Bioware said over a year ago they didn't want or intend for hybrids to be viable at end game, and if they saw that most players of a given spec were only speccing 75% or 50% into one tree and few were bothering to finish it, then they were going to buff/nerf the trees to encourage players to finish off a single tree. Some people weren't around then, but this has always been Bioware's design goal.

That's most likely the case. Bioware is going to let Wither proc Harnessed Darkness and Induction only function in Surging Charge as a way to force people away from Hybrid specs.

Don't freak out yet. Induction still procs in Dark Charge. The in-game tooltip says it doesn't, but it's wrong, because I was proccing it a few minutes ago. Just like the tooltip for Harnessed Darkness is wrong and Wither doesn't proc that.

It's really just an ability for tanks to put some extra threat into a group. As a DPS you're generally not going to want to use it.

To be fair, I love tanking in PvP. I have a 50 Powertech and a 50 Assassin and I'm really torn on which I like more; it really just depends on the day I guess. With the Assassin, I'm decked out in DPS PvP gear. When the battle starts, I'll stealth, follow the team and wait for a skirmish to begin. I target the player on our side who's getting hit hard or looks like they'll get focused (usually a Marauder who just jumps in). Then I'll hang back for a bit; usually nobody bothers to focus on me. Then I'll target enemy players who are getting low on health and rush in. Usually between Assassinate and Shock I'll be able to finish them off. Once I get 3 stacks of Harnessed Darkness I'll target someone kind of low on life, pop cooldowns and use Force Lightning. Lots of times that will kill the player, if it doesn't Assassinate almost always will. The Assassin has fairly strong burst on low health targets. If my health starts to drop I'll use a health pack. If I start getting focus fired I'll pop Force Shroud, or Force Speed or Force cloak and run away. I've got a lot of survivability from those cooldowns. I regularly get 8-9 medals per game, and that's without even really trying. The Powertech is largely similar, the only real weakness is that it doesn't have any escape tools. Once I get focused I go down. The Assassin though I can get out of there, and I tend to appreciate that a bit more.

Assassins had a threat drop in beta but it was changed from being a Sith Inquisitor skill to being a Sorcerer skill. Not sure why Bioware did that.

Or just find some friends and duel them. Throw on Dark Charge, pop Dark Ward and sit there while they throw attacks at you. See how many Dark Ward charges you still have left. Against say a Sorcerer or a Bounty Hunter you'll probably still have 8 at the end of the 20 seconds buff period.

Powertechs are meant to be tanks just as much as Assassins are; in other words, if a Powertech is specced into their tanking tree they're a tank. If they're specced into their DPS tree, they're a DPS.

From what I have been reading, around 80% of player attacks will bypass your Shield/Absorption stats; only a few, like attacks with basic weapons, will use thta stat. Further, from several posts on the Tanking forum, apparently each time you use your Defence stat to Defend against an attack your character "dodges," and evidently you aren't able to activate any instant attacks, even ones that are off the GCD while in the middle of the Dodge animation; so stacking too much Defence means that you'll be avoiding lots of attacks and getting locked out of your own attacks. That can be really bad for a Harasser in PvP if you aren't able to hit your interrupt to stop the healer or use CC. In short, no - it's better to just buy DPS gear, throw on Dark Charge and use Dark Ward.

Same thing happened in Warhammer. You'd expect that since the same team that designed that game was largely in charge of the PvP in this one, they'd, I dunno, have planned things differently?

Except that the OP is playing a female inquisitor which means she can't flirt or give courting gifts.

The big problem with this is in tanking AoE trash or fast hitting mobs. Within 5 seconds after activating this all the charges get used up. And then you're stuck without your defences for another 5 seconds. This puts you at a disadvantage when compared to other tanks who pretty much are operating at peak efficiency 100% of the time.

I dropped Slicing for Treasure Hunting after the nerf and am pretty happy with it. I send my companions out on lockbox missions. I normally get an orange item each day which tends to sell for ~40-60k. If it happens to be a lowbie belt or bracers I can sell those for around 80k. I tend to get about 15 blue items each day, which I typically sell for around 2/3rds of what other people are selling similar times for (to make sure they sell fast) and usually end up getting another 100-150k from that. I vendor the greens that I get and that generally covers the cost of sending my companions out on the missions in the first place. I tend to make about 200k-300k a day. It's maybe not the best, but it isn't too bad. Plus it's nice getting rare oranges or purples that that I can give to my alts or even my friends.

