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Assassin Feedback


JackieKo

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I really like the Old Interface 5-10x better, and mostly sad many classes lost favorite abilities they LOVED; some have to make difficult choices while others only give up ones nobody cared about.

 

I really wished they'd not take away abilities, people used to FIND 'core' to a Class; take away those nobody cared about more... :(

 

https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=997315

https://i.imgur.com/Vq1gaqL.png

Edited by Strathkin
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Assassin is a combat style that I've played extensively in all aspects of the game - I even once made an assassin who levelled up solely by playing PvP and levelled another to 75 in the past couple weeks. While my knowledge and experience is primarily from a damage dealer's standpoint, I've recently been dipping my toes into tanking on an Assassin and so have at least a basic understanding of how to play one and how they are supposed to function (at least in current content) when played optimally.

 

Writing this has been a lot more challenging than writing the Sorcerer feedback as I feel that Sorcerer genuinely had a lot of good options, and the bad options can easily be fixed and buffed. Assassin on the other hand, has had drastic changes to its survivability and cc potential across the board. Assassin didn't have as many abilities to lose as some of the other classes and as such, moving 5 abilities into the ability tree really hurts and requires a more complex response.

 

Echoing my Sorcerer post - all my testing was done without using tacticals of any kind because we still have not received confirmation on which tacticals are being baked into the base classes, which are staying and which are being removed. As such I think that it is completely pointless testing with tacticals which may or may not even exist in 7.0. If this changes during a later PTS stage, I will begin using them again.

 

 

General choices and ability options:

Since the level 20, 35 and 70 opt ins and choices aren't as neat as the Sorcerers, I'm going off the rails and combining them anyway into the "general" choices category.

 

Spike - one of my favourite abilities in the game - is now gone completely from the damage dealing specs and is an opt in ability for tanks who arguably have made better use out of it due to tanks negating the stealth requirement and granting DR with a certain set bonus. I'll discuss Spike heavily later and why it should stay in an altered form.

Guard is also finally gone from the damage specs as expected.

 

For tanks, Spike is the level 20 opt in while severing slash, whirlwind and overload are the level 70 choices.

For dps, overload is the level 20 opt in and severing slash, force shroud and whirlwind are the level 70 choices.

Both tanks and dps can opt into overcharge saber at level 35.

 

Before we even get into specific passives and choices, there is so much to talk about here that I'll put it inside a spoiler tag with a TLDR. (Sorry it's so long and congratulations if you read it all, I really needed to list all my thoughts and reasonings for why I'm suggesting these changes.)

 

 

 

Level 70 options and concerns about survivability:

 

The decision to drastically neuter both an assassin's crowd control AND defensive power is very perplexing. While tank assassins gain force shroud as a baseline ability, it can no longer gain an increased duration. Dps assassins on the other hand are left with one single defensive ability - deflection. This ONLY works against ranged and melee white damage attacks and is utterly useless against force and tech attacks, attacks which assassins are supposed to be the strongest class at countering. As such, there is no level 70 option for dps assassins, they will always take force shroud. Tanks have a more interesting choice between two forms of cc. What's more, assassins no longer gain access to either of their survivability utilities - one that buffed armour rating by 30% and another that increased DR by 25% during force speed.

 

No, I didn't forget about severing slash, it's just not worth taking. It is a terrible ability and needs a complete rework to be considered even in heavy aoe scenarios. I have a couple ideas for how it could be changed:

Option 1: the ability deals drastically higher damage, perhaps in the form of an initial hit and a DoT.

Option 2: severing slash by default causes discharge to arc through all affected targets on deception, resets the cooldown of death field for hatred and resets the cooldown of wither and discharge for darkness.

 

Option 2 would incorporate all the current aoe tacticals by default and would be the preferable option.

 

 

Assassin's Crowd Control capability, mobility and the issues with stealth:

 

Assassins have a large amount of cc in their kit on live, but they also need it in PvP. Stealth itself is considered an extremely powerful tool - especially ever since blackout and sneak were baked into stealth. However, stealth is most useful in 1v1 scenarios imo which are very irregular. In most PvP fights, I would prefer to have the various full heal options and defensives that a mercenary or juggernaut tank has over dipping out of a fight. In ranked, by combat stealthing you are now relying on your team to survive 3v4 while you heal up outside the fight over 10 or so seconds at minimum. This is even more so an issue in PvE, where combat stealthing simply resets the fight in solo content. This is why I don't consider combat cloak to be a real defensive compared to the likes of shroud, enraged defence or kolto to name a few.

 

Personally I'd prefer we go back to the days of blackout and sneak, but that would add an extra ability and go against dev intents. Instead, I would flat out add a passive that buffs player detection levels such that they can always detect stealthed targets within 10m. This allows stealthers to sneak at range, but are always at risk of being discovered at close ranges - thus negating one of their advantages and granting room for changes in other departments.

 

Assassins struggle in the mobility department from my experience in PvP due to a 30 second cooldown leap and the massive amounts of slows and knockbacks in the game. This results in the level 60 choice being a non choice for PvP - you always take Force Phase to negate movement impairing effects with force speed. This passive should be baseline for assassins with a new passive taking its place. If this doesn't change and you take Force Phase, you no longer gain access to Speed Surge which increases movement speed once per 18 seconds. Baking Force Phase into the "Assassin's Training" passive would solve this. There is no situation where I don't take the equivalent passive on live because there are far too many movement impairing effects in both PvE and PvP for a melee class to deal with without such a tool. Instead of Force Phase as an opt in passive at this tier, I'd add a passive that causes thrash and voltaic slash to slow targets by x amount for 6 seconds. This would instead gives players the choice of slowing a specific target, getting temporary movement through the use of a rotational ability or increased aoe damage where movement speed isn't needed.

