SWTOR 7.0 Assassin Changes Preview and Analysis (PTS)

SWTOR 7.0 PTS Assassin Changes are up now. Time to outline and analyze the changes to the Combat Style as a whole and individual Disciplines!

I have also included translations so Republic players can still follow along.

General Assassin and Shadow changes

Assassins / Shadows didn’t lose any abilities outright, though some were relegated to being exclusively for the tank spec. DPS specs no longer have access to Spike / Spinning Kick or Guard. 

Guard

Since DPS Juggernauts / Guardians also lost Guard, it seems safe to assume that BioWare is making Guard a tank-only ability now. This is in line with the change made earlier in 6.0 that made it so DPS would deal 50% less damage while guarding and should help to make tanks feel more unique in PvP, though it is unfortunate that it comes at the cost of DPS group utility. That said, DPS guarding is primarily a PvP-oriented group utility and many other group utilities are outright disabled or far less effective in PvP, like raid buffs and battle rezzing, so this gave DWTs greater group utility than other classes. 

Spike and Spinning Kick

The situation with Spike / Spinning Kick is rather convoluted. Both DPS specs have access to the following choice at level 20:

• Gain access to the Overload / Force Wave ability with the Electric Bindings / Force Wake effect included. 
• Gain a passive that makes it so that dealing damage with Maul / Shadow Strike or Leeching Strike / Serenity Strike from stealth stuns the target for 2 seconds. (this is the same CC effect that currently exists on Spike / Spinning Kick)
• Gain a passive that makes it so activating Force Cloak increases your movement speed by 50% while active and slows all enemies within 5m by 75% for 2.5 seconds. (this effect is very similar to one component of the Disjunction / Mind Over Matter utility)

Tanks have a slightly different choice at level 20:

• Gain access to the Spike / Spinning kick ability. It does not have the limitation that it must be activated from stealth, which is in line with how the ability behaves now for tanks. 
• Gain a passive that makes it so activating Force Cloak increases your movement speed by 50% while active and slows all enemies within 5m by 75% for 2.5 seconds. (this is the exact same passive that DPS can take)
• Gain a passive that makes it so Shock / Project’s critical hit damage is increased by 50% and dealing damage with Shock / Project extends the duration of your single-target taunt by 3 seconds to targets already affected by your single-target taunt.

Tanks still have the opportunity to have access to Overload / Force Wave, but I’ll get into that later on. 

After seeing this, you might be asking yourself “why not just give the DPS specs Spike / Spinning Kick instead of that passive?” Before I answer that question, I think it’s important to  explain just how ridiculously strong stealth is in PvP right now, just so we’re all on the same page. It’s way stronger than what you might think of as being super strong in PvP, like the Juggernaut / Guardian’s Enraged Defense / Focused Defense or Mercenary / Commando’s Responsive Safeguards / Echoing Deterrence. 

• Defensively, stealth can be used to completely reset the fight with the Force Cloak ability, and thanks to Shroud of Madness / Cloak of Resilience (AKA stealth shroud), this can be done practically whenever the player wants with almost no chance of failure. When a player stealths out, they can go hide somewhere and use their regen ability to completely heal to full and there’s almost nothing the enemy can do about it. 
• Once the player has finished healing up, they can enter stealth again and enter combat entirely on their terms. This means they can target someone without any DCDs up and an empty resolve bar. Then they can individually stun them for 6 seconds (Spike / Spinning Kick + Electrocute / Force Stun) and unleash their burst without any retaliation. 
• When completely out of stealth, Assassins / Shadows still have access to a toolkit of abilities and CC that is on par with what most other specs have access to. 

The conclusion I gather from this level 20 choice is that BioWare doesn’t want stealth to offer so many distinct advantages at the same time. They want DPS players to choose between one of three advantages with respect to stealth. You either gain an advantage when exiting stealth (the Maul / Shadow Strike stun), gain an advantage while completely out of stealth (knockback), or gain an advantage while stealthing out (speed boost and slow). 

