SWTOR 6.0 Deception Assassin PvP Guide by Kre’a

This is an in-depth Onslaught Deception Sith Assassin 6.0+ SWTOR class guide focusing exclusively on PvP, written by Kre’a. It’s suitable for beginner players as well as veterans, who seek to learn how to improve their performance! This Guide is written for VULKK.com by Kre’a

INTRO

Deception Assassin is a short to medium range melee fighter, who utilizes both Force and Melee damage in synergy to bring their opponents down. In order to play this specialization to its maximum potential, you must be able to both stick to your targets in melee range as well as understand how to properly make use of your superior crowd control tools. If you enjoy the role of being a mobile wrecking ball with the ability to shut down another player with crowd control at a moment’s notice, this is the guide for you. Without further ado, let’s get into the guide!

GEAR AND STATS

• Set Bonus: 6pc Death Knell + 1pc Amplified Champion
• Tactical: Two Cloaks, Life Warden, Blade of the Elements or Awakened Flame
• Combat Amplifiers: Weapon Expertise
• Bonus Amplifiers: Featherweight
• Accuracy: 5%
• Alacrity: 1213 rating 
• Critical Rating: 40% minimum (All remaining tertiary stats after reaching Accuracy and Alacrity thresholds)
• Relics: Serendipitous Assault and Focused Retribution

Death Knell set bonus is the obvious choice for this spec. The 4pc set bonus allows us to generate a stack of a buff upon spending a Recklessness charge, that will give our next Maul or Assassinate 100% crit chance. The 6pc set bonus will give us increased melee damage by 10% per stack, up to 3 stacks, whenever we spend Recklessness charges. So as you can see, it’s highly beneficial to take a 3rd Recklessness charge in our utilities to benefit more from this set bonus.

As Assassins, we are able to swap tacticals as we vanish out of combat, so the Tacticals that we should be using are Two Cloaks for the 2nd cloak, Life Warden for the 80% heal that it provides, and either Blade of the Elements or Awakened Flame. Blade of the Elements is great if you prefer burst damage, while Awakened Flame is better for overall DPS at the cost of DoT’ing your target. This is relevant for when you want to mezz your target using Low Slash or other mezz abilities by your team. If you are using Awakened Flame, make sure not to inappropriately DoT the Crowd Control (CC) target.

We want 5% Accuracy so that our Low Slash doesn’t miss, as well as 1213 Alacrity to reach the 1.4 GCD threshold.

Weapon Expertise amps provide more overall DPS than Armor Penetration amps, even on high armored targets, so we opt for Wep Exp amps on our Armorings. Featherweight is the only useful amplifier on our Mods and they will reduce the fall damage we take on some of the two tiered maps, such as Makeb Arena, Orbital Station on the catwalk, Mandalorian Battle Ring on the top floor, etc.

Lastly, throw the rest of your stats into Critical Rating and you will want to make sure that you at least reach 40% crit chance so that you always have 100% crit chance when using Recklessness.

UTILITIES AND ABILITIES

Utilities

Below are my utilities of choice. After listing them, I will explain what abilities are affected by these utilities and why I have chosen them:

Skillful

Avoidance – Reduces the cooldown of Jolt by 2 seconds, Unbreakable will by 30 seconds, and Force Speed by 5 seconds

Oppressing Force – Lowers the cooldown of Electrocute by 15 seconds and increases the duration of Force Slow and reduces its cooldown by 6 seconds.

Formless Phantom – Reduces damage taken from Area of Effect attacks by 30%.

Optional: Nerve Wracking – Targets controlled by your Spike or Electrocute take 5% increased damage from all sources.

