Can someone post a link to the MM spec? I'd like to test it out. Also, what are you aiming for regarding your stats with this spec?

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#200ZfhbRzZcMcRrrkrM.2

Some of the stuff in Madness tree could sort of be moved around but I don't recommend it. Parasatism is better for full Madness where you'll take points in Charge Mastery. Oppressing Force is just kind of bad and the availability of dots in this game makes Corrupted Flesh more useful overall than Sith Defiance.

You'd still want to emphasize the same stuff you generally would in Deception based builds (i.e. lots of power). So just read the OP for that. Run Force Master bonus because healing on Crushing Darkness is pretty good and your Discharge crits don't proc off of Recklessness anyways.

While I still strongly disagree with arguments that Mad Maul is a competitive DPS spec - parsed numbers don't mean much of anything in PvP (and for what its worth my parses in 0/27/14 are much higher than yours were), the environment is just too volatile - you made your points well enough and if it works for you then more power to you I guess. I still strongly stand by the fact that the setup is too long but we all have our opinions and preferences so whatever.

I actually saw a thread about assassin dps on here started by a guildie of mine, and the most assassin dps came from a madness (he had a 1mil+ game which I haven't seen an assassin do before, and 2 pics of about 1200 dps... The pics showed he had creeping terror on his bar).

I'm trying to figure out the real intricacies of madness now because 1200 dps is on par with the good smashers. The most I've had in any spec is about 800 so I'm really curious now to see how he gets it that high.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#200ZfhbRzZcMcRrrkrM.2

 

Some of the stuff in Madness tree could sort of be moved around but I don't recommend it. Parasatism is better for full Madness where you'll take points in Charge Mastery. Oppressing Force is just kind of bad and the availability of dots in this game makes Corrupted Flesh more useful overall than Sith Defiance.

 

You'd still want to emphasize the same stuff you generally would in Deception based builds (i.e. lots of power). So just read the OP for that. Run Force Master bonus because healing on Crushing Darkness is pretty good and your Discharge crits don't proc off of Recklessness anyways.

Thanks for the link! Though I don't really see the benefit of this spec compared to a full madness build. From what I recall from earlier posts (correct me if I'm wrong) this spec runs in lightning charge so the only reason for grabbing induction and consequently surging charge from the deception tree is for the 30%+ crit damage from maul.

If I've missed something let me know because as I'm seeing it everything this spec does can be done better running full madness.

I actually saw a thread about assassin dps on here started by a guildie of mine, and the most assassin dps came from a madness (he had a 1mil+ game which I haven't seen an assassin do before, and 2 pics of about 1200 dps... The pics showed he had creeping terror on his bar).

I'm trying to figure out the real intricacies of madness now because 1200 dps is on par with the good smashers. The most I've had in any spec is about 800 so I'm really curious now to see how he gets it that high.

The problem with Madness, either sorc or assassin, is that lots of it is "useless damage", meaning its not killing anyone. As a sorc, I can just spam FL all game, nothing else, and at the end of the game I will have top damage. And yet practically, sorc damage is very poor, because it is so easily healed through. Damage means absolutely nothing without kills, a 1 hp player can do just as much as a 19k hp player, as long as he keeps that 1 hp. That is the big gripe about maras/ sents god mode cd, it stops you from killing them, while they can still do full damage.

I suggest you go look again at that 1mil damage game, and look at the number of kills. I bet it will be very low. Even when smashers or pyro PT's get 1mil games, it is only because the game went on so long, because nobody was actually dying. And if nobody is dying, then all that damage is pointless. That is why burst is king, and why Deception based builds are so powerful. I may not top damage, often I'll sit around 200-250k in an average game with my current gear. But when I'm unloading that damage, my target is going to go down. I'll use a CW from the other day I had. I was playing with some random juggernaut who had a pocket healer. The enemy had both sides, we had the middle, so the jugg and his healer go to snow, and spend the rest of the game there, and never ever capped snow back. At the end of the match, that jugg was top damage, but because he never actually got anywhere in terms of capping the node, it was all pointless. He also had a super low kill count alongside that damage. Now, I do not know exactly what he was doing, but the few times I got the chance to look over, he was beating on someone, who was just laughing at him, because they had a healer who was easily healing through that damage. Does being top damage make the jugg a good player? In this case, absolutely not! I had much lower damage, roughly 1/3rd of his, but I had approximately double his kills. Why? Because my Deception burst was actually killing people, and fast enough for us to get a node back. That is useful damage.

