Nostromo... Game changer

Could someone post the Darkness/Death Field build and some information regarding gearing and how to run it, or post a link to a good thread regarding this hybrid spec? I am really curious to check this out.

Looks like Mize gets ripped apart in game as well as in the forums... Sins for the win

Haha... I like that

How do you feel about 2 points into Dark Embrace instead of Torment?

Hey dont get me wrong, as you can see I havent spec'ed into dark ward and I do use a power gen but I was just raising suspicion on the use of the shield gen because there are so many people who cant decide between the two.

In your opinion... If you spec into Dark Ward and use a shield, it seems to me that would boost your survivability significantly compared to the dps you would lose.

Well I use thrash when wither, shock and discharge are on cooldown all at once which happens pretty often. Also with the point in energize, thrash has a chance to make your shock crit so I wouldnt say that Thrash is a total waste.

This has been the Million Dollar question from everyone since day 1 of running Darkness. If neone has a solid answer please post it in caps so we can all know! I've heard viable answeres from both sides of the argument and am really not sure what would be the optimum choice.

This was one of my main questions. I see everyone putting the 2 points into torment, but I feel in most pvp situations I am poping Spike and Electrocute every CD so why not buff them as hard as I can. Especially if its a ball carrier in Huttball and everyone is focusing them, 9% damage from ALL sources is pretty huge.

iiconik UPDATED 03/06/12 Darkness Assassin PVP Build 31/0/10 -Gear: See Gearing at bottom -Stance: Dark Charge -Off Hand: Focus -Ability Priority: force lightning (3 charge) > wither > shock > discharge > thrash > saber strike 0. Target running or >10m range then force slow/pull/force speed or if 3 stacks of harness darkness and target will eat an entire force lightning then pop recklessness and a power or surge clicky and force lightning. 1. if the target is =<30% assassinate. 2. Shock on CD to build charges of harness darkness 3. wither to get debuff up 4. discharge 5. spam wither/saber strike/thrash depending on level of force and range of the target You may prioritize Thrash higher if you are able to maintain good uptime in melee range in order to get more energize procs or if you don't need the defensive debuffs from wither/discharge. Open to comments on this priority list. STRATEGY Make sure you kite other melee. You have 10m range vs their 4m range. Against healers use your stun, interrupt, knock-back, and spike to control their healing. Be sure to get your 3 stacks before popping your force lightning. Fill in the gaps with discharge and Saber Strike.. Use stealth and pull to set up 1v1s. Use stealth and AoE knockback to get up beside a caster on a vantage point and knock him down to where you want to fight him. Use your defensives when you get focused obviously. Use guard on squishies to get your guard medals. Get your Matrix cube from datacrons. Get all your useful datacrons. Obviously use dark charge. Now this spec is versatile. You can gear out pure dps other than the shield generator and have great damage (2-4k assassinates, ~2400 crit shocks with 45% for another to follow etc). This makes you a great brawler able to survive in the fray and escape when you need to or 1v1 ANYONE. NOTE*** healers can be tough to kill without big burst damage, save interrupts and DPS clickies for these situations. Or you can go full tank gear to ball carry or be a huge support to your team and leave the damage dealing to the OP mercs. Final note: Many of you think operatives are OP but guess what... with this spec you will crush them. You have more than enough survivability to outlive their burst if you get caught in it. Return fire with your own CC, get your defensives up, heals up, and start kiting them with force slow and your 10m range moves for the win. If you happen to have your CC break up its GG and the operative is toast. TLDR - Spike out of stealth, pull, massive survivability and escapability, good damage, 20s force speed with snare/root break, ability to kite and not be kited with 4-10m range moves = IMMORTAL! (Quick Tips) -Your primary job is to get as much attention as possible off your team. Feel free to run through crowds of enemies throwing out a taunt and smashing healers in the face to get that attention. -Learn to CC/interrupt lock healers. KB, jolt, electrocute, pull, and spike are very important to locking down a healer. A locked down healer heals no one which makes ppl attack you. -My preferred open in huttball is pull into the acid, spike them, then stun them as they get up if needed. If you stun before spike you trigger resolve. Spike also pushes ppl forward a couple meters use this if an enemies is too near a cliff or trap. -Medpacks are your friends carry one at all times. -Don't be afraid to blow your defensive cds in order to survive. -Learn the locations of the healing powerups they can extend your staying power tremendously. -When in doubt vanish and run the time it takes to you find a spot to seethe is usually less than the time needed to respawn and move halfway across the field. GEARING PvP is where the whole thing gets complicated. Avoidance and Shielding (especially shielding) are mostly worthless in PvP, as they will not activate properly on a significant portion of the attacks delivered in PvP. My recommendation for PvP tanks is to slot a balance of power and surge rating in your upgrade slots, along with a bit of critical hit rating. This extends to your relics and adrenals; only your stim is possibly in question, since a higher Endurance translates to a bigger Harnessed Shadow heal. Expertise is, of course, the most important stat - it improves all of your healing - but it's basically a default stat that doesn't need to be factored in. At 50, you'll want to run with two pieces of Survivor PvP gear rather than Stalker PvP gear if you went deep enough to get the Stasis skill - just unslot the Survivor mods and put in Stalker mods. Yes, that means you have to get at least two extra pieces of Centurion, Champion or Battlemaster. I do not recommend equipping a Shield Generator in PvP; you'll be better off with a Power Generator. Saying shield and defense is useless is an exaggeration. But in my opinion the defense it gives doesn't outweight the offense you loose. (Getting 2 sets of gear depending on role, as has been mentioned, is of course an alternative.) Saying shield and defense is useless is an exaggeration. But in my opinion the defense it gives doesn't outweight the offense you loose. While I don't share the OPs opinion on "small dps gain", I do agree there's a lack of napkin math and theory behind the "shield is useless" claims. Hopefully the arguments in this thread makes it easier for others to decide for themselves? (Opinion of BallaRa on using a Shield Generator vs. a Power Generator) So the question becomes, how much damage does a Power Generator give you over a Shield Generator? With a mix of Battlemaster and Champion gear, here's the difference for me, according to the ingame character sheet and ability tooltips, if I put in a Battlemaster Power Gen. instead of Shield Gen.: +7% damage on force attacks (basically every attack you do except Thrash and Assassinate) +2.3% crit chance and +1.3% crit dmg bonus (<-- depends a lot on your crit and surge ratings because of diminishing returns, this is what I got) -2% health (again , what I lost with my char from less endurance, if I moved the useless-for-focus Dark Ward point to +1% endurance) -10.5% melee and ranged attack (the list in the OP) dmg. reduction average (around 38% chance to reduce incoming dmg by 24%, then loosing some defense for another 1.4% or so). As an example, if you faced another Darkness assassin, that would be 10.5% dmg. red. lost vs Thrash and Assassinate, but 0% lost reduction on the other powers he uses. So, is a gain of +7% dmg on all force attacks and +2.3% crit chance/+1.3% crit dmg bonus worth giving up 2% health and 10.5% dmg.red. on incoming melee and ranged attacks for? Yeah, I think so. But I wouldn't say that others are stupid by having different opinions on the matter: Depends on what you value the most. Doing more/faster damage, or being able to take take a longer beating? Thank you to Strategiize for suggesting a 3 piece stalker, 2 piece survivor gear setup. Ideally one would pull the tanking mods out of the survivor gear and replace them with power/surge/crit mods. With this setup you keep your dps up while taking advantage of the very useful 20s CD on Spike! MODDING:Ditch all Accuracy mods. Ideally you want "Willpower/Endurance/Power" and "Endurance/Power/Surge" mods (the latter you get from BH or IA gear, depending on the endurance/power ratio you want - Why no accuracy? Most of your damage is force attack based, which there is close to 0 "defense" (resistance) against. As a Darkness Sin, you probably have 2% resistance: You put 2 points in Premonition (this is defense against all attacks, including Tech and Force, if you belive the in-game Character Sheet). So 2% accuracy is all you need to get 100% force hit percentage in a mirror match. Afaik other classes generally aren't better off in the resistance department. (Alternate gearing opinion for DPS PVP) [5/5 Stalker; take pieces based on the stats and pull out all the accuracy mods, since Accuracy + Power or Accuracy + Crit can only be replaced with Surge + Power or Surge + Crit. Stacking Surge is most advatageous. A vast majority of the attacks used are force attacks, so accuracy is not needed. Also push surge up to a base 70% then raise crit. Never take survivor. Tanking stats dont seem to have enough impact on PvP as pure damage stats. Best way to survive in PvP is through smart gamesplay, positioning, timing of CDs, and having a good team backing you up.] (Gearing alternative opinion by Enexemander) "The survivor gear is just overall better for a darkness spec. Yes, with stalker gear a darkness spec can do okay damage, but we're not talking Madness assassin level of damage by any stretch. In my opinion, the survivability you give up is not worth the extra damage. Any class with white attacks I completely laugh at. Marauders? They're a joke. They RUN from me after fighting about 10 seconds and they see which way the wind is blowing. There is no 1v1 match up that I fear in full Survivor. It's worth noting that the Health increase in survivor is SIGNIFICANT. I'm at 20k with just my class buffs and stim. In my opinion, Darkness Assassins in tank gear are also the best ball runners in huttball. Charge is nice, but it depends on the team you're fighting to be idiots about positioning. You can bet at the battlemaster level that's going bye-bye when ranked WZs hit. Really, it's all about how you play. I run the ball. I defend my team, the doors and the turrets. If anyone decides they want to get their 1v1 medal attacking me, I WRECK them. Conversely, I feel if you want to be the guy pressuring the healers, killing the enemy dps to cap and such, you'd just be better served as a real dps spec. Darkness in full dps gear is okay, but let me be clear- Darkness spec damage even in DPS DOES NOT COMPARE with both deception and madness for burst and healer pressure. So anyway, in my opinion, if you're going to be squishy, you might as well respec dps and be useful. If you want to be a tank, roll with the tank gear and be unstoppable. "