 

 

How I would change the level 20, 35 and 70 ability choices:

 

Most importantly, Force Shroud should be baseline for ALL disciplines. Assassins should not have one single poor defensive option baseline as a melee class - even as a stealth class. In exchange, to keep things more balanced, Shroud of Madness would be changed to grant 2 seconds extra duration of Shroud instead of its current effect (activating Force Cloak grants 2 seconds of Force Shroud). This forces players to choose how to use Force Shroud - to reset a fight and escape, or to keep the fight going and sustain through incoming damage.

 

This is where things get difficult.

Overcharge saber can stay where it is for all specs at level 35 but it should have 25% damage reduction for the damage dealing specs as well as tank. Otherwise, overcharge saber should provide different effects for each spec. 25% DR for tank, halve the surging charge rate limit for deception and grant much higher lifesteal for hatred.

 

That leaves the level 70 choice and level 20 opt in.

 

In PvP, overload is used primarily as a way to interact with map traps, knock targets off ledges, or interrupt. Stuns are similarly used to interrupt casts or prevent casts due to the target being incapacitated.

Assassins on live have a mez, a soft stun, a situational hard stun in spike, a hard stun, a knockback and a slow.

 

With that in mind, I would place Overload in the level 20 ability slot. I would then alter the Maul Spike passive to give a large 90% slow for 3 seconds after using spike once per 60 seconds and re-add a buffed version of Spike to the base class. My reasoning for this is twofold:

 

One - maul is a very high cost force ability and as such, while it theoretically sets you up to start your rotation on a stunned target, it also forces you into force management mode. Second, hatred doesn't even have maul as an ability - it gets leeching strike - which you don't want to use immediately and it's on a long cooldown compared to maul which has a 0 second cd.

 

Two - this would recreate the duality between operative and sniper / gunslinger and scoundrel where the ranged class has a 10m range hard stun, and the melee class has a 4m range hard stun. Less overlap, more individuality between the combat styles.

 

This buffed version of spike would have a slightly longer cooldown - say, 30 seconds, but be usable when outside of stealth for less damage just like how maul does less damage when attacking from in front of a target. The stun duration would be 2 seconds and only knock weak and standard targets down. Thus assassins would keep their unique stun while balancing out their overall levels of cc.

 

I would then change the level 70 choices to be between Severing Slash (buffed version), electrocute and a buffed version of instant cast whirlwind that lifts multiple targets in PvE (baking in both current utilities but without the hard stun element when it ends). This provides assassins with a meaningful choice between AoE damage, a 4 second hard stun and a longer 8 second soft stun.

 

Using both electrocute and this buffed version of spike in a row might sound like a lot, it is two hard stuns in a row, but spike only lasts for 2 seconds. This is far less than the potential 12 seconds of stun when you combine whirlwind and electrocute. Either way, you lose one of your CC options and still have to opt into overload for maximum levels of controlling effects.

 

 

I am perfectly happy with the rest of the shared ability tree passive options and so don't feel a need to extend this already long essay by including them.

 

I think that just about covers my thoughts and feelings on the opt in abilities and how defensive and CC tools could be reworked and reconsidered for the assassin.

 

TLDR version of my thoughts and suggested changes for the general options and ability choices:

  • Force shroud baseline for all specs
  • Shroud of madness level 80 passive extends Shroud duration by 2 seconds rather than granting 2 seconds of Shroud when activating Force Cloak
  • Overcharge saber grants 25% damage resistance for all specs or 25% DR for tank, half surging charge rate limit for deception and much higher lifesteal for hatred - stays at level 35
  • Overload becomes the level 20 option for all specs
  • Level 70 choice becomes Severing Slash, Whirlwind and Electrocute for all specs
  • Severing Slash is buffed to incorporate AoE tacticals for each spec - reset death field for hatred, arc discharge for deception, reset discharge and wither for darkness
  • Whirlwind - bake in current utilities -> instant cast version + multi target for PvE
  • Add Spike baseline for all specs as their base stun. Cooldown changed to 30 seconds, stealth requirement removed for all classes. Damage lowered if not used from stealth. Only knocks down weak and standard NPC targets.
  • Maul spike level 20 passive changed to provide a 90% 3 second slow to targets after Spike's stun ends
  • Bake Force Phase into Force Speed so that it always removes movement impairing effects and replace Force Phase's slot with a 30% slow when the target is struck by thrash or voltaic slash
     
  • All players in PvP matches should gain an increased detection radius of 10m to allow room for stealth classes to have better defensives. Essentially a revert to the days of blackout and sneak but without ruining quality of life in PvE or adding more buttons back in.
     

 

 

Now onto the discipline specific options and overviews.

 

Darkness

Darkness feels mostly the same - with the caveat that you have to opt into overcharge saber and force shroud lasts 3 seconds instead of up to 5. Honestly I'm pretty happy with the Darkenss passives, there are some fun options and combinations here and even some options that make sense for off tanking.

 

 

Level 15

  • Antagonizing Volts- flat damage and threat boost is nice - I'd remove the threat boost and instead buff crit more to establish this as the off tank damage spiking option.
  • Energized Volts - overlaps with Antagonizing Volts to an extent, but more interestingly restores a huge amount of force vs mind controlled targets - effectively making the ability free
  • Chained Volts - depredating volts arcs to nearby targets

Chained Volts and Energized Volts are great. Antagonizing Volts and Energized Volts should have their names swapped since "Antagonizing" Volt's name fits Energized's effect which is directly tied to mind control, while "Energized" Volts sounds like it should have Antagonizing Volt's effect which are flat damage and crit chance increases. I do think Antagonizing Volts should do something a bit more interesting like reducing taunt cooldowns each hit. That way you'd have the choice between more taunts, less taunts but the taunts give you more damage and regen, or aoe depredating volts.

 

Level 20

  • Energized Shock - shock extending mind control effects works really well with energized volts and the higher crit chance provides a pretty substantial damage spike if used with recklessness and a procced energized shock.

I went over how I'd change the level 20 ability earlier to be overload for all specs. Force magnetism is perfectly fine as is. My proposed change would give a choice between spike damage, cc and rapid escape.

