I've leveled to about 38 as Deception. I obviously am questing, but I love warzones as well. I haven't tried Madness at all, but I'm curious about it. I'd like to hear the opinions from people who have played Madness, especially those who have played both Madness and Deception, to give me their thoughts on playstyle differences, strengths and weaknesses, and overall feel of effectiveness.

 

Yes, I've read the sticky. I'm looking for more anecdotal opinions.

 

I'm also not interested in a Darkness-focused spec.

 

Thank you.

Edited December 29, 2011 by YanksfanJP

Deception seems more preferable due to it's burst imo. But then again i've never been a fan of the madness style in Battleground format. Edited December 29, 2011 by CkMobster

All I get to play is Huttball. So Darkness for pull and non-stealth melee stun, then just stand in stealth next to acid and make $$. Edited December 29, 2011 by Hethroin

Because of the reduced range... stray from madness. If there was an ability that knocked our reach up with ALL ranged abilities to at least 30m, it may be worth it. It would definitely be worth it if Parasitism still replenished force.

Remember, Healers hate you for burst damage, Constant damage they can take care of, maybe not at first but they will adapt to your style of damage and come out on top. What they dislike to the point of Raging is when you suddenly out damage their normal heals and leave the Tank or whoever they are assisting abusing the hell out the them for not keeping up.

 

Edit: That is to say go deception

Edited December 30, 2011 by sankalp

Burst DD >>>>>>>> Dots in Pvp. It's harder to heal through back to back 3k hits from discharge, shock, and assassinate/maul. DoT stacking takes time which warzone design does not encourage plus it gives them time to out maneuver you given that our armor is paper unless tanking the longer they live the bigger of a problem they are.

Thanks for the insight. The reason I ask is I keep hearing about how hard Death Field hits, plus the self-healing, plus the burst that a Shock hit can have when you proc the second 50% hit... And then you add the dots on top of it, plus don't have to depend too much on Maul and the positional requirements. It just seemed like it was a really good mix of everything that works in pvp.

Thanks for the insight. The reason I ask is I keep hearing about how hard Death Field hits, plus the self-healing, plus the burst that a Shock hit can have when you proc the second 50% hit... And then you add the dots on top of it, plus don't have to depend too much on Maul and the positional requirements. It just seemed like it was a really good mix of everything that works in pvp.

 

i am a balance shadow so the same as madness, and love it. you have stealth of a rogue, dots of a warlock, and no positioning requirements. with the stuns, interrupts, and closers, the ability to do a ton of dps at 10m, with some 30m abilities allows you to close gaps to double strike.

 

no class in swtor is bursty like in wow, so a constant stream of high pressure is really strong, especially in wzs.

 

dont pvp until level 25 or so until you get your procs and the equivalent to force in balance.

 

its all personal preferene of course, but to use stealth to capture the objectives, have the hardest hitting double strike of any inquisitor, no positional requirements, and strong mid range dots is very powerful if played right.

Thanks for the insight. The reason I ask is I keep hearing about how hard Death Field hits, plus the self-healing, plus the burst that a Shock hit can have when you proc the second 50% hit... And then you add the dots on top of it, plus don't have to depend too much on Maul and the positional requirements. It just seemed like it was a really good mix of everything that works in pvp.

 

If you think the shock damage is nasty from that... you should see the shock damage from a full Deception/Madness assassin That spec can also acquire the potential second shock per shock thrown out there... on top of boosting it's damage AND critical damage by rather extreme amounts.

 

Then it turns into something... kind of like this

 

Edited December 31, 2011 by Kazakuhn

i leveled all the way to 50 as deception and decided to play with madness afterward in regards to PvP deception is defiantly superior the quick burst style is essential for 1v1 style. With that said PvPing as madness the overall damage done is alot higher though your killing blows may be lower. i found in most 1v1 situations i was doomed and against a healer without having low slash it was hard to get them down but in anything else i.e 2v2, 3v3, etc madness poses a solid threat.

 

 

PvE wise i have to say madness is the way to go. Though the rotation is harder and takes some getting use to with the range and debuff/buff timers it seems to do more damage.

 

(now i obviously dont have a dmg meter to prove it but while in deception spec i never pulled threat but in madness i have to vanish on every boss fight because i pull half way through)

 

 

ps death field crits for about 2600

Edited December 31, 2011 by LordFallacy

I regularly dish out 300k+ damage, about 20k heals, and anywhere from 10-20k protection as a L50 Madnassin.

 

I use Dark Charge, not Lightning Charge, for PvP. Use a shield, not a Focus. This increases survivability quite a bit (especially with the Charge Mastery talent). This also allows me to guard a healer and tell him to watch my *** (which also nets more medals). I crit for over 3500 on Assassinate and about 3200 on Mauls. I start off a little slow, but once my target dips down to sub 50%, they're probably going down without a lot of heals and CC. The crit Maul/Assassinate combo will take nearly anyone out at that point except for tanks.

