Combat is still a very powerful spec, the only problem is that the changes to Focus have done a few things that explain why you do not see very many combat players. 1. Focus is FOTM right now. Whether OP or not, the changes to the spec have piqued the interest of a lot of sentinels into trying it out. Some will decide they still do not like it, and return to Combat, but others will undoubtedly stay Focus. 2. Combat and Focus are both burst trees, so they are far more comparable to each other than either is to Watchman. So naturally, people want the "better" burst tree. And at least right now, whether it's actually true or not, Focus is seen as the better burst tree right now. In fact, there is a thread in the Marauder section titled "Carnage is Dead." Carnage is the Marauder version of Combat. Why is this? Well, if you go to that thread and read it, you will see why people say such things, some of which do indeed have merit, others not so much. Basically, compared to Combat, Focus is far easier to achieve incredible results. It is much easier to shut down a Combat Sentinel than it is a Focus Sentinel. I personally still thoroughly enjoy Combat, more so than Focus, and the added difficulty to succeed makes it more satisfying when I do get results. But even I can admit that there are days when Focus just has it so much easier and I wonder why I don't just go Focus full time. Combat is still a very good spec, and you will have no trouble getting into ranked games (80% Transcendence is beast) but in terms of damage, Focus is outperforming right now.

That pretty much is what I meant. Spectacular, and worthy of recognition, but far far away from normal. Imagine the QQ about Madness if these were normal games. I don't think I've ever ever seen a nerf Madness thread. And yea, due to the possibility of healing medals in addition to all the others, it is possible to get the most as Madness. Medal-wise, my current best is 20 as full Deception, in 1.3 of all times

I guess if your looking at darkness as a dps build, you would have to compare it to similar things, such as jugg tank hybrids like 16/25 or some such thing. No idea what the vanguard equivalent is, if they have one. Also no idea how they compare, someone else will have to help you with that.

I totally agree with you about how irrelevant parses can be in a pvp environment. 100%. That's why I'm going to be running actual warzones with it, testing not the damage on a dummy, but how it actually plays out in the "real world." I only use dummies to work on practicing rotations. All I meant to say is that the numbers piqued my interest into looking into the spec again. And yea, I was thinking to myself that something must have been wrong with Xethis' parses of Wakajinn, its just way too low. Either way, actual pvp is where it matters, and that's where I'm going to be testing these specs for myself.

Ok, I went and found those screenshots, few things here. First of all, I'm not trying to discredit you, your guildie, or Madness in any way, shape, or form. Just so we are clear on that. That 1mil voidstar. I'm not going to lie, I was incredibly surprised by that. Your guildie deserves some serious props for that, even if it is one of those blue moon games. He falls into the same category as my guildie, those who can do amazing things with Madness. The spec does have incredible potential, I have always agreed on that. And 1108 dps, while not the 1200 you said, is still certainly impressive. He does have the lowest objective points by a large amount of any on his team, but doing that kind of damage, I'm guessing he spent a lot of time transferring side to side wherever the action is, so the lower objective score is totally understandable. Unfortunately I cannot see how far he got as the attacker, but based off of where they are on the minimap, and the fact that i was a victory, they must have gotten farther than the 2nd door. Fairly good progression and defense, but look at his teams kills compared to they enemy. The enemy had an average of 5 kills each, and his team had 3 healers who all did over 400k heals. Your guildie had only 1 death, so near 100% uptime. So yes, it still is incredibly impressive, I do not deny that, but remember this is a blue moon kind of game. The huttball screenshot, the one that did actually have 1200 dps, I think more than proves my point. 525k damage, with 8 kills. Over 65k damage per kill. So again, impressive, but deceptively so. So yes, Madness can do crazy things, as people like your guildie and mine like to prove. All I'm trying to say is don't fall into the trap that so many do, thinking it's all about the numbers on the board at the end. Often, the things that win games never show up on the board. But hey, I'd take a competent Madness player over 99% of the players I run into in this game Good luck figuring out Madness for yourself dude. Lets make em fear this class again.