 

Level 30

  • Dusk Ward - more force cloaks is situationally useful for shroud cheesing, but with npc rebalances happening and my proposed change to Shroud of Madness, the accuracy reduction is most important here.
  • Twilight Ward - lower recklessness cooldown alongside energized shock does sound really fun for spike damage
  • Gloom Ward - amazing for AoE tanking scenarios

These passives all depend on the final clause "if dark ward is broken by damage". From my limited experience, I rarely have my wards fully broken even with 60-70% shield rating and this would require a lot of finesse to perfectly time reactivating dark ward as soon as it is fully broken. The effects themselves are fine, I just don't know how often the second part will be relevant. My guess is that in AoE and PvP situations where you are hit a lot more frequently, you'll get the most use out of these.

 

Level 35

  • Dark Forces - nice force regen and some max hp healing
  • Reckless Defence - gain up to 15% DR for you and your allies when using recklessness, only lasts 6 seconds though.
  • Overcharge saber - 25% damage reduction is the only thing making this ability useful as a dcd and as such is maybe the default choice.

At first I thought, Reckless Defence is just a budget version of Overcharge Saber. Then I thought wait, combine this with twilight ward and you get much more frequent AoE damage reduction for your whole team. Not bad. Interesting choices here beyond default picking overcharge saber and Dark Forces is useful for off tanking.

 

 

 

Deception

Deception has some extremely fun options. Finally you can make reaping strike feel like part of your rotation rather than that one button you press once per 18 seconds. Has the highest survivability potential out of it and hatred due to retaining rotational damage reduction + the new voltaic defence. Burst is the name and there are many ways to do it. I love that you can opt for safe passives that provide flat buffs, or opt for crazy combinations that drastically shake up the rotation with a higher skill ceiling. Deception feels more fun than on live for sure with these changes.

 

 

Level 15

  • Penetrating Slash - higher armour pen and crit chance on your most damaging ability
  • Reaper - hilarious for open world content and killing weaker adds in AoE scenarios - also very good for quick bursty target swapping.
  • Energized blade - this is amazing. Resetting reaping strike when you crit with a force attack shakes up the rotation in a great way

I love all of these passives, I honestly have nothing to complain about here!

 

Level 20

I've already gone over the level 20 options under the "general" thoughts section. To reiterate, Overload should be the level 20 option for all specs. Maul spike should be changed to grant a large but short slow to Spike - with Spike being added baseline alongside a mini rework to how Spike works. Force Magnetism can stay as it is. Thus you'd have a choice between utility in overload, pinning down a target with Spike slow or running away with magnetism.

 

Level 30

  • Reckless Voltage - lowering the cooldown on recklessness shakes up the rotation by allowing more frequent uses of 3 stack discharge, interesting option especially for PvP when combined with resetting reaping strike and level 35's Lightning Critical
  • Voltaic Engine - 20% flat crit chance increase is a very safe option for sustained burst damage
  • Voltaic Defence - 10% extra DR is always nice. The 30% slow has no real place here especially with my thoughts that a 30% slow should be made a level 60 passive for all specs replacing Force Phase

I like all of these options, only thing I'd change is moving the slow to its own passive and baking Force Phase into Force Speed for all specs as mentioned earlier.

 

Level 35

  • Lightning Engine - extra force restoration and slight self healing is awesome for a safe sustainable rotation and I'm sure many newer players to the spec will love this. Also allows you to squeeze more reaping strikes into your rotation due to the increased force cost if you decide to go down that route.
  • Lightning Critical - FINALLY. For so long I have wanted deception to be able to use reckless charges on melee attacks. I love this.
  • Overcharge Saber - needs the 25% damage resistance baseline as mentioned for all specs - or halve the rate limit for surging charge for the duration to 3 seconds instead of 6.

Once again, I like all of these. I really really love just how many combinations you can create with these passives for deception. You can reach for really high skill ceiling rotations at the expense of micro managing your force to levels never before seen, or opt for safe long rotations in PvE. Only change is 25% DR for overcharge saber.

 

 

 

Hatred

Oh my sweet summer child, you have good AoE but the rest is just kinda meh. There are at least 3 clauses that begin with "killing a target" or "when a target dies" - which sound great! But if your target is dead, why does it matter? The answer is more AoE. Madness got some awesome buffs to its sustain but none of that translated here to hatred - the melee and thus squishier version. I'm a bit disappointed but as always I have solutions!

 

 

Level 15

  • Death focus - restore 5 force and reduce recklessness cooldown by 5 seconds for each enemy hit. Don't really care too much about recklessness unless we keep death knell, in which case this would be amazing. But, it's been confirmed that current set bonuses won't work so I'll hold my breath.
  • Penetrating death - death field dealing more damage and granting armour pen for each target hit can lead to monstrous AoE - which it is already good at. Otherwise it just seems like a flat 10% armour buff for 10 seconds in single target scenarios...
  • Deadly field - I've seen some people saying that this is amazing, and while yes having two charges sounds fun, without recklessness, your charges recharge independently. That means after your opener (in which you can use three death fields in a row on one target), you're back to the standard old one death field per rotation thing.

 

Unlike deception, I immediately have issue with these:

  • Considering Death Field is already an AoE ability, I don't know why all three passives are AoE focused.
  • I would take a page out of madness's book and flat out replace one of these with sustained corruption (most likely death focus).
  • Death focus and deadly field have an anti synergy where you want both - one to reduce recklessness's cooldown and the other to proc death field charges from recklessness.

So, I'd replace Death Focus with a carbon copy of sustained corruption from hatred's cousin madness, change penetrating death into a more single target focused passive whereby it equally applies the 20% armour break debuff to all targets hit and does up to x% more damage the fewer targets there are.

I'd keep deadly field as it is - but I'd combine this with a later change to a passive allowing for more frequent casts of recklessness.

This way instead of a choice between aoe, aoe and more aoe, there'd be a choice between sustain, higher single target damage + armour break and the hilarity of 3 death fields in a row.