iiconik 03/01/12 Darkness Assassin PVP Build 33/0/8 -Gear: See Gearing at bottom -Stance: Dark Charge -Off Hand: Focus -Ability Priority: force lightning (3 charge) > wither > shock > discharge > thrash > saber strike 0. Target running or >10m range then force slow/pull/force speed or if 3 stacks of harness darkness and target will eat an entire force lightning then pop recklessness and a power or surge clicky and force lightning. 1. if the target is =<30% assassinate. 2. Shock on CD to build charges of harness darkness 3. wither to get debuff up 4. discharge 5. spam wither/saber strike/thrash depending on level of force and range of the target You may prioritize Thrash higher if you are able to maintain good uptime in melee range in order to get more energize procs or if you don't need the defensive debuffs from wither/discharge. Open to comments on this priority list. STRATEGY Make sure you kite other melee. You have 10m range vs their 4m range. Against healers use your stun, interrupt, knock-back, and spike to control their healing. Be sure to get your 3 stacks before popping your force lightning. Fill in the gaps with discharge and Saber Strike.. Use stealth and pull to set up 1v1s. Use stealth and AoE knockback to get up beside a caster on a vantage point and knock him down to where you want to fight him. Use your defensives when you get focused obviously. Use guard on squishies to get your guard medals. Get your Matrix cube from datacrons. Get all your useful datacrons. Obviously use dark charge. Now this spec is versatile. You can gear out pure dps other than the shield generator and have great damage (2-4k assassinates, ~2400 crit shocks with 45% for another to follow etc). This makes you a great brawler able to survive in the fray and escape when you need to or 1v1 ANYONE. NOTE*** healers can be tough to kill without big burst damage, save interrupts and DPS clickies for these situations. Or you can go full tank gear to ball carry or be a huge support to your team and leave the damage dealing to the OP mercs. Final note: Many of you think operatives are OP but guess what... with this spec you will crush them. You have more than enough survivability to outlive their burst if you get caught in it. Return fire with your own CC, get your defensives up, heals up, and start kiting them with force slow and your 10m range moves for the win. If you happen to have your CC break up its GG and the operative is toast. TLDR - Spike out of stealth, pull, massive survivability and escapability, good damage, 20s force speed with snare/root break, ability to kite and not be kited with 4-10m range moves = IMMORTAL! (Quick Tips) -Your primary job is to get as much attention as possible off your team. Feel free to run through crowds of enemies throwing out a taunt and smashing healers in the face to get that attention. -Learn to CC/interrupt lock healers. KB, jolt, electrocute, pull, and spike are very important to locking down a healer. A locked down healer heals no one which makes ppl attack you. -My preferred open in huttball is pull into the acid, spike them, then stun them as they get up if needed. If you stun before spike you trigger resolve. Spike also pushes ppl forward a couple meters use this if an enemies is too near a cliff or trap. -Medpacks are your friends carry one at all times. -Don't be afraid to blow your defensive cds in order to survive. -Learn the locations of the healing powerups they can extend your staying power tremendously. -When in doubt vanish and run the time it takes to you find a spot to seethe is usually less than the time needed to respawn and move halfway across the field. GEARING PvP is where the whole thing gets complicated. Avoidance and Shielding (especially shielding) are mostly worthless in PvP, as they will not activate properly on a significant portion of the attacks delivered in PvP. My recommendation for PvP tanks is to slot a balance of power and surge rating in your upgrade slots, along with a bit of critical hit rating. This extends to your relics and adrenals; only your stim is possibly in question, since a higher Endurance translates to a bigger Harnessed Shadow heal. Expertise is, of course, the most important stat - it improves all of your healing - but it's basically a default stat that doesn't need to be factored in. At 50, you'll want to run with two pieces of Survivor PvP gear rather than Stalker PvP gear if you went deep enough to get the Stasis skill - just unslot the Survivor mods and put in Stalker mods. Yes, that means you have to get at least two extra pieces of Centurion, Champion or Battlemaster. I do not recommend equipping a Shield Generator in PvP; you'll be better off with a Power Generator. Saying shield and defense is useless is an exaggeration. But in my opinion the defense it gives doesn't outweight the offense you loose. (Getting 2 sets of gear depending on role, as has been mentioned, is of course an alternative.) Thank you to Strategiize for suggesting a 3 piece stalker, 2 piece survivor gear setup. Ideally one would pull the tanking mods out of the survivor gear and replace them with power/surge/crit mods. With this setup you keep your dps up while taking advantage of the very useful 20s CD on Spike! MODDING:Ditch all Accuracy mods. Ideally you want "Willpower/Endurance/Power" and "Endurance/Power/Surge" mods (the latter you get from BH or IA gear, depending on the endurance/power ratio you want - Why no accuracy? Most of your damage is force attack based, which there is close to 0 "defense" (resistance) against. As a Darkness Sin, you probably have 2% resistance: You put 2 points in Premonition (this is defense against all attacks, including Tech and Force, if you belive the in-game Character Sheet). So 2% accuracy is all you need to get 100% force hit percentage in a mirror match. Afaik other classes generally aren't better off in the resistance department. (Alternate gearing opinion for DPS PVP) [5/5 Stalker; take pieces based on the stats and pull out all the accuracy mods, since Accuracy + Power or Accuracy + Crit can only be replaced with Surge + Power or Surge + Crit. Stacking Surge is most advatageous. A vast majority of the attacks used are force attacks, so accuracy is not needed. Also push surge up to a base 70% then raise crit. Never take survivor. Tanking stats dont seem to have enough impact on PvP as pure damage stats. Best way to survive in PvP is through smart gamesplay, positioning, timing of CDs, and having a good team backing you up.] (Gearing alternative opinion by Enexemander) "The survivor gear is just overall better for a darkness spec. Yes, with stalker gear a darkness spec can do okay damage, but we're not talking Madness assassin level of damage by any stretch. In my opinion, the survivability you give up is not worth the extra damage. Any class with white attacks I completely laugh at. Marauders? They're a joke. They RUN from me after fighting about 10 seconds and they see which way the wind is blowing. There is no 1v1 match up that I fear in full Survivor. It's worth noting that the Health increase in survivor is SIGNIFICANT. I'm at 20k with just my class buffs and stim. In my opinion, Darkness Assassins in tank gear are also the best ball runners in huttball. Charge is nice, but it depends on the team you're fighting to be idiots about positioning. You can bet at the battlemaster level that's going bye-bye when ranked WZs hit. Really, it's all about how you play. I run the ball. I defend my team, the doors and the turrets. If anyone decides they want to get their 1v1 medal attacking me, I WRECK them. Conversely, I feel if you want to be the guy pressuring the healers, killing the enemy dps to cap and such, you'd just be better served as a real dps spec. Darkness in full dps gear is okay, but let me be clear- Darkness spec damage even in DPS DOES NOT COMPARE with both deception and madness for burst and healer pressure. So anyway, in my opinion, if you're going to be squishy, you might as well respec dps and be useful. If you want to be a tank, roll with the tank gear and be unstoppable. "

