Wakalord's concerns/ideas for DPS assassins/shadows

[EatenByDistance]

(This thread will only cover the two assassin DPS specs. I plan on making a tank thread within the next few days but I felt it was extremely important to just type something up now because I've been thinking a lot about how to improve this class and just wanted to go public with my thoughts asap).

 

Ok, since everyone else with any chance of being elected as sin/shadow class rep is doing this I will too.

 

Most of the questions/issues that have been brought up in these kinds of threads are quite important and I would love to have answers to all of them. While it is not the representatives place to suggest actual changes, I feel like simply raising concerns is simply not doing enough.

 

I have a fair amount of experience with both DPS and tanking and PvE but nothing on the bleeding edge hardcore level that serious raiders have. As such, if I am elected I plan on privately talking to some of the more prominent PvE-focused assassins in the community.

 

With that said, I'd like to express some of my concerns related to the PvP aspect of sins/shadows.

 

1) Madness: Currently, what is the point?

Madness assassins are arguably the worst PvP class in the game. Worse than the nerfed pyrotech, worse than concealment, worse than a marauder nodeguard. They're really, really bad.

 

This is due to nonthreatening dots (lightning discharge is energy damage, while sniper/sorc dots are all internal), terrible procs (no more bonus melee damage, no maul at all...The only "big" move we have is crushing darkness and the method of proccing it is both more unsafe and less reliable than sorc's method). And of course, the damage is just atrocious. Madness sins had a problem of "what is our niche" pre-2.0. While they were arguably the single most damaging spec if left completely alone pre-2.0, that was both entirely unrealistic and doesn't even apply anymore.

 

Respec utility aside, the only things madness sins have over sorcs are stealth, taunts and phase walk. Our methods of getting procs and our filler are both more risky and far less damaging. While both madness sins and sorcs have paper-thin defenses, sins have to get into melee range to do anything. Even a mediocre team is going to be able to focus you down to oblivion. Marginal self healing doesn't matter when three smashes and a fully-loaded cull are tearing you apart.

 

So how could this be fixed?

 

Madness sins are always going to be a hybrid of melee/ranged moves. And that's a pretty cool concept. But right now, our only reason for being in melee is to proc crushing darkness. Losing Unearthed Knowledge (fairly weak as it was) and any sort of Maul really destroyed the spec. Also, Shock has been rendered useless. We basically put some dots on the target and pray to god we get a Raze proc before dying. After we get it, we're pretty much useless for six seconds.

 

And of course, *** Lambaste.

 

Defensively, while 30% DR while stunned and 15% dot DR are obviously great, they aren't enough when you factor in the fact that you need to be in melee range to get your procs.

 

Here are some ideas:

1) Rework the Lambaste talent to make Lacerate apply the Lightning Discharge dot to all affected targets. I really don't know what the thought process was, giving lacerate some utterly useless force damage on hit. Make it apply the Discharge dot to all affected targets, making it a melee version of the agent's corrosive grenade.

 

2) Bloodletting seems like a very lazily designed talent. Madness is about sustained damage, and giving us a marginal damage boost against sub-30% health targets is contradictory by design. We should be about constant, sustained pressure. Mediocre "burst" like this isn't necessary.

 

I suggest this: Scrap Bloodletting and give us a talent that increases Force Lightning and Shock damage by 10/20/30% (the numbers are debatable) for each one of our DoTs on the target. This would give us the burst and pressure required to actually be viable in rated warzones. It would also necessitate smart play. Instead of just spamming dots on everything, setting up the three dots on a target would reward proper focusing play (especially given the short duration of Crushing Darkness...That said, this would make Lingerning Nightmares make sense over the old Unearthed Knowledge).

 

WOW WAKA THIS WOULD MAKE MADNESS SIN OP SO MUCH BURST!

 

Not really. Unlike an agent's cull, our Force Lightning could be interrupted (if this proves to make our Force Lightning useless then make it uninterruptible if we take this proposed talent..Probably lower the % damage increase to compensate though). Also, our Shock still costs a massive amount of force. Currently, it's almost impossible to use Shock more than once or twice without suffering force starvation.

 

Therefore, we couldn't use spam Shock and Force Lightning on cooldown. It would necessitate smart play and knowing when to burst.

 

Also, giving us a reason not to just spam Recklessness for more Death Field AoE damage would be great. All in all, this synergies with the theme of madness being a "master of the arcane force," as opposed to "HOLY FK I GOTTA DOT EVERYTHING IM GONNA USE THRASH NOW OK I GOT CRUSHING DARKNESS I GUESS ILL GET CCD AND DIE NOW" theme which is considerably less uh....Cool.

 

3) What about melee and madness sin defensive issues?

 

To keep with the concept of "sustained, hybrid ranged/melee damage" this spec has going for it, actually wading into melee range should reward the player. As such, I suggest a two point talent that increases damage resistance by .5/1% every time you use a melee attack on a target affected by one of your dots. This stacks up to ten times (again, we're going with a theme of madness sins excelling in long sustained fights).