BioWare could replace the Maul / Shadow Strike stun passive with Spike / Spinning Kick, but that has several drawbacks:

• It defies their otherwise universal system where 5 abilities are locked away in 3 Discipline choices and you can pick to keep up to 3 of them. 
• Spike / Spinning Kick currently behaves differently between tank and DPS specs since tanks can use it outside of stealth while DPS can’t, so by moving the stun to Maul / Shadow Strike for DPS, Spike / Spinning Kick can have a single consistent behavior. It would make more sense though for Spike / Spinning Kick to fully replace Maul / Shadow Strike for tanks though now. 
• Maul / Shadow Strike is way more expensive than Spike / Spinning Kick, so this will hinder Deception / Infiltration’s out-of-stealth burst since they likely won’t have the Duplicity / Infiltration Tactics proc. 

The alternative to this solution would be to significantly nerf stealth directly in some other way. Here are a few individual alternatives:

• Greatly increasing the cooldown on Force Cloak, at least to 3 minutes, maybe 5. This would restrict how often it can be used to once or occasionally twice per round.  
• Adding a short-ish active time to stealth making it similar to Force Camouflage. This sort of effect could also be accomplished by reverting stealth to how it was prior to 3.0 (I think it was 3.0) and reintroducing the Blackout ability where it was easier to see nearby stealthed opponents unless they had Blackout active, which increased their stealth level for 8 seconds to what it is now all the time. Basically, regular stealth allowed you to be invisible at range, and then if you wanted to get close to someone, you had to use Blackout, but you couldn’t stay at close range for very long. Operative / Scoundrel stealth worked the same way, though their equivalent ability to Blackout was called Sneak.
• Making it so Force Cloak is the only way to enter / exit stealth, so the normal stealth ability toggle would be eliminated and that toggle would be moved to Force Cloak instead. This basically forces players to choose between using stealth offensively or defensively. An alternative mechanism would be making it so entering stealth places Force Cloak on cooldown. 
• Eliminating Shroud of Madness / Cloak of Resilience or make it a tank-only Discipline passive. This forces players to burn their strongest DCD if they want to reset combat at will, otherwise they have to be more opportunistic and make sure they don’t have any DoTs on them.

Pick your poison. 

There is a benefit to the way BioWare has chosen to nerf stealth for DPS with the level 20 choice: it is far less impactful for non-PvPers. Stealth works the same way it does now, just without some of the advantages it offers in PvP. That said, I do still have a PvE-related criticism of the current level 20 DPS choice: there isn’t a useful option for raiders. Yes, Overload / Force Wave + Electric Bindings / Force Wake is required for a couple fights in NiM, but most of the time, it goes completely unused. Stunning things from stealth is similarly pointless in group PvE content, and the speed boost is only helpful for cheesing a couple of specific mechanics. This could be fixed by swapping the position of the Fade passive with the Force Cloak speed boost passive. 

Pick 1 of 3 Abilities

Like every other class, at level 70 you have to choose between 1 of 3 abilities that you currently have access to. Similar to Juggernauts and Guardians, the choice is different between DPS and tanks. 

DPS Assassins / Shadows have to pick 1 of the following (Assassin / Shadow mains, you may want to sit down and buckle up for this):

• Force Shroud / Resilience
• Whirlwind / Force Lift (includes the Haunted Dreams / Containment utility bonuses)
• Severing Slash / Cleaving Cut

Tanks get Force Shroud / Resilience as a base ability and that choice is replaced with Overload / Force Wave that has the Electric Bindings / Force Wake utility effect built in. If this is unclear, you’ll be able to see an image of the choices in the next section. 

DPS specs effectively no longer have access to Whirlwind / Force Lift.  As a Sorcerer main, I must say I am truly sorry for your loss. They just keep taking things away from Assassins and letting Sorcs keep them. But hey, look on the bright side! At least you get to keep Force Slow XD!

This does have implications for tanks too since they’ll no longer be able to take both Whirlwind / Force Lift and Overload / Force Wave. If this isn’t a deliberate PvP balance choice, it would be nice if they could swap the choices for Overload / Force Wave and Spike / Spinning Kick so that tanks can still take both for fights like Brontes NiM to help deal with the orbs. 