They are 2 different builds

Yeah, I am pretty brand new to posting on the forums so Im not really too sure about all the rules. Really the main reason I did this is so that I could transfer all the information I have gathered from my work computer to home as I am not able to send emails to outside accounts due to company restrictions on our systems. Thank you very much for the heads up!

After doing some research on Darkness Assassins, I compiled this post consisting of 3 builds and the info that goes along with running them. I have mirrored posts and added comments to put everything in one accessable post. Enjoy! -------------------------------- DARKNESS ASSASSINS "Jedi. Their order is a fading light in the dark. Corrupt and arrogant. They must be punished. The Jedi shall fall!" Playstyle: High threat defender; melee with some ranged moves. Mode: Dark Charge PvE Builds: Standard (31/0/10) PvP Builds: WitherChain (31/0/10), WitherStab (31/7/0+3) Which spec should I pick?: Standard is your best option if you want to both PvE and PvP, as it performs well at both. WitherChain is my recommendation for the hardcore PvPer, and WitherStab is an experimental build I want to mess around with a bit. Three points are leftover with WitherStab; I recommend they go in Exploitive Strikes in Madness, or Obfuscation in Deception. Overview of Recent Changes: v1.1.2 - Energize now functions correctly with Recklessness. Harnessed Darkness now has a 30 second buff life, and can be applied via Wither. Raze and Induction are now inaccessible in Dark Charge. The overall effect is a significant buff to Darkness's survivability and damage and a significant nerf to the effectiveness of hybrid specializations that do not take 31 points in Darkness. There are no hybrid specializations that I consider worth recommending at this juncture now. v1.1 - A Quality of Life improvement makes it so that tanks can change the recipient of their Guard without first removing it from their previous target, which is a significant boon to Sith Assassin tanks. Dark Charge has been changed to heal a larger amount, but more infrequently; Overcharge Saber increases the rate of the healing. The net effect is an overall moderate buff to the self-healing in the majority of situations. The biggest point of note, however, is the Wither buff - the ability now drops a 50% snare on all afflicted targets, and deals 15% more damage than before. This significant increase to AoE threat and utility essentially removes all compelling reasons to play a Hybrid Madness Tank in PvE, and should cause those playing it for PvP to rethink their position. v1.0 - Discovery that Shielding and Defense are only partially effective in PvP significantly changes gearing approaches for this class in PvP, as well as skill specializations. Welcome to our tanking tree. The Darkness Assassin has the highest single-target threat of the three tank styles available in the Old Republic, and we possess a mix of battlefield control, mobility and range that makes the playstyle a blast. The bulk of a Darkness's survivability is defined by her high blocking chance, while she has moderate avoidance, stable mitigation, and the unique ability among tanks to self-heal. Though the class's armor rating seems initially low, Combat Technique and several of its specialized skill brings the class armor values on par with the Jedi Guardian, and it has superior damage reduction for Elemental and Internal damage, the two types not covered by armor. ABILITY OVERVIEW Priority List: 1. Dark Ward (1 charge or about to expire) 2. Force Lightning (3 stacks of Harnessed Darkness) 3. Assassinate (Target at 30% health or less) 4. Wither 5. Shock (Energize) 6. Discharge (every CD) 7. Thrash 8. Saber Strike (Conserving Force) This priority list holds even single-target, as Wither and Discharge have useful side effects, and Death Field is good damage for the FP cost. Dark Ward: Useless in PvP; shielding is basically unimportant there and it costs Force and splits your attention. In PvE, just keep it up whenever it is about to expire. Spike: This ability is most notable in PvP; it causes less than half a bar of resolve. Darkness Assassins will be able to use this ability out of stealth, and should use it before any of their other stuns; it's particularly effective after Force Pulling a target into a hazard in Huttball, or to be focus-fired, thanks to the Nerve-Wracking skill. Do not open with this ability at the start of the fight, but save it to disorient the opponent. In PvE, the tank should use it regularly on the primary non-boss target. Wither: This ability generates more single-target threat than your Thrash, increases your Harnessed Shadows stacking, and deals a comparable amount of damage, while also snaring the target and ignoring defense/accuracy. It also delivers a hefty 5% damage debuff to the target. And it strikes up to five targets at a time within 5 meters of your original target. Use it every cooldown. This ability makes Darkness Assassins very important for harassing opponents trying to move between objectives, especially in Huttball and Voidstar. Maul: Only use this ability while Exploit Weakness is an active buff. If you're not WitherStab specialized, don't use it at all. Discharge: In Dark Charge, it functions like a cheaper (20 cost versus 30 cost) and weaker version of Wither that bypasses standard armor-based damage reduction. It has double the cooldown length, and deals less damage even against heavily armored targets. -5% accuracy is also a significantly weaker debuff than -5% damage in PvP, though it's the other way around in PvE. It's useful and necessary, but not very fun or compelling. Electrocute: It has a much longer CD than Spike, but is also a much longer stun. In PvP, when used on kill targets it should be reserved for targets who are already near their maximum resolve bar. It's also very handy to use on non-kill targets, of course, to prevent enemy ranged artillery and healers from freecasting. In PvE, it should be used similarly to Spike. Whirlwind: 23/0/18 Hybrids will use this ability a lot due to having it as an instant cast; the two second cast makes it uncommon for use by any other type of Darkness Assassin. The primary incapacitate basically gives the opponent a full grey resolve bar from nothing. If the target has any grey on their resolve bar prior to casting, they will get a white resolve bar, granting them CC immunity until the bar drains completely. Any damage will break a Whirlwind, but Madness Hybrids will then get a secondary two-second stun. If the target did not already have a white resolve bar, this second stun will trigger and give them one. All in all, Whirlwind is a risky and situational ability and I only recommend using it in PvP on a target you have no intention of killing or can guarantee that you will kill in 2-3 global cooldowns. In PvE, its benefits are slim. Force Shroud: Any ability that doesn't deal 'weapon damage' in its description is affected by this ability. Use it together with Force Cloak to make a successful escape, use it offensively when you anticipate a cast, use it to remove all healer-removable enemy effects on you... It's on a short cooldown and grants you five seconds of near-immunity. It's particularly useful for running the ball in Huttball, or surviving boss damage traps like those on the final boss of Athiss or Eternity Vault. Force Shroud is not affected by nor causes a global cooldown. Jedi Knights and Scoundrels have some immobilizes and snares which Force Shroud does not grant immunity to. Force Cloak: Obviously, a very useful defensive escape tool - but you cannot be healed while in it. Make sure to keep stealth in a position that's easy to activate immediately following Force Cloak. Worth noting is that Overcharge Saber does not break stealth, but medpacs will - so the former would be wasted if you used it within 10 seconds of Cloaking without first breaking stealth, while the latter will immediately break your stealth and heal you. In PvP, I frequently run for the heal power-ups while being chased, cloak, and then immediately destealth right