 

Death Field also crits for 2500+ to 3 targets. Meanwhile, I'm randomly dotting people up with Creeping Terror, and any procs I get for instant Crushing Darkness. Thrash/Shock until the target is low enough to burst, randomly taunt other enemies that are wailing on team-mates. If you're in a large battle, liberal use of Overload, and the AoE taunt will reduce a significant amount of damage (unless they get smart and try to focus you - then pop defensive CDs or try and Force Cloak out).

 

Recklessness if you can afford to throw a full Force Lightning at a critical health target, etc. Creeping Terror is also especially useful for kiting enemy melee - allowing your short-ranged attacks to whittle away their health until you get them into "execute" range and finish them off.

 

All of my gear is built for high willpower, crit, and surge. It's also excellent for PvE.

 

I've never lost a straight-up fight with a 50 Deception Sin (it's usually not even close, even with CDs down). I frequently kill players 1v2, 1v3, even a few 1v4. Hell, I had a game earlier today where I did 330k damage with 49 kills and Zero, yes, Zero Deaths.

Edited December 31, 2011 by Warlyik

I regularly dish out 300k+ damage, about 20k heals, and anywhere from 10-20k protection as a L50 Madnassin.

 

I use Dark Charge, not Lightning Charge, for PvP. Use a shield, not a Focus. This increases survivability quite a bit (especially with the Charge Mastery talent). This also allows me to guard a healer and tell him to watch my *** (which also nets more medals). I crit for over 3500 on Assassinate and about 3200 on Mauls. I start off a little slow, but once my target dips down to sub 50%, they're probably going down without a lot of heals and CC. The crit Maul/Assassinate combo will take nearly anyone out at that point except for tanks.

 

Death Field also crits for 2500+ to 3 targets. Meanwhile, I'm randomly dotting people up with Creeping Terror, and any procs I get for instant Crushing Darkness. Thrash/Shock until the target is low enough to burst, randomly taunt other enemies that are wailing on team-mates. If you're in a large battle, liberal use of Overload, and the AoE taunt will reduce a significant amount of damage (unless they get smart and try to focus you - then pop defensive CDs or try and Force Cloak out).

 

Recklessness if you can afford to throw a full Force Lightning at a critical health target, etc. Creeping Terror is also especially useful for kiting enemy melee - allowing your short-ranged attacks to whittle away their health until you get them into "execute" range and finish them off.

 

All of my gear is built for high willpower, crit, and surge. It's also excellent for PvE.

 

I've never lost a straight-up fight with a 50 Deception Sin (it's usually not even close, even with CDs down). I frequently kill players 1v2, 1v3, even a few 1v4. Hell, I had a game earlier today where I did 330k damage with 49 kills and Zero, yes, Zero Deaths.

 

This.

 

I'm only lvl 40 on mine but this is exactly where i'm heading (hopefully as successfully too!). Pretty much 90% of time I top on Medals/Damage/Protection in WZ's (at the least 2 of those three).

 

To me a Madness Sin is strongest in support in group pvp waiting for those targets low on health (below 50%) for you to finish and guarding/taunting to protect healers/DD's.

Any 1v1 revolves around getting dots on and working down to 50% with small cost skill rotation waiting for Trash/Maul/Assasinate to finish. Hardest I struggle with so far are BH's/IA on 1v1. They're CC's and kiting ability are pretty awesome.

I regularly dish out 300k+ damage, about 20k heals, and anywhere from 10-20k protection as a L50 Madnassin.

 

I use Dark Charge, not Lightning Charge, for PvP. Use a shield, not a Focus. This increases survivability quite a bit (especially with the Charge Mastery talent). This also allows me to guard a healer and tell him to watch my *** (which also nets more medals). I crit for over 3500 on Assassinate and about 3200 on Mauls. I start off a little slow, but once my target dips down to sub 50%, they're probably going down without a lot of heals and CC. The crit Maul/Assassinate combo will take nearly anyone out at that point except for tanks.

 

Death Field also crits for 2500+ to 3 targets. Meanwhile, I'm randomly dotting people up with Creeping Terror, and any procs I get for instant Crushing Darkness. Thrash/Shock until the target is low enough to burst, randomly taunt other enemies that are wailing on team-mates. If you're in a large battle, liberal use of Overload, and the AoE taunt will reduce a significant amount of damage (unless they get smart and try to focus you - then pop defensive CDs or try and Force Cloak out).

 

Recklessness if you can afford to throw a full Force Lightning at a critical health target, etc. Creeping Terror is also especially useful for kiting enemy melee - allowing your short-ranged attacks to whittle away their health until you get them into "execute" range and finish them off.

