The 2 points in Crackling Charge are completely wasted since you will be using Surging Charge as Deception. Max dps you would put those 2 points into Electric Execution, but your healers will hate you for not putting those points into Entropic Field. Reduced AoE damage, I feel, is required as a deception assassin when raiding. You will likely find yourself dead without it and therefore doing 0 dps. Other than that, the spec is correct. As for the stats, the general practice is stated to get around 30% crit and 75% surge and swapping excess crit/surge into power.

No... SI still get crap opportunities even after Korriban. It seemed like a bunch of the options that were supposed to be DS choices just didn't give points, though. Could be a bug that they fixed.... or didn't fix. Not sure.

I get them all anyway. Completionist over here. Willpower, Endurance, Presence, and Strength are the ones that would actually improve an assassin (and your companions).

Blackout works fine for improving your stealth so people can't see you when you're walking by them. Remember it only has the stealth effect if you're already in stealth, and gives you energy regen if you're specced Deception. Although, AoE and the probes from bounty hunters and troopers can still get you out, of course. Mind trap only works for 8 seconds on players I believe. A 60 second CC in PvP would be broken, which is why stuff like that has its duration reduced in PvP. Force cloak works quite nicely, actually. There is that chance where they just released their projectile as you force cloak, and it still takes long enough to get to you that it'll break you out, but those are few and far between. Also, make sure they don't have any damage over time spells on you, or that'll pull you out, obviously. Usually a force shroud prior to force cloak is a guaranteed getaway. Force pull won't work if a player's resolve bar is already full (white bar under their name).

First of all, win trading on War Zones doesn't happen because of faction imbalance. You're not going to go up against the other faction every time you queue at all. Also, if you knew who you were going up against every time, win trading WOULD happen. It happened with Arenas in WoW, and the developers had to step in and fix it. It is common knowledge that people will find the quickest and easiest way to get something finished. Valor trading is the quickest and easiest way. However, it's also the most boring. We didn't valor trade for a while on our server, but it was still frustrating. Basically for about one hour every day you'd get all the Republic to go to Ilum and have a big zerg vs. zerg push, but that ends quickly. If you weren't on at that specific time of day, it was running around for hours trying to find republic, or having the Empire zerg camp in front of their base and maybe get one or two kills every 10 minutes. Valor trading made it way more efficient to get what people wanted and leave. Ilum was never fun. It needs to be completely reworked. At this point, I wouldn't mind it being similar to Wintergrasp or Tol Barad from WoW. I know those aren't anyone's definition of "World PvP," but Ilum has never been world PvP. If you don't have to do Ilum for a bag, and can get your gear from just doing War Zones, people are going to completely ignore Ilum. It's just more fun to war zone than to do Ilum.

I see your server hasn't started valor trading yet. And here I thought ours was the last one to start... There really is no point to it. Once you hit Battlemaster, valor isn't even necessary. 65 for a mount, and titles every 10 levels. Of course, now those titles mean absolutely nothing since it's just how long you can stand in Ilum and take turns AoE'ing each other down, not even learning how to play. There really will be no point in going there after the patch. You can say that capping bases gives you 200 valor per war zone completion, but really that's not much. And again, valor means nothing after Battlemaster. But yes, if no one is in Ilum, maybe they'll redo it!

Changing the currency system really does not fix Ilum. If you still can get your awesome gear from not doing Ilum, I believe no one will want to go there. Even going there right now is the most boring thing ever, but I just do it to get a shot at a Battlemaster Commendation. Actually, even now I generally skip doing the Ilum daily because it's just so boring and a complete waste of time for me. I imagine there's plenty of people that feel the same way.

From the Q&A: The only reason people went to Ilum was to get their daily finished and/or valor trade. This change will obviously make people who do the daily for the bags stop going, and thus drastically reduce the population so that valor trading becomes a lot "harder." Personally, I hate how Ilum is set up to where those are the only reasons to go there. It needs to be redone from scratch so that people actually look forward to the enjoyment that comes out of going there. So, yeah, I really hope Bioware takes Ilum back to the drawing board and comes up with something that will make that place actually epic.

