Funnest/Fastest Levelling spec for Assassin?

[otterscrubber]

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.

[Hobothesis]

What level are you btw?

 

I'm only level 20, but fairly geared and so is my khem, both of us at 4k hp. I started as darkness but thought having 2 tanks is kinda pointless. So I went deception.

 

Having khem tank something while I maul it from behind(lawl) and getting duplicity procs for really nice dmg. One a duplicity proc i can drop a standard mob down low enough that 1 measly saber slash kills it. Shocking will stun the target if need be if I happen to tank one of the mobs, making it easy to re-position behind. I'll be going darkness probably post 30. Madness I hear is more pvp oriented but can work for pve aswell.

 

As it stands right now, I like how deception plays out. The +force regen while in/after you leave stealth makes spamming maul fun and if tackling an elite you can throw up your dots crushing force/lightning discharge and still be at full force to just go to town.

 

Really comes down to playstyle. I'd personally recommend doing a similar route as me, taking on a more dps role and let khem tank. Once you get a dps/healer companion is when I'd go back to darkness(cept id prob be darkness in dps gear.)

 

But I'm new to the game so I don't know much, just general mechanics that run throughout most mmo's so I try and loosely base my opinions off those for now.

 

 

I havn't pvp'd at all yet, still a tad worried I'd just get roflstomped by some high level, but I see most assassins either go deception or madness for their pvp specs, but I've seen plenty of posts and pics of darkness specs just dominating like nothing in the warzones.

 

If you can get a pocket healer, you'd probably be unstoppable. Whence the cries of OP shadow/***'s on the forums =)

[RicoFrost]

If you find your dying or having to heal lots go Darkness until you get Talos Drellik the healer. I was Darkness spec up to lvl 40 its seemed to have the least downtime.

 

I used Khem Val up to about 35ish then used ASHARA ZAVROS for a few levels.

 

At around 40 I changed to Deception and find it rather fun, the burst damage is much better and with Talos leveling is much easier.

 

Try this site for builds

http://www.sithspecs.com/sith-inquisitor-assassin/

 

 

PS Assassin I found to be very fun to play.

[Meeth]

i would go deception with Khem Val until you hit 33 then respec as full darkness and get a high level friend (lvl 50 preferably) to run you through your class quests until you get Talos on Hoth. after that go back to Quesh and finish the quests there. after you get wither at 40 go for chain shock in the madness tree.

 

leveling with the standard darkness build after level 33 with (31/0/10) + Talos will make killing mobs take a bit longer but the trade-off is that you will have almost zero down time between fights and be immortal if you play right in that you can always escape if you time your cool-downs right.

 

hope this helps, happy gaming:D

[verfallen]

i would go deception with Khem Val until you hit 33 then respec as full darkness and get a high level friend (lvl 50 preferably) to run you through your class quests until you get Talos on Hoth. after that go back to Quesh and finish the quests there. after you get wither at 40 go for chain shock in the madness tree.

 

leveling with the standard darkness build after level 33 with (31/0/10) + Talos will make killing mobs take a bit longer but the trade-off is that you will have almost zero down time between fights and be immortal if you play right in that you can always escape if you time your cool-downs right.

 

hope this helps, happy gaming:D

 

Thats rather useless. Just keep Ashara or Andronikos out and use the ship droid to heal you on tougher fight. Due to the amount of self-heal, it takes a really long fight to anything that isn't a champion to take down a Darkness assassin.

 

There is no need to rush through Taris, Quesh and hoth to get Talos.

[Grymnyr]

I was deception from 10-50 with khem until I got Xalek. If you are dying a lot, you're doing it wrong. I was on almost every planet 3 levels early on average.

 

The key is stealth and CC. You have them. Use them. Win.

[Mordeguy]

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.

[otterscrubber]

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?

[otterscrubber]

If you find your dying or having to heal lots go Darkness until you get Talos Drellik the healer. I was Darkness spec up to lvl 40 its seemed to have the least downtime.

 

I used Khem Val up to about 35ish then used ASHARA ZAVROS for a few levels.

 

At around 40 I changed to Deception and find it rather fun, the burst damage is much better and with Talos leveling is much easier.

 

Try this site for builds

http://www.sithspecs.com/sith-inquisitor-assassin/

 

 

PS Assassin I found to be very fun to play.

 

Excellent link for the various assassin builds, thank you.

