Hello everyone!

 

In the next installment of our series showcasing the synergy of Set Bonuses and Tacticals, we just published an article looking at Assassins and Shadows!

Joke ability for dps, more of a joke for tacticals and set bonuses, too op tank

A couple of quotes from the article:

As soon as the fight starts, the Darkness Assassin uses Mass Mind Control to taunt all eight nearby enemies.

After giving the tank some time to build threat, our Deception Assassin lets loose a flurry of abilities.

Using Mass taunt at the start of a fight and DPS giving the tank time to build threat? You guys are funny

Using Mass taunt at the start of a fight and DPS giving the tank time to build threat? You guys are funny

*Marauder intensifies*

As a shadow main tank, I find the combination offered interesting. However, there are several other set bonuses that are, in my opinion, more valuable.

Set bonuses offer the option to gain a damage reduction buff by using spinning kick (1) or by using force wave (2). Due to the short cooldown of those abilities, you can get roughly 30% uptime on those buffs, making it effectively another battle readiness.

Speaking of battle readiness, I also like one of the DPS set bonuses, that reduce the cooldown of battle readiness by 20 seconds on the four-piece bonus and resets the duration when an enemy is killed on the 6 piece bonus.

These three bonuses are in my opinion all more powerful than the one mentioned in the article, hence I am currently running the one I mentioned last to test if I can utilize the 6-piece-bonus in a good way. The other tank in my raiding team is currently favoring the spinning kick-bonus, for the reason that it is easier to use, since, in large add groups, using force wave might cause the DPS start whining about the adds being pushed away in every direction.

For tacticals, the one mentioned seems to be the one with the most diverse options to use. However, I also tend to like the one extending the duration of resilence by consuming dark ward stacks and the one applying resilience to the guarded ally.

Nevertheless, I'd like to mention that I want to get my phase walk back. It's just not fair that gunslingers and sages are having one while shadows lost their due to some PvP'ers complaining.

Ok, i will try my best to be as constructive as i can without being an a hole... (*)

1st: New Cone ability. So, you have a game engine that has real issues with positioning. Conal abilities suffer from it and you decide to add a new one?

Now let's see Hatred

Set bonus: Has absolutely NOTHING to do with hatred, is too much assasin generic.

4 piece: Hatred already has a 2 second immobilize for single target. So only benefit is if used in multiple targets, but wait! we already have it with an utility for every inquisitor and it last even more time.

The example just don't feel like a hatred sin at all, and doing most of that can be any sin.

Since before PTS 1.0 people showed how hatred was in a really bad position and that set bonus and taticals were a joke. It has been months and still nothing that shows you understand things.

What's tomorrow article about? About how Snipers, that already have an incredible survival toolbox, can now also phase walk? (or holotranslocate or whatever you call it). People showed that is not needed and is a really bad idea, but my guess is you will ignore all that too.

I know all this is suposed just an example of a work in progress not yet balanced. But i see no progress, practically same bad things pre PTS.

(*) Sorry, i failed. There is just so much wrong right now with PTS and this that i really can't find better words without some sarcasm. I'm also actually wondering why are you comunicating things in a manner that makes everything look even worst.

The example just don't feel like a hatred sin at all, and doing most of that can be any sin.

Since before PTS 1.0 people showed how hatred was in a really bad position and that set bonus and taticals were a joke. It has been months and still nothing that shows you understand things..

They don't give a sith about sustained disciplines

What's tomorrow article about? About how Snipers, that already have an incredible survival toolbox, can now also phase walk? (or holotranslocate or whatever you call it). People showed that is not needed and is a really bad idea, but my guess is you will ignore all that too.

Real talk, I'm not looking forward to an already broken class getting even more utility.

Hatred has been broken since Death Field nerf among other nerfs, another useless ability for that spec won't do anything.

DF spreads force slow? Good luck having enough Force Energy to do that after spamming lacerate to spread your dots, since Force energy regen is horrible on that spec.

Now with Alacrity GCD level's gone up, gl getting GCD3 while still having some crit.

Shows how much dev's are clueless about classes and specs.

Don't get me started on Deception and their nerf hammer.

*Marauder intensifies*

I had the same feeling as to why people need to taunt in the beginning of any fight. But why such a downcast change for the DPS set bonuses? This is leading me to believe that although we are level 75 the DPS cap still does not go over 15k dps......

its like all other games allow the overall DPS to grow based on new gearing, ranking, etc.....but not here?!?! This makes no sense Eric. Can you please help us understand why?

Why not give Assassin/Shadows better survivability? We are one of the squishiest classes if anything (especially when you are playing as Deception/Infiltration). While the other classes can do max damage while surviving longer due to their healing factors, tank abilities and temporary immunity to damage, we only got stealth that can easily break, with a few useless stuns.

Because force speed is op defence and primary reason why sin tanks are absolute and a must. Sin has great defence in pve, not bad in pvp as well especially for deception with the stealth

As soon as the fight starts, the Darkness Assassin uses Mass Mind Control to taunt all eight nearby enemies.