Bioware did a terrible job designing the class. Op/Scoundrel has very little uptime on targets because they have the worst mobility in the game. So, Bioware gave that extreme burst in order to make up for the lack of mobility.That way, they could kill their target in the few seconds that they would be able to stick on them. Bad, bad idea. Bioware needs to go back and redesign this class from the ground up, decreasing its burst, increasing its sustained damage, and adding in some mobility effects (a shadowstep style move, or even a dash) to ensure that the Operative/Scoundrel can stay on the target after a knockback.

The Powertech can dish out damage just fine. The Mercenary however can generally dish out easier damage (Tracer Missile spam); which is powerful but admittedly can be kinda boring. The Mercenary is also a ranged class, which means they tend to take less damage in most fights and have more uptime on targets (since they're less likely to get hit with knock backs or point-blank AoEs or have to chase the enemies around). Finally, Tracer Missile puts a 20% armor debuff on the target that the entire party/raid can make use of. So, from a pure PvE DPS perspective, Mercenaries are generally preferred over Powertechs, but it's not a big issue. Powertechs (well, to be more specific, Pyrotechs; AP Powertech is not doing so hot right now) can belt out fantastic damage. Personally, I would recommend checking in with your guild and seeing if they care which class you take to the raids for DPS. If they don't care, then play whichever you enjoy the playstyle of more.

As Darkness I tend to focus on Protection, guarding important players (Huttball carriers, healers, damage dealers, etc). I then go focus on the opposing team's healers or damage dealers, trying to peel them off. I use knockbacks, force grip, slows, etc to annoy the other team as much as possible.

It doesn't matter right now since it happens at the end of the story. But, in expansions, NPCs will likely refer to you by your title occasionally; Oculus, Imperius, Nox.

From day one I wanted my Sith to be Darth Occulus. I ran into this cut scene where I was named Darth Imperious. I quickly escaped out and went to Black Talon and spent the next 4 hours there farming my alignment up to LS 5 with 0 DS points. I went back to complete the quest, but it appeared to save my alignment meter at the start, so I got Darth Imperius anyway. I was very sad.

Bioware just needs to radically reduce the price of white vendor med kits and stim packs. If people could just buy 99 of them for a reasonable price, then the Biochem perk would be for their resuable kit to have a somewhat better heal or slightly more stats. As is, the purchasable med-kits/stims are just too expensive, so a resuable one becomes much, much more attractive.

Unfortunately Marauders are the class that gets the "Imperial Guard" style armor.

What with Bioware reducing the duration on the Operative knockdown opener to 1.5 seconds, I can't imagine them increase the duration on the Assassin stun. I think Spike is going to stay where it is; basically a skill for Darkness specced Assassins.

After 2k it gets easier for guys, since they can give her Courting Gifts, and she starts accepting many other gifts for them. Females however can't give her courting gifts and she refuses to accept many other gift types from female characters that she accepts from male characters (beyond simply courting gifts). As a female Sith Inquisitor, you're just going to have to suck it up and grind her affection out with the 24 point gifts and taking her along on daily quests for 40 points here and 40 points there.

Bioware just needs to sell 3 sets of social armor at the vendors; a light set, a medium set and a heavy set. Same look, different base armor stat. That way every class can use it instead of limiting it to just one class. I bought the "Imperial Trooper" armor set for my Bounty Hunter. But it turned out to be "light armor" so my Armor Rating took a huge hit. My Inquisitor though can wear all that social armor and it doesn't matter. In fact, it's kind of handy being able to buy and equip a full set of Orange gear as soon as I land on the fleet.

Bioware attempted to do this via Orange, modable gear. But so far the modable gear just doesn't work the way Bioware wants it to. Even they admitted it was a problem, and that's why most of the gear that drops in PvE operations is unmoddable. Further, all of the social gear in the game is treated as light armor; you can put armor mods in it, but it'll always be light. So there are only two classes in the game who can really use social gear, Sith Inquisitors and Jedi Consulars. Anyway, it was a good idea, but Bioware didn't spend enough time tinkering with it and now it's clear that it doesn't function the way Bioware wants it to. At this point they should just introduce an appearance tab and be done with it.

Agreed. Further, I'd like non-paid race changes, maybe once per character. This is going to be necessary once the Legacy system rolls out and Bioware introduces new Race/Class combinations. I really don't want to have to roll a new character from the ground up, run through the same storyline, make mostly the same choices and then regear the character simply to have a different race.