Definitely going to try this the next time I'm online. 31 Deception is "OK", but only excels at single-target destruction. There's also a lot of downtime since you're getting beat up pretty bad, so any self-healing at all sounds good to me. I'll play around with the spec/rotation and come back to post any impressions I have.

I love this game. Definitely going to keep playing both my Republic and Empire characters.

I would not play at work unless it was part of my job to play. Even when I work from home, or am working on a consulting gig that isn't my "day job", I focus on the work I'm doing and get that out of the way. Once all my goals for that day are complete, then I can double-click my favorite icon and fire-up some Star Wars fun. I agreed to work for pay, so I'm going to do the best job I can while I'm doing that. Granted, we all (or at least the more ADD among us) need forum breaks (like this one) to reset our brains, but I'm still "at" work. That just may be a cultural more, but it's one I have to hold to in my current profession.

The Talz Commando! Specifically, the strong-version Talz Commandos found in the Power Station on Hoth. These suckers have a couple evil things: 1.) Stealth Detect. It de-stealths you! Not only is that annoying, but the range on it is beyond the commando's normal aggro range. You think you're safe? Nope! What's even evil-er is that if you get de-stealthed, the commando and its entire group aggro you. Sheesh. It also seems to cause aggro even when you aren't stealthed. 2.) Death by a thousand cuts. These guys have a serious lot of bleed (internal damage) DOTs. Both myself (lvl 40, Deception) and KV are at 10k health and one of these commandos almost killed us both, even with popping cooldowns. Does anyone else hate these things? I almost want more mobs like this (they are only in that one mission)... it makes things interesting/challenging when you can actually be detected (normally I just stealth to objective, grab it, stealth out), and when the mob seems custom-made to kill your class.

I think in our instance it was a tank issue. The tank was trying to play like a DPS

So I was in a great 4 person heroics group on Taris last night. We basically destroyed the heroics there all night long... until Fathers of Taris, that is. We were all level 35-37. The first spawn killed us! It wasn't so bad when there were 3 strong commandos, but then 3 elite commandos spawn after aggro, and it's basically game over from there. We managed to kill all but one of the first spawn, so we were able to clean up that plus the 3 adds post-rez. The worst part is the rest of the spawns are exactly like that... you start with 3-4, and then get adds to make it 6. We eventually completed the quest, but not without dying at least once for each commando spawn. It seems to me the DPS these spawns of 6 do is way above what it should be. You're basically required to have at least 2 60-second CCs (one is not enough as we found out) to reduce their DPS to the point where an appropriately-leveled group can handle it. I've never seen this kind of thing elsewhere in the game. Has anyone else had issues with this quest?

? I use maul all the time (it's a huge part of my rotation) and only have problems when I'm not positioned to the side or behind a mob. If I'm positioned correctly, I obliterate things.

Zash and I were level 33 (assassin, deception spec) when I did this quest. I went in without medpacs (I was out), but both Khem and I had great equipment for the level. My first try I tried to keep her interrupted, but that didn't work so well, so I force cloaked to reset the fight. This time I mind trapped her, rezzed and healed Khem, and I just went crazy DPS. I just did my normal rotation without any crazy tricks and she died suuuppeeerr fast.

Typically I'm doing so much DPS on non-elite+ mobs that assassinate never comes into play. I would say it deserves a mention in the rotation, but it's very situational. I agree with the majority of what the OP has posted. Liberal use of stealth-related abilities is the only way to play Deception effectively. Anyone not using blackout during fights should start right away.

Artifice and the related skills (arch and treasure hunting) are huge money sinks, but amazingly rewarding. I love getting an orange armor or weapon empty of mods and filling it up with mods I make. It's even better when you realize that you can keep that awesome-looking armor/weapon for a long time... you just have to keep adding higher level mods to it to boost the stats and armor/damage amounts.