Pretty much this. Whenever possible, you want to gut head or glove pieces for their enhancements, to ditch as much accuracy as possible. Only juggernauts really have any use for accuracy at all (since they rely on their basic attacks to generate rage), meanwhile assassins and powertechs only get a small threat bonus for the few basic attacks they use.

That's not really worthwhile though. Most 4 man heroics can be solo'ed by tank classes with a decently geared healer companion. My darkness assassin can solo every single daily quest with Talos, in columi gear. All veracity pieces would do is slow down my completion time.

Yes, you caught my mistype, I meant madness assassin. And yes, I play a darkness assassin, and I can tell you that swapping charges is a big deal for every assassin spec. If a madness spec'ed assassin (the only real dps spec for pvp) uses darkness charge, they lose access to alot of their class - lightning charge dot spam (especially since their spec is built around dots for damage through creeping death, deathmark/calculating mind, parasitism healing, etc), and raze (since it requires hitting a target with lightning charge's dot on it). Because of that, you lose 2 out of your 3 dots (unless you want to sit and actually hard cast crushing darkness for the full cost). But hey, I guess you can use dark charge and be liability to your team doing less dmg than a tank, while having less survivability.

Well part of the issue to keep in mind is that dps using the tanking stance will lose access to alot of their main abilities, which generally require a certain form (warriors), lightsaber charge (assassins), or weapon cell (bounty hunters). Ya, you can slap on your tanking stance and throw out guard, but you can say all you want about dps specs getting a few pvp things, but tank specs are just plain tankier when you get focused, period. A tank spec'ed assassin gets 10% and 12% of max health heals, 20% shield chance (ya ya, it only works on certain abilities, blah blah blah), 5% dmg reduction IN AOE, 5% accuracy reduction IN AOE, a stun in on a 20 sec cd outside stealth, more base dmg reduction, longer force shroud + root/slow removal, AND force pull to top it off. Yes, a madness sorc can pull out dark charge and try to do the same, but they will flat out die faster, AND lose access to vital talents like Raze, or discharge DoT spam.

You will find in later content that holding aggro is not very easy, and having a bit of power can go a long way. Threat isn't faceroll in this game like it is in WoW, and you need to be very careful to keep your threat stats up to keep pace with the dps.

Except that Juggernauts do get an absorb shield that never overheals, unlike the large majority of assassin self-healing.

Except taking WoW's DR system would be *worse*, since you could then layer multiple cc's in succession that don't share DR, just like you had in so many arena teams. At least in this game, every single CD shares in the DR, and most CCs are on a 1 min CD. At least you dont have sorcs using whirlwinds back to back to back like you had in WoW.

Did him at 50, in blues/greens, with Ashara (who promptly died shortly into the fight from force storm spam) as Darkness spec. I just interrupted and avoided aoes, used shock/wither/discharge on CD, FL at 3 stack. Was a tough fight with no companion, but not super bad.

I use Lacerate as a Sin tank for when Wither and Discharge on CD, and mobs are spread out. Lacerate is still pretty crap in terms of dmg/force, even hitting multiple mobs, but I use it when I have to.

I use Tumult all the time. It's free, and hits like a truck on weaker mobs. Being able to 2 shot a regular mob to get it out of the way, for free, is great. Yes, it has restrictions and you can't use it on bosses, but its still a nice situational ability that lets you hit extremely hard for free, allowing you to build/retain resources for killing the stronger mobs in the group.

The simple fact is you won't do much dmg as an assassin tank in pvp. In full pvp gear at 50, I typically only get around 100-150k dmg (at the very high end in competitive voidstars/alderaans). If you're looking for high dmg in pvp, you're in the wrong spec.

Thanks for phoning that in, and not even reading the thread. Clearly in the post you showed, there is nothing regarding a matrix cube for tanking assassins, which is what this post is concerned with. How bout you "l2read", before you mindlessly drop a "l2google" remark that is not useful to anyone.

It's not the threat modifier, its the simple fact that DFA does a *ton* of damage. Merc's shouldnt be opening with this on serious trash if they dont want to be pulling aggro.

And that's just fine. You still prevent people from killing your guard target. If they do 20k dmg to your guard target, you both live at half health, and one of them is dead. Not to mention you have taunts going off further reducing their damage to your guard target. As an assassin, I also get to mitigate the guard damage through self healing. I love being a pvp tank, and I commonly finish games with 10+ medals. I don't need to do 250k+ dmg to feel important.

What exactly are you planning to do by removing Thrash from your rotation? Wither and Discharge have cds, then you fill the space with Thrash, shocking when you proc. If you take out Thrash, you have nothing to do while you wait on cds to come back.