SWTOR 7.7 Deception Assassin PvE Guide and Best Builds

SWTOR Deception Assassin PvE Guide (DPS) for beginners and more experienced veterans: Skills, Choices, Rotations, Gearing, Builds, Tips!

Table of Contents:

• Introduction to Deception Assassin
• Abilities Explained
• Ability Tree Choices
• Gearing and Stats Priorities
• Best Deception Assassin Builds in 7.0
• Openers, Rotations, Priorities

Introduction to Deception Assassin

Deception Assassins charge their saberstaves with static electricity using a combination of high-voltage Force lightning attacks and lightsaber swings. At any point, they can discharge this pent-up electricity to unleash devastation upon unsuspecting foes, though their saber needs to be fully charged in order to deal maximum damage.

Deception is in the middle of the pack when it comes to single-target sustained and one of the better specs for burst, especially in shorter checks like you’ll find in more recent Operations.

Deception’s greatest strength is its capability to target swap without any consequences whatsoever. The only limitation is with movement abilities, but both have pretty short cooldowns and that only matters if you have to swap to something out of melee range which isn’t always the case.

Unfortunately, Deception’s DPS capabilities are only suited to single-target. In terms of AoE, Deception offers basically nothing. Yes they can spam Lacerate, but that doesn’t come close to what many DoT specs are capable of. If you want to do AoE, switch to Hatred or leave it to other specs.

In terms of survivability, Assassins received minor nerfs. They no longer have Force Speed DR, Disjunction for longer Force Shroud, or tiny boost to armor from Insulation. That said, almost all disciplines received some sort of survivability nerf with many being a fair bit more significant than what Assassins lost.

AoE RDT is a bit more painful to take since you’ll have to give up Fade, but this is only a minor DPS loss in longer fights and in shorter ones, it may not result in a DPS increase at all. Assassin DPS remains exceptional at handling most spike damage thanks to Force Shroud, but have a more difficult time mitigating damage over a longer period of time like you’d find in burn phases since they lack a reliable cooldown with a longer duration.

Major Changes in 7.0

Utility points are gone! Instead, there is a new system called the Ability Tree. Each discipline has 8 choices where they pick 1 of 3 options. The options have several similarities across the Combat Styles:

• 2 choices buff a discipline-specific ability (2 abilities, 1 choice each).
• 3 choices which are just old Utility effects. These choices are almost always the same for all disciplines. 
• 2 choices where you’re picking between 1 ability or 1 of 2 passives. One of the ability choices tends to be an offensive cooldown (OCD). The other seems to be related to PvP balance, but there isn’t a clear pattern beyond the choice forcing players to decide which of 3 capabilities they want to keep.
• 1 choice where you’re picking 1 of 3 abilities. One of the abilities is always one of your primary CCs, either the 8s mez or 4s hard stun. Another of the abilities is the movement ability with the longest cooldown. The third option is less consistent, it seems to be there as an extra balance lever for Broadsword since some abilities that got locked away are more impactful than others. The 3 abilities are almost always the same for each discipline.

This means almost all disciplines had 5 abilities locked away behind choices with the option for players to keep up to 3 of them. In addition, many extremely situational abilities were pruned entirely. Deception permanently lost access to 2 abilities: 

• Guard (now tank-only)
• Spike (now tank-only as choice)

Guarding is now a tank-only ability, which is the logical next step since the nerf to Guard for DPS partway through 6.0 was ineffective at stopping its ubiquity in PvP. 

Battle rezzes in general are now healer-only, but there is no longer a global 5 min lockout on those abilities, so it’s treated just like any other ability, albeit with a much longer cooldown.

Group Composition Tips

In order to deal maximum damage, Deception requires 2 other DPS debuffs:

Please note that these numbers are based on the damage distribution of your abilities in 6.0. Melee damage will likely represent a greater proportion of your overall damage output in 7.0 thanks to new ability tree choices. I will update these values as soon as I can. 

Deception is pretty average when it comes to dependence on the group. It pairs best with Annihilation Marauder / Watchman Sentinel because both disciplines provide both of the debuffs that the other one needs. All previously Warrior / Knight-exclusive Combat Styles (Juggernaut / Guardian and Marauder / Sentinel) provide the Melee DPS debuff. 

That said, I wouldn’t focus too much on getting the Melee DPS debuff because Assassin / Shadow DPS is the only Combat Style that can benefit from it that doesn’t provide it, so it won’t provide much benefit to your group as a whole and the DPS increase isn’t all that significant. Technically the Force-wielding tanks will benefit from it as well, but you shouldn’t be optimizing your DPS debuffs for tanks. 

In contrast, the Internal / Elemental DPS debuff is valuable to almost every combat style, so I would definitely try to make sure you have it. Annihilation / Watchman is the only Force-wielding discipline that provides it by default, though Madness / Balance can also provide it with a specific ability tree choice. Operative / Scoundrel DPS and any of the Tech DoT specs can provide the Internal / Elemental DPS debuff. 

DPS Mindset

How can I do as much damage as possible in each GCD (global cooldown, 1.5 second duration before you can activate another ability) given the constraints of the fight? Which ability do I use right now that will provide me the most DPS? How can I maximize my uptime? If I’m not activating an ability right now, why not? Can I finish this cast before I need to move? What happens if I don’t have time to finish a cast before moving? Can the healers deal with it without too much stress?  

Check out the SWTOR Damage Types and Damage Mitigation guide for more details on how they differ from each other and how to determine which attack does what damage!

Our in-depth analysis and breakdown of the relationship between mechanics and strategy in boss fights in SWTOR may also help you perform better in group content.

Abilities Explained

Please have the game open while reading through the next few sections. I will not be writing out ability descriptions and I will only be transcribing the components of discipline passives that directly relate to the ability and rotation. This forces you to read through what everything does so that you can understand what all of your passives and abilities do as well as locate these abilities in-game. Make sure you place all of these abilities on your bar in an order that makes sense to you. 

Single-Target Rotational Abilities, Attributes, and Important Procs

Surging Charge

(Force/Internal/Direct/Single-Target)
I’m going to start off this section by going over Surging Charge, which is a discipline passive that used to be an ability a long time ago alongside Dark Charge (now exclusive to Darkness) and Lightning Charge (now exclusive to Hatred). This passive is responsible for the visual effect you see on your saberstaff. 