before I run over the heal. Force Cloak is not affected by nor causes a global cooldown. Deception Hybrids do not have the issue of Cloak preventing healing. Mind Trap: A very useful ability - in PvP it can help a partner take an objective, reduce the number of opponents you have to face temporarily, break an opponent's objective taking without revealing your presence. In PvE, the biggest issue is that you risk discovery if you're not careful, and that your AoEs can break your Maze. It's used well in conjunction with Blackout to prevent the former issue, and strategic use of Force Pull can help with keeping your targets far enough away from your Mazed victim. Blackout: For most Darknesss, this ability is only useful to ensure that you can remain hidden for a brief period of time while Mind Mazing or scouting. If you're an Deception hybrid, you'll want to avoid using it for that and instead using it to guarantee when you can go all-out against a target. I recommend using it at about 25% to 75% Force. Any higher and you risk wasting some of the energy, and going lower risks having periods where you have insufficient energy anyway; none of the Force would be wasted, but your burst period would be hampered. This ability does not respect the global cooldown. Overcharge Saber: Use it whenever you need a 10% heal. This ability does not break stealth. The bonus to your healing over time from Combat Technique is notable, but not significant enough to plan around. The 2 minute cooldown is short enough that you can use it multiple times in long boss fights like in operations: once early on, once in the middle, and then once towards the end. Most boss fights of any kind will allow at least two uses if the first is cycled early, so don't be too shy about saving it. This ability does not respect the global cooldown. Deflection: Amazing survivability CD in PvE. The 2 minute cooldown is short enough that you can use it multiple times in long boss fights like in operations: once early on, once in the middle, and then once towards the end. Most boss fights of any kind will allow at least two uses if the first is cycled early, so don't be too shy about saving it. In PvP, it's of limited function; it will provide a decent survivability bonus against specializations that rely heavily on weapon damage, such as the Deception Assassin, Sentinels and some Gunslingers; it is of less useless against those that primarily rely on tech or force damage, such as the Commando, and completely useless against a Sage. This ability does not respect the global cooldown. Recklessness: This ability should work with Energize, but as described in the notable issues segment, it does not. That's not a major concern, however; you primarily want to use the ability with Force Lightning as a Darkness Assassin, as it increases the range to 30m and gives a 60% boosted chance of critical on every single tick. Harnessed Darkness is what you want to save your first Recklessness charge for. Your second should ideally be spent on Shock, as you will almost always have enough Force to activate Shock immediately after a full-duration F-Lightning. Anything else is a waste for anyone with the Harnessed Darkness skill. If you are Darkness and don't have Harnessed Darkness, your best bet is to use it with Death Field. If you don't have that, either, use it with... whatever, I guess. Note that Shocks that activate with the Chain Shock skill will consume two charges of Recklessness, and Death Field's heal will also consume a Recklessness charge. This ability does not respect the global cooldown. Force Lightning: Never use this ability as a Darkness unless you have three stacks of Harnessed Darkness. With three stacks and Recklessness active, I can guarantee delivering 3.5k damage in 1 second, and another 3.5k damage over 2 seconds. That is a massive amount of single target threat, and a massive amount of burst damage. In a multiple target situation in PvE, this should go towards your secondary target, as it will even up your threat very quickly. Shock: Ideally, you should only use Shock with the Energize buff active, which can be noticed on your buff bar or with a briefly flashed halo of color around your character. When opening, however, you may wish to begin with Shock to gain a Harnessed Shadow buff; the amount of healing and damage delivered by Harnessed Shadows is too large. Force Pull: In PvE, never start a fight with your primary target using Pull; it has a threat component and a long cooldown, so it's best used to reposition a ranged enemy closer to you mid-fight. In PvP, it's extremely versatile; you can use it to close gaps with a target, pull someone into the fire (where you will then stun them), pull them into your group (where you will focus fire and murder them), or - and this is a personal favorite - sprint about 25 meters away from the group and pull a healer or a tank away from the rest of their group. Pulling the healer away prevents him from healing effectively and you may be able to kill him, especially if you broke a tank's Guard on him. Pulling the tank away prevents him from taunting and again interrupts his Guard on an ally. Use your judgement on which is the best to pull away at a given time; I usually prefer to get the healer, especially if it's a Sage, as a Sage can pull their tank right back to them. Lacerate: This move is typically terrible and should only be used when you can guarantee you'll strike at least four targets, or if you like spinning in place like a pretty ballerina. In PvP, it can also be useful for preventing objective caps, but watch out for the Force Cost. However, when paired with Deflection and other defensive cooldowns, the Force cost can briefly become negligible and make its use more compelling when a lot of AoE damage is necessary. Unbreakable Will: Your CC breaker as a Jedi Consular. In PvE, just use it any time you're stunned for more than a second. Your speed should be used for breaking immobilizes and snares instead. In PvP, try to reserve it for when you have a white bar of resolve, unless you absolutely need to break an objective cap by the enemy or something. Force Speed: You can do it every 20 seconds, and it breaks all snares and immobilizations on you. Use it judiciously to avoid hazards (like in Hard Mode Directive 7), sprint right through hazards (in Huttball, but this is risky even when paired with Force Shroud), close gaps, etc. Guard: Judicious use of Guard is one of the things that separates the good tanks from the bad tanks. In PvE, you'll typically want to Guard your off-tank - in a flashpoint, this refers to your best-geared DPS (melee preferred over ranged.) This will reduce the amount of healing that needs to go to them. Healers should generally not be guarded barring extraordinary circumstance. In PvP, however, the Guard mechanic changes greatly and a Healer should almost always be your main Guard target. But not your only Guard target. Watch people near you and switch Guards as necessary or even turn them off if it's going to get you killed - you'll do more if you survive, heal, and taunt than if you just go down. Keeping Target Nearest Friendly bound in a convenient place as well as Set Focus and Target Focus is essential to maximizing good Guard play in PvP. Also try and keep your Guard target about 10m away from you. 15+ breaks the Guard effect, while <10 makes it too obvious who you're Guarding as well as making you both susceptible to AoEs. Mind Control/Mass Mind Control: PvE, their usage is simple: you don't have threat, you use this ability and get threat. Force Pull is preferable to MC for a ranged enemy, and note MMC's short 15m radius as opposed to MC's long 30m range. In PvP, use Mind Control every CD on someone who's not hitting you (it doesn't trigger a GCD), but I'd reserve Mass Mind Control for the hectic situations. Every now and then I do burn MMC with only a single target around - if a healer is about to go down and they're already guarded and MC is about to end, then I chain in MMC. It's made the difference a few times. Overload: There's about a 0.5s delay in activation on this ability, which