Funny, because 2 weeks in a row our HM EV group has seen nothing but warrior gear drop when we had 3 BHs that needed gear. We do have a very happy marauder though.

Good for leveling and taking out weak trash, but by 50 it wasn't even on my bar.

Wasn't a big fan of the story either, most people are not.

This post is absurd.

That damage is a misconception. I have played PT and assassin tanks both, and I have to say it's easier to do a lot of damage on the PT in any sort of pug. What gives assassins the big numbers is that they have amazing staying power, they are incredibly hard to kill if they have healers and a good team around them, even if you do get them low they can simply run away, get healed and jump back into the fray without waiting for respawns. They get lots of KBs too because of assassinate, but their damage is really not all that great unless you're letting them cast HD+recklessness full channeled FL followed by an energized + reckless shock, and that's not even taking into account relics and adrenals. Yes at times it seems like they do too much damage but it's not as if they are pulling that off constantly. When you see the purple flames, they are going to cast FL on you, as I'm sure most people know by now. Stun, knockback or pop a cooldown, you've just dealt with their biggest hitter and should have only taken 1-2 ticks or reduced damage. Yes it's pvp and you can't always be ready to stop it and a smart assassin can take steps now and then to make sure he gets it off but people need to stop acting like darkness sins do amazing damage, they don't, they just do decent damage over long periods of times.

Irrelevant would be your argument. Context sure is fun.

Sorcs and sages are easy to shut down. Mercs have the mitigation and healing power to survive 1 dps almost forever right now, ops/smugglers though lacking utility don't have to stop and cast as much as sorc and can be hard to finish off alone because they will have constant self healing when low on health. What sorcs do have is force speed, bubbles, knockback and such. But, any smart DPS is going to know how to deal with force speed and the knockback, and sorcs have to stop and cast quite a bit. Combined with being the squishiest healer anyone who knows how to cycle their interrupts is going to make life hell for a sorc. Sorc/sage are the easiest to focus down atm.

Tank here, anyone who wants their DPS to slow down is bad at tanking... Sometimes they spike and steal aggro, big deal. You have taunts for a reason. Aggro is YOUR job, not theirs. They need to do as much damage as they can to down bosses quicker, and there is never any reason to hold back on trash, ever, so long as they let you get initial aggro. They have aggro dumps in some cases to help you out but you should ALWAYS be ready to get aggro back if you lose it, be ready for it, don't expect it not to happen because there are times it will. It happens, they aren't going to be 1 shot by most things in HMs other than enraged bosses and any decent player will pop a CD if its needed. If they are getting 1 shot, and you are hitting lots of enrage timers then they are under geared...if you're losing aggro to under geared dps that's on you buddy. Something else to keep in mind is that there are a lot of mobs and bosses in this game who switch targets randomly, and some that ignore taunts. The dps are not to blame in these cases.

The best tank class is the one you are good with, period. Doesn't matter how new you are to it. They've all been shown to be able to clear anything. They have different styles and unique strengths but there isn't a best one. Some people say vanguard/PT are the easiest, some people say it's the hardest or "suckiest". Same with the other tanking classes, you see it every day. Simply a matter of style.

I've been on both ends. On my tank I try to protect my healers, but pug healers are just as bad as pug dps sometimes. It gets old dying for a healer who would rather keep himself topped off while I soak his damage, taunt for him and die without receiving one heal, or him make no effort to CC or "self peel" other than to again, keep his health above 80% while mine is dropping to the low 20s. It needs to be a team effort. Tanking is just as thankless, which is fine. I will peel, guard, taunt and kill for my healer as long as I know they have my back as well. On my healer I often times top someone off before I die, when I know one of us is going to die depending on the situation it's much smarter for me to top off that mara as he will be able to do more than I will if one of us is to die at that moment. I don't expect to be thanked, why should I be? You don't thank a dps each time he kills someone, you expect them to. I don't thank healers most of the time though I will compliment good heals the same way I would a dps or tank. It doesn't mean the heals are not appreciated, but if someone joins the WZ as a healing spec I expect them to do their job without needing recognition. I have had games where I don't get protection or peels and it is very very frustrating, but there are lots of times on my other characters where healers are the ones not working with their team like they should. Selfish or tunnel visioned healers are as bad as any other specs. DPS, tanks, healers...they can all be awful and all be godly. My point is, in pugs you find bad players of all specs and classes. From your pov you mostly notice dps and tanks not protecting you, but play a tank and guard a healer who isn't willing to work with you and watch your hp bar and you will realize its not a spec/role problem, but a pug problem.

