lolwut? you used some pretty vague terminology there, because i'm pretty sure the word consistently and infiltration dont mix ;P but getting serious, can you tell me you can parse 3.4k on, say, 10 dummies in a row? if not i think 'consistently' isn't the right term. hell, i'd be surprised if it was even possible to have such consistency with infiltration for five straight parses, let alone 10. in all of my parsing with this spec, i've never seen the spec preform on any level of real consistency. i have to parse at least 3-5 times before i get a parse that is even in the 3.4 range, let alone one that gets close to my previous best, that takes days minimum for me. maybe its just me? who knows, i couldn't say. all i know is i've done my fair share of practice and the consistency has never been satisfactory in my eyes. (however my recent experiences make me a bit biased, since i only just got a working computer again and have lost some of whatever edge i had ^.^)

yeah no one ever said it was a consistent problem. i mentioned it, saying i can't stand when it does happen, and i'd go on to say even even the idea that CSx2 is normal bothers me, which is why i'd like the ability to use low slash efficiently. (or just a higher rate of shadow strikes and breaches in general to have a similar effect. i feel like a broken record....) EDIT: i'll amend that, the way i see the spec in it's ideal state, CSx2 will be inevitable every couple of shock rotations. so normal isn't the right word, the fact that it's so much more frequent than i think is necessary is what bothers me i guess.

i still tend to disagree with your standpoint here, i think it's not very hard to add low slash into your rotation while making sure its not interfering with the natural infil tactics proc and not delaying project, but lets face it that happens inevitably even when not using low slash. you have a good point about the execute phase though, LS>SS would certainly (and does) become less usable during the execute phase. having the constant spinning strike every 6 seconds added to the rest of our key abilities makes it so adding burst isn't really even necessary. however for the first 70% of the fight i would welcome a controllable infiltration tactics, because idk about all of you but i am sick to death of having project cooldowns being filled with three clairvoyant strikes. even two is too repetitive for me. in the execute phase this problem is close to non-existent, but again in all the time before that, i would really welcome the addition to low slash to our usable abilities. on the other hand, changing infiltration tactics to a 100% proc chance as is being suggested would pretty much serve the same purpose, only with a slightly lesser reduction of the use of CS. i would probably welcome such a change (but who knows unless we are actually able to test stuff, right?)

for me personally, i spent time playing and growing to enjoy deception (infiltration). even if madness wasn't boring as hell i'd probably end up switching classes if i even stayed on the game.

you should know by now the internet grammar gods are never appeased.

i'm sure my opinion on this is already semi-known: i'd quit, or if i didn't end up being as mad as i predict then i would reroll classes. i think it would be semi-fair if every AC had this sort of restriction, but even so just for me personally i've spent way too much time working with infiltration, and don't even particularly like balance, so to have to switch after so much dedication would be pretty game-breaking for me.

this is what i assumed would be talked about when changing phase walk. changing it to be target-able or place-able would change it too much from what it is, and bring it into the realm of overpowered. however only changing the cast time and possibly the permanence of the node seems more than reasonable. at least an instacast is needed for it to be used more than once in any given fight in pve, however it being instacast doesn't necessarily make it any more appealing if it doesn't bring anything to the table other than a teleport, since it's really just not needed. force speed basically does that better than this idea, i think. if it were changed to be instacast and the node becoming permanent, on top of adding something equivalent to the healing buff for tanks, then i'd think it may be worth it to use in pve. that's my take on the situation, anyway.

i think it's safe to say we could and should cover madness in the pvp section, since that's where it could use the most work. if we can get it so that madness gets a change to pvp that also helps their pve situation, then that'd be the most ideal and would free up the pve question to talk more about deception that'd be my preference anyway, and then wildcard could be about tanking in pvp or phasewalk.

my previous best is 3480 something if i remember correctly; that's close enough to me to make me want to try for the same. if only i could take advantage of that inspiration, my game client went all fail on me and i'm in the long process of troubleshooting and redownloading.

i like the direction your thoughts are in, however this particular idea of autocrit discharges (as it is now) kinda negates the purpose of recklessness and electric ambush, and i don't think you can just throw a buff in that will negate it in pvp (speculation of course). electric ambush could be changed to accommodate such a new mechanic, but i don't see any change getting around the fact that making discharge autocrit will take importance away from recklessness, which i think is great for pve, but may get the pvp crowd mighty angry (both that discharge will always crit and that recklessness will lose it's upfront burst advantage) i think we're better off goin a different route. that's my two cents anyway.