 

The catch? It only lasts for five seconds. This means that you need to be constantly pressuring the opponent in melee range to maintain your stacks. It would also punish players trying to use the previously mentioned Shock/Force Lightning talents to play like a sorc with a more damaging proc (we're trying to differentiate the classes here, people).

 

On the offensive side, make Lightning Burns proc off of melee attacks instead of your dot?

 

I'm sure someone is gonna ask about why maul and assassinate weren't mentioned here. While it would be nice to have every ability be somewhat useful for every spec for every class, that would probably require a ToR 3.0-level rework of pretty much everything. Being realistic, I don't think not having a super duper cool maul/assassinate proc in madness is necessarily a bad thing. And I have cool ideas for those abilities in Deception (see below)

 

I believe that if these changes were made, madness sins would become a significantly more useful, fun and rewarding class than what it currently is.

 

 

2) Deception: Putting the ASSASSIN back in assassinate

 

I have been very vocal about the 2.0 "balance" changes for a variety of classes, but I probably yell about the deception changes the most. While I don't feel that deception was hit as hard as oher specs (it's downright godlike compared to the current madness sin/concealment op specs, for example) it requires a fair amount of fine tuning if it is going to be respected again by the community at large.

 

While I'd still argue that sins have a great amount of utility (though very old this thread does a good job of explaining the utility I think DPS sins bring: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=582016&)

 

That said, most people still prefer the raw power of Smash maras/sents to deception sin. While an issue of toning the Smash spec may be in order, that is not the intent or focus of this thread, so instead I'm going to talk about how to make deception "up to par" and fill its own niche as a viable role in rated warzones.

 

So what issues do we face?

 

When Recklessness is up our damage is on par with snipers and marauders. When it's not...Well, good luck hope the stars align and you get a Maul crit to even be on par with everything else! RNG is a crippling issue for assassins (low slash miss? There goes Impose Weakness, the only good [no I don't think the recklessness reset is good in rateds] offensive talent we have! Oh, you got it? Maul doesn't crit you do no damage anyways).

The tree seems to be redesigned for ONLY doing upfront burst and then being useless. Concealment has the same issue (though admittedly its a much more severe issue for them) and as such is equally ignored in rated play.

 

We need some sort of proc that puts us on a threat level on part with Carnage's Gore, Lethality's Cull, Smash...etc.

Defensively, Phase Walk is fantastic, but the raw power increase that other classes/specs have acquired necessitate more in-combat survivability. Also, being forced to run away from a fight (causing you to do literally nothing for quite a few crucial seconds) is a major issue that either needs to be reworked or justified.

 

So how could this be fixed?

 

1) Blackout is our most reliable defensive cooldown. Our Cloak of Pain, basically. Our Impose Weakness basically revolves around Low Slash because Spike is basically used once in a fight: aka useless to have a talent revolve around it for rateds (Nerve Wracking is also useless in PvE). I believe that moving Nerve Wracking back to the tank tree would greatly improve its viability in rateds since the utility can be nice. In its stead, give the seventh tier of deception this two point talent:

 

"Reactivating Phase Walk has a 50/100% chance to put you back in stealth."

 

This would refresh our blackout, but at the cost of Phase Walk. Smart play would be required to not blow all your major defensive cooldowns at the same time. It would allow us to use Spike and take full advantage of Impose Weakness. It would NOT remove us from combat (no recklessness reset), and could be somewhat countered by being afflicted with dots. I believe that this talent would give us the survivability we need to handle ourselves in PvP.

2) Offensively, I have several ideas, but they all revolve around one key concept: Giving us an Assassinate on a target of any HP%.

 

Sith Executioner is bad. It's a boring and thoughtless damage boost for execute phases in PvE and just as unreliable as Madness' Bloodletting in PvP. You either kill the target or it is healed up to full in a split second, your useless 6% damage boost won't change a damn thing.

 

Maybe rework the talent like this:

 

"Using Discharge while in Surging Charge has a 50/100% chance to finish the cooldown of Assassinate and make the next Assassinate inflict trauma for 6 seconds, reducing all healing the target receives by 15/30% (or maybe 20/40%). This effect can only occur once every 10 (this number of course up for debate) seconds. In addition, increases your melee critical chance by 17.5/35% for 5 seconds after using Assassinate.

 

Now, let's pick apart this theorycrafted talent.

 

This gives assassin's a very supportive and useful niche in rated warzones. While the trauma duration is shorter than those of other classes, it is a much stronger debuff. This would necessitate proper focus targeting and communication. This is a good thing.

 

Don't like the idea of assassins getting trauma? Here's another idea: "...make the next Assassinate ignore 25/50% (or 50/100%, whatever is balanced), of the opponents resistances."

 

(note that that would include armor, actual resistances, buffs and the like), making this a truly unique proc and attack that could really make an impact.

 

While a Marauder gets armor penetration from Gore, we get increased melee crit from Assassinate. Due to Maul's hefty power but lack of a cooldown and somewhat frequent uptime you'd have on this crit% buff, it wouldn't give you guaranteed crits. But it would give you enough to make your melee attacks actually threatening.