Oh also, Severing Slash / Cleaving Cut might as well be deleted from the game because no one in their right mind would ever take that. Not that it matters since hardly anyone bothers to use it now. I would be interested in seeing what they’d have to do to Severing Slash in order to make it a viable choice next to the other two abilities. Would people take it if it applied the hindered debuff for a GCD like Gore / Lance or gave you a similar CC immunity effect like Gravity Vortex (with a longer cooldown)? What if it applied a super strong DoT?

Overcharge Saber and Battle Readiness

Overcharge Saber / Battle Readiness is the final Assassin / Shadow ability that is locked away behind a choice. It’s possible that BioWare could swap Overcharge Saber / Battle Readiness with Force Slow if it ends up being the case that Assassins / Shadows need a defensive buff after all the nerfs they are receiving. I’ll cover this ability in greater detail in the next section since each Discipline has completely different potentially viable alternative passives to choose from if they don’t want Overcharge Saber / Battle Readiness.

Notes on Utilities

Utilities as a separate concept are gone. As with other classes, you will have 3 levels where your choice between 3 passive effects are closely related to current utility effects. For Assassins / Shadows, here are the choices:

• At level 50, you will pick between Formless Phantom / Intangible Spirit, Fade, and Dark Stability / Sturdiness. 
• At level 60, you will pick between Speed Surge/ Kinetic Acceleration, Lambaste, and  Force Phase (very similar to Emersion / Egress). 
• At level 80, you will pick between Reaper’s Rush / Stalker’s Swiftness, Avoidance / Celerity, and Shroud of Madness / Mind Over Matter. 

The most significant missing utility effect is the Force Shroud / Resilience 2 second duration extension component of the Disjunction / One with the Shadows utility, so now Force Shroud / Resilience will now almost always last 3 seconds, or 2 with Shroud of Madness / Mind Over Matter. Assuming the tactical sticks around, tanks will still be able to extend the duration of Force Shroud using the Shroud of a Shadow tactical item. 

Individual Discipline Changes

Recklessness / Force Potency now has an additional effect unique to each Discipline. Don’t get too excited:

• Deception / Infiltration is now the only spec to provide 3 stacks of Recklessness / Force Potency. This effect was previously part of the Audacity / Force Harmonics utility.
• Hatred / Serenity now has the cooldown of Recklessness reduced by 2 seconds each time one of your periodic damage effects critically hits. 
• Darkness / Kinetic Combat moved the +30% Shield Absorption effect that used to be part of a Discipline passive to part of the base ability.

Deception and Infiltration Discipline changes

Deception / Infiltration gets to choose 1 passive out of 3 options pertaining to Reaping Strike / Vaulting Slash and another pertaining to Voltaic Slash / Clairvoyant Strike. Here are the options for Reaping Strike / Vaulting Slash:

• Penetrating Slash – Increases the armor penetration and critical hit chance of Reaping Strike / Vaulting Slash by 20%.
• Reaper – Killing an enemy within 3 seconds of dealing damage with Reaping Strike / Vaulting Slash resets the cooldown of all damaging abilities and increases your critical hit chance by 40% for 6 seconds. 
• Energized Blade – Critically hitting with Force attacks (so Ball Lightning / Psychokinetic Blast and Discharge / Force Breach). Resets the cooldown of Reaping Strike / Vaulting Slash. In addition, Reaping Strike / Vaulting Slash costs 10 additional Force.

I like these options. I’m happy that they’re giving more functionality to Reaping Strike / Vaulting Slash since it always felt out of place in the rotation as just a random, high-damage ability you use because it deals high damage. Two of the options complicate the rotation so it’s good that the third is just a basic stat increase. Now more than ever though, I think it’s important that Reaping Strike / Vaulting Slash grant you a stack of Voltage / Clairvoyance, since it will be even more annoying to maintain if you go for one of the more complicated passives. 

Here are the options for Voltaic Slash / Clairvoyant Strike:

• Reckless Voltage – Dealing damage with Voltaic Slash / Clairvoyant Strike reduces the cooldown of Recklessness by 2 seconds.
• Voltaic Engine – Voltage / Clairvoyance stacks also increase your critical hit chance by 10% per stack.
• Voltaic Defense – Voltage / Clairvoyance stacks also increase your damage reduction by 5%. In addition, Voltaic Slash / Clairvoyant Strike slows its target by 30% for 6 seconds.