 

Level 20

Copy pasted from earlier:

I've already gone over the level 20 options under the "general" thoughts section. To reiterate, Overload should be the level 20 option for all specs. Maul spike should be changed to grant a large but short slow to Spike - with Spike being added baseline alongside a mini rework to how Spike works. Force Magnetism can stay as it is. Thus you'd have a choice between utility in overload, pinning down a target with Spike slow or running away with magnetism.

 

 

Level 30

  • Ruin - bouncing eradicate makes me thing of plasmatech and pyrotech with their bouncing DoT. The difference being, theirs lasts 30 seconds whereas you have a few seconds to work with and it only deals initial damage.
  • Eradication ray - sounds great, is fun in practice - but is actually worse than both other options.
  • Befall - straight period damage crit buff - the only good option here.

These changes come down to - weird bouncing, no damage gain and a flat crit buff. Only one of these is really any good.

 

Ruin should instead double the duration of eradicate and bounce with the entire DoT, not just the initial damage. This not only increases sustain by turning eradicate into more of a real longer lasting DoT, but also helps with target swapping as it would be one less DoT to set up.

 

Eradication Ray sounds fun but even in burst scenarios isn't great and what's more, is actually the only passive I can think of so far that is a flat nerf to the spec! Leeching strike restores force for each periodic damage effect on a target. A global cooldown is higher than 1 second. If you cast eradicate with eradication ray and then leeching strike, you just spent 4 more force than you should have for the sake of 0 damage gain. Instead, eradicate could increase its DoT damage for each deathmark it consumes by x%. This would create a quickly increasing damage burn. Alternatively, eradicate could consumer present dots for bonus damage (though this would have to be balanced out with the 9 second raze cooldown and the fact that you can double cast with an non-raze-procced eradicate).

 

Befall is fine - but would be best if a passive at level 35 is reworked.

 

Level 35

  • Maliciousness - sounds amazing but it actually only really resets leeching strike and eradicate. The damage buff is the main thing, but once again, you're already good at AoE and in single target situations - your target is already dead so the damage buff does nothing.
  • Hungering Force - completing my explanation into how I'd tie together deadly field with more frequent recklessness casts, hungering force should instead reduce the cooldown of recklessness whenever a DoT crits. My reasoning is that you already increase DoT crit chances by 20% with the languishing lashes discipline passive - then a further 10% with Befall. At that point, why care about a 5% crit chance buff even with the 1 force regen?
  • Overcharge saber - needs the 25% damage reduction or it should cause all your DoTs to heal you for 1% max health over the duration instead of the normal 10% damage or something similar - full ilfesteal mode.

I'd completely redesign maliciousness. You already have so much AoE and so many on target kill effects that it's hard to keep track of. I'd rather bake in two time trouble into this passive - melee hits causing extra ticks of creeping terror.

Next, I'd change hungering force to instead reduce the cooldown of recklessness by 1 second whenever a DoT crits - allowing you to combo it with deadly field.

Lastly, Overcharge saber once again should either give 25% DR to all specs, or buff each spec in a different way. Overcharge saber should be exactly that! You overcharge your current charge. Darkness gets overcharged tankiness, deception gets overcharged burst through more potential 3 stack discharges and hatred gets to live out its lifestealing dream with a much higher lifesteal.

Ultimately this would give a meaningful choice between sustained damage through a two time trouble bake in, burst potential with more death fields and recklessness activations and lastly overcharge saber for self sustain.

 

 

 

This took me about 3-4 hours to make in total and is probably the most comprehensive and thought out post I've made on a game forum. I have given justification for all my suggestions and at the very least I hope it was an enjoyable read and gives the devs some more ideas for how they could improve each spec. Hatred absolutely needs the most work if we're talking specific disciplines and is the only discipline so far that nerfs its rotation over live. I really do urge you (the devs) to consider shifting round the level 20 and 70 abilities and reworking Spike to establish it as THE assassin hard stun - creating a stronger differentiation between the skills available to a sorcerer/sage and assassin/shadow. We don't have base classes anymore, so why do they both need electrocute - a shared ability - baseline? Spike is way too cool an ability to be left in the dirt for damage specs and I won't feel the same without it. To end on a high, Deception feels fantastic. Love it. Amazing work as well with all the passive names, I got a kick out of reading them.

 

Thanks for reading!

Edited by LordCamTheGreat
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HATRED

 

I've dabled in all 3 assassin specs on the live server. Of the 3 of them hatred is by far my favourite and what i actually noticed when testing the hatred is that it still felt like my hatred assassin overall.

 

I felt comfortable with it and there was nothing that I can really say needs changing urgently. I can easily get over the loss of whilwind and spike there are too many stuns in the game as it is. I play a lot of regs and getting ganked by 2 operatives or 2 sins or a mix of both is not fun, so i'll take the loss of some cc as a good thing for the game as a whole.

 

Not tested the other two specs on PTS yet, I'll tackle each spec one at a time and post my thoughts accordingly.

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PvP Deception player here

 

I think Severing Slash just needs to be outright removed from the game, because it's a redundant ability that no one ever used anyway. It just eats the global CD for nothing. You already have Lacerate for AoE damage and Stealth reveal.

So the fact that it tries to compete against Whirlwind and Force Shroud is ridiculous.

Taking Force Shroud is going to be a no-brainer for Ranked PvP anyway, there is no way you're passing a self-cleanse.

 

On top of that, I think the level 50 choice is also going to be a no-brainer for PvP: you always go for 6 seconds invulnerability to stuns, you can't justify saying no to that.

 

Overall, the relevance of assassins in ranked pvp will be largely determined by whether we get to keep Two Cloaks or not. In the current patch, there is a utility that prolongs the duration of Force Shroud which also applies to the utility that grants you Force Shroud each time you use your Cloak. Which means, you can basically get 3 5-second long Force Shrouds in one match. If that is gone, assassins are going be a lot easier to kill overall.

