I think I found our spec gentlemen. Pls hear me out before you flame.

http://pts.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/sith-assassin/222/?build=002300231100000000000000000000000322230021112032001022010010000001020000000000000000000000000000&ver=20

Basically 12/31/3. Ill give you guys a quick rundown on the key talents that do make this work and why I am finding good and bad in the rotation.

First the Deception tree. Those of you following the other two threads probably heard about the nerf to Surging Charges Discharge and how it effects our burst. Specially for those of us that ran the Wakajinn spec or something similar. If you ran full Deception before, then you will more than likely really like the changes as there is even more flow and if you don't mind the set up then full Deception in 2.0 is going to be a blast for you.

The key talent in the Deception tree for this build is Impose Weakness. Giving your Low Slash and Spike 100% chance to proc Duplicity on a separate cd from the Duplicity Talent. This lets us make sure we can open with Spike and use Maul right off the bat. On top of that it can proc another Duplicity giving two Mauls right up front. I won't go into detail with the rest of the Deception talents as they should be pretty damn familiar to all of us by now.

Out of the Darkness tree we are taking 3 talents that will improve our Dark Charge as well as a tiny bit of Thrash damage. The cookies are in the third tier with Energize and Disjunction. Disjunction is very sexy as it lets our 15 second sprint also break roots and snares. I don't need to explain why this is so good for Assassins. The Next one is Energize, there is some sexy synergy here guys. Not only does it crit 100% of the time, but it also refreshes the cd when it procs. I would say about 75% of the time it is refreshed before its 6 second CD is up. By itself its critting for me 4.7k-5.6k With the Recklessness buff it is another 50% increase to crit damage that DOES stack with our Crackling Blast talent. With Recklessness my initial Shock is hitting for 5.4k-6.5k damage. Chain Shock is hitting for 1k-2.4k that can be added to your Shock damage 45% of the time. Safe to say, with out Reck, Shock hits for 4.5k-6k, and with Reck it is hitting for 6k-8k.

Only 3 points left so to the Madness tree we go for Torment and last point to help with some crit on our Mauls/Assassonates.

So the first time I tried this, this is what happened. I opened with Spike and then I Mauled for 7.6k, Energize proced so I hit Reck and Shocked for 5.4k (no chain shock proc). That Shock procced my Duplicity for another 8.1k Maul. Energize procced again and Reck still had a charge, 5.8k+2.4k(chain shock proc) I Low Slashed for another 4k non crit Maul. Total of 7 globals and well over 30k damage, this has to be by far our best burst potential with the least mount of set up.

Right now the WZ's on the PTR are absolutely retarded, I will do my best to give you guys some actual pvp data to see if this spec is going to be as good as it is sounding as of right now.

Just did an Energized Shock that hit for 6k+3k(9k total) and followed it with an 8.4k Maul. You guys need to understand how awesome this is. There aren't any classes out there that can match that much damage in 2 globals.

I have one each AC on the PTR and nobody is hitting this hard with any of there abilities. The most my Sniper did was a 7.2k Ambush followed by a 4k Followthrough. I could hit 7k with my Smash Monkey so multiple targets may compete with that, neither my Mara's Ravage or my Mercs unload could break 10k total damage. When I went Engineering with my sniper, Series of Shots with EP/Explosive grenades was close with about 13k total damage. My Pyro PT was combining TD and RS for about 11k, or even Rocket Punch followed by RS was only about 10k. There aren't any abilities that can hit for 8k in any of these classes, none of them can do over 15k damage in a couple globals with out a channeled ability or an AOE on the crit train.

To put things in perspective, all of the abilities above either take quite a bit of set up or are on long CD's, My Assassin is not only capable of exceeding the damage on all the others, but able to do it way more often. God I can't wait for this to go live.

How are you getting 8k mauls? I am in full lvl 55 gear (apart from relics) and im getting 6k with your spec

I am testing on the lvl 55 ops dummy, thats correct right?

This spec has the same problem full darkness has. There isn't enough force to spam thrash and then shocks. The mauls are ok on the force pool, but without some way to lower the force cost on shock it's not viable to run energize. It hasn't been viable for a long time. If energize could proc with saber strike it might work.

