NightTrix Posted April 10, 2013 Share Posted April 10, 2013 I just wanted to say playing a Darkness assassin as my main mostly and with all the changes and such with 2.0 I feel the tanking tree is better than it ever has. The force management allows to chain thash, wither, shock, force lightning, discharge, and our new filler Maul from cloaked conspiracy. The shield generator is now so much more important as it now proc's and absorbs tech and force attacks and can be talented to give a very nice increased shield absorption that stacks. The 25% damage reduction from overcharge saber also adds to our utility and survivability even more with a buffed 15% heal on top which goes for all assassin trees. I have read and understand peoples frustration and disappointment with the other 2 trees in general and I understand very well too. I just wanted to say Darkness is now in my opinion just pure awesome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AggieKasten Posted April 10, 2013 Share Posted April 10, 2013 Agree completely. First day on 2.0 I soloed a [Heroic 4] with just me and Talos. This was my reaction: http://www.refinedguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/4-excited-nets-basketball-fan.gif Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NightTrix Posted April 10, 2013 Author Share Posted April 10, 2013 Agree completely. First day on 2.0 I soloed a [Heroic 4] with just me and Talos. This was my reaction: http://www.refinedguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/4-excited-nets-basketball-fan.gif Yup sums it up for me too Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacerobot Posted April 11, 2013 Share Posted April 11, 2013 Would you mind sharing your build. I'm sick of deception and want to try something new! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayperringo Posted April 11, 2013 Share Posted April 11, 2013 I notice that I am gettubg 15 stacks of dark ward instead of the 8 i used to get.. but this isnt mentioned on the tree, or am I missing something? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noobie-Wan Posted April 11, 2013 Share Posted April 11, 2013 The base ability has changed to grant you those extra stacks, they still vanish real quick though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WaldoA Posted April 11, 2013 Share Posted April 11, 2013 How is Darkness in PvP? I've tried Deception in PvP and quite frankly, it is AMAZING. The burst is insane, not only that, it's actually sustainable burst as the force regen is beyond great now. I did try using Darkness in PvP, though I was playing naked and didn't even bother to look at the stats I was getting, though after I died I RQ and went back to Deception. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noobie-Wan Posted April 11, 2013 Share Posted April 11, 2013 When I first went into a 2.0 WZ I had all my WH gear on and died so fast I thought something was wrong. All the survivability I'd been enjoying in 1.7 was gone, it was like I was a noob again. Took off all my gear other than LS and Shield and suddenly had 29k health and things went MUCH better. Overall I'm doing more damage than I was pre-2.0 by a factor of 2 in most cases. Guard a healer, make him your friend and then damage debuff the enemy while never running out of Force for attacks. You're never going to kill stacked healers as you lack the burst for it but that's not reall your job anyway. Looking forward to seeing what happens in 55 bracket once I have to start wearing gear and gearing up again, although I am already almost at the limit for WZ comms again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AggieKasten Posted April 11, 2013 Share Posted April 11, 2013 Would you mind sharing your build. I'm sick of deception and want to try something new! I started a thread about this, and so far the best build we've come up with is this: http://pts.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/sith-assassin/222/?build=020332201121023002120203020200100302000000000000000000000000000000220000000000000000000000000000&ver=20 Which is apparently considered to be the "standard" darkness build. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacerobot Posted April 11, 2013 Share Posted April 11, 2013 Great. Thanks. Out of curiosity what is your standard rotation if you are doing PvE with one of these specs? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AggieKasten Posted April 11, 2013 Share Posted April 11, 2013 (edited) Out of curiosity what is your standard rotation if you are doing PvE with one of these specs? Its more of a priority list than rotation: 1. Keep all defensive cooldown's active (dark ward, deflection, etc.) and use interrupts or force shroud when you can see big attacks coming. Most important is dark ward. They've made it so that your best utilization is to re-activate DW just before you run out of stacks, since its effectiveness increases the fewer stacks are left. 2. HARD hitting attacks like maul (when it procs from conspirator's cloak so you can use it frontal) or assassinate (when target is below 30% health) 3. Force Lightning when it has 3 stacks of harnessed darkness (HD stacks are gained by using shock and wither, and with 3 stacks this causes massive damage AND self-heals you. If your health starts to get low, this becomes priority numero uno since its the only way you can get your health back up without a healer.) 4. Shock and Wither to get stacks of harnessed darkness. 