Masterful

Fade – Reduces the cooldown of Force Cloak by 30 seconds and increases its duration by 5 seconds

Dark Stability – Activating Deflection grants 6 seconds of immunity to stun, sleep, lift, and incapacitating effects 

Audacity – Reduces the cooldown of Overload by 2.5 seconds and Recklessness grants 1 additional charge when activated

Heroic

Shroud of Madness – Activating Force Cloak grants 2 seconds of Force Shroud

Disjunction – Increases the duration of Force Shroud by 2 seconds and Force Speed by .5 seconds. Additionally,  Force Speed slows all enemies within 5 meters by 75% for 2.5 seconds when activated

Phasing Phantasm – Phantom Stride can be used while immobilized and purges movement-impairing effects when used. Additionally, activating Force Speed grants Phasing Phantasm, which Reduces all damage taken by 25% for the duration of Force Speed.

Explanation

Our Skillful tier of utilities allows us to benefit from a shorter cooldown on our CC breaker, interrupt ability, Force Speed, and our hard stun ability. Additionally, we will take 30% less AoE damage, which is useful since we are still a melee class and need to be in melee range to do most of our damage.

The Masterful utilities give us a shorter cooldown on Force Cloak, CC immunity when we pop our Deflection, and an extra charge of Recklessness which is very important to have since this equates to an extra 10% melee damage.

The Heroic tier offers us Force Shroud when using Force Cloak from Shroud of Madness and the duration of that Shroud is also increased by the Disjunction utility, so there is some nice synergy between those two utilities. The final utility point that we’ll want to take is Phasing Phantasm. The root break on Phantom Stride is nice, but the real benefit of this utility is the damage reduction offered on Force Speed, an ability which is both great for mobility and with this utility, great for tanking incoming spikes of damage.

This spread of utilities offers a decent amount of survivability, while also providing a few offensive power spikes in the form of the extra Recklessness charge and the lowered cooldown on Electrocute, our hard stun. The increased damage from all sources when a target is hard stunned by us is great for dealing large sums of burst damage to our kill target, and the CC immunity on Deflection gives us an unstoppable opener.

Abilities

Primary Offensive Abilities

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Primary Defensive Abilities

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Priorities

The opener below, when executed properly, will deal roughly 90-95% of the target’s total health in damage, while controlling them in hard stuns throughout the entire duration of the opener, ensuring that they will take the entirety of the damage if they do not use their CC breaker.

1. Stealth
2. Recklessness
3. Spike
4. 5-meter Low Slash
5. Discharge
6. Electrocute
7. Maul

After this opener, the target will likely have 30% hp left, or below

If you fail to kill your target, Force Cloak out and wait until their Resolve bar is empty, and repeat the opener, up to two times (if using the Two Cloaks tactical). 

After your opener, you move to a priority system. Priority for your abilities after your opener, from hardest hitting abilities to the weakest abilities  are:

1. Maul (with Duplicity and set bonus auto-crit buffs)
2. Assassinate
3. Reaping Strike
4. Discharge
5. Ball Lightning
6. Voltaic Slash / Lacerate for filler

LINE OF SIGHT

In this next section I want to discuss the idea of Line of Sight. Line of Sight is a term that means to hide behind an object which blocks the visual line between you and an enemy, meaning that you cannot hit them with any abilities and they cannot hit you. To get a better understanding of how to properly utilize Line of Sight, check out this video here:

This is one of those topics that is much easier to understand if you see it first hand as opposed to reading about it, but the long story short is that you want to always be utilizing LoS whenever you are not in melee range spreading your DoTs. Make sure to weave melee abilities in and go back behind LoS (line of sight) when your GCD is ticking. This will only serve to bolster your survivability and increase your uptime when in a warzone.

MAP STRATEGIES

In this section I will expand on some of the various maps in both arena and objective format, as well as what should be required and expected of you as an assassin player on each map.

Ranked Arenas

Your role in Ranked Arenas is to constantly apply Low Slash to the enemy support players, whether that’s a healer or DPS player who is off-healing, or even a tank. Below, I will go over where you will primarily want to be to line of sight your enemies to both mitigate incoming damage while maximizing your damage output, in a safe manner.

