Not really.... for my style the spec works better for me. When I want to maul (somewhat rare) it is up and ready. 9/10 I don't even look for the proc, I just use it as needed and it is there. Those few seconds of regen are nice but since you can't get the blackout skill once you are in a fight you get no benefit from it.

1v1 assassin every time. Basically because we can reset the fight... vanish, mind trap, seethe. In a warzone among other people I kill them all the time as darkness, they kill me in about 5 seconds as deception/madness. If you are deciding what to play, it is stealth or range, pick one. PT's are tougher in pvp when running dps specs, sins do more damage in tank spec in pvp.

27/1/13 http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#200rcrokrskdZoZf0cRb.1 I have tried spec after spec in pvp. Generally I go from darkness to trying deception/madness then back to darkness. Deception and madness are disappointing every time. Not having harnessed darkness basically makes force lightning useless for a sin. Not having claws of decay makes thrash very weak and almost useless for the force cost. Getting both leaves you with a great toolset. Getting wither simply costs too many points that can go into very effective skills. Wither itself hits for about 1k at most in pvp and the speed debuff isn't as useful as simply using force slow. Death field is not a spamming ability, it is a tool. When an enemy stealths, runs, roots, or when you need to just pop a long range target (or interrupt) you use it. I also use it as an opener if I'm running in on someone, but save it if already on them. Harnessed darkness still works great without wither thanks to the new change that gives it a 30 second timer. You can use your thrash more since you have claws of decay and that procs energize more, letting you shock more frequently, letting you build harnessed darkness faster. HD still does the same thing, and honestly I find myself using it just as often as I did as a full darkness build. Light targets get trashed fast... 2k+ thrash crits, 2.5k shocks, 2.5k death field, 6.5k HD FL.... even higher with relics and adrenals.

There are no mods with power and crit, you can't get that combo. You aren't meant to set up gear how you want in this game, you are meant to cram your playstyle into narrow roles and character looks. You don't like having 500 points of accuracy on your gear when you have 100% to start with? (/sarcasm)

Exactly.... sorcs can have a rotation that makes them force neutral, they don't actually drain any force and therefore don't have to stop dps or regen. There is ZERO reason, none, for sorcs not to be on the same 100 force system that assassins are on. They can spam a few abilities, keep spamming light ones or wait to do heavy ones. It is the same reason they are by far the best healer, can maintain extreme dps in pve and unlike EVERY OTHER CLASS they can continue to spam their best abilities in pvp for a LOOOOOOONG time.

No taunts. I know what they look like (assassin) and this went on and on and on. When the tank died he simply rushed back to put up guard. He had 75-90% reduction FULL TIME. Again, the people that do it know how extremely OP it is.

Honestly I am just done.... Just had a round where a commando was getting guarded watching a door in Voidstar. 4 people are on him. I can't account for their damage, but I had recklessness on (100% crit), power adrenal, power relic.... 1550 willpower, plus talent damage, plus almost 900 temp power from buffs.... my assassinate crits him for 300. THREE HUNDRED... now you say, "But how much would that hit for otherwise"? Well, with those buffs and my gear it would be about 3500-4000. NINETY PERCENT damage reduction. People sat there beating on him for miniute after minute, hell people were getting killed, rezzing, then coming back to beat on the same guy.... But you say, he must be getting heals or be a healer... NOPE. He did no healing for the round and their team had no healers. I put a post up before about being annoyed about the additive damage reduction in this game, now it is to the point people are planning around it. You CANNOT put classes in heavy armor, 50% guard reduction, 25% reduction from skills, instant self heals and then make the point of a round to simply last long enough to prevent capping a door or point. Oh, and he did 30% more damage than anyone else in the round, basically because he sat there alive in the middle of the fight for the entire round. You have classes like assassin that can only do damage if they spec into a role that gives them ONLY cloth armor, but then give a dps class with heals heavy armor and straight damage reduction skills that stack with other defense... This is not unbalanced, it is broken. And please, undergeared keyboard turner commandos don't come in here defending it. The commandos who play well with good gear know it and so does everyone else other than Bioware.

And god forbid you tab to the target you want then because of the barely noticeable marker you tab past them... be prepared to hit tab 45 more times to get back to them.

Madness spec in dark charge.... Doesn't work anymore.

I love it too.... why I get bored playing WZ's with anything other than the sin. Plus if you have teammates running with you, instead of making an easy goal pass to them right at the line and let them score. I get so many people saying thanks and voting me mvp that way. Plus there is the benefit of going darkness and getting force pull. Force pull and grapple can be more effective than an entire team in Huttball.