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I wont post a full breakdown because others have done a great job and I can't even get into the PTS due to pink screen of death.

 

I do have concerns I would like to discuss based on what I've read and watched. Specifically regarding Whirlwind, Shroud, Overloard and Unbreakable will.

 

On Darkness level 70 has use choose between Overload and Whirlwind, and to a lesser extent severing slash. I think as a tank being forced to choose between abilities that allow them to control the enemies and their placement is a very strange choice for a tank. I also make heavy use of both Overload and WW on Hatred for grouping enemies in order to dot spread - especially when duoing/solo'ing content without a tank. It isn't the biggest loss in the world but I think the quality of life the class loses is a step backwards. I'm holding judgement on Hatred until I can test personally but Overloard feels like it will vanish into the ether when paired up against maul spike - choosing burst damage vs CC on a class that already lacks burst feels like an obvious and inevitable choice and the same goes for Whirlwing, against force shroud it simple does not stand a chance of being relevant outside of niche scenarios.

 

Then we get unbreakable will. At first I didn't think much of this choice, reapers rush all day right? But no - a few hours after reviewing the changes I was happily running heroics while waiting for a PVP queue to pop. Even with the cool down reductions and cleanses currently available being CC chained by basic enemies was a very real annoyance. Then we get into the pvp match itself and every man woman and their dogs has multiple stuns available. In a game where even the most basic of enemies can stun chain and PVP matches revolve around stuns and break frees making Unbreakable will a choice feels once again like a step backwards for Assassin.

 

That's my general problem with the Assassin changes. Nothing glaringly bad at a glance but perhaps for me more than others rather than being given a choice we are given the illusion of choice because on multiple lines there are abilities that can just not contend with those they are up against.

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1. The way the combat styles are working definitely feels like an Assassin imo. The core of the class wasn’t really changed too much and we got some cool new abilities.

 

2. I tried Darkness and Hatred

 

Darkness

I liked that we have the option to get increased crit/threat generation on depredating volts or have it arc to multiple targets. The extra force regeneration when DV hits targets affected by mind control is also noticeable, and can provide a good threat boost. The options for dark ward were decent as well. I really liked the one that gave the accuracy debuff when dark ward breaks from damage. The tooltips/descriptions were informative, accurate, and, as far as I could tell, all worked.

 

Hatred

I also enjoy playing Hatred. I’m a fan of Befall, the extra charge on Death Field, and the overall choices of increasing the crit/fdamage of periodic effects. The tooltips/descriptions were informative, accurate, and, as far as I could tell, all worked.

 

For each class so far (guardian/sent, sniper/op, and sin/sorc), I feel the changes are pretty cool. Looking forward to seeing the new abilities in the future update. Thanks for the hard work

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Hatred.

 

Still feels like hatred. Cleaner UI is nice. Nice utilities.

A few PvP related issues. Hatred needs to have better survivability in PvP, it just feels so soft and squishy and always has been, the changes to PTS make the combat style feel even more squishy as vs mobs in the environment the hp went down so fast. Also please make death field the dot spread again, and lacerate tick the dots or summin, a bit like sweeping slash dealing more dmg with veng warrior dots.. It has always felt clunky with lacerate spreading dots. Other than that It plays nicely atm.

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I mostly play DPS, or Assassin (Deception) yet most the talk is about Hatred being significantly buffed; or their Tank Build.

 

Don't think there's any changes for Deception, just a few less opportunities, and may have to consider Hatred even though I really don't want to. I'd however expect them to be far more squishy, and if they aren't right now, then it's likely coming...

 

Still I'm mostly not likely having to choose between 1 of 3 abilities that used to be CORE defining on most classes. Perhaps this isn't so much an issue for Assassin, yet still it's greatly on my mind.

 

Really wish they limited this down to 2, and focused on a separate skill tree for PvP that was different. They could also do something similar for more Tacticals, making them mostly PvE, or PvP options; say at the PvP Vendor for example.

 

Hatred. Still feels like hatred. Cleaner UI is nice. Nice utilities.

A few PvP related issues. Hatred needs to have better survivability in PvP...

 

https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=997315

 

I really dislike this new Interface, why, because it takes twice as many clicks just to see your skills. I strongly prefer the OLD interface a lot more, because less clicks is what I call cleaner & efficient! Less clicks, (one) not click and drag before you even see the categories or skills. I give two thumbs down to the NEW interface, and I have heard a lot more say similar in General Chat about it!

 

I've already said above, what I think they should do regarding PvP; that's separate Skill Tree, and Tacticals.

Edited by Strathkin
Grammar
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for basic info, im gonna talk from pvp pov.

 

Deception:

Imo the changes feell pretty good, but

-energized blade resets a crap ton especially with lightning critical, imo needs a rate limit or has to be changed to "reset on direct force attack crits" (spamming the **** out of one button isnt something I consider fun)

- force magnetism; i dont see anyone picking this ever except for trolling urself

- overcharge saber; nothing wrong with it i guess but would have loved to see something like "also increases force damage by 10% over the duration" or something

- speed surge; muuuch worse than force phase...dunno if it matters in pve anywhere

- severing slash...im honestly sad that's still in the game

 

offnote-I would have loved to see phasewalk again as a choice for sins (just do it devs); also, it would have been cool to get a way to choose between ball lightning and shock (let them do slightly different stuff)...maybe u could do that via tacticals later...rly loved the animation in deception

 

hatred:

rly like the new stuff there, gonna see how it plays out in matches

-force magnetism/speed surge/ severing slash: refer to deception above

 

Wont give any feedback abt darkness since im not a tank main

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I have been taking a break from SWTOR after being mortified by the interview with Chris Schmidt about 7.0 and Combat Styles ( https://vulkk.com/2021/08/22/swtor-game-designer-director-explains-combat-styles/)

 

So I only just learned about Assassin being available for testing on PTS.

 

Despite my complete disagreement with the philosophy behind this lazy make-the-devs-life-easier-change-a-10-year-old-combat-system exercise, I was willing to get involved because I know Assassin... its predominately all I've ever played since launch.