[Solaras]

Ive run darkness and madness. When i rolled a higher pop server i went deception.

 

For fun and speed go deception w/ khem until u get talos. Deception w talos is lulzy ez.

 

Pro-tip: dismiss/resummon is much less downtime rather than healing khem through "seethe".

 

Use heroic moment liberally for champs/class story bosses.

 

Our stealth,speed, and resource mechanic (boosted regen linked to stealth) makes us an insannely efficient and fun grinding class.

 

For reference i hav 40+ level sniper, op, and sorc. Deception assn was easily fastest for me. Enjoy!

 

Lunarus/The swiftsure

[Meeth]

Thats rather useless. Just keep Ashara or Andronikos out and use the ship droid to heal you on tougher fight. Due to the amount of self-heal, it takes a really long fight to anything that isn't a champion to take down a Darkness assassin.

 

There is no need to rush through Taris, Quesh and hoth to get Talos.

 

of course there is no need to do it but it is definitely not useless. if you don't have a 50 or two to run you through it will not be worth it but if you are anxious to get a real healer that is the way to go. the droid is just inadequate for various reasons even if you fully gear him. talos, on the other hand, comes geared with level 38 equipment even if you get him at lvl 33 plus he can actually do some damage and his carbonite freeze is very nice.

 

it all comes down to personal preference. i don't like dying and i don't like seething and i didn't have to do either as full darkness all the way to 50 after i got talos. plus if you follow the best rotation (wither, discharge, thrash till energize, shock, recklessness, shock, force lightning, assassinate) you will drop mobs almost as fast as a dps build would.

Edited April 4, 2012 by Meeth

[otterscrubber]

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.

[SerinZexus]

I tried all three between level 20-30 and found madness to be the most entertaining. I have never really liked tanking but darkness was solid and slow. I disliked how much cc and positioning i had to use with deception leveling and it was way to squishy to just jump into anything without cc ing frist.

 

Madness however hit my sweet spot. I love the mix of dots/lighting and melee, its really fun but it takes a while to get the hang of. With a dps companion you can pretty much jump in to any fight golds/groups whatever, get deathfield/dots up and own.

 

It has a bit of downtime until you get enough crit for the dots to keep you alive. The armor talents in deception tree and some hp regen food both help quite a bit. Once you get talos you can use him for no downtime but I still prefer dps companion for any kind of normal leveling.

[jbuschell]

I'm a balance shadow the mirror of a madness sin and love every minute of it, I was a gladiator frost mage so the point and click aspect of death field is nothing since its just like pet frost nova, I wreck warzones its a nice mix of melee, proc watching and dots and opportunities of some nice burst with recklessness and death field and shock. Essentially it may not be op like darkness but its a lot more fun if you can get the play style down.

 

Darkness is op yes however it is terribly boring to level untill you get wither, its painfully boring its just thrash and wait for proc then shock its dull. Once you get wither along with harnessed shadows or whayever you imps call it then it gets better

[Hobothesis]

Well now I'm almost 27, still decently geared as i'm synth and craft all my goodies but its getting expensive to run missions so I'm a tad behind on my crafting =) but I just respecced from deception to madness just for hahas

 

I'll be honest, I tried it and was like oh *** is this crap, its worthless. Then I remembered the talent that makes yur discharge have no cooldown in lightning. Dot crits also heal you. Chance when melee'ing someone that your next mind crush is instant...hmmmm I thought so I just started running around discharging every mob I saw and learned a rotation pretty quick.

 

Group of weak mobs? Just death field them and 1 shot them all. Standards? Death field then overload and if it doesn't kill them, they have a sliver of hp left (which my khems aoe's would kill)

 

As it is right now, it's fun, sure. But I feel it's not entirely viable just yet for me. It plays just like the spec is named; "madness." I even put khem in his dps stance for like the first time ever. When he's geared he does some surprisingly decent dps and I'm sure madness is insane (har har) once you get a dps companion.

 

I'm debating going back to deception, or just swapping over to darkness. Deception even on elites/champs the ability to get 8 seconds of dark embrace just by using blackout is heaps of help by itself. Extra stealth levels and fast stealth speed brings more peace of mind to me.

 

But really, when I was deception and had to go dark charge to tank heroic quests the healers always said I was easy to heal, even w/o a shield. I'm sure darkness in dps gear isn't all that bad.