3.2k is a HUGE amount of damage absorption. And it works against everything (unlike sheilds which also requires DARK CHARGE STANCE (!?!). But, sorcs are not assassins so you can't really compare them. However, assassin's defenses do need some attention. Allowing shields to be used in any stance would be a good start...

Hence why I'm so pissed that they made induction sugring charge only...

I'm going to consider that a rare anomaly and move on. It's too bad you can break 500k in voidstar but not able to pull together a fraps. That would have been impressive.

No good. We need to see what abilities you are using and the context. If that's all AOE damage, then big deal. If you're somehow mauling everyone, let's see that. If you're critting a lot, we'd like to see that too. Screenshots don't show anything. If you plan to make such enormous claims, you should be able to back it up with some actual proof.

Save your time and roll an IA Operative.

Can you please provide 2 or 3 FRAP'd games of you doing this? I'm very interested in seeing this.

Perhaps it is counterproductive to YOUR playstyle, but your playstile (as a range tank assassin?) does not fall in line with the abilities you get DEEP in the darkness tree: 1) Spike out of stealth. Can you spike at 30m? 2) Forcepull. That's pull, not push. So you will be in MELEE with the mob, not range. 3) Energize: Procs on thrash and lacerate. Those are melee attacks, last I checked. Contrast that to what? Harness Darkness which, with 3 stacks of energize (which comes from thrash and lacerate, remember) you get a more powerful force lightning. That's your range game. Wither is only 10m. What r"range game that deep Darkness possesses" are you talking about? To the Darkness/Deception, you play in the face of your enemy, you are trying to quickly build energize and critical shocks. Deception makes this manageable. With this change, you're now going to fall back to saber strike a LOT because in order to leverage your Energize procs, you're going to be force starved.

To put it simply (and so another one of my posts doesn't get removed by BW): 1) The Fore cost to switch stances from 50 - 100 is not a huge impact, since spending 50 force in any type of rotation is completely unfeasable. So, they might as well made it a 30 min cooldown or not able to switch in combat. I don't think that this is the thrust of the complaints. 2) Induction requiring surging charge. This is a HUGE problem for Darkness/Deception builds. You're in Darkness to get defenses (such as dark ward, being able to use a SHIELD, harness darkness for self healing). You're in deception to hep reduce the cost of shock (which in darkness, they give you talents to cast shock more frequently (the talent that immediately reduces cooldown on shock) but you can't possibly sustain casting shock at that rate without induction. Now, you can't get induction without surging charge, so you're giving up a HUGE amount of durability to gain some DPS (i do not know the numbers). That's pretty much it, but a simple change breaks a lot of things. I don't understand why Sheilds can't be used outside of Dark Charge. But being able to use a shield is one of the primary reasons to be in DC. I think even with this, people with darknes are going to stay darkness because you can't loose out on all the mitigation, and instead go with the madness's chain shock (but you wait, soon chain shock will only proc if you are in lightning charge). I hope this post passes muster with our BW Censor board.

Could you please FRAPS 2 or 3 of your matches? I'm really interested in seeing this.

There was no reason to change anything here. If you had some ponits in madness or deception as a primary dark charge user, it as so that you could do SOME damage while having SOME survivability. I've never EVER heard one complaint that assassins were just some unkillable machine on the battle field. Nor have i ever heard one complaint taht their damage output is over the top. All this is, is some class designer's ego needing to be stroked so they have to bend all these talents and abilities so that the class is played the way they want to play. And to hear someone say 'And you're not supposed to stance dance', that is the same line of crap they said about warriors in WoW. And you know what? 5 years later they realized how stupid that is so they actaully let you stance dance (not that I'm saying anyone DOES stance dance...I never switch stances in a fight, 50 energy was too much to loose and now 100 is just LoL). The point is, there is no 'balance' in these changes, it's just excluding gameplay options,. Plus, there's pleanty of other places that classes need to be looked at outside of Assassins, and there's a LOT of changes in this patch on us, and I just have no CLUE why they are spending so much time on us.

I'm not joking. These latest changes, it's like, the desiner is saying 'I don't like the way these players are having fun with the game, so I think if I add more talent dependencies, only let certain procs trigger in certain stances, I think then they will play the way i want them to play.' This brings back memories of abuse from EQ: 'Make them stare at a book for 5 minutes to recover mana'. Or WoW: 'Let's let them burn all their rage to switch to defensive stance'. So, please find a new guy, this guy is a masochist. Thanks.