Orbital Station

The green squares are locations that your team mates (Snipers and Sorcerers) will likely set up their Phase Walk abilities. The red locations are areas where your enemy might want to set up their own respective abilities. This is a two tiered map with multiple limited visibility areas which you can utilize to LoS enemy ranged DPS. Between the two GTNs on the ground floor, the large force field walls by the initial spawn points, and the central column in the middle of the map, there are a plethora of areas to choose from when utilizing line of sight. Many Ranged DPS or healers will attempt to stay up atop the catwalk to deal damage or heal from afar, it’s your job as Deception to crowd control these players with Low Slash every time it’s available. If possible, you can also Phantom Stride to them and knock them down.

Makeb Mesa Arena

This is probably the 2nd worse map to play as an Assassin, with Corellia Square being one of the worst. Green circles are where your teammate sniper and sorcs may set up their phase walk. Red is where the enemy will likely place theirs. There is a ton of open space here with only a handful of objects to LoS behind. Additionally, the bridge is a ranged DPS player’s dream spot, they can turret away atop the bridge while utilizing displacement abilities to knock the melee characters down and continue to DPS them. Yes, as a melee player we can hide beneath the bridge, but then most ranged DPS can then simply heal back to full HP which is detrimental to us winning the match. Many of the fights as Deception will happen beneath the bridge and when that occurs, you want to use the stalagmites to LoS enemy players to mitigate damage.  

Corellia Square Arena

Easily the worst of the maps for Assassin players and melee players as a whole. This map is very open and offers very little protection from certain ranged classes. It’s crucial that you dictate the flow of the battle and force the fight around either one of the transformers right outside of the spawn point, or the transformer in the center of the map. Speaking of the center transformer, this is the choke point to group up enemies who are gunning for you to get off a Seismic Grenade. If the enemy has multiple ranged dps and manages to get the fight to occur at the south eastern transformer, you will have a really bad time, there are no LoS objects anywhere in that clearing and you will be easy pickings. Here’s a good example of where you would want the fight to occur.

Make sure that when you are focused that you are using the various pillars to mitigate the incoming damage while still throwing out 10 meter abilities to deal damage such as Ball Lightning, Discharge, and Low Slash:

Tatooine Canyon

There are a ton of choke points to bait the enemy to, as well as multiple objects for us to Line of Sight behind. Between the four pylons in the sand pit and the two buildings on the east and west, there’s a ton of options for us to LoS and mitigate damage. Keep note of where the enemy Sorc and Snipers may place their Phase Walks, as it can be easy to lose track of them when the activate the ability to try to recover lost health. The same goes for enemy Operative and Assassins. Whenever they vanish, the will often try to go behind one of the 4 pylons or the two buildings to heal up, whichever is farthest away from the fight. This knowledge can be useful to kill off a low HP opponent before they get a chance to heal back up to full health.

Rishi Cove Arena

This arena is pretty similar in playstyle to Orbital Station. There are two levels, but most of the Line of Sight objects are on the 2nd level, atop the platform. There’s not too much to say about this map that wasn’t already said about Orbital Station. If your team primarily comprises of ranged DPS, make sure that you are utilizing your knockback to capitalize on it and create an advantageous situation where your teammates are capable of dealing damage while taking very little damage in return.

Mandalorian Battle Ring

Hands down, one of the best maps for stealth classes and one of the worst maps for chasing down enemies. This map not only offers a decent amount of LoS objects up top, but it also has two very distinct levels, meaning that stealth players can go to the bottom or top level to heal up to full if they are brought low. Additionally, getting knocked down on this map comes with a severe penalty of being separated from the rest of your team, so try to bait players to the edge of the top platform by utilizing Line of Sight behind a pillar to draw them in, then position yourself behind them to knock them down to the ground level. This will give your team a huge advantage of a 4v3, while wasting the time of the player(s) who tried to deal damage to you. Bonus points if you manage to Low Slash a target who you’ve knocked down.