This lightsaber charge passive governs how the Discharge ability works for each discipline and makes it so dealing melee damage has a 50% chance to deal some sort of additional Force damage alongside some other effects unique to each discipline. 

Surging Charge deals the most damage with each tick, but it has a 6 second rate limit on how often the effect can trigger. More importantly, each time Surging Charge is triggered, you generate a stack of Static Charge which affects how much damage you deal when you activate Discharge. Static Charge can stack up to 3 times. You can still trigger Surging Charge even if you have 3 stacks of Static Charge, but you will only refresh the duration of the proc rather than generate additional stacks. 

Since Surging Charge has a chance to trigger with each hit, melee attacks that hit multiple times have a greater chance to trigger the effect compared to attacks that only hit once. Voltaic Slash hits 2 times, Saber Strike hits 3 times, and Lacerate can hit up to 8 times (though only once per enemy).

The key distinction here is between Voltaic Slash and Lacerate. At 2 targets, Lacerate deals roughly identical damage to Voltaic Slash (though it’s split over 2 targets). At 3 targets and beyond, Lacerate deals more damage than Voltaic Slash and begins having a greater chance to trigger Surging Charge per GCD. Surging Charge has 2 procs associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Saber Conduit
Dealing damage with Surging Charge restores 9 Force over 9 seconds. Cannot occur more than once every 12 seconds. While you don’t have any way to consume additional Force, you don’t have any to spare either. On the dummy or in fights where you truly have 100% uptime, you very occasionally have to use Saber Strike to regenerate Force. This makes the Force generated by Saber Conduit essential to your rotation and helps to reinforce the idea that you should be triggering Surging Charge as often as possible. Saber Conduit’s 12s rate limit aligns with Surging Charge’s 6s rate limit such that you will be triggering Saber Conduit with every other instance of Surging Charge.

Exploitive Strikes
Dealing critical Force damage increases your melee critical chance by 5%. Lasts 10 seconds. This proc applies to all Assassin disciplines. I’m pointing it out here because it’s a proc that applies to all of your melee attacks. It shouldn’t ever affect which ability you choose to use, but it will appear on your bar so I wanted to explain what it does. This can trigger from Surging Charge in addition to actual attacks.

Discharge

(Force/Internal/Direct/Single-Target/Instan
This ability functions completely differently in each discipline; the only things about Discharge that remain constant between the 3 Assassin disciplines are that the ability deals Force damage and is instant.

In Deception, Discharge doesn’t have a cooldown, but is only usable when you have stacks of Static Charge and its damage dealt scales with the number of Static Charges you’ve built up. Activating Discharge consumes all stacks of Static Charge. The damage doesn’t quite scale linearly, so you deal more than triple the damage by activating Discharge at 3 stacks than you would by activating Discharge with only 1 stack of Static Charge.

It’s best to only activate this ability when you have 3 stacks of Static Charge and almost always activate it as soon as you generate your 3rd stack so that you aren’t wasting future stacks. Since Discharge is one of your most damaging abilities, your rotation is structured around being able to generate stacks of Static Charge as often as possible. 

That said, it is technically okay to delay its activation in certain situations because it doesn’t have a traditional cooldown. If you just triggered the 3rd stack of Static Charge with a melee attack (not Ball Lightning), it is okay to delay using Discharge in favor of one of your high-damage melee attacks since you know that you won’t trigger Surging Charge because of the 6 second rate limit. 

There are a couple of ways that you can immediately gain 3 stacks of Static Charge that I will go over momentarily. Make sure that you don’t have any stacks of Static Charge when you activate one of those effects so you aren’t wasting any stacks. Discharge has 1 debuff and 3 passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation that I haven’t already mentioned:

Saber Conduit
In addition to its other effects that I’ve already mentioned, Discharge applies the Force damage debuff, which makes targets take 5% more damage from Force attacks. Lasts 45 seconds. The Force debuff is beneficial to Juggernauts / Guardians and Marauders / Sentinels. Every other Combat Style that deals Force damage provides the debuff for itself.

Electric Ambush
Activating Recklessness or Phantom Stride build 3 stacks of stacks of Static Charge. In addition, exiting combat or activating Force Cloak reduces the cooldown of Recklessness by 60 seconds. This enables you to always have Recklessness available for each set of trash mobs so you will always get autocrit Discharge. With the Reaper’s Rush ability tree buff, you can jump around and whack each trash mob with an autocrit Discharge.

In order to preserve the existing functionality of resetting Recklessness’ cooldown despite Force Cloak no longer removing you from combat in Operations, Broadsword has made it so activating Force Cloak will grant the cooldown reduction.

Crackling Blasts
Increases the critical damage dealt by Discharge (and Ball Lightning) by 20%. This passive makes Discharge synergize better with Recklessness and Shadowcraft, though with new ability tree choices, it’s only barely enough to make Discharge a viable candidate.

Voltaic Slash

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This is your filler ability. It’s a bit stronger than a lot of other fillers in the game, but it’s still your least damaging rotational ability and its damage output pales in comparison to your other melee attacks, especially when they crit. Please note that Voltaic Slash hits twice, so it has a greater chance to trigger Surging Charge. 

In StarParse, it’s a bit difficult to see, but you are shown damage per strike, not per activation, so the numbers you see for Voltaic Slash are only half of what the ability actually deals. Voltaic Slash has 1 proc associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Voltage
Ball Lightning can trigger Surging Charge off of its normal rate limit. Each stack increases the chance of this happening by 50%. Stacks up to 2 times and lasts 15 seconds. Basically, at 2 stacks, Ball Lightning is guaranteed to trigger Surging Charge (and grant a stack of Static Charge). One of your ability tree choices also makes each stack of Voltage also grants some other benefit. For PvE, you’ll be using the buff that makes each stack of Voltage increase your crit chance by 10%.

All of this makes it essential that Voltage has 100% uptime. When using the Traditional build, it’s pretty easy to maintain Voltage when the boss has more than 30% HP, but it gets trickier sub-30% or if you’re using a Blade of the Elements build, so the 15 second duration reinforces the need to have high APM. Your DPS will drop precipitously if you aren’t able to consistently maintain 2 stacks of Voltage without delaying your more damaging abilities.