This ******** makes no sense. This 100 force to stance change was the same ******** that WoW did with warrior stances (except this one is MUCh worse, because in WoW, you just burned all your range to change, but in this one you need to wait for FULL energy then change..WHAT?) And, only 5 years later, do they realize how *********** ******e ******* that is, so they give skills to reduce the range cost so that I think you can now swithc stances with little rage penalty at all. Anyways, I do not understand this change at all, they are basicalyl saying that there's goign to be 1 way to play assassin, and that's IT. It was looking like a reasonable class to play because of the variation in style, but .. i hate to say this, but I'm getting sick of this ********. Bioware, i was a BIG BIG defender...I always said that you looked at the data and made appropriate changes, but what is this ****? WHAT IS THIS ****? This is the most AVERAGE class in the enitre game, no one EVER complains about it one way or the other...and you just want to scramble the eggs or something? This makes no *********** semse.

While that's true, we could also make it really easy and just say that there's just 1 class in the game. My point (again) is that I don't see how this particular change with induction would throw damage output out of whack. Since you're not 31, you don't have the aoe damage, etc. So, again, you're trading one type of damage for another, while still maintaining the 'balance zone' of the class. This is what I don't understand, and why I voice my confusion at BW that why are they even CONSIDERING changes like this when there isn't a problem here that needs fixing (aside from they don't like the idea of hybrid builds and then will do things to restrict it). If they want people to focus on a particular tree, then they should do what others have mentioned about WoW and lock the tree until you spend 31 pts in it. Of course, WoW didn't start out this way and only was really done once you had like 61 pts of abilities to spend, so this isn't really apples to apples.

I'm sure they do not look at it that way. They look at what the benefit of the talent gives, what the overall capabilities of the class are, and what they envision the class to behave. They don't go and look at each permutation of talent builds and compare them to all the other types. In the case of operatives, they didn't say 'Wow, compared to these 3 builds in merc and 2 builds in sorcs and 1 build in assassin, and based on that, we have to say that we are going to reduce armor penetation, the stun, and X/Y/Z.' Instead they say 'Ok, looking at these numbers in this particular build, we see that this damage output is 20-25% above what we want from the class, in addition the player is not in control for a certain amount of time, and they are doing this by using 1 ability. So, how do we get that in line? We do X,Y,Z, that will reduce the damage output, reduce the CC etc. Balancing classes means that within certain roles, the classes can yield certain results. A class is out of balance when they are exceeding tolerances. In this way, the game makers can balance classes to fit certain roles, and then only have to concern them with the 3 or 4 roles in the game, and then within those classes how those classes can perform those roles. So, getting back to my origional point, I don't see what the purpose of this change is. They have properly balanced the talent tree such that in order to gain one perk, you have to give up something else. That's the 'balance' of it. Of course certain play styles will be able to leverage one configuration over an other, but it's not like you can say 'this is THE build that you are going to play if you wish to use the darkness tree. Once they make these changes, there's going to be a single build if you want to play darkness or madness or deception. Perhaps part of the problem here is that we're only seeing part of the intended changes in the talent tree. Maybe they'll introduce something or change /buff things such that you can go pure darkness and have fun. Currently for me, it's not the case: I have to really ease up on making attacks to avoid force starvation if I go all into darkness. To me, that's boring, so I give up wither, and other top tier talents for induction. But I still am playing the defensive role that darkness affords (force pulls, spikes, shields, etc).

See you lost me at 'Geared 1v1 you shouldn't loose'. Why? I must be bad because on my best day if i get into a 1v1 it's usually 50/50 chance I will win. Against specific classes (Operative/Scoundrels) it's NEVER a win 1v1, I always have to do something to escape or then just bust me down. I might not die every time, but 1v1 against operatives if I gain an edge they disappear and if I can't gain the advantage quickly, then I'm escaping myself. You're dreaming (and a liar) if you say you can walk into any 1v1 situation and win. As far as the 23/0/18 build being 'best' for pvp...I tried it, and I couldn't capitalize chain shock enough because the cost of shock was unsustainable (hence the induction talent in deception). I'm having more success 27/14/0. YMMV, but 'best' is in the eye of the beholder.