 7.5 Concealment is currently not considered one of the strongest classes overall. It lost a lot of its PVP power with the removal of the old set bonuses (looking at you double hard-stun) in the 7.0 Legacy of the Sith expansion. The removal of the Revitalizers passive (now Lethality only) meant that Concealment lost its most reliable source of damage reduction and you now need to rely on proactively dodging incoming damage with roll. Additionally, it is one of those true melee classes that must be in 4m range to do any meaningful damage. This means Concealment struggles in fights that involve a lot of kiting and sustained incoming damage from multiple opponents that you can’t always reliably dodge.
Key Abilities
Your biggest crits in PVP will come from Backstab and as the name suggests, it can only be used from behind the target. Very hard to stab someone in the back if you’re in front of them. However, there is the Revealing Weakness passive that lets you use backstab from the front and makes it grant a Tactical Advantage, which is your secondary resource.
This passive is triggered by Volatile Substance, which is the next key ability I want to highlight. It puts a debuff on your target and will explode when you deal poison damage to them. So this delayed damage is the first important part of setting up a big juicy burst combo. You can trigger the explosion in three different ways: Corrosive Dart, Backstab which triggers the Acid Blade passive, or Veiled Strike, if you are using the Volatile Strike Tactical. Volatile Substance marks the target and causes it to take 7% more internal and elemental damage, which you don’t have a whole lot of, but provides a great synergy with damage over time classes such as PyroTech PowerTech.
Crippling Slice is another key ability. It does not cost any energy - which is great - it roots your target and prevents it from turning, which is unique to Concealment but most importantly, with the build that we are going to run, it turns your next ability into an autocrit.
And the final key ability that I want to highlight is Exfiltrate, the operative roll. While it doesn’t roll as far as the Sniper’s roll, the cooldown is a lot shorter with only 8 seconds. This will be the key for chasing after targets or avoiding incoming damage because it makes you dodge or resist all incoming attacks for 1,5 seconds, so it works against melee, ranged, force, and tech damage. On top of that, this effect will last a little bit longer than the actual roll animation.
Tactical
For PVP, Volatile Strike is the Concealment tactical of choice. It buffs your burst by turning Veiled Strike into an autocrit, if you have Volatile Substance on the target. It also causes it to trigger the Explosion, so you will have both attacks hitting at the same time for some nice burst. In addition, it also turns your next Backstab into an autocrit, so the perfect setup if you are playing PVP.
For Huttball you can run Augmented Holocomm, which gives your Holotraverse a second stack. Very OP for scoring the ball and then jumping back to your healers!
For PVE, a single burst of damage is not going to be enough to kill a boss, so you want to prioritize your sustained dps. The best tactical for that is Acid Lash, which makes Laceration trigger your Acid Blade dot and refreshes its duration. Laceration is of course your main filler and tactical advantage spender and Acid Blade is the DoT caused by Backstab.
While doing damage to multiple targets is probably not the reason you want to play Concealment, I want to mention that the Explosive Cells Tactical can be an option if you want to improve your AoE.
Legendary Implants
The best legendary implant is Tactician, which grants you an extra 10% critical hit chance as long as you have a stack of Tactical Advantage. This just buffs your overall damage and we can almost always have it up, so you always run this.
IMPORTANT: There is another Operative Implant called “Tactician’s Focus”. (Good job on the clear naming, Bioware!) Don’t confuse them!!! Tactician buffs all your damage, whereas Tactician’s Focus only gives you an auto-crit on a filler ability, which doesn’t even do great damage to begin with. So don’t waste your tech frags on that one!
For your second legendary, I recommend running Locked and Loaded. The tooltip on that one is wrong. It will give you an extra 5% BONUS damage, which is less than 5% extra overall damage (different modifier). But it’s still a bit more damage, so it’s a good implant.
The final implant that I have been playing with in PVP is Second Wind. This one gives you a 20% HP heal and 75% movement speed buff for 8 seconds. Using this, you will lose some dps, but you will get rewarded for kills in PVP, which feels really good. Especially if you play solo without a healer, this can allow you to stay in the fight for longer and it helps with catching up to your next target. If you are going to run it, I recommend replacing Locked and Loaded for this.