 

The rotation would be rather similar to what you do in PvP after Gore (you force scream if you have a proc [you use maul if you have a proc] or you just spam massacre [spam voltaic slash]...And if you think you should use a Gore'd ravage you're wrong don't try to argue that).

 

Note that the crit% buff lasts 5 seconds. Assassinate has a 6 second cooldown. You can't chain this proc on low target enemies without proper planning (assassinate, proc, assassinate). It finally gives us a serious reason to run full Deception over Wakajinn (proc is related to Surging Discharge, which is way better in full Deception).

 

3) Humbling Strike is basically 3 points for something useless. Either give Low Slash a chance to slow for X% after effect ends or increase the knockdown duration of Spike. But something needs to change, because it's currently far too niche and unrealistic to be of any use.

 

I have thought of several other ideas, such as reverting Surging Discharge to pre-2.0, giving Voltaic Slash a cooldown and so on so fourth....But these ideas seem like complete overhauls as opposed to the more modest tweaks I am assuming we are supposed to present in this class rep system.

 

These changes would give us the sustained pressure, possibility for burst and team utility we need to make deception sins once again a force to be reckoned with in rateds!

 

 

 

So these are my ideas everything is work and progress and most of the numbers are of course up for debate. I plan on making a second/updated thread within the next few days covering my tank concerns/ideas but until then feel free to tear apart this thread unless you are dumb then please don't do that.

 

 

Thanks for reading.

Edited July 23, 2013 by EatenByDistance

[NogueiraA]

Awesome post waka, sins need a total rework.

I'm playing a hybrid 0/18/28, I made a video to show my numbers. My gear is full 69 with blue augs, 69 hilt.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iV0vEloEtg&feature=youtu.be

[cycao]

I like the idea of having the number of dot's effecting damage for shock/FL. The things I really miss about madness is having abilities that can actually inflict some damage. When they removed maul and shock from the rotation and took out WW they made the class one big heaping pile of worthlessness.

 

A rotation similar to lethality which you made a suggestion on, a way to proc maul or our execute, possibly get instant WW back (just tie it into lightning charge). Any one of these things would make the class a lot more enjoyable because as of now there is no real reason to play full madness the hybrid I use is loads better.

[Gudarzz]

bump

[TheOpethian]

Following this guy's ideas will make the class much better imo.

[maebeebuzz]

Generic "I agree".

 

Love you.

 

Sins should also be able to clean deionized, just saying.

[Puscifer]

My opinion, I'll try my best to not sound biased or one sided

 

1) Madness: Currently, what is the point?

 

1) Rework the Lambaste talent to make Lacerate apply the Lightning Discharge dot to all affected targets. I really don't know what the thought process was, giving lacerate some utterly useless force damage on hit. Make it apply the Discharge dot to all affected targets, making it a melee version of the agent's corrosive grenade.

 

You mentioned before, constantly spamming Force Shock would leave you Force starved (didn't really think that was possible considering you dont have any diminishing effects the lower your force becomes but anyway)

it's almost impossible to use Shock more than once or twice without suffering force starvation.

 

Spamming lacerate does exactly the same thing...

I do see where your point is on this talent point "rework", however. From what you've said here >

This is due to nonthreatening dots (lightning discharge is energy damage, while sniper/sorc dots are all internal), terrible procs (no more bonus melee damage, no maul at all...The only "big" move we have is crushing darkness and the method of proccing it is both more unsafe and less reliable than sorc's method).

How does giving you lacerate putting discharge effect on everyone it hits... solving your problem of "energy damage being laughable"? Or having a constant risk of being collapsed on by a number of players?

No offense, but you're making what you feel is an already useless talent point... even more useless.

Your arguement here lacks consistency, you bring a good point about energy damage being 'non-threatening'. However, changing the talent point of how Lacerate works isn't solving the problem which brought up the arguement in the first place... it just spikes your dps because you're putting the same dot on more than 1 person at a time. That for an assassin is unnecessary

 

2) Bloodletting seems like a very lazily designed talent. Madness is about sustained damage, and giving us a marginal damage boost against sub-30% health targets is contradictory by design. We should be about constant, sustained pressure. Mediocre "burst" like this isn't necessary.

 

I suggest this: Scrap Bloodletting and give us a talent that increases Force Lightning and Shock damage by 10/20/30% (the numbers are debatable) for each one of our DoTs on the target. This would give us the burst and pressure required to actually be viable in rated warzones. It would also necessitate smart play. Instead of just spamming dots on everything, setting up the three dots on a target would reward proper focusing play (especially given the short duration of Crushing Darkness...That said, this would make Lingerning Nightmares make sense over the old Unearthed Knowledge).

 

I actually like this idea!

Although I'd say it's a bit TOO much like Cull... and again no offense but you're not a sniper. You're not an operative.

You dont do the skill by sitting in cover and hoping to god the person you're attacking doesn't know you're there!

But i think having it focus on shock and force lightning is kind of pushing your luck. Simply because sorcerers would benefit from it also, I would say it needs to be deduced from a skill such as Maul or Assassinate, something to (like you said) reward you for being in melee range...