As for how your madness assassin got that much damage, I do have a theory. I'm not claiming this is actually what he did, but doing that much damage causes me to automatically think Discharge spam. Target an enemy, Discharge your 18 sec DoT on him, tab target to another guy, and repeat. Put that 18 sec DoT on every enemy you can. Similar to FL spamming sorcs, you will do a ton of damage, but its all wasted into scoreboard padding, and your allies will have to pick up the slack of effectively playing a man down. Good way to lose a match, even if you get top damage. I'll take burst builds that actually kill people any day. Now of course Madness can actually kill people. While not super, stacking multiple DoTs on a target combined with thrash and DF can do decent burst, and played smartly, sure a Madness assassin can utterly destroy people. I've got a guildmate that does it everyday. But even he swaps to Deception for ranked game, because of the burst. The idea of the Mad Maul spec is to get the sustained damage of Madness, but grabbing enough Deception talents to give it really good burst as well. I'm still working on improving my performance in the spec, but based off Xethis' points, it has the potential.

The idea of the Mad Maul spec is to get the sustained damage of Madness, but grabbing enough Deception talents to give it really good burst as well. I'm still working on improving my performance in the spec, but based off Xethis' points, it has the potential.

But the MM spec isn't grabbing anything except for the +30% crit damage on maul that adds to it's burst. It can't take advantage of the shock buff from Induction because that requires you to be in surging charge. The other argument might be the extra force regen from dark embrace but with deathmark and calculating mind you shouldn't really be starved for force.

I feel that its sustained DPS would be lower than madness and its burst lower than deception (or deception based builds) and not far off from madness so I just can't see this spec as a competitor. But I haven't actually tested it so I'll reserve further judgement until I do

But the MM spec isn't grabbing anything except for the +30% crit damage on maul that adds to it's burst. It can't take advantage of the shock buff from Induction because that requires you to be in surging charge. The other argument might be the extra force regen from dark embrace but with deathmark and calculating mind you shouldn't really be starved for force.

 

I feel that its sustained DPS would be lower than madness and its burst lower than deception (or deception based builds) and not far off from madness so I just can't see this spec as a competitor. But I haven't actually tested it so I'll reserve further judgement until I do

That's what I thought as well, if you read my earlier posts. But I trust that Xethis is giving us real, truthful data, and not making up garbage, and those numbers are impressive. That is why I also am going back to trying MM again, and looking at what results I get before I make further judgments. If that data is realistic, I'll find out. I mean, I played Surging Charge 13/28 Arika quite extensively pre 1.4, and the burst from it was impressive. And by all accounts, Lightning Charge 14/27 has even more burst, so it seems that the possibility is there. Have not been able to do many warzones lately, but I am going to be testing it whenever I can, and if it means anything at all, it does have some impressive burst phases in the pve that I have been doing, and I can see it also having a great effect in pvp. Looking forward to more testing.

The 1mil guy had 97 kills, obv it was a voidstar

His dps more importantly was 1200. Even with discharge spam on all 8 players every 18 seconds I'm not sure I could do that

I do agree with you on deception helping more in some situations, but madness actually has more burst because you can spam mauls with a damage bonus while you also have 3 dots ticking on him vs deception with just individual hits.

I think deception has always been and is the best tho for the reasons you mentioned but I'm going to try to get 1200 dps

But I trust that Xethis is giving us real, truthful data, and not making up garbage, and those numbers are impressive. That is why I also am going back to trying MM again, and looking at what results I get before I make further judgments. If that data is realistic, I'll find out.

You guys really can't rely on dps parsing for PvP, that's really dumb and it isn't even a good general/basic estimate of how a spec performs. If that were the case nobody would play 23/1/17 or Rage specs (one dummy in most parses=no Smash aoe etc).

That said, idk what was going on for the 12 second "burst" parse of 0/27/14. I averaged ~2200, much more than Xethis' parse.

And parsing anything more than that is a complete waste of time. I mean, seriously, are you ever going to dps every GCD for four minutes straight? You won't do that every 30 seconds. It's a complete waste of time and the data is irrelevant even if I got the same results. Parsing is one of the most pointless things you can do to judge PvP specs.

and no, I'm not being mean. Just because I'm using it to invalidate someone's idea doesn't mean I'm a dick or upset that not everybody agrees with my spec. It's a fact.

The 1mil guy had 97 kills, obv it was a voidstar

His dps more importantly was 1200. Even with discharge spam on all 8 players every 18 seconds I'm not sure I could do that

 

I do agree with you on deception helping more in some situations, but madness actually has more burst because you can spam mauls with a damage bonus while you also have 3 dots ticking on him vs deception with just individual hits.

 

I think deception has always been and is the best tho for the reasons you mentioned but I'm going to try to get 1200 dps

Ok, I went and found those screenshots, few things here. First of all, I'm not trying to discredit you, your guildie, or Madness in any way, shape, or form. Just so we are clear on that.