That's what I thought as well, if you read my earlier posts. But I trust that Xethis is giving us real, truthful data, and not making up garbage, and those numbers are impressive. That is why I also am going back to trying MM again, and looking at what results I get before I make further judgments. If that data is realistic, I'll find out. I mean, I played Surging Charge 13/28 Arika quite extensively pre 1.4, and the burst from it was impressive. And by all accounts, Lightning Charge 14/27 has even more burst, so it seems that the possibility is there. Have not been able to do many warzones lately, but I am going to be testing it whenever I can, and if it means anything at all, it does have some impressive burst phases in the pve that I have been doing, and I can see it also having a great effect in pvp. Looking forward to more testing.

The problem with Madness, either sorc or assassin, is that lots of it is "useless damage", meaning its not killing anyone. As a sorc, I can just spam FL all game, nothing else, and at the end of the game I will have top damage. And yet practically, sorc damage is very poor, because it is so easily healed through. Damage means absolutely nothing without kills, a 1 hp player can do just as much as a 19k hp player, as long as he keeps that 1 hp. That is the big gripe about maras/ sents god mode cd, it stops you from killing them, while they can still do full damage. I suggest you go look again at that 1mil damage game, and look at the number of kills. I bet it will be very low. Even when smashers or pyro PT's get 1mil games, it is only because the game went on so long, because nobody was actually dying. And if nobody is dying, then all that damage is pointless. That is why burst is king, and why Deception based builds are so powerful. I may not top damage, often I'll sit around 200-250k in an average game with my current gear. But when I'm unloading that damage, my target is going to go down. I'll use a CW from the other day I had. I was playing with some random juggernaut who had a pocket healer. The enemy had both sides, we had the middle, so the jugg and his healer go to snow, and spend the rest of the game there, and never ever capped snow back. At the end of the match, that jugg was top damage, but because he never actually got anywhere in terms of capping the node, it was all pointless. He also had a super low kill count alongside that damage. Now, I do not know exactly what he was doing, but the few times I got the chance to look over, he was beating on someone, who was just laughing at him, because they had a healer who was easily healing through that damage. Does being top damage make the jugg a good player? In this case, absolutely not! I had much lower damage, roughly 1/3rd of his, but I had approximately double his kills. Why? Because my Deception burst was actually killing people, and fast enough for us to get a node back. That is useful damage. As for how your madness assassin got that much damage, I do have a theory. I'm not claiming this is actually what he did, but doing that much damage causes me to automatically think Discharge spam. Target an enemy, Discharge your 18 sec DoT on him, tab target to another guy, and repeat. Put that 18 sec DoT on every enemy you can. Similar to FL spamming sorcs, you will do a ton of damage, but its all wasted into scoreboard padding, and your allies will have to pick up the slack of effectively playing a man down. Good way to lose a match, even if you get top damage. I'll take burst builds that actually kill people any day. Now of course Madness can actually kill people. While not super, stacking multiple DoTs on a target combined with thrash and DF can do decent burst, and played smartly, sure a Madness assassin can utterly destroy people. I've got a guildmate that does it everyday. But even he swaps to Deception for ranked game, because of the burst. The idea of the Mad Maul spec is to get the sustained damage of Madness, but grabbing enough Deception talents to give it really good burst as well. I'm still working on improving my performance in the spec, but based off Xethis' points, it has the potential.

Kira Carsen, not even a competition here. Best companion in the game IMO.

Oh ok, that makes sense. I'm going to go back to MM again for a bit, and see if I can get these incredible results that you seem to be achieving. Now you are apparently doing something far different than I used to do when running MM, and even looking through your posting history, I cannot find what that might be. Again, maybe its sitting right in front of me and I'm somehow missing it So as far as I understand it, you open with DF, into a discharge, then into thrash spam. Using Crush and Maul whenever they proc. At some point you use shock for UK, when exactly should I be using it? Also, am I using shock off cd, or only enough to keep UK up? Blackout usage I'm also confused about. You say using it right after the first dark embrace is not ideal, ok. So what would you say is the ideal situation to be using it? When I'm force starved, and using it offensively, or when I'm being focused and using it as a defensive cd? Thanks again for all the help.

