RE: Treading the Path of Darkness - The Sith Tankasin
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swtorfan84 Wrote:any chance u can ask this guy what blackout does?
Gorodetski Wrote:I can go one better  I can't ask that Dark Charge guy about it but I CAN put you in contact with a guy : alterswtor@gmail.com
he says he's got a Beta Test account and is MORE than willing to answer any/all questions about high end chars/abilities
he also confirmed that Sith Assassins have around the same level of armor as Juggys, there are NO avoidance tanks in this game.
Pantelijus Wrote:If i remember correctly heavy armored tanks get 60% armor buffs while Assassins/Shadow gets 300% armor buff
Makes sense considering Ass/Shadow can only wear light armor
Masterkiller Wrote:Gorodetski Wrote: he also confirmed that Sith Assassins have around the same level of armor as Juggys, there are NO avoidance tanks in this game.
That is GREAT news. Trying to balance 2 mitigation tank classes and 1 avoidance tank class is extremely difficult. Look at how much they changed the Death Knight and Druid for this very reason. We are seeing some smart decisions by Bioware, in reference to only having a single primary stat and homogenizing tanking styles.
Gorodetski Wrote:aye, gotta say despite ALL my previous statements, I did breath a sigh of relief when I read that they say Assassin's have SLIGHTLY less armor and SLIGHTLY more avoidance (something along the lines of 5/10% less armor and around the same level more avoidance) but it's just enough to give a different flavour, not enough to make the damage intake ANY different.
as far as we know, tanking breaks down like this
Assassin SLIGHTLY higher avoidance SLIGHTLY lower armor (marginally lower armor, and slightly increased avoidance *probably due to Dark Ward*)
Sith Warrior - base everything (the norm from which we all brach off )
Powertech SLIGHTLY higher armor SLIGHTLY lower avoidance (IIRC they can't parry/deflect, only miss and shield, but the armor makes up for it)
Alratan Wrote:This is indeed pleasing! In the last build, many beta testers seemed to think that Assassins/Shadows were already the best tanks, so I wonder how have these buffs to Assassins and the other classes have changed things.
Gorodetski Wrote:really Alra? Why where they saying there where the best? where they easier to heal/better threat/longer TTL?
also I think the Dark Charge buff has been around for a while, so I think that opinion is based on the buffed Dark Charge, so very little will have changed.
also seems like the trees have been tweaked a little:
http://war-tools.com/t73007.html
important changes:
Shroud of Darkness no longer increases Will 
Blood of the Sith is now Tier 4 (swaps place with Mounting Darkness)
Nerve Wracking now also increases damage on targets stunned by Electrocute (the more I think about it, the more this seems like a PvP talent to me)
Mounting Darkness now only increases DCD by 15% BUT now also increases Wither's damage by 30%
Will of the Sith now tier 1 in Madness increasing Will by 6% (I'm not going mad right... it wasn't always there )
Slightly less important changes:
Charge Mastery now also increases the duration of your Lightning Charge effect by 3 seconds...woo...
the talent to renew Creeping Terror when you Raze targets below 50% health is gone guess it really WAS too OP to make it live... ah well 
interesting note: I was looking at the Jedi Shadows tree's which are a mirror to ours, and their version of 'Force Shroud' is called 'Resiliance' so I'm guessing it's NOT a vanish type spell, and is in fact a DR CD just speculation of course.
Alratan Wrote:Gorodetski Wrote: really Alra? Why where they saying there where the best? where they easier to heal/better threat/longer TTL?
also I think the Dark Charge buff has been around for a while, so I think that opinion is based on the buffed Dark Charge, so very little will have changed.
Survivability, at least, from what I recall people saying. You might be right about Dark Charge having been like that for longer, but it seems odd that no-one mentioned it before.
(Yesterday 07:31 AM)Gorodetski Wrote: also seems like the trees have been tweaked a little:
http://war-tools.com/t73007.html
Thanks for the information, Gorodetski and Draevenus!
I'm not terribly surprised by these changes. Will of the Sith in T1 Madness was expected after Consulars received a similar skill in their shared tree, and with that addition it's not unexpected that Shroud loses Will. I can't help but feel that Endurance is a little weak now, when one considers that 2 points at T1 nets a 6% dominant stat increase, but 3 points at T2 nets a mere 3% Endurance increase. However, unless Swelling Charge has received a stealth buff, it's still well worth taking.
The Blood of the Sith change is also not a surprise, given what I was saying a few posts ago about Focus regeneration being difficult for an Assassin. Putting BotS earlier means that a levelling Darkness Assassin won't go mad from unused Induction procs.
Mounting Darkness is also a very nice buff, but along with Nerve Wracking, it does make me wonder if my thoughts about there being more AoE tanking even on bosses when compared to other games be somewhat borne out. That said, they'd have to be pretty powerful mooks for an extra damage increase be worth it. Your point about PvP is spot on.
Moreover, the fact that it now buffs 2 CC abilities, one of which a dedicated CC, it does make me even more certain that NW won't affect bosses, as it seems a very definite CC ability.
We also now have a definite duration for Wither listed in the skill tree, at 15s, which does imply that this is the expected reset rate in a single-target Assassin tanking rotation. That said, the buff from Mounting Darkness also suggests that they want to reward us if we can fit it in slightly more often than 15s. The fact that Shock is no longer as cheap as it once was seems to support this.
Additionally, it's probable they didn't want a large amount of Induction proc wiff to cripple our threat generation. Thus, even without lots of Induction procs, we can still spend our Focus/Force on Wither instead, even if the debuff is still up.