Bioware did say they were going to fix the force issues in darkness, so all hope for this spec isn't lost. But even with the terrible force issues, I didn't have to delay procs with saber strike all that much and it still only pulled 1900ish dps. Deception does 2300+. Disjunction is good, but I'm not sure it's good enough to give up 400+ dps for it.

As for wakajinn, you won't be doing enough burst to kill any target in the new wakajinn, ever, and you're wasting points on dot damage to get death field which now costs 30 force instead of 25, and you're still having force management issues. I had to saber strike more in wakajinn than I did in your shock spec, and the dps was lower than your shock spec. All this for a spec that doesn't even get disjunction.

TLDR: Deception > shock spec > wakajinn in the new patch. Wakajinn is no longer viable in 2.0 people, deal with it.

When bioware fixes the force regen of darkness it may improve the shock spec as well, so wait for the next PTR changes before deciding whether you want full deception or shock spec.

This spec has the same problem full darkness has. There isn't enough force to spam thrash and then shocks. The mauls are ok on the force pool, but without some way to lower the force cost on shock it's not viable to run energize. It hasn't been viable for a long time. If energize could proc with saber strike it might work.

 

Bioware did say they were going to fix the force issues in darkness, so all hope for this spec isn't lost. But even with the terrible force issues, I didn't have to delay procs with saber strike all that much and it still only pulled 1900ish dps. Deception does 2300+. Disjunction is good, but I'm not sure it's good enough to give up 400+ dps for it.

 

As for wakajinn, you won't be doing enough burst to kill any target in the new wakajinn, ever, and you're wasting points on dot damage to get death field which now costs 30 force instead of 25, and you're still having force management issues. I had to saber strike more in wakajinn than I did in your shock spec, and the dps was lower than your shock spec. All this for a spec that doesn't even get disjunction.

 

TLDR: Deception > shock spec > wakajinn in the new patch. Wakajinn is no longer viable in 2.0 people, deal with it.

When bioware fixes the force regen of darkness it may improve the shock spec as well, so wait for the next PTR changes before deciding whether you want full deception or shock spec.

Yes you are right, you cannot spam Thrash and still have enough force to both Shock and Maul at leisure. You have to fill with Saber strikes with anything at or below 30 force, this way when Energize does proc you are within one Saber Strike of being able to Shock. Yes you will get less Thrashes and ultimately hurting your sustained dps. But the sacrifice is well worth it for a Shock with a 50%-100% crit damage bonus.

Wakajinn was never a spec that boasted high dps numbers. That was the main reason so many were so reluctant to try it. But what they found was they did have high opening burst with very little set up. No set up means you can pour on your burst at anytime with out any warning or indication to your opponent. That is the reason that we are all searching for a spec that has burst with out the set up. I believe I have found the closest thing with this Dark Maul 2.0 spec. It has hard hitting Mauls, hardest instant attacks in the game. As well as a Shock that has up to 100% crit damage bonus that is capable of 9k damage on the ptr, again highest instant cast ability in the game.

There are some challenges associated with the force management of this spec. It is true that you cannot spam Thrash over a 3 minute cycle to maintain the highest possible dps. You can however spam the **** out of it during Dark Embrace which we can get plenty of with a 45 second cd on Blackout and 1.5 min on Cloak. Also, this is a PvP spec, and given the amount of stuns and roots, you can guarantee you will usually be right at or near 100 force when the cc ends.

BW has indicated that they are going to address the force regen of the Darkness tree. If they do a very simple change, such as allow a low tier talent that will allow Thrashes to lower the cost of Shock, I will wet myself if they do that. It will be insane for this spec.

Aside from the aforementioned update to darkness that Bioware has mentioned, I could see this spec being more for pugging warzones, as not having force pull would hinder rateds. It does look quite interesting however.

I'm tempted to try 32 1 13, however for rateds I feel as though going full darkness would still be beneficial, especially as I'd put some points in assassin's shelter.

I'm just a dastardly shadow browsing for info, but couldn't you just push for Blood of the Sith to fix the regen issue? Yes you lose having controlled burst from low slash & spike, but is that worth creating something that leaves you a sitting duck 50% of the time?

http://pts.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/sith-assassin/222/?build=022302201120002000000000000000000322230021112032001022000000000000000000000000000000000000000000&ver=20

Aside from the aforementioned update to darkness that Bioware has mentioned, I could see this spec being more for pugging warzones, as not having force pull would hinder rateds. It does look quite interesting however.