can make prediction hard unless paired with a target who is already immobile. Overload is also the weakest KB in the game, with the least momentum behind it. Aside from the obvious 'knock someone into hazards or down cliffs' component of all knockback abilities, Overload should be used judiciously to get your Guard target some breathing room in PvP. GEARING As with all Inquisitors, Willpower is your primary stat, and you use both physical and Force abilities; Willpower no longer increases the effectiveness of any of your self-healing, however. When gearing in PvE, you will have to balance Shield Rating (chance of a shield effect triggering), Absorption (strength of a shield effect), and Defense. Averaging out these values to provide your maximum survivability has a precise formula. This thread has the related formula you should use if you want to find out what could potentially give you the most survivability out of your upgrade slots. The basic rule is to not try to stack too high on any one stat. In PvE, you will always prefer mods that favor Endurance over Willpower, and you'll never have to make a choice for Endurance versus a secondary stat. For PvE gearing, you can just stick with the Survivor sets. PvP is where the whole thing gets complicated. Avoidance and Shielding (especially shielding) are mostly worthless in PvP, as they will not activate properly on a significant portion of the attacks delivered in PvP. My recommendation for PvP tanks is to slot a balance of power and surge rating in your upgrade slots, along with a bit of critical hit rating. This extends to your relics and adrenals; only your stim is possibly in question, since a higher Endurance translates to a bigger Harnessed Shadow heal. Expertise is, of course, the most important stat - it improves all of your healing - but it's basically a default stat that doesn't need to be factored in. At 50, you'll want to run with two pieces of Survivor PvP gear rather than Stalker PvP gear if you went deep enough to get the Stasis skill - just unslot the Survivor mods and put in Stalker mods. Yes, that means you have to get at least two extra pieces of Centurion, Champion or Battlemaster. Getting the four piece Survivor bonus isn't a big deal in PvP. It's preferable over having two pieces of Stalker and two pieces of Survivor, but the Stalker two-piece bonus is decent enough, so if you want to grab all Stalker pieces initially for the better mods, do so. I do not recommend equipping a Shield Generator in PvP; you'll be better off with a Power Generator. Thank you to Strategiize for suggesting a 3 piece stalker, 2 piece survivor gear setup. Ideally one would pull the tanking mods out of the survivor gear and replace them with power/surge/crit mods. With this setup you keep your dps up while taking advantage of the very useful 20s CD on Spike! Dark/Chainshock Tankassin PVP OK guys here it is. For all those complaining about the shortcomings of deception and madness, or assassin pvp in general try this on for size: (I think deception and madness both have their place but this IMO is the best for solo que) 31-0-10 full darkness/chain shock. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#200bcrskrskbsZZf0cM.1 With this spec you OWN every map. Huttball is a playground for you to annihilate. Your damage may seem low at first but your staying power is HUGE. You also have the most escapability of ANY class in the game giving you the ability to completely avoid death if you play your cards right. With this set up I have gone countless solo que games with 25-45 kills 15-25 killing blows, 8-12 medals, and 0, 1, or 2 deaths per game! Currently around valor rank 40 with almost full champ gear (2 piece cent). Now you may ask why full darkness? Why not deathfield? Simply put wither is much easier to use, has a useful debuff, and harness darkness will turn the tide of any 1v1. This spec also gives you nearly spammable 10m range moves and buffs them. Further more going into deception may seem like a good idea but setting up maul will frustrate you with the amount of CC and knockbacks in team play. This is where Darkness excels, you have 4 moves with 10m range and can break movement impairs and super sprint every 20s... talk about staying on target! Some tips: use stealth and pull to set up 1v1s. Use stealth and AoE knockback to get up beside a caster on a vantage point and knock him down to where you want to fight him. Use your defensives when you get focused obviously. Use a SHIELD GENERATOR and dark ward this is HUGE mitigation. Use guard on squishies to get your guard medals. Take biochem for the very useful rakata medpack (5-6k heal) and permanent 136 willpower and 56 power from the stim as well as the adrenals! Get your Matrix cube from datacrons. Get all your useful datacrons. Obviously use dark charge. Now this spec is versatile. You can gear out pure dps (recommended) other than the shield generator and have great damage (2-4k assassinates, ~2400 crit shocks with 45% for another to follow etc). This makes you a great brawler able to survive in the fray and escape when you need to or 1v1 ANYONE. NOTE*** healers can be tough to kill without big burst damage, save interrupts and DPS clickies for these situations. Or you can go full tank gear to ball carry or be a huge support to your team and leave the damage dealing to the OP mercs. Final note: Many of you think operatives are OP but guess what... with this spec you will crush them. You have more than enough survivability to outlive their burst if you get caught in it. Return fire with your own CC, get your defensives up, heals up, and start kiting them with force slow and your 10m range moves for the win. If you happen to have your CC break up its GG and the operative is toast. TLDR - Spike out of stealth, pull, massive survivability and escapability, good damage, 20s force speed with snare/root break, ability to kite and not be kited with 4-10m range moves = IMMORTAL! PS: I PvP without a chest on cause assassins are such BEASTS! **In PvP there is no rotation you will adjust everything you do on the fly. In a team fight I get the debuffs up first but 1v1 would be something like: 0. Target running or >10m range then force slow/pull/force speed or if 3 stacks of harness darkness and target will eat an entire force lightning then pop recklessness and a power or surge clicky and force lightning. 1. if the target is =<30% assassinate. 2. Shock on CD to build charges of harness darkness 3. wither to get debuff up 4. discharge 5. spam wither/saber strike/thrash depending on level of force and range of the target You may prioritize Thrash higher if you are able to maintain good uptime in melee range in order to get more energize procs or if you don't need the defensive debuffs from wither/discharge. Open to comments on this priority list. Important tips for mastering this spec 1. Your primary job is to get as much attention as possible off your team. Feel free to run through crowds of enemies throwing out a taunt and smashing healers in the face to get that attention 2. learn to CC/interrupt lock healers. KB, jolt, electrocute, pull, and spike are very important to locking down a healer. A locked down healer heals no one which makes ppl attack you. 3. My preferred open in huttball is pull into the acid, spike them, then stun them as they get up if needed. If you stun before spike you trigger resolve. 4. Spike also pushes ppl forward a couple meters use this if an enemies is too near a cliff or trap. 5. medpacks are your friends carry one at all times 6. don't be afraid to blow your defensive cds in order to survive. 7. learn when to run, running can be the best distraction. The other night i got the other teams best dpsers to chase me down one huttball lane while the ball carrier went up the other with no serious resistance. 8. Learn the locations of the healing powerups they can extend your staying power tremendously. 9. when in doubt vanish and run the time it takes to you find a spot to seethe is usually less than the time needed to respawn and move halfway across the field. (Mirrored from AstralFire and Fitterbr)