Ball Lightning

(Force/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability deals slightly more damage than Voltaic Slash, but it’s essential that it’s used mostly on cooldown because it always generates a stack of Static Charge thanks to the Voltage proc from Voltaic Slash. Ball Lightning also has 10m range, which helps a ton with maintaining high uptime in a lot of fights and getting back into range sooner. Ball Lightning has 2 procs, 1 discipline passive, and 1 tactical item associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Induction
Your rotational melee attacks grant Induction, reducing the Force cost of your next Ball Lightning by 25%. Stacks up to 2 times. In addition, Ball Lightning has a 50% chance to strike the target again dealing 50% damage (called Twin Surge in StarParse). This second attack cannot trigger Surging Charge, but can reset the cooldown of Reaping Strike if you’re using the Energized Blade ability tree buff it will consume its own stack of Recklessness, if available.

Returning to the first part of the buff, Ball Lightning is one of your most expensive abilities, costing 32 Force. The Induction proc helps to reduce that cost. The only abilities that don’t trigger it are Discharge, Low Slash, and Saber Strike. Thankfully, you don’t ever have to pay attention to it. Continue activating Ball Lightning on cooldown regardless of how many stacks of Induction you have. Honestly, I’m not sure why it still exists since it just adds unnecessary complexity and incentivizes you to do the rotation incorrectly.

Crackling Blasts
Increases the critical damage dealt by Ball Lightning (and Discharge) by 20%. Yes, I already mentioned this passive, but with the new ability tree choices, I have to bring it up again. This passive makes Ball Lightning synergize better with Recklessness and Shadowcraft, but it’s still weaker than your other options, so Ball Lightning should never be used during the Shadowcraft window if you can help it and it should only be used during Recklessness if you aren’t taking the Lightning Critical ability tree buff.

The Awakened Flame
This tactical item makes it so dealing damage with Ball Lightning applies a small DoT that lasts 6 seconds. This boosts the damage dealt by the Ball Lightning GCD and helps to reinforce that Ball Lightning needs to be used as often as possible.

Maul

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability has a special trait where it deals about 18% less damage unless it’s used from behind the target. Please note that unlike Backstab / Backblast for Operatives / Scoundrels, Maul doesn’t deal more damage from being activated from stealth, you just have to be behind the target. 

Maul is one of your most damaging abilities and it doesn’t have a cooldown. What stops you from just spamming it instead of Voltaic Slash? Maul costs 40 Force while Voltaic Slash only costs 20. It simply isn’t sustainable to spam the ability outside of specific situations. Maul has 2 procs, 2 discipline passives, and 1 debuff associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Duplicity
Dealing direct damage grants Duplicity, which makes your next Maul deal 25% additional damage and cost 75% less Force (bringing its Force cost down to 10). Cannot occur more than once every 8 seconds and lasts up to 15 seconds. Maul’s usage is centered around this proc and in PvE, Maul should typically only be used while you have the Duplicity proc. Since Maul’s usage is typically governed by the rate limit on a proc, rather than an ability cooldown, you are free to delay it so long as you don’t start missing out on future triggers. Since Duplicity itself lasts 15 seconds, you have until the buff bar has only about a third of its duration left to use it. Typically, this means you are free to prioritize it below everything but Voltaic Slash, but sometimes you have to pay closer attention like when you have a Recklessness or Shadowcraft window.

Dark Embrace
While in stealth and for 15 seconds after leaving stealth, Force regeneration is increased by 25%. What does this have to do with Maul? You’ll see…

Darkswell
Maul grants 15 seconds of Dark Embrace. While Dark Embrace is active, all damage taken is reduced by 25%. Now it all makes sense! It’s possible to have 100% uptime on Dark Embrace by using Maul exclusively with the Duplicity proc since you have to use Maul every 8 seconds because the proc lasts 15 seconds. That said, sometimes you can cut it a little close and you need to have 100% uptime on this Dark Embrace if you don’t want to have any Force management issues.

Electric Ambush
The critical damage dealt by Maul is increased by 30%. This passive makes Maul an excellent candidate to use during the Shadowcraft window as well as potentially for a stack of Recklessness if you’re using the Lightning Critical ability tree buff.

Assassin’s Mark
Maul applies the armor debuff, which reduces a target’s armor by 20%. Lasts 45 seconds. Bosses have 35% DR from armor, so a 20% reduction corresponds to a 7% damage increase for Energy / Kinetic damage, which is the same as the damage increase provided by the Internal / Elemental debuff. The armor debuff is typically regarded as the best debuff in the game because most disciplines deal a lot of Energy / Kinetic damage (all weapon damage is Energy / Kinetic), though in certain compositions, particularly ones with a lot of DoT specs, you may get more benefit form the Internal / Elemental debuff.

Reaping Strike

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This is your most damaging ability. It can’t always crit quite as high as Maul since it doesn’t have something like Electric Ambush, but its higher base damage still makes it competitive. Technically, it can only be used from stealth or within 15 seconds of critting, but that’s effectively all the time. The main impact of Reaping Strike is that it slightly complicates Deception’s rotation by giving you another high-priority ability to juggle. Reaping Strike has 1 tactical item associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Blade of the Elements
This tactical item makes it so Reaping Strike’s critical strike chance is increased by 50% with each stack of Voltage (100% at 2 stacks). In addition, Critically hitting with Voltaic Slash reduces the cooldown of Reaping Strike by 1.5 seconds. Thanks to new ability tree buffs and this tactical item, Reaping Strike can become more tightly integrated into your rotation. With a proper ability tree build and this tactical item, Reaping Strike can become your highest-priority ability.

Assassinate

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability is typically only usable against targets that have less than 30% remaining HP. It deals a lot of damage and is quite cheap, but it is the weakest of your strong melee attacks (next to Maul and Reaping Strike). It’s also less central to your rotation, so it should definitely be used before Voltaic Slash, but not much else. Assassinate has 1 discipline passive associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Executioner
Increases all damage dealt to targets below 30% of max HP by 5%. In addition, the Force cost of Assassinate is reduced by 10. The 5% damage boost is a sizable boost, and it’s better than what any other burst DPS spec gets, but it doesn’t affect your rotation. We’re more concerned with the Force cost reduction; in fights where you are able to have very high uptime, this cost reduction is essential to not running out of Force. In fights with 100% uptime, you rely on using Phantom Stride at least once every 30 seconds to avoid running out of Force.

Semi-Rotational Abilities

These abilities aren’t part of your core rotation since they don’t deal enough damage, but they have some property that makes them useful in many fights in specific situations. 

Low Slash

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This is your only attack with 30m range. It deals slightly more than half the damage of Voltaic Slash without any of the benefits. It should only be used when you’re out of range for all your other abilities, but it should absolutely get used in those cases because you have no alternative. You’ll often use it alongside Force Speed, resulting in a gap closing GCD that is quite similar to abilities like Force Leap and Jet Charge.

Keep in mind that Low Slash is considered a melee attack, so it can trigger Surging Charge and grant a stack of Static Charge, so even if you can’t really deal damage with Low Slash or there isn’t a target worth damaging, it can still be worthwhile to chuck your saber at them to get a free stack and refresh the duration of the proc. 

Low Slash also applies a 4 second mez (stun that breaks on damage), but this is almost never relevant outside of PvP. You might find use for it in select fights against specific adds as a sort of second interrupt. Low Slash doesn’t have any procs or discipline passives associated with it. 

Saber Strike

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
In an actual raid, it is exceedingly rare that you will ever need to use this. On a dummy parse, you should only need to use it twice and practically any amount of downtime will make it so you never have to use it in an actual fight.

Only use it if you see yourself dip below 20-25 Force and try to use it instead of Voltaic Slash so you aren’t delaying more damaging abilities. If you have less than 20-25 Force, you end up becoming unable to afford to activate a lot of your attacks, though thanks to the higher Force regeneration rate, this will only feel like slight additional delays between abilities, which adds up over time. 

Since it’s so rare, it’s not something you really need to pay attention to. Outside of practicing on the dummy, just check your Force level if you feel that it took slightly longer than usual to activate an ability and if your Force is below 25, throw in a Saber Strike. Saber Strike has 1 Combat Style passive associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Assassin’s Training
Endurance is increased by 3%. In addition, dealing damage with Saber Strike restores 1 Force (3 Force total per activation). I mention the Endurance thing because you may notice that your health is slightly higher than everyone else’s. The key part of the passive for Saber Strike is the Force regeneration. Basically, the high Force regen + a single GCD where you aren’t spending any Force + the 3 extra Force from this passive is enough to sustain you at literally 100% uptime for about 90 seconds against targets above 30% HP. Once your target dips below 30% HP, there is no longer a need to use Saber Strike at all because Assassinate is cheaper than Voltaic Slash.

AoE Damage

The formula for determining how much damage an AoE ability does per GCD such that it can be compared to single-target abilities is: (Damage Dealt/Number of GCDs) x Number of Enemies. An AoE ability’s place in the priority is as high as it can be until it reaches a single-target ability that deals more damage than the AoE will deal to all enemies in the GCD. 

AoE damage is considered fluff if the adds do not need to die immediately or if you are otherwise shirking your main responsibilities to deal more damage than necessary to adds. It’s pretty easy to tell what is and isn’t fluff, don’t be greedy and don’t hurt your group’s chances of beating the boss. 

Lacerate

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
This is your spammable (and really only) AoE ability. Its damage per target is roughly half of Voltaic Slash, so at 2 targets, Lacerate and Voltaic Slash deal nearly identical damage, but you’re splitting that damage between 2 targets, so it doesn’t make much sense to use it against only 2 targets. When you have 3 or more targets, Lacerate has a higher chance of triggering Surging Charge and deals more damage per GCD than Voltaic Slash. Lacerate has 3 discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation that I haven’t already mentioned:

Saber Conduit
In addition to its other effects that I’ve already mentioned, Lacerate builds stacks of Voltage. This allows you to generate Voltage before a fight starts and maintain it during downtime. Please note that whenever you use Lacerate, you lose the ability tree buff to Voltaic Slash and can’t regain it until you use Voltaic Slash again. It’s still valuable to use this when you can’t hit the boss, but remember to use Voltaic Slash before anything else.

Whirling Edge
Increases your armor penetration by 10% and increases the critical chance of Lacerate by 15% and its critical damage bonus by 30%. The armor penetration component is just a generic DPS increase that applies to all of your Energy/Kinetic damage, not just Lacerate. The critical boost component is a standard buff that is given to almost all burst DPS specs that applies to their spammable AoE.

Lacerate deals more damage than the following rotational abilities if it hits at least the following number of targets:

• 2 targets: Voltaic Slash
• 3 targets: Discharge, Ball Lightning, Assassinate
• 4 targets: Reaping Strike (without Blade of the Elements)
• 5 targets: Reaping Strike (with Blade of the Elements)
• Never: Maul

You have to maintain the Dark Embrace or you will quickly run out of Force (and take more damage). You can spam Lacerate for quite a long time, but not indefinitely, and that time will be cut short if you let Dark Embrace fall off. 

Severing Slash

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
In order to make Severing Slash more unique, this ability now grants a unique buff for each discipline. For Deception, Severing Slash Electrifies you for 3 seconds. Electrify increases the damage of your Force attacks by 5% for each target hit with Severing Slash. Severing Slash doesn’t appear to have a cap on the number of targets it can hit like the normal 4 or 8 targets for all other AoE abilities in the game (it’s possible this was just an oversight in the tooltip description). 

If there isn’t a target limit, the Electrify buff is only limited by the number of targets you can fit into the cleave area. The May Cause Injury tactical item also doesn’t specify a target limit, so you might be able to deal a ridiculous amount of damage with an AoE Discharge. I recommend playing around with it inside an Uprising or using it against the pirates inside the cantina right before the Quartermaster Bulo fight in The Ravagers. 

Outside of this potential whacky use case, Severing Slash only deals slightly more damage than Lacerate, but it’s a lot harder to hit the same number of targets because of its much smaller effect radius, so it’s rare for this ability to actually deal more damage than Lacerate. Severing Slash doesn’t have any discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation. 