 

I'm tempted to try 32 1 13, however for rateds I feel as though going full darkness would still be beneficial, especially as I'd put some points in assassin's shelter.

The two top tiers of Darkness look to be useless for PvP tanks. Sure you'll only be able to use Harnessed Shadows every 20s, but that's probably all you'd manage anyway.

The healing well is just an invitation to drop an AoE attack like Flyby/Orbital Strike, and takes too long to set up for anything other than when you're in preparation for node defending.

Slow time & force breach don't do enough in the stance to be worth your time, not when you can get masked assault/dark swell or a 5 person AOE that eats through most players (extra defence above base buffs resistance though).

Finally the shadow strike ability is a marginal DPS gain, and is built for PvE. You are far and away better off with the infil ability, where you can load up for a surge bonus on it.

27/5/14 here's a deathfield build.

Try 27/4/15 instead.

I use spike in my rotation quite a bit. I do miss having it every 20 seconds though.

While there is no complete viable way to test (with new gear and all) I tried testing on my dummy with nearly min maxed gear, focusing on willpower, surge and then power.

When critted with recklessness, 3 stacks harnessed darkness was hitting for over 2.4k each tick, deathfield for over 4k. They should be addressing the force management though soon, cause right now it's completely terrible.

Also with the new gear, we loose aptitude xA for some reason, but stalker boots seem to be the way to go, which adds +28 endurance, +25 willpower, +40 exp, +4 power and +4 surge.

In my own playstyle I generally reserve deathfield to stop node caps, or when it's procced with recklessness or when I just need a slight heal. And with procced shock and thrash, that also helps. It'll be interesting to see how much the new shielding will help.

I also hope to god that we can start collecting gear pieces while we level to 55. This would pretty much encourage me to only pvp for levelling.

This was the one I may try to use: http://pts.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/sith-assassin/222/?build=022322201121023002120200110000000100000000000000000000000000000003222100010200000000000000000000&ver=20

Assuming of course the darkness build doesn't change, but they are doing some changes come next patch.

I re worked some itemization for the Dark Maul 2.0 build that I have been working on. I got rid of all the alacrity and ditched as much of the accuracy as I could. I know the alacrity is supposed to help with our force regen, but the way I figure, its already broke so just get as much damage as possible.

My stats are 1255-1536, bonus is 693. Force bonus damage is 1156. Crit 20% Surge is 75%. I traded out mods to stack my power and surge. Initially I was down to about 16% crit and thought that was just way too low so I replaced my Implants and ear piece to get some crit back.

Now with those stats my Mauls are hitting for 3.9k-4.3k and 7.7k-8.4k on crits.

Shock is hitting 5.1k at its lowest with no Chain Shock. With a non Crit Chain Shock its 5.1k+1k.

With Chain Shock Crit its 5.1k+2.4k

And with the Recklessness buff Shock is hitting for 6.1k-6.4k and Chain Shock is consistent at 3k. With Recklessness I consistently saw 9k+ on my Shocks when Chain Shock procd.

The Energize proc rate is pretty consistent and refreshing itself before the Shock cd is up given I have enough force to Thrash. Maul will also proc Energize. I am pretty sure I am Shocking just as much as full Deception is Shocking and Discharging combined. Only difference is I am hitting 5k-9k, Deception is 2k-5k.

Earlier I was trying to reserve Force by Saber Striking at <30 Force, but I found that just spamming Thrash as much as possible and then Saber Striking after Energize procs to get enough Force for Shock was a bit more efficient. I am also burning Blackout on CD and Cloaking to restart Blackout timer every chance I got helped quite a bit with force management.

I did change one thing with the spec. I traded out the 2 points in Torment to go 3/3 in Exploitive Strikes. My reasoning there is the force situation is just too bad for Torment to make a difference. Since I sacrificed so much crit for power and surge, and since Shock is 100% crit, the Exploitive Strikes 9% increased crit brings my Mauls back up close to 30% and my Thrashes are critting at 45%. http://pts.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/sith-assassin/222/?build=002300231100000000000000000000000322230021112032001022010010000003000000000000000000000000000000&ver=20 is the new build I am going with.

