Best 1v1 Dueler class in 1v1 ("Melee only")

I can agree with that. I think it's situational if a sin and Vig Guardian are of equal skill.

Would largely come down to luck, I think. If the (presumably bonus damage-heavy) Sin manages to crit a couple of procced Mauls early on, the odds are definitely in his favour. If the Guard successfully reflects a discharge combo during the first stunlock, he's the one on the proverbial horse.

Deception/infiltration. Period. Always has been (only bads thought we were gimped before).

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total BS because of Darth Maul, which was the character the class was based on.

The only class I have been able to win with vs. a (incredibly good) Deception Assassin is Saboteur Gunslinger, and it was only because it was in an area with no line of sight obstacles. The reason is because when you Hunker Down, it forces them to either eat all your uninterruptible damage, or vanish and reset the fight, in which case you both heal yourselves up to full out of combat (you can not be sapped while Hunkered Down).

Their sap-n-heal is one of the main reasons that makes stealthers so powerful in 1 on 1s and the 'slinger is the only one that can take that out of the picture without needing to burn their CC breaker. Not to mention that your stealth detection will stack up to 30 during this "fight reset" so if you stay in place they will not be able to get the drop on you from stealth again if you put the Incendiary Grenade in your blind spot. IIRC you can't Maul gunslingers unless you use a stun because they always face towards you (not sure on this one, though).

However, the Assassin can just respec to tank, put on a shield and beat the Gunslinger handily by deflecting all their attacks. Lol.

Vigilance Guardian can 1v1 pretty much any class, including sins. Lots of CDs, a CD usable while stunned,stun immunity, focus gained on stuns, and reflect really hurts the effectiveness of deception.

IMO the most fearsome 1vs1 class in the history of SWTOR (not counting the old days, direct after the launch, balance still wobbly... where Op/Scoundrels were like... *shudders*) was the Jugg/Guardian; Defense/Immortal + Focus/Rage hybrid. I consider it lucky only a relative few people used this build, since the people I know who used it weren't the 'forum types' and would not disclose or share information much.

The basics would be Soresu for high damage reduction + defense + shield, offense-oriented gearing, use of two hard-stuns, use of 0-cost AoE slows, use of Force Sweep/Smash criticals, and two leap-type powers, two defensive CDs. Although in this case, the sweep/smash wasn't as powerful as full Shii-cho use, it still was reasonably strong attack.

You can imagine what the consequences would be like, when you are hard-stunned for a total of 8 seconds straight (if you had your CC breaker on cool), during which time you'll be hit with a 4~5k sweep/smash and a total of 6~7k damage master strike/ravage... during those days when everyone's HP was like 18k~19k. Not only were they strong in damage, but they also were strong in defense, as they had the basic levels of defense/shield, on top of a 12 second Saber Ward and a 10 second 40% flat damage reduction.

...

Ofcourse, like many OP builds, this also passed into history when mechanics changed

Are you seriousing me? Shield? Pre-2.0? On what essentially is a DPS buildin DPS gear? Even hybrid Kinetic Shadows took foci for greater Force damage. Goes double for a smash build.

Its not a dps build. Essentially its a 6:4 or 5:5 defense-focus hybrid, since back in those days there was hardly any skills in any of Jugg/Guardian trees that directly boosted or contributed to damage, and most of the damage component would almost solely depend on stats.

Therefore, as a trade-off to a teeney bit lower damage, the hybrid build gained 20% shield chance -- compare this to the contemporary mara/sent with around 5% defense chance and 0% shield. Also, skill investment from Defense tree boosted defenses a considerably higher than a contemporary shadow, so being able to use Soresu, get 6% increase in defense from Riposte, on top of the 20% shield chance was considered a worthy trade off.

The high point of this build was not necessarily about pure damage performance, which there were plenty others with much higher levels -- but rather about its versatility, and the ability to cram in massive damage by oneself when the opponent was stunned twice in a row.

Untalented, stat-less shield in Soresu was, pre-2.0, an overtime 5-ish% damage decrease over a specific, underrepresented damage category - weapon damage. Across SWToR patch 1.XXX, balance shifted, but the majority of the most threatening PvP damage was Force and Tech. Was it really worth it?

But I do agree that this build wouldn't be as Force-heavy - most of its damage would be white.