May Cause Injury Tactical Item

This tactical item makes it so Severing Slash enables your next Discharge to arc to other nearby targets. Since you can’t afford to give up Force Shroud outside of meme situations, this tactical is practically useless. That said, Deception has always been oriented towards single-target damage and its ability tree build is centered around defeating enemies individually, not AoE. 

Offensive Cooldowns

All offensive cooldowns (OCDs) should be used as frequently as possible under the conditions stated here and should only be delayed if they need to be saved for a DPS check or burst window, but don’t start delaying them until you see that you have to. 

Recklessness

This ability now has an additional bonus that’s unique to each discipline. Deception is now the only discipline that has access to 3 stacks of Recklessness. Every other discipline only gains 2 stacks per activation. 

There’s a bit more to consider when using Recklessness than there has been in the past, though it’s mostly dependent on your ability tree build, so I’ll talk about that aspect later on. 

Recklessness normally only increases the critical chance of your Force attacks and because activating the ability grants 3 stacks of Static Charge, you’ll almost always want to use at least 1 stack on Discharge, though sometimes you’ll be able to spend 2 stacks on back to back Discharges thanks to Phantom Stride. 

I also want to reiterate that the Twin Surge effect from Ball Lightning will consume its own stack of Recklessness, so if you do use Ball Lightning with Recklessness, try to only use it with the final stack when possible. The easiest way to accomplish this is to use Phantom Stride’s Discharge for the second stack, but that ability isn’t always available.

Force Cloak

This ability now offers a bit more of a DPS increase than it has in the past thanks to the Shadowcraft Legendary Item, which increases your critical chance by 100% for 6 seconds (effectively 4-5 GCDs) after using Phantom Stride from stealth. 

Since the cooldown on Recklessness is effectively reset when you exit combat, it’s essential that you only activate Force Cloak shortly after using Recklessness, though the exact timing will depend on your build.

Force Cloak now behaves differently in Operations. It still drops your threat to 0, you just don’t actually exit combat or enter stealth anymore, so it’s more like a stronger version of Force Camouflage in that way.

In order to counteract the changes to stealthing out in Operations, activating Force Cloak now also directly reduces the cooldown of Recklessness by 1 minute as part of the Electric Ambush discipline passive. The cooldown reduction will still happen from exiting combat too. 

Overcharge Saber

This ability offers both a damage and survivability increase, making it the ultimate cooldown for burn phases. It’s best to activate it right before you use Ball Lightning because that’s when you are guaranteed to trigger Surging Charge and enables you to activate Ball Lightning 3 times while Overcharge Saber is active.

The description of the buff is a bit confusing, but Overcharge Saber doesn’t actually increase the damage dealt by Discharge, so it’s ideal to minimize the number of times you activate Discharge during Overcharge Saber, though you shouldn’t delay activating Discharge because of this. Basically, just don’t use Overcharge Saber if you know you plan to use Recklessness or Phantom Stride in the next 15 seconds if you can help it. 

Adrenal

It’s best to have the Adrenal active at the same time as your other OCDs, particularly during your Shadowcraft window and Recklessness starting with the Discharge you use right before these effects are active. Since the Adrenal’s cooldown is so long, it’s hard to delay it for long enough that you end up missing out on additional activations, so it’s okay to delay your Adrenal to ensure that this happens. 

Defensive Cooldowns and Mobility

Defensive cooldowns (DCDs) are not used just to stop you from getting killed, they’re there to minimize overall damage taken. For any Combat Style in any fight, your most effective DCDs should be mapped to the most damaging attacks in the fight while weaker DCDs should be used against weaker attacks. 

Don’t pop all of your DCDs at once or only use them when your health gets low. You should be attempting to mitigate as much damage as possible by using your DCDs against predictable damage.

In fights where you’ll be taking a high amount of sustained damage, it’s important to use your DCDs in the order that maximizes your overall uptime. If you can tweak the order that you use your DCDs where it allows you to get an extra use out of one of them over the course of a long burn phase, you should definitely do that instead of activating your potentially stronger DCDs first.

Force Shroud

Most of the hardest-hitting attacks that you’d want to mitigate are considered Force / Tech damage, and this ability provides complete immunity to them for a brief moment. Unfortunately, the Disjunction utility effect no longer exists, so your protection will only last for 3 seconds. Since Force Shroud provides complete immunity, you shouldn’t need to pair it with other DCDs unless you’re taking damage from multiple different attacks with different damage types at the same time.

Force Shroud also purges all removable hostile effects when activated. Purges are a bit stronger than cleanses and can get rid of some effects that regular cleanses can’t remove. Since this ability is often your only DCD, be careful about using it as a cleanse if you know a big hit is coming up. 

Unless a good chunk of the group is getting hit with the debuff at the same time, there’s a good chance that healers are meant to and capable of cleansing it themselves. You could actually be making your healers work harder if you prioritize cleansing weak DoTs over strong individual hits. 

Deflection

Defense chance is the chance to completely avoid the damage from an attack. When you successfully defend against an attack, you’ll see a little popup that says dodged / parried / resisted. Defense chance almost always only applies to Melee/Ranged damage, though there are a few exceptions. It’s important to note that defense chance is disabled while you are stunned (can’t dodge something if you can’t move). 

Deflection works by increasing your defense chance by 50%, so with the 10% defense chance you get as an Assassin, your total defense chance becomes 60% while Deflection is active. This is fairly strong when it works, but you don’t normally take a whole lot of Melee/Ranged damage as a DPS, so it isn’t useful in every fight.

In group content, Melee/Ranged damage mostly only comes from basic attacks. Adds and trash almost exclusively deal Melee/Ranged damage and bosses usually have some sort of basic attack they use in between their mechanics, so if you get aggro on some adds or a boss, pop this right away!

Mass Mind Control with Formless Phantom

As a DPS, Mass Mind Control is your threat drop and the Formless Phantom ability tree buff makes it so Mass Mind Control reduces AoE damage taken by 60%. All danger circles are considered AoE damage, but the majority of boss attacks are considered AoE damage as well, even if they don’t look like it, so this is one of the most powerful DCDs in the game for boss fights. It’s far less useful in solo content and PvP where AoE damage is far less frequent.

If you have to stand in a circle or stand in front of the boss, preemptively pop Mass Mind Control so you can mitigate the damage you might take from a cleave.