 

When critted with recklessness, 3 stacks harnessed darkness was hitting for over 2.4k each tick, deathfield for over 4k. They should be addressing the force management though soon, cause right now it's completely terrible.

 

When I pop Recklessness and hit an Energized Shock with the Dark Maul 2.0 build, I'm hitting for 9.4k which is only 200 less damage than your 3 second channeled ability that takes 4-5 globals to set up.

My Mauls are critting for just under that, only thing is I am averaging 2 Mauls every 10-12 seconds.

27/5/14 here's a deathfield build.

I absolutely love Deathfield. In my opinion it is one of the best abilities the inquisitor has. I just do not think it is enough to make up for the lack of damage that this spec has.

With the talents you chose I am assuming your running a shield which has considerable less damage than a focus. You do have 100% crit on your Shocks which is nice, but with out Crackling Blasts they are going to be very weak outside of your Recklessness buff, which I am sure at least one Charge will be used for your Force Lightning which will lead to most of your Shocks barely hitting for 3k. With out Recklessness your Force lightning is only good for 4k-5k total damage, one Shock in the Dark Maul 2.0 build is good for 5k 100% of the time. Funny thing is if you take two in Claws of Decay then you will actually do way more damage just spamming Thrash and leaving Shock completely out of your rotation even with the Energize talent. You have no Maul at all. This spec will only be good for guarding healers, pulling ball carriers off of ramps and interrupting caps. You will never kill anyone.

I re worked some itemization for the Dark Maul 2.0 build that I have been working on. I got rid of all the alacrity and ditched as much of the accuracy as I could. I know the alacrity is supposed to help with our force regen, but the way I figure, its already broke so just get as much damage as possible.

 

My stats are 1255-1536, bonus is 693. Force bonus damage is 1156. Crit 20% Surge is 75%. I traded out mods to stack my power and surge. Initially I was down to about 16% crit and thought that was just way too low so I replaced my Implants and ear piece to get some crit back.

 

Now with those stats my Mauls are hitting for 3.9k-4.3k and 7.7k-8.4k on crits.

Shock is hitting 5.1k at its lowest with no Chain Shock. With a non Crit Chain Shock its 5.1k+1k.

With Chain Shock Crit its 5.1k+2.4k

And with the Recklessness buff Shock is hitting for 6.1k-6.4k and Chain Shock is consistent at 3k. With Recklessness I consistently saw 9k+ on my Shocks when Chain Shock procd.

 

The Energize proc rate is pretty consistent and refreshing itself before the Shock cd is up given I have enough force to Thrash. Maul will also proc Energize. I am pretty sure I am Shocking just as much as full Deception is Shocking and Discharging combined. Only difference is I am hitting 5k-9k, Deception is 2k-5k.

 

Earlier I was trying to reserve Force by Saber Striking at <30 Force, but I found that just spamming Thrash as much as possible and then Saber Striking after Energize procs to get enough Force for Shock was a bit more efficient. I am also burning Blackout on CD and Cloaking to restart Blackout timer every chance I got helped quite a bit with force management.

 

I did change one thing with the spec. I traded out the 2 points in Torment to go 3/3 in Exploitive Strikes. My reasoning there is the force situation is just too bad for Torment to make a difference. Since I sacrificed so much crit for power and surge, and since Shock is 100% crit, the Exploitive Strikes 9% increased crit brings my Mauls back up close to 30% and my Thrashes are critting at 45%. http://pts.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/sith-assassin/222/?build=002300231100000000000000000000000322230021112032001022010010000003000000000000000000000000000000&ver=20 is the new build I am going with.

The numbers you're getting Xethis, I presume they're on a dummy? What level dummy? Not your ship one I hope...

When I pop Recklessness and hit an Energized Shock with the Dark Maul 2.0 build, I'm hitting for 9.4k which is only 200 less damage than your 3 second channeled ability that takes 4-5 globals to set up.

 

My Mauls are critting for just under that, only thing is I am averaging 2 Mauls every 10-12 seconds.

I'd like to avoid surge stance like the plague. Plus my self heals will equate to something like 500hp per tick, so certainly helpful. I'm not so much looking for damage, than I am usability.

Though I think I'll add another point or two to proccing shock more often, as 15% is not the best.

