I honestly don't know, but I would think VS is stronger. Madness thrash gets a surge buff from claws of decay and base damage buff from unearthed knowledge (if you keep it up), other than that the buffs are shared (exploitive strikes, thrashing blades). I'd think a critical hit on thrash would beat out a crit VS, but VS is more consistent, and actually leads to useful procs to buff shock and discharge. Thrash in madness is just filler. Strong filler, but filler nonetheless. And that TOR assistant looks incredibly useful, especially for when you have to track deathmarks between multiple madness inquisitors.

I think madnessin is too high maintenance for not enough reward. You have to watch your target's buff bar for death marks, discharge, and creeping terror (if you go full madness), and you have to watch your own bar to keep unearthed knowledge up, and watch for exploit weakness and raze. I don't think there's enough of a reward in it, deception has become much more viable in the last couple patches and the rotation is much simpler. Another thing that turned me off to madnessin is I leveled a sorc. Madness is MUCH simpler for them; keep affliction (discharge) and death field up, spam force lightning, use crushing darkness/lightning strike when they proc (they proc just from FL). Not to mention madness sorcs can go hybrid and get some great synergy from the lightning tree. There's not really much to be gained out of darkness or deception for a madnessin past the first tier. Plus of course the madness sorc gets to sit at 30 meters all the time. Stick to deception. It's a lot less crap to watch, and the only decent DPSsins I've seen are deception. Volt slash, volt slash, shock, discharge on cooldown, maul on proc, blackout at the end of a force heavy rotation or as a cooldown when you might be taking heavy damage (force cloak as well). And of course, always begin your combat in stealth mode for the free dark embrace.

Not as bad as sins that try to tank it in lightning (or worse, surging) charge. I generally try to help bads when I see them, but you have to vote to kick them when they're unresponsive or belligerent. I have absolutely no patience for bads in endgame content though. People should be smart enough by the time they reach 50 to know when the assassin tank is CCing stuff, it's because he's trying to get you through the instance as quickly as possible. Especially if he says so in group chat. Nothing makes me rage harder than some idiot jumping right into the add I just mezzed.

Every madness sorc I've seen runs hybrid, creeping terror isn't worth the points when you can get lightning barrage, subversion, and convection from Lightning. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201Zfcb0bZsMbRsrkrs.2 Keep Deathfield on cooldown, keep affliction up, spam FL, Crushing Darkness on proc (or for alpha strike), lightning strike on proc when crushing darkness is on cooldown. Recklessness priority is Deathfield > Procced CD > FL I believe, but maybe just Deathfield and FL. I only ran DPS on my sorc for a little bit at 50, started gearing up as a healer because my guild needs sorc healers, so I haven't had too much experience with it. But I know the 3 sorcs in my guild all run hybrid, they've parsed on dummies for a while and believe that hybrid is best. Thought this was interesting, they also noticed that it was a DPS gain to interrupt FL channels to hit death field as soon as it comes off cooldown, procced CD, or refresh affliction. The force loss is negligible, considering the bonus regeneration you get from subversion.

Nice build, think it would be better if you took a point from enraged sunder, put it into accuracy, and switched an initiative for an adept enhancement? I think the rage generation with rage is pretty good without it, I find I rage dump to use enrage fairly often. I noticed you put the minimum points into malice, I'd think you want that 6% force crit considering how often crush, scream, and choke are used in the rotation. I'd consider pulling out of gravity (-1 rage from crush?) or interceptor (only real use imo is when jumping to a moving enemy that doesn't get rooted [writhing horror adds, dread guard, kephess] and you have to play catch up). Just my 2 cents though. I've had to split raid time between my tank assassin and my jugg dps, and of course my dps isn't favored as much as maras that bring bloodthirst, sorcs/mercs that bring more range, or even the operative that brings stealth rez. So I haven't gotten as much experience as I'd like on my jugg, especially at rage, and especially on Kephess. Gotta admit, the trenchgutter phase kinda worries me as a derpsmasher.

Sorc DPS is very fun and quite viable for endgame raiding and PVP. I honestly have no idea what the spec is for PVP, but I know this or something like it is best for PVE. Death field, affliction, spam lightning, hit crushing darkness when it procs, lightning barrage when CD is on cooldown.

I hope you guys realize that if you hit a proc for ravage, you should NOT use your other proc skill until the cooldown for the skill that procced is off cooldown, because the lockout for savagery is the same length as the cooldowns for shatter and impale. So you hit a proc on impale, you ravage, then sunder, vicious slash, whatever filler necessary until impale is off cooldown again.

My biggest problem with vengeance is how immobile you are. Ravage roots you for 3 seconds, and your only gap closers are force charge and intercede (which can be hard to pull off). Most of the bosses in EC and TFB require quite a bit of mobility (Toth and Zorn, Kephess, Writhing Horror, Dread Guard, first phase operator, Kephess again, second phase of TFB), and it really sucks breaking a ravage channel because of mechanics. Only problem I have with rage in raids is the firebrand and stormcaller shield phase and kephess's trenchgutters in EC. I don't have much trouble at all on the tanks, and I think rage could be extremely useful once the warriors are kited/killed.