Medpac

Don’t save it for a rainy day because today is that rainy day! Unless you get hit by a one-shot mechanic (which you shouldn’t), you should never let yourself die while your Medpac is still available.

If everyone’s health is getting low or there’s a heal check in the current phase, do not hesitate to use your Medpac if you can take full benefit of the health provided or need to be above a certain health level to survive an imminent mechanic.

If you think Medpacs are too expensive, it’s time to get Biochem on one of your alts or even better, your raiding toon so that you can make your own or get reusables. Choosing not to use a medpac for financial reasons and subsequently dying is not a valid excuse.

Force Speed

I think this is the best movement ability in the game. It offers the best balance of speed and directional control. It’s also on a super short cooldown, so you usually have access to it whenever you need it. 

As I mentioned before, it’s great to pair with Low Slash so you aren’t missing out on too much damage if you find yourself outside of Melee range. 

Phantom Stride

This ability instantly teleports you to the target. In Deception, it also grants you 3 stacks of Static Charge, so it’s best used when you have 0 stacks for maximum benefit, but it’s not always a DPS increase to save it for this purpose. If Force Speed + Low Slash are unavailable, you’re gonna lose far more DPS from not doing any damage for a GCD than you would by using Phantom Stride to get back into range when you already have 1-2 stacks of Static Charge. Furthermore, if you know that you’ll regularly become out of range of the boss, it’s far better to save Phantom Stride for use as a gap closer than to ever use it only to get a free extra Discharge.

Phantom Stride does not cause a GCD, but there is a deliberate slight delay before you can activate it after activating another attack. This was done to mitigate a bug where people would sometimes be launched into the air after reaching their target. 

Crowd Control and Other Abilities

There are only a handful of instances in Operations where CC is required, so I will briefly go over what this Combat Style has at their disposal in addition to any other abilities I haven’t yet mentioned. 

Electrocute

This is your hard stun, meaning it does not break on damage. In PvE, this will generally only be used for specific mechanics since most things you’d care about stunning are immune. Be sure to pay attention when something is stunnable though, because that often means you’re intended to stun it.

Mind Trap

This is your primary mez. It can only be used out of combat, but this is really an advantage in PvE because it doesn’t force you to pull as soon as something is CC’d like most other mezzes. 

Mind Trap can also enable your entire group to sneak past trash pulls since enemies affected by Mind Trap don’t notice you or anyone else even outside of stealth. In order to maximize your chances of having everyone sneak by, try to CC the add that is furthest away from the others or the one that is closest to the edge of the group. 

If you’re progging a fight, it’s often more efficient to just kill the trash instead of trying to sneak past it after every pull, especially if you have group members that are prone to accidentally aggroing things. Also, don’t forget to enter stealth before you walk up to an enemy to CC it. 

Whirlwind

This is another of your mezzes. It has the old Haunted Dreams utility effect built in now, so it’s instant and stuns targets for 2 seconds after being broken early. In PvE, there’s little use for an 8s mez. Many enemies are often immune to mezzes even if they are vulnerable to being hard stunned or interrupted. 

Unbreakable Will

This is your CC break, use it when you are prevented from DPSing by a CC.  

Force Slow

This ability applies a slow and deals a small amount of damage, roughly the same as Low Slash. It does have a 10m range, so if Discharge, Ball Lightning, and Low Slash are all unavailable, you can technically use this ability to deal damage.

I don’t think you’ll find yourself with too many instances where you’re at 10m range and Ball Lightning is on cooldown unless you already used it and are unable to get closer due to some mechanic. 

Overload

This is your conal knockback. The only fight it’s important for right now is Styrak in NiM where you have to knock back the Chained Manifestations. It now has Electric Bindings as a built-in feature (5s root). Also, please do not ruin everybody else’s day by using this ability for its AoE damage. 

Jolt

This is your interrupt. For a melee DPS, the cooldown on your interrupt is a little on the long side. Without the Avoidance ability tree buff, it’s cooldown is equivalent to Sorcerer / Sage and Sniper / Gunslinger interrupts. If you really want to be a clicker, I highly recommend you at least keybind this ability or you will have trouble with some of the shorter casts that need to be interrupted. 

Stealth

This is a toggle ability that lets you enter stealth when out of combat. You are effectively invisible to enemies unless you get super close. If you try to walk through an enemy even while stealthed, you will typically aggro them. 

Keep an eye out for Stealth Detection and Super Stealth Detection buffs on enemies. Those make it so you can’t sneak past them in Stealth. 

Mind Control

This is your Taunt. It forces your target to attack you for 6 seconds and puts you at the top of the threat table. Only use this if a tank or raid lead specifically tells you to use it or if the boss is running rampant because one or both of the tanks are dead. Make sure that you have a DCD ready or there isn’t too much of a point to Taunting as you’ll probably get killed pretty quickly. If you’re going to use Mass Mind Control, make sure you activate it right before you Taunt so you don’t accidentally lose aggro after 6 seconds. 

If one tank dies in a fight with a tank swap mechanic, a common strategy is to have a DPS Taunt and hold aggro only for enough time to get the stacks or get hit by the attack that forces the tanks to actually swap and then have the actual tank take the boss back immediately after. This isn’t always possible, but it’s important to be aware of. 

Ability Tree Choices

Level 23 Choice – Reaping Strike Buffs

Penetrating Slash

• Effect: Increases Reaping Strike’s armor penetration and critical chance by 20%.
• Recommendation: Always take this in group content. This option is basic but provides a consistent and reliable DPS increase.

Reaper

• Effect: Killing an enemy within 3 seconds of dealing damage with Reaping Strike resets the cooldown of all damaging abilities and increases your crit chance by 40% for 6 seconds.
• Recommendation: Always take this in solo content. This option is part of a dedicated build that uses the May Cause Injury tactical and allows you to quickly finish off enemies that didn’t get wiped out by your AoE Discharge.

Energized Blade

• Effect: Critically hitting with direct Force attacks reduces the cooldown of Reaping Strike by 6s. Reaping Strike costs 10 additional Force.
• Recommendation: Take this only if you’re using Blade of the Elements, and take it alongside Lightning Engine. This buff allows you to use Reaping Strike far more frequently but demands that you take another talent, Lightning Engine, to mitigate the Force consumption issue it introduces.