Simple enough explanation for me, thanks

Just curious, why did you not spec into Wither?

I rolled an Assassin and am currently leveling in Deception. Ive done alot of research on the build and play style and understand how everything works... except for Exploit Weakness. I know what to do when it procs but I am not sure what makes it proc ect. Could someone please explain the mechanics of this ability for me please?

The following is a collective of information taken from various threads throughout the SWTOR community. I have compiled information I feel will be helpful to anyone wanting to roll a Deception Assassin. Enjoy! DECEPTION ASSASSINS 02/23/12 iiconik SITH DECEPTION ASSASSIN "You were deceived." Playstyle: Spike damage striker, harasser; melee skirmisher. Mode: Surging Charge PvE Builds: Chain Shock (2/31/8), Armor Piercing (5/33/3) PvP Builds: PvP Chain Shock (0/33/8) v1.1.2 - Induction is now only accessible in Surging Charge, and changing stances costs 100 Force. This essentially prevents the Deception Assassin from switching stance mid-fight for a survivability spike. ABILITY OVERVIEW Priority List: 1. Assassinate (Target at 30% health or less) 2. Maul (Exploit Weakness) 3. Discharge (every CD) 4. Shock (2x Induction) 5. Voltaic Slash or Thrash 6. Saber Strike (Conserving Force) Deception is the most martially-based of the three Assassin trees, eventually becoming extremely flashy as a melee combatant. It's the tree the Assassin was built for, and thus levels the most effectively of any Assassin tree early on; where the other trees are grasping for their basics before level 20, the Deceiver already has most of what he needs. It also is unique, as it is the only spec among all 24 Imperial specializations that has no good 30m offensive abilities, and essentially, no method of gap closing beyond Force Speed. In return, it has the most effective control while it is on a target, and the highest damage of any Shadow specialization. The basic conceit of the tree is that you use your martial strikes with a lightsaber to either buy time for your powerful, Force-driven attacks; or that you use those abilities to get into position for a particularly vicious Lightsaber stab in the back. Note that Deception is overall considered to be lesser PvE damage than Madness, both for its higher melee dependency and lower sustained damage. Thrash/Voltaic Slash: Voltaic Slash is essentially the same ability as Thrash, dealing slightly more damage, using a new animation, and with an excellent secondary effect. Once you have Voltaic Slash, take Thrash off your bar. Maul: Generally, try to restrict use of this ability to when Exploit Weakness has activated, preferably near the end of Exploit Weakness' buff cycle since it can only trigger once every 10 seconds anyway. It can deal more damage than Assassinate for you when it crits. There may be once or twice you'll really need the spike of burst damage and you have the spare Force to use Maul without the Exploit Weakness buff active, but it's not going to happen very often, and miscalculated it will cost you more damage than it gives you. You may also sometimes wish to open with this ability in PvP, such as on a weakened target. Spike: This ability is most notable in PvP; it causes less than half a bar of resolve. Do not open with this ability at the start of the fight, but save it to disorient the opponent after vanishing with Force Cloak, particularly if the opponent is in mid-activation of a non-instant ability. You can also use Spike to buy you time to set up for a Maul backstab. *Low Slash: This ability has some similarities to Spike for tanks, but important differences; Low Slash does significantly more damage, almost as much as your normal attack. Low Slash is also a daze and not a stun, which means that it breaks on damage. It also fills the resolve bar less than Electrocute. This opens up several different avenues of approach: Low Slash into a brief run into a Whirlwind when you want to escape, Low Slash into Maul for burst, Spike into Low Slash into Electrocute to maximize damage uptime and minimize their time to react, Low Slash to break someone's non-instant ability... it has a very fast CD, which only helps. In PvP, this is the most game changing single ability for an Deception Assassin; in PvE, however, the only reason you would bother to take it is because it's required for Voltaic Slash. Force Slow: Should be spammed on your primary target judiciously in PvP, just about every cooldown. It causes no resolve, does a little bit of damage, and helps you maximize your uptime. It has no PvE usage except on very specific fights. Surging Charge, Discharge and Static Charges: Since Surging Charge has a chance to activate on each hit, even though it's capped at a maximum of 1 activation per 1.5s, all of your multiple hit moves get more benefit from Surging Charge than it appears. Incidentally, you gain Static Charges very slowly. You'd need six or seven full cycles to get a stack of five with high certainty - that's around 30 seconds, and Discharge will be up every 12 to 15 seconds. Static Charges should be simply considered a bonus rather than a need in a maximum DPS cycle, and Discharge should only be held back when you want burst damage. Electrocute: It has a much longer CD than Spike, but is also a much longer stun. In PvP, when used on kill targets it should be reserved for targets who are already near their maximum resolve bar. It's also very handy to use on non-kill targets, of course, to prevent enemy ranged artillery and healers from freecasting. In PvE, it should be used similarly to Spike. Whirlwind: (OFF BAR) The two second cast makes this ability uncommonly used. The primary incapacitate basically gives the opponent a full grey resolve bar from nothing. If the target has any grey on their resolve bar prior to casting, they will get a white resolve bar, granting them CC immunity until the bar drains completely. Any damage will break a Whirlwind, but Balance Hybrids will then get a secondary two-second stun. If the target did not already have a white resolve bar, this second stun will trigger and give them one. All in all, Whirlwind is a risky and situational ability and I only recommend using it in PvP on a target you have no intention of killing or can guarantee that you will kill in 2-3 global cooldowns. In PvE, its benefits are slim. Force Shroud: Any ability that doesn't deal 'weapon damage' in its description is affected by this ability. Use it together with Force Cloak to make a successful escape, use it offensively when you anticipate a cast, use it to remove all healer-removable enemy effects on you... It's on a moderate cooldown and grants you three seconds of near-immunity. It's particularly useful for running the ball in Huttball, or surviving boss damage traps like those on the final boss of Athiss or Eternity Vault. Force Shroud is not affected by nor causes a global cooldown. Jedi Knights and Scoundrels have some immobilizes and snares which Force Shroud does not grant immunity to. Force Cloak: Obviously, a very useful defensive escape tool - but you can use it offensively to lead into a Spike when it's absolutely vital. Blackout: You'll want to avoid using this ability for improving your stealthiness most times, and instead use it to guarantee when you can go all-out against a target; it increases your Force Regeneration. I recommend using it at about 25% to 75% Force. Any higher and you risk wasting some of the energy, and going lower risks having periods where you have insufficient energy anyway; none of the Force would be wasted, but your burst period would be hampered. This ability does not respect the global cooldown. *Overcharge Saber: The additional damage increase is fairly large - it can easily pan out to an additional 3000 damage while it's active, by itself - and gets even larger when timed with other cooldowns. Use it early, use it often. This ability does not respect the global cooldown. Deflection: (SIDE BAR) Amazing survivability CD in PvE. The 2 minute cooldown is short enough that you can use it multiple times in long boss fights like in operations: once early on, once in the middle, and then once towards the end. Most boss fights of any kind will allow at least two uses if the first is cycled early, so don't be too shy about saving it. In PvP, it's of limited function; it will provide a decent survivability bonus against specializations that rely heavily on weapon damage, such as the Deception Assassin, Sentinels and some Gunslingers; it is of less useless against those that primarily rely on tech or force damage, such as the Commando, and completely useless against a Sage. This ability does not respect the global cooldown. Recklessness: Note that Shocks that activate with the Chain Shock skill will consume two charges of Recklessness. *You'll want to use Discharge first with this, then Recklessness*, for maximum ouchies. And trust me, it will be very ouch. In PvP, your four-piece set bonus gives an extra Recklessness charge, so you can use it in whatever order you like. This ability does not respect the global cooldown. Force Lightning: (OFF BAR) This move is usually terrible as a Deception. Potency/Recklessness extends the range and makes every tick have a 60% higher crit chance, making it situationally useful. You may want to bind it if you're really concerned about the lack of a 30m attack and think that there will be sufficient situations where you'll save up Recklessness to channel from 30 meters away - stranger things have happened. But that will be rare enough that, if you are hurting for keybind space, you won't miss not having this on your bars. Shock: Only use it after two Voltaic Slashs or Thrashs. Don't bother using it before you get the Induction skill. In PvE, Shock has a stun effect on some weaker enemies if you're desperate for a chance to backstab. Lacerate: (MOVE) This move is terrible and should only be used when you can guarantee you'll strike at least three targets (preferably four or more), or if you like spinning in place like a pretty ballerina. In PvP, it can also be useful for preventing objective caps, but watch out for the Force Cost. Unbreakable Will: Your CC breaker as a Jedi Consular. In PvE, just use it any time you're stunned for more than a second. Your speed should be used for breaking immobilizes and snares instead. In PvP, try to reserve it for when you have a white bar of resolve, unless you absolutely need to break an objective cap by the enemy or something. Force Speed: You can do it every 30 seconds, and it increases speed enough to basically ignore most snares (though not immobilizations.) Use it judiciously to avoid hazards (like in Hard Mode Directive 7), sprint right through hazards (in Huttball, but this is risky even when paired with Force Shroud), close gaps, etc. Mind Control/Mass Mind Control: PvE, their usage is simple: you don't have threat, you use this ability and get threat. Force Pull is preferable to MC for a ranged enemy, and note MMC's short 15m radius as opposed to MC's long 30m range. In PvP, use Mind Control every CD on someone who's not hitting you (it doesn't trigger a GCD), but I'd reserve Mass Mind Control for the hectic situations. Every now and then I do burn MMC with only a single target around - if a healer is about to go down and they're already guarded and MC is about to end, then I chain in MMC. It's made the difference a few times. Overload: There's about a 0.5s delay in activation on this ability, which can make prediction hard unless paired with a target who is already immobile. Overload is also the weakest KB in the game, with the least momentum behind it. Aside from the obvious 'knock someone into hazards or down cliffs' component of all knockback abilities, Overload should be used judiciously to some breathing room in PvP, such as immediately before a Cloak. GEARING All characters use one primary ability score of Aim, Cunning, Strength or Willpower. All four of these abilities has a specialized purpose. Aim will only increase your ranged damage and critical chance, Cunning will only increase your tech damage and critical chance, Strength will only increase your melee damage and critical chance, and Willpower will only increase your Force damage and critical chance. Normally, anyway. Each base class has a different primary ability score. A primary ability score equally improves both of the damage vectors which your class will use. Through the Force, all things are possible; Willpower is the primary score for Consulars and Inquisitors, and grants both Melee Damage and Force Damage, as a result. As with all Inquisitors, Willpower is your primary stat, and you use both physical and Force abilities. The Deception Assassin has essentially identical preferences for gearing in both PvE and PvP. You target the Stalker gearsets at 50, and lean heavily on critical hit chance in your passive gear upgrades, while picking up a bit of Surge rating here and there incidentally. Around 5% accuracy from gear is useful - much more and you are subject to diminishing returns that reduce the value of the gear. Your adrenals and active-use relics will prefer to be Surge Rating and Power so that they can be used in conjunction with your Recklessness. Accuracy Rating is of minimal importance, and I would strive to minimize it in your gear whenever possible. In PvP, Expertise Rating will be your single most important statistic. Presence measures your ability to inspire, lead, and guide your companions. A higher presence score will increase your companion’s health, damage and healing. Companions take up the party slot of a player, but are less effective than a player; if you intend to do a lot of content which requires full or nearly full groups, it’s not wise to invest much into presence. Endurance, simply enough, improves one’s raw health. Secondary stats are available, which add more complexity to the matter. Absorption Rating: Increases the amount of damage blocked by a successful shield reaction. More rating is required to achieve the same percentage bonus at higher character levels. Accuracy Rating: Grants additional hit, and then reduces the opponent’s defense once past 100%. More rating is required to achieve the same percentage bonus at higher character levels. Alacrity Rating: A secondary stat which improves the speed of activation time for non-instant abilities. It does not affect the Global Cooldown. More rating is required to achieve the same percentage bonus at higher character levels. It may also increase the rate at which periodic abilities take effect. Critical Rating: Improves the chance of a critical hit. More rating is required to achieve the same percentage bonus at higher character levels. Defense Rating: Improves the chance of avoiding an attack. More rating is required to achieve the same percentage bonus at higher character levels. Expertise Rating: Increases damage and healing done, and reduces damage taken, but only in PvP. A maximum of 10% effectiveness. More rating is required to achieve the same percentage bonus at higher character levels. Force Power: A secondary stat which improves Force Ability damage and healing only. Power: A secondary stat which improves damage and healing from all sources. Shield Rating: Increases the chance that a shield reaction is triggered against an attack. More rating is required to achieve the same percentage bonus at higher character levels. Surge Rating: Improves the effect of a critical hit. Base Surge is +50%. More rating is required to achieve the same percentage bonus at higher character levels. Tech Power: A secondary stat which improves Tech Ability damage and healing only. PVP Alderaan By far my favourite tactic here is to be in stealth guarding one of the side turrets. If one person comes along you can jump on them and kill them. The best way to do this I find is to use you Out Of Combat crowd control (CC) first, it has a short cooldown and people will often blow their freedom from CC ability on it, meaning you can Electrocute them when you break out of stealth to give yourself an advantage. If more than one person comes, you can use your interrupts and CC to stop them taking the turret, then Force Cloak and then re-engage to stop them capping the turret all over again. If you’re Madness you can use Death Field and DoTs to delay the capture for ages either until they finally lock you down or help arrives. Either way every second you delay the enemy, the more time your mates have to capture somewhere else. As I always teach my 40k players, Always Play The Objectives. Let’s play HUTTBALL! You can use much the same approach to cap an enemy turret from one or two enemies, what I tend to do here is use Blackout when I’m going up the stairs to spot enemy stealthers without them seeing me, meaning you can crowd control them and kill their friend first. The most obvious tactic that applies here involves having someone else who knows how to pass, simply stealth up onto the catwalks or into the enemy score zone and have someone pass the ball up to you from the center or the pit respectively. REMEMBER YOU CANNOT CATCH THE BALL WHILE STEALTHED! You need to drop out of stealth as soon as you see the blue circle, you then catch the ball and have a easy run to the scoring line with speed and your defence abilities to get you there. The reverse of this tactic is to play back field in stealth and get a quick kill /CC on ball carriers