 

No offense but again your arguement is lacking in consistency

 

To keep with the concept of "sustained, hybrid ranged/melee damage" this spec has going for it, actually wading into melee range should reward the player. As such, I suggest a two point talent that increases damage resistance by .5/1% every time you use a melee attack on a target affected by one of your dots. This stacks up to ten times (again, we're going with a theme of madness sins excelling in long sustained fights).

 

The catch? It only lasts for five seconds. This means that you need to be constantly pressuring the opponent in melee range to maintain your stacks. It would also punish players trying to use the previously mentioned Shock/Force Lightning talents to play like a sorc with a more damaging proc (we're trying to differentiate the classes here, people).

 

So you want to give a sustained dps spec, not only a burst skill... but also sustain?

Wait what!? I don't understand the logic there

Why does it have to be resistance? If you're talking about melee range and melee this, melee that... why resistance all of a sudden.

If you jump at an angry juggernaut and you put dots on him, he's gona be pissed! And you want increased resistences?

... ...no

 

I'm sure someone is gonna ask about why maul and assassinate weren't mentioned here. While it would be nice to have every ability be somewhat useful for every spec for every class, that would probably require a ToR 3.0-level rework of pretty much everything. Being realistic, I don't think not having a super duper cool maul/assassinate proc in madness is necessarily a bad thing. And I have cool ideas for those abilities in Deception (see below)

 

I believe that if these changes were made, madness sins would become a significantly more useful, fun and rewarding class than what it currently is.

Hmm, interesting about the Madness spec, I think you were bordering off the background position of WHAT an Assassin is and does... but at least you kept it considering the after effects it would have on a sorcerer nonetheless (wait... you didn't)

Sorry but your arguement lacks impact here.

You haven't even weighed in the effects this would pose on a sorcerer simply because its a shared tree.

Thats the problem with this spec that bioware most likely faced. Fear of too much for one class.

 

2) Deception: Putting the ASSASSIN back in assassinate... ..heh

 

When Recklessness is up our damage is on par with snipers and marauders

That's... ...not even remotely correct.

 

RNG is a crippling issue for assassins (low slash miss? There goes Impose Weakness, the only good [no I don't think the recklessness reset is good in rateds] offensive talent we have! Oh, you got it? Maul doesn't crit you do no damage anyways).

Sniper's leg shot has the same issue. Same with Force charge for sith warrior.

It's just a simple issue of your class being shutdown, it has nothing to do with RNG simply because the stun is reliant on the attack landing...

 

We need some sort of proc that puts us on a threat level on part with Carnage's Gore, Lethality's Cull, Smash...etc.

Defensively, Phase Walk is fantastic, but the raw power increase that other classes/specs have acquired necessitate more in-combat survivability. Also, being forced to run away from a fight (causing you to do literally nothing for quite a few crucial seconds) is a major issue that either needs to be reworked or justified.

 

You hopped back and fourth between offense and defense powerplays there... It's hard for me to keep up.

Why would you need a proc that puts you on a threat level with Carnage's gore? That doesn't make any sense... are you having issues dealing damage with Deception!? ... ...no comment

As for the defensive thing... uhm, you have a combat cloak, need I say more?

 

1) Blackout is our most reliable defensive cooldown. Our Cloak of Pain, basically. Our Impose Weakness basically revolves around Low Slash because Spike is basically used once in a fight: aka useless to have a talent revolve around it for rateds (Nerve Wracking is also useless in PvE). I believe that moving Nerve Wracking back to the tank tree would greatly improve its viability in rateds since the utility can be nice. In its stead, give the seventh tier of deception this two point talent:

 

"Reactivating Phase Walk has a 50/100% chance to put you back in stealth."

 

This would refresh our blackout, but at the cost of Phase Walk. Smart play would be required to not blow all your major defensive cooldowns at the same time. It would allow us to use Spike and take full advantage of Impose Weakness. It would NOT remove us from combat (no recklessness reset), and could be somewhat countered by being afflicted with dots. I believe that this talent would give us the survivability we need to handle ourselves in PvP.

This is literally throwing your class WAY off the concept of an assassin.

How exactly does this put the Assassin back in Assassinate... so you have yet another method to disengage from a fight? It's unnecessary

 

2) Offensively, I have several ideas, but they all revolve around one key concept: Giving us an Assassinate on a target of any HP%.

 

Sith Executioner is bad. It's a boring and thoughtless damage boost for execute phases in PvE and just as unreliable as Madness' Bloodletting in PvP. You either kill the target or it is healed up to full in a split second, your useless 6% damage boost won't change a damn thing.

 

Maybe rework the talent like this:

 

"Using Discharge while in Surging Charge has a 50/100% chance to finish the cooldown of Assassinate and make the next Assassinate inflict trauma for 6 seconds, reducing all healing the target receives by 15/30% (or maybe 20/40%). This effect can only occur once every 10 (this number of course up for debate) seconds. In addition, increases your melee critical chance by 17.5/35% for 5 seconds after using Assassinate.