I use it all the time. Sure it's not something to do every fight but I find constant uses for it. In addition to pushing something away to CC it's great for knocking some of the spread enemies into aoe range or sending them falling to their deaths. Enemies like the hunters or mercs in kaon both provide great times for overload. Getting them off their target sooner, which is better. If your other options are on cooldown your best bet is to rush over and overload. Not to mention in large pulls if your dps aren't very strong aoe wise and wither/discharge are both on CD anyway it's smart to overload all of the melee mobs beating on you. This makes your healer's job much easier and there's no reason you should lose the aggro just because you pushed them back for a few seconds. And in fights where you need to pick up adds so they can be aoe'd its a great tool to use without blowing your high aggro moves or taunt that you need to use on your primary and is much cheaper than lacerate. Easy way to give your dps time to know where to set their aoe so they'll be able to hit every thing as well if they have it. And that's just pve, we all know it's great in pvp. Plus, if you don't force speed up stairs and overload jump at the top or over desks and stuff you are definitely not getting good use out of it like you should.

I was madness in dark charge until 40. Deathfield and the thrash crit are both great, but I mostly pvped and eventually I was a madness/dark hybrid after getting my key madness talents. Questing was easy though, just shared aggro with khem up until I got Ashara. She usually didn't need to be healed up until I did as well (if she even pulled aggro at any point) and greatly increased my killing speed. Then at 40 I switched to full darkness and did some FPs and more pvp all the way to 50. Again, I was mostly geared and specced to be better for pvp but I never had issues doing pve and the speed was pretty good.

A lot of people who played casters in other games naturally went to sorcerer, since it's really the only one. Other classes play like casters (mercs for example) but they don't shoot lightning, so the only true casters are sorcs (sages). Assassins have the coolness factor going for them. A stealth tanking class that uses a double bladed saber? Combined with the fact it gets the lightning too it attracts a lot of people. And FWIW, assassins are absolutely viable as main tanks.

What this guy said, cleansing it may be a waste of time. From a pyros pov I want my burns to ALWAYS be on you, and since my "rotation" applies one automatically they will be. Incendiary missile is actually ok to cleanse though, it has a high heat cost so wont be reapplied often.

What's funny is that assassins and ops are much in the same boat organized pvp wise. When it comes to whats "good" in pvp both have 1 tree that does well (darkness, medicine). 1 tree that can take down healers and then die (deception, concealment) and 1 tree that does good damage but isn't very useful (madness, lethality). But they are not meant to be the same class, people simply like to compare them because they both have stealth. Damage tree wise assassins and ops have the same problem, it's their specialty trees that do well while the DPS ones fall short. The problem is most op players didn't make their op to heal on. A healing op plays way different than dps op, while tank assassin still feels like the class you had in mind when you first started playing it. More assassins are willing to spec to whats working right now because of this. This is not the fault of tank assassins and no where did the class description of op say you should be anything like a tank assassin. You're comparing assassin tanking viability to op dps viability. It makes no sense. Play a deception assassin, you will see they have many of the same problems as concealment. Next should we compare sorc dps to merc healing?

The ignorance towards assassins is getting out of hand. You can tell a lot of the people who are complaining haven't played one since half the things they say are just wrong. Yes, darkness sins are doing great in pvp, but just because both classes have stealth doesn't mean they are supposed to be the same. And I wish I had all of these miracle tools in one spec.

The damage is still important in pve for more reasons than threat. It's already on the low end and lowering it would mean a higher chance for lesser geared groups to hit enrage timers because the tank is contributing next to nothing on damage. The HD damage is important as are the energized + recklessness shocks. For bosses, leveling, dailies and yes pvp. Not to mention I see shieldtechs (up to at least jet charge) break 300k damage far more often than darkness assassins. I play both classes myself and its easier to do on a PT tank in pvp. Smart teams will know how to cripple your damage by cutting off HD FLs, if you're letting the assassin cast it then like I said, you deserve the hurt.

Ashara sucks? News to me. Never had issues with her staying alive even when shes tanking her own strong or a champ for short spurts. I hope to god you don't actually have her in light armor and blame the game for her sucking. With that said if extra damage is all you're after I'd gear Andy.

Nerfing darkness damage would be beyond stupid. If you're in pvp and you don't know how to interrupt their HD FL you deserve the damage you take. It's painfully obvious when they have 3 stacks, and its painfully obvious that they will be doing their best to build up to that. Any sort of stun, KB/Pull or disorient is all it takes to avoid their hardest hitting move. And seeing as it channels you have plenty of time to stop it before the full damage. Don't get me wrong I know darkness is great in pvp right now, but nerfing it's damage would be a terrible decision. There is a PvE side of the game too, in which a darkness assassins damage is pretty low. Lower that anymore and darkness sins are going to be losing aggro and hitting way more close enrage timers than they should. People need to get over their mindset of anything better off than them should be brought down to their level instead of their own class/spec getting brought up to par.

Do some dailies for mods to put in your orange gear. New hilt, armoring, mods and what not. At the same time you can do some of the easier HMs. BP can be tricky for an undergeared group, the last boss will hit enrage if dps is slacking too much or just not geared enough. BT and foundry are both really easy to start with though.

I love my flying trash can. It's the only ship you literally do barrel rolls in.

When will people stop complaining about these skills? ALL classes have something like this, use it if you want and don't if you don't. It's pointless to complain about these, they will never be changed. The entire point of them is to use them on weak mobs without dipping into your resource pool. You don't have to use them, they are not needed, you are not gimped for not being able to use them in pvp. They are optional and situational.

I've used ravage since day 1 in both pve and pvp. When full on dpsing I didn't always use it, but for leveling and pvp I found it to be great. A lot of people I saw always stopped casting if someone walked out of range and would complain ravage is useless since you have to stop. It's always worked fine for me even if they do walk away, as long as I continue to channel it, it's done the damage. Never had any issue, to me it's the same as stopping to cast FL on my assassin.

OP you know nothing about assassins. If a tank is getting 400k damage its because he has an amazing team keeping him alive in the thick of things. What ranged moves do they have? You mean the 10m moves? They aren't exactly snipers, assassins have to stay on their target. Juggs have moves they can can use at medium ranges too. Like I said any tanksin doing that much with any sort of consistency is obviously in a premade with a very organized and well played group. If you can't get over 250k damage done you are doing something seriously wrong. I was getting ~200k per WZ at level FORTY. That's without all the talents I even need for a smash build. My damage was much less than level 50 and yet I still broke 200k easy many many times. If you can't break 250k in BM gear you need to adjust your play style. It should be almost effortless. 250-300k is good for any dps in a given warzone if they are actually helping with objectives, but if you try for more damage as a rage jugg and can't get over that I don't know what to tell you

DPS is fast and doable. People rely way too much on healing companions I think, I use mine plenty but they are not needed for any spec to level with. They do go well with tank, but your kill speed is going to be much slower and not always worth the lack of downtime. I leveled as a DPS jugg using only DPS companions, there was no story or planet mission (heroic aside) I couldn't solo and rarely died unless I unknowingly pulled a champ or something, which tank spec can definitely deal with better. I'm not saying Immortal is a bad way to go for leveling by any means, and you did ask for easy. Try out DPS though, nothing to lose by at least trying it and you will love the kill speed of a dps/dps combo. FWIW even with a dps spec you can switch stances and solo the harder content just fine.