See, Xethis, now that is exactly the kind of civilized argument post I was looking for, thank you. You brought up a few points that I had not considered , and require more thought from myself, so again, thanks and good work on that. So again, with the nature of pvp, you still have to take those parses with a grain of salt, but the fact that the numbers are so far in favor of MM even in burst comparisons merit the spec more than I had originally thought. One thing I take an issue with, is your claim that you refresh Crush before it even expires. The Raze tooltip says the effect cannot happen more than once every 7.5 seconds, and Crush is a 6 second DoT, so how exactly are you refreshing it before the previous one expires? MM will still lose a ton of damage if the DoTs are clipped, enough that I suspect will put it behind WJ. I did not see a response to this in your post, although I may be just missing it. Could you maybe explain that part again? I think your points about WJ spec are exactly dead on. And that is a big reason why it may be superior, not in terms of straight damage, but because, like you said, it is easier to react and adapt to the battlefield. You yourself said that WJ is cleaner, and makes it easier to pay attention to other things, which is absolutely key in pvp. From the sound of that paragraph, I would say your overall pvp performance was increased in WJ. Also, it being a simpler spec means that the average person will get far more out of it than MM. I know myself, I have a ton of trouble managing all the things that Madness and MM require. I really appreciate the time you took to write out such a long and thorough post, and I think your communication skills are far better than you give them credit. You also made lots of great arguments in favor of WJ, you did a great job of remaining neutral, which is great, and something I am trying to do as well. I have a lot more to think about and consider. I think that at this point we are fighting over crumbs, I know that both MM and WJ spec are incredibly powerful specs, and that either one is more than viable.

If the two of you could act a little older than 5 for a minute, I'd be very interested to hear your response to my earlier post. I'm perfectly willing to accept that MM is superior, if you can give me reasons. So lets go back to civilized discussion here, how do you counter the points I made about MM vs WJ spec?

Deception assassins/ infiltration shadows 4 sec mezz is white damage as well.

Unfortunately, Xinika is not just inactive, she quit altogether. Ok, now about the Mad Maul vs Wakajinn argument. The thing about the MM build, is that it is still a DoT spec, where WJ is a burst spec. MM has more burst than full madness, but that still does not make it a burst spec. The two will play differently from each other, just as full madness plays differently from full deception. The thing you have to remember is that pvp is not all about 1v1s. So parses of X doing more than Y does not mean as much in pvp as you guys seem to be making it out to be. And also, the problem with DoTs, is that they can be clipped. What if you get your discharge, and your raze set up, and then they die before the DoTs end? Then you have just lost a lot of this "extra dps" that MM may have. I believe that this is what Wakalord may mean by setup. GCD for GCD it may be the same, but those GCDs on MM are weaker, it does not start to pull ahead until all the dots have finished rolling. And so if the target dies before they end, that's wasted dps. Meanwhile WJ is unloading hard hits on them, and if they die, its done, and there's no wasted dps anywhere. And yes, dead is dead, but in this scenario, WJ will have them dead faster than MM, which means you can start capping or whatever sooner. So in the end, yes in long drawn out fights MM will out dps WJ. The problem is, if that 18 sec discharge DoT has finished, they have had a long time to call inc, for the team to respond, and you probably have another 1-2 guys in your face. Node ninja successfully stopped. And in large group brawls, people will either be dying before all the DoTs finish, or the enemy has good healers, that are not going to be outdpsed by DoTs anyway. Burst is king in pvp. So, after all this, I'm with Wakalord on this one.

That right there is your problem. I'll give you a hint: look up the icon for sii cho form.

Where can you pick up recruit gear in outlaw's den? I've never heard that before.

I believe that any and all boosts to stats provided by skill tree pints are not affected by diminishing returns, or RNG. When I have exploitive strikes up, my melee attacks are critting a ridiculous amount, I would go so far as to say it feels actually greater crit chance than what my character sheet says.

Low slash says hi, and that's just one AC. Force Shroud is also broken currently, it does not always work as it should. You pretty much lose all credibility right there. QQ moar bro!

After being the bottom of the barrel forever, as a deception assassin, I can say that I am thoroughly enjoying actually being feared again. So nice to actually be a cause of concern, rather than just seen by everyone as a free kill.