(Yesterday 07:31 AM)Gorodetski Wrote: the talent to renew Creeping Terror when you Raze targets below 50% health is gone guess it really WAS too OP to make it live... ah well
Yeah, a teeny bit of OP, perhaps. Was also necessary to fit Will of the Sith in, I suspect.
(Yesterday 07:31 AM)Gorodetski Wrote: interesting note: I was looking at the Jedi Shadows tree's which are a mirror to ours, and their version of 'Force Shroud' is called 'Resiliance' so I'm guessing it's NOT a vanish type spell, and is in fact a DR CD just speculation of course.
That fits my previous speculations nicely - excellent!
If I'm right about Nerve Wracking, I can see this build being advantageous. If not, I'd be highly tempted to swap Shroud of Darkness for it.
After the recent posts in this thread which have asked questions already answered in the mess of previous discussions, and the fact that at least 4 Sith Assassin tanking blogs seem to have popped up which all list an incomplete set of data which we have already thoroughly analysed, I have taken it upon myself to re-write Ysme's initial post/guide as a Sith Assassin Tanking Compendium, incorporating a lot of recent information and discussions. Please feel free to chime in with additional comments, here or there.
Gorodetski Wrote:nice breakdown dude, I agree on pretty much all of it seems a shame they've nerfed shock again , seems a bit silly to have so much in our tree based around Shock, and then make the cost so high we can hardly ever us it  high cost FTL, lets just hope it drops again in the next build, or change Induction to lower the cost on proc as well
as to the build that's exactly the build I was trying to link yesterday, I reckon I'll be running with that asap. I do agree about SoD though... 3% endurance seems pretty weak, you'd think with them moving Will off it, the talent would be fairly underbudget, maybe they'll buff the endurance to ~6% soon.
I also agree about Nerve Wracking, I really WANT it to be good, and with SoD being as bad as it is I'd happily swap the points from there in NW if it was usable on bosses etc.
As to Wither, I'm not sure if we'll be using it more on single target that is needed to refreah the debuff, even with the boosted damage the focus cost seems a little inhibitive... I guess we'll have to see how the damage is in comparison to other moves in our toolbox. In AoE I imagine it'll be spammed as much as possible alone with Dark Charge Discharge (which IIRC hits 5 people for a medium amount of damage, and lowers their accurary by 5%)
Alratan Wrote:Gorodetski Wrote: nice breakdown dude, I agree on pretty much all of it seems a shame they've nerfed shock again , seems a bit silly to have so much in our tree based around Shock, and then make the cost so high we can hardly ever us it high cost FTL, lets just hope it drops again in the next build, or change Induction to lower the cost on proc as well
Thanks, I hope to keep it continually updated. Regarding Shock, I think that the developers' concern was that Shock was better for single-target tpf than Wither, which would be a bit of a let-down. Either that, or we had far too much focus/force to play around with. At 14.3 fps regeneration, we can still use Shock reasonably frequently, I would have though.
(Yesterday 11:52 PM)Gorodetski Wrote: as to the build that's exactly the build I was trying to link yesterday, I reckon I'll be running with that asap. I do agree about SoD though... 3% endurance seems pretty weak, you'd think with them moving Will off it, the talent would be fairly underbudget, maybe they'll buff the endurance to ~6% soon.
Great minds, etc. Yes, I would hope that SoD is buffed, but I expect that it won't be, as it's already good enough to take compared to alternatives.
(Yesterday 11:52 PM)Gorodetski Wrote: As to Wither, I'm not sure if we'll be using it more on single target that is needed to refreah the debuff, even with the boosted damage the focus cost seems a little inhibitive... I guess we'll have to see how the damage is in comparison to other moves in our toolbox.
Remember that at 40 Force, Wither is comparable to the cost of Shock at 39/33 (45/40 - 6), and it may well provide quite a lot more threat given the MD change. This is especially true if Wither's increased threat is based off the damage it deals rather than being a separate component (e.g Wither damage deals double threat rather than Wither having additional threat equal to a flat damage amount). The real question is the coefficient received by Wither and Shock.
From the E3 video and that Sorcerer's damage bonuses, a critted Shock would deal (I think) 407.5 * 1.5 = 611.25 damage on average, with +15% threat, to the equivalent of 702.94 threat.
Wither deals a base of 174 damage, or 224.2 with MD. If we assume that it deals double threat for a moment, we'd only have to assume that the same +damage the E3 Sorcerer has increases the base damage of Wither by 55% in order to make the threat produced comparable (174 * 1.55 * 1.3 = 701.22). This isn't unreasonable figure given that comparable attacks like Thundering Blast, the capstone Sorcerer skill/ability, deals 157-166 damage.
All in all, I think this is meant to make Induction procced Shock inferior to Wither in the rotation, whereas before it might have been slightly superior due to lower force cost. Induction procced Shock is a filler between Wither, not the other way around.
(Yesterday 11:52 PM)Gorodetski Wrote: In AoE I imagine it'll be spammed as much as possible alone with Dark Charge Discharge (which IIRC hits 5 people for a medium amount of damage, and lowers their accurary by 5%)
Do you have a source for that, for reference? I may have missed it, but that sounds awfully similar to what Wither does - 5 targets, with 5% damage debuff. Also, don't forget that Dark Charge heals on melee hit, which makes Lacerate very valuable as well when AoE tanking.
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trapstar Wrote:Darth Hater Assassin Video Dissection
Hey guys. This is my first post on these forums, but I should be posting a lot from now on.. and hopefully help the site a lot when the game gets closer to release Rolleyes
Quote:The rest is lost, but contained a brief discussion of how Dark Charge Discharge actually works, and welcoming trapstar.
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Treading the Path of Darkness - The Sith Tankasin