That 1mil voidstar. I'm not going to lie, I was incredibly surprised by that. Your guildie deserves some serious props for that, even if it is one of those blue moon games. He falls into the same category as my guildie, those who can do amazing things with Madness. The spec does have incredible potential, I have always agreed on that. And 1108 dps, while not the 1200 you said, is still certainly impressive. He does have the lowest objective points by a large amount of any on his team, but doing that kind of damage, I'm guessing he spent a lot of time transferring side to side wherever the action is, so the lower objective score is totally understandable. Unfortunately I cannot see how far he got as the attacker, but based off of where they are on the minimap, and the fact that i was a victory, they must have gotten farther than the 2nd door. Fairly good progression and defense, but look at his teams kills compared to they enemy. The enemy had an average of 5 kills each, and his team had 3 healers who all did over 400k heals. Your guildie had only 1 death, so near 100% uptime. So yes, it still is incredibly impressive, I do not deny that, but remember this is a blue moon kind of game.

The huttball screenshot, the one that did actually have 1200 dps, I think more than proves my point. 525k damage, with 8 kills. Over 65k damage per kill. So again, impressive, but deceptively so.

So yes, Madness can do crazy things, as people like your guildie and mine like to prove. All I'm trying to say is don't fall into the trap that so many do, thinking it's all about the numbers on the board at the end. Often, the things that win games never show up on the board. But hey, I'd take a competent Madness player over 99% of the players I run into in this game Good luck figuring out Madness for yourself dude. Lets make em fear this class again.

You guys really can't rely on dps parsing for PvP, that's really dumb and it isn't even a good general/basic estimate of how a spec performs. If that were the case nobody would play 23/1/17 or Rage specs (one dummy in most parses=no Smash aoe etc).

 

That said, idk what was going on for the 12 second "burst" parse of 0/27/14. I averaged ~2200, much more than Xethis' parse.

 

And parsing anything more than that is a complete waste of time. I mean, seriously, are you ever going to dps every GCD for four minutes straight? You won't do that every 30 seconds. It's a complete waste of time and the data is irrelevant even if I got the same results. Parsing is one of the most pointless things you can do to judge PvP specs.

 

and no, I'm not being mean. Just because I'm using it to invalidate someone's idea doesn't mean I'm a dick or upset that not everybody agrees with my spec. It's a fact.

I totally agree with you about how irrelevant parses can be in a pvp environment. 100%. That's why I'm going to be running actual warzones with it, testing not the damage on a dummy, but how it actually plays out in the "real world." I only use dummies to work on practicing rotations. All I meant to say is that the numbers piqued my interest into looking into the spec again. And yea, I was thinking to myself that something must have been wrong with Xethis' parses of Wakajinn, its just way too low. Either way, actual pvp is where it matters, and that's where I'm going to be testing these specs for myself.

Lol, I wish that guy was in our guild. The thread started was my guildie but neither me nor him have topped 850 dps as far as I know.

And yeah they aren't Normal games, but none of the 1200 dps games or 1mil games are normal. That guy gets my props for even reaching those numbers as a sin.

We do have smashers in our guild that have done millions though and our lead assassin has gotten 25 medals I can only hope to reach those numbers and I'm going to have to try madness to do it.

Lol, I wish that guy was in our guild. The thread started was my guildie but neither me nor him have topped 850 dps as far as I know.

And yeah they aren't Normal games, but none of the 1200 dps games or 1mil games are normal. That guy gets my props for even reaching those numbers as a sin.

 

We do have smashers in our guild that have done millions though and our lead assassin has gotten 25 medals I can only hope to reach those numbers and I'm going to have to try madness to do it.

That pretty much is what I meant. Spectacular, and worthy of recognition, but far far away from normal. Imagine the QQ about Madness if these were normal games. I don't think I've ever ever seen a nerf Madness thread. And yea, due to the possibility of healing medals in addition to all the others, it is possible to get the most as Madness. Medal-wise, my current best is 20 as full Deception, in 1.3 of all times

But the MM spec isn't grabbing anything except for the +30% crit damage on maul that adds to it's burst. It can't take advantage of the shock buff from Induction because that requires you to be in surging charge. The other argument might be the extra force regen from dark embrace but with deathmark and calculating mind you shouldn't really be starved for force.

 

I feel that its sustained DPS would be lower than madness and its burst lower than deception (or deception based builds) and not far off from madness so I just can't see this spec as a competitor. But I haven't actually tested it so I'll reserve further judgement until I do

Yes the extra 30% crit damage is one aspect of going Mad Maul, 6k Maul crits are just fun as hell. But pls do not look at this as just trading Creeping Terror for Maul crit. Another huge aspect to choosing Mad Maul over full Madness is for the Darkswll talent which is the only reason Mad Maul can work in pvp. You have to be exploiting the hell out of Dark Embrace for the defensive bonus. Mad Maul pre 1.4 was as glass cannon as the Assassin could get with no armor buffs and very very little healing.