 

Ahh at last, the ulterior motive comes out.

You brought an entire thread's attention to this one point and it's very easy to notice... honestly I was wondering when something like this would come up and im not in the slightest surprised nor impressed.

 

1st

Snipers have a 45% chance

Marauders have a 45% chance

Juggernauts have a 30% chance

 

And you want a 100% chance to trigger this?

Get real

 

2nd

35% crit chance on melee attacks?

I can guarentee without even looking your base crit chance probably isn't even half that!

Get real

If you had honestly said something like accuracy ... it would make sense! But crit? Are you serious!?

If you want crit THAT badly... GO CRIT RATING...

 

But anyway enough of my rating... let's tactfully dissect this idea of yours

 

So, the main way to make Surging charge's discharge effect have a real impact, is to get 3 stacks of Static charge...

The quickest method of getting all 3 stacks is within a time delay of 9 seconds... Let's say you wait for 3 charges to stack before you unleash teh thunda!

You let loose one blistering discharge and then you want to follow it up with assassinate which has a 35% increased chance to crit.

Hmm ok, lets say they actually make this happen

 

How can you even say its remotely fair to give Assassin a 100% chance when discharge is activated, which is DOUBLE every other classes' chance for this to occur?

 

Sorry to burst your moment but this is not only way off the scale of logic and bias, but even if it would be changed into this... Where would you place this in your skill tree? lol

Above Voltaic slash or something?

Anyway, im going to assume this is your ego talking when you mentioned this "idea", but in case you didn't realise it from my response just above... it's a little 1 sided

 

Let's juice it up a little! (in terms of the scales of fairness)

How about something like this:

 

"For every stack of Static Charge, when discharge is used, gives 10% per stack to grant Static Strike (yay I made up a name for it ). Which finishes the cooldown of Discharge, and Assassinate and makes the next Assassinate usable on a target with any health level. When static strike is active, the critical strike chance of the next Discharge or Assassinate is increased by 35%"

This not only imposes the idea of the Assassin stacking Static Charges, but also gives him another motive to consider using discharge and gives good incentive to stack charges... for a greater chance to get this effect to proc.

The crit effect is for specific skills instead of every blasted melee skill just so assassins can hybrid builds with Thrash 50% crit damage and yet again exploit broken concepts because of lack of a better idea.

Even if you say that waiting for static charges are too long or tedious... you could even change it to say whenever Surging charge activates it has a 30% chance or something

 

That's the best I can come up with to make it sound in any possible way fair.

Let me just disclose, I'm not saying your ideas are wrong... I'm saying they lack impact, they dont really CHANGE the way an assassin is played or even make up for their current short commings... they're just improving talents and passives which in your opinion seem lack-luster.

Or in this case giving something to an Assassin that other classes have, but with more dauntingly scary procc rates which will stop trash marauders like me from sleeping at night

The current issue I'm seeing with Assassins is that they lack that little bit of solidity to finish the job, especially in PVE, which in some cases can leave you just standing there thinking to yourself... well *** do i do next?

 

And albeit lack-luster indeed I'm not one to argue with you, im simply dissecting what you're saying, and showing you that they're NOT improving the ground in which assassins are suffering from.

Any class can get new talent points which make the untouchable or unreachable or can give you the impression that the facets of the talents themselves turn you into single shot wonders... but thats not what we want? Let alone what we need.

Your ideas are good! Hell they're better ideas than I could ever come up with...

But you need to ask yourself, are these really giving the impact an Assassin NEEDS (not wants)

If these changes were to be made... would it solve the problems assassins face in pve let alone pvp?

 

I get you're a pvp player, and theres nothing wrong with that!

But you have to weigh in the balance between how this would effect them in pve..

If a change is made and it makes assassins crazy strong in pvp, it can make them weak, or remain the same in pve. and this is where applying nerfs, buffs and fixed become somewhat hard to come to a compromise.

The whole Force Camoflague with Sith Marauders is a great example of this.

There was a time when it used to give 90% damage mitigation when fully talented, now this raised a low of eyebrows to players, but the reason it was changed and nerfed is because it RARELY gave marauders an impact in pve, and in pvp it was just stupid op... thus it was changed.

 

Saying a fix is needed is easy, finding a fix suitable for a class that affects one side of the game is very difficult. simply because it can have too much of a positive, or a negative bearing on the other side...

Edited July 23, 2013 by Puscifer

[DarthSpekulatius]

1st

Snipers have a 45% chance

 

 

And you want a 100% chance to trigger this?

Get real

 

while I too think it would be OP together with +35% crit on as low an CD

you obviously haven't played a Lethality Sniper

snipers don't have a 45% chance

 

"damage dealt by Cull has a 45% chance to trigger Lethal Takedown, which finishes the cooldown of Takedown and makes your next Takedown usable on a target with any health level."

doesen't mean

"Cull has a 45% chance to trigger Lethal Takedown, which finishes the cooldown of Takedown and makes your next Takedown usable on a target with any health level."

