Mad Sith Assassin

SWTOR 2015 Roadmap

2015-02-10T13:56:00.000-05:00

SWTOR Roadmap Shortsighted

Producer Bruce Maclean's SWTOR 2015 roadmap is available on the official website. It states essentially what was previewed at recent community cantina events.

Unfortunately this is very shortsighted and light on details, focused heavily on the first quarter of the year - and we're already in February.

HM Flashpoints and PvP

Even after adjusting Hard Mode Flashpoint rewards, I haven't felt they warranted the time to farm up on my alts. At least Blood Hunt and Rishi are still fresh and we aren't waiting until a major update for their HMs.

I gave up on PvP. Bioware keeps saying there's more in development and they have a plan for improved queues and matchmaking, but in the meantime I find it boring. Either you stomp or get stomped, depending on the groups.

With no word on how matchmaking will be improved I imagine the ranked season will still be full of premades in solo queue and win traders in group matches. How can you peg someone as cheating if there are only enough people queued for one match?

Ziost and Story

We were told Ziost was coming and it would continue the story after the events of Yavin 4 played out. It should be interesting to see if we'll have another class-specific quest on the new planet or how our choices are incorporated in the overarching storyline.

This is what I have the highest hopes for right now. Bioware's strengths lie in storytelling and they should always play that up to stand out from other MMORPGs. If they can pull off less generic questing than Yavin dailies the majority of the casual player base should be satisfied.

DnT HM Revan Kill

2015-02-06T16:29:00.000-05:00

Death and Taxes Hard Mode Revan Kill

Watch DnT's hard-earned Revan kill.

Congratulations to DnT

Death and Taxes downed Hard Mode Revan with a Deception Assassin on the team. This is noteworthy because full Bounty Hunter teams have been preferable since they currently provide unparalleled damage and mobility.

The team jokingly mentioned they needed an emote to lift Tenebras on the team's shoulders, implying they carried him. He often dishes out advice on Twitter and I'm happy to see his success.

In their announcement DnT stated this was the most difficult encounter in the game and overtuned for a Hard Mode fight.

Exploit Response from Bioware

2015-02-01T19:12:00.001-05:00

Bioware (Finally) Responds to Ravagers Exploit

By now most level 60 players have likely heard about the Ravagers loot exploit, which was finally fixed after about a month. I wanted to wait until Bioware acted before commenting on the situation.

Community Mindset

It's easy to see why players flocked to this particular exploit: action was not taken against Nefra or Dash'roode exploiters, and Nefra took multiple patches to try to fix pathing issues before a working resolution was implemented.

That alone isn't enough to persuade longtime upstanding players to cheat though. The main problem was that Shadow of Revan launched in an unacceptably buggy state and a week later the entire staff disappears for a month. There must have seriously been one person watching the servers during the holidays, just in case there was a failure.

Finally, after dealing with bugs and knowing Bioware's track record for extreme leniency towards exploits, there's peer pressure. It's not an excuse, but if you're getting told "We all have our chest armor, why don't you? If Bioware does anything they'll just remove the gear we're getting" it sounds like a good deal.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Bioware gets back from their monthlong vacation and threatens the wrath of the maker upon the playerbase. This was, naturally, met by players blaming Bioware for doing nothing to fix the exploit and letting it spread across servers instead of taking responsibility for their choice.

Now we have a company that completely dropped the ball by letting this go on for so long that also needs to take some sort of action for ToS violations. Expectedly, players became hostile towards Bioware and each other during the wait to see what punishments would actually be doled out.

Temple of Sacrifice Operation

2015-01-02T13:34:00.001-05:00

Temple of Sacrifice

All the story mode videos for Temple of Sacrifice bosses are ready for you to view. We also started Hard Modes and those fights will be added to the appropriate playlists in a few days.

Happy New Year

Shoutout to the SWTOR development team taking a month off while massive bugs and exploits were introduced right before the holidays. The sad thing is addressing exploits will take resources away from fixing things like Underlurker's casts breaking early, doing random 180s, and the cross failing for no reason amongst other non-raid problems.

It's situations like these that make me want to stay away from game development, despite the allure. Enjoy playing catch-up when you get back to the office, guys. I hope you had a nice break.

To my viewers: I genuinely thank you for your continued support. Have an awesome year.

The Ravagers Operation

2014-12-23T13:07:00.000-05:00

The Ravagers

Videos for Story Mode Ravagers are up on my Youtube channel.

