Madness is a support dps spec, it can't take down anything really by itself, and there's no reason to run a madness assassins when madness sorcs are so strong right now and bring so much more to the table (and from 30 meters away). Deception was trash before 1.3, and is even more trash with the relic/adrenal nerf. The moment I see one I just wait for him to twirl his lightsaber and stun and kill him in 4-5 GCDs no sweat. Darkness is the only viable spec for rated, and even that got gutted in 1.3.

Great video as usual! A couple things I'd like to add though, for instance on Huttball, I find that placing a tankasin constantly stealthed very close their endzone area either at the area in between the last two fires on the highest platform or on either sandbags works ridiculously well. Stealth has an amazing advantage in that you can set yourself up for passes without fear of being pulled or stunned on your way there. Tankasins are best for this role because they have basically 5 seconds of immunity where you can just run through the second fire unscathed or down the middle ramp to the endzone uninteruppted. As long as your team controls the mid, you control the game with this strategy. Another thing assassins can do very well is peel. A tankasin in my opinion is the strongest peeler in the game because of the absence of an explicit counter. Place your guard on a healer and follow him everywhere. If he has a mara/sent ravaging them, spike, slow, taunt. If theres a pyrotech, pull or knockback. Stun works well, and if you run insta whirlwind (which I strongly strongly recommend) you can shut down 3 or 4 dps on a healer. And by the way, that soundbite at the beginning is what my guildies hear everytime I'm capping anything

The optimal setup for dps for anyone right now is one war hero power relic and one war hero proc relic (30% chance to inflict etc...) because if you do the math, then 113 power only increases damage per GCD by around 25, while the proc relic increases it around 60.

Just wait till tomorrow and you'll understand

Depends on how you look at it. The second deception assassins start twirling their lightsabers they're just screaming "HEY FOCUS ME". With Arika it's a lot less obvious and you can alternate between different ranges easily, not to mention that it's very versatile and can kite effectively.

I said it was tuned for small scale, not that it was any good in small scale. Besides the fact that it's meant for something completely different than warzones, it's designed terribly, as I stated in the last post.

Even if you multiplied 24 by however much surge you had it would come nowhere near an overall 12-15% damage increase. Arguments like "herp i hit someone for 7k with project in infiltration , it's viable l2p!!!!" and "everyone plays kinetic cuz they suck, infiltration is good" are ridiculous. There's a reason that an overwhelming majority of shadows and assassins play KC/darkness in pvp, and that's because we've been pidgeonholed as a class into playing it to be viable, and it's one of the best specs in the game right now. Quit attacking people because they play a spec that's designed to be viable; infiltration needs to be thrown out and reworked completely. It's a one trick pony thats extremely easy to counter for anyone with a brain, and even if yo manage to kill someone, you're a sitting duck for 75 seconds and totally worthless. Don't get me wrong, I love the spec, but it just has no place for anyone who wants to be serious in pvp, and is going to be in an even deeper hole of awfulness come 1.3. People like you that claim the spec is any good are just holding the people who actually want it to be good back from getting the buffs that we need to a tree that is just terrible.

You're vastly overestimating how augments actually affect damage. The only reason TTK went down so much in 1.2 was because of the drastic expertise buff. Even with 6 willpower augments, you only gain about 72 willpower, which only increases damage per GCD by around 23. Compare that to the 12-15% damage increase that occured from the expertise buff and then you'll understand why burst went up so much in 1.2. Adding more augments in 1.3 won't change the fact that TTK is going to go up to almost pre 1.2 levels because of the relic and adrenal change. Getting rid of those destroys on demand burst, and now WZ adrenals are going to be used even more often than before for the damage reduction. Take more time to understand the game before you attack people on their opinions.

It's definitely really useful, but if I had a delay on shock like project, I would've tried out full deception/infil by now. I just really like the idea of project and force breach hitting at the exact same time.

Spec used in the video is 0/13/28 "Arika" hybrid. Gear is modified full augmented war hero. Let me know what you think, and enjoy!

Spec used in the video is 0/13/28 "Arika" hybrid. Gear is modified full augmented war hero. Let me know what you think, and enjoy!