when they come across. Punt works very well for this as if the ball carrier is on his own he’s likely not gotten CC immunity so you can simply punt him off the edge and then follow him down and kill him. Voidstar The assassin is the best class for getting objectives in this warzone hands down, this is because you have stealth and the ability to re-stealth and drop yourself out of combat. The easiest way to win this warzone is to send 7 people to one side and an assassin in stealth to the other. If they guard the other gate at all it’ll be one or two people. If it’s one, bonk him on the head in stealth (Gebe’s note: sorry, I still call this Sap as it’s shorter to type!) and then get the door, if he breaks it, stun him, kill him and then blow the door. If the door is guarded by two people, wait around to see if one leaves, remember the other door is now understrength so they’ll likely be calling for backup. Once the first door is down is when you really start to shine. If you’re in stealth, Force Speed through the door and make straight for the next console, Deception is great for this as they have no speed loss, and being out of combat means that you get your speed boost to keep ahead of the pack. Madness spec probably wants to drop stealth after the speed so you get to the console faster. If you can keep your momentum up you can get all the way to the end of the map before the enemy really has a chance to catch up, especially as they’ll mostly be trying to kill your team mates they can actually see! Also remember the power of Deception! When you activate a single bridge, go for the door on the other side! It’s much less likely to be guarded. If there’s an enemy that can see you, head directly towards one door, then stealth and go for the other door instead! I’ve led so many poor republic players to go to the wrong door when I’m ahead of the pack and gotten the bomb placed and get back into stealth before they realise their mistake and catch up with me. More general tips Guard/Dark Charge: Most specs end up taking improved charge from the Darkness tree as it’s a good boost for all DPS and tank specs. Most importantly it means that every spec get 9% internal and external damage resistance when in Dark Charge. This is a large amount of survivability gain. This means you can guard someone even without a Darkness spec, and, using your Dark Ward and Force Shroud cooldowns, survive a lot of punishment. This really helps ball carriers in Huttball and squishy sorcerers all the time. It is also easy medals! More medals is more Valor and more commendations! Wait till you get the three easy protection medals (5k defended, 2k in one life and 10k in one life) then switch back to your usual DPS charge and beat face to get the damage and kill related ones. having a Madness spec helps here too because you can use your 30yrd abilities without getting out of Guard range and those also give you health via life stealing. If you’re the one with the Huttball, remember to switch off Guard but keep in Dark Charge, the damage resistance is very useful given how much hate is gonna come your way. You’re unlikely to be killing much when you have the ball, concentrate on CCing every enemy you can (run sideways!) and looking for opportunities to pass the ball to someone further up the field. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few things, but please add your own. Death to the Republic! Deception PVP thoughts The biggest thing Deception lacks that the other trees are better at, is survivability, and this makes them easier to play hands down. However, Deception is completely capable of doing things the other trees can't if you can play it well, and if you can get the gear. I can't put enough emphasis on that last part, because it is really, really important. You've probably heard a lot of people say "boy Assassin sure gets better in Battlemaster Gear!' And people often come to the agreeable assumption that no sh*t, of course it does, every class does. BUT, these people are actually right, because Assassins get a lot of bang out of the Crit and Surge stats due to their critical damage talents, namely Crackling Blast and Induction. For those of you who leveled as Deception (as I did), this is part of the reason you had such a hard time, because you probably couldn't itemize yourself properly to really benefit from what makes the tree strong. This is the other problem with Deception, our PvP gear is itemized like balls. If we could switch out every +accuracy stat with +crit/surge/power, we would be much better off. I know you could say this for almost every class, but it is more essential to Assassins than any other. Only a few PvP items are properly itemized optimally for Assassins, and if you want to really get the most out of Deception in PvP, you will have to reslot your enhancements with crit/surge or surge/power ones (as far as I know, crit/power doesn't exist yet). Until you can buy an ***-load of Champion Gloves (which have a surge/power enhancement in them that you can remove and place in all of your gear) you will probably have to ask an artifice to make you some epic adept enhancements. You can get these out of Operations if you're lucky: http://www.torhead.com/item/dyXw8Xh/...enhancement-25 but I don't PvE, so that's not an option for me. So unless you know an Artificer who has the Adept 24 or 23 schematics, you'll likely have to settle for Adept 22's, which give 18 endurance, 27 power, and 39 surge. Even though they're lower quality than what is already in the PvP gear, being properly itemized makes them better, period. So what does a properly itemized Assassin bring to the PvP table that the other two specs don't? Unstoppable burst, basically. The other two trees can put out impressive numbers over a longer period of time, but they can't hold a candle to Deception done right. When you pop a relic (I suggest a +power relic for this combo), recklessness, and over charge saber all at once, only a tank or a CC train can stop you from murdering the sh*t out of some one. With good gear--not even best gear--you can drop 15k damage in 6-8 seconds no sweat, on just about anything but a well geared PvP tank (though I've dropped some pretty well geared tanks pretty quickly on occasion). The other thing about Deception, is that if you have a healer and/or a tank working with you, to up your survivability, Deception becomes the best PvP spec possible (for pure damage, that is, darkness tanks work very well). However, if you solo queue WZ's often, I would suggest going with one of the other specs if you like surviving while trying to carry bad team mates. So now you understand the concept behind Deception, but how do you accomplish that? Stealth is obviously important because it lets you fight who you want to, when you want to. That said, being in stealth does nothing for your team until you make a move. Rapid target acquisition is a skill you will have to excel at to play Deception well. Squishy healers and casters that are trying to stay at the rear of the fight are always high priority. Killing them might not always be the most efficient option, though. Mind Trap is a seriously under-used ability, and if you can reach a ranged player or a healer before they jump into the fight, you can be very valuable to your team. Especially if they use their CC breaker to get out of it and try to hurry into the fight. Healers with guard on them are a different story completely. If you come across a healer with guard, killing him is usually not an option unless he or his tank are very, very stupid/poorly geared. The best thing you can do in this case is make the healer's life a living hell. Just stick on him as much as possible and interrupt him every chance you get. If you interrupt one spell and he tries to cast another, slap a stun on him with electrocute or do force cloak -> spike, and then when those are about to run off, hit him with a whirlwind. While doing this, you can throw out taunts and maybe some damage to help your team some more, but locking down the healer is your top priority. Remember that Low Slash and Overload also make useful interrupts if Jolt is on cooldown. As a side note, openers for the Assassin are pretty limited. I usually go with maul because its high cost is off-set by the 6 seconds of dark-embrace while exiting stealth. Spike is decent, but the only time I use it really is for knocking people off ledges. You could open with force slow, u can follow it up with a maul while dark embrace is still up and it prevents people from really getting any distance on u while u burst them down. (Taken from http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=317915&highlight=guard / Deception PvP, and why you're doing it wrong)