Stay tuned for Temple of Sacrifice and hard modes after the holidays. Happy Life Day and Merry Sithmas.

Surviving Shadow of Revan

2014-12-02T09:34:00.000-05:00

SWTOR: Shadow of Revan

courtesy swtor.com

Early access for the Shadow of Revan expansion has arrived! Follow me on Twitch because I'll be streaming throughout the week. Here's an idea of what you can look forward to.

Disciplines

First, everybody needs to open up their skills and choose a specialization again. Next, you'll want to check the trainer to see if you need to buy anything that changed significantly.

Finish up by reading through Utilities and grabbing the ones you think will help you play the way you want. These can easily be changed so long as you're out of combat.

The site has been updated so Discipline overviews are part of the menu bar at the top of every page.

Train Crew Skills

New expansion, new crafting materials. Head over to the crew skills area to train then start up a quick mission so you can harvest from the new planets. Remember you can send out 6 companions on missions now.

UI Setup

If you play a spec with DoTs or lots of procs, take a few minutes to open the UI editor and decide what options you want to use for the new highlight feature.

Abilities buffed by procs and debuffs applied by you are now highlighted for easier tracking. The buff bar is also its own UI element and no longer attached to your player portrait. You can move it wherever you like.

Prelude

You may have the Prelude to the Shadow of Revan quest available to you on your ship. This will take you through the three flashpoints that led up to the expansion in Solo mode. That's right - Flashpoints important to the storyline can be experienced by solo players.

Rishi

After getting an odd holocall on your ship, you'll want to head to the pirate port on Rishi to investigate. This is a pretty lighthearted planet with various gangs and feathery natives to satisfy in the name of gaining experience towards level 60.

At some point during the main storyline, an opportunity to continue your class story pops up. Inquisitors speak to an old ally with some questions about how you'd like to handle the assets you acquired during your rise to power.

Rishi is the location of both new Flashpoints and The Ravagers Operation. Blood Hunt and the Battle of Rishi have Solo modes if you prefer to handle them that way.

Yavin 4

The story heats up as you head to Yavin 4, a location absolutely steeped in the Dark Side of the Force. Massive temples are visible through thick forest including the Temple of Sacrifice Operation.

It becomes obvious that an alliance is necessary to handle threats Revan presents on Yavin - Empire and Republic share a landing zone.

Although the atmosphere is tense, the number of quests on Yavin is actually similar to Oricon. This will become a reputation daily hub once the initial push to level 60 is over. Enjoy discovering and attempting to thwart the Revanites' plans. If you've read "Revan" you'll probably be very hyped.

SWTOR Level 60 Stalker Set Bonus

2014-11-24T14:12:00.000-05:00

New Stalker Set Bonus

Information from a Shadow of Revan press event came out today. Pretty Little Sith has a great writeup on what she got to play and took a photo of the new Assassin DPS set bonus.

Stalker's Gear

This is a 7 piece set that now includes bracers and belt at 192 gear rating.

2: Ball Lightning and Leeching Strike of Psychokinetic Blast and Serenity Strike increase damage dealt by 2% for 15 seconds.

4: Reduces the cooldown of Recklessness or Force Potency by 15 seconds.

6: After activating Voltaic Slash and Thrash or Clairvoyant Strike and Double Strike your next Assassinate and Maul or Spinning Strike and Shadow Strike will critically hit. This effect can only occur once every minute.

These look solid, but they're definitely not as big a deal as our old constant critical chance on Thrash. I like that our new abilities trigger bonus damage. It makes them seem a bit more interesting.

Not long until December, everybody!

Inquisitor and Consular Disciplines Stream

2014-11-13T18:33:00.000-05:00

Inquisitor and Consular Disciplines

SWTOR developers go into detail about Inquisitor and Consular disciplines.

The stream started with Sorcerors and Sages, which is outside of the scope of this blog (and was partially featured during the very first Discipline showcase.)

Utilities

Most of the skill points you may move around pre-3.0 are now utilities (damage reduction while stunned, extra stealth levels, instant whirlwind.)

Overload can be spec'd to root enemies.

Any Assassin spec can pick up extra duration of Force Shroud.

Force Speed removes movement-impairing effects.

Assassin's Shelter is available to any spec as a utility.

One ability per Discipline gains a root application.

Force Cloak increases movement speed by 50%.

Individual Disciplines

There are pretty minor changes in the actual discipline skills, most of which were already mentioned earlier this week.

Serenity is the new name for Shadow's old Balance spec.