I find it silly how oblivious some people are to the true state of assassins. When it comes to rated play, cookie cutter deception will be obsolete, and madness assassins will have their spots replaced by their prettier twin madness sorcerers. The argument that "omg i hit someone for 7k with shock deception is fine l2p!!!!" or "i hit 500k damage as madness in voidstar its fine l2p!!!" is ridiculous. Deception is a one trick pony that is useless against any good player that can recognize the spinny lightsaber. Doulbe voltaic slash? Oh lemme just stun you here. There's a reason why 90% of assassins in pvp play as darkness. It is designed to perform optimally in large scale PvP, whereas deception is tuned for small scale encounters (think WoW 2v2 Arena...it would be viable in there) in a large scale objective based PvP system. As much as people like to think "I'm just better than those guys, they should learn how to play their class", the state of assassins come 1.3 is going to become clear. Deception needs to be thrown out the door and reworked completely. There's no reason to bring in a madness assassin when madness sorcerers do everything but from 30m away and much better. I'm not saying assassins are going to be say, concealment operative bad come 1.3, but they're not going to be as rosy as some would like to believe. Any team that brings in a deception/infiltration or madness assassin will just be gimping themselves. And this is coming from a DPS assassin. I've played all 3 specs and am currently settled into a 0/13/28 spec, so I'm not one of these "darkness FOTM baddies". Just because a spec is good, doesnt mean the people who play it aren't. Compare how well a good player does (when I say well I mean how drastically they affect their teams outcome at the end of a match, not how many numbers they put up) with darkness as opposed to deception, or annihilation to carnage, or pyrotech to advanced prototype.

Been using Arika for about a month here. How do you think it's going to perform in rated? I know the reasons for why deception/infiltration has no place on a rated team and was wondering if that applies to 0/13/28 as well.

Gonna have to agree with Shinarika on this one. Bioware has made their intention clear: No more burst DPS. Just as TTK went way down in 1.2 due to expertise changes, it's going back up in 1.3 with the relic/adrenal change. Even now deception/infiltration has no spot on a serious competitive ranked team. You might be able to take out one subpar person on the other team with your cooldowns and then you're a sitting duck for another 75 seconds while stay in stealth or do negligible dps with a weak rotation. And the argument that "omg i hit someone for 6k with project/shock!!! infiltration is fine l2p" obviously has absolutely no idea how pvp works in this game. Deception/infiltration was tuned for small scale encounters (it would be viable in a 2v2 arena style deathmatch, though still not fantastic, they'd have to make it less predictable), in a game where the only pvp is 8v8 mass warzones. Don't get me wrong, it's a fun spec, but against players who know what they're doing, it just cannot perform.

As of right now, the only two roots that last over 5 seconds that come to mind are snipers and hybrid sorcs. Snipers are a very strong counter to melee dps, but I'm speaking for the rest of us, and hybrid sorcs are fairly uncommon. Now here's another thing, there are half the classes in this game have some sort of dot spec. Pyrotechs and mercs, madness sorcerers/sages, other marauders/sents, vengeance jugs/guardians, and lethality ops/ madness assassins (both uncommon but still around). All of them have dots that last over 10 second with the majority using dots that last 18 seconds long. That's 24 seconds of cloak of pain from just one dot. Another thing is you're not taking into account AOEs. AOEs are everywhere in warzones. So if you're waiting out this 6 seconds and an aoe hits them, which is pretty likely, then you have to do it for another 6 seconds. There's just wayyyy too many things that have to go right to justify how strong this ability is. I wouldn't say that. Deception isn't terrible, it's just gimmicky against good players. A good deception assassin will know how to use their defensive cooldowns correctly and survive a decent amount. I'd know because I have absolutely 0 points in darkness and without a healer around I can survive as long as a lot of tankasins out there because I know how countering classes work. With that said, back to the topic... Thanks for mentioning this. I have no intention of asking for Bioware to lower carnage's survivability. Carnage is the deception of the marauder skill trees (but slightly better) and needs no survivability nerf. It wouldn't be a bad idea to put a talent in to reduce the cooldown back to 60 seconds after the suggested tweak deep into the carnage tree. Don't get me started on rage, that spec is just flawed in so many ways beyond squishiness. On your comment about the BH and Trooper defensive CD, it has a 2 minute cooldown and lasts 12 seconds. And again, your suggested counters are sniper/gunslinger specific. And even then, you have to pray that they don't get hit by any stray aoe's or have a pre-existing DoT applied by someone else.

The problem is by blowing your CC to take their cloak of pain off you then have to deal with a full resolve marauder with undying rage and camo up later in he fight. Not hitting them isnt viable in any situation because then youre giving them free reign over whomever they want to beat on for 6 seconds. Then you have the problems of dots and aoes refreshing it while they're cc'ed.

