Maul is great damage for sure, but it eats a lot of force power if you are not specced deception. I'm specced for madness, when is a good time or place to use maul, if at all? Or is it just not the best choice if you are madness or darkness specced? It's nice to see that big number roll up, but not at the cost of being able to use other stuff. Opinions?

NO, no I would not. I'm not really a fan of romancing a computer game. I like MMOs but that aspect has always seemed a little weird to me.

What he said Madness is a fun leveling. Super effective and fun in my opinion, but others seem to find their squishiness unappealing, but you can work around that. Deception is melee burst dps and very sneaky with great ability to drop feels in pvp. Darkness spec is just great for tanking. Also good at leveling, but not quite as fast as the other 2 specs.

I see a lot of comparisons to the assassin and what could be done to make them more like darth maul, but the only similarities are the type of weapon they used, the double bladed lightsaber. I think darth maul was closer to a marauder frankly. But I agree, why not let a marauder chose either 2 lightsabers or a double bladed one? I'm sure they will open up the styles as the game progresses, allowing classes to choose more than 1 type based on their style and or spec perhaps. To the OP, if you really want to play a pure melee class then my recommendation would be......to play a pure melee class like juggernaut or marauder. Sadly at this time it means you would not get to use a double bladed lightsaber, or lightning, or stealth. But darth maul only used 1/3 of those things anyways so there ya go

Honestly i've played both and they are both very fun. however, I could not play an evil jedi and not use a lightsaber. Sorcerers can use lighstabers, have some basic attacks with lightsabers, but frankly do not use them much unless you are just trying to prove a point. So I went with the Assassin and I love it! Best of all worlds, can do melee with my lightsaber, shoot lightning, limited but useful CC abilities, excellent dps and can stealth. It's like they took all the awesome from the juggernaut, marauder, operative and sorcerer and rolled them into one super deep fried piece of awesome dipped in awesome sauce. Personally I play the madness spec and find it a good mix of melee and ranged dps that fits my hectic play style. If you want to tank you certainly can by just switching to the tank stance or by diving headlong into the darkness tree which makes an excellent tank as well a solid pvp if that is your thing. Go deception if you like to stealth around and deal crazy good burst dps and be a sneaky bastard. Enjoy!

SI/Assassin, lvl 29, I'm totally digging the story so far. Some folks complain about the ending but i'm not sure why. I'll decide when i get there.

It does win for style points that's for sure. Kick to the face FTW!

I just got this power, I had never seen it mentioned on this thread. I like it. it's situational for sure, but I was wondering how many of you use it. Do you work it in your rotations or is this something that just does not get used much?

I would imagine Bioware makes changes based on numbers. Which currently are unavailable to the community. Which means the community could be very wrong in many of their assumptions (which are labelled as opinions). Which means they could very much care for the opinion of the community, but have to balance that with the fact that they have much more actual data than the community. That's my gut feeling, which by the by is not in any way backed up by actual numbers.

Darkness: tough, good damage, good in 1v1, great for objectives like carrying the huttball. Great mobility and an ability to stay mobile when others get locked down. Only downside is less dps than the other specs, although some might argue they have better "burst" dps than madness. Deception: Live in the shadows, burst dps, lower total dps, but well used and will result in more kills than other specs. Madness: Limited but useful self heals, more overall damage, but fewer kills as the dps is less bursty. Has some fun CC, can AE for some good crit numbers. Solid play, but less likely to get kills then deception in 1v1, but great ability to mess with the other team as a whole with AE, snares and CC in addition to very respectable damage output. Not super tough if you come under heavy fire.

I feel similarly, but oppositely I wanted to do melee, but I also wanted to blast with lightning and do need Sith-ey things. I like the play style. I played deception, and it rocked, but just decided it wasn't my style. Madness is a blast for me, and often for my foes. Shocking them with purple arcing death just never, ever gets old for me. Only way it could get better is if we could choke. But I guess you can't have everything.

This is actually working really well. I found with madness they key is keep Khem Val up and keep him geared and you will tear through folks. The priority/rotation takes one getting used to and is very situational, but highly effective. I roll with Lightning Charge about 90% of the time, but switch to Dark Charge when I need to stay alive longer. When I do that I lose single target dps, but I still have a ton of AE stuff for trash and the increased survivability against a target that might not be so easy to dps. However, i think dark charge isn't that great in the end, at least not until I get a healing companion. With Madness it seems to be the most effective to gear out Khem Val and make sure he is in his tank stance (didn't do this for a bit and was wondering why he was feeling so weak) and then unload with the DOTs and the AE until just the tough guys are standing then work them down. I have yet to run into anyone in world PvP or try this in a war zone, but for PvE purposes it is very good fun and quite effective.

Cool. Only lvl 26 so don't have Talos yet, but that sounds like good advice when I get there. I'll give this build a tryout and post here if I like it. May not be the most effective if I were to crunch the numbers but does sound like fun.

I wanted to have a good dps with my Assassin (currently lvl 26), but wanted to try something other than the deception spec for a bit as it seems that is the default spec and it lacks options at this level in my opinion. So I tried darkness and was blown away by how much tougher I was and how much health I had left even after what used to be "tough" fights. However, stil the problem of options. Then I started wondering how much tougher I was because i was in the darkness tree or because I was using the Dark Charge tanking 'stance'. The stance seems to provide the lions share of the increased survivability the more I looked at it, although the darkness tree did offer some protections as well. So I'd like to give the madness tree another looks, pop tank stance when I feel I need to, keep lightning charge running at other times to try and get the best of both worlds. Has anyone else tried this, how did it work? Thanks for any feedback.

I really like this class. I like using lightsabers. I like using force lighting. I like stealth. it's like they took the funnest parts of the juggernaut, sorcerer and operative and rolled them all into one super fun awesome class: Assassin. Ya, i'm loving it. Oh yea, and I can tank if i need to. Everyone loves a decent tank!

I just switched to darkness and my toughness has been nuts. Still do plenty of damage and the mobs seem to die quickly. Although I do question whether I could go with a deception spec in the tank stance and achieve the same effect of toughness with a higher dps? In my darkness spec i don't even use maul at all to be honest as it just eats up way to much force for what it does. Has anyone tried a deception or madness spec using the tanking stance? I'd love some feedback on that.

Ya, i tried madness. Perhaps I just couldn't get the hang of it but i seemed a bit sqwooshy. So i switched to darkness since I've been deception since lvl 10. I like darkness, very tough rarely below 90% health even when fighting strongs. Gonna roll with that for a bit until I feel Im not killing things fast enough then I will probably switch back to Deception. Thanks for the good advice.

Excellent link for the various assassin builds, thank you.

Ya, I"m lvl 23 now, have been deception the whole time. Wanted to try something else for fun. Madness looks shock, and darkness looks pretty burly. I guess I have more of dps play style than tanking. I was curious if darkness could also provide decent dps but allow me to be tough enough to survive most anything. Although I'm not really dying at all so thats not even the issue, but once in awhile I come across a tougher fight. I see most of the responses are to level with darkness or deception mostly. Anyone leveled with Madness? What is the benefit to madness?

Good video, thanks. Nice to see someone explain the madness spec a bit, it does sound interesting but for some reason all I seem to read about is the darkness or deceptions spec. Good stuff. Did you use madness to level? your video is about it's effectiveness in pvp, but do you have any feedback the effectiveness of madness for use in leveling? Any particular weaknesses?

The only thing about Darth Maul that does not fit with the Juggernaut class is the fact he uses a double bladed lightsaber. If you can wrap you mind around that I think he would best be played by a Juggernaut character. I think at some point they will allow classes to use or access all the lightsaber styles based on spec. I do not think anything about the Inquisitor class was based on Darth Maul other than the look. We didn't see much of him, but he didn't sneak up on anyone that I could see. He walked up and smacked them. He was a Jugg. Maybe a Maruder. Open for debate for sure.

Priority is levelling in PvE, being able to handle groups and solo fights. 2ndary concerns are looking good while killing things. I like to be able to use a combination of lightsaber and force lighting (or shock) as that just seems fun. Tertiary concerns are being of use in a Flashpoint or being able to do PvP. I like PvP, but do not do it often enough to make it a driving force in any decisions of how I want to design my character while leveling. I'm curious how folks would rank Darkness vs. Deception vs. Madness on this. Darkness seems to be the favorite of a lot of folks as you can survive a lot in both pve and pvp, but is it a slow grind? Is the dps of Darkness gonna make me feel like every fight takes forever? Deception; the one I've played the most of so far. Does good damage, but if the heat comes my way I do not last long. Not sure how it's damage compares to other specs as I have not tried them. Madness; I have not played it but it looks fun, would really love some feedback here from folks who have tried both this spec and darkness for comparison.

Roger that, thanks for the heads up.

I'm glad to hear darkness is effective, but I'm also interstedin in if it is FUN to play as well. Deception is pretty effective and fun for what I do, which is mostly PvE solo. Sounds like it's a good spec though as you can also tank instances just as well though when the situation calls for it. I'd love to hear comparisons for leveling with the darkness tree as well as the deception tree. Anyone out there who has done both?

Since you have the tanking charge on your lightsaber I'm guessing tank