... think about it and if you don't see the difference try it out

 

the rest doesn't make much more sense.

 

I hope, no I pray my WOT in Wakas thread over in the shadow Forum is better to read then yours,

writing a WOTs in a foreign Language is... not good.

 

 

and now the jewel of your post

 

"For every stack of Static Charge, when discharge is used, gives 10% per stack to grant Static Strike (yay I made up a name for it ). Which finishes the cooldown of Discharge, and Assassinate and makes the next Assassinate usable on a target with any health level. When static strike is active, the critical strike chance of the next Discharge or Assassinate is increased by 35%"

 

 

 

Stop Using Darkcharge if you want to DPS -.-

[Puscifer]

"Stop using darkcharge if you want to dps..." *scratches head*

 

Why did you even bring dark charge into this conversation, if thats what you think it is?

Edited July 23, 2013 by Puscifer

[DarthSpekulatius]

"Stop using darkcharge if you want to dps..." *scratches head*

 

Why did you even bring dark charge into this conversation, if thats what you think it is?

 

it's marked red in the spoiler,...

it seems you aren't playing either sniper nor assassin

Edited July 23, 2013 by DarthSpekulatius

[Puscifer]

it's marked red in the spoiler,...

it seems you aren't playing either sniper nor assassin

 

The subject is about Surging charge's Discharge usage...

Therefore I raise the question yet again... Why are you bringing dark charge into this conversation.

Don't talk about sniper or assassin, answer the question

If you cannot answer the question... dont talk period

 

In fact let me dumb it down for you.

I made a slight mistake when I mentioned that idea of a talent.

This was simply because 2 notions of an idea came to me at once which can present many ways that make a single skill effective... if you somewhat curious then i'll tell you

 

1) the first was where I put the "reset cooldown of discharge", The notion I had here was I was going to say as an example that it would've reset the downtime of Surging charges' effect. As discharge cannot be done without a single stack of static charge. I was going to put that the next Discharge can be done without any stacks of Static Charge and the next discharge would've done the effectiveness of 3 stacks of surging charge *basically a free cast discharge without building stacks*

2) the second was simply making discharge and assassinate free and usable anywhere without hp requirements or specific charges. I decided to use this one simply because it was more relevant to the idea, Waka had in the first place. And for comparitive reasons as an example of what I see as somewhat fair... anyway

 

These are the two ideas I had come at me at the same time... however due to trying to stay on the point I had in the first place I didn't really put much effort into it.

I'm terribly sorry if it confused you

I'm terribly sorry if it suggested I don't speak english though I question how you even came up with that.

If you think it makes me play too much Darkness spec though I don't understand where you see the relevance... so be it. I really dont care

 

All the same my point stands... It doesn't change in anyway the impact an assassin as a dps has.

It just gives you bigger guns and increases your killing threshold... how does this increase your pve viability in anyway?

You clearly missed that point in some attempt to try to argue what I'm saying. and in doing so, you question what class I play... oh how original

Edited July 23, 2013 by Puscifer

[Avicii]

The subject is about Surging charge's Discharge usage...

Therefore I raise the question yet again... Why are you bringing dark charge into this conversation.

Don't talk about sniper or assassin, answer the question

If you cannot answer the question... dont talk period

 

Think about how the chargers interact with discharge and cds then you will get to how he got to dark charge. Lets try to keep this thread as a healthy discussion and not taking jabs at people presenting ideas. I know it's tough being on the Internet and all but really this is a discussion in how to improve the class lets keep it positive regardless if you dislike Waka's ideas or him personally.

 

Thank you

[Puscifer]

By the way:

Your point about snipers cull procc is highly questionable.

 

If you roll a dice 6 times, and you have a 15% chance to roll a one...

Rolling the dice 6 times doesn't give you a 15% x 6 chance to successfully roll a one.

Every single roll is still 15%

Figure the rest out yourself, im tired of brainstorming the point of bringing it up

 

 

Like I said, the ideas are good, but it doesn't necessarily solve the problem

 

Think about how the chargers interact with discharge and cds then you will get to how he got to dark charge. Lets try to keep this thread as a healthy discussion and not taking jabs at people presenting ideas. I know it's tough being on the Internet and all but really this is a discussion in how to improve the class lets keep it positive regardless if you dislike Waka's ideas or him personally.

 

Thank you

 

Sorry if I said anything that sounded rude or out of order... it wasn't my intention, I naturally get hostile to people that try to pretend they understand logic.

Edited July 23, 2013 by Puscifer

[RankorSSGS]

Good ideas as always Waka.

 

@Puscifer please just stop posting.

[Xethis]

Nice to see you posting again waka. Glad your back in the game. I do have a couple thoughts about your post though.

 

Firstly, I think Deception is in a fantastic place right now. In fact I think you are probably the one responsible for the new Electric Ambush talent. Your wakajinn spec pre 2.0 showed the Assassin community just how valuable upfront burst was compared to sustained damage and even burst that requires set up. Now every Deception Sin has really hard hitting auto crits right at the beginning of the fight. Yes it does suck when later in the fight your Discharge and Shock hit for less damage than a VS, but that is just the trade off you get for being able to basically open up on someone to start the fight with them at 50% health. Deception has nice defensive talents with great opening burst, in my opinion, no changes are needed. Yes there are some useless talents and abilities, but I really don't think that we need a change.