 

All of my gear is built for high willpower, crit, and surge. It's also excellent for PvE.

 

I've never lost a straight-up fight with a 50 Deception Sin (it's usually not even close, even with CDs down). I frequently kill players 1v2, 1v3, even a few 1v4. Hell, I had a game earlier today where I did 330k damage with 49 kills and Zero, yes, Zero Deaths.

 

Do you have a link to this build? I'm interested in checking it out.

The build no longer works. Before Raze was dependent upon melee crits to proc, now it requires that you have lightning charge on your saber instead of dark charge, invalidating the whole build.

First off i am a HUGE advocate when it comes to madness. i played it from 10-25 in the beta and 1-50 live. it is hands down the most versatile of the 3 specs with darkness a very very close 2nd. use lightning charge to tab dot large groups then pick a healer and burst them down.

 

If you do not use maul in madness you are wrong.(i saw a 4300 crit today.) my current spec is 5/5/31. my death field crits for over 3k on the regular and 4k if i pop adrenal and trinket with recklessness. Just like with deception you have to time your attacks for the most dmg. Get that expertise buff as much as possible and you will rule the war zone.

 

There are very few people i play against on my server that scare me or that i worry about. i regularly do 300k+dmg and 10k+defense and 20k+ heals. With any spec or class you just have to know what you are doing. As madness you will never have someone get away from you without blowing cds all over the place.

 

Sure you have sustained dps on healers and sometimes their crits can be nasty and put you back where you started. Just make sure you use vanish in conjunction with spike to interrupt along with jolt and electrocute to keep them from overwhelming you but keep in mind if they are healing themselves they are not healing the ball carrier or anyone else for that matter.

 

Madness requires some serious gear to start in a WZ so deception or darkness may be your best bet if you are still gearing up. Once you get that gear you are a force to be reckoned with.

I regularly dish out 300k+ damage, about 20k heals, and anywhere from 10-20k protection as a L50 Madnassin.

 

I use Dark Charge, not Lightning Charge, for PvP.

 

 

Death Field also crits for 2500+ to 3 targets. Meanwhile, I'm randomly dotting people up with Creeping Terror, and any procs I get for instant Crushing Darkness. Thrash/Shock until the target is low enough to burst, randomly taunt other enemies that are wailing on team-mates. If you're in a large battle, liberal use of Overload, and the AoE taunt will reduce a significant amount of damage (unless they get smart and try to focus you - then pop defensive CDs or try and Force Cloak out).

 

 

you must be pro being able to use crushing darkness in dark charge....

 

 

Edit. My bad didn't notice someone necrod the thread.

Edited April 8, 2012 by Blarginflarg

you must be pro being able to use crushing darkness in dark charge....

 

Read the post date.

People really underestimate Madness spec. I don't know if it's because people don't understand how to play it or are simply using the wrong rotation. Let me break it down for you:

 

Your most important filler is discharge. When combined with lightning charge, it produces your first dot which ticks anywhere from 500-900 every second. When specced into Raze, any melee hit will give you a 60% chance to activate an instant crushing darkness while also reseting the cooldown to it. Now throughout the tree, you have several specs in which force attacks will increase the melee damage of your attacks by a certain %. In addition, there are also talents which increase the damage of shock.

 

Will the damage produced by discharge, crushing darkness, terror as well as your simple strikes, the target's health goes by fairly quickly. Combine that with a 2-3k Deathfield crit, 2-3k Shock crit and a 3-4k Maul and you can produce a pretty heavy burst. In addition, the healing from madness is decent and much better than no heals from Deception.

 

I've played since early release. I have a level 50 assassin and a level 50 shadow. I spent most of my time playing infiltration / deception, but only recently went tank spec with dps gear. i've begun to experiment with madness and though the survivability is ill in comparison to the tank spec, I believe it's better than Infiltration / Deception. i also think that the burst from madness is more control.

i leveled all the way to 50 as deception and decided to play with madness afterward in regards to PvP deception is defiantly superior the quick burst style is essential for 1v1 style. With that said PvPing as madness the overall damage done is alot higher though your killing blows may be lower. i found in most 1v1 situations i was doomed and against a healer without having low slash it was hard to get them down but in anything else i.e 2v2, 3v3, etc madness poses a solid threat.

 

 

PvE wise i have to say madness is the way to go. Though the rotation is harder and takes some getting use to with the range and debuff/buff timers it seems to do more damage.

 

(now i obviously dont have a dmg meter to prove it but while in deception spec i never pulled threat but in madness i have to vanish on every boss fight because i pull half way through)

 

 

ps death field crits for about 2600

 

Well i have to disagree mad sins are worst in killing healers.

In fact as madness sin i usually target healers due to the fact i know they have no way of defending themselves against mea.