 

Before I was going to start testing Screenshot comparison of my Character Copy from Star Forge to PTS shows me that this is a straight up nerf for Sith Assassin: Darkness - a Class that is the last one to need any nerf of any kind! How do you even justify adding 5 Levels and still having less stats than what we have now currently?!

 

Skank Tank at Level 80 =


  • Significantly Lower Crit Chance (33.89% @ Lvl 80 PTS vs current 43.16% @ Lvl 75 LIVE) and Crit Multiplier (64.23% @ Lvl 80 PTS vs current 69.91% @ Lvl 75 LIVE) than my current Star Forge LvL 75;
     
  • Significantly Lower Damage Reduction Defense Chance (33.81% @ Lvl 80 PTS vs current 37.50% @ Lvl 75 LIVE);
     
  • Significantly Lower Bonus Damage (6621.2 @ Lvl 80 PTS vs current 6640.7 @ Lvl 75 LIVE);
     
  • Reduced Force Regen (10.9 @ Lvl 80 PTS vs current 11.1 @ Lvl 75 LIVE);
     
  • SIGNIFICANT Alacrity Reduction (4.49 @ Lvl 80 PTS vs current 7.20 @ Lvl 75 LIVE);

 

WTHK Droid are you doing?!? :d_eek:

 

This is so sickening that I have zero appetite to play masochist to this little charade of 'more choice' grift gaslighting.

 

Plan and simply, I'm done... all this PR is a front for completely remaking/re-imagining the SWTOR combat system, that in practical terms means massive nerfs to a matured combat system that people know and are familiar.

 

So no - right off the bat this does not feel or resemble anything like what we have now...

 

Count me out - I'll go play War Thunder and spend my money over there.

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I have been taking a break from SWTOR after being mortified by the interview with Chris Schmidt about 7.0 and Combat Styles ( https://vulkk.com/2021/08/22/swtor-game-designer-director-explains-combat-styles/)

 

So I only just learned about Assassin being available for testing on PTS.

 

Despite my complete disagreement with the philosophy behind this lazy make-the-devs-life-easier-change-a-10-year-old-combat-system exercise, I was willing to get involved because I know Assassin... its predominately all I've ever played since launch.

 

Before I was going to start testing Screenshot comparison of my Character Copy from Star Forge to PTS shows me that this is a straight up nerf for Sith Assassin: Darkness - a Class that is the last one to need any nerf of any kind! How do you even justify adding 5 Levels and still having less stats than what we have now currently?!

 

Skank Tank at Level 80 =


  • Significantly Lower Crit Chance (33.89% @ Lvl 80 PTS vs current 43.16% @ Lvl 75 LIVE) and Crit Multiplier (64.23% @ Lvl 80 PTS vs current 69.91% @ Lvl 75 LIVE) than my current Star Forge LvL 75;
     
  • Significantly Lower Damage Reduction Defense Chance (33.81% @ Lvl 80 PTS vs current 37.50% @ Lvl 75 LIVE);
     
  • Significantly Lower Bonus Damage (6621.2 @ Lvl 80 PTS vs current 6640.7 @ Lvl 75 LIVE);
     
  • Reduced Force Regen (10.9 @ Lvl 80 PTS vs current 11.1 @ Lvl 75 LIVE);
     
  • SIGNIFICANT Alacrity Reduction (4.49 @ Lvl 80 PTS vs current 7.20 @ Lvl 75 LIVE);

 

WTHK Droid are you doing?!? :d_eek:

 

This is so sickening that I have zero appetite to play masochist to this little charade of 'more choice' grift gaslighting.

 

Plan and simply, I'm done... all this PR is a front for completely remaking/re-imagining the SWTOR combat system, that in practical terms means massive nerfs to a matured combat system that people know and are familiar.

 

So no - right off the bat this does not feel or resemble anything like what we have now...

 

Count me out - I'll go play War Thunder and spend my money over there.

 

I wouldn't worry about stat values too much, stats budgets are increasing with new gear levels and augments that'll inevitably come with the new expansion, so they're tuning the formulas to calculate stats percentages. This is something that is done across the board though, so even if with max iLVL and augments you'll still be below current values, that'll be true for all classes. Test it for any class currently supported on the PTS and you'll see similar drops in stats, it's what they've done with every expansion to prevent values jumping up to high because of the increasing stat budget from better gear.

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Dear SWTOR team,

 

Here is my feedback for Sith Assassins.

 

Darkness Assassin

 

Overall the rotation seemed to be the same. It felt a lot like it is currently on live. I have noticed that you need to make a choice between Overcharge Saber and some other defensive cooldowns. Since it doesn't provide a 25% absorb boost like it can right now on live, I think it makes it a less desirable option. I do think that some options on the earlier levels do provide some extra defense though via passive means through some abilities. Having a choice to make Devastating Bolts an AOE is quite fun (not that Assassins need more AoEs, but it is a good option). I think the best way to test it will be by doing an operation, which I haven't done.

 

Deception Assassin

 

The flow of this spec feels exactly the same as it is on live. I do want to make few comments about some of the choices though. I found it quite devastating (in a good way) that there are options to increase your armor penetration as well as your crit chance (via stacks of Voltaic Slash). If you min/max your gear you should be able to make your deception assassin a crit machine. It certainly adds some good flavor to it.

 

Hatred Assassin

 

Once again, the rotation of the spec and how it flows feel the same. Extra options related to Death Field are amazing! You can really spice up the AoE potential of this spec. By making Death Field to have 2 stacks and gaining stack for Recklessness is quite powerful. Some other good choices include armor penetration and cooldown reduction for Recklessness for each target hit. I had a lot of fun playing with that.

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I have noticed that you need to make a choice between Overcharge Saber and some other defensive cooldowns. Since it doesn't provide a 25% absorb boost like it can right now on live, I think it makes it a less desirable option

 

It's supposed to give +25% Damage Reduction, not Absorption. It's been giving me that +25% DR but no passive or the ability states it grants this DR. Recklessness does grant +30% Shield Absorption though.