Objective Based Warzones

Hypergate

As Deception, you have a whole host of tools at your disposal which allow you to take a node from an unsuspecting enemy. Start by sapping them and then try to capture the node. If they break the sap, you can vanish and sap them immediately, followed by capturing the node again. In addition to this, you can also stop the enemy from capturing their node by throwing your Low Slash from 30m away. Whirlwind is another great tool to use here when attempting to steal the enemy’s capture point. And if all else fails, you can easily kill someone with your burst opener, which will take anywhere from 6-10 seconds. If you do decide to defend your node, make use of some of the small pylons to defend from multiple enemies at once, as can be seen here:

You’ll note that in this image, I have been hit with a mercenary’s electro-net, preventing me from using Force Cloak to vanish out of this sticky situation. However, utilizing Line of Sight, the enemy is forced to used weak AoE abilities to deal very little damage to me while I wait out the duration of the electro-net and stealth away to safety.

Civil War (all variations)

On these maps, our best friend is the ability to utilize stealth to our advantage to capture off-nodes that are normally guarded by only one target. We can do this by sapping our enemy and then capturing the node. If they try to contest by using their CC breaker, we can stealth out, sap them and then immediately capture the node again. Try to make sure that when you go to capture a node, you are Line of Sighting the enemy in such a way that would require them to move their character in order to be able to hit you. This will give you a little bit of extra time after they come out of their mez to try to capture the node. Both variations of civil war have platforms that you can use to Line of Sight multiple enemies while you are focusing down your main target. Here’s a good example of this:

Notice that in this picture, I am out of line of sight for 3 enemies while I focus down my main target, the mercenary. It’s important to use line of sight at ALL times because in this particular situation, I would have died almost immediately if those other three enemy players were able to see me and deal damage to me. A 1v1 is always easier than a 1v4, so make sure to utilize line of Sight whenever you can. Line of sight is a powerful tool and its use cannot be stated enough.

Novare Coast

There’s two roles you can perform here. Either stealing the off-node or protecting your own. As Deception, you are more than capable of killing a player before they can call for reinforcements, but keep in mind that it will take much longer to fully capture an enemy’s point compared to a point that is only halfway contested. The biggest benefit of Deception is that Recklessness will reset whenever you leave combat, so you are very adept at dealing large bursts of damage in small skirmishes. Make sure to utilize Line of Sight when defending a node. The primary area you want to use to line of sight is the bunker where the node is captured, as displayed here:

Notice that in the above picture, right above my player portrait, you can see a “Failed” cast of Blazing Bolts. This is a great example of how to use weave in your offensive abilities to damage the opponent while properly mitigating damage taken by line of sighting their abilities. Use this to your advantage to push damage and potentially take on multiple opponents at once, to successfully defend a node.

Odessen

The objective here is to control various “Control Points” by standing in them and maintaining them for their duration. You lose the point when you are knocked out of the area for more than a couple seconds. We can knockback and Electrocute enemies to ensure that they do not reenter the control point so that we can capture it. There are a ton of areas to line of sight, but most of these areas are outside of the control point, so if you are maintaining a node you will need to face tank a lot of the damage that’s coming towards you.

Huttball (all variations)

An assassin’s role in huttball, regardless of the map is to give the ball carrier guard. The best ball carriers are Operatives and Juggernauts, so giving them guard so that they can survive long enough to make it to the goal line is of #1 importance. Bonus points if you have the Friend of the Force tactical, which will give your guarded target Force Shroud when you activate yours, further enhancing their abilities to mitigate damage and crowd control effects and to score effectively. You can also ensure that you hug certain corners when you aren’t protecting the ball carrier. All of the huttball maps have some large terrain that you can use to LoS, like this one:

Snipers and Sorcerers alike really love to camp the pipes up top to wreak havoc on your teammates below. Make sure that you Low Slash them to mitigate incoming damage. You can also jump and use your knockback from the middle platform and it will reach them at the top, knocking them down from the pipes.

TIPS VS OTHER PLAYERS

Mercenary

Defeating a mercenary is now much easier with the addition of the Two Cloaks tactical as we now have access to an additional Force Shroud. The only new tool that mercs received in 6.0 was an extra Rocket Out charge, which isn’t really relevant to us since we can still close the gap with either Phantom Stride or Force Speed.

