Stalker definitely. Unless you can afford both sets and swap stalker mods into the survivor set for the survivor set bonus. In any case want the damage dealing stats.

For the Thrasher build start with BM Stalker. All that Accuracy is not lost on the build because it is so melee focused. Eventual plan would be to swap the high end PVE Stalker armor mods in for the PvE set bonus of +15% crit to Thrash.

I guess I would say that 1. The lower end of the deception tree is not great. You "HAVE" to waste 2 extra points in duplicity because insulation doesn't work in dark charge. Yes the extra force and better stealth movement is good but its at the expense of offense. 2. I started this thread by looking at what is so effective about 31 darkness. Wither is great. If I am not using wither, you have replace it with something that can at least compete with wither- and for the thrasher build that is pumped up thrash and the fact that your shocks are going to be energized and hit harder more often. With your proposed build I can't see what is supposed to be the core of your offense. You've gimped thrash and shock for those points in deception. Your force regen is better but much of that benefit is lost because your thrashes and shocks are more expensive and don't hit as hard. This build will provide sub-standard offensive burst that opposing healers can handle. It won't provide the AE pressure and utility of 31 darknesses's combo of wither and discharge. You won't kill stuff. When you play 31 darkness you realize you don't need stealth. When you play 31 deception you realize that you DO need stealth to get all that offense on target.

This is a PvE perspective. Right, Maul is very hard to use if you are holding aggro, although spike and stun should allow you to pull it off. In PvP, you are much more likely to be crawling up the back side of some enemy chewing on your healer in which case using maul is real easy.

Look at what you wrote! "IF you had played on the PTS" !!! This is a requirement to playing the game??? "I would have known what was going on"- like ranked warzones being dropped? They told us to spend our champion commendations TODAY. Yes Dulfy recommended this a while back but since when is she the official anything? You are defending the indefensible. As it is, spending warzone commendations under the old system is not that big of a deal for me. I'll convert them into crafting mats as planned. But IF I had wanted to do another direction- buy tank gear for example, I do not have the option. A 36 hour heads up on the 1.2 patch is not close to sufficient. What is in bold in front of every PTS patch? The patch notes published for the Public Test Server are not final and are subject to change. You don't get to say "these notes are not final and subject to change" and then say "well, you should have known this was coming". So, again, this was handled poorly.

100% wrong. 1.2 patch date was released yesterday. Before that notification we had no idea how many more rounds of PTS changes we had to go, but I could wait and decide what to do with the 800ish champion commendations I had because we were assured we would get some lead time between 1.2's patch date announcement and the actual date. The fact that they announced that 1.2 was scheduled for thursday and then TODAY announced that ranked warzones would not be in 1.2 but that there would be an "alternate means" to get War hero gear (I don't now what that means yet) means that the situation is still very much in FLUX. There was no reason to spend commendations until we knew what the implications would be and now that window to do so is tiny. There is no question that the 1.2 rollout has been handled in such a way as to infuriate much of the player-base. What I find amusing is how careful Bioware is in giving corporate flack answers at any possible Q&A for fear of giving out premature information and now they simultaneously give a hasty 1.2 patch announcement and then follow up the next day with pulling the (arguably) main feature of 1.2 out. Poorly done.

36 hours is not ample lead time if someone (me) is out of town for a few days. I thought we were assured we were going to get more of a heads up than this.

I think without a duplicity proc its not worth it. 50 force is just too much. If you are madness spec'd you'd always thrash or shock instead for immediate damage. But I'm a strong proponent of 1 point in duplicity for darkness and madness builds.

Well, I am going for a top 1v1 spec. Re: your 24/0/17 Looks good. These are all playstyle choices and I think your spec makes some good ones. 24/0/17 Death Field Instant WW Claw of Decay vs 27/1/14 Improved Maul Harnessed Darkness Claws of Decay vs 31/0/10 Wither Harnessed Darkness Discharge I think you look at these choices and you'd say that 31 darkness has the most AE and debuffing. 27/1/14 has the most single target threat, and 24/0/17 sacrifices some single target threat and healing for improved CC and mid range AE capability. The question I would ask is which spec is best vs that sorc or merc. Does harnessed darkness or instant whirlwind make killing that healer easier? My money's on harnessed darkness. I had a few good over time 1v1's in Ilum the last couple of days against healers. Without HD, I think my opponent could have simply outlasted me. With harnessed darkness, I was able to heal enough to make them run dry on their force. The healer has to choose between healing and doing damage. With HD, you can do both. Another thing I've noticed on my stats at the end of the WZs is that I am healing for 15-20k more per WZ than with 31/1/9. I can only attribute this to additional dark charge procs from this spec and how you use it. In other words, by thrashing and saber striking more you heal 40-50% more.

