To quote a friend of mine, "the better class is the one you don't suck at." To say it a little more nicely, everyone is gear dependant, but its an extra climb for melee in general. So both classes will need to gear up before you shine.

Thrash and Lacerate both have an individual chance to proc Energize for each hit it delivers. Meaning Thrash has 2 chances to Energize per use, and Lacerate has up to 5 chances per use (if you're actually hitting that many targets). It's why the Energize change in 1.1.2 was a flat out buff, not a tradeoff.

The thing you have to understand is two-fold. 1) Dark Embrace continues for 6 seconds after leaving stealth. 2) Higher force regen is essentially raising your dps temporarily. You can sustain the higher cost skills longer, thus greater output: i.e. burst potential. Also, don't underestimate the value of force cloaking out of a tight spot. Since this wil trigger Dark Embrace as well, it helps ensure your force returns to a solid amount after dodging an emergency.

How you set up your gear will determine where you go with it, but it performs well. Tank gear if you want to tank, dps gear if you want to fight. Wither lets you constantly apply a snare debuff which is great in PvP, and its decent aoe damage on a relatively low cooldown. Getting harnessed darkness off will require some intelligent playing on your part if you use it in PvP. Otherwise you're begging to be CC'd when you start channeling force lightning -- but once you get it down, its potent.

You clearly aren't much of a tactician in your fights if you think stealth gives you no benefit. It doesn't need to produce a number. Just the "can't be seen unless I'm right beside you" part is already great. In PvP I can pick out who I want to jump on, and I'm almost guaranteed the first strike. In PvE, I can skip past most of the stuff I don't feel like fighting, and focus on the primary objective. (Unless I do feel like fighting the extra stuff, of course). To me, those are huge benefits by themselves. Edit: Your second pot ninja'd mine, but I'm sticking to my point. Besides, there's this talent called Dark Embrace. That's a beneficial mechanic last time I checked.

There are a lot of misinformed people around. Firstly, the reason Deception is considered the "worst" is because, comparatively, it lacks utility. Its fine as a dps spec, but it offers little to any other task. It's not so much of an issue of being "bad" just "limited". And limited isn't preferable for most. That said, it's still quite damaging and can certainly get kills if you don't catch too much attention. (It's called "deception" for a reason). Secondly, being a Darkness assassin isn't just about "outlasting" anyone; unless you're 100% tank geared, but I doubt any serious PvP Dark sin would be. Its about bringing utility and survivability for the purpose of taking objectives or preventing them. If you're any good at reading the intentions of your enemy, Darkness is a great spec to counter and punish them. Or even just to stall for time when outnumbered near an objective.

The forum has enough meaningless threads bro. You admit to liking the tank sin? But then you ask why they exist? Answered your own question ftw? How does it not suit the style? The term "assassin" is extremely vague, there's no defined way an assassin functions. An assassin is just someone who kills for a living; how they do it is up to them.

I think we officially have enough "Madness is awesome" threads, haha. Just hope Deception gets a buff soon.

Madness is definitely far better now than before. Its pretty sick, tbh. Not sure if I'd call it "the" tree for pvp, since Darkness is still made of awesome utility, but they're both great now. Still waiting for Deception to get some of that love though. Then the class would be set.

Frankly, if its beyond your ability to notice how much the Darkness and Madness (pure) builds have improved and how much less necessary the hybrids actually are... this class won't miss you. I do have pity for Deception at the moment though.

No need to be a smart-***. Since he clearly doesn't know how to check for it, I'm pointing it out so he knows what to actually look for.

The color of the item has nothing to do with it. The item needs to have modification slots to be modified.

The damage output for darkness pure builds has gone up because now its both faster and easier to generate and maintain stacks of harnessed darkness. Just load up on dps gear instead of tank gear if you want to up your damage output more. Its perfectly valid, just don't expect numbers that compare to the new Madness tree numbers (the price for the higher survival rate of Darkness is being less dps oriented, naturally).

And I'm really disliking that some people can't be bothered to click "patch notes" on the game launcher.

Read your skill tree more carefully. Here is a hint: one of the bottom level madness talents will have your answer.