You can't have heals going on you and you can't have your companion in an aggressive stance. Set your companion to passive, then force cloak, maybe blackout for good measure.

Yes, the mirror class is exactly the same.

You haven't seen a good sorc/sage then. A good hybrid will be competitive with mercs, snipers, and marauders, and the rotation is cake. I think shadows make the absolute best tanks in the game, bar none. There's some good DPS shadows out there as well, but I think you're pretty much pigeon holed into infiltration, as sages get the vastly superior use out of balance (because they can get great synergy out of telekinetics). Sages get a great DOT/burst hybrid spec (http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#600Zfcb0bZfMbRsdkrs.2), but the burst spec of pure telekinetics is very wonky, requires more alacrity, and pretty much roots you in one spot for the fight. The shadow has a great burst spec with a fairly underwhelming dot spec compared to how great the sage is. If you want to mainly tank, go shadow and never look back. If you want to dps or heal, go sage.

Terrible idea. First of all, a tank using a threat drop in any PVE boss fight is a terrible idea that will punish you in bosses like zorn and toth, firebrand and stormcaller, kephess, the deep wriggler, the dread guard, kephess, and the terror from beyond. You can't solo tank the harder instances in this game. You and your healer should be geared and competent enough to where you don't get in trouble. And when you do get in trouble, you pop force shroud, overcharge saber, deflection, medpack, relic, and an adrenal as able and necessary to stay alive. But the absolute only time you hit force cloak is when a wipe is called, all non-stealth players are dead, and you can safely vanish and revive people. 31/0/10 is the tried and true standard for a reason, and the thrashless rotation is the standard for a reason; they are the best in terms of DPS, TPS, and HPS. Darkswell is a good cooldown for deception assassins, not tanks. By going 27/12/2 you miss out on the best AOE threat generator in the game that isn't AOE taunt, threat and damage buffs to wither, shock, and discharge, cost reduction to shock, basically everything that makes assassins the best tanks. And in return you get a backstab buff that you can't use, 10 more force that doesn't make a difference, lowered cooldowns on stuff that really doesn't make a difference, and increased stealth level. I would not raid with an assassin who has fewer than 31 points into darkness.

Duplicity is not a skill a tank should take under any circumstances. Skills that increase DPS are not necessarily bad to pick up with your extra skill points, but one that requires you not to have aggro is a bad talent. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#200MIrokrskbsZZf0cM.2 is generally considered standard, you could move the points in chain shock around, but not to duplicity. Maul shouldn't even be on your quickbar as a tankassin.

You really have no excuse to not use the set bonuses now that you can buy campaign armorings. But as was mentioned earlier, the easiest thing to do is get your set bonus from your hat, legs, hands, and feet, hide your hat, and wear whatever chestpiece you want. You don't even need rakata shells, you can just buy cheap tionese or columi pieces and retrofit them with the mods you need. Then when you get campaign and dread guard armorings, you can start wearing whatever you want in those slots.

Enraged defense is even a terrible cooldown for dps. It takes 4 rage, and another 1/second for the next 10 seconds we take damage. Bad defensive cooldown, even worse threat drop.

Only crit I have is in my earpiece, I just switched out all my mods for power/surge. I don't think rage is that bad outside of smash, I've seen good damage with scream, ravage, and vicious slash.

Feel free to tell me what I should be doing then

I talked to the jugg I talked about in the OP, and I've learned a lot. Most important thing for ALL juggs, is that apparently we don't get any benefit from other players' armor debuffs whatsoever. That's why you can't use shatter until you get your own sunder up in vengeance. So for max DPS, we need to keep our own sunders up 100% of the time. Which isn't a bad thing, because sunder is a great rage generator. But anyways, he told me his opening is saber throw, charge, crush, sunder, smash, and then have a priority of crush > choke > enrage for shockwaves, keep ravage on cooldown, always use your free scream from your jump abilities, keep saber throw on cooldown (4 piece PVE bonus), and dump rage into vicious slash when necessary. He said always rage dump before hitting enrage, if you have more than 2 rage when you pop enrage you've wasted resources. Another important thing is he said he never uses enraged defense, and always gets a guard from a tank. The reason for this is simple; the juggernaut has the worst threat drop of any class. It costs 2-4 rage, and then takes away up to 1 rage per second for the next 10 seconds. No other class has a threat drop that costs anything (except powertechs, they don't have threat drops at all, so they'd get a guard too). http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#101MZcMMZGMRrdfMrcz.2 that's his spec, I disagreed with him about picking up interceptor, but he said payback was situational, 1 rage for force crush isn't worth a point, and he doesn't use enraged defense, while extra speed can help during positioning in fights like kephess and the dread guard. I would consider putting 1 point into accuracy until I get mine up to 99%, but otherwise it looks good. For stats, he said he stacks power/surge, and augments with strength, minimize crit rating (since we get force crit bonus and smash is autocrit). Right now my power is at 1119, force bonus damage is at 1098.8, force crit multiplier is at 109.23%. I'm going to hit something HARD.