5. Discharge (more for the debuff than damage) 6. Thrash (procs maul because of conspirator's cloak, and procs the talent energize which finishes the cooldown on your next shock and makes it an autocrit. Maul also procs energize, but thrash does it twice as fast since it hits twice) 7. Saber strike (if you are out of force, which will be rare) As an added note, try to activate recklessness and overcharge saber JUST before you use your force lightning with 3 stacks of HD. Also, there are situational abilities that also need to be utilized. Taunts (mind control, mass mind control) are important as a tank because your whole job is to keep enemies off the fragile DPSes and healers. Use them whenever you see a team member getting killed or a healer running for his/her life. Lacerate can also be useful, but only if there are at LEAST 4 mobs around you. Otherwise its not worth the foce cost, especially at the expense of derailing your rotation. As you can tell, this is not a simple rotation. Thats what makes assassin tanks frustrating/hard/fun/awesome. Over time you just get a feel for when to use each ability. Edited April 11, 2013 by AggieKasten Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacerobot Posted April 11, 2013 Share Posted April 11, 2013 Its more of a priority list than rotation: 1. Keep all defensive cooldown's active (dark ward, deflection, etc.) and use interrupts or force shroud when you can see big attacks coming. Most important is dark ward. They've made it so that your best utilization is to re-activate DW just before you run out of stacks, since its effectiveness increases the fewer stacks are left. 2. HARD hitting attacks like maul (when it procs from conspirator's cloak so you can use it frontal) or assassinate (when target is below 30% health) 3. Force Lightning when it has 3 stacks of harnessed darkness (HD stacks are gained by using shock and wither, and with 3 stacks this causes massive damage AND self-heals you. If your health starts to get low, this becomes priority numero uno since its the only way you can get your health back up without a healer.) 4. Shock and Wither to get stacks of harnessed darkness. 5. Discharge (more for the debuff than damage) 6. Thrash (procs maul because of conspirator's cloak, and procs the talent energize which finishes the cooldown on your next shock and makes it an autocrit. Maul also procs energize, but thrash does it twice as fast since it hits twice) 7. Saber strike (if you are out of force, which will be rare) As an added note, try to activate recklessness and overcharge saber JUST before you use your force lightning with 3 stacks of HD. Also, there are situational abilities that also need to be utilized. Taunts (mind control, mass mind control) are important as a tank because your whole job is to keep enemies off the fragile DPSes and healers. Use them whenever you see a team member getting killed or a healer running for his/her life. Lacerate can also be useful, but only if there are at LEAST 4 mobs around you. Otherwise its not worth the foce cost, especially at the expense of derailing your rotation. As you can tell, this is not a simple rotation. Thats what makes assassin tanks frustrating/hard/fun/awesome. Over time you just get a feel for when to use each ability. Thanks for the info! I'll play around with this tonight and see how it goes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NightTrix Posted April 11, 2013 Author Share Posted April 11, 2013 Hi everyone just wanted to add some comments to this thread and first off Aggie just wanted to say the only real problem I see with that build is you are not skilling exploitive strikes which gives you a 9% up front crit percentage to your melee attacks which I feel is very important. I also wanted to ask all of you who will and who have read these posts is it just me or has wither's damage been buffed. It seems to me it has as wither for me on my assassin is hitting harder just wanted to see what you all thought as with patch notes with the increased cool down to 9 seconds and less force cost it states they were leaving the base damage alone but seems otherwise. I think when everyone is comparing assassin trees and such dps wise I think the advantage now that makes darkness pull ahead is the force management as to me we are now just drowning in it. The more fore we have the more we can cast and utilize our attacks. I will state for example even with a GCD I have noticed that HD stacks procs so much faster now that we have such freedom to cast without managing our force and such. I really feel that darkness as a whole right now is in such a very very nice position though we will still need to see more how we scale when the level 55 brackets come around if not now then on 4/14/13. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacerobot Posted April 12, 2013 Share Posted April 12, 2013 I played around with this last night. At first I was a little lost with the rotation. Once I got it though it seemed pretty cool. I'm not geared all that great but I was able to take on some gold star mobs without really losing much health at all (with Telos healing). After a while it seemed pretty fun. I'll check it out more tonight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AggieKasten Posted April 12, 2013 Share Posted April 12, 2013 One thing I forgot to put in the rotation (can't believe I forgot it but hey, this was off the top of my head) that often comes in handy for PVE is electrocute. Its up to you where you put it, but honestly I have it up there around #2 on the priority list because I'm a huge fan of cc and it also works as an interrupt in some cases. If assassin tanks have a weakness, its against large numbers that can kill our stacks of dark ward. So being able to stun an enemy while you wail on another can be pretty valuable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keizak Posted April 12, 2013 Share Posted April 12, 2013 I think right now I am enjoying deception too much to go back to darkness. I was mainly darkness the entire time before 2.0 for pvp and enjoyed it. I'll have to give it a try since now tanks are more useful in PVP and the darkness tree has some really sweet changes. I really like that conspirator's cloak ability to let you maul facing someone after you use recklessness and overcharge saber Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts