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Belgaer

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  1. Maybe it's just me, but when I think of a battle mage, I think of something that stays in melee range to melee (usually with a sword on one hand and spell at ready in the other), maybe setting their sword aflame with fire (we have stances that do just this) while they fling fireballs or lightning at something alla Elder Scrolls. Most RPG games have something to that effect. Something that's not as strong with magic as your standard mage, but makes up for it by providing sustained damage via melee attacks between spells. I've always loved this and when they announced the Assassin way back when, I figured it might be my best bet at that playstyle. I was right. Sort of. I've always thought it was weird that Assassin leans more toward melee than Force though considering the base Class it comes from. Pre-2.0 Madness was cool, but didn't quite fit the bill for me. But it was the closest thing I had and it was fun in it's own right. Waka's idea about Force Lightning and Shock use got me a bit excited, since even in pre-2.0, Shock only complicated rotations, created force starvation, and actually decreased DPS even with Unearthed Knowledge because it simply cost way too much Force for the DPS is was netting in return. I've always wished we had a reason to use Force Lightning every now and then too and knowing I wasn't alone is nice. But back to the whole battle mage idealism I mentioned, and maybe it's just me, but DoT's don't feel very magey at all anyway. It's just kind of boring and a let down. 'Oh ****, I just used Crushing Darkness on your ***! Prepare for pain. Wait for it.... wait for it... You hurting yet?' The spec has always kind of fell flat for me. Maybe I'm shallow and my real gripe is that the animations are boring, but it's only worse since 2.0. Deception, on the other hand, has only become more enjoyable as time has gone by. Though, I will say that Deception has a lot more room for variety in playstyle where Madness has next to none.
  2. Yeah, I know. I've told my father this (it's his internet, I just stay here over summers), but he's about the most unreasonable person ever born. It's a shame too, because he could get the same data allowance from AT&T for about the same he pays for satellite.
  3. Yeah, I only get about 2000 dps at best on this internet. Can't wait to see the back of it. Thanks for the spec info. It's good to see that the two are close enough that it's situational. Still wish they both put out more damage, but that's another topic that we're all beating to death lately anyway.
  4. Thanks for the info. I guess it's probably my connection that kills Madness's damage or something then (Satellite, 700-1000 ms ping). You'd think Deception would lose a lot more than Madness with a bad connection. I suppose gear or my own play style could be at fault, but I played Madness pre-2.0 and did really well in progression ops with it, so a less complicated rotation shouldn't be the issue.
  5. No problem. Some of the ideas are pretty handy individually. I really like the idea you had for Blood of the Sith/One with the Force, personally. But on that note, I would say it doesn't even need to be a talent if all trees are expected to pick it up. Just tack it onto the Assassin Training passive and remove the force regen talents we get in the other trees in favor of talents that add to our utility or damage.
  6. Although I will say that Stealthing OUT has always been broken. We get an increased stealth level for a few seconds when we stealth out of combat, but it often doesn't work. Sometimes it's because our companions don't leave combat for whatever reason and sometimes it just doesn't work at all and we still get attacked (pve). In pvp, it's easy enough for players to simply use an area attack as soon as we do it to knock us right out of combat though, so it's useful to pop Black Out and Force Speed as soon as we stealth out.
  7. I mean I suppose you could replace the Force Lightning/Shock idea with Maul. Make Maul cost less Force and do more damage based on how many DoTs you have on the enemy. But then you're really just applying the concept of Duplicity to Madness. I personally like the idea of getting more offensive Force Power use out of my Assassin though. If I want to Maul, I have a spec for that. If I want a melee focus, I have a spec for that. I started as an Sith Inquisitor, not a Sith Warrior. I'd like to have a spec that's got more of a battle mage idealism, personally. (I'm not including DoTs) Maybe that's just me though.
  8. I see a lot of talk of ways to replenish Force and reduce Force costs. But it's a resource pool. You're meant to manage it. I don't think making it almost impossible to burn through it between the incoming Force and global cooldowns is the right route to take here.
  9. I was also under this impression, for the record. If that's not the case, then the missing element here is that you didn't know being damaged takes you out of stealth. lol If it wasn't this way, it'd be overpowered in pvp. :/
  10. On Madness Rework: I totally agree with most things here. And a lot of this holds true in my mind even in pve (the topic of my post, as I'm much more familiar with pve than pvp). Going with the offensive side of your melee suggestion, I think that, with everything else going on, you've only complicated the rotation (not trying to be rude by any means here) and you'll find yourself rarely getting around to your Force Lightning/Shock idea (which I thought was brilliant). What I would like to see instead is for Lightning Burns to be reworked to be a lasting DoT effect (the Force Regen added effect would need to be rethought, of course) on melee hits rather than procing Raze to then use a DoT. It would promote meleeing and the use of Force Lightning/Shock at the same time. Here's what I suggest: Remove Crushing Darkness from Assassin and make it Sorcerer-specific. Assassin has no use for it without Raze, so let's just remove it from the equation entirely. Instead, increase the damage of Lightning Burns to compensate for the loss of Crushing Darkness as well. But yeah, fantastic ideas, man. I'd especially love to see Force Lightning see some use in the spec.
  11. Do you have your graphic settings on low, with out Bloom or very low shading settings? If so, are you sure you're not being detected by droids (they're pretty common on Makeb, especially) that have a constant Stealth Detection (you can see their little Remotes buzzing around them scanning, but the lightning might not be visible on lower settings, so it can be surprising). I'm not sure what to suggest about PvP. I have this issue too, but it's generally when I just do a bad job of sneaking up on someone, I stay put too long, or they just have an elevated detection level (talents). I can tell you right now that outside of popping Black Out, Stealthing around players is almost entirely dependent on just not getting unlucky enough to get spotted. Being hit by area attacks of any kind will take you out of stealth though.
  12. Ah, I missed that. Yeah, doesn't seem to be any room to pick it up either. Harsh. EDIT: Yeah, the 0-18-28 definitely seems to lose a lot of damage on the ops dummy versus standard dummies and enemies. That doesn't mean it wouldn't be fine in a real op situation, but it still seems "as good" as Deception in all situations I've seen. Definitely not sorry to see myself losing Fade though, considering I'm always in melee range.
  13. I must be doing something wrong with Madness (I'm assuming you meant Madness/Balance tree when you said Balance). It always comes out a good 15% less than my Deception parses. Consistently. :/ I don't know if that's saying something good for me on Deception or if I'm doing something very wrong with Madness. lol EDIT: I tried out the 0-18-28 build, and it does seem to be doing leaps and bounds better for dailies at the very least. I tried it on a dummy and it seems to be doing pretty well. It does just as well as full Deception without depending on procs as much, I would say. I'll do some more testing soon. EDIT2: I noticed the 3% loss of accuracy too and I have to ask... where is that coming from? I checked tooltips and I can't figure it out.
  14. Isn't that intended as a pvp spec? I thought it didn't fair as well in pve? Either way, Lightning Charge, right? I'll have to try it out. Sounds a lot like pre-2.0 Madness. lol
  15. No, I agree. I just didn't want to turn the thread into a rant topic. But I don't think there's any avoiding that. lol Also, I don't think that question in the interview was specific to the Madness spec. The question was saying there was concern of low dps parses causing fear that we'd all get pigeon-holed into tanking. That makes me think Deception was being included.
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