Edited by Ruchalus
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It's supposed to give +25% Damage Reduction, not Absorption. It's been giving me that +25% DR but no passive or the ability states it grants this DR. Recklessness does grant +30% Shield Absorption though.

 

I read through all of the abilities in the list and the tree for each spec when I first tried testing the sin. It does say it in a passive called Premonition. It reads:

 

“Increases your stealth detection level by 5, defense by 2%, and shield absorption by 4%. In addition, when you activate Overcharge Saber, damage reduction is increased by 25% for the duration.”

 

For sin, I didn’t notice in my testing any incorrect tooltips or abilities not working as intended. However, there were some for sorcerer.

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I read through all of the abilities in the list and the tree for each spec when I first tried testing the sin. It does say it in a passive called Premonition. It reads:

 

“Increases your stealth detection level by 5, defense by 2%, and shield absorption by 4%. In addition, when you activate Overcharge Saber, damage reduction is increased by 25% for the duration.”

 

Back when I first read all the passives during testing, I didn't see that. Maybe they added it after a couple people brought it up? Or maybe my reading comprehension is not as good as I thought. Regardless, it's nice that we can see it listed out as intended.

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  • 1 month later...

With the most recent patch I looked back at Assassin and here are my thoughts.

 

Still has a bunch of issues, overcharge saber needs to be baseline at least for tanks considering tanks gain 25% dr with overcharge saber. This means there is no choice at level 47 for a tank.

 

Level 73 is still not really a choice for dps, you need force shroud to survive.

 

 

Now that we can see the levels at which we gain our base abilities, the new levelling experience looks really slow.

You have a single DCD which is only gained at level 39 (at level 31 you get combat stealth - which is NOT a dcd in pve content). That means until level 73, you can only defend yourself against white damage attacks.

 

You also now gain force speed at level 31 which means until 31, you do not have any way to engage outside of stealth. This combined with not having any DCDs before level 39 means that assassins will be abysmal in pvp. I played pvp at every level on my most recent shadow, and playing in lowbie levels felt awful. This will be even worse and I can't see anyone enjoying pvp on an assassin or shadow until they get force shroud and phantom stride.

 

Overcharge saber is not good enough for dps specs to be chosen over the passives at its level, but is mandatory for tanks due to 25% dr.

 

Overall not much seems to have changed for assassins this patch. They are still incredibly fragile while also losing a lot of utility and mobility.

 

The level 68 and 78 passive choices are far harder to make than the level 73 choice. Force shroud vs whirlwind vs severing slash is not even a contest. One is a mandatory DCD for all content, the others are just whatever in comparison especially considering whirlwind only lasts 8 seconds compared to the 60 of a sorc.

 

For level 68, Force phase is practically mandatory due to the obscene amount of slows and roots in the game. PvP on a sin/shadow is hellish on live without it and will be even worse in 7.0. Obfuscating speed is really nice, 50% move speed boost on your shock/ball/eradicate lets you stick to a target, but force phase is just so necessary as a melee class.

 

For level 78, I used to take all of these on live. More force speed is mandatory as a melee class. Reaper rush is great for PvE open world, useless in everything else. Shroud of madness is borderline mandatory for combat cloak to properly work in PvP if you take force shroud at level 73 and is completely mandatory if you didn't take force shroud at 73.

 

If you didn't get the memo, force shroud is a fundamental DCD for the assassin and shadow and without it they will heavily suffer. Guardians got a bunch of abilities back and they have more baseline abilities than a sin, so I'm hopeful things can change.

 

Hatred

 

For hatred, the death field morphs still just feel ok.

Death focus is ok for force management but getting more recklessness charges doesn't really matter unless we keep death knell's 30% melee damage buff as a legendary item (can't check because descriptions aren't working properly)

Pervasive death is fine as a 10% flat damage buff + melee damage buff through armour pen.

Deadly field is still great for AoE and open world content and clearly not meant for single target rotations.

 

For the eradicate morphs

Ruin still feels kinda meh because it only deals the initial hit damage. If it full transfered with the dot, it would be much more fun. As it stands, it's the only real AoE option but even then doesn't perform its job well enough to be taken over Befall.

Eradication ray is funny but more or less worthless compared to the other 2. It deals worse damage than both other morphs while also preventing you from using leeching strike's full 3 dot buff. It needs a buff.

Befall is great for single target, 10% crit buff on dots is really nice.

 

Maliciousness is great for open world, mostly irrelevant for anything else as while resetting all melee attacks sounds great, that's only really 2 attacks + eradicate.

Hungering force is the clear winner for me, hatred suffers from force management and this fixes it to an extent. 5% extra crit is just a bonus.

Overcharge saber needs a buff to be taken for the dps classes. Regaining only 15% hp won't save you in a fight and slightly more damage once per 2 minutes is far worse than having more force to use more thrashing strikes.

 

I'm glad to see that recklessness has a passive for hatred that reduces its cooldown every time a dot crits. Love this.

Also glad to see that mass mind control still has the 30% DR buff built in for hatred. They really need it.

Hatred also has one less tactical than the other disciplines (though of course we still have no clue which tacticals are staying, what new ones we are or aren't getting etc.)

 

I tried killing random enemies around Onderon without a companion to test my survivability and I was struggling to stay alive during fights as hatred.

 

 

Deception

 

Deception feels like it's in a good spot, more survivable than hatred due to the passive DR reduction, very crit heavy and resetting reaping strike is still awesome.

Lightning engine's force regen doesn't appear to be working on voltaic slash though in theory it fully negates any energy issues you may have.

Both lightning engine and lightning critical are way better than overcharge saber for the same reasons as with hatred. ​

 

I still really dislike that spike is gone, it's one of my favourite abilities in the game and is THE unique assassin CC ability. I talked extensively in my previous post about how things could be moved around so I won't go over it again here.