And we have a winner..... Those 700k rounds people post for madness are where they sit back dotting up everyone and dropping death field. A 2k dot on someone adds up quickly on the scoreboard but does very little to help down another player. I tried madness when the last changes hit. It was harder to kill a single target and far easier to die than in Darkness. I kept trying to figure out how they did all that damage. Then I finally got frustrated and literally started hitting tab>discharge>tab>discharge>tab>discharge over and over and over again... came out with the most "kills" (few DB's) and like 550k damage. From what I saw it made very little difference to the overall fight.

There is an Op on my server I pvp with regularly. Since Ops are short on utility he basically hunts down people in FULL HEALTH and picks them off where they can't get support. I will get 2nd - 4th in damage in most games playing the objective and come out with around 150k - 250k, in those same games he easily tops 500k. Now I don't judge effectiveness in damage done, but he is effective because he finishes people, not just damaging people getting heals. He stops people that could otherwise stop our ball carrier or heal their team. Now if you talk about sustained damage... he is doing far more (twice as much) as anyone else in those rounds over the course of the ~12 minute game. He is really an exception, good gear and a good player, but when you talk about pure damage an Op can easily outdo other classes and can do it all round long.

If you are trying to figure out what to go with first as you level it is really up to you. They do different things.... Spike still has a rather long cooldown, so even using it out of stealth it is situational. Mainly in pve on mobs I use it as an interrupt for a gold/champ mob to prevent them getting off an attack. It also works well if you spike then electrocute a tough mob... they stay on the ground during electrocute then still take time to stand up when the effect ends. Just have to remember that spike is 1.5 second knockdown and it goes off about 1 second into the global cooldown, so you only get about 1 second of knockdown time to do anything (like I said, more of an interrupt). Death field has a pretty short cooldown and is the hardest hitting AOE an assassin can get. If you are leveling in dark charge it works well on groups of regular mobs to discharge then death field, takes most normals down to 20-40%.

I remember something a while back about focus vs shield that was saying a focus might add something like 3% damage over a shield. A shield may not work on many attacks but it does at least work on some. When you are moving in/out of range many ranged players start spamming their basic attacks which can be shielded. Some other attacks can be shielded as well (though not many), mainly from melee. As someone that soaks damage as a tank in pvp I still use a shield because there are far too many fights I leave with 10% hp or less, meaning a focus may not have changed things but that shield may have saved me. I personally just don't think there is enough of a trade off in damage for a focus unless you are trying to dps in a group in pve with a tank, then there is little reason for a shield. Think of it this way... everyone says "armor only works on a few attacks, shields only work on a few attacks"... but then everyone also says to pvp in Dark Charge because it offers survivability. Why would dark charge offer any survivability if armor, shield and defense did nothing for you?

I think it has to do with positioning. I have noticed that when talking to people on Vent that when we call out where we are in relation to each other it can easily be 10m or more difference than what we are seeing on screen. I recently had a merc see me and was able to shoot me from full range, 30m. We were both running in the same direction though so I figure that is the positioning problem and on his screen we are within about 10m of each other, me directly in front of him.

I would basically agree when talking about a deception assassin. I also don't see the point in madness either... it is a dot spec for a melee range class. It works great for sorcs (well played sorcs with madness are insanely OP) but for assassins there is really no point. Bioware should have given the lightning tree as the shared tree which could have given chain lightning and blast but worked them off procs. For Darkness there really is no comparison though. I keep trying to level my alts but they are so boring compared to a darkness assassin. I can control the fight in pvp, no matter where and now at 600 expertise it takes 3-4 people to take me down in any reasonable amount of time (thanks surge nerf). Darkness simply gets all the utility that Ops don't get. Sadly you can roll a powertech and get the same utility and ranged damage, plus heavy armor and better burst in tank spec... but stealth is way too fun. Hopefully if the devs are paying attention we will get a rework of the deception tree and some real skills added. Giving a charge that simply does what our current dps charge does but instant and a replacement for our basic melee attack is pretty weak. And like I said about madness, there is no reason to go that way as an assassin, just roll a sorc.

Almost anybody? 3 AC's out of 8. Out of those they can only remove SOME forms of dots, not all dots. If a sage/sorc dots you, you need a sage/sorc to remove it. That means 1 AC of 8 can remove it. I do not think that is almost anyone.

