Krea's Shadow/Assassin PvP Guide

[Jinre_the_Jedi]

Yeah but that isnt the rotation you've written down. You Rotation goes: Recklessness -> Spike -> Discharge -> Ball Lightning

And that is in my opinion not that clever. Sometimes it is, for example if youre trying to stop someone from kiting in the first place, but in 70 to 80% of the time I am using Spike as my second opener after i vanish offensively or defensivly.

 

The point is, that you are wasting one Recklessness charge if you are opening with Recklessness into Spike and continue afterwards with Discharge and Ball Lightning.

4

 

 

You are only able to use Spike out of stealth if you are in Tank specc, but i was only talking about deception

 

 

 

And yes, in the tooltip it says that Spike should deal a few points of damage more than ball lightning but i tested it with my ships dummy and in none of my tries, a critical Spike did more damage than a critical Ball Lightning, With level 59 you get a 30% surge boost for your surging charges discharge effect and your ball lighting. Since you will always (because of your Voltage Procc from Voltaic Slash) trigger your surging charge, when using your Ball Lightning it will ALWAYS be more dps than using Spike, especially when you are consuming 2 Recklessness charges with Ball Lightning and the following surging charges discharge effect.

 

here a little video I made today to show you the difference between Spike and Ball Lightning. I forgot to specc the additional Recklessness Charge but to show the difference, you dont need 3 stacks, since we're talking about the dps between 2 critical hitting abilities

 

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmWGYHOuSxU&feature=youtu.be

 

So youll get more dps out of: Recklessness -> Discharge -> 2x voltaic Slash -> Ball Lightning -> Maul (if procced)

The biggest nerf in this part is, that you can only be able to maximize your burst, if you manage to apply the amor reduction that is given with Maul. The Problem here is, that the armor reduction is placed with Maul, but doesnt already count for the placing Maul, so it will only count for every Skill that is used AFTER the first Maul on the Target, so your second Burst, always will be the stronger one.

 

 

 

If you have 95% Accuracy, the only class that is able to dodge your low slash without a deff cd are Sages and Sorcs because of their additional 5% of defensive chance due to their light Armor. Every other class has to use a deff cd to raise their defensive change to be able to force a missing low slash.

 

But yeah, you are right, it depends on the players if they think it is better with or without accuracy, maybe ill try out maximizing my surge, but in my opinion everything over 75% surge is a big waste of stats.

 

I hope my english is understandable and it doesnt sound to critical or to negative I just want to show my opinion and exchange experiences

 

First, let me clarify, when I said taking an extra Potency charge allows you to use Spike out of stealth, what I meant was, it allows you to open with a crit on a CC ability COMING out of stealth. Not that you can use Spike when you are not in stealth mode, so I apologize, I didn't word that properly and caused confusion. I will reword this in the guide. Now that that's cleared up:

 

As far as whether to use a Recklessness Charge on Spike, pre 3.0 I would NEVER advise this, however, since it's damage increase going into 3.0, it is now a viable ability to use a charge on. When I play Infiltration/Deception, I play with the mindset of doing the most damage in the smallest amount of Global Cool Downs as possible, as this is the point of playing a burst spec as opposed to a sustain spec in PvP. That is why I take the extra Potency charge, it is a direct Dps increase over any other utility in that tier with the exception Nerve Wracking, potentially, but even then, that utility is only a situational Dps increase and is more suited for tanks. With that being said, if I have 3 Recklessness charges and want to do the most burst possible in a short window of time, I will want to use one on Spike, because if I wait 6 seconds to use it on a second Ball Lightning, I am adding 4 additional GCDs to get out all of my burst. However, I will definitely agree, you could open up with Discharge from stealth instead, and if it crits for the maximum amount, you can deal a 10-11k hit coming from stealth, which is powerful. I will amend that part of the guide, to show that you can also open with Discharge instead of Spike

 

As far as accuracy goes, I think you're looking at this incorrectly. Adding 5% Accuracy does NOT give Low Slash a 100% success rate on players that aren't Consular/Inquisitors. It gives a 90% chance to hit as opposed to a 85% chance to hit. This is because you have a base accuracy of 90%. Your opponent (non-consular/inquisitor) has 5% base defense chance. Even if you add 5% to take away this defence chance by adding accuracy, you still have a 10% chance to miss. This is because accuracy works this way:

 

Your Accuracy (90%) - Opponents Defence Chance (5%) = Total chance to hit (85%).

