Not sure where all this "other classes before 4.0 could do it" came from, but I can't remember any of the kingpin bosses being unable to be done in deception+tank. I'm not saying they might have been easier with other classes, but I did all my kingpin achievements (kill and capture) on all of them at 50 and still could solo them at 55 and 60 with Xalek. There are particular things you need to avoid, and if you use your interrupts and dcd's wisely you should be able to kill them solo. Heck if the pressure calls for it you can use Treek in tank stance (she's a bit more tanky then Xalek and has some heals too) and play a bit with the agro if need be (switch it from your companion to you with mind control, and lower it while saber striking to get your force back an lose agro alongside mass mind control), but this stuff it's not usually necessary - I used it to solo a Monolith on Ziost though. Trust me, Deception has other bigger problems (pvp related) right now, then not being able to maul mobs they have agro on.

Hatred seems to do fine... but today I've noticed the futility of every thing I tried in deception in a warzone against a double healer(sage)+tank premade... it felt like I was far from anywhere near being able to kill anything even though I tried all sort of approaches. Probably my team was sort of bad and started... bickering at some point, more then doing something, but I must say I never felt that useless in a long time during a warzone. The amount of slows, knockbacks + roots and heals is over the top right now for this spec at least. As a side note, my fears about snipers/slingers were spot on, just needed to get to play a good one... Heh, the battle was so one sided I wouldn't believe my eyes. Stride can't be used on guys in cover, while the guy in cover can reset all its dcds my 25s speed was absolutely useless. The guy got a bit of offheals, but he could make a fool of me even with half hp. I couldn't keep on target, got slowed, rooted, knocked back, exfiltrated and my stride was useless. So much fun... PS: the ttk has yet again been raised... this is so much of a pleasure for the specs that don't need to be as quick as possible in dealing with an enemy. To bad for our most beloved squishy stealth "burst" specs which become more and more overwhelmed as much as the battle prolongs. Sustained and stalemates is love.

Ok. I'll clarify some things for you too. First of all, Assassin/Shadow classes don't have "Barely any attack with range above 4m, although Shock & Force Lightning are low cooldown attacks (10~30m)". They do have their attacks fairly split between 0-4m and 0-10m, also Force Lightning/ Telekinetic Throw and Shock/ Project are 10m too. Only FL and TT go up to 30m if you use them on recklessness charges, which you usually don't if you're not a tank and use it on DV or so. Deception/Infiltration have a 30m mezz attack (designed as a counter kiting ability), hatred/serenity, have a dot with root (i think, if that wasn't nerfed too, designed as a kiting ability). So assassins are pretty much more limited then the other melee classes on ranges over 10m (which in this game translates as melee classes). OP and PT have several choices in ranged (10m-30m) department which makes them less dependent on movement ability. Juggs and Maras compensate lack of ranged abilities with leaps... which can be considered movement ability for their purpose They also have at least 1 ranged attack so they are sort of squared with assassins in this department. Now that being said as opposed as some may believe Phase Walk for assassins can not be considered a mobility ability since no melee class has any advantage in a fight phase to increase the distance between them and the enemy. This is a bit debatable when it comes to Hatred, which would be the only spec that would be able to benefit from something like this. But as an overall PW (unlike for sorcs&sages) for assassin is at most an escape, much more to it is that it's mostly unreliable and very situational too (it's a visible fixed point in the ground, it's effectiveness depends on your current position, and also doesn't get you out of combat only out of the battle). So in either pvp or pve, assassins don't get much mobility benefit from an ability like this which was mean for a ranged class in the first place. Now about stealth. You say stealth it's a gap closer, which is sometimes true, most of the times it's not. Stealth it's a gap closer only as an opener and when you don't get detected by the enemy (which usually shouldn't be a problem, even against snipers if you combine it with Blackout - defensive cooldown - and speed). For other purposes you should keep in mind stealth is only a mobility hindrance and also if you're in stealth you're not contributing to the team effort. As opposed to this, Juggs sturdiness that makes them keep inside battles for longer periods of time while contributing to the battle too is an advantage. Stealth can't be considered mobility ability either, it's just a mechanic that provides cover for a surprise attack, and if used correctly and not dotted can be a decent defensive cooldown/escape, but nothing more. With these things out of the way, there comes the main question I wanted to raise. What is mobility for assassins and why do they need it? I will focus on a Deception/Infiltration perspective right now, since those specs were the wounded the most by this change. Deception is a spec that wears light armor and with the entropic field buffs don't even match the medium armor specs in DR and survivability. Pit any other melee class in a one on one battle with an immobile out of stealth deception assassin, and you'll see who goes down first. Right now the class has one of the lower bursts in the game and cant be considered a sustained dmg class either. It lacks survivability and like 2 hp bars like juggs can manage, and also their self heals is the worst. To compensate for this lack of anything this spec is meant to use a combo of mobility, cc's and stealth to keep itself alive and keep near ranged targets. So nerfs in mobility for deception is like making the spec dead meat at some level. So I guess there are solutions to this mobility nerfs which combined with a bit of play style change could more or less get you back the mobility issues you have... but for a price... and the price is not low at all. As I did some thinking deception right now needs to cast away 2 utility points just to compensate for this change and still need to adapt it's play style a little. In the end it won't get the same advantages as there were before, but will get some other mobility percs which should cover for it. On the other hand while deception struggles to stay the same, dmg outputs and mobility overall increased for the other classes, be it for only a bit. While these changes were made, deception needs to sacrifice 2 defensive utility points (for me) or other cc related ones (like instant WW) just to keep up with the old game. Me playing deception as my main I can tell this is a big hit for this spec. The other assassin specs maybe don't need that much mobility in the first place, but deception can't be played without it. This was my pvp preview on the matter, as for pve, probably someone that posted before me is mostly informative.