I think the early reports of shielding's uselessness were greatly exaggerated for one thing. I have played with this build enough to see the charges of dark ward being used up to know that I am indeed shielding damage and often. Hollow is worth taking if only for the heal, so the additional shielding is a nice bonus. And, again, unlike a 31pt darkness assassin who lives by wither, shock, discharge, and force lightning almost exclusively, this build is going to use most of its force on thrash, along with proc'd mauls and assassinates. The difference between the focus and the shield is primarily FORCE POWER so melee attacks hit just as hard with the shield, ergo I'll only take a damage hit from using a shield on shock and force lightning. That said, if you want to build to be as offensive as possible use the focus by all means. I just play too much huttball to give up the shield. As far as the floating points on the darkness side, I don't think the return on 1% more HP for 1 skill point is that great. Since this build thrashes and saber strikes so much the return on charge based talents is greater. FWIW the single point in duplicity in the 31 point darkness build is something that I got from Tamgros who runs the 31/1/9 spec. I especially recommend the 31/1/9 build is you leveled as deception and have a high comfort level with maul. Well you have to remember that that 10% proc rate is per swing and each thrash swings twice and each saber strike swings 3 times. So what you find is that when you get to the point when you are going to force lightning, its available: And then the FL > Maul > Assassinate > shock provides the burst you need to actually finish targets off. If I were to keep death field in the build, you simply can't use it at 50 force. You have to take the talents to make it cheaper. At best you can take it down 25% before you have to start eating into claws of decay or harnessed darkness, the two cornerstones of the build. I would rather keep the build focused on killing a single target.

Time to lock the thread and end the pile-on

The point in Duplicity is actually really good. What is really wasteful is the full 3 points in Duplicity. My deception spec was 2/1/2 in the first tier because the next 2 points in duplicity are so wasteful because of the proc lockout. But just a single point in Duplicity means its going to proc quite often giving some cheap punch to any darkness build. Even if you go 31 points into Darkness, I recommend 1 point into Duplicity. Your saber strikes will make sure that its available often. Scrimp one point on torment instead.

