You know you can just keep getting BH merc offhands for those right?

You know that you could kinda do this before anyway with the nightmare EV council right? DPS classes could race (we bet on it) to see who finishes first

Yeah, last night we covered all 4 buffs with only 2 of the 4 classes running the new HM, was pretty nice...

Just play tanksassin in DPS gear, you hit almost as hard as a dps and have almost all of the survivability of a tank, and you can self heal for 2k every 10 seconds or so with harnessed darkness...

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#200rcrokrskdsZZf0cM.1 Use this and use the pure stalker set and you will be able to hit 4k+2k shocks while still keeping most of your survivability. (Use a shield not a focus)

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#200rcrokrskdsZZf0cM.1 Pretty much the same spec for pvp and pve (like 2-3 points are negotiable) I use it to wreck in warzones and main tank operations. Definitely use the stalker set for your pvp gear though.

Pure tanksassin still the way to go, 1 on 1 anyone, even 1 on 2 most people... All the survivability + self heal and still crit double shocks for 4k + 2k

There is almost no reason to ever use anything but tracer missle as a merc if you have 35% crit and the bonus for another 15%. At 50% crit, especially with a 1.5 second GCD, tracer is more heat efficient than any of your proced abilities off of tracer so you might as well keep casting it. Only in a burn phase or when you have vent heat up is it worht it to use anything else. Railshot being the only exception.

My assassin's gear has all been customized like this pretty much (champion stalker/columni survivor) so dps pvp set and tank pve. I have gotten tons of extra tokens for other classes from heroics, and I've found that BH head pieces give good enhancements for stats for assassins, costs 25k to pop one out so 50k in all per slot.

How can you be darkness spec and not use spike? how do you kill healers in PVP? I use spike all the time when I spec darkness, and actually its part of the rotation for deception too. Its a free hit out of stealth because you can follow up with anything else, so its a chance for a charge to build up to make your discharge hit all that much harder... Darkness fights are generally thrash/shock to 3 stacks of harnessed darkness while keeping wither on the target, then relic/reckless, force lightning + shock. This should bring them to assassinate range. The shock can hit over 4k, assassinate over 3k, and force lightning can go well over 1000 per tick. Deception you want to find someone solo and spike => VS => VS => Low Slash => relic/reckless/adrenal => discharge => shock (or shock first if you have 4 piece pvp) => blackout => electrocute => maul (if proc)/VS + VS => assassinate => shock/maul. The shocks, discharge, maul and assassinate can all hit over 4k.

Assassin scales a bit better in single target fights in my experience than the others, so as gear goes up, assassins shine more and more. Thats because Assassins get a 20% spell buff to shield, which means they can get much higher shield chance than the others considering DR. On my assassin I have 29% defense, 59.5% shield (with DW) and 40% absorbtion while having around 41% armor reduction. The armor is slightly lower, but the shield makes up for that (and more) on most attacks that can be mitigated by armor anyway. In addition, the short cooldown on force shroud for spell immunity, plus the 16% + 10% I can heal myself on demand from overcharge + force lightning makes me a lot more self sufficient and survivable than powertechs and juggs, all while still having over 20k hp unbuffed. I think what it comes down to is that assassins have ~8% higher single target shield chance at the cost of 8% lower armor mitigation. While this means that the biggest hit on the PT is lower, the % of time that an assassin will be hit for their biggest possible hit is significantly less (50% of the time vs 40% of the time, a 20% reduction in frequency). This actually makes the damage less spiky and thus easier to heal, because the 8% lower top end is really a question of do I have enough hp to survive the biggest hit. This doesn't make the assassin an "avoidance" tank because its not an all or nothing spike, but rather it makes it so that for 100 hits of 1000 damage, the PT will avoid 25 of them, and of the 75 hits remaining, they will take 500 damage on 38 of them and ~315 damage on 37 of them. In contrast, the Assassin is avoiding 29 of them, and on the 71 hits remaining, taking 590 damage on 28 hits, but taking 325 damage on 43 of the hits. The end result is 19000 + 11655 = 30655 damage taken for a total of 100000 possible for the PT. 16520+13975=30495 damage taken by the Assassin. The benefit though, is less of that damage is coming in on the maximum hits, making it less likely for the assassin to take several big hits in a row and get "unlucky". This is without factoring in abilities to reduce the enemy's hit chance or damage.

Being behind really doesn't matter that much... voltaic doesn't seem to do that much less damage than maul anyway, and it lets you build induction faster so sure, to maximize you need maul but most of the time front stabbing people is fine...

I really don't get what the issue is... While darkward is up, we have the best mitigation of anyone in the game... I have 29%+ defense, 59%+ shield and 37%+ absorb in tank gear, while having 40% reduction. The armor is lower, but if you factor in the 10% higher than anyone else shield chance vs single bosses, and the self heals, I can sit there without heals taking it far longer than a PT or a Jugg... We are built to scale the best with gear because our 20% bonus is added on top of diminishing returns from stacking shield, taking us further than the other classes can go. We can heal ourselves for 16% of our HP every 20 seconds and another chunk with overload instantly, without counting dark charge procs for 450 or so. We don't have invincible, but by the time you need that, (usually enrage) your not geared enough as a raid to win anyway, also if its actually needed, a DPS warrior will do just as well, you can force cloak or they can taunt.

We might have to blow CDs on some trash where other tanks don't but... Who cares, they're short enough to be up for the boss anyway... That said! I still like more charges and less cooldown as a solution because then on bosses you don't have to refresh as often but on trash you can spam refresh to keep it up as a tradeoff of losing force for damage. Anyway, our shield is not just a bit higher than the other classes, it is much much higher with +20%...