 

Adding 5% accuracy to have a total of 95% personal accuracy simply means that you have only made your chance to hit 90% instead of 85%. You can test this yourself, by adding 5% accuracy and low slashing a player. You will notice that it still has a chance to miss, even if they have no DCD's popped. This is because in order to have a 0% chance to miss, you would have to have 105% Melee accuracy, which is VERY impractical in a PvP situation. I can post a video of this later today, showing a 95% accuracy build on a non-inquisitor/consular missing, despite my accuracy negating their defence chance.

 

I found your post very informative and will go ahead and amend parts of the guide based on it, I thank you for your help!

 

Edit: I forgot to mention, about your maximum dps rotation: That rotation is perfect for a PvE environment, but in PvP, realistically, that is way too many GCDs to try to get off maximum dps. You want the most damage in as little GCDs as possible. Your rotation has 5 GCDs and that's only using up 2 out of 3 Recklessness charges, which would take an additonal 4 GCDs to use on another Ball Lightning. That is far too long. I can say from experience, after your first 2-3 GCDs, your opponent will use a Defensive Cool Down which will lower the burst of any GCDs applied after it, this is why you want the most burst possible in the first 3 GCDs as opposed to 5 or 9 GCDs.

Edited May 12, 2015 by Jinre_the_Jedi

[Lord_Unterhemd]

It is true that you dont have 100% hit Chance with 95% Accuracy, I had a hard time trying to explain what I meant^^

 

I just preferred 95% to close the missing window a bit further and for me it just works fine

So, on a really abstract level, I wanted to say that i prefer missing one possible low slash instead of two, if you know what i mean.

 

And as I said, I prefer having Spike as a Stunlock ability for a second Burst, I often Open with Discharge into 1 Voltaic Slash, into Maul and then the second Voltaic into Ball Lightning.

 

The Deception Burst overall aint by far as strong as it was in 2.10, because of the missing duplicity Procc on Low Slash and Spike. In my Opinion, knowing that, your priority as a deception sin should be trying to stunlock your enemy and Burst him down in the few locking windows.

 

Of course it depends on the Level of enemy you are encountering, if he isnt that experienced or skilled, you can easily burst straight through them, without much effort, but if they are skilled, you WILL have to play cat and mouse in order to kill your oponnent and burst at the right times and kite him at the right times.

 

Knowing what your Deffs are, what the enemy deffs are and which ones have already been used by yourself and your enemy is essential for beeing good at deception.

 

A maximized opening bust isnt always the best solution in Winning a Duel or killing one of the 4 enemies in the Arena

 

But I like your Guide and I find it very interesting to see another point of view on the speccs and the playstyles

[Aelanis]

I would like to add to this discussion on opening with Spike vs. not doing so that if you don't, you risk, instead of a second Ball Lightning, a Twin Surge consuming a stack of Recklessness, which is definitely less damage than Spike. With respect to maximum burst, though, I think there's some merit to a single Voltaic Slash, just to trigger an auto-crit Maul. I made a probability of kill (PK) simulation, designed to examine your average chance of killing a target in X moves, counting critical chance and even damage rolls, averaged over 10,000 simulated fights. It doesn't integrate cooldowns or external healing, but those variables are too uncontrollable to reasonably simulate. I didn't include an opening Spike at first, nor did I look at using Maul without an auto-crit,. However, I can guarantee you that your average damage using the auto-crit maul is far, far higher, and thus your PK shoots up dramatically, even if it does take one extra global. Obviously, if you can sneak in a VS before you have your burst window, that's a much better option, but if you have to freshly open on someone, there's some merit in using that VS.

 

As far as accuracy goes, remember: only your basic attack (Saber Strike) has 90% base accuracy. Every single other melee move you has uses a Special Melee Attack accuracy, which happens to be equal to your Force accuracy, with a base of 100%. So yes, against non-Inquisitors, a 95% melee accuracy means your Low Slash will have 105% accuracy, which will cancel out their 5% base M/R defense chance. Throw a tank into the mix, though, and suddenly you have a 5% accuracy debuff, which gives it the chance to miss again, not to mention the fact that Consulars/Inquisitors still have their higher base Defense chance.

[Lord_Unterhemd]

As far as accuracy goes, remember: only your basic attack (Saber Strike) has 90% base accuracy. Every single other melee move you has uses a Special Melee Attack accuracy, which happens to be equal to your Force accuracy, with a base of 100%. So yes, against non-Inquisitors, a 95% melee accuracy means your Low Slash will have 105% accuracy, which will cancel out their 5% base M/R defense chance. Throw a tank into the mix, though, and suddenly you have a 5% accuracy debuff, which gives it the chance to miss again, not to mention the fact that Consulars/Inquisitors still have their higher base Defense chance.