Not really sure why people wouldn't bring Assassins to raids. They could actually have a lot of melee already, or plenty of Inquisitors that are in the raid already (therefore don't want another person that could take their tier piece but they won't just tell you that straight up). I have been brought to our raids every time and do fine. Assassins may not have a lot of passive damage reduction; but if you're deception you take the 30% reduced AoE damage talent, and guard may be on you as well. On top of that, Assassins can use Force Shroud to just straight up not take damage from many of the attacks. A big example being the lightning balls on Soa which you pop force shroud and run into, thus actually making you the best class for that specific mechanic. Another example would be the first boss in EV where you can pop force shroud during his AoE missile phase if you're all staying stacked, and not taking damage for a few seconds. You also have that Deflection cooldown or whatever it's called that'll help you if the attack is melee or ranged. Not seeing the issue.

I've always wanted to try Madness in a raid, but I usually roll with Deception as I have gotten used to it. I must say that I don't feel like I'm terrible at it. For now I believe the closest "meter" you can get to is with the Infernal Council. As Deception, I usually finish on time or just slightly after the other DPS. This is of course without being able to use Force Cloak for the extra force regen (not sure if that would cause my guy to go attack someone else and F it up or not, so haven't tried) or being able to use Maul. Of course, I know other classes have abilities they can only use from behind as well and can't on this fight. I know Madness spec theoretically should pull more sustained DPS. I haven't tried it yet, but I imagine it would be a real pain to be Madness on a fight like Soa, where you just have short windows where you have to kill something else or bursting him down in phase 3. This is where I think Deception would be a better spec, but that's not to say that Madness isn't viable either. Basically, I believe I do fine as a Deception assassin. I believe Madness assassins can do fine as well given sustained damage. It may feel weak at times when Blackout and Force Cloak are on cooldown and you're hovering near 0 force, but once those cooldowns are back up the damage is quite nice. Also, many classes have the same low-dps phases in their rotations, as they're all usually limited by their resource at some point. As it's been said many times, it's hard to really tell for sure without a damage meter, but I don't believe that Assassins are hindering any operation.

It's just immune to pushback not you getting pushed back. So when someone attacks you the cast doesn't lose time is all that means.

Harnessed Darkness states (in the game, not torhead) that Wither and Shock grant a stack of it. However, Wither does not grant a stack of Harnessed Darkness. Is this just a tooltip error and is Wither really supposed to give a stack.

I just think that because of its internal cooldown, the 15% is basically a waste. If anyone is familiar with holy paladins from WoW, I can almost equate this to putting 1 point in Blessed Life instead of 2. 50% chance on taking damage to gain a charge of holy power with 1 point, but because of its internal CD of 8 seconds maxing it to a 100% chance is a waste. I know that comparing an 8 second ICD to a 1.5 second ICD is kind of meh, but the fact that the abilities you will be using most of the time as an Assassin tank hit more than once within their GCD, it's almost guaranteed that you will get a proc from dark charge anyway. I just feel that the endurance talent is less of a waste than swelling shadows. Oh how I would love there to be combat logs.

The tooltips on torhead and such have higher numbers than you actually see at 50. Maybe when you get the absolute best gear it might be around there, but so far mine says it heals me for 54... and it does.

That's assuming that the talent increases the number of pocs by 15%, which it doesn't. Without the talent, it has a 50% chance to proc, but can only proc every GCD. Most of the attacks we have increase that chance by hitting multiple times already. Thrash hits twice, and saber strike hits three times. If the additional shock counts... then that as well. Having a 50% chance on each hit of multiple hit attacks seems plenty to me, and I doubt that having a 65% chance would actually increase the number of procs you get considerably at all.