Important Raid Debuffs

Darkness' Thrash and Lacerate reduce healing on targets in addition to Discharge reducing Accuracy.

Deception's Maul applies an armor debuff.

Both Hatred and Deception apply 5% more Force damage taken debuff.

Death Field makes targets take extra damage from area attacks.

Sith Assassin 3.0 Overview

2014-11-11T17:47:00.000-05:00

Sith Assassin Overview - SWTOR 3.0

Courtesy swtor.com

Today's Assassin developer blog highlights some changes we'll see in update 3.0.

All Assassins

Force Cloak does not prevent healing done or received.
Lacerate's cost and damage adjusted
Charge Mastery is now passive
Exploitive Strikes is passive (but only 5% crit chance)
Thrashing Blades is passive (5% more damage on Thrash, Lacerate, Assassinate, Voltaic Slash, Leeching Strike, and 3 less Force cost)

New Utilities

Audacity: 2.5 sec CD reduction on Overload and Recklessness grants 1 extra charge
Shroud of Madness: Force Cloak provides 2 seconds of Force Shroud
Dark Stability: Deflection makes you immune to stun, sleep, lift, and incapacitation

Darkness

Passive: Increased shield absorption by 30% for 20 seconds when you use Recklessness
Passive: Lacerate deals more damage to targets with an accuracy debuff
New: Depredating Volts - upgrade to Force Lightning

Deception

Passive: Increased critical chance and damage bonus of Lacerate
Increased damage on Lacerate, Voltaic Slash, and Assassinate
New: Ball Lightning - upgrade to Shock
Surging Charge only procs off of melee attacks to prevent Discharge wasting a Static Charge

Hatred

Passive: Death Field spreads Discharge and Creeping Terror to other targets it hits, provided one enemy already has these DoTs
New: Demolish - upgrade to Crushing Darkness. Makes targets take 5% more Force damage
New: Leeching Strike - Deals weapon damage and heals user for 50% of damage done

Impressions

The changes shown so far look pretty solid. Both DPS specs get some improved AoE capability and some old Force management talents are passive.

Spreading DoTs with Death Field should make target swapping a lot quicker than it is right now. Providing an additional 5% Force damage as Hatred finally adds some group utility (in a way.)

The new Darkness and Deception abilities sound a bit boring, but we know other classes are getting plain abilities to replace old ones as well.

It doesn't seem like there will be major playstyle changes, which I gladly welcome compared to the massive overhaul we had around 2.0.

Utilities look promising from a PvP standpoint. We all know how annoying crowd control spam is (thanks for nothing, Resolve.) Now we have some options to let us stay in the thick of battle and a better likelihood of escaping without needing to blow multiple cooldowns.

Check out more from the developer stream.

Combat Changes in SWTOR Update 3.0

2014-10-30T18:04:00.000-04:00

Combat Changes - SWTOR 3.0

Bioware discusses some combat changes coming with 3.0 in a livestream from 10/30/14.

Watch live video from SWTOR on Twitch

Stream Summary

Power targets for level 60 are not much higher than current 55s
DPS at 55 will be lower after 3.0 releases
Nightmare DF/DP may remain relevant at 60 due to the small power creep
Every AC will have a raid utility buff (enemies take more damage from certain attack types, raid wide Critical or Alacrity buffs like Bloodthirst, etc)
Training Dummy debuff consumable applies all possible DPS buffs/debuffs
Player DoTs cannot be cleansed in PvP (can still be purged)
Most crowd control can now be cleansed
Old content with cleanse-dependant mechanics will be updated to function with a longer cleanse cooldown
Interrupt cooldowns will be longer
Channeled abilities cannot be pushed back. Resources are now consumed per tick instead of upfront.
Accuracy has been removed from Disciplines, but scaling from rating has been increased. Tanks gain 10% Accuracy while in their tank stance.
Alacrity now also speeds up DoT ticks, reduces skill CDs and ICDs on procs (example: Duplicity)
Skills affected by a proc get highlighted on the UI
Buffs and Debuffs can be separately moved and customized in the UI Editor.
Your debuffs applied to a target are highlighted
Virulence is the new name for Sniper's old Lethality spec
Bolster now considers augments in its calculations
Expertise max value is not changing. 2 new PvP sets coming with 3.0.
Line of sight angle is increased for ranged attacks
Set bonuses for PvE and PvP gear are the same, but can't be mixed to activate them
Bonus main stat % increases are no longer in Disciplines

More to Come

In the following weeks, Bioware will continue sharing specifics about changes for each class, one at a time.