The Thrasher Hybrid Assassin The Thrasher build is designed to be an alternative to the standard 31/0/10 (or 31/1/9 which I prefer) darkness build. The build sacrifices some of the tanky group utility (and AOE focus) of the standard build for better single target pop. First some observations about the 31 point darkness build. 1. Dark Charge- quite simply, Dark Charge is substantially better than lightning or surging charge. +150% armor at the cost of 5% bonus damage (that's not even 5% damage, that's more like 2.5% damage) is a great exchange. The only reason to take any other charge is simply that they are pre-requisites for some abilities in other trees- so unless you are going to go full madness or deception, dark charge is the default assassin stance. 2. Wither is great. Talk about an all-in one ability. Things it has going for it: AOE, increased range, force attack, snare, damage debuff and if that wasn't enough, it triggers harnessed darkness. Its everything a 31 point should be. You could probably take out 75% of the damage of this ability and it would still be worth using every CD. 3. Harnessed Darkness is great as well. Big damage with a substantial self-heal. It's so good that pretty much everything you do as a 31 point darkness assassin is about building charges of harnessed darkness so you can do it again. 4. Energize + Exploitive Strikes is amazing synergy. Energize is a guaranteed crit that procs a huge melee crit rate buff. Combine this with Recklessness which gives +50% crit damage and you have very hard hitting shocks, especially when combined with Electrify and Chain Shock. 5. Huge utility- all the best utility lies in the darkness tree. Disjunction is what every Deception assassin wants and can't have, especially when combined with the reduced cool-down on force speed.. Ranged pull and an out-of-stealth knockdown. Higher energy regen and a second self-heal are all just bonus. The Negatives: 1. Your threat to healers is not great. 2. The prevalence of so many darkness assassins means that much of that great utility from wither is probably already taken care of. So one of the things I found while playing 31/1/9 is that I had a tendency to be a complete slave to harnessed darkness. I start combat with wither and shock and 7.5 seconds later I wither again and I have 3 procs of harnessed darkness and I am ready to Force Lightning. By the time Force Lightning ends shock and Wither are off cooldown so that's two more charges of harnessed darkness...and so it goes. Rinse and Repeat. So what this means is that pretty much all of your force is devoted to wither, shock, force lightning, and (hopefully) assassinate. I use Discharge in big groups of course but you actually need to make sure that you don't burn through your force doing other things...like using Thrash. So its actually hard, or even self-defeating, to try to make Energize a part of your rotation. So between Wither, Shock (no guaranteed crit) and Force Lightning you are putting out a good bit of damage but its not the most focused. Also, the devotion to wither, shock, and Force lightning, all force attacks, means that the extra 200-ish Force Power from a focus instead of a shield is put to good use. The Thrasher Hybrid build is designed to sacrifice the group utility of Wither in order to provide more single target threat. The Thrasher Hybrid Build http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#200rcrRkrskbZoZf0cMb.1 So, this build retains all the good stuff from 31/1/9 with the exception of wither. You also stop using Discharge. The main thing you add is: Claws of Decay Increases the critical strike damage dealt by Thrash by 50%. You are now reliant on shock to build stacks of harnessed darkness, which will be slower. However, ALL of your shocks will now crit because you thrash until you proc energize, which also resets the CD of shock. Energized shocks automatically trigger Exploitive strikes so you have +15% crit to Thrashes which do +50% crit damage. Note: I don't feel at all strongly about the points in Swelling Shadows and Electric Execution. If you want to put those points into +3% Endurance, go right ahead. This is just a decision to add a tad more offense at the expense of a few HP. Also since you are thrashing so much more than other Darkness Assassins, talents that effect Dark Charge procs get more milage. Also there is a free point floating around there- the key build is 27/1/12 so if you want to put 1 point into an expensive Death Field and use it situationally, do so. I still recommend 4 points in Swelling Shadows and Electric Execution. Also, unlike the standard Darkness's use of almost exclusive force attacks, the Thrasher is going to use a much higher percentage of melee attacks- meaning that the smaller force power figure on shields affects them less. In other words, Thrash does pretty much the same damage whether you are using a shield or a focus...so use a shield (and dark ward and receive the benefit of Hollow). Gear Now what I have been unable to test, since I don't really PvE, is what this spec would do using Rakata armor mods with everything else Battlemaster. Rakata Stalker set bonuses are (2) Saber Strike hits restore 1 Force and (4) +15% crit on Thrash(!). So you'd have to lose 200 Expertise in exchange for +85 Endurance and +82 Wisdom. Thats 964 Expertise vs. 1164 (or about 19% bonus vs. 22.2% expertise bonus). Using this set Thrash would be running at +30% crit (above base) most of the time and do +50% crit damage (above base) when it hits. Also remember that crits can't be shielded, so that's definitely some extra penetration. Also, since this build is so melee damage based, the BM gear high accuracy numbers are actually put to much better use. Your near-constant +15% melee crit means Assassinates and duplicity-proc'd Mauls are going to hit big much more often, so thats also more burst and more kills. If Rakata gear is not an option then you probably do want the Survivor set bonuses (reduced CD on Spike and +5% damage when Guarding) without the other survivor shielding stats, which is pretty much standard Darkness itemization at this point. Testing My experience with this build so far- I am almost full BM (still using champ saber and shield). And my overall damage is slightly down in WZs without Wither and Discharge to pad the numbers but my killing blows are up at least 25%. Against most other classes I feel better 1v1, since my 1v1 damage is higher and much more bursty, so I'm more likely to finish off opponents I control. Ironically other Tank Assassins are now a harder matchup since their force attacks ignore my shield and because the debuff effects of wither and discharge are frankly, effective against this build. Personally, my ego can live with this. I'd rather be better at killing enemy healers and DPS than dueling my mirrors, but some might conclude that this spec is “worse” than the standard 31 point build because its at a disadvantage in a heads up fight. Play-style Without Wither, you also need to play more like a deception assassin since your target isn't perma-snared. You will use force slow from time to time, but if you leveled as deception as I did, that should be second nature. Unlike Deception, the Thrasher has Force Pull and disjunction at his disposal. You definitely have to be good at watching your buffs and procs to play this build, especially as you are completely reliant on shock to build harnessed darkness. Much like Maul and duplicity, you don't shock without an energize proc- shock is too expensive to cast without being patient for the guaranteed crit. You also need to be careful not to fall into a “force well” where you don't have enough force to shock but you do have enough force to thrash- and therefore you stop Shocking- you need to be patient and saber strike up to acceptable level of force when shock is available. The other side of this is that dark charge itself will heal you more because you are using Thrash and Saber Strike so often- you are also getting much more milage out of Overcharge Saber with this spec. In the end, this build gets the most out of the Assassin's simplest ability but then sets up 3 different procs to take advantage of its use - Energize, Duplicity, and Harnessed Darkness. Summary I am not going to tell you that this build is “better” than the standard 31/0/10 (or 31/1/9) build. This is more a play-style choice. I do think this provides a play-style that is closer to what most people wanted when they chose an Assassin in the first place. There are many times, especially in group PvP, where you may choose the single target threat that the Thrasher provides over the AE pressure that the standard Darkness build provides. So the Thrasher might be the Assassin to run...when you're running more than one.