Level 27 Choice – Overload, Maul Spike, or Force Magnetism

Overload

• Effect: Grants the Overload ability, which deals a small amount of damage, knocks back up to 8 enemies within a 15m cone in front of you, and immobilizes them for 5 seconds. Direct damage dealt after 2 seconds ends the effect prematurely. Standard and weak enemies are additionally knocked down for 3 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in specific fights only. Overload now always comes with the Electric Bindings utility. There are a few fights in the game where your knockback is valuable, like against the Chained Manifestations from Styrak in S&V NiM. I personally prefer the increased mobility for solo content, but if you prefer the knockback, have at it!

Maul Spike

• Effect: Dealing damage with Maul from stealth stuns the target for 2 seconds. Standard and weak enemies are knocked down instead.
• Recommendation: Never take this in PvE. It can be fun to use in solo content, but Maul is ridiculously expensive without the Duplicity proc and can hinder your ability to use other attacks. It’s also kind of unnecessary since you’re able to defeat most enemies with Discharge and Reaping Strike. You’ll typically only be using Maul against stronger enemies in solo content.

Force Magnetism

• Effect: Force Cloak increases your movement speed by 50%. In addition, Force Speed lasts 1 second longer and slows all enemies within 5m by 75% for 2.5s when activated.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. The movement speed boosts are nice and it’s difficult to make use of the other two options in PvE. Remember that the slow will aggro enemies, so make sure you don’t use Force Speed too close to enemies you don’t want to aggro, like the Birthed Larvae in the TFB fight.

Level 39 Choice – Voltaic Slash Buffs

Reckless Voltage

• Effect: Voltaic Slash deals 10% more damage and reduces the cooldown of Recklessness by 5s whenever it deals damage.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Reckless Voltage would only be a burst DPS increase if it enabled Recklessness to be available for a burst check when it otherwise wouldn’t be, but the sustained DPS loss is too significant while the increased critical chance from Voltaic Engine should be enough for most burst DPS checks to counteract if Recklessness happens to be unavailable for a check. In solo content, this option is completely overshadowed by the 1 min cooldown reduction you get each time you exit combat.

Voltaic Engine

• Effect: Voltage stacks built by Voltaic Slash increase your critical chance by 10% per stack.
• Recommendation: Always take this. Voltaic Engine provides the greatest sustained damage increase out of any of the Voltaic Slash buffs by several thousand DPS. It will be superior in checks where Recklessness is available and should still offer comparable burst DPS to Reckless Voltage when Recklessness is unavailable for a check. Please note that this buff deactivates whenever you refresh Voltage with Lacerate and does not become active until you use Voltaic Slash to refresh Voltage, so whenever you use Lacerate, you have to use Voltaic Slash before using any other ability. This effectively makes it so that Lacerate exclusively never benefits from this increased critical chance.

Voltaic Defense

• Effect: Voltage stacks built by Voltaic Slash increase your damage reduction by 5% per stack. In addition, Voltaic Slash slows its target by 50% for 6 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this in PvE. The damage reduction is nice, but the DPS loss is MASSIVE. Please note that this buff deactivates whenever you refresh Voltage with Lacerate and does not become active until you use Voltaic Slash to refresh Voltage, so whenever you use Lacerate, you have to use Voltaic Slash before using any other ability.

Level 43 Choice – Lightning Engine, Lightning Critical, or Overcharge Saber

Lightning Engine

• Effect: Critically hitting with Voltaic Slash or a direct Force attack generates 10 Force and heals you for 1% of your maximum health. This effect cannot occur more than once per second.
• Recommendation: Only and always take this option when taking Energized Blade. The only way to have a sustainable rotation with Energized Blade is by taking this option to counteract the additional Force cost from Reaping Strike. This option will also enable you to use “dry” (unprocced) Mauls even with Energized Blade, though be careful not to overdo it and run out of Force or let Voltage fall off. Being able to use unprocced Mauls is the only way to gain DPS with this ability tree option without Energized Blade + Blade of the Elements.

Lightning Critical

• Effect: Melee attacks that cost Force now benefit from and consume Recklessness. You deal a small amount of additional energy damage to targets you critically hit with melee attacks. This effect cannot occur more than once every 6 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content only. The fact that Melee attacks can benefit from Recklessness is really only a small DPS increase for the third stack that would go toward Ball Lightning. The bigger benefit is the additional damage from Melee crits, though this DPS boost is still small. Given that you do need to tweak your rotation slightly to take full benefit of this passive, I think you’re best off taking Lightning Critical primarily for solo content or when you really can’t use Overcharge Saber on cooldown. Make sure you have 2 attacks alongside Discharge to use with Recklessness that aren’t Ball Lightning. Your options include Reaping Strike (best), Maul, and/or Phantom Stride + 2nd Discharge; it’s okay to slightly delay these abilities if Recklessness is about to come off cooldown, but don’t delay them for more than a single use of Discharge. To be clear, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have one of these available and end up using Ball Lightning instead; it’s only a DPS loss if you don’t manage to trigger Twin Surge. Assassinate isn’t a DPS gain over Ball Lightning, especially if you trigger Twin Surge.

Overcharge Saber

• Effect: Grants the Overcharge Saber ability, which immediately restores 15% of your max health, increases the damage dealt by Surging Charge by 100%, increases its chance to trigger by 50%, and heals you for a small amount whenever it is triggered. The healing cannot occur more than once per second.
• Recommendation: Take this in group content only. Overcharge Saber seems to offer about the same sustained DPS as Lightning Critical when used on cooldown However, Overcharge Saber provides an additional source of burst and improved survivability, both of which make this ability more valuable than Lightning Critical in PvE group content.

Level 51 Choice – Formless Phantom, Fade, or Dark Stability

Formless Phantom

• Effect: Activating Mass Mind Control grants Formless Phantom, which reduces your AoE damage taken by 60% for 15s.
• Recommendation: Always take this for group content in PvE. The vast majority of damage dealt by bosses is considered AoE damage, even if it doesn’t look like it, so in group content, this is roughly equivalent to 60% RDT (reduced damage taken). Make sure Formless Phantom is active whenever you anticipate that you’ll be hit directly by the boss, typically whenever the boss is facing you (or if you’re standing in front of the boss). Deception deals sufficient damage already, so there’s no need to take Fade.