Shadow of Revan Announcement - SWTOR Expansion

2014-10-07T16:00:00.001-04:00

Shadow of Revan Expansion Announced

Bioware announced the next SWTOR expansion, "Shadow of Revan" yesterday. Thankfully the delay wasn't too long and seemed to be related to the pre-order bonus for subscribers: 12 times experience gain on class quests leading up to the December 9th launch.

I've been antsy on getting a timeline for update 3.0 and was about to let my subscription time run out if there wasn't any news soon. No point playing a story-driven game when you know nothing new is coming, right?

Shadow of Revan Features

There's obviously a lot we have yet to learn, but the expansion features a new storyline focused on the Revanite campaign to dissolve the Republic and Empire. This takes place on two new planets, Rishi and Yavin IV over the course of 5 more levels.

At launch, we can expect two tactical and four hard mode flashpoints. Two level 60 operations should also be ready to go. Major combat changes will be highlighted at a later date.

Finally, 3.0 brings us a revamp to the skill tree design.

Disciplines

Discipline Preview, courtesy swtor.com

Disciplines will look similar to World of Warcraft's newer talent system where you simply choose a spec and receive the most important tools as you level. This eliminates weird builds like Darkmaul or Death Field Deception but tightens up Bioware's ability to balance classes.

Where you will have a choice is the secondary "Utility" selection. Here you can choose which of a handful of perks you want to enable at any time you're not in combat. Some old abilities will be moved to this grouping. Later tiers will require a certain number of points placed in earlier tiers before unlocking.

The shared class trees are getting renamed. Madness Assassins will now be called "Hatred" spec. Abilities gained along the path will be similar, improved versions of what we currently have.

I hope to see things like secondary effects to Phase Walk, the root break with Force Speed, and Force Pull all moved to Assassin utility selections.

Guild Ship Unlocks: That's an Expensive Hallway

2014-09-22T15:26:00.000-04:00

SWTOR Conquest Guild Ship Unlocks

Conquests have been active for a while. After some guild merging and recruiting, we unlocked the first Logistical Encryption area of our guild capital ship. It's a hallway leading to more rooms to buy.

Is that an unreasonable amount of effort for a small area a handful of people can decorate? Maybe not, if we keep perspective of Conquests happening weekly for the rest of SWTOR's lifetime. It does, however, suck some of the enthusiasm out of us who were initially pretty excited about the system.

Conquest Leaderboard

The main thing putting me off from dumping all my time and effort into my guild's conquest points is the unlikelihood of actually placing at the top of the leaderboard when there are larger guilds that already focus on repeatable objectives as their normal gameplay preference. Most weeks this seems to be PvPers.

As an aside, the week ranked PvP objectives were highlighted I only got in one match the entire week and it was against a guild premade. This was in solo queue but it doesn't matter because the matchmaker's coding at this server population is completely worthless. I raged a bit and decided to take a break from PvP.

Back on topic: If you can't win first place, you just need to hit top 10 for your rewards. Now that the initial rush is over this can be accomplished by simply having a guild ship and choosing a planet with crappy bonuses. There's no competition for ranks 3-10.

Deception Assassin changes in SWTOR 2.10

2014-08-12T19:30:00.000-04:00

Deception Assassin Skill Changes for SWTOR 2.10

Our Deception skill tree is seeing some changes on PTS patch 2.10.

Assassin

Deception
Discharge now properly calculates damage based on the current number of Static Charges. This results in the damage at 1 stack being increased, the damage at 2 stacks being decreased, and the damage at 3 stacks remaining the same.
Voltaic Slash now has a base cost of 23 Force (down from 25).
Voltage now increases the chance to trigger Surging Charge by 12.5% per Voltage stack, in addition to its other effects.
Saber Conduit can now occur once every 9 seconds (down from every 10 seconds).
Electric Ambush now has a 100% chance to grant 1/2 stacks of Static Charge when Recklessness is used (changed from a 50%/100% chance to grant 3 stacks). It still reduces the cooldown of Recklessness upon exiting combat.

The TL;DR on that is a small DPS gain while trading off some on-demand burst. Servers are up, so discuss the changes and parse for yourself to give the developers feedback.

My initial testing is showing a 200-300 dps gain over live parses. I don't enjoy managing 2-stack Static Charge from Recklessness on top of Force starvation which actually seems worse despite reducing various costs due to a rotation change.

Update: Electric Ambush has been reverted. Deception will retain its initial Discharge burst.