 

We all agree that Madness is in a very very bad place right now, in pve and pvp. I like your idea's about getting Shock and Force Lightning back into the mix, but I fear that the class will play too similarly to other AC's. I made a post a while back when 2.0 first launched about some proposed changes that will make MadSin fun again, only 4 changes will not only bring this spec up to par with others for pvp, but also give it some uniqueness. First, make DF proc our Discharge dot. Your idea of making Lacerate proc this is not a bad idea, but I would rather do it from range lol. This way we can also apply our dots from range the same as Lethality OP. Since DF is a long cd (18sec) it will not come close to being op. Second change would be to Torment and Claws of Decay. Make Torment include Lacerate and reduce its force cost to 25 force. Claws of Decay would include Lacerate in its crit bonus damage. This would turn the MadSin into a melee aoe terror. Instead of spamming Thrash for Raze, we could spam Lacerate for Raze and produce a ton of spammable aoe damage. As of right now with Lambaste, Charge Mastery and Electric Execution my Lacerates are doing 2.5k-3.5k damage on everyone it hits, even returning force. We would not have the big crits that Rage Warriors have, but your aoe is spammable and would quickly surpass their aoe if we are not cc'd or kited. The third change would be to make Assassinate usable at any health % during our Crushing Darkness dot. So once every 10 sec or so we could use Assassinate to help with some single target burst. Fourth and final change, would be to our heals we get back, they either need to be doubled flat out, or include our Lightning Discharge (not the dot) to also proc heals. This way as we are spamming Lacerate for our auto procs on Lightning Charge we are also healing back. The more people we hit, the more danger we are in, the more heals we deserve. It will give us a little bit of staying power against the other melee classes.

 

I will agree that you are one of the best pvp Assassin we have in the community. As I mostly pvp, I would be inclined to vote for you as you would have my interests represented. However, I am worried that some of the pve'ers might not get the best representation. Do we have any Assassins that both hardcore raid and do ranked warzones? That person might be better suited to represent the community.

Edited July 24, 2013 by Xethis

[penguinhunter]

By the way:

Your point about snipers cull procc is highly questionable.

 

If you roll a dice 6 times, and you have a 15% chance to roll a one...

Rolling the dice 6 times doesn't give you a 15% x 6 chance to successfully roll a one.

Every single roll is still 15%

Figure the rest out yourself, im tired of brainstorming the point of bringing it up

 

 

Like I said, the ideas are good, but it doesn't necessarily solve the problem

 

 

 

Sorry if I said anything that sounded rude or out of order... it wasn't my intention, I naturally get hostile to people that try to pretend they understand logic.

 

Yeah, I play a gunslinger in ranked and I almost always proc takedown if I get a full cull off. Know what you are talking about before you do.

[ohto]

Awesome ideas Waka.

[BambulaGTS]

1. Everything that have "and give it trauma effect" is unjustified per se.

 

From the launch only mara have it on deadly throw. And it was garbage (dispellable), no one use it. They gave it to snipers to get them in par with maras as they are both only non "cross-role" classes (no baseline offheals/taunts/dispels) and made it undispellable.

 

Saying that anything besides this two that needs trauma... I do not know why it needs it considering context of this debuff appearance and evolution.

 

2. About that deception ideas.

 

Now imagine arenas will come and 3 such assasins show up. Nice, nice? Dumb, I would say. What you are trying to create here is self sufficient killa, which does not any support to "assasinate".

 

What's next? 1 vs 1 arenas with every participant is assasin?

[DarthMaulUK]

What's interesting is that I saw a Shadow deal 515k damage in a recent warzone( Civil War) using Lighting/damage spec and thought 'wow'

 

Can't find any guides etc yet to see how, and I have been trying to figure it out myself, coming close but only hit 370k in a game of huttball and force management was a joke.

 

Im currently running 13/31/2 and enjoying it. Medals rack up fast, you have to watch your health (didnt we always?!) and so far I have been dealing between 360-390k damage and I just need to max out my off hand and adjust my crit(sits around 24% atm).

 

Overall, I am purely disappointed at how the Sin has just been kicked in the balls. The beauty of this class was that you could almost be any spec you wanted, including Hybrids but Bioware just want to dismiss this class and leave it hanging with TWO broken abilities (force Shroud and Overload).

 

It's clear that the Agent/Smuggler gets all the love (how many fixes for their bugs since 2.0?) and ours havent even been acknowledged despite myself and others filing several bug reports.

Edited July 24, 2013 by DarthMaulUK

[Xethis]

What's interesting is that I saw a Shadow deal 515k damage in a recent warzone( Civil War) using Lighting/damage spec and thought 'wow'

 

Can't find any guides etc yet to see how, and I have been trying to figure it out myself, coming close but only hit 370k in a game of huttball and force management was a joke.