Assassin here... Basically vanish (force cloak) is useless when multiple people are focusing you. You have to combine it with force shroud to remove dots and prevent damage from bringing you out of stealth again. I would say in a situation fighting 3+ people it works maybe 1/5 times. The rest of the time there will be a remaining dot that brings you out, delayed damage like on the Project ability that brings you out, or the game calculates damage after you vanish but before you shroud so you come out of stealth instantly. Geee, all we have to do is limit ourselves to pvp'ing in tank stance for survivability or to pvp in light armor with no defenses in order to get it. So someone got away from you.... live with it. They got away so they could go heal up and ARE NOT FIGHTING. You claim you are worried about group fights which mean you are talking about team gameplay, well you got rid of one player for about the same time it takes to spawn and run back so your team still benefits. What people really need to learn to do is stop obsessing about the one that got away and go back to focusing on the game when one does get away.

Technically that is what is broken about it. Root a ranged class and they still do 100% of their damage (other than snipers which is also broken IMO). Root a melee class and it is the same as a stun since they have to be in melee range to do damage. So ranged classes get full resolve and then cannot be stopped from doing damage. Melee classes get full resolve then can be rooted till resolve drops, then can be stunned again up to full resolve. It also instantly fills resolve on hit and begins counting down.... if the stun is 8 seconds your resolve has already began to drop by the time the stun ends. It is broken because it does not have the same effect on all classes.

If you are going to say "unbiased review" you can't then go and exaggerate by saying things like "the entire team leaves". Not in a single match on multiple characters probably playing 1000 rounds of WZ's have I ever seen the "entire team" leave. Just because you say it is unbiased in the title does not mean you get to exaggerate and say whatever you want after that.

As an assassin in FULL pvp dps gear (11% expertise) and a tank spec I hit normal thrashes for maybe 1000 if it double crits, shocks are about 1500, assassinates (under 30% hp) can maybe crit for about 3000. The only time any real dps comes out is if you stack 3 abilities to charge force lightning, then use trinket, adrenal and crit cooldown to maybe do 6k total damage over the course of a channeled ability. Normally it might do 3k, all in a 10m range. Oh, and if I want to spec for dps I have to leave the tank charge (stance) and then I am left with no damage reduction ability other than a 3 second ability to block attacks and light armor. That means every ability that any other class has hits me for 90%-100% full damage with no reduction. It is why you see so many complaints about assassins being forced into dark charge (tank stance) to pvp, which negates putting points into anything other than the tank tree. Powertechs, no matter how specced or what stance they are in get to keep heavy armor. They get to keep grapple, which is the most powerful ability in huttball and still extremely powerful in other WZ's. Powertechs also get to keep ranged abilities and a bubble that stacks with their heavy armor. So basically you either need to gear up or learn your class better. The powertech is THE BEST overall class in pvp right now. Good damage absorption, good damage output from melee and ranged and good utility.

You now get 7 champ tokens and 14 (I think) cent tokens from a champ bag. Makes it so you can basically have full champ/cent gear in just a few weeks of casual play. The problem with an assassin is that the gear sucks and you need to buy gear from other classes, rip the mods out and put them in our gear for it to be really effective... so double the time it takes to be "well geared" on an assassin.

Yeah sorry I forgot to say to buy one bag first.

Try being a tank class just trying to control them.... I should be able to completely shut them down given my skills on a darkness assassin, but in reality you manage to stop about 20% of the heals. Basically a healer can negate 100% energy/15 seconds worth of CC and damage with 20 energy/50 force in 2 seconds. At least before the change I could hope for a large crit to pressure them, now I'm basically just wasting time till the rest of their team gets there.

Just had three games of Huttball in a row watching a tank get infrequent heals and our entire team couldn't take him down. The game needed CERTAIN skills balanced, not the top-end damage of every single class. Still getting cut down by concealment (the good ones) in a matter of seconds, still getting smashed for 5k by warriors and getting killed by the IWIN 99% reduction. Now the problem is that classes that had low spike damage to begin with are completely ineffective at downing someone that gets any assistance or any healer. It is obvious the nerf to surge was just a kneejerk reaction to try and balance a few things and they didn't worry about the classes it damn near broke... if they had actually planned out this change then there would have been gear changes to balance out the amount of surge that is budgeted. I used to think people were being too hasty in judging the poor pvp in this game... not anymore. There is no tradeoff for the most powerful skills in pvp (how about 90% reduction in damage done when a class gets 99% reduced damage taken?) Basically pvp in this game boils down to blowing all your cooldowns and winning, or having everything on cooldown and losing.