dat 50+ crit% on shadow strike and force breach. i'm gunna puke ;P

low slash causing induction still leaves us with the problem of having to overuse saber strikes, and therefore would only work as a change not accompanied by others if it gave an induction and refunded some force, imo. but thinking too deeply on it tends to not be so helpful unless we're dealing with real possibilities, which i'm not sure we are, cause... bioware. as to the bolded part, while i understand this perspective, i don't feel the same way. i think we could use another ability to break the tedium of the VS spam, unless we get changes to increase the frequency of mauls and discharges drastically enough to have the same effect. but that's just my personal QoL thing, i doubt this would ever happen, heh.

ok i see what you're asking now, coincidentally it's what i thought you were asking ^.^ yes, iv'e made absolutely sure the stacks just disappear into thin air. the logs say they never even get built. when discharge/force breach procs surging charge/shadow technique, logs show that it never actually builds a stack to accompany the damage of the technique. another similar issue is chain shock double proccing surge/techniques. this can be something that isn't completely detrimental when you don't overcap on stacks because of it, but most of the time it overcaps, and even when it doesn't it still throws off the flow of naturally occurring surge/technique procs so anytime chain shock/upheaval proc a surge/technique then it's subtly messing up your rotation, i see it as always being a bad thing. if we could get the discharge/force breach bug fixed, and the upheaval/chain shock double proccing scenario eliminated, then we'd be heading in the right direction and i'd think BW actually knew what they were doing for us. since it hasn't happened i will keep my position as they don't know what to do ;P and the upping of duplicity proc chance is something iv'e suggested before, and certainly would help relieve the situation, but who knows if it will fully solve it. i'd definitely prefer the low slash solution, but if it's either duplicity % increase or nothing, i'll take the duplicity % increase, and i'd probably be fine with the lower chain shock chance to compensate, since we can't rely on shock as a high damaging ability anyway, since it has to crit, proc chain shock, crit chain shock, and then if you really want comparable numbers to maul/discharge you need to crit on the surging charge proc too. (SO MUCH RNG.... CANT TAKE IT....)

to paragraph one, i've toyed with this idea a little bit. what you're describing is basically a talent we already have (saber conduit/profundity), only without the internal cooldown. i think it would be acceptable if we just lowered the internal cooldown from the current outrageous 10s for 10force, then it might have the desired effect without making it identical to lightning burns/rippling force, as would be the case if we completely eliminated the 10s icd. in regards to the force breach/discharge bug, fixing this alone may not put us directly in line with, say, concealment scrapper, but it would be a bump in the right direction. i'd say if a fix to that was coupled with taking away the ability for upheaval/chain shock to proc a second time then there'd be a better chance of getting the desired outcome. if both of these ideas were addressed and fixed as well as a slight force management bump, i would be satisfied with the efficiency of the spec in pve-- --if i had my way i'd add low slash or increasing duplicity/tactics reliability into the mix, then i think the spec would preform as perfectly as the spec's general structure allows, but maul/shadowstrike frequency is probably the least pressing of the matters at hand, since it only has two layers of rng (single layer proc chance and crit chance) instead of the four or so involved with force breach/discharge.

good example, thanks for the needed perspective. however, i'd think the warrior class is slightly different due to the distinct change in resource generation between the two class, the warrior archetype gets the bulk of it's resource generation from using active abilities and has quite a few of them, while assassin has probably the most passive resource generation of any classes due to its static nature. but putting that idea aside for what it's worth, we can at least agree that the necessary frequent use of saber strikes comes at a larger cost than we generally see with the frequency of other classes using their 'auto attack'. and honestly, evo, the thought had occurred to me to raise the damage on saber strikes, but it's not far off from the point of doing too much damage, if all hits crit and you get a critting surging charge with it then the damage is comparable to a non-critting VS, if this was slightly raised it may have a decent effect on our poor sustainability, and would probably solve any force issue we have (which i still say we have a minor one). the only thing i'd say we'd have worry about after that is the unnecessarily large rng risk involved with frequency of discharges and mauls.