Cloak of Pain/Rebuke. Now, I'm not one of those peoples that cries "OP NERF TAKE AWAY ALL THIER SKILLZ PLOX" every time I see a marauder/sentinel. In fact, 90% of the time a marauders comes up to me, he ends up in the respawn box while I walk away, mainly because of the sheer amount of unskilled bandwagoners that have no idea how to play a difficult class. I play a DPS Assassin (not one of those silly darkness hybrids either) and have no trouble with them because I've taken the time to understand how their class works. But they are overtuned. Simply put, they have too much survivability. Their damage is fine, they're a pure dps class with no pure stun. And no, it's not because of Undying Rage. Not because of Force Camo. Not because of Saber Ward. Most people don't realize it, but cloak of pain/rebuke is probably the best defensive ability in the game, if not the best ability period. One might argue," it's only 20%. But that undying rage omg 99%!!!!" But a 20% decrease in overall damage taken puts marauders over the passive defense of a heavy armor user and then some. Now let me list the counters to a marauder's survivability. Undying Rage/GBTF - The most notorious ability of a marauder/sent and makes them a nightmare in pug warzones. It gives them god mode for 5 seconds right? Nope. If you put a marauder at full resolve before he hits 30%, you deserve to die to them. Any decent premade will see undying rage and instantly chain stun/taunt that *****. If he has a healer, switch/cc them while you kite double glowstick man around. Kite him around, see how good of an ability undying rage is when he spends his 5 seconds derping around. Force Camo - Lets them reset the fight. Don't get me wrong this is a powerful ability, but it shares the same counters with Undying Rage. Saber Ward- 3 minute cooldown, almost every class has a similar defensive cooldown, must I say more? Cloak of Pain/Rebuke - .......Don't hit him? This gives the marauder heavy armor status and has no serious counter. One could technically cc him and then just spam "DONT TOUCH HIM" for 6 seconds in ops chat, but how well does that generally work in warzones? The primary problem with this ability is how ridiculously low its cooldown is. It essentially has a 30 second cooldown. By the time he's fighting again, it's back up. I wouldn't even call it a defensive cooldown, it's basically a defensive ability. I guarantee if DPS assassins got an ability that decreased our damage taken by 20% for 30 seconds, people would instantly switch their tears to deception/infiltration (but srsly bioware please give us another defensive CD ()Either increase the cooldown to 90 seconds or lower the damage reduced to 10%. TL;DR = The other defensive CDs are easily counterable. Cloak of Pain/Rebuke gives them heavy armor status with n ocounter on a non existent cooldown.

you're one of my favorite shadow/assassins and damned well one of the best ones i've seen. in fact you've inspired me to make my own pvp video using your 0/13/28 spec . hopefully whenever they made cross server warzones i'll have the pleasure of pvping against you!

That build is fine, I used it for a couple months before I switched to my current one. Basically it relies on energized shocks for HD stacks and does it very well while pumping up some serious damage. I think the highest damage i hit with that build was upwards of 600k with 110k healing and 100k protection. Even without wither I was casting 3x FL at least once every 15-20 seconds. That said though, come 1.3 the best specs are going to be 23/1/17 in dark charge obviously for mobility, tankiness, and utility and 0/13/28 in surging charge for burst dps with no setup (this is the one I'm using, Shinarika invented it, works amazingly well). I don't mind the nerfs for pvp tankasins (don't even get me started on pve though...) since it forces us out of that "WITHER SHOCK SABER STRIKE WITHER FORCE LIGHTNING DERP" mode that requires very little skill to play decently.

how will your 0/13/28 spec be?

My spec is a deception, madness hybrid that plays like deception. I don't run lightning charge or use dots. Refer to http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=455762 for specifics. To be more specific, I was more asking how deception assassins deal with it.

I've been running a 0/13/28 "Arika" hybrid and absolutely doing great with it. I can drop priority targets and 1v1 every class but one: snipers. Now I understand that snipers are a counter to melee dps, but it seems like there's just nothing I can do against a good sniper. There's a sniper in my guild who is amazing and I'd like to say we're about equal in skill, and he usually goes for me the second he sees me on one of his teammates. I've tried to kill him multiple times but failed due to the sheer amount of CC that snipers can put out against melee dps. Usually I just give up and LOS him or force cloak away, but I was wondering what my fellow dps assassins do against snipers.

You sir, win the internet. Also: Clicking the fleet on the planet selection interface now randomly chooses the Republic or Imperial fleet, regardless of the player's faction. Also strips the player of all clothing upon elevator to main level. This change has been implemented to increase interest in world PvP.

not sure if serious...

You clearly forget pyrotechs shoot hot pire at our faces. And double marauder glowsticks are HOLY JEBUS OP TOO. Oh and snipers can wtfpewpew you so hard! And OPowered (cwutididthar) can heal so hard! And sorc healers throw lightning at our face! And Mercs have icky bubbles. SO OP MAN