Talos. CC + Heals. Win. If you're sure about not using him, then probably Ashara, just because she has the highest single target DPS.

This. Just because you enjoy this build, and it suits your playstyle, doesn't make it "the best". Such statements are misleading, and not in any way justifiable.

Just thought I'd offer an alternative opinion/suggestion. I'm not by any means saying that what others have said is wrong, in fact it is all very valid, just saying that there's more than one way to skin a cat! When I first hit 50, I was disappointed too. I was a slow burner on my Assassin, work commitments unfortunately meant I didn't get to 50 anywhere near as fast as my guildies & friends. I spend quite a lot of time at work browsing various forums, and as such had watched the countless PVP videos of assassins putting out crazy damage, admittedly every single one of whom was a Battlemaster. I hit a wall after a week, and reluctantly specced to Darkness, just so that my puny little existance was lengthened that bit longer. I say reluctantly only because I'd spent the entirity of my journey to 50 as DEception, and was looking forward to putting my experience to good use. Having to change spec wasn't really something I'd planned for. Also, it meant my options for PVE were restricted, unless I wanted to front the cash to respec left, right and centre. After dragging myself kicking and screaming through a few weeks' dailies and weeklies, I was fortunate enough to have got myself the vast majority of a Champion Stalker's set, except for 1 Rakata relic (from Artifice), my implants (both still Centurion) and my focus (also still centurion). The improvements in my gear made an absolutely massive difference. Whilst 1on1 against battlemasters would still prove tricky because of the gear difference, and they may well have an edge, a lot of them were now beatable. A lot of them quite easily beatable in fact. All I'm suggesting is to give Deception another chance one you've geared up a little, you'll be quite nicely surprised. I've always considered the itemisation & reward system for PVP in SWTOR to be pretty poor. It effectively rewards people for the time spent playing rather than any form of player skill. At least the high end PVE stuff you need to kill hardmode/nightmare bosses to get.... I would love to see some from of rating or ladder based system, whereby top-end PVP gear could be limited to those who truly earned it, such as the Arena & rated Battleground system in <the game who shall not be named>. They did a lot of things wrong, but I kinda liked that. In SWTOR, it takes effectively no skill whatsoever to achieve Battlemaster status and collect all the BM gear, just a lot of free time. I don't mean to say that all people who achieve it are terrible players, far from it in fact, just don't automatically assume that because someone has a weapon with a black colour to its effect that you can't take them on.

While levelling, Spike + Tumult combo was a great opener. Still use it on trash in ops, I don't see what the huge problem is to be honest.

This. It isn't a bug.

If I'm honest the one thing I really want changing to make my time in PVP as Deception more enjoyable? Fix stealth. 1) Stealth in itself is buggy as hell. The number of times I've been stuck in combat for minutes at a time and unable to re-stealth is just daft. 2) If there are going to be abilities in the game that take us out of stealth, fine. At least make stealth work at other times then! It's absolutely infuriating to get targetted and jumped on while stealthed by targets 15-20m away.

Sorry, apparently I'm in a bad mood today. I was simply pointing out that while Darkness is perfectly viable for PVP, as are both Madness and Deception. Blindly picking a spec because you've been told it's "the best" isn't the way to go, I'd recommend playing around with the various different specs, and choosing the one that you personally feel the most comfrotable with. There are decent specs (both PVE and PVP) listed in this thread along with some pretty comprehensive additional information to go with each.

Abolutely! That's about the only time I use it too.

"They" are wrong.

The other issue, of course, is that when tanking anything more than 2 mobs at a time, the fact that is even has a cooldown in the first place becomes a problem. THe charges are gone in 2 seconds leaving you to take a beating until it's available again.

So let me get this straight. You make a post suggesting that people don't play a class, stating the reasons behind such a statement as nothing more than conjecture and a stream of unjustified whining. I'm sure you can back up what you said with actual figures from damage meters/reports though..... oh wait..... Just about everybody gives perfectly valid and justifiable reasons as to why what you're saying is an absolute load of horse manure. These same people post their views in the hope that people won't be discouraged by your illegitimate whinging. However, apparently we aren't allowed to post our views in your almighty thread, because the thread wasn't aimed at us. Riiiiiiiiiiight.

I find the people saying that we "can't tank" somewhat interesting. My friend and I both play assassins, yet fill different roles in our guild. He MT's, and I DPS. We're both more than capable of fulfilling our roles without a problem. It's very rare that he loses aggro on anything other than large number AOE pulls, despite our raid DPS being what I'd consider above average, given how fast things tend to die. ALso, our healers don't have a hard time keeping him up. He PVP's regularly along with me, me playing deception, and he will top tables due to protection medals, defender points, and in a lot of cases, damage done, due to his significantly better AOE options. Granted, his single target damage is a lot lower than mine, but that's why Dark Charge increases threat. If the tank spec did the same/more damage than deception, then we truly would be a broken class. TL;DR version: Whilst our tanking talents are far from perfect at the moment, competent players are more than capable of making the most of them without a problem. If you aren't one of said competent players, then stop the QQ, and just reroll, and save us having to listen to your whining.

I think this summarises just about every single Assassin QQ thread on this entire forum. Thank you so much for doing that.

Has anyone done it this way recently? I've got about 800 DS points to go til Dark V that I've been putting off for way too long. I'd prefer just repeating the first part as described above, but haven't tried this yet....

This sounds to me, like you're trying to use Maul a lot, given that you can "only do decent damage while the guy you're hitting isn't hitting you" Just FYI, you're doing it wrong.