Gear & Stats
PVP
For PVP, you can either use the Thyrsian PVP gear which goes up to item level 336, or any higher item level PVE gear such as the modded 340 item level gear from Hyde & Zeek or the Rakata 344 gear. They will all give you almost the same stats as soon as you enter a Warzone or Arena.
Critical: 4800
Alacrity: 2154
Accuracy: 0
For stats, you want to get your alacrity rating to around 2150. That will allow you to get your global cooldown to 1,4 seconds. To get to that rating you can use one alacrity piece and three superior (golden) alacrity augments on top of your legendary implants. If you don’t have the gold augments, you can also do what I did here and use two alacrity pieces, your two alacrity implants and no alacrity augments, which will get you to 2356 alacrity rating. A bit more than needed, but honestly it will not change your dps all that much.
Since almost all your damage is tech or yellow damage, you do not need accuracy at all for PVP, because here you will never miss a yellow damage attack unless your enemies are using some kind of cooldown. But in those cases, accuracy usually does not help you much anyway, which is why we don’t take any for PVP.
Once you have that, you want to get your critical rating to around 4800. For that, you need the remaining armor pieces, the earpiece, and 6 critical augments.
The rest of your augments can then go into Mastery.
For your stim, you want to run the Advanced Kyrprax Versatile Stim, which further boosts your Mastery and Power.
The best relics for PVP are the Thyrsian Relics of Serendipitous Assault and Focused Retribution.
PVE
Critical: 3765
Alacrity: 2128
Accuracy: 2704
The main difference when gearing for PVE is that you need 10% accuracy because bosses can avoid your yellow damage. So the #1 priority is to reach more than 2694 accuracy rating. However, you want to stay as close as possible to this number and don’t go much above it, as that would waste stats which you could put into crit otherwise.
With the best available gear currently in the game (Rakata 344) you need 3 armor pieces with accuracy, the Advanced Kyrprax Proficient Stim, and 4 gold accuracy augments.
For Alacrity, the goal will be the same, around 2150 will be fine. With Rakata gear, that means you need one piece with alacrity, your two fully upgraded legendary implants, and 2 gold alacrity augments.
The rest of your stats should go into crit.
For relics, you want to run the Rakata 344 relics of Focused Retribution and Serendipitous Assault. Or if you drop it first, use the Rakata Relic of Devastating Vengeance. The difference in dps is very small.
Builds
Warzone PVP Build
Level 23: Roll Knife is a huge boost to your dps and reduces the cooldown of your Stim Boost. Always take this.
Level 27: I like Quick Countermeasures for the 100% movement speed buff it provides while Evasion is active. This one felt really good when chasing after Sorcerers or Mercenaries in a Warzone where a lot of random slows and roots are flying at you. It also reduces the cooldown of Evasion, meaning you have one of your most important defensives available more often.
Level 39: Crippling Wounds. Turns your next attack after Crippling Slice into an autocrit. While Crippling Throw and The Best Defense have their uses, I prefer to do maximum damage and Crippling Wounds helps with that.
Level 43: Here I take Tactical Critical. The buff to critical chance it provides is nice, but the thing that makes it mandatory is the root break on Stim Boost. Concealment only does meaningful damage if you are within 4m range of your target so you need reliable ways to break movement-impairing effects. It also synergizes well with Roll Knife, which we took at level 23, meaning we have our buffed Stim Boost available more often.
Level 51: Chem-resistant inlays are the best choice if you want to stay in the fight for longer. Advanced Cloaking can be better for defending nodes though.
Level 64: Med Shield can add some nice HPS since you have Shield Probe up so often. But I prefer Evasive Screen to make sure to get a clean stealth-out without needing to use Evasion.
Level 68: Here you have two options. Do you want to be a fucking asshole who gets off on Flashbanging people in the face or do you want to do TOP DPS and actually be able to play Huttball? In the first case, go Flashbang, in the second, you need to run Holotraverse, which by the way is also a root break.