Yeah, since deception has bonus dmg on crits with it's big hitters, one might be inclined to believe crit+surge is the way to go, especially now since 100+ crit chance adds to dmg bonus. Fact is alacrity benefits your sustained rotation more then only big crits on hits, in a long fight. This, on the other hand, doesn't apply to pvp exactly the same, since the fights are way shorter, you can get out of combat more and benefit from recklessness and dark embrace (even though this one isn't that much of an issue in pvp) more often. That's why alacrity is out of the question for me in pvp. As for pve, never participated in any progression raids, but if I'll get there at some point i'll keep alacrity in mind.

I'm not sure what your 2nd point was, but it a bit off from reality. I mean, "assassins have access to a considerable array of crowd control abilities" is true but juggs (not sure about mara) do have comparable array of cc. They might not have a low slash 4sec mezz on 15sec cooldown but they have an mass aoe 6sec mezz. also jugs have more roots then any assassin spec, and while roots don't keep you out of the game at the same degree as a mezz, they don't build resolve either. They also don't break on dmg taken (i'm refering on the jugg ones: leap, ravage, maybe saber throw). Also not sure what you wanted to say with 10-30m range dmg on assassins... there is no such thing, also juggs and maras have that range way better covered than the assassins. Deception for example has only Low Slash dealing dmg further away than 10m, which is not meant as a dmg deal but a counter kiting ability, it's dmg is poor. Hatred was nerfed to 10m some patches ago, and darkness is a tank spec, never needed that kind of range. Recklessness force lightning or volts it's very situational and you'll most likely not see it use since it's usually a lose of ability. As opposed to that Twin saber throw deals a lot more dmg than low slash for example. Saber throw is also no less then Low Slash. Also both classes have 30m leaps on lower cooldown than assassin's teleport (which also doesn't deal dmg). Not sure if there is more for those two, but even now you can see what you said is not true. Maybe assassins can pull out more dmg then the 2 in 4-10m range, but otherwise maras definitely rack the hell out of assassin's dmg, and juggs are around there too.

I don't actually believe people dislike the changes made to assassin for pve. Losing some utility points and changing the way you move a bit, while adding a bit of more dmg potential to the class is nothing to be whining about. The problem here is with pvp. And even this it's not a con for either Hatred or Darkness (as I could see from the first class experimentation shared on the forums). The only spec that suffered was Deception which is inherently a mobility-utility burst spec. Well, at the moment it's debatable if Deception can sill be considered burst spec. But with that aside both utility and mobility aspects of the class were hit pretty hard with the changes. Well, for me it's sort of like losing 2 defensive utilities just to compensate for the movement nerf. While the overall dmg output (concealment excluded) of the other classes increased, losing defensive ability on this scale doesn't go well with a spec that has it's defenses mostly on utilities. Take that from deception and it's goes down like any other low armor class. Also most of the other classes had their mobility improved, so staying on target with almost the same mobility capabilities (changed but sort of the same) might have gotten the class into possible challenges anyaways, things that would require to rethink how you approach another player etc.

