SWTOR 3.0 Deception Assassin DPS Guide by Evolixe

SWTOR 3.0 Deception Assassin DPS Guide by Evolixe of TOFN.

Contents

• 1 Intro to Deception Assassin
  • 1.1 Rating
  • 1.2 Gearing & Stats Priority
  • 1.3 Gearing Overview
  • 1.4 Utility Choices
• 2 Abilities & Rotation
  • 2.1 Abilities
  • 2.2 Rotation
• 3 Sample Parse Analysis
• 4 About the author

Intro to Deception Assassin

Deception pretty much plays like it used to. The energy management got slightly changed and we got a replacement ability for Shock but that is really all there is to it as far as mechanical 3.0 changes go.

You still have your choice for utilities which I highly advise you judge on a boss-to-boss basis. Each boss has unique abilities and that makes different utilities particulary useful.

Overall though, I would generally not recommend the exercise of the Deception Discipline at all given the current strength of Hatred. Hatred beats Deception at AoE, Single Target, and in some cases even at burst capabilities.

If you really are a die-hard Deception player that doesn’t want to know about Hatred, just know you are shooting your own kneecaps. kinda.

Rating

• Single Target Dps: 7
• AoE Damage: 4
• Group Utility: 7
• Rotation Difficulty: 9
• RNG Dependant: Very Slightly
• Burst: 8
• Sub 30% Talent or Ability Buffs: Yes

Gearing & Stats Priority

• **Must Have** Accuracy: As close to 759 accuracy rating as possible.
• 0 Alacrity
• 68-77% Surge
• 180-220 Critical Rating (Got less attractive, not sure about the values)
• All other secondary stats in Power
• **Must Have** Augments: Willpower (Resolve)
• Relics: Serendipitous Assault & Focused Retribution
• Alternate Relic: Boundless Ages
• Set bonus: 6 piece Stalker’s
• Surging Charge

Gearing Overview

• Reaching the Accuracy cap should be your highest priority
• At this point in time Alacrity is not advised until you start hitting massive Surge Diminishing Returns (over 74%, which you won’t reach for a while with the accuracy requirement). It doesn’t reduce the cooldown of your Force Cloak and therefore completely mucks up your Recklessness/Blackout synergy.
• Crit rating isn’t that amazing anymore, I’m unsure of the exact values that would be wishful. But I’d personally stay around the ~180-220 crit rating right now.
• Choice of relics should be made on a fight-to-fight basis. Serendipitous Assault and Focused Retribution will give you a greater overall damage increase, while Boundless Ages will allow you to focus your burst into a short window for fights with tight burn phases
• Getting your set bonus as quickly as possible is highly recommended. It will increase your dps substantially enough that having lower item level armorings with the set bonus is still a better option than higher item level armorings without it.

Utility Choices

Each boss you’ll probably want a different Utility set. However let me first state the ones you should have for EVERY boss fight.

• Clerity/Avoidance, Breaker cooldown reduction and Force Speed cooldown reduction mainly. Increases uptime, allows you to escape dangerous situations more often. Can save your life in pretty much every fight.
• Misdirection/Obfuscation, increases movement speed..and as a little bonus adds a layer of 5 levels in stealth. Prevents detection from both players and creatures. Once again good for uptime..but also for avoiding all kinds of situations any boss can throw at you.
• Fade, due to the nature of the Deception talenttree is completely mandatory for force management reasons.
• Force Harmonics/Audacity, because it is pretty much the only utility that DIRECTLY increases your single target damage.

Now you have 4 choices left per boss.

• Shadowy Veil/Insulation can be good for bosses where you have a high damage income on. IE Walkers, Torque, Blaster. It’s a pretty nice talent for all of those.
• Lambaste is a must have for any boss where you will be allowed to AoE a number of close range targets for longer than 5 seconds at a time. Great for Torque HM and Sparky SM.
• Mind over Matter/Disjunction is great in situations where an extended Resilience time is actually going to provide you any gain. For example on Torque, so you can wander the fires like nothing is going on, or on Blaster..to eat the "Boss" his lazer damage for a longer than normal period of time. Bulo, for eating the minecarts without having to f-off. It can be useful on Walkers, if you intend to take risks and not move..but it shouldn’t be necessary given you have more than plentyful room to manuever in 8man.
• Cloak of Resilience/Shroud of Madness can be particulary useful on bosses that have a high frequency of particulary hard-hitting force/tech abilities. Such as Kurse on Commanders, The Underlurker with Rage storm and the adds in melee range, or Walkers whom simply have a TON of ShroudableAoE abilities.
• Egress/Emersion, great on fights where you get slowed or rooted.Most notoriously The Underlurker.
• Lastly, Containment/Haunted Dreams is pretty much the only other actually useful point in the Heroic tier for PvE. As on Commanders, you’ll sometimes want to put some CC on the mandalorians while you’re handling others.