Level 73: I like both Blow for Blow and Evasive Imperative. The first makes it so AP PowerTechs one-shot themselves on you. The second makes it so you have your buffed Evasion available more often. Tough choice this one! Best to scout out the enemy team before the match and decide according to the enemy team's composition.
Arena PVP Build
For Arenas, you will usually not be the first target. Taking advantage of that, we are making some changes to the build.
Level 27: In Arena, the first kill is super important since it turns the rest of the match into a 3v4. That’s why we take Debilitate and aim to stun the kill target (ideally after they have used their CC breaker).
Level 64: In case you do need to stealth out, you want to make sure you can safely get away and don’t randomly pop out because of a lingering DoT on you. In a Warzone, one death is not that bad, but in Arena it means you are out of the match and are forced to watch your teammates chase the enemies around for up to 5 minutes, while you inspect the integrity of the arena floor. Instead, I recommend that you take Evasive Screen, vanish out, heal to full, and make them pay.
PVE Build
For PVE, you are not going to be using your hard stun that often, so just pick the right option at level 27. The 60% AoE damage reduction is very strong here even if it just lasts for 4 seconds.
Other than that, I recommend picking up Endorphin Rush at level 64, because in PVE, you can run out of energy if you keep spamming those Lacerations, which you should.
How to Do Damage
PVP
The combo below is how you usually want to start a fight. Of course, you cannot always follow this “rotation” because PVP is dynamic, people kite, they use defensives, etc. so you will need to react and change your combo to counter your opponents.
Use Stim Boost in Stealth to buff your alacrity and critical damage.
Start the fight with Volatile Substance.
Next, you walk up and use Crippling Slice.
Now, your target cannot turn around, so you walk up behind them, which means they cannot attack you. Then, you use Veiled Strike, which will detonate your Volatile Substance and be an auto crit because of your tactical. Crippling Slice will make it so that your Volatile Substance damage always autocrits as well, so you have a guaranteed double autocrit.
Next, we have Backstab available, which is also going to be an autocrit, because of our tactical. That’s three autocrits in a row but only if you use the abilities in the correct order. They have nice synergies with each other, but you need to make sure you don’t mess up the combo.
Now, your target will probably panic and start to kite or use a defensive cooldown. Here, you have to decide whether chasing them is worth it, or whether you should use exfiltrate and switch to another target. In either case, while your burst combo is on cooldown, you should use Veiled Strike to build tactical advantages and Laceration to spend them and reduce the cooldown of your stim boost.
If you want to go for the biggest crit possible, use your Crippling Slice autocrit on Backstab instead of Volatile Substance. So the combo would then be:
Volatile Substance
Veiled Strike
Crippling Slice
Backstab (of DOOM)
This way you can hit for upwards of 130k, but Volatile Substance will not be an autocrit, so based on my testing, it is a dps loss.
PVE Rotation
Remember that for PVE, you will be using the Acid Lash tactical. So the whole thing above does not apply anymore. But the good news is, the PVE rotation is not all that complicated.
This is how it works:
Use Backstab on cooldown.
Combo Volatile Substance + Filler + Crippling Slice on cooldown.
Use Veiled Strike if you have less than two Tactical Advantages.
Use Laceration if you have at least one Tactical Advantage
Use Rifle Shot if below 70 energy and Adrenaline Probe is on cooldown
This is how two blocks of the rotation look. (read from left to right, starting in the first row)
You start in Stealth and use Backstab, which will give you a tactical advantage. You can also pop your Stim Boost and Raid buff before you open, to give you that extra critical and alacrity.
Next, you use Volatile Substance.
Follow up with Laceration. Note that this Laceration will refund our Tactical Advantage. This will happen once every 10 seconds, because of the Level 35 Tactical Opportunity passive if we are hitting a poisoned target.
Now, you use Crippling Slice, which will autocrit your Volatile Substance. So similar to PVP, we want to use our Crippling Slice to autocrit the Volatile Substance, because that is our hardest hitter overall.