Arsenal

This is the burst spec between the two and it’s also one of the easier specs to counter with Line of Sight. A lot of their moves are telegraphed and have pretty long travel times. Between Blazing Bolts, Heatseeker missile and Tracer missile, it’s pretty easy to see the ability coming at you and either LoS it or Shroud it. 

Innovative Ordnance

This spec isn’t seen very often but they do have a respectable amount of damage up their sleeve. When you see the thermal detonator attached to you, be sure to shroud it. Additionally, I like to wait until they apply their DoTs before cleansing so that they waste a couple GCDs and then need to reapply their DoTs.

Powertech

This class is hands down one of the scariest this expansion. The amount of damage they can do with their meteor brawler set can go into the 100ks. They also got a new ability which allows them to do more damage the more they are tunneled. But most importantly, when you see them pop explosive fuel and get a buff on their bar that looks like this you need to be prepared for a 100k AoE ability to come your way, in the form of their set bonus called Meteor Brawler.

Pyro

Meteor Brawler, Meteor Brawler, METEOR BRAWLER. I cannot state this enough. Combined with Pyros DoTs, AoE carbonize which goes through our shroud (a bug perhaps?) and the ability to grapple us back in when our shroud is down, Pyro PT is one of the scariest melee dps around and should their damage should be respected. You will know when they are priming their meteor brawler set when they pop explosive fuel. They can preemptively use their meteor brawler effect by right clicking off the Explosive Fuel buff as well, so any time you see the Explosive Fuel symbol, it’s best to just kite around and get out of the area for awhile while dealing damage from afar. Your best asset against this spec is Low Slash. Right before you see their Explosive Fuel run out, Low Slash the enemy and tell your team to move away from them. Incapacitating them will ensure that they cannot grapple your teammates in and global them.

Advanced Prototype (AP)

This expansion, AP is a bit weaker than Pyro. It still has pretty good burst but the sustained DPS is much lower than that of Pyro, which is capable of putting up numbers upwards of 20k DPS. AP still has access to meteor brawler though, so the same advice as above applies, you see Explosive Fuel, you get outta there.

Assassin

What better way to understand your class than to understand how to turn your class’s strengths against them? Similar to Operatives, Assassins are able to cleanse your DoTs. Whenever you see on their buff bar, it means that you should hold out on using any Force abilities, because they will all be resisted, however, Low Slash is white damage and will still incapacitate them. I will quite often target the enemy Assassin as my kill target and simply wait in stealth until they pop their Force Shroud and then wait out the duration of it. The reason this is a viable strategy is because most Assassins will use this ability as their first line of defence simply because it has such a short cooldown (60 seconds) and thus will be available again in a short time period.

Hatred

There’s not much to say here. This spec is susceptible to burst damage and has a hard time recovering from burst, so wait out their defensive cooldowns and then do your full opener on them. Swap to melee damage after they pop Force Shroud, and then back to force abilities when you see , which indicates they’ve used Deflection. You can very easily burst down a Hatred Assassin from nearly full health with your first opener, when you stealth out to reset recklessness, they are more than likely dead.

Deception

Deception has some of the best burst damage available in the game at the moment. If you see that your opponent has stacks of a blue buff which looks like this , then you need to be aware that you are about to get hit for roughly 60k damage multiple times in a row, equal to how many stacks they have. That means that you should save your Deflection if possible to cause them to miss. If they miss, it does NOT consume the buff, but it does buy you time for your damage mitigation cooldowns to become available, such as Force Speed, your Warzone Adrenal. Counter their moves by asking yourself “what would I do in this situation”. Using Force Shroud early can be good to delay the opponent’s auto-crit stack buildup, so try to use that as your first DCD.

Sorcerer

Madness

This is similar to fighting a Hatred Assassin, except a bit easier. They lack cooldowns such as Shroud or Deflection and cannot vanish with Force Cloak. They can use Phase walk, but it’s really easy to make an educated guess on where they went to, just take a look at the maps section to have an idea of where they might have set up their Phase Walk. They do have a rotational root on their Creeping Terror, but it’s nothing that your Phasing Phantasm can’t break. 