Any Utilities I didn’t mention are not even worth considering for end game plays.

With the sole Exception of Mental Defense/Shapeless Spirit, if your healers are extremely slow with cleansing on Torque HM.

Abilities & Rotation

Abilities

Discharge while in Surging Charge has a different mechanic from Madness, so instead of being a dot it is an instant damage ability, however its damage depends on how many Static Charges you have built, up to a maximum of 3 charges. Using it while at 3 stacks is a must, and delaying it will often lead to a dps loss. As per 3.0, Discharge also increases ALL force damage dealt to its target by 5%. For everybody in the group/raid. Maul is one of your most important abilities. It should only be used with a Duplicity proc, increasing its damage done and reducing cost. However it is very low on the priority list simply because it can be delayed for exactly 6 global cooldowns before it would have a negative impact on DPS. As per 3.0 Maul also applies an armor debuff on its target. Shock is no longer any part of your rotation at all. And it can be removed from your actionbars entirely. Ball Lightning is considered to be your most important ability, in combination with Discharge, and should be used on whenever you have 2 induction procs unless you already have 3 Static Charges. It deals decent damage, procs your lightsaber Charge, essentially improving its damage and giving you Static Charges, and can be quite low cost. Voltaic Slash is your general filler ability, allowing you to buff your Ball Lightning with Voltage, which should be up as often as possible, triggering Induction to lower Shock cost, and dealing decent damage. Assassinate is your sub 30% damage ability, and should replace Voltaic Slash whenever it’s available. The only reason it’s below Voltaic Slash on the priority list is because you have to keep the Voltage buff up permanently, meaning that eventually you may have to delay the use of Assassinate by a GCD to refresh your Voltage buff. The only abilities that should be used ahead of Assassinate are a 3 stack Discharge, and Voltaic Slash (only to maintain Voltage). If Assassinate is up during a Duplicity proc, Assassinate should be used first and Duplicity delayed, due to its long internal cooldown.

Lacerate is your AoE replacement for Voltaic Slash. If there are more than 3 targets within its range Lacerate is well worth the effort. And in 3.0 it also applies ALL benefits that Voltaic Slash does on only a single target.

Rotation

Opening Rotation

I personally prefer to open with Stealth + Recklessness / Adrenal + Discharge  + Ball Lightning + Voltaic Slash + Voltaic Slash + Maul (proc) OR Voltaic Slash + Discharge + Ball Lightning +  Blackout > follow rules (see below)

Another opener would be Stealth  + Voltaic Slash + Voltaic Slash +  Recklessness/Adrenal  + Discharge  + Ball Lightning + Voltaic Slash + Maul (proc) OR Voltaic Slash + Blackout + Voltaic Slash + Ball Lightning> follow rules 

Rotation Strategy

Now let’s talk “Rotations”

The reason for using the quotes is because there isn’t really much of a rotation for Assassins. It’s all about interpreting your momentum the right way. I will explain exactly what I mean by that now.

For Assassins, I like to explain the damage sequence as a set of rules that you should follow but you CAN “cheat” them if you find yourself in a unique situation.

The first rule, ALWAYS use Discharge the moment you get 3 Static charges. Not doing so might result in procs that will only retrigger the duration of the 3 stack proc. But they are effectively “lost” This can still be a good thing though, if you need to save your burst for a couple of seconds for example. You might want to hold off on using your Discharge. But only then.

The second rule, ONLY use your Ball Lightning with 2 Induction procs. Not doing so will result in force starvation before Blackout is back. Forcing you to use more Saber Strikes than you should. Once again this rule can be cheated if you find yourself in a massive overflow of force. For example at the opener.

The third rule, keep your Voltaic Slash buff up at all times. This rule should not be cheated and is pretty much a holy grail. Sometimes you will find yourself using extra Voltaic Slashes to ensure you do not overcap force. This is when you are in the middle of a Ball Lightning cooldown and havn’t got anything more force consuming to use. If however you find yourself overcapping and Discharge becomes available, Discharge still has priority.