That's...that's not how taunts work. Mind Control(Mass or otherwise) does two things:

1. Forces the affected enemies to attack the controler for 6 seconds.
   
2. Moves the controller up to the number 1 position in the threat table and gives him 10% more threat than whoever was #1 beforehand.(If it's the first ability used you get 10% of 0, which is still 0)
   

A sin tank that uses mass taunt as his opening ability essentially enters a 6 second threat race with the other members of the group. Barring an incredibly crummy group, he will lose that race every single time.

I'm starting to get the feeling that there's a pretty big disconnect between how the devs want the classes to be used and how they actually get used.

Because force speed is op defence and primary reason why sin tanks are absolute and a must. Sin has great defence in pve, not bad in pvp as well especially for deception with the stealth

It would seem 6.0 changes is making matters worse for Deception/Infiltration, why do we keep getting nerfed? It's really not needed for sins, they are making us into a laughing stock, while giving superior classes more of an edge over us than before? Why do I sense there are some kind of bias towards range classes while melee classes get the short end of the stick? When they took away our phase walk to give away to sorcs/sages did they compensate us?

I do want to know why we are being forced to TAUNT all the time? The object of being a tank is to NEVER taunt unless we have to. Please discuss why TAUNT is mandatory? Are you saying that our threat is crappy now? Are you saying that DPS has way more threat, especially with those gorgeous new set bonuses that drive DPS to new lows?

Please Address all these asks Daniel, Eric, etc......devs

When are we going to get:

A Day In The Life Of A 6.0 Craft Mat Grinder

And will it look something like this:

All The Best

It would seem 6.0 changes is making matters worse for Deception/Infiltration, why do we keep getting nerfed? It's really not needed for sins, they are making us into a laughing stock, while giving superior classes more of an edge over us than before? Why do I sense there are some kind of bias towards range classes while melee classes get the short end of the stick? When they took away our phase walk to give away to sorcs/sages did they compensate us?

Well, a couple of things:

1st and most important one is We Don't Know... Yet.

I understand your frustration. Sins got nothing but nerfs sins the beginning. But they didn't balance anything yet, so we don't know that if we getting a nerf or a buff. (Not that I'm optimistic.) I mean all they have to do buff the discharge %15, and boom, you are number 1

2 - Sins never will be op for one thing and one thing only. Stealth. Since they have the same output for pve and pvp sins never will be op because of the pvp. You can say it's useless in pve, or not really reliable in pvp, but the outcome will be the same, since you have stealth, since never will be op damage wise. Deception was 1 at the parsing, at the start of the 5.0 and wrongly nerfed.

The new ability is a joke for everyone, but it will stay. Set bonuses are really bad, but they will stay as well. Does the future look bright? Nope. Will the sins take their rightful place? Def. not. Will the Sin Tanks be absolute in 6.0? From what we know so far sin tanks will be the only tanks worth taking for 6.0. Can sin DPS be better than 5.0+? We don't know yet, hopefully, yes. But I'm not holding my breath over it

Hatred has been broken since Death Field nerf among other nerfs, another useless ability for that spec won't do anything.

I would be very happy if the devs unnerfed Hatred back to its early 3.x days... back when we had the sorc's version of DF: wider radius, 30m, and spread dots

Conal abilities back at it again. Searing wave is pretty bad about it too, could we potentially get a different type of shape for the output? It's notorious for not landing and having desync issues.

Agreed. Conals are a bit wonky in this game. Hoping they improve them for 6.0 if they implementing this.

When are we going to get:

 

A Day In The Life Of A 6.0 Craft Mat Grinder

 

And will it look something like this:

 

 

All The Best

wrong thread

I would be very happy if the devs unnerfed Hatred back to its early 3.x days... back when we had the sorc's version of DF: wider radius, 30m, and spread dots

I don't get why DF doesn't spread dots anymore. That was such a weird change.

I don't get why DF doesn't spread dots anymore. That was such a weird change.

It was smooth and fun, that's why. Of course they'd remove/gut it in favor of something inferior.

Yep I find it ironic that they're 'highlighting' a class they've just taken a giant turd on in PTS. Rotation breaking cooldowns, tacticals, and bonuses, a skill that doesn't seem to be useful (I'll let pvp ppl comment on that since it's pointless in pve).

BW has some SERIOUS work to do on the Assassin Deception and Hatred specs, especially after the litany of nerfs already inflicted prior to PTS.

I would be very happy if the devs unnerfed Hatred back to its early 3.x days... back when we had the sorc's version of DF: wider radius, 30m, and spread dots :D/QUOTE]

 

Trust me, I've been trying to put some sense in BW staff for years about that spec and how wrong it was to nerf and keep nerfing that spec, but you know BioWare, they only listen to themselfs and then the Deception nerf hammer came and I gave up. The reason for Deception nerf was and I quote Musco:

 

"We felt that Deception was OP, so we nerfed it's dmg."

 

They didnt only nerfed the dmg, they literally broke that spec, to the point that there's no burst for it like Mara's have, like 5.0 Deception had, its dmg just went RNG and not in a good way. All of that was said and done while Mercs were still OP and untouched for the whole year, no cry threads in the forums about Mercs were heard.

 

Even Jugg skanks could pull more dmg than Deception. I did 56k hit on my Jugg skank recently on PTS and Deception didnt even come to 40k hit. With new GCD's for Alacrity, Hatred is worse than before when it comes to Force regen. But hey, here they are, glorifying their new sets and tacticals for sins, which are probably the worst among all classes.