 

That is something I wasn't sure of. I heard it before that special attacks are using the same accuracy value as Tech/Force Attacks.

 

Checked for it now and you are right. I looked at the accuracy tooltip, that I will post here:

http://www11.pic-upload.de/12.05.15/9duuqp124za.jpg

 

And it says 105% for Special Attacks. But Special Attacks are every Action/Attack that consume your ressource?

[Jinre_the_Jedi]

It is true that you dont have 100% hit Chance with 95% Accuracy, I had a hard time trying to explain what I meant^^

 

I just preferred 95% to close the missing window a bit further and for me it just works fine

So, on a really abstract level, I wanted to say that i prefer missing one possible low slash instead of two, if you know what i mean.

 

And as I said, I prefer having Spike as a Stunlock ability for a second Burst, I often Open with Discharge into 1 Voltaic Slash, into Maul and then the second Voltaic into Ball Lightning.

 

The Deception Burst overall aint by far as strong as it was in 2.10, because of the missing duplicity Procc on Low Slash and Spike. In my Opinion, knowing that, your priority as a deception sin should be trying to stunlock your enemy and Burst him down in the few locking windows.

 

Of course it depends on the Level of enemy you are encountering, if he isnt that experienced or skilled, you can easily burst straight through them, without much effort, but if they are skilled, you WILL have to play cat and mouse in order to kill your oponnent and burst at the right times and kite him at the right times.

 

Knowing what your Deffs are, what the enemy deffs are and which ones have already been used by yourself and your enemy is essential for beeing good at deception.

 

A maximized opening bust isnt always the best solution in Winning a Duel or killing one of the 4 enemies in the Arena

 

But I like your Guide and I find it very interesting to see another point of view on the speccs and the playstyles

 

I'm glad you're enjoying the guide, the more feedback I can get from the Shadow/Sin community, the better the guide will be, as I would like this guide to be more of a collective effort than just my own thoughts and experiences

 

As far as your comment on spike goes, it's only a 20 second cool down, and even if you were to use Force Cloak to reset Recklessness, chances are, spike will be up again for another Recklessness window, so there's really no reason to not use spike on your initial opener due to the low cool down. I also found that it helps a lot in Ranked Warzone scenarios where you are on a map with a 2nd tier and you are on tier 2. You can open with Spike for a 2 second stun and then reposition yourself around the enemy to knock them off the Bridge of Makeb, or Catwalk of Orbital station, etc.

 

Which reminds me, I should update the maps section with that tip

Edited May 12, 2015 by Jinre_the_Jedi

[Lord_Unterhemd]

That is why I think, that deception is one of the most difficult Speccs in the game,

There are so many Situations and possibilities with the Specc to play either solo or teamwork oriented, that its almost impossible to summarize it in these guides.

 

But for beginners who want to get a clue of what this class and this specc are able to do, these guides are a pretty good start.

 

And I have another question for the DoT Build, or the gear selection.

 

If you increase your crit rating, does that automatically mean, that you will increase your selfheal (which is only triggered by your dot crits) and your sustained dps but decrease your burst dps?

 

I think Aleanis has the most experience with this kind of questions:D

[Jinre_the_Jedi]

I would like to add to this discussion on opening with Spike vs. not doing so that if you don't, you risk, instead of a second Ball Lightning, a Twin Surge consuming a stack of Recklessness, which is definitely less damage than Spike. With respect to maximum burst, though, I think there's some merit to a single Voltaic Slash, just to trigger an auto-crit Maul. I made a probability of kill (PK) simulation, designed to examine your average chance of killing a target in X moves, counting critical chance and even damage rolls, averaged over 10,000 simulated fights. It doesn't integrate cooldowns or external healing, but those variables are too uncontrollable to reasonably simulate. I didn't include an opening Spike at first, nor did I look at using Maul without an auto-crit,. However, I can guarantee you that your average damage using the auto-crit maul is far, far higher, and thus your PK shoots up dramatically, even if it does take one extra global. Obviously, if you can sneak in a VS before you have your burst window, that's a much better option, but if you have to freshly open on someone, there's some merit in using that VS.

 

As far as accuracy goes, remember: only your basic attack (Saber Strike) has 90% base accuracy. Every single other melee move you has uses a Special Melee Attack accuracy, which happens to be equal to your Force accuracy, with a base of 100%. So yes, against non-Inquisitors, a 95% melee accuracy means your Low Slash will have 105% accuracy, which will cancel out their 5% base M/R defense chance. Throw a tank into the mix, though, and suddenly you have a 5% accuracy debuff, which gives it the chance to miss again, not to mention the fact that Consulars/Inquisitors still have their higher base Defense chance.