Lightning

This spec is pretty difficult. Not only do they get a crazy amount of damage reduction rotationally, but they also have a deceptive amount of burst damage as well as a crazy amount of AoE damage, which is important to note, because this AoE can pull you out of stealth if you are too close to your teammates. Make sure that you’re spread out when you decide to open up on a Lightning Sorc and keep your Force Shroud available for the incoming Thundering Blasts. If they are using the Stormwatch tactical, it will deal damage to you whenever their Crushing Darkness ticks, so be sure to cleanse that DoT as well.

Sniper

Probably one of the most finicky classes to take down, purely based on the current terrain you are fighting on, Sniper boasts a ton of extremely powerful burst damage that is almost impossible to mitigate as an Assassin. Our only real DCD against them is Deflection, so our best bet to take down a sniper is Line of Sight. Our second strongest actual ability that we can use against a sniper is our Force Cloak. This is because it allows us to reset the fight and engage on our own terms. This is important because of Sniper’s Entrench ability. Any time you see this purple buff on their bar  then you should wait out its duration while in stealth. Stealth is our best tool here, because as long as that buff is up, we cannot stun them or control them in any way.

Marksmanship

While there aren’t any passive abilities to be on the look-out for with this spec, there are some offensive ones that are problematic. Simply put, Ambush is the ability that we want to avoid here. There are multiple ways for them to instant cast this ability, but for the times when they can’t, make sure that you are cancelling the ability by using Line of Sight.

Engineering

The most annoying part of engineering is the large pulsing fire AoE effect that they can put on areas at will. This is annoying because they can throw an interrogation probe on you and then detonate their EMP to stun you, as long as you are in that AoE fire effect. Make sure to Shroud when going through a choke point to reach the sniper because it’s very likely that they will get their stun off and then displace you using one of their many knockback abilities. 

Virulence

This spec isn’t nearly as dangerous as the other two. We can cleanse their DoTs and the spec lacks the burst of the other two specs. Cleanse the DoTs with your regular Shroud as well as your Force Cloak Shrouds and you will be golden.

Operative

One of the hardest classes to counter, Operative boasts some of the strongest sustained damage in the game, along with the strongest DCD in the game in the form of Exfiltrate. Between all Operative specs, seeing this buff: means that your Low Slashes and Electrocutes will be resisted and wasted. Operatives ability to roll our Crowd control as well as heal themselves up is only one of the few reasons that they are so strong against our class. Below, I will list a more detailed look at what makes each of the specs strong against our class.

Concealment

Aside from being able to cleanse DoTs, concealment also gets 100% resist/dodge chance when using their Exfiltrate ability. This means that every 6-8 seconds, they are capable of mitigating 100% of the offensive abilities that we throw at them, whether that be crowd control or damaging abilities. Additionally, concealment has extremely potent burst. If at any point you see this icon on your debuff bar, it’s time to pop Force Shroud, because you’re about to take roughly 100k damage in the next 3-4 GCDs. It is almost never correct to try to Low Slash an operative because the animation is pretty slow and any operative worth their salt will be able to roll and resist it. If you are going to Low slash them, it’s much better to do it in melee range.

Lethality

Lethality is much less potent than its concealment counterpart, however it is still capable of some instant cast Kolto Infusions, which will also ensure that the enemy team remains healthy. Unlike Concealment, however, they do not have a 100% resist roll, their roll is only viable against Melee and Ranged damage, so your Electrocute and other Force based abilities will still work on them, though your Low Slash will still miss.

Marauder

Marauders are probably one of the most resilient melee DPS that exist in today’s meta. Of all of their tricks, the primary icon that we want to pay attention to between all marauder specs is this one: , as it means they take 99% reduced damage for 4-6 seconds, depending on their talents. Below, I will detail some of the more specific buffs or debuffs you may encounter, depending on the marauder’s spec.