Now the reason that Mad Maul can out dps full Madness head to head is a couple of reason. First off, the 30% increased crit from Maul is not enough to overcome the damage from Creeping Terror alone, however it does leave room for another global (usually Thrash) per cycle. The dot from Discharge is also more damage then Creeping Terror and when Creeping Terror is not used it pretty much doubles the amount of Discharge ticks that can use Deathmarks.

Increased Deathmarks utilized on Discharge Dot, an extra Thrash per cycle, and the increased crit on Maul all add up to about 50-100 increase in overall dps over Madness.

That said, idk what was going on for the 12 second "burst" parse of 0/27/14. I averaged ~2200, much more than Xethis' parse.

and no, I'm not being mean. Just because I'm using it to invalidate someone's idea doesn't mean I'm a dick or upset that not everybody agrees with my spec. It's a fact.

I will try again this evening to see if I am doing anything wrong.

I will try again this evening to see if I am doing anything wrong. When I parsed the opening 12 seconds with Wakajinn spec I very rarely saw 1700-1800, and my average was in the 1600's. I could be doing something wrong or you could just be that bad ***. If you can do 2200 with Wakajinn you should easily be able to clear 2400 with Mad Maul.

My parses on Mad Maul were about equal to yours lol. Again, its a useless measure though.

Just spent a few hours on the dummies to see how I parsed Wakajinn so low for the opening 12 seconds. I was able to pull it way up though. I played around with the rotations and just tired to get as smooth as I could with it. The reason I think I had it parsed low to begin with was I was basically looking at my damage graph, I would see where I was at during the opening and then just kept going for the 3-5 min. I should have stopped combat immediately for a more accurate parse.

The original OP's advise for the rotation for Wakajinn was

Basically, your rotation goes like this:

Death Field

2x Induction Shock

Discharge*

Assassinate

Thrash

Exploit Weakness Maul

Saber Strike

Well I changed things just a little bit and I think for the good. I would still open with DF but I would Shock right after with Reck buff. The reason being is my Thrashes only reduce the cost of shock, and during Dark Embrace the cost of abilities is no issue. After I DF and Shock, I usually had a EW proc for Maul, then 2 Thrashes Discharge and Shock again, if my EW procced off my DF It always seemed popped back up after my 2 Thrashes. One other change I made was taking 2 points in Claws of Decay over Fanaticism. Reason being is I found with Wakajinn spec I was using DF situationaly. I found I was not having to use it off CD the way I did with Mad Maul. It was primarily being used to stop caps, runners, and if I saw some huddled opponents. I always seem to have enough force when I want to use DF.

With Reck buff I was hitting 2k-2.2k for around 25k-27k damage in that first 8 globals. During one Recklessness parse both my Mauls crit as did my second shock resulting in 2378dps and 31k damage. That was awesome to see.

When I parsed without Recklessness I was only hitting 15k-17k but still getting 20k damage down in that 12 seconds. Still plenty of damage to kill people. Recklessness is also only on a 90 sec cd, definitely a short enough cd to have this buff for the majority of your openers.

I could not match the opening burst with the Mad Maul spec. Oh lord did I try. Even with Recklessness I was still consistently opening for 1.9k-2k damage and one time I barely broke 2.1k. Without Reck buff I was managing 17k-18k so it seems that this spec is a little less reliant on Reck for its burst, but it definitely helps.

I just started using the arika build(and have also noticed the similar build in this thread)...

How much crit would you use for this spec? I have went with unbuffed crit anywhere between 23-30% and currently am about 30% unbuffed, but I havent really found a sweet spot.

I just started using the arika build(and have also noticed the similar build in this thread)...

 

How much crit would you use for this spec? I have went with unbuffed crit anywhere between 23-30% and currently am about 30% unbuffed, but I havent really found a sweet spot.

Same as all other non-Madness DPS specs. See op for details.

Is anyone else having issues seeing the builds at torhead? I've tried on 3 different pc's and can't get the builds to display.

Thanks

Is anyone else having issues seeing the builds at torhead? I've tried on 3 different pc's and can't get the builds to display.

 

Thanks

I was having trouble last night, has been working fine this morning however.

cant open the torhead too

can someone pls create the talent at http://swtor.askmrrobot.com, its more easy to access

i wanna try the wakajinn en MM

thx a lot

cant open the torhead too

can someone pls create the talent at http://swtor.askmrrobot.com, its more easy to access

i wanna try the wakajinn en MM

thx a lot

This is the Wakajinn spec here , make sure to read the ability names though as some of the icons are not the correct ones on Mr. Robot.