I am currently playing with the Razer Naga and I don't love it. The feel of the mouse in my hand is awkward (its feels a little too small- the hand doesn't rest comfortably on it). Also the button layout is much too busy. I find that I can only use about 5 of the side buttons reliably. That said, I use a N52 for my left hand so I don't have to use all 12. When I look at the corsair mouse I think the button layout looks like the best I have seen, but I can't speak to the software for that mouse.

I agree. 150 Champion to 1 BattleMaster would have been a smart thing to include all along to hedge the effects of the RNG.

I run 31/1/9 and take torment over the 3rd point in chain lightning. The darkness spec does chew through energy so torment, even just to make shock cheaper makes sense. It's a bit of a tough transition from other specs, but you really do use stealth much much less as darkness, so regen out of stealth becomes much less valuable. Your stealth is poor and you move slowly in it, so you mainly use stealth for sitting on a node or playing hide n seek in ilum.

Its not even 5% less melee damage. Its 5% less melee bonus damage. So that's really more in the 2.5 to 3% less melee damage range. I agree with the OPs basic premise that WZ design is deeply unfriendly to the deception tree. If we were playing Shadowbane, a deception or madness assassin might be just fine as a 1v1 ganker. That said, I felt like I got better 1v1 when I switched to darkness. For all its group utility, I'm better off against non-healers as darkness. Pat of that could be that an undergreared deception character can simply be outclassed by better geared players. Perhaps I need to go back to deception now and try it again, now that I'm all champ/BM. But as the OP points out, why would I do that? The WZs favor darkness heavily. The differences in the stances is really unforgivable from a design perspective. If the tooltip for lightning and surging charge read "you have 60% less armor in this stance" it would be more accurate. My first take on SWTOR's skill trees was "this looks like the illusion of choice". My opinion has not changed. And thats true of many aspects of this game.

http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/attachment.php?aid=256

Pathetic. Can you imagine Michael Mann polling the general audience to see what kind of movie they want to see? Or Steve Jobs asking customers what kind of electronic devices they want? Sadly this is a great example of what a clone this game is. The designers have no vision regarding PvP but have simply re-skinned other established games. All polish and no vision. Seriously, you spend how many millions on this game....how many years... and you ask three months after release the population to weigh in on what kind of PvP they want?? What a bald admission that PvP (outside of warzones) was always an afterthought in the design of SWTOR. It should be no surprise that Ilum was such a colossal failure... because the designers never had any kind of idea of what they even wanted it to be. In all seriousness, if James Ohlen or his design team does not a extremely strong feelings about what Open World PvP should be, then they have no business designing a game that features it. I love a number of Bioware games, but what SWTOR really reveals is that Bioware's soul is devoted to single player games. They want to create controlled experiences and dialogue trees. But having players interact in any kind of meaningful way is a foreign concept. So here's my answer to the poll: none of the above. SWTOR was not built with Open World PvP in mind. Clearly. You are not going to retain the players that want open world PvP. They're gone, if not already, certainly when GW2 comes out. So, in effect, you're designing open world PvP for players who don't really like or want open world PvP. Its PvP for PvEers. So design it with that in mind. Include a ton of mobs and bosses in your open world PvP and have players have to compete to get the kills. Spread the rewards across the zones so that zerging is inefficient. Reward killing other players minimally. Killing other players is just a means toward getting at the good drops off mobs. Or don't. Forget open world PvP and devote yourself to making the best sci-fi raiding PvE game around because those are the players you can retain for years. (as you have damn well known all along).