Fury

The primary buff that we care about avoiding against a Fury marauder is this one: . You will see this buff once every 30 seconds and it is acquired when they use Force Crush on you. You’ll know that they’ve used Force Crush because your character will get progressively slower until you are practically moving at a crawling pace (95% movespeed reduction). When this occurs, check your enemy’s ability bar for this buff. While this buff is active (6 second duration) the marauder is completely immune to any crowd controlling effects. This is extremely important information to know, because Fury marauders can hit like a truck and feel like an unstoppable wrecking ball of damage if you don’t understand what’s happening. As long as you are keeping track of their Gravity Vortex buff (the purple buff that’s seen above) you will have a much better understanding of when you can apply crowd control to keep the marauder in check.

Annihilation

Aside from the typical marauder DCDs that we care about paying attention to, the main passive that we would like to pay attention to against Annihilation is . These are stacks of a buff called Annihilator. These stacks will reduce the cooldown of their primary bread and butter ability, Annihilate. The more stacks they have, the more it’s cooldown is reduced. This is important to know, because when the marauder starts out, they will have only a couple stacks of this buff, meaning their capabilities of bursting you down are pretty low. However, as they obtain more stacks, their burst windows will become more frequent, so it’s important to note how many stacks they have, in addition to paying attention to the usual DCDs that I’ve listed above. Overall, Annihilation marauder isn’t as threatening as the other marauder specs, but you must still respect their damage, as it’s easy to fall victim to their DoTs and burst damage when becoming too cocky.

Carnage

Probably one of the scariest specs, Carnage boasts of extremely impressive burst windows called Ferocity windows. Ferocity looks like this: and can be used every 12-ish seconds. When you see this buff, the marauder will have 100% armor penetration on some of their abilities. This means you’re gonna get hit like a truck, so either run away and LoS, or keep them controlled via roots, stuns, and lifts. One of the abilities that they will hit you with is called Gore, and this ability will apply the Hindered debuff, as seen here: on your debuff bar. If you see this debuff, it means that you are unable to use Force Speed or, more importantly, Force Cloak, for 1.5 seconds. This is the exact same debuff that Mercs can apply to you with their Electro-net ability. So not only can Carnage marauders burst you down with 100% armor penetration, they can also hinder you from using Force Cloak. A deadly combination. Pay close attention to these buffs/debuffs, and react accordingly (LoS, Crowd Control, etc).

Juggernaut

Juggernauts are one of the easier classes to kill.. Despite their plethora of DCDs, they die fairly quickly. Take note that once they pop Enraged Defence, you will see this buff icon: , and unlike Hatred, you are able to counter this ability by utilizing Low Slash and Whirlwind. This will prevent them from consuming stacks and healing up, and your damage output should outscale their defensive capabilities. Below is a more detailed look at what the various Juggernaut specs are capable of.

Vengeance

The biggest thing to play around when facing a Veng Jugg is the Brawn buff, which looks like this: , here is a more in-depth look at the buff:

If you see this buff on the enemy Juggernauts buff bar, it means they cannot be stunned or otherwise crowd controlled for 4 seconds. This means that you won’t be able to use your Electrocute, Low Slash,  or grenades on them. This is an important buff to take note of and you will see the visual cue for this ability when you see this shield go up around the Juggernaut:

Save all of your CC for after this ability wears off. Juggernauts are otherwise pretty easy to kill, even with their plethora of DCDs.

Rage

The buff that we care about avoiding here is this one: . When you see this buff on the enemy’s bar, you know that their next Furious Strike (white damage) or Raging Burst (yellow damage) will be an auto-crit. They obtain this buff by using either of their leap abilities (Force Charge or Obliterate). This means that once a jugg leaps to you, it’s probably in your best interest to Force Speed and use a Warzone Adrenal to start mitigating damage, otherwise you’re going to want to prepare your Force Shroud or Deflection to hopefully avoid the incoming auto-crit damage.