These passives seem interesting. They’re a little basic, but with how the Reaping Strike / Vaulting Slash passives work, I think that’s a good thing. You have a clear defensive option for PvP with the DR and slow, a slightly more hectic one with the Recklessness / Force Potency cooldown reduction, and a consistent, unobtrusive one in the crit chance increase. 

Finally, we have the Overcharge Saber choice for Deception / Infiltration:

• Lightning Engine – Critically hitting with Voltaic Slash / Clairvoyant Strike or a direct Force attack generates 10 Force and heals you for 1% of your max health. Cannot occur more than once per second. 
• Lightning Critical – Melee attacks that consume Force (so everything but Saber Strike?) now benefit from and consume a stack of Recklessness / Force Potency. You deal additional elemental (armor piercing) damage with melee attacks that you critically hit with. This effect cannot occur more than once every 3 seconds. 
• Overcharge Saber is granted as an ability. 

It’s cool that these choices seem to synergize well with each other, so you can create something that feels like a coherent build rather than a collection of passives like it does for many other specs. For example, it seems pretty clear that you’re supposed to use Voltaic and Lightning Engine together alongside Energized Blade. I hope they tweak the names of the passives so they match better with their intended synergy though, like Energized Blade should be called Reaping Engine instead. 

Hatred and Serenity Discipline changes

Hatred and Serenity offers choices that upgrade Death Field / Force in Balance and Eradicate / Squelch. Here are the options for Death Field / Force in Balance:

• Death Focus – Death Field / Force in Balance both restores 5 Force and reduces the cooldown of Recklessness / Force Potency by 5 seconds for each enemy hit.
• Penetrating Death – Death Field / Force in Balance deals 10% more damage and increases your armor penetration by 10% for each target it hits. Lasts up to 10 seconds. 
• Deadly Field – Death Field / Force in Balance gains an additional ability charge. Killing an enemy or activating Recklessness / Force Potency generates 1 charge of Death Field / Force in Balance.

Holy AoE, Batman! It seems like they’re really leaning into Hatred / Serenity as the de-facto AoE spec and ultimate spreader of madness. I have a couple of reservations about these options though. Deadly Field seems designed for solo content since it’s reliant on kills, but the other two seem redundant. Penetrating Death seems more bursty, but AoE burst hasn’t ever been required and we’ll still probably have AoE tacticals for that.  I would like to see Penetrating Death replaced by a passive effect that’s more single-target oriented, and definitely with a less gross name please. 

Here are the options for Eradicate / Squelch:

• Ruin – Whenever a target affected by your Eradicate / Squelch dies, it bounces to the nearest target, dealing its initial damage and priming the target for being Eradicated / Squelched, causing the initial hit of your next Eradicate / Squelch to deal 25% additional damage. 
• Eradication Ray – Eradicate deals all its periodic damage over 1 second.
• Befall – Dealing damage with Eradicate increases the critical hit chance of your periodic  effects by 10% for 10 seconds. 

I must say, while it doesn’t provide the most sustained damage, Eradication Ray is pretty fun to use, especially watching like 6 Deathmarks disappear in an instant! While it does make the rotation a bit easier since you don’t ever have to worry about clipping Eradicate / Squelch, you also won’t get max damage or Force regeneration from the Languishing Lashes / Serene Poise passive. 

Befall and Ruin seem neat as well, though Ruin is a bit overcomplicated. Why not just have the whole ability jump and deal more damage with each successive jump, then you can limit it to only having one instance of the ability active at a time similar to Interrogation Probe / Shock Charge. Also, they’re missing an opportunity to call this passive Force Disease. Since it jumps on kill and has a pretty short duration, it probably won’t get taken too much for group content, though Befall seems to fill that gap well. 

Lastly, we have the Overcharge Saber / Battle Readiness choice:

• Maliciousness – Killing an enemy and activating Recklessness / Force Potency resets the cooldowns of all melee attacks (so really just Leeching Strike / Serenity Strike) and Eradicate / Squelch and increases their damage by 10% for 20 seconds, stacks up to 2 times. 
• Hungering Force – The critical hit chance of your periodic effects is increased by 5%. Whenever you steal / redistribute life, you regenerate 1 Force. 
• Gain access to the Overcharge Saber ability.