Nightmare Dread Palace - SWTOR DnT

2014-08-06T01:26:00.002-04:00

Nightmare Dread Palace

While I'm still working on Dread Fortress, some acquaintances I often pick up tips from finished a timed run of Nightmare Dread Palace with Nightmare Power active.

Watch the impressive Dread Master title run from Assassin Tank Tenebras' point of view.

Watch live video from TenebrasTOR on Twitch

Progress: Nightmare Mode Draxus Down

2014-07-19T16:29:00.000-04:00

Nightmare Draxus Downed by TORWars Midnight Mynocks

It took awhile to get a solid team together long enough to practice Draxus' wave 5-6 mechanics. My team managed the kill this week with a few extra hours of raiding each night.

Grob'thok appears to be a simple tank coordination encounter. I hope to have that completed by the end of next week. If Brontes is too overwhelming to tackle when we reach her, we plan to switch to the first few bosses of Palace. Check out the full Nightmare Dread Fortress overview.

Madness Assassin Buffs - SWTOR 2.8

2014-05-01T16:38:00.000-04:00

Madness Assassin Buffs in SWTOR Update 2.8

Along with Nightmare Dread Palace, some class changes showed up on SWTOR PTS today. There are a bunch of buffs to Madness DPS, resulting in my highest dummy parse ever of over 3800.

Assassin Patch Notes

General

Assassin’s Training now additionally decreases the activation time of Whirlwind by 1 second.
Force Shroud provides 100% chance to resist Force and Tech abilities instead of 95%
Mass Mind Control lowers threat when used in any stance other than Dark Charge.
Phase Walk's cast time is 0.5 seconds and the duration has been increased to 5 minutes.

Madness (Assassin)

Creeping Terror now deals slightly more damage.
Lightning Discharge now deals slightly more damage.
~~Creeping Death now increases periodic Crushing Darkness damage by 8.3%/16.67%/25% to targets affected by the player’s Lightning Discharge in addition to the existing bonuses of Creeping Death.~~
Creeping Terror now also triggers the damage and Force regeneration of Lightning Burns.
Lingering Nightmares now increases the periodic damage of Crushing Darkness by 16.5%/33% instead of increasing its duration.
Haunted Dreams now reduces the cast time of Whirlwind by 0.5/1.0 second (up from 0.25/0.5) - requires Lightning Charge
Shapeless Spirit additionally causes Mass Mind Control to grant you 30% damage reduction for 6 seconds
Bloodletting additionally lets DoTs finish Assassinate's cooldown and allows it to be used on targets above 30% health once every 10 seconds.
Raze now has 100% chance to proc off a melee attack outside its rate limit.

SWTOR 2.7 Support Starfighters

2014-04-21T13:06:00.000-04:00

SWTOR Support Starfighters

Update 2.7 introduced new support variants of the Strike Fighter and Scout ship classes. They sacrifice some standard components to gain group utility skills. Which ones are worthwhile?

Strike Fighters

FT-3C Imperium and FT-7B Clarion

New Systems:

Remote Slicing: Drains enemy shield power and prevents engine or shield ability usage.

Combat Command: Increases nearby ship accuracy and weapon regeneration.

Repair Probes: Heals ships within the initial pulse over 20 seconds, providing ammo or shield regen.

Remote Slicing and Repair Probes provide a tangible effect. You can clearly see a beefy ship's shields melt away or rack up healing medals.

Combat Command lacks this feeling. You aren't rewarded for providing buffs and you aren't in control of how the boost goes to use. This ability doesn't feel like it makes a difference when you use it, so I prefer to build around either of the other two systems instead.

Remote Slicing does require full upgrades to be useful. With an abundance of shield regen abilities now in game, you need the perk to temporarily disable shield abilities to get any benefit from it.

Scouts

S-SC4 Bloodmark and Spearpoint

New Systems:

Tensor Field: Increases speed and turning rate of nearby ships.

Combat Command: Increases nearby ship accuracy and weapon regeneration.

For the same reasons as the Strike Fighters, I prefer Tensor Field over Combat Command. A speed boost from spawning in has an immediate impact on your team's ability to reach Domination objectives before the enemy.

When fighting, you can help counter Interdiction effects or let your team chase down a satellite-hugging pest more easily. This is my favorite of the new Systems abilities.

New Shields:

Repair Drone: Stationary regen station identical to the one carried by bombers.

Shield Projector: Restores nearby ship shield power while under fire (which normally prevents regeneration.)