ADVANCED RESOLVE MECHANICS

In this section I want to discuss resolve. Many people refer to this as your “white bar”. The way that resolve works is actually quite simple. It starts at an empty bar and goes up to 1,000. After obtaining 1,000 units of resolve, your character becomes immune to all Sleep, lift, stun and otherwise incapacitating effects. Attempting to crowd control a player who has a full resolve bar will result in a “resist” and the crowd control will be converted to a 50% slow. A hard stun will contribute 200 units of resolve for every 1 second of crowd control, while a mez or “soft stun” will contribute 100 units of resolve for every 1 second of crowd control.

For clarification, a hard stun is a type of crowd control that does not break upon the target taking damage. A mez, or soft stun is a type of crowd control that does break on damage. It’s important to note that when factoring in resolve, a mez will always apply its full amount of resolve to a player, even if they don’t actually sit through the full duration of the crowd control. For example, Whirlwind is an 8 second mez (cc that breaks on damage). The target will receive 800 units of resolve, even if you damage them 1 second into the mez and break the crowd control effect. For this reason, you always want to utilize your hard stuns before you use your mez effects, to get the most out of the enemy’s resolve bar. 

After you apply enough CC to give the enemy a full bar of resolve (white bar), they will be immune from CC until the resolve runs out. The duration of the white bar resolve is always equal to the total amount of units over 1,000, divided by 100. For example, if I get whirlwinded twice in a row, I will have 1,600 resolve. 1,600 divided by 100 equals 16. This means I’ll be white barred for 16 seconds and have a total of 16 seconds of cc immunity.

It’s important to understand how Crowd Control abilities work, as this knowledge will give you a good idea of how potent it will be for you to sit through a certain amount of CC, while also giving you a good idea of how much CC you can throw out towards your enemies to maximize your kill potential on any given enemy.

FOCUS TARGET MODIFIER

Focus Target Modifier is a key that will enable you to use abilities on your Focus Target, without having them selected as your primary target. This is important as Deception, because it allows you to CC players without actually having to target them as your main target. This keybind can be seen here:

In the preferences menu, under the Targeting tab of the keybinds. Make sure to make your keybind something that’s easily usable because you will be using this keybind a LOT as a Deception sin. Using this keybind is what separates the good deception players from the truly great ones. Seriously, learn to use this!

CONCLUSIONS

About the Author

I hope that my guide was of use to you all. If you have any questions, feel free to ask! You can find me on youtube at Krea Gaming or on twitter @KreaGaming. Additionally, you can reach out to me with your questions on discord, Krea#5985. Thanks for reading friends and good luck on the battlefield!

From Vulkk

I would like to thank Kre’a for writing this in-depth Deception Assassin PvP guide for SWTOR 6.0 expansion Onslaught. Whether you are a new player, returning veteran or someone who seeks to improve their skills and gameplay, I believe and hope this article has been of great help to you!

If you are skilled with a Class and Discipline that has not yet been covered with a guide on VULKK (check the list here), and you want to provide one for the SWTOR Community, contact me via email or wherever you see Vulkk present. Twitter and Facebook PMs are an option too.

Related links:

• SWTOR 6.0 Class Guides List
• SWTOR 6.0 Hatred Assassin PvP Guide by Kre’a
• SWTOR 6.0 Serenity Shadow PvP Guide by Kre’a
• SWTOR 6.0 Infiltration Shadow PvP Guide bt Kre’a
• SWTOR 6.0 Deception Assassin PvE Guide by Zak
• SWTOR 6.0 Infiltration Shadow PvE Guide by Zak
• SWTOR 6.0 Darkness Assassin PvE Tank by Ahz
• SWTOR 6.0 Hatred Assassin PvE Guide bt Mebrithiel
• SWTOR 6.0 Serenity Shadow PvE Guide by Mebrithiel

How is the Class and Spec changing with SWTOR 7.0

In Update 7.0 BioWare is introducing a new term “Combat Styles”, which will replace the traditional class-specific disciplines. If you are curious and want to get a head-start, check out the SWTOR 7.0 Class Changes Previews available on the Public Test Server.

And if you are behind on the news, find out what the SWTOR Legacy of the Sith Expansion will have to offer.