The fourth rule, use your Maul only with a Duplicity proc. It is also at the bottom of your priority list because while the proc is up, another cannot trigger due to internal cooldown. It replaces one of your Voltaic Slashes in between Ball Lightning’s cooldown when it triggers. Allowing you to save 13 force. Which you will need to last the entire 45 seconds of Blackout cooldown.

The fifth rule, Assassinate on cooldown. The only ability that takes priority over Assassinate is Discharge. Once you enter the burn phase, you will pretty much stop using Saber Strike entirely and switch to using Assassinate, Voltaic Slash and Maul in between every Ball Lightning cooldown. However you should delay Ball Lightning for Discharge/Assassinate if it comes to that.

Now before we continue I wish to add a little explanation as to how Ball Lightning really works in conjunction to the rest of your abilities. Basically, when you use Ball Lightning, you have EXACTLY 3 GCDs to get 2 Induction and once you have that you should stop using attacks that trigger Induction.

For example: You are at 60 force, you have a Duplicity proc and need to refresh Voltaic. You use the Duplicity proc and you refresh Voltaic Slash. After that you Saber Strike to ensure you don’t lose more force than you have to.The order isn’t important unless either buff is prone to expire before you can get the second gcd off. In that case whatever is about to fall off has priority.

This rule is overridden once you get to the burn phase. At that point you just hammer for as long as you have force. Only using a Saber Strike if you think you will run out of force.

AoE rotation

The AoE “Rotation” has basically become your Single Target rotation where you Substitute Voltaic Slash for Lacerate. Lacerate now costs the same amount of force, and offers the same bonuses that Voltaic Slash does including the Voltage buff. It is a full-blown replacement for 3+ targets in close range.

This doesn’t make the AoE of Deception particulary amazing..but at least it’s not as terrible to execute as it used to be.

Sample Parse Analysis

Force Breach (Discharge) has taken the top spot from Voltaic Slash as your main damage source now. Which isn’t surprising given the drop of crit chance as we don’t have the old 4-set anymore. And the new 4-set makes us able to almost perfectly sync Force Cloaking and Blackout.

Psychokinetic Blast (Ball Lightning) is your full-blown Shock replacement. It hits harder but basically does the same thing. The high frequency of its use and high Surge rating on it cause this ability to come in a close second.

Clairvoyant Strike (Voltaic Slash) as I said with Force Breach, this ability lost a lot of its damage from the sudden drop in crit chance. However it is still by far your most activated ability and therefore comes in at a balanced third place.

Shadow Strike (Maul) also hits particularly hard thanks to Duplicity, however it’s less frequently used due to Duplicity’s longer cooldown, though it should still be in fourth place for your overall damage.

Shadow Technique (Surging Charge) is an excellent Charge, with a low proc chance for high damage, but thanks to Voltage Balls, it is forced to proc more often than it should naturally, despite its long internal cooldown. Depending of course on RNG, the exact percentage will vary, but will often take the fifth spot for your damage dealt.

Spinning Strike (Assassinate) is a powerful and cheap ability that gains great benefit from talents. It should be used as often as possible, and its damage essentially depends on how long the fight actually lasts for with targets under 30% HP. On an average single target boss fight, it should do lower damage than your other hard hitting abilities, but higher than Saber Strike and any fillers.

Saber Strike is the final components of your parse. Saber Strike is used the most during the two long delays between Blackout and Force Cloak cooldowns, since you won’t regenerate Force as quickly, so accounting for between 2-5% of your damage dealt is often a good number.

You can observe that at least half of your damage dealt is done by melee attacks from your Voltaic Slash, Assassinate, Maul and Saber Strike close to 50%, while the other half comes from Force abilities such as Ball and Discharge. A high proportion of your damage dealt, usually around 70%, is done by Energy / Kinetic damage which is highly mitigated by armor, making your armor penetration talent and Debuff very useful. The other 30% is Internal damage from Discharge and your Saber Charge.

About the author

Evolixe is a well known Shadow/Assassin player residing on Tomb of Freedon Nadd. Mostly known for PvP experiences, recently joining into the PvE scene and quickly picking up Nightmare level raiding. Currently recordholder of multiple Infiltration/Deception DPS world records on latest content bosses.