Hey all ,

I am a Madness Assassin Level 47. I have played madness from about level 20 because I found it best for inflicting solo damage PVE. Now I am not far from my Level 50 and getting those Tionese comms and I am thinking I should respec as a tank instead of dps, purely for grouping with players. Don't want to stuck waiting for dps joins. Anyway - most of the choices I have made on my gear so far have been to add Willpower. I will now probably change to the Darkness skill tree to tank and should I then being picking all gear with a higher Endurance, as opposed to Willpower?

I play exclusively PVE and will roll an alt for PVP later on.

Anny input or advice people have would be great

Well you could farm dailies for mods and credits and then use what credits you accumulate to purchase some moddable gear. That's what I did with my first Sin when I was playing around between DPS and Tank. What you can do is set the gear up, I'm not a number cruncher so I cannot advise what mods would suit you best and how much of each you should get; but the point is to get you geared so you can start doing HMs to collect the higher gear.

Alternatively, easier depending on how you do, jump into PVP DPSing and collecting the tokens to afford the PVP gear. Expertise has no affect in PVE but a lot of their stats are better than at least Tionese gear.

I will now probably change to the Darkness skill tree to tank and should I then being picking all gear with a higher Endurance, as opposed to Willpower?

Yeah, the stat focus changes. Endurance, Defense, Shield boosts, Absorption, stuff like that. You're looking to raise your health, and your defensive stats. Darkness gives you the tools for taunts/aggro management (and they're really fun and easy to master). So you then shift your build from the DPS stats to the ones that make you better defensively for when you've got the enemies' attention.

I found, in terms of tanking, the Tionese wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The offhand shield is a solid pickup. On one of my other characters, the PVP recruit gear was better than the Tionese in a lot of spots. But for an Assassin tank, the Tionese Survivor set boosts a lot of the right stats so the Recruit gear doesn't make it pale by comparison.

The lightsaber's not all that hot compared to the recruit saberstaff. But I'd take the Tionese shield over the weapon anyways.