The numbers you're getting Xethis, I presume they're on a dummy? What level dummy? Not your ship one I hope...

Yes these numbers are on a dummy. I have never given any indication that this is what we will do to other players. What I am doing with these numbers is comparing these numbers to other numbers with in our AC. So if x > y on the dummy, it will also translate to x > y on other players. Because these numbers are only relative to other numbers with in our AC.

Secondly, I do have one of each AC in exactly the same gear, I am testing those on the exact same dummy. Again, this wont translate to exact numbers when we are actually at 55, but it will give us a pretty close comparison to what each class and their abilities are capable of.

The next phase is going to move to duels (unless WZ's get fixed soon) to see exactly how this spec performs against other classes. Last night I dueled a Jugg for well over an hour. Granted he may not have been the best player but he never once even came close to beating Dark Maul 2.0. He tried over and over with multiple specs and varying rotations. This spec does insanely well vrs the Jugg. I hope to get some nice data vrs all the classes soon and we can nit pick the changes we need in spec and rotations.

Fair enough; my concern was more to do with the fact that the entire spec's damage can be mitigated by armor & shield, so if your figures from your ship dummy, they are not reflective of likely output.

Tanks will mitigate, to some extent, all of the damage in that spec except the proc from Combat Technique/Dark Charge. The question is simply if it's enough to compensate for the raw output.

Its not the ship dummy! lol

I have not Parsed Dark Maul 2.0 against full Deception or Madness yet so I do not know exactly how far behind it is performing in sustained dps. All I know is that for right now it has the biggest punches and they come in bunches. Mauling 2x every 10-14 seconds is about the same frequency as a PT's Railshot. And so far a Recklessness Shock with a Chain Shock proc is the highest hitting instant cast ability through out all the classes. I am sure we can find a way to make these two abilities work in pvp with their damage potential.

I totally understand where you're coming from, but unlike a Pyro PT/Assault Vanguard, you're costing yourself regen bonuses and a low cost on project. Shadows/Sins are the only class with a base regen rate not receiving alacrity talents, and it's showing in the output and regen issues.

I don't understand how this made it out of the first draft submission, let alone the PTS, but if they're serious about it, I'd want to be putting points into Kinetic/Darkness' regen boost to operate your build in PvP, and I'd be losing the extra maul/SS proc to do so.

My goal with this spec was to find something with big burst potential with little to no set up. I believe I failed. Sure, there is no set up, but I do need to spam Thrash to get procs, and well, Proc is a fancy way to say "set up". Also, there is the force regen issue. Full deception flows so damn well with nothing over 25 force being used. Energized Shocks do have 100% crit, but is it really worth the 3-5 Saber Strikes you got to spam around that so you can afford the Shock. Second, the main burst via Maul is actually quite challenging to land consistently in objective based pvp. There is so many damn cc's and snares and you really only have one ability to help with that "Sprint" and when that is on cd your just following your target hoping they stop to cast something so you can catch up lol.

But I don't believe full Deception is the answer either. Deception is slightly less positionally hindered with being able to Discharge at 10m. And Deception has less of a force management issue. But Maul is still pretty challenging to land on people. Believe it or not, most people don't let Assassins stand behind them and just do what they want. Secondly, crit is so weak now. When Discharge and Shock don't crit, they are hitting for like 2700, its so weak I should have just spammed another VS.

Im not sold on Darkness either. Forcing Darkness to go full tank spec for pvp is fail. 23-1-17 was fun because you had descent armor, descent heals back, moderate damage through nice Thrash crits and auto crits on Shock and you had DF, with all that you had **** ton of utility. Now the armor is gone, the Thrash crits are gone and so is DF and the utility. As of 2.0 if you want to run a focus in your OH instead of a shield for full Darkness, you only have 1% better damage mitigation over Deception. Actually Deception has way more survivability with Blackout and 30% increased aoe mitigation. So now Darkness has to use Shield to even have and edge over Deception Assassins in survivability.

So Deception can't crit, Darkness can't do anything and Madness can't Maul, *** BW

If Assassin goes as is in 2.0, I will not be playing my sin.

^this

The more I play on the PTS, and the more I feel like I will have to retire my sin for 2.0

^this

 

The more I play on the PTS, and the more I feel like I will have to retire my sin for 2.0 PVP

Fixed.