These passives seem interesting. Maliciousness synergizes well with the other on-kill passives you can choose, which should allow you to run around like a tornado of death and insanity, wiping out everything in sight, similar to what can already be done with Deception / Infiltration with Recklessness’s cooldown getting reduced by 1 minute upon exiting combat. 

Hungering Force is the more consistent, sustained of the two. Since periodic crits reduce the cooldown of Recklessness / Force Potency, you’re gonna have it very often now in Hatred / Serenity.  

Neither of these passives seem to be quite as helpful in PvP though, so it’s likely that BioWare intends for Hatred / Serenity players to still use Overcharge Saber / Battle Readiness for PvP. It seems like it won’t be nearly as much of a sustained DPS increase as Hungering Force though, so I doubt that it will get used much in PvE.

Darkness and Kinetic Combat Discipline changes

Tanks get to upgrade Depredating Volts / Cascading Debris and Dark / Kinetic Ward. Here are the choices for Depredating Volts / Cascading Debris:

• Antagonizing Volts – Increases the damage, critical hit chance, and threat generated by Depredating Volts / Cascading Debris by 10%.
• Energized Volts – Depredating Volts / Cascading Debris deals 20% more damage to targets you have taunted and restores 5 Force whenever it deals damage to them. 
• Chained Volts – Depredating Volts / Cascading Debris arcs to nearby targets each time it deals damage. 

I like that Assassins have both an AoE-oriented option as well as a single-target option. Antagonizing and Energized Volts seem quite redundant. I would like to see a choice available at each level that will allow players to create an off-tank build that has less mitigation and threat generation capabilities, but deals more damage and compensates for the reduced resource regeneration that results when tanks don’t have aggro. Perhaps Antagonizing Volts could be tweaked to reduce the threat generated by Depredating Volts / Cascading Debris rather than increase it.

It’s also worth noting that these choices are extremely similar to the choices for Juggernaut / Guardian tanks, almost identical except they apply to a different ability.

Here are the choices for Dark / Kinetic Ward:

• Dusk Ward – Each time you consume a charge of Dark / Kinetic Ward, the cooldown of Force Cloak is reduced by 2 seconds. If Dark / Kinetic Ward is broken by damage, it reduces the accuracy of all nearby enemies by 20% for 6 seconds.
• Twilight Ward – Each time you consume a charge of Dark / Kinetic Ward, the cooldown of Recklessness is decreased by 2 seconds. If Dark Ward is broken by damage, it grants 1 stack of Recklessness to you.
• Gloom Ward – Each time you consume a charge of Dark / Kinetic Ward, the cooldown of your AoE taunt is reduced by 2 seconds. If Dark Ward is broken by damage, it deals damage to nearby targets, generates a high amount of threat, and finishes the cooldowns of Discharge and Wither. 

My feelings about these passives are mixed. I like that these options further incentivize you to not reapply Dark / Kinetic Ward if you still have stacks so that you can preserve the increased absorption from Dark / Kinetic Bulwark, but I hate having to play I Spy for the Dark / Kinetic Ward buff on my bar to see how many stacks I have, and it just doesn’t happen when things get chaotic. I think it would be extremely helpful if the Dark / Kinetic Ward ability icon lit up if it expired or if the ability were changed to have a much longer base cooldown that would get reduced each time a stack of Dark Ward was consumed. Alternatively, these new passives could just trigger when Dark / Kinetic Ward is activated and then have Dark / Kinetic Bulwark not fall off when Dark / Kinetic Ward is reactivated. 

I also like that these options offer a variety of different effects that are applicable to different situations. Gloom Ward is great for adds, Twilight Ward increases DPS and helps with aggro in single-target situations, and Dusk Ward is good for when you need more cheeses or want to stealth out in PvP. Unfortunately, the shield does not work consistently in all fights. Sometimes, there’s very little that you can shield, and since all of these passives only trigger when you successfully shield something, all of these choices will be pretty useless in some fights. If shielding is reworked to be more universally useful, this won’t be an issue, but otherwise, one of the options should focus on buffing Dark / Kinetic Ward when most attacks are not shieldable. 