All those campaign armorings are there for is to allow you to get your set bonus from the armoring. You can get a set bonus by using a tionese/columi/rakata gear shell, or campaign or dread guard armorings. If you don't care about the set bonus, your black hole armorings should be fine. For my jugg, I prefer the 4 piece PVP set bonus, so I avoid dread guard and campaign armorings. I use all might augments as well. The 6% strength bonus from the skill tree doesn't give as much bonus damage as stacking power does, but the difference is negligible, plus stacking strength gives us more crit rating (which is outside of the diminishing returns for crit rating from mods).

A concealment op and hybrid sorc were keeping up with a mara and merc in the NM EC I was in this week. You can keep up, you just need to know your class.

Derp I didn't mean to put stagger on that tree, meant to have improved sunder. I figured enrage, jump, smash would be my opener, I do something similar with vengeance. What I do right now in vengeance is I pop a dread guard on use relic, then equip my PVP stat stick relic before we start the fight. Then I pop my adrenal while I'm in midair, then ravage as soon as I land. If I do that except with smash, I'll be doing some damn good damage (and threat). I guess accuracy would be a good place to put that last point. I was thinking maybe enraged sunder, as I use it on my vengeance spec, but with one point it doesn't seem that great, neither does payback. Accuracy would give me a little more armor penetration, which is never a bad thing, plus more hits whenever I'm not choking, crushing, screaming, or smashing. I'm still not sure about the set bonuses though. I really like the PVP bonus because of how many bosses in this game have phases that require you to move. Pretty much the only bosses where I don't benefit from the PVP set are minefield and the last phase of TFB, every other raid boss has a lot of opportunities for me to charge in. I think overall I'd parse out to get more damage out of the damage buff than the lowered enrage cooldown. Could really help in phases where you have to push the boss (purple level on operator, stormcaller in NiM). And who knows, if I get REALLY pro and am able to use intercede as part of my rotation, I could jump to a healer and then back on the boss, get that 10% bonus every 20 seconds or so. That's a 10% damage buff with a 20 second cooldown. I thought it was great for ravage, but with the raw burst of smash it could be crazy. I get a full ravage channel into the damage buff, should be able to fit in a smash and a scream instead of that.

I've mostly been raiding as vengeance (http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#1010MZcGMRMuddGoZGz0M.2), and have been able to put up competitive numbers, but a guildie told me about a jugg he knew that saw his DPS jump by like 500 when he made the switch from ravagespam to smashspam. Problem is, I don't know the rotation for rage as well as I do for vengeance, I'm not sure how to manage my shockwave procs (should I always smash on cd, regardless of shockwaves, when do I choke, when do I crush, when do I enrage). Not entirely sure about the build either. Figured something like this (http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#101MZcMMZhMRrdfRbfz.2), but not entirely sure where to put the last point. Also, not sure on what gear set to get. I've been using the PVP shells for the 10% extra damage after jumping (the 8% health from intercede is situationally useful too). The 2 piece bonus for PVE seems decent, 5 seconds off of enrage to bring it down to every 35 seconds sounds pretty awesome. 4 piece PVE seems fairly worthless though, saber throw isn't much more than an extra rage builder. Any help would be appreciated. And for those who think rage isn't viable for raids, I have 109% force crit multiplier in rage, and I'm about half 61/63 gear.

And I assume stat priority is pretty standard, 350 CR and 75% surge, then stack power, correct?

I've been tanking, but picking up some DPS gear on the side, was madness before 1.3 but I'd like to try deception again for the first time since 1.1 http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#200bc0MZfMrRkfbRroZc.2 Is that the general standard? And what's the rotation, isn't it volt slash x 2, shock, repeat, throwing in maul when it procs, discharge on cooldown?

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#200rIRRkrskbsZZf00M.2 That's what I use for PVE. Unless they fixed it, chain shock likes to use both charges of recklessness when you have 2 available, so I can't pop recklessness until I have 3 stacks of harnessed darkness, which I feel slows down my healing. I don't see my threat generation falling off much without chain shock, even when running with dps with some 63 mods. I disagree on the sentiment that lacerate is useless, it's your best AOE threat generation when wither and discharge are on cooldown, plus it's more likely to proc than thrash/assassinate when you can hit 2 enemies with it. Nerve wracking is nigh useless in PVE, as it only works on enemies that can be affected by physics (i.e. trash). If it did work on bosses, that would be absolutely the biggest gift bioware could give us as tanks, it'd be a mini-bloodthirst every 30 seconds (or pretty much every burst phase). I would recommend having a spec for PVP and one for PVE, don't try to have a spec versatile for both. It won't be good at either.