I'll admit that thematically, I feel like I got sold a bill of goods; either way, I'm just about committed to seeing the story, at least, through to the end, (that particular character isn't in a guild, and I personally have no interest in pvp) and so I'm open for advice; assuming that you still want to talk to me, Xan, I'll mention that the storyline quest actually withholds the companion slot from me while it throws bots at me since Talos is opening a door (to even enter the instance Talos has to be the active companion, and there's not enough time between waves to click through the menus and pop a replacement before bots are shoving vibroblades up my man-skirt). I feel like I've specced too deeply into the deception tree to think that dark charge would do anything other than screw my damage output, and I guess at this point, assuming I'm just terribad, are there any general rules-of-thumb to be thrown out there? I generally stealth up, pop recklessness, open with a maul, thrash till shock, discharge, blackout for the regen, then repeat, add in assassinate when enemy health gets low, possibly add in the stun or the daze somewhere in there if I'm getting beat up badly (which, as that whole tear-filled text wall earlier illustrated, is happening more often than my ego will allow me to handle) and I'd just kind of like to know if there's something I can do better here.

Since I started playing, I've been maining a Sith Assassin, Deception spec. I'm at level 39 on Hoth, and I feel like I've hit the wall. I literally cannot finish the planet class quest; in the apparently 38-rated tomb, I always get knocked right over by the waves of sithaweenywhatever 'bots while Talos tries to open the door. This is an issue that has been happening to me with increasing frequency as time has gone on; I hit a similar wall on Alderaan, wherein I ended up having to spend my time grinding up in space and just trying to make sure I was always a level up on all my quests, lest the elite boss at the end outlast me and end up chewing through about 10k of repair money while I spent the next three hours thinking that the only reason I didn't win was because of some defect in strategy, rather than a pve bias against squishy melee dps; generally I couldn't win a fight on Alderaan against a non-heroic quest boss unless I popped heroic moment about 10 seconds after an electrocute opener, had Khem out, and was 1-2 levels above it; I didn't do heroics because I both knew I couldn't solo them with Khem, and because there's maaaybe 5 people on Alderaan on my server if things are real active; if there were two silvers within aggro range of each other, I either found a way around or died killing one, then spotrezzing and hoping I could kill the other and leave before guy #1 respawned and pulled my lunch money out through my nose. Generally, I ended up ragequitting back to the ship and pewpewing space missions until I could roflstomp everything because it was 1-2 levels below me (note that roflstomping on bosses was more like: khem val dies about two-thirds of the way through the bosses' life bar, and about this time the fight's lasted long enough for the 4 second stun to come back up, and let me put up enough damage that the boss won't last long enough to burn me down). Anyway, ignoring the ragetastic thingy up there, the gist of it is, is there any way for me to do better in pve? I'll admit that my opposition to darkness is mostly philosophical, (why should an assassin focus on outlasting their opponent/supporting their allies) which is why I'm not a darkness assassin right now, and I'm willing to spec into something that isn't deception if it means I have a chance of actually succeeding, but I mean...this is an endemic problem: Zash knocked me over about four times before a combination of pure luck and spaceleveling let me beat her, the unnamed and generic looking Jedi in the Elysium put a me-shaped smear in the floor a couple of times...am I just so terribad that I can't succeed as a force user? I mean, I heard somewhere that solo pve is biased against melee and I've got a slinger and a sniper on different servers that I'm doing just fine with; granted, they're lower-leveled, but are each doing very well, and comparatively better than the sith was at the same level. The slinger is at level 16 doing 14 quests on Coruscant, and the sniper skipped the Taris bonus series because he's far enough into level 21 to go visit a new planet; I actually learned how to dodge mobs without the help of stealth in the base at the end of the main class/planet storyline because I had hit the kill bonus 20 minutes prior and just didn't want to waste my time. tl;dr: 39 Deception Assassin on Hoth stalled out, needs solo pve help, server too low population for heroic grinding, refuses to spec darkness, won't refuse to spec to not-darkness