Next, Laceration to spend your tactical advantage.
Veiled Strike to build another stack.
And another two Lacerations to finish the first block.
Now Backstab is ready to be used again so we use it. Note that it will build a stack of Tactical Advantage, because we used Volatile Substance before.
Next, use Veiled Strike to build another Tactical Advantage.
Now we have two Tactical Advantages and since more than 10 seconds have passed since step 3, we can use three Lacerations in a row, since the first one will refund one stack again.
And again our Combo - Volatile Substance + Filler + Crippling Slice - is off cooldown. Now, we use Veiled Strike as our filler since we are out of Tactical Advantages.
Now Backstab is ready to be used again.
If you run out of Tactical Advantages and Veiled Strike is on cooldown, you can also use Holotraverse or Stim Boost to build a Tactical Advantage or use Corrosive Dart or Rifle Shot as Fillers depending on your energy level. Using Stim Boost as often as possible will maximize your dps, but make sure not to use it when you already have two Tactical Advantages.
Defensive Cooldowns
Shield Probe can be used often and does not break stealth. It has a very short cooldown, so you can even pop it in stealth before you open on a target in PVP.
Exfiltrate makes you immune to all damage but cannot be used when you are rooted, netted, or stunned. So you need to anticipate incoming damage and interrupt your dps to dodge an ability with roll. This is easier in PVE, where bosses have much more casted abilities. In PVP, you need to anticipate and skillfully outplay your opponents. This takes a bit of practize and is one of the main skills to master as Concealment.
Evasion makes you immune to most white damage attacks for 4 seconds. That’s why it is best to use it if a Carnage Marauder, Marksmanship Sniper, or Deception Assassin is hitting you. On top of that, it also purges all removable negative effects on you and gives you 60% AoE damage reduction. Evasion has a lot of good uses and you need to carefully judge when to utilize. That being said, the cooldown is not too long, so don’t be afraid of wasting it either.
Finally, we have Cloaking Screen which is your Vanish. It puts you into stealth meaning, no one can target you. This one is usually your last line of defense in PVP because of its long cooldown of 2 minutes. But be aware that certain AoE abilities can still pull you out of stealth, so it’s best to combine it with Exfiltrate to immediately create some distance from the place where you were last seen.
Gameplay Tips
Use Noxious Knives to detect enemy stealthers that have just vanished.
Hololocate does not trigger a global cooldown so you can combo Hololocate into Debilitate stun or Hololocate into Laceration if you run out of Tactical advantages.
If chasing a Sorcerer, you can pop their stun bubble from more than 5m away to avoid the CC. To do that, use Volatile Substance, Corrosive Dart, and if you don’t get a crit, an extra Overload Shot.
Easy classes to face
Advanced Prototype PowerTechs: Simply wait until they pop their burst on you, hit Evasion, and watch them one-shot themselves on your reflect. You can avoid most of their burst if you roll Thermal Detonator, but be aware that a good PowerTech will root or stun you when using his combo, so best to have Evasion and CC break ready.
Vengeance Juggernauts are also relatively easy to fight, at least 1v1. You have better single-target dps, so just spam your combo on them and roll away if they pop a defensive. Once they run out of defensives, they are a free kill.
Hard classes to face
Madness Sorcerers are a hard class to face because they can root you more often than you can cleanse it, so you will never be in range 1v1. Your only chance is to kill them from stealth if they are below 100% HP or without cooldowns. Try to dodge the Overload knockback root and save Stim boost for the root break.
Any tank will present a big headache as well because you don’t have meaningful AoE or internal damage to pressure them or their teammates through guard, while they can shut your mobility down with a variety of roots, stuns, and pulls.
Synergies
Concealment goes well with Deception Assassin. Both classes have a similar playstyle and Deception’s cc helps keep targets in place long enough to unload your burst damage.
Madness Sorc or Pyro PTs are also good pairings. They can slow and root enemies for you and also profit from your 7% internal/elemental debuff.
That’s all for this guide. Have a question? Let me know in the comments below!