 

Im currently running 13/31/2 and enjoying it. Medals rack up fast, you have to watch your health (didnt we always?!) and so far I have been dealing between 360-390k damage and I just need to max out my off hand and adjust my crit(sits around 24% atm).

 

Overall, I am purely disappointed at how the Sin has just been kicked in the balls. The beauty of this class was that you could almost be any spec you wanted, including Hybrids but Bioware just want to dismiss this class and leave it hanging with TWO broken abilities (force Shroud and Overload).

 

It's clear that the Agent/Smuggler gets all the love (how many fixes for their bugs since 2.0?) and ours havent even been acknowledged despite myself and others filing several bug reports.

 

As far as guides for your Lightning spec, don't even bother. That Shadow probably was qued with some friends and had some healer buddies. I even ran a Madness spec for a few weeks, it is not hard to get 500k or even 1mil with this spec. All you do is spread your dots, use DF on grouped up enemies, spam Thrash for Raze. Thats it.

 

As far as your 13-31-2 spec, I run a very similar spec and absolutely love it. 12-31-3 (Dark Maul) is by far my favorite spec right now. Tons of burst while guarding healers and squishies. I love the play style. I still get big crits and get to kill people, and I have the utility of guard to help keep healers up. Not uncommon for me to go 500k-700k+ damage and 200k-350k protection. I know most of you think 700k isn't that much damage compared to Snipers and Smash Monkeys. But keep in mind that 500k-700k damage is all single target Shocks and Mauls, No aoe's or dots. If you guys have not tried this spec yet, I strongly recommend it.

[MystbladeWA]

 

As far as your 13-31-2 spec, I run a very similar spec and absolutely love it. 12-31-3 (Dark Maul) is by far my favorite spec right now.

 

Did a forum search with no luck so would you mind posting a spec link for that build please? And confirming whether its still run with full dps gear or a hybrid of the two (Ie: Augments, Shield/Focus etc)?

 

Thanks in advance.

[Xethis]

Did a forum search with no luck so would you mind posting a spec link for that build please? And confirming whether its still run with full dps gear or a hybrid of the two (Ie: Augments, Shield/Focus etc)?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

I literally just posted about this spec in 2 other threads lol. I am loving it.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=663865

 

In this thread I posted the spec I think in my second post. Instead of just typing the info again you can see everything I put there. In two posts I give a general idea on how the spec plays and why I chose certain talents. As far as gearing I am doing the same thing as Deception. 94% acc (Im happy with what talents and my companion gives me here), 75.5% Surge, I run 23% crit, I like to have a bit of this to help with my dependency on Maul crits for my burst. The rest in Power. You can pretty much just follow Xinika's guide on gearing and stat priority and get your best stats possible for this spec.

 

I do not run a shield as I would consider this spec more dps than tank. More like a dps spec that can guard and has some staying power in a big fight.

 

I have been talking about this spec since 2.0 was on ptr, just click my name you will see at least 20 posts where I break down the pros and cons of this spec, rotations, and talent synergy. I am also on the bastion server, you can pm me in game, going by Xethiss on that server.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Xethis

[MystbladeWA]

Thanks.

 

Its strange. I searched "Darkmaul" and "Dark Maul" and came up with 3 hits...One of them on the French forums.

 

Oh well, thanks for the clarification.

[DarthMaulUK]

As far as guides for your Lightning spec, don't even bother. That Shadow probably was qued with some friends and had some healer buddies. I even ran a Madness spec for a few weeks, it is not hard to get 500k or even 1mil with this spec. All you do is spread your dots, use DF on grouped up enemies, spam Thrash for Raze. Thats it.

 

As far as your 13-31-2 spec, I run a very similar spec and absolutely love it. 12-31-3 (Dark Maul) is by far my favorite spec right now. Tons of burst while guarding healers and squishies. I love the play style. I still get big crits and get to kill people, and I have the utility of guard to help keep healers up. Not uncommon for me to go 500k-700k+ damage and 200k-350k protection. I know most of you think 700k isn't that much damage compared to Snipers and Smash Monkeys. But keep in mind that 500k-700k damage is all single target Shocks and Mauls, No aoe's or dots. If you guys have not tried this spec yet, I strongly recommend it.

 

Totally agree with all this. You run Dark charge with this spec? Interesting. I will give this a whirl as well. And yes, us Sins/Shadows have to work damn hard to get our damage up unlike those one button clicking fools and frankly, I wouldnt have it any other way.

 

As mentioned, if you haven't tried this spec, DO - it rocks.

[DarthMaulUK]

Did a forum search with no luck so would you mind posting a spec link for that build please? And confirming whether its still run with full dps gear or a hybrid of the two (Ie: Augments, Shield/Focus etc)?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

I currently run something a little different (clicky )

 

With this spec, you need to use the shield but remove the mods from a normal focus off hand and place them in the shield. But I run this with Surging charge and not Dark Charge. DC will of course increase your armour so I will be giving the other spec a go to see if there is a point to having the shield or not.