I honestly don't have a good answer for you but my friend who plays Darkness says he tries to get them both around the same level. He's a mix of BM and Rakata gear and his hp is just under 24k. I have no idea how he got it so high. But it makes huttball way easier to just give him the ball and let him run it in.

It's very viable. I've been Madness since release and I love it. Even when I had centurion gear it was easy to push 300k damage, 30+ kills and single digit deaths. With Champion and BM gear those numbers only get better. I'd say the only thing that sucks about it is that once the other team sees an assassin they for some reason tend to think you're a Darkness tankasin and focus you. Once they realize you're not Darkness but instead a squishy, well they go for you anyway lol. Kiting is your friend.

I have an alt with 400 slicing. I've been running mostly lockbox missions for the mission discovery drops. I've only run 3 of the augment thing missions but i got patterns back on 2/3 of those. 4 schematics total (2 each). That sounds insane that you guys are running so many of them and not getting any augment schematics back. I would file a bug report if you haven't already.

I honestly wasn't aware of just how beneficial Biochem was until I decided to level it on an alt. Already I can see that the blue versions of stims and medpacks are vastly superior to the top level ones you can buy from the vendor. I actually save quite a bit of money making them instead of buying the ones i need from the vendor and even more from trying to buy the biochem ones on the GTN as the blue stims i use go for about 10k per stim. It is kind of selfish to begin with but you can still craft them for guild mates and help them out that way. Also, the implants are always good to sell. Especially if you look at the GTN and look for the level range that doesn't have much available. I have Cybertech on my main and the only reason i'm hesitant to drop it on him is because of the amount of time and money i've put into it getting purple schematics RE'd and the ones from operations. It is absolutely worth it.

When I started doing HM's pre 1.2 I was wearing orange gear with full daily mods/armoring. I had a artifact level 49 crafted earpiece and 2 blue lvl 45 implants. That was mostly for HM BT. I'd have to say that it might be your skill distribution, rotation, or maybe just the people you run with. If all of you are clickers that might be an issue as well. I'm not saying that HM's are impossible as a clicker (far from it) but it's infinitely easier when you bind your skills. I'm not sure which, if any, of these you are experiencing but they are some ideas at least.

Im still getting quite a few 340 missions from the rich and abundant rank 5 missions. Mostly investigation and diplomacy but still the occasional UWT, slicing, and archeology ones. All from lock box missions. I haven't ran any of the augment missions yet.

I didn't go with the Resolve hilt since I wanted a bit more endurance but this is what mine looks like that I used to use. Modded DBLS Totals: +88 End +87 WP +76 Crit +556 Force Power +39 Surge Lt Blue color crystal 56 +41 Crit Hilt 51 +43 End +40 WP Mod 50 +27 End +47 WP +8 Crit Enhancement 50 +18 End +27 Crit +39 Surge Centurion Stalker's DBLS Totals: +120 Endurance +68 Willpower +40 Expertise Rating +66 Power Color Crystal 56 +41 End As a Madness assassin I wanted the higher critical rating over the power and I felt like the other stats made up for the loss of expertise. I didn't bother switching out until I got the Champion DBLS.

I don't remember if i've seen that or not. i think a friend of mine had it on his assassin but that could have been a different name but same skin. There are other black hooded robes out there tho.

Do you have a screenshot? I'm not quite sure which look you're referring to.

Are you using force shroud first?

It's in preferences under Social. Pretty sweet when I saw that Talos can have a hood over his mask but I can't lol.

I believe there's a lower robe that drops in Hammer Station that has the exact same skin. If all you want is the moddable look, try running HS a few times to get it.

What gear are you in? I'm in mostly centurion (which i think is what's keeping me down a bit) and a few champ pieces. I do on average in the upper 200k-lower 300k damage. I can get in the 40's-50's for kills and single digit deaths. The healing part varies quite a bit obviously since i'm not a healer so it's dependent on more than just using my damage abilities. I'm happy with my K/D ratio but I'm hoping that when my gear gets better, my damage will go up. Right now I feel like whenever someone sees an assassin they think they're a tankasin and focus the crap out of them. The problem is I just can't take that kind of damage for long lol. I'm 7/3/31 btw.

I think you meant to post this in the sorc forum. The OP is talking about sin dps.

I had that very thing happen to me yesterday. Got about 8k credits in my box a +28 WP and +28 Aim augment and a 340 Archaeology mission. So happy to see all those purples.

I don't play deception myself but its entirely viable for ops as my friend is deception and does well in HM and Nightmare ops. I play madness and love the utility of the spec. Its a lot of steady dps on the bosses and allows me to attack cdrom both melee and range. I stay in for thrash and such for raze procs and then am able to back away when the boss frenzy's and still get off a few range attacks. Both are viable. It just depends on your playstyle and what you're looking for.

We could, but we'd have to get over that whole 'mortal enemies' thing first...

Ha! I was elyos on israfail. So i had the fragments, just couldn't get the procs...

Yeah I don't have anything 'official' either except that in one of the loading screens it says that companions with higher affection affects the crit chance. I know that since I got all my companions to max affection, they crit a lot more on the special and regular missions.

Hahaha! I share your pain. I can't remember how many GS's (drenium and balic) I failed just trying to get a blue proc. After going through that hell I have no complaints at all about the RNG in TOR. This is utter bliss compared to that.

Also it can somewhat depend on the "rng" of your attacks. You may have crit a bit more the first time which made the elite die faster. But id say its less dependent on that than the type of elite you're fighting.

Ah, I know I've seen it in red if that's the color you're after. I can't remember where but I think it may be from one of the planet commendation vendors. Or go try stuff on off the GTN and see it it's there. You can get several tops that look like that from the Hoth elites and champions as well.

I'll have that sometimes and I'll have to look down at my bar to see if I've actually used a GCD. Sometimes it happens it pvp but I'll still be able to see the damage. But when it happens on a boss fight like SOA or the first dude in KP I can't see the damage all the time because the boss is big. But this rarely happens so I'm not very worried about it.

A higher affection with your companion also shortens the time it takes for the mission and raises your companions chance to crit on a mission. It says this on one of the loading screens. Once I maxed out all of my companions affection, I also noticed significantly more crits on the regular abundant and rich gathering missions.

Unlike earpieces where you can get several blues per green, and several purples per blue if you RE them, the mods are strictly a linear RE. You cannot RE a mod to a Redoubt or Critical version of the mod or anything like what you can do with an earpiece. The tanking mods you are looking for are not available to us in game right now to craft. Once 1.2 drops and we are able to RE and learn the schematics for end game mods then we will be able to craft them. Until then, you will not be able to craft any mod that is not given by the crafting trainer. HOWEVER, I haven't tried buying a ton with commendations and RE'ing them to see if I can learn the schematic. It might work if you try that but then again I believe those are only <50 level mods so can't help you there.