I side with the Repair Drone on this choice. The Projector makes me think "I'm not sure this actually helped anybody" when I use it. Alternatively you could go with the old, reliable Distortion Field.

SWTOR Nightmare Dread Fortress Overview

2014-04-06T15:12:00.000-04:00

Nightmare Dread Fortress - SWTOR 2.7

This is an overview of mechanical changes seen in Nightmare Mode Dread Fortress vs Hard Mode.

NiM Bosses

Nefra, Who Bars the Way

Tank swap: The offtank gets a stacking debuff. At 4 stacks, taunt and become the main tank. Repeat throughout.

Nightmare Twin Attack: Nefra gains a stacking buff. At 15, Nightmare Twin Attack is casted. Damage will be spread to every player in front of her. The entire Operations group should move in front of her to fully reduce the damage done.

Gate Commander Draxus

Subteroths: Explosions cause a debuff that make you take double damage from other explosions. Separate them and use cooldowns like Force Shroud or Saber Ward if multiple die at once.

Despoiler: Does significant healing. Interrupt and kill before other enemies.

Corruptor: Cannot be interrupted by the same person on consecutive casts. Plan an interrupt order and burn them quickly.

Bulwarks: The shield blocks healing received by players inside. Enrage if not killed by the end of their shield cast.

Phase Timer: Each add wave will happen on a 55 second timer. You cannot wait around and recover while leaving one add alive.

Grapple: Draxus will occasionally pull a random person to his position.

Shield: The final wave of adds must be killed before Draxus' shield is removed.

Grob'thok, Who Feeds the Forge

Tank swap: Taunt off when Grob'thok roars. Both tanks should be familiar with positioning for Pipe Smash.

Magnet: The Magnet will kill any player stuck in it. Stay ahead of it and position the boss correctly.

Pipe Smash: Deals significantly more damage. It should be removed before the 3rd swing or deaths will occur.

Mining Droid Fire: 2 Players will drop fire at a time. Ugnaught adds are shielded and need kited through fire to become vulnerable.

Corruptor Zero

Extra Unified Beams: Single Beams fire right after the boss arrives, then again at 70% and 40%. The final series of Beams around 30% happens just like Hard Mode.

Nightmare Mines: 2 Concussive Mines are applied at once. Affected players cannot overlap Mines. Plan an order for mine removal ahead of time. The second person should clear theirs immediately after the first is removed.

Waves of Enemies: Add waves cannot be crowd controlled but can be interrupted.

Missiles: Missiles require the group to spread out. A red circle under your feet notifies you that the splash damage is incoming.

Dread Master Brontes

Orbs: Orbs begin during phase 1 and are present in most phases, including the last.

Reach of Brontes: You move slowly while Reaches spawn.

Corrupted Clone: Kephess can now leap to a random player and damage them upon landing.

Lightning "Clock:" Lightning can now swing either clockwise or counter-clockwise randomly.

Six Fingers: When you get knocked back, you must swap fingers with another player.

Hands of Brontes (Final Phase): Hands remain active until you activate their shield and can be pointed towards Orbs to remove them. Standing inside the shield prevents all Orb damage.

Loot

Bosses mostly drop the same piece of loot they did in Hard Mode.

Nefra's Implant is a guaranteed drop.

Each 186 item carries the same type of stats the same 180 piece did. If you had Alacrity on armor, it's there on the new gear as well. It could be time consuming to min-max because of this.

Draxus can drop a Subteroth pet. Brontes may drop a mount designed like her tentacles. It uses the rocket boost animation.

Good Luck

Good luck to those of you on the cutting edge of progression. My group will attempt the new content, however I expect to get stuck for a while. Video guides will come as quickly as possible. If you would like to submit an Assassin or Shadow point-of-view video to be featured, let me know (via social media, links at the top of the page.)

Assault on Tython and Korriban Incursion - SWTOR 2.7

2014-03-04T16:59:00.001-05:00

SWTOR 2.7: Invasion

Two new Tactical Flashpoints await us in SWTOR 2.7. Your faction invades the opposing homeworld and defends your own in the first part of a new story arc. These drop level 53 gear and a black market piece from the final boss.

You have a chance to loot recovered relics which can be exchanged for a Legacy recoloring of old Battlemaster Shadow gear. These are Tattered Mystic and Tattered Ritualist sets. No reputation required, thankfully.