Hybrid juggs and powertechs. lol

For infiltration, never ever use anything but pvp stalker. And extra force potency charge, and reducing its cd by 15 secs is massive.

Adding to my posts, in light of some points that have been brought up by others. First off, never ever ever EVER use your cc breaker on the knockdown. The knockdown is only 2 seconds, and even though its a painful 2 seconds, your best option is to man up and eat it. Otherwise, you have to eat the 4 sec stun, during which we can unload even more than we can during the 2 sec. The optimal choice is to just eat every stun until you are white barred, then use it, and be immune for the rest for the fight. If they haven't killed you by then, then you should win because they are a terrible assassin player. The reason you want to save the cc breaker as long as you can, is for their out of combat sap. The thing that makes assassins almost invincible in 1v1s, is the ability to vanish, sap you, and then use the out of combat channeled heal for 8 secs, and be full health again. Then they have virtually no trouble finishing you off, because you will be hurting from the first engagement, while they come in almost brand new. If you have gotten them down to the point where they have to use that trick, you can probably beat them, IF they do not get to heal back up. So do not let them do that. It is true that vengeance will fare better than rage. If we open on you, use push, then leap in order to get your cc immunity for 4 seconds. White damage is not affected by force shroud either, but your burns still will be. We do have deflection as a white damage DCD, but it is only 50%, equivalent to Saber Ward. Assassins and operatives are the kings of ambushing and quickly destroying you, that's what the class is designed to do. So the longer you can survive, the better your chances get.

Lol, whats up ugly my man Anyway, to the topic at hand. The cold hard truth is that your rage spec is just a straight up lousy counter to assassins. From reading your post, I am having a difficult time trying to figure out what spec this assassin is. You say he puts dots on you, which leads me to say madness, but you also describe a powerful opener, and some really big burst, which comes from deception. Madness does have some burst potential, but not at the levels your talking about. And deception has no dots, unless they take 2 secs to cast a crushing darkness, which I'm sure you would have noticed. So my best guess is that he was playing a 14/27 hybrid or some variant. But either way, it just sucks to be a rage warrior vs assassins. Madness can dot you up and just kite all day. Deception knocks you on your butt and unloads. You mentioned him resisting your first smash, which can be attributed to force shroud. I mostly play deception, and am more familiar with it, so from here on in ill speak about that spec. First off, we get a straight 30% AOE damage reduction, plus another 25% from Dark Embrace, which will likely be up, especially in duels. So your OMGWTF 6k smash was just turned into 2-3k. And that pretty much kills rage spec right then and there, without that big hit, your done. And then deception will follow it up with multiple 5-6k hits of their own. Deception assassins are among the hardest bursting classes in the game, if not number 1. And yes, they do have a lot off cc, with Deception getting an extra 4 sec mezz in addition to everything else the class gets. Honestly, the matchup is just so far in Deception assassins favor, that I really have very little help to offer you, other than do not be caught alone, as that is where Deception thrives, in 1v1s. Pop your cds, use freezing force and crush to slow them as much as you can, try to kite if you can. Popping those cds will help with the initial burst. At the end of the day though, Rage spec is the new FOTM, because OP or not, its easy, fun, and gets big results. And Deception assassins serve as the best counter to them right now, with their ability to resist or shrink that 6k smash, and then retaliate with multiple huge hits of their own. Rock, paper, scissors kind of matchup here.

