Best Armor/Stat/Skill rotation set up--theorycrafting 4.0(ish)

Best. Thread. Ever. High levels of math geekiness in this thread, along with stat suggestions and skill rotation ideas for every class/subclass to maximize procs and buffs/debuffs.  http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=8558158

Scroll way down to post #5 and un-hide the spoilers to get skill rotations that provide the best overall damage/healing/DPS. The only thing that was a bit lacking was the skill rotation for Shadow Infiltrators/Assassin Deception:

Rotation:
Filler* (Priority List)
Filler* = Discharge > Ball Lightning > Assassinate > Maul > Voltaic Slash > Saber Strike

(Jae's note: For those who refuse to think in Imp terms, Shadow Infiltrator skills would be the following:
Filler* = Force Breach > Psychokinetic Blast > Spinning Strike > Shadow Strike > Saber Strike

Here's my usual run of that build (which I'm altering slightly based on these guides) just for damage:

Stealth--Force Potency--Force Breach--Clairvoyant strike x 2--Psychokinetic Blast--Force Breach (if there are 3 stacks of the Breaching Shadows buff)--Blackout (to increase Force regen)--Shadow Strike IF Infiltration Tactics buff is active to reduce Force cost--Clairvoyant strike x 2--Psychokinetic Blast--Force Breach

Stay behind the enemy so you can use Shadow Strike--it does nasty, beautiful damage.

Use Spinning Strike when the target is below 30%

Use Force Potency early and every cooldown whenever you don't have any Breaching Shadow stacks (you don't want to waste the stacks).

Use Force Breach every time you have 3 stacks of Breaching Shadows. This is also one that does lovely, lovely damage with the 3 stacks.

Use Psychokinetic Blast after getting 2 stacks of Circling Shadows (from Clairvoyant strike) to reduce Force cost.

Use Blackout and Battle Readiness on every cooldown.

Only use Saber Strike if you're out of Force points and need to rebuild the pool.

Here's one skill parse (click the tab called 'rotation' near the top to see the skills he used) http://parsely.io/parser/view/120125/0

Here's an older 3.0 guide that has some suggested skill rotations that can be adapted to 4.0: http://dulfy.net/2015/03/29/swtor-3-0-infiltration-shadow-dps-guide-by-artorias/

And for those who like to watch YouTube videos of this kind of stuff where you can see the skills being used in real time with the 4.0 skills: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztjMjUOhQIE

In 'real battles', there are things to consider like Mind Snap (I LOVE to interrupt healers), Force Stun (did I mention I LOVE to interrupt healers?), and other skills that help the team.

Jae and all SWTOR group,

Have you discovered StarParse yet?  It is great program that displays your dps after each battle. As a test of your skills, you can buy an "operations dummy" and a "repair droid" from your legacy menu (under ship unlocks) which will add these items to your starship.  Once you have them, you can buy an item from the repair droid that will set the dummy's HP to 1,000,000.  Then -- with StarParse on -- you have a very effective way to measure your dps using different rotations or builds as you repeatedly kill the droid.  Make sure you reset its HP to 1M before each test.  There is supposed to be a way to measure heals also, but I have not figured that out.

Fym

I've heard about StarParse, yes--the only problem is that it doesn't take into account some of the buffs and debuffs. The creator of the program has mentioned that this is one of the limitations of the program in one of the shadow infiltrator threads.

Practically speaking, unless we plan on doing super-elite hard mode Ops or high end PvP, missing a bit of dps or healing here and there isn't going to matter much.  I still like seeing big numbers, though. :D