Assault on Tython

The opportunity for Empire players to assault Jedi homeworld Tython has arrived. With some advice from Lana Beniko and her master, we can disable defenses constructed upon the old training grounds at the Jedi Temple.

Inside, the Jedi fervently defend their archives from our attack. As a tactical FP, none of the mechanics are too difficult. They involve moving out of the bad circles on the ground and hitting group heal canisters as needed. Destroy holocrons before the Jedi master can unlock their power. I really wish this had a Hard Mode.

Korriban Incursion

Strangely, an attack by the Republic on Korriban occurred at the same time as ours. This raises some serious questions about who orchestrated this "coincidence."

Regardless, the Sith Academy and Council chambers have been compromised. Empire players carve a path of destruction through the Republic forces (which have essentially the same abilities as they do on Tython.) Boss adds should be dealt with quickly since they stun a player.

SWTOR Hard Mode Dread Palace Assassin PoV

2014-02-25T17:00:00.000-05:00

Hard Mode Dread Palace

My Assassin has finally cleared Hard Mode Dread Palace! Slicing through the Dread Masters has gone significantly quicker than our roadblock at Corruptor Zero and then Brontes in Fortress.

Watch Hard Mode Dread Palace guides.

New Class Representative Schedule Announced

2014-02-20T14:12:00.000-05:00

Class Representative Initiative

Musco announced the dates for the resuming class representative questioning system today.

If you missed the first round, an elected player from each AC gathers and prioritizes 3 class questions to the development team. This can potentially lead to balance or quality of life improvements.

Sith Assassin and Jedi Shadow

The Assassin and Shadow question submission will happen on April 25th.

Update 2.7 is likely arriving in April, which suggests to me that we won't see any significant changes until long after that. Is that acceptable?

I suspect Assassins are actually near Bioware's target for them. Recent nerfs to things like Orbital Strike brought Snipers close to our best-case scenario Operations Dummy parses. This trend may continue.

Other classes will soon see PvP nerfs as well. If no changes to Assassins show up on PTS, we'll be in a relatively stronger position than we are currently.

As eager as I am to see ongoing improvements to our ACs, the wait until our next Q&A session is probably justified. We can still start brainstorming.

SWTOR 2.6 PTS Lacks Testing Incentive

2014-01-20T13:40:00.000-05:00

SWTOR Update 2.6 PTS

Lack of Testing

SWTOR Update 2.6 went up on PTS and I jumped on the chance to check out everything new headed our way. There's a new role-neutral (now called Tactical) Flashpoint called Kuat Drive Yards and Bombers are available in Galactic Starfighter matches.

The problem? I've never had a starfighter match pop while I've been on. There is nowhere near the enthusiasm arena PvP had in testing. The players who have gotten in say they've experienced some game-breaking bugs such as being unable to see any other ships, turrets, or powerups.

There has been a valiant effort by the SWTOR community to set times to go test, but there wasn't a very good turnout. We may see a particularly buggy or delayed patch if we can't provide Bioware a decent sample size to assist in fixing these issues.

Why Bother?

I believe the core issue with Galactic Starfighter testing is in the nature of the system. It's a grind. It takes enough time on live servers to gear up all your ships, so why bother doing it on PTS? If a ship requisition multiplier was applied for testing, we would at least test upgraded ships.

Bioware isn't helping their cause either. Arenas were hyped up, streamed, and had "play with the developers" sessions to boost participation. During 2.6 testing, we've had two community livestreams on fresh characters on live servers. Why not play PTS and invite us to join in?

On the official site and social media there hasn't been much promotion about 2.6. We've just read teasers about an event with no known start date. Be more practical, please.

Kuat Drive Yards Flashpoint

Kuat Drive Yards has been easier to test since it uses PvE bolster and is role-neutral. During the flashpoint, we "meet" the Admiral and our basic ship crew we've been using for the past month. The introduction to these characters is rather lame, in my opinion. I thought better of them before seeing how small a role they play in this short story. They were a means to an end; now they just feel tacked-on.

Kuat Drive Yards itself has a fairly amusing mechanic: each floor is chosen from a random set of encounters. One time you may assemble a ship then the next you'll assault an armory. The final floor's boss is also chosen out of a random selection.

The major enemies don't drop loot (yet?) They drop reputation tokens. This is a big issue for me, because I feel like the randomization is done to try to hide the reputation grind. Of course you're fighting over the tokens amongst your group because only one person gets it.

I can't see myself doing this multiple times a day just to try and get reputation to buy new ship paint jobs. I hope either standard loot is also added, or the system is changed to let everyone pick up rep tokens.