Finally, I would like to see one of these choices dedicated to an off-tank build. Perhaps you could change the effect of the Twilight Ward option to something like the following: “Dark / Kinetic Ward increases your damage dealt by X%, reduces your threat generated by Y%, and triggers the effects of Lightning Reflexes. Whenever you successfully deal direct damage, a charge of Dark / Kinetic Ward is consumed. Dark / Kinetic Ward no longer increases your shield chance. If Dark / Kinetic Ward runs out of charges, it grants 1 charge of Recklessness to you.” Here is the current text of Lightning Reflexes:

I think overall, these passives do add interesting effects to Assassin tanking, they’re just marred by a QoL issue that has plagued Assassins and Shadows for nearly a decade now. 

Finally, here is the Overload Saber / Combat Readiness choice:

• Reckless Defense – Consuming a stack of Recklessness grants you and nearby allies Reckless Defense, which increases damage reduction by 5% per stack. Reckless Defense stacks up to 3 times and lasts 6 seconds. 
• Dark Forces – Each time you deal damage to a target currently affected by one of your taunts, you restore 2 Force and heal for 1% of your maximum health.
• The Overcharge Saber / Combat Readiness ability is granted to you. It does not specify in any of the tooltips, but it does still give you the 25% DR in tank spec. 

These options clearly make it seem like you’re supposed to take Overload Saber as a tank. This makes some sense, but it’s odd that Assassins and Shadows have to choose to take one of their most consistently useful DCDs. Maybe they’ll swap it out for Force Slow. Also, unless you take Twilight Ward, you won’t be able to grant that third stack of Reckless Defense ever. Reckless Defense should be renamed to Reckless Protection or something too, since it’s providing DR, not defense chance. 

You can find Jaydenz’s Darkness Assassin PvE Guide for SWTOR 7.0 now here. It includes best builds and Operation-specific tips on top of all other things!

Concluding Thoughts

I’m definitely on board with Assassins / Shadows getting a major PvP nerf and like I said, if it ends up being too much, BioWare can always just swap one of the current choices with Force Slow. In terms of PvE, most of the choices seem pretty great. Assassin / Shadow seems like it will be even more fun to play in 7.0 

I am a bit concerned that Assassin / Shadow DPS will be a bit lacking in terms of PvE survivability. They haven’t been very good at dealing with sustained damage for a long time now and the degree to which they could handle spike damage was always more than needed. This issue would be mostly fixed if all Assassins / Shadows had access to the 25% DR on Overcharge Saber / Combat Readiness, though that does have significant PvP implications. 

I also hope that tanks receive some quality of life improvements, like having an off-tank build (each tank should have that), and making Dark / Kinetic Ward less painful to use optimally. That said, it doesn’t really seem like Assassin / Shadow tanks will be in a worse spot than they currently are. 

In general, the latest round of PTS changes seem to be more refined than the earlier changes for Guardians / Juggernauts and Sentinels / Marauders; hopefully they give those Combat Styles another major pass before 7.0 is released. 

You can also read my analysis of the Sorcerer and Sage changes for SWTOR 7.0, based on the new PTS phase that launched earlier this week.

Since parts of SWTOR 7.0 started showing up on the PTS, a lot has been added to it for testing and below are the analysis for all other classes and disciplines as well as any other changes to the game in general that we know of so far:

• SWTOR 7.0 PTS New UI and Sniper and Operative Changes
• SWTOR 7.0 PTS Sentinel Combat Styles Analysis
• SWTOR 7.0 PTS Guardian Combat Styles first look
• Analyzing SWTOR’s System Design Philosophy
• SWTOR Design Director Explains Combat Styles
• SWTOR Galactic Season 2 Changes announced. PTS 7.0 Update coming

Looking for Class Guides? You can find detailed guides for each class and discipline in the SWTOR Class Guides List.

The Legacy of the Sith expansion is expected to be released this Holiday season. There is no exact date yet announced.