 

I completely forgot to even include the set bonus effect in there, good catch! The opening rotation was more about the first 3 GCD's as after that your enemy will likely use a defensive cool down, but I will amend it and add in a new rotation with consideration to the set bonus auto-crit.

 

As far as the accuracy thing goes, I didn't know that Low Slash was considered a special ability as it seems that I still missed when I was at 95% by a fair amount on non-consular/inquisitors. I will test this more optimally later, and if it checks out, will amend the guide. Thanks for the info

[Jinre_the_Jedi]

That is why I think, that deception is one of the most difficult Speccs in the game,

There are so many Situations and possibilities with the Specc to play either solo or teamwork oriented, that its almost impossible to summarize it in these guides.

 

But for beginners who want to get a clue of what this class and this specc are able to do, these guides are a pretty good start.

 

And I have another question for the DoT Build, or the gear selection.

 

If you increase your crit rating, does that automatically mean, that you will increase your selfheal (which is only triggered by your dot crits) and your sustained dps but decrease your burst dps?

 

I think Aleanis has the most experience with this kind of questions:D

 

The dots actually are no longer based on critical rating to trigger the self heal, it is a flat % based on damage done by the dots. So for this reason, you will get more healing done from power than crit. HOWEVER, you can definitely add some critical rating to that build and potentially gain a dps increase, I just personally prefer no crit rating in that spec, as I found that I performed better without any.

 

Edit: I also agree 100%, a PvP guide can never be 100% accurate, which is why I have that huge disclaimer at the very top of the guide The hope is though, that someone who is less familiar with the class will learn something and the veterens of the class might notice something they've never paid attention to before. It's hard to put a guide to something that is dynamic as PvP, but I figured it would be better to have something out there as opposed to nothing.

Edited May 12, 2015 by Jinre_the_Jedi

[Jinre_the_Jedi]

Wow, went to edit the guide and apparently I am at the 50,000 character limit! Perhaps I should have reserved a second post just incase

[Lord_Unterhemd]

. It's hard to put a guide to something that is dynamic as PvP.

 

One of the reasons why i never wanted to write a guide myself

[Aelanis]

I completely forgot to even include the set bonus effect in there, good catch! The opening rotation was more about the first 3 GCD's as after that your enemy will likely use a defensive cool down, but I will amend it and add in a new rotation with consideration to the set bonus auto-crit.

 

As far as the accuracy thing goes, I didn't know that Low Slash was considered a special ability as it seems that I still missed when I was at 95% by a fair amount on non-consular/inquisitors. I will test this more optimally later, and if it checks out, will amend the guide. Thanks for the info

 

By the way, going for an extra GCD and including that VS, against a Hatred Assassin, jumps you from about 7.44% to 63.75% chance to kill them, though much less if they pop Deflection in time.

[Jinre_the_Jedi]

By the way, going for an extra GCD and including that VS, against a Hatred Assassin, jumps you from about 7.44% to 63.75% chance to kill them, though much less if they pop Deflection in time.

 

This is good information, I'll find a way to stick it into the guide. If only I reserved a 2nd post for additional information

[Hero]

Thanks for this guide, I recently came back to the game and have always main'd an assassin, I knew how to play the class but the in-depth gear setup and 1v1 tips and tricks was really nice.

 

Also Im on The Bastion now and am leveling a shadow to go along with my sin, I notice you mainly play shadow, is that just personal preference or are there in-general better pvpers in the ranked queue on the pub side?

[Voemel]

I just wanted to take a moment and thank you for this guide. Most times you see guides that are primarily from Imp side POV. I appreciate that you covered the Pub side.

 

Well done.

[Jinre_the_Jedi]

Thanks for this guide, I recently came back to the game and have always main'd an assassin, I knew how to play the class but the in-depth gear setup and 1v1 tips and tricks was really nice.

 

Also Im on The Bastion now and am leveling a shadow to go along with my sin, I notice you mainly play shadow, is that just personal preference or are there in-general better pvpers in the ranked queue on the pub side?

 

I like the animations more and most ranked on the bastion is pub v pub, all the good pvpers came pub side and moved their imps to Harbinger.

Edited May 14, 2015 by Jinre_the_Jedi

[Jinre_the_Jedi]

I just wanted to take a moment and thank you for this guide. Most times you see guides that are primarily from Imp side POV. I appreciate that you covered the Pub side.

 

Well done.