Class Changes

There isn't anything to be said for Sith Assassins. My group's DPS Operative is getting a damage buff at the cost of lower Orbital Strike damage. There are a handful of healer quality of life improvements in 2.6 as well. Read the full PTS patch notes.

Darkness Assassin Tanking: 2.5 Aftermath

2013-12-09T07:00:00.000-05:00

Darkness Assassin Tanking after 2.5

Have the Darkness Assassin Tanking tree changes helped balance us against other classes? The community's response is mixed. I gave this information some time to accumulate since my own tanking experience is limited. My e-friend +Slade Evans / @DurtaDurta provided the following video to show some of the changes.

Stats

There is no need to regear your tank due to the recent changes unless you were overvaluing Endurance for the sake of larger heals. If that was the case, revisit the recommended mitigation stat list (now updated with Dread Forged stats) and adjust accordingly. BiS relics are Reactive Warding and Fortunate Redoubt.

Threat

We lost some self-healing Threat-Per-Second (TPS), particularly against secondary/AoE targets. Class rep KeyboardNinja hasn't done the math yet, but believes single-target threat is mostly the same because Dark Charge and Thrash apply more threat than before the patch.

Dark Protection

Maintaining stacks of Dark Protection is the hottest topic amongst Assassin tanks right now. A major gripe is the low duration of the buff, leading to inevitable stacks dropping due to boss mechanics. Force Lightning resists do not apply the buff. That seems to be the most reasonable point Bioware should address to remove RNG from our survivability.

Consensus is that outside of boss mechanics, we are very capable of keeping Dark Protection stacks up about 95% of the time. If you're initially having a difficult time with it you were probably not making the most of your self-heals before the patch. This is simply a way to track how effectively you're playing.

Overall Experience

You'll probably find yourself at lower health while soloing or doing anything without a healer compared to before Patch 2.5 without your self-heals.

On paper you'll take around the same amount of total damage in a group setting, but it will be less spikey. The result: you're easier to heal and more in-line with other tanks. Ultimately it looks like that goal was achieved, but we'll keep an eye on how tanking continues to play out.

Holiday Planning Update

2013-12-02T15:54:00.000-05:00

MSA Holiday Planning Update

Towards the end of the year I like to update you on the status of the site and share some thoughts. First off, I hope you have a fantastic holiday season - whatever you happen to celebrate!

Video Content

As you've probably noticed, SWTOR class changes are few and far between. This means there hasn't been much need to update the list of recommended specs or stat weights. To keep things interesting I've put more entertaining, general gameplay videos up on Youtube. These don't all get highlighted on Mad Sith Assassin, so go watch anything you missed.

Guides will still be released as my ambitiously casual Operations team progresses. I also began testing the viewership of other gaming videos, starting with Hearthstone. More may follow once the data comes in.

I just upgraded my internet speed to stream in better quality. If all goes according to plan, grabbing highlights from Twitch should improve my video content production rate. You get more ways to watch in high-quality.

SWTOR Expansion: Galactic Starfighter

Galactic Starfighter is a pretty odd expansion for an MMORPG. It doesn't tie very strongly to the ground game other than letting you use companions as crew members. There aren't any new craftables because customizations are going to be Cartel Market items. It definitely doesn't advance my cause of manufacturing better Sith Assassin players.

With that said, I actually do like the combat better than ground PvP. With a basically unrestricted pool of players thanks to no level or rating requirements, queues will probably be quicker than ground PvP now. It will most assuredly be more reliable than rated arenas on my PvE server.

Essentially this is my reasoning for the new PvP plan. I'm slowly going to do dailies to work my way up from Valor 91-100, then drop it entirely until I max out my starfighters on both factions (or until new maps/modes are added). I'll be starting on a scout during early access tomorrow evening.

TL;DR: More non-guide videos. Less PvP. More space.

Patch 2.5 Dread Forged Relics

2013-11-22T21:13:00.003-05:00

Patch 2.5 Dread Forged Relics

Feeling underwhelmed by the Willpower boost relic? It was pretty weak, but in 2.5 the on-proc relics are getting buffed. Examples:

Dread Forged Relic of Focused Retribution: 740 Primary stat, up from 225 for 6 sec, down from 12.

Dread Forged Relic of Serendipitous Assault: 740 Power, up from 625

I'm extremely happy about this because the Dread Forged tier doesn't have flat-out damage proc relics. This is a much better upgrade than the pre-2.5 relics.