Because of the bigger boost to shield, I'd rather have it changed slightly to maybe have a few more charges, or a way to replenish charges and duration... I actually support removing the recast timer on it, that way for true AOE pulls we can sacrifice agro and damage for keeping it up... I think that would be a pretty balanced solution. I would think that making it 12 charges, lasting 30 seconds, but with a 5 second cooldown etc would be very fair, if you spam it you will waste energy and be inefficient, but with 12 charges available every 5 seconds, you should never run out. As for unload spam, I guess I've just gotten used to having a relic up for those situations, and having self heal up if it does drop a bit early. I generaly don't trigger my force lightning as soon as it hits 3 charges but rather wait for a time when I need the heal to do it, and I like to use it in conjunction with overload saber... For AOE packs, they take long enough to kill that deflection is pretty much up for every pull, and the odd one where its not up, I can always force speed away for long enough to get a few heals if needed

My question is what pulls are you talking about that DW falls off too fast, which encounter are you talking about? Even the packs of AOE dogs etc in EV don't make my DW fall off usually (I have ~28% defense, 37.5% shield (57.5% with DW) and 38% absorb)... Defense since it is the first roll is useful in keeping it up, use your electrocute and your spike to reduce hits even more and I just have not found a single encounter where (with a little pre planning) I had trouble keeping DW up so far in this game, outside of pvp with 2-3 mercs shooting at me etc. I'm not trying to say you don't have a point (I'd love not having to spam energy on DW... more pew pew) but I just don't see where the fight currently exists that we lose DW completely for more than 1-2 seconds in the game as it exists today (unless you face pull a second group).

I guess if you click everything with a GCD and bind everything thats not on GCD it works ok... Not so hot for PVP and positioning though

I think Assassin threat is probably the highest right now of any of the tanks. Word of advice, if you want to burst more dps, don't use discharge (a lot of bosses' attacks can't miss anyway), and sometimes I'll even let wither drop for a higher damage ability. I gamble a bit though because since i haven't done Nightmare mode, everything HM and lower doesn't really hit so hard that 5% will make a huge difference, so if I drop it for 1 cycle, no big deal. I do make sure i have it on when bosses AOE etc though. Also, the DPS relics have high end and good burst, I pop one at the start of boss fights to get ahead for the rest of the fight.

So then the only question is, are you all geared enough to 7 man or 15 man hard modes yet , and if you need 15 to run 1 guy, the profit margin is quite small, whereas if you do 8 man losing one person is all the more significant...

Assassin tank, so on the higher end, but shock crits over 2k, up to about 2.5k (3k if I reckless, adrenal, relic). Force lightning ticks for 1200 crits, thrash crits are 700-100 per swing depending, wither can crit over 1k and discharge somewhere in the 5-600 range. Assassinate is in the 2k range.

I have 57.7% shield with Dark ward, and if it drops for one or 2 seconds so what... it should never drop more than that since you shouldn't pull an aoe group right after you refresh it, and you can use deflection to carry your charges out longer so they stay up longer.

I think the point you missed though is that we have much higher shield chance... I have like 57-58% with dark ward on (2 piece bonus) and that is a good 10% higher than the other tanks in the guild (I'm probably the best geared as MT but thats a separate argument). Even though I have 5-10% less mitigation, it doesn't matter as much because most bosses are single target, so my superior shield actually mitigates a lot more, and harnessed darkness force lightning heals for like 3k, so I can pretty much solo the hard mode turrets in EV without a healer (we actually have the whole raid go one side while I laugh at the turret on the other with some HOTs...) What AOE pulls are you actually losing all your charges on in 12 seconds? Most aoe pulls in this game can be semi CCed (stuns, kbs, kds etc) so that you aren't getting hit by everything at once. I don't pull until ~5 seconds after I cast DW and by the time my second one is gone so is at least 1-2 mobs. I just don't see this as being an issue outside of PVP, where getting focused by 4 guys should kill us anyway. Even the mass packs of aoe in Kaon HM (if you get 2 packs by mistake) I can just aoe taunt with deflection and my DW won't go down. If there was a fight in the game where this actually matters, I'd commiserate with you, but its literally never a problem in game so I don't see what the issue is. I actually use the crit/surge relics for the extra hp and burst agro to help me stay ahead at the beginning on bosses (people like to burn their CDs early to get them back for another use).

Yeah I'm actually rolling up a merc, because even though I MT for the guild, sometimes I feel like raid leading would be easier if I were playing lol tracer spam and we'd probably do better with one of the less geared tanks and an additional ranged dps (rather than the tank speccing dps with melee gear).

I main tank and have 1-6, Shift 1-6 and alt 1-6 bound to my abilities, along with q a ` t r and a few others, but even then, I find that there are some things I prefer to click... I click health packs, adrenals, relics etc all in a row down the right side, and sometimes I click deflection if I am doing something else with the left hand. I've found that playing MMOs rebinding movement to esdf makes for a much easier experience in terms of key binds and I recommend you trying it. In a game like this one, with no autoattack, I can't see how you can get by purely clicking while moving with the mouse but if you can, more power to you. I think the worry is threat not anything else, as threat generation in this game reall does require tight rotations etc, and a lot of fights you have to throw in a ranged move while moving around to keep up the dps as a tank.

And this is why I'm not doing bonus quests and sticking to the core story on my BH as I level up, supplementing it with pure pvp exp... I guess I can buy the battlemaster earrings etc first for when I hit 60.