I mean - when i kill their barier with death field [that actually crits for 3-4k depending on the fact i trigger my stim and relic or not] i start of the doting, discharge + creeping terror, then some quick shock [to get dmg boost] and trash to trigger raze and shoot crushing darkness, later on its only a matter of properly rotating stuns and repeating the ultimate damage rotation [and starting to spam assasinate as soon as they drop below 30%]

 

Sure it takes some time to kill healer, but targeting the main healer makes his team doomed to be wiped out

Such healer can chose among 3 things : heal his team and ignore me, wich will end up as him dead quite imidieatly, screw his party and start to self-heal [most people do this] it will make his party vulnerable and left with no heals and he again die eventually due to the fact he have to focus on healing and he is unable to properly fight back, or he can focus on trying to go toe to toe and fight back, wich again will make him dead - lets be honest a pure dps vs a healer or even a healer hybrid in face to facte fight, the outcome is quite obvious [no offence to the layers that use healers, i just asume the obvious things, we all die easly in certain circumstances]

 

All in all - i would say madness can be a ultimate killing machine, sure deception is gr8 for some fast burst dmg, but overall i was always able to do so much more as madness sin [as deception i was focused to use mostly standard play style - assasinate people from shadows, focusing mostly on killing single targets, as madness i can sometimes go all out vs many oponents and win it out if i have at least 1 people backup, wich i was not able to do as deception]

 

Thou i never liked to compare classes and judge "hey class X is way better than class Y".

Both builds are gr8, but again both being dps they are used in quite difrent ways, i would say if someone preffer to be a single target ultimate killer he should try deception [strike from stealth, kill heavy tanks with small backup of healer or teamate tank, quickly end up ball carier/objective performing player etc], and madness is imho for people that want to wreack more chaos on the battlefield [annoy healers with dots, stun/cc people with annoying instant whirlwind, kill multiple targets that are weakkened, or kill mutliple targets having backup of guard or heals from ur teamate and this kind of stuff].

I have played both and because of the short range of deceptions abilities be prepared to live out of cloak. You are not much help to your group outside of dps on priority targets which can be nice cause your will be getting A ton of killing blows. Madness has a ton of utility to help the group and your attacks can start from 30m. So not only do u have a nice range opener but you get stronger as the fight goes on because of your dots stacking on top of your deathmarks plus your thrash.

I have played both and because of the short range of deceptions abilities be prepared to live out of cloak. You are not much help to your group outside of dps on priority targets which can be nice cause your will be getting A ton of killing blows. Madness has a ton of utility to help the group and your attacks can start from 30m. So not only do u have a nice range opener but you get stronger as the fight goes on because of your dots stacking on top of your deathmarks plus your thrash.

 

This, plus parasitism and the 2 pc. Force Master set bonus adding up to 2.5% health per DoT Crit really sets madness apart from deception. With the teir 1 Crit talent and improved lightning charge I run around with about 41-42% Crit while engaged so the healing really adds up after awhile. I used to be a big supporter of deception but after somewhat mastering madness I don't think ill ever spec deception again until the spec is reworked.

i think that is the problem with most assn they are stubborn and believe that madness is not a good spec for some reason.

 

but really they tried it a few times and didn't really master the rotation.

 

i only play 3 specs - full darkness, darkness/hybrid, madness.

Just fyi, against a GOOD healer you won't keep your dots on them. You get a dot for each global cooldown....they can cleanse 2 dots per cure, and the cure is off the global cooldown.

 

I found as madness it was best if you fought right in the middle of a big pack of folks. Run along the periphery of the brawl, cutting through the corners. Don't specifically focus on any particular person, but instead hit each person 2-3 times to dot, and then move on. Best if they don't think someone is directly targeting them (which often devolves into a 1v1 duelr right in the middle of the brawl). You'll do massive damage to their side, and make it difficult for their healers to understand who's getting focus fired.

i think that is the problem with most assn they are stubborn and believe that madness is not a good spec for some reason.

 

but really they tried it a few times and didn't really master the rotation.

 

i only play 3 specs - full darkness, darkness/hybrid, madness.

 

Nah they are probably like me and actually want to melee, i rolled an assassin for primarily melee combat with a side of force attacks not the other way around so i will never roll madness, I'm indeed stubborn but not because i think madness is bad i just don't care for it

Edited April 9, 2012 by deags

Balance shadow here, out of the 3 characters I play regularly (scrapper scoundrel, balance shadow and watchman sentinel) I can say that its my balance shadow is my toon that performes the best, my other toons can hit close to the same Dmg amounts but the 25k prot points and the healing usually pulls it into my shadows favor though my sent and scoundrel do usually eclipse 75k heals.

 

Regardless balance/madness is a very awesome spec and will have noobs crying about darkness/kinetic combat because when they get roflpwned by a shadow/sin they assume it was by a tank spec shadow/sin