All of that is opinion, not fact. I'm also assuming you are referring to darkness assassins for the most part, which is understandable. IMO, the only specs that you can compare between scoundrels and assassins is their middle dps tree, because of all 6 trees, only those 2 are similar enough to make valid comparisons. You cannot compare tanking to healing, etc. AS for the middle trees, they are both hard hitting, bursty, pop in, kill, and pop out kind of trees. So I will compare these two trees. my knowledge of Deception is extensive having levelled both a shadow and assassin with it, and done extensive pvp with it. I am less knowledgeable about the scoundrels tree, having not played it all the way to the top myself, but over the course of my time in this game, I have done a fair amount of research into it, in guides, videos, and anything else I can find. So take what you will. Probably the largest difference between the trees is the setup for their respective burst. Assassins require some setup, via building of Voltaic stacks, and also static charge stacks. You do not necessarily need to build them, but you will hit the hardest if you do. The downside of course is people will see you winding up, and my shut you down if they can, in which case you are screwed. I personally compromise, I always build my voltaic stacks, because they are guaranteed to appear whenever I use voltaic slash. Static charges are less reliable (my main complaint about the spec) and thus, I do not always build them up, usually ill use discharge with only 3-4. If I know I'm facing a less skilled player, who doesn't understand what's about to hit him, then I will take the time to build them up before unleashing hell. Scoundrels are not so much like this. You can instantly start with your out of stealth opener, and start rolling with your rotation. However, on the flip side, your rotation now depends on upper hand to actually work well. Assassins rely on procs to setup, scoundrels rely on them to burst, so if that 50% chance on flying fists is unkind to you, you may end up in some trouble. But if all goes well, the potential is there for hard hitting burst, with basically no set up. Also note that assassins have a proper finishing move, while scoundrels do not. In terms of survivability, scoundrels used to come out ahead pre 1.4 due to the small HoT, and medium armor. But with the changes to deception made in 1.4, this may no longer be the case. In terms of how deadly the burst actually is, based off of what I have seen, assassins may be able to put up SLIGHTLY bigger numbers if they get all setup. I see BiS assassins hitting for typically 5-6k on their big hits. BiS scoundrels tend to hit for 3-4k, with 5-6k appearing every now and then. Admittedly, I have seen far more assassin footage than scoundrel, so take that with a pinch of salt. The advantage of scoundrels of course, is that they will pull out more of these hits than assassins will. Assassins big hits are shock, discharge, and maul. Scoundrels have shoot first, back blast, sucker punch, pistol whip, sabotage charge, quick shot, which are not as big, but there is more of them. Also, scoundrels will have a DoT running this entire time, while assassins will not, unless they take the time to cast a crushing darkness. Assassins get a 4 second mez, which has an infinite amount of uses, and they can also protect teammates with taunts, even as a full dps spec. Scoundrels cannot do this, but instead they can run around a corner, and heal themselves right back to full, or offheal teammates, and then jump right back in. I've seen dps geared scoundrels get 4k heals with their underworld medicine, not specced into healing at all. So that's what I've gathered, as I said, my scoundrel information is limited, and not firsthand, so it may not be all accurate. Having said all this, I myself personally find the assassin more fun to play.

I know that it is possible, stacking endurance, to sit constantly at 31k hp in pve gear. An assassin tank for CKN mods this way, and that's what he sits at. Saw this while they were livestreaming 16 man hm tfb. Caused a giant debate in the channel chat too lol.

I personally open with spike, straight into a maul, regardless of proc or not. Gives me a good opener, especially if spike does proc maul. The reason I do this is basically for maximum force usage. With Dark Embrace going, if you don't use a maul basically right away, your going to refill your force bar, which is wasted force. Maul is expensive enough to not have this issue unless it procs. Dark embrace is enough to cover the full 50 force, so you still aren't hurting force management for later. In pvp, the likelihood of being stunned as soon as you pop out of stealth is ridiculously high, which unless you dump a ton of force into maul, you end up wasting even more force while you are stunned. Personal preference I suppose, but I've found this to work best. So my pvp rotation looks something like the following: Open with spike straight into maul. After the maul, I'll go to my 2x Voltaics. Then depending how confident I am about being able to unload my burst, I may use electrocute to stop them from doing something to nullify my burst such as a defensive cd or a stun. Once that's done, I'll pop recklessness, and use shock and discharge. If maul does proc, I interrupt this rotation to use it, and then resume. Blackout also gets used either in the middle of this, or right after. After that, it really varies on how much hp they have left, or what procs have come up. Sometimes chain shock will have taken my third recklessness charge, others I'll still have it for another shock after some more voltaic. Now is when I start saving discharge for when its got some stacks to boost it, in my opener I use discharge regardless of how many stacks it has, just to try and get my burst off ASAP. Assassinate whenever applicable, same with cds, stuns etc. If I'm still fighting much past this point, either myself or my enemies usually have all been sent back to the respawn gate.