 

I tried my best to make this guide faction neutral for those who only play one side

[Jinre_the_Jedi]

Thank you random mod who made this thread a sticky

[endless_]

Hey, just logged to say this is top shelf man. Very useful and well explained. Specially liked the 1v1 section, that's handy not only for 1v1 but in general in how to deal with specific classes.

 

I just wished you did one guide for every spec of every class!

Edited May 14, 2015 by endless_

[Jinre_the_Jedi]

Hey, just logged to say this is top shelf man. Very useful and well explained. Specially liked the 1v1 section, that's handy not only for 1v1 but in general in how to deal with specific classes.

 

I just wished you did one guide for every spec of every class!

 

I could expand the 1v1 guide to each spec of all classes, you'll just have to give me some time to compile the information and type it all out

[Jurakan]

Jinre I think you have a lot of valid points on deception and I applaud your effort on guiding new and experienced players but it seems to me you are assuming we are just going to fight kiting classes and the utilities revolve around that. If you are in a full group it is very unlikely you will play the role of the lonely stealthcapper and lacking that 30% dmg reduction while stunned in a game where resolve is broken will most likely mean you will die a lot more often than you should. You said yourself you don't have any problems even against good sorcs which are the #1 kitting class so, why base all your utility setup around them? If I follow your advice thru it means if I don't have cooldowns, phasewalk or force cloak on and I get stunned by an OP i will have a 90% chance of dying. Your hatred utility setup makes sense to me but it doesn't seem like you play deception very often. If you go ahead and say this setup is thinking of ranked pvp only then I can accept it. Edited May 14, 2015 by Jurakan

[Jinre_the_Jedi]

Jinre I think you have a lot of valid points on deception and I applaud your effort on guiding new and experienced players but it seems to me you are assuming we are just going to fight kiting classes and the utilities revolve around that. If you are in a full group it is very unlikely you will play the role of the lonely stealthcapper and lacking that 30% dmg reduction while stunned in a game where resolve is broken will most likely mean you will die a lot more often than you should. You said yourself you don't have any problems even against good sorcs which are the #1 kitting class so, why base all your utility setup around them? If I follow your advice thru it means if I don't have cooldowns, phasewalk or force cloak on and I get stunned by an OP i will have a 90% chance of dying. Your hatred utility setup makes sense to me but it doesn't seem like you play deception very often. If you go ahead and say this setup is thinking of ranked pvp only then I can accept it.

 

This entire guide is based on the premise that you will be playing in Ranked pvp, hence the title of Krea's Ranked PvP guide and the disclaimer I am in no way thinking of or even referring to regs in any of this post.

[Jurakan]

That explains it. You should write one for regs too since at least in PoT5, t's the only thing that pops frequently.

[Jinre_the_Jedi]

That explains it. You should write one for regs too since at least in PoT5, t's the only thing that pops frequently.

 

If there is more demand for it, then I could, but for the most part, regular warzones aren't very competitive, so writing a guide for them seems redundant. Not to mention, most of the information here for Ranked warzones will work in regs, since regs is a less competitive version of ranked. The only thing that might differ is one or two utilities, but it's not game breaking to use the utilities I've suggested in a regular warzone environment.

[Lord_Unterhemd]

If there is more demand for it, then I could, but for the most part, regular warzones aren't very competitive, so writing a guide for them seems redundant. Not to mention, most of the information here for Ranked warzones will work in regs, since regs is a less competitive version of ranked. The only thing that might differ is one or two utilities, but it's not game breaking to use the utilities I've suggested in a regular warzone environment.

 

In my opinion regs can be as competitive as arenas. The chances for getting 2 premades fighting against 2 premades arent that high but happen often enough to say that there can be Regs that just play out like the old 8v8 ranked games.

 

And in my personal opinion, 8v8 is way more interesting than 4v4

Of course i like the arenas and the tactics to hardswitch and burst an enemy down in a few seconds with the right CCs for example, but 8v8 is more interesting.

 

And yes, you probably should make a 8v8 Guide too And in 8v8 in my Opinion Deception is way more efficient than Hatred, just because of the utilities and team capability that hatred doesnt really have. Its a zerg-specc.

[endless_]

I could expand the 1v1 guide to each spec of all classes, you'll just have to give me some time to compile the information and type it all out

 

Oh wow haha I meant that you should do guides for other classes other than sin but now that you mentioned it expanding the 1v1 section in that way also makes a lot of sense. I guess there's no end to how much detail you can go in there, what cues to look for when fighting (like the sound of a thermal detonator), what abilities you should interrupt, when are people invulnerable to stuns, etc. but I suppose it's not about digesting every single detail people need to do some stuff by themselves