Unearthed Darkness always seems like such a strange talent to be so high in the madness tree. Am I wrong that it is only going to modify thrash, saber strike, and assassinate while having no effect whatsoever on your "main" madness abilities like discharge, CD, CT, and death field? Those are all force abilities not melee.

blocked for copyright reasons

haha . They moved this out of the PTS forum! Bioware really over-moderates.

You missed my point while you were busy being condescending. I did not suggest that you shouldn't be able to play your assassin as a tank. I said that too much of the survivability of the class is wrapped up in a single ability. So much so that a toon can forgo defensive stats and not suffer much penalty. Imagine if Dark charge modified defensive stats as opposed to just providing a ton of armor and a high base shield chance. You should have to invest in defensive stats to get return on a defensive stance. edit:spelling

I have an assassin. I would love to play as deception. Its really not a good option though. So it was curious to see no changes to assassins in 1.2. There have been a number of thread with good suggestions about what to do about it. I think, when it comes to darkness assassins, there is one giant problem. Dark Charge is too good. It provides a huge jump in survivability with a minor hit to offense with no investment into defensive stats. Whereas the best reason to use Surging Charge is.....it is necessary for induction. Power issues aside, Assassin was due a minor overhaul in 1.2 and it didn't get it.

Talos is the man (healer).

I think this has to be an honest mistake...

For Deception you'll see power jumps at 32 and especially 40. The level 40 pvp gear + VS makes for a big jump

http://db.darthhater.com/items/17979/battlemaster_stalkers_power_generator/ http://db.darthhater.com/items/41350/battlemaster_survivors_shield_generator/ Battlemaster Stalker's Power Generator Bind On Pickup Shield Armor (Rating 140) Total Stats: +82 Willpower +75 Endurance +612 Force Power +50 Expertise Rating +51 Surge Rating +77 Critical Rating Battlemaster Survivor's Shield Generator Bind On Pickup Shield Armor (Rating 140) Shield Absorb: 20% Shield Chance: 5% Total Stats: +61 Willpower +126 Endurance +37 Defense Rating +408 Force Power +50 Expertise Rating +48 Shield Rating So picking up on the "deception doesn't get enough out of its offhand idea".... All specs use discharge and shock. So that's kind of a wash. Darkness' other "main" attacks are wither and force lightning (both of which are force attacks) - so you can see how they get more out of their off hand and are even tempted to use the stalker focus at the expense of defense. Deception assassins "main" attacks are voltaic slash and maul both of which are melee attacks and therefore do not benefit from that juicy 204 extra force power on the focus. Can deception's lack of punch be fixed simply by itemization, changing "stalker" foci to a greater percentage of "power"? Battlemaster Stalker's Power Generator Bind On Pickup Shield Armor (Rating 140) Total Stats: +82 Willpower +75 Endurance +408 Force Power +204 Power +50 Expertise Rating +51 Surge Rating +77 Critical Rating This would essentially buff Voltaic Slash, Maul, and Assassinate- the things that make deception deception.

FWIW I think that 1.2 is supposed to change the landscape for gear for PvP so that a mix of PvP and PvE is not optimal. PvP gear will be the best PvP gear. We'll see.

Spike Kick for Shadows

The trick with Ashara is to be Male. If you are female, your gifts return only the lowest rewards. I've got everyone else at 10k and Ashara is still sitting there at 3.5. (And I only have that through light sided decisions).

I'd just say make an effort to have your pre-50 gear as good as possible when you hit 50. You can already have about 100 expertise from the 46 PvP weapons (and pulling the enhancements out of them). It drives me crazy to see new 50s with 11k HP and they're sporting level 40 gear. That's just laziness and its generally reflective of their play. When I see new 50s and their gear reflects some effort to maximize their slots, it's indicative of a player who can make an actual contribution.

I believe Crit works fine. But like Surge and expertise, it suffers from diminishing returns. Power and willpower don't. So as you get toward endgame gear, you start to prioritize willpower and power just because you aren't getting as much out of stats like crit and surge, which are essential to a new level 50 assassin. So its just a question of where you are in the game's gear "path". This is why you see many PvPers with some slots of PvE gear- because these pieces will provide more raw stats once you are at heavy diminishing returns on crit/surge/expertise.

Power is definitely good and continues to scale well. It really accuracy that is the issue. High accuracy may eat into dodge/ parry type stats but healers don't have these stats to any significant degree. Accuracy at the expense of crit, surge or power is not going to drop them quicker.

Ok let me rephrase- between the opener, which you admit can do 30-40% of the bar, then follow up CC and you can account for 70+ % of my health before I can really do anything to you. As another poster admits, if you don't have your 2 minute CD stun break up, you're in big trouble. If you don't have fun health, you're in big trouble. If a deception assassin opens on you without your cc break or 100%, you're not really in big trouble. FWIW- the good assassin in my guild has stopped play deception. Other members of my guild have rolled operatives as alts and giggle in vent over the ease in which they drop opponents. Is anyone going to really argue that operatives are less powerful than deception assassins right now?

Just my impression but high end Operatives with endgame gear can still drop most players before they can even stand back up. Or rather battlemaster OPs can do this to me in my cent/champ gear. No Assassin takes me out like that ever. As an assassin, assuming you don't open with spike, against good players you are immediately CCd. If you do open with spike, then you have done some small damage but you've also added a ton of resolve to your opponent, cutting down your options for later. It just seems like operatives are much better at controlling their opponents which combines well with their higher front end burst. Assassin's ramp up to burst model is probably much better for PvE but in PvP it just gives your opponents too much time to counter you.

My perspective as an Assassin. 1. Fix Maul (if possible) I don't know about the animation for Shadow's shadow Strike but maul gets hung up in its animation and is incredibly unreliable. Since maul is supposed to be a core aspect of the deception spec with 5 points in the tree devoted to improving it, having this skill be unreliable is a major problem and its hard to know what, if anything the spec needs, until maul is fixed or replaced. 2. Itemization - This probably affects many classes, but especially melee classes...PvP gear is loaded with accuracy and what we really want is better ratios of crit/surge/power. Because these enhancements and mods are difficult to replace without devoting yourself extensively to PvE, the result is that assassins are gimped compared to some other classes from a gear perspective alone. _______ Personally I think the squishiness of the spec is fair. The bigger problem is how easily we are handled by simple CC counters. There are simply too many knockbacks, roots, knockbacks that root, stuns, etc in the game. As a squishy melee DPS we need a few more tools to get at our targets. As far as changes, I think mind over matter belongs in the infiltration/deception tree or at least be low enough in the tank tree so its an option while retaining out 31 pt talent.

22 "battle" enhancements are crit/surge and are generally available on the GTN for 25-35k each. So you switch out the accuaracy / power enhancements with crit / surge. You will still have more accuracy than you desire just from other non-mod-able pieces.

Only Maul is positional and its a bit buggy. You don't have to run in circles but good movement will definitely help you stay in melee range. Attacking from behind can negate some defense I believe (parry?) Darkness and madness are both more forgiving of less than stellar movement skills. Deception best rewards superior character movement.

Hey that's great if you can get away without using maul. But that's not the point. Abilities of any class in the game should work reliably, period. 5 points in the tree are devoted to improving maul. It should work or be replaced with something that will work within the game's technological constraints.

Its not just that it doesn't fire. Its that it begins the animation and then stops. So you can be completely behind a non-moving target and hitting maul and you will see the arm go back once, twice, thrice, and never complete. If it simply didn't fire then I could use a different ability without much time lost, but this is worse because it eats up a good chunk of time with an animation that doesn't complete. Other times it works fine, but its completely unreliable. Which is especially a problem for a skill which has a pretty narrow window to work time-wise. I imagine this is an issue with latency and some discrepancy between where my client thinks and opponent is and where the server thinks he his.

Will 1.1.5 fix Maul? Will 1.2? Without Maul being reliable, we can't even begin to determine if deception is viable as a spec. The guild summit and all that is great, really. First fix the broke stuff.

Talos. He's even better in PvP than PvE (since he can't pull agrro). His heals dont suck. His DPS is not bad and he does have meaningful CC. I guess the real question is what PvP you are doing with a companion since the game doesn't reward this behavior in any form. Seriously why do they even have PvP servers? (and I'm on one)

Went 0 for 38 before only drop. Currently 1 for 48.