 

 

I didn't bother testing with any legendary items as half of them have missing descriptions. I also as per usual refuse to test with tacticals until we get explicit confirmation on which ones will still be available or not. No point testing and saying this is great or underpowered etc if they won't even exist in 7.0.

 

For the legendary items I can see:

  • Dynamic force package is ok but not great, 15 second less recklessness isn't as significant without the 30% melee buff from death knell
  • Force resistance package is only a 3% damage resistance boost, which is pretty underwhelming compared to other legendary items such as the emergency power item that powertechs and vanguards get for their tanks.

The rest I can't read so can't comment.

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Player here with a couple of thousands hours in Deception Assassin.

 

Well i logged into the test server and i was literally shocked that i simply lost spike,

 

Where is the new stuff ?

Instead of just giving the player 1 or 2 new abilities with level 80 on top of what the players at the moment have.

 

It feels like taking away important features what made the Assassin an Assassin.

Stuns made him survivable. Without he will just be a very weak class or just stacking damage up super high without any croud control.

Skillgap for PVP is dropping with this.

 

It simply feels like taking away some abilites and just giving the player a choice of some old.

If this goes live like this on the Testserver im gonna quit.

 

Best regards and bye.

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Player here with a couple of thousands hours in Deception Assassin.

 

Well i logged into the test server and i was literally shocked that i simply lost spike,

 

Where is the new stuff ?

Instead of just giving the player 1 or 2 new abilities with level 80 on top of what the players at the moment have.

 

It feels like taking away important features what made the Assassin an Assassin.

Stuns made him survivable. Without he will just be a very weak class or just stacking damage up super high without any croud control.

Skillgap for PVP is dropping with this.

 

It simply feels like taking away some abilites and just giving the player a choice of some old.

If this goes live like this on the Testserver im gonna quit.

 

Best regards and bye.

 

I just posted about this too.

 

Spinning Kick/Spike are a huge part of what makes Infiltration/Deception feel like their spec.

 

There's still an option to stun an opponenet with Shadow Strike/Maul from stealth, but the experience pales in compaison to using Spinning Kick/Spike as an opener.

 

At least for Jedi specs, the last kicks like in the game are the Knight interrupt ability and Spinning Kick for Shadows.

 

Spinning Kick/Spike should be given back to DPS Shadow/Assassin as baseline or worked into the skill tree in place of the current stun with Shadow Strike/Maul. It's too important to the feel of Infiltration/Deception when starting a fight, or stealthing out and reengaging.

Edited by arunav
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Spinning Kick/Spike should be given back to DPS Shadow/Assassin as baseline or worked into the skill tree in place of the current stun with Shadow Strike/Maul. It's too important to the feel of Infiltration/Deception when starting a fight, or stealthing out and reengaging.

 

In my first feedback post I basically said that assassins should gain spike baseline and lose electrocute - that way they have their unique hard stun compared to sorc. In exchange, spike would be able to be used out of stealth but on a slightly longer cooldown.

 

Pruning things like raid buffs would have made perfect sense, instead we're losing a load of iconic abilities for seemingly no reason.

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Hey folks,

 

Combat Change - Vanish

Currently, Vanish allows players to circumvent intended game mechanics, especially ones that require a target. It also allows for players to revive out of combat, and change their ability/discipline in the middle of an encounter. Vanish abilities are being slightly redesigned to remove unintended use, specifically dropping from combat and reviving in specified situations.

 

For all Flashpoints and Operations, Vanish abilities will instantly drop all threat and allow players to enter stealth at max level, however, players will no longer exit combat. This restriction does not apply to the open world PvE/PvP or Warzones.

 

We understand the benefit of resurrecting more frequently in group content, so we are removing the Operation wide lockout timer from combat rezzing. As a balance measure, we've made it so only healing disciplines have access to combat revives. We'll be monitoring this and will adjust the cooldown as needed.

 

-eric

 

 

Posting this here to try to ensure this gets seen, with the vanish change notwithstanding pls make sure to some how correct the recklessness resets for deception/infiltration sin/shadows due to then no longer leaving combat, this is a major dps loss for the class and would effectively remove them from endgame content due to raw lack of dps.

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Posting this here to try to ensure this gets seen, with the vanish change notwithstanding pls make sure to some how correct the recklessness resets for deception/infiltration sin/shadows due to then no longer leaving combat, this is a major dps loss for the class and would effectively remove them from endgame content due to raw lack of dps.

 

Force shroud should be made innate to vanish without a perk with this new change

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For the Deception spec i just found out there are some abilities that doesn't work as intended:

 

- Energized Blade : this doesn't work like said cause the critical hit use direct force attack does not reset the cooldown of reaping strike everytime. It seems to work for one attack every 10s and some time you will reset the cooldown every force attack seems weird.

 

- Lighting Engine: for this one the effect can occur once per second but it works only once every 10s or so.

 

For the serenity spec i just saw that the ability for the double death field do not work at all and some other seems bug as well.

 

i don't know if someone else saw this or not but just wanted to notice it ;)

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[Darkness]

I can only agree with @LordCamTheGreat

 

I play Shadow/Assasin-tank since the first day of this game, most times in PvP.

I took every nerf with more or less motivation for this class, but now it's enough with that destruction.

 

The choises for lvl 68 and 78 are...

Pvp without "Force Phase" is a very bad idea, but without the 15% extra movespeed... playing huttball with only one of these abilities are the pure horror. Solution: Put the effect from "Force Phase" on "Force Speed" by default. (for all classes and specs maybe with that ability)

For PvE all three abilities at lvl 68 are very nice to have. Leave it as it is will have a high impact for this class.

 

The choise at lvl 78 is very simple to fix it: Put the effect from "Shroud of Madness" on Force Cloack by default.

But leave it like that... RIP.

 

And bring back the 2 extra seconds for "Force Shroud" maybe.

 

 

Note: Sorry for my possibly bad english. Some of this post are translated with google, flame them for any bad grammar xD

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