It seems like we have conflicting systems here. New Orange armor with possible augment slots which you can pull the mods out of BM / WH to put in. BUT don't you need those mods to trade in the piece for the next tier or not? WH requires BM. The next tier will require WH to trade in. Does the "shell" suffice or do you have to double grind when ready to move up a tier?

The reason to use spike is only when the target is engaged with another player or if spike will knock him off a ledge. Otherwise spike is low damage and just adds a bunch of resolve to their bar. Resolve you will need later to stun and low slash. Spiking takes away your interrupts later on. So VS for a 1v1 is the way to go. As far as spiking causing bad players to panic on blow their CC breaker- well, do you really want to get in the habit of using a tactic that works on poor players that you should beat anyway? Open with spike 1v1 against a good healer and you may not be able to interrupt enough heals later on to kill him. Thats a bad feeling when your CC doesn't work, and can't stop that healer as he heals himself- generally you are out of force at this point too.

Exactly. Why do you keep assuming that? No one is trying to play a deception assassin as a marauder. Of course I am trying to play deception as a hit n run backline ganker, I just don't find them as effective as they need to be to fulfill that role. Ergo, they don't justify their spot in a group with the current composition of WZs. Every class and every spec can make a contribution. It's just a question of degree. Right now Darkness is beating out deception handily in my opinion. I also feel like operatives (currently) out perform deception assassins in that backline ganker role. I'm certainly going to give deception another shot come 1.2

If you never get caught in AE you are playing so conservatively as to be ineffective. You can get caught in AE as soon as you approach a target- any target. Between AE KBs and AE mez its easy to get accidentally popped as you approach your target in the back line. There are no magical hit and run locations in voidstar. As a darkness assassin I accidentally knock opponents out of stealth all the time with withers and discharges as they approach a guarded healer that is already under attack. Wrong comparison. Don't compare deception to darkness. Compare it to operatives. Operatives burst out of stealth is much greater and also comes with more control. A deception assassin can VSx2, shock, discharge with adrenals, and in the unlikely event that you haven't been CC'd in some form, you still need to account for the other 50% of the targets health while interrupting all healing in the process. It can be done, but it generally requires some incompetence by your opponent. Congratulations. Your imagination is vivid, insulting, and inaccurate!!!

Problems with deception. 1. Squishy but has to be in melee range. 2. Spec is very easy to control. A single KB/root is an easy 1 button counter. Your only option is to waste your long CD CC break (which every class has) or watch as you get focus fired. Darkness by contrast can use disjunction to escape the root or force pull to return the target to melee range. 3. Stealth is fragile. With all the AE flying around its very easy to be accidentally knocked out of stealth. 4. Not that deception has a good opener anyway. Deception DPS can be excellent but it requires a big ramp up. Good opponents don't allow that. The window for them to react to you is very large. 5. WZs don't reward deception playstyle. Huttball's ramps make for easy counters to deception. Voidstar's doors create choke points that reward scalable/AE talents. Civil war is probably the best for deception but still features concentrated fighting on nodes. I played deception to valor 60 and then switched to darkness as I just did not see deception fitting into an any kind of premade for rated WZs. Darkness is so much easier to play and has so much more utility. There is no doubt that my contribution to a group / win is far greater as darkness.

I think this is one of those things 1.2 will address. Red Goo becomes a grade 6 compound and as higher tier schematics are introduced, those grade 6 items will start to have more use. Running grade 5 Bioanalysis missions are the good money-makers atm agreed. Also I think the demand for actual biochem consumables will go up quite a bit when rated warzones begin.