Again after seeing this still can't believe and can't remember how did deception ended up benefiting more from alacrity then other (dot) specs. It's somehow funny that my brain refuses to take this in even though it's probably real. This being said, this alacrity based build is probably working in speed rotational environments, like training dummies and probably not so melee-killer group/raid bosses. I'm curious if these stuff applies on real deal operations where you have to follow mechanics and ****. As for pvp, I know already alacrity won't be an option for me.

I've been using Xalek most of the time since I play deception. The other tank companions (Khem & Treek) were cool on their own and probably could take more dmg until dying, but Xalek was the only companion who was able to keep up with my burst phases most of the time since he had the best dmg output and threat generation. I also like his character so I guess I'll stick with him around even though right now he doesn't give me that particular benefit from before 4.0 compared to the others.

For lag purposes I'm ok with this clean teleport version. Also since it's an instant cast that moves you around I don't think you'll get to see much of the animation itself anyways. But yeah, Jadus' cutscene with teleport and Choke was pretty cool.

As a side note, since 3.0 hit there was one thing that improved for Deception and that was it's sustained dmg. That came with a price though to it's burst dmg to honor the law of equivalent exchange and not get op in the process. On the other hand deception was and still is an utility spec, it doesn't shine either in dmg output, burst, or defense. It's use is very tied up to it's mobility and good use of DCs and it's highly situational. That being said, I took a look at the Discipline window and start counting the utility points I'm only using to bring back the utility deception needs inherently to be able to work... And, for me, there were 4 utility points (out of 7) that were initially on deception skill tree only and find myself wasting points in things that make this spec functional. What I'm trying to get at is this nerf that costs us another utility point has a greater impact than might appear at the first glance.

I think it's defense rating is increased, not the I/E dmg reduction.

I wasn't disapproving with your posts, they are quite informative for me as well since I main deception. Just wanted to point that out since you added the "light armor" side note exactly in the paragraph you wanted to make a point that didn't have anything to do with armor dmg reduction.

Actually, I was talking about the Patch Notes too. The change (force speed cd nerf) for assassins wasn't written in there either.

...Not that armor has anything to do with Discharge's dmg.

I usually read patch notes and keep myself up-to-date with what's coming up too, but the nerf on force speed is news to me too. Even if it's bad news, not sure what they were trying to accomplish by hiding this? Less feedback, more upcoming protests on the forum? Could be anyone's guess...

Just wanted to point out that the radius hasn't increased (at least not for my balance sage), but the aoe target animation was fixed. I remember, before 4.0, I was always hitting with Force in Balance people slightly outside the the pinpointed area I was casting. Now the displayed area seems to fit the affected area. I had a bit of hard time to realize this and adjust accordingly.

Hah, this last sentence is so funny and true!

I've sent a notice report to customer service about this too. I have no idea what's up with the power conversion module slot of my ship and loading screens, but there is an issue. I also have to complain about how they filled all out inventory slots with companion gear. They said we will get them via mail (and we did, partially after our inventory was filled), don't know why they didn't sent them all back via mail so we can take them back few at a time.

Yeap, a little time. But the guy says he is a loyal subscriber and Early Access is little time in itself. His frustration is understandable.

yeap, I'm having this same issue, not to mention Xalek's dmg suck with double-bladed lightsaber equipped, compared to the other companions who don't have the offhand slot issue.

Just shuffled around the assassin forum and I've seen someone who said deception only hits for like 12k max. So 20k is a bit overboard. On the other hand, I've read madness pulls out a bit too much dps with the dot crit increase. EDIT: numbers on forums went up to 16k some hours later and after more testing and checking.

I've checked it yesterday, and yeap, operatives don't get roll cd nerf. Even though their new teleport ability is on 45 seconds cd, they kept their mobility as it was before. Not sure what they thought about the force speed but I believe they wanted to force assassins to alternate between phantom stride and force speed to get sort of the same effect as the almost halved cd force speed. Doing this they really are forcing us to rethink the choice of utilities, especially since ps/ss only removes roots&slows with that specific masterful utility. Kind of sucks. I also feel my lvl 60 dps went a bit down, since my crits on the big hitters went down with the crit surge merging. Power might get a bit more dmg on regular attacks but can't say it's an improvement, and I just bet that if the fights still go down as fast as before is because the companions are a bit more powerful right now. So it's only an illusion that our overall dps might have increased. Not saying anything until I reach 65, but these are my observations 'till now.