Fade

• Effect: Reduces the cooldown of Force Cloak by 30 seconds and extends its duration by 5 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in specific fights only and for solo content. Fade takes 3 mins 30 seconds to contribute a minor DPS increase in the form of an additional use of Recklessness. Rather than getting to activate Recklessness twice every single time, you only get to activate Recklessness back to back every other time because the cooldown of Force Cloak doesn’t sync up. This is a fairly negligible DPS loss and in some cases may not even result in a DPS loss at all depending on the length of the fight. Meanwhile, Formless Phantom will basically always significantly reduce the amount of damage you take. Fade is most useful when it enables Recklessness to be available when it otherwise wouldn’t be, so only consider taking it for specific DPS checks. In solo content, if you frequently find yourself wanting to stealth out but can’t because it’s still on cooldown, take Fade.

Dark Stability

• Effect: Activating Deflection grants Dark Stability, which makes you immune to stun, sleep, lift, and incapacitating effects for 6 seconds.
• Recommendation: In PvE, take this in solo content only. Dark Stability is nice if you feel confident that you’re about to face an enemy that you know will CC you. The stronger the enemy, the more likely it is to have CC capabilities and most of them use it as their first or second attack, so pop Deflection preemptively. In PvE group content, the other options will be far more useful.

Level 64 Choice – Obfuscating Speed, Force Phase, or Lambaste

Obfuscating Speed

• Effect: Increases your movement speed by 15% and your effective stealth level by 10. Activating Ball Lightning increases your movement speed by 50% for 9 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 18 seconds.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this in group content. The additional movement can result in a sustained DPS increase in fights where the boss is moving a lot because it enables you to get back into range more quickly. That said, not all fights require high mobility and Force Speed and Phantom Stride can typically get you where you need to go, so if you can benefit from another option, don’t hesitate to take it instead.

Force Phase

• Effect: Force Speed and Phantom Stride grant Force Phase, which purges all movement-impairing effects and grants immunity to them for 2 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in specific fights only and for solo content. Keep an eye out for debuffs that this option can purge; sometimes DoTs have a slowing component. The two most notable examples are Captain Horic’s Corrosive Grenade in Cartel Warlords NiM and the Reaches in Brontes NiM. Since there are a bunch of enemies that apply slows, I recommend taking this for solo content. With the solo content build, you won’t be using Lacerate too much anyway.

Lambaste

• Effect: Lacerate deals 25% additional damage.
• Recommendation: Almost never take this. Since Lacerate turns off Voltaic Engine and Deception is better suited to bursting down individual targets compared to traditional AoE, I don’t think it’s worthwhile to ever take this because you really shouldn’t be using Lacerate for AoE anymore in Deception unless there are tons and tons of adds where you can overcome the reduced crit chance.

Level 68 Choice – Severing Slash, Whirlwind, or Force Shroud

Severing Slash

• Effect: Grants the Severing Slash ability, which deals moderate damage in a frontal cone and slows targets it damages by 50% and grants Charged Veil to you for 3s. Charged Veil increases your damage reduction and the damage dealt by your Force attacks by 5% for each target hit with Severing Slash.
• Recommendation: Take this for solo content only. Severing Slash provides vastly superior benefits specifically in solo content compared to the alternatives. It deals more damage than Lacerate while boosting the damage dealt by your (AoE) Discharge autocrit and providing a consistent bit of extra DR for each trash pull.

Whirlwind

• Effect: Grants the Whirlwind ability, which mezzes the target for 8 seconds. If the effect ends prematurely, the target is stunned for 2 seconds. Strong, Elite, and Champion enemies heal rapidly.
• Recommendation: Never take this. The Assassin’s Whirlwind only lasts 8s. In PvE, things almost always need to be mezzed for longer than that, so there is practically no benefit to taking this as a DPS, especially not when Force Shroud is an alternative.

Force Shroud

• Effect: Grants the Force Shroud ability, which purges all hostile removable effects and increases your chance to resist Force and tech attacks by 200% for 3 seconds. Does not break stealth.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this in group content. Force Shroud is often considered the best DCD in the game because it grants complete immunity to the vast majority of the most damaging attacks in the game; it’s quite rare for Melee / Ranged attacks to hit harder than Force / Tech attacks. That said, 3s of partial damage immunity is considerably less useful in solo content, especially considering that Melee / Ranged damage is more common.

Level 73 Choice – Reaper’s Rush, Avoidance, or Shroud of Madness

Reaper’s Rush

• Effect: Phantom Stride grants Reaper’s Rush, allowing your next Assassinate to be used on any target, regardless of remaining health. Lasts up to 10 seconds. In addition, if the target of your Phantom Stride is killed within 10 seconds of using Phantom Stride, the cooldown of Phantom Stride is reset.
• Recommendation: Take this with the Traditional build and in fights where you can benefit from it. In fights where you have to focus down one add at a time, like the droids during the clock phase when you fight Brontes, this option is absolutely AMAZING because you get to Phantom Stride to each one and whack it with a full power Discharge. You can do that to just about any trash mob too. Even if you aren’t able to benefit from the cooldown reduction, it’s still a slight DPS increase because Assassinate is cheaper and deals more damage than Voltaic Slash. On the dummy, you will have noticeable Force management issues unless you take this option.

Avoidance

• Effect: Reduces the cooldown of Jolt by 2 seconds, Unbreakable Will by 30 seconds, and Force Speed by 5 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in specific fights only. Only take this in PvE if you wanted to use Force Speed or Unbreakable Will but couldn’t use it because it was still on cooldown and the cooldown reduction from this option would have made it available. In other words, don’t take Avoidance just because you want to use these abilities more often; only take this option if it would make abilities available when they otherwise wouldn’t be.

Shroud of Madness

• Effect: Activating Force Cloak grants 2 seconds of Force Shroud.
• Recommendation: Take this in specific fights only. Shroud of Madness should only be used when absolutely necessary in PvE as Deception because you want to use Force Cloak on cooldown unless you absolutely need to use it for Shroud. The only fight I can think of where this option is required is the Dread Guards in TFB HM and NiM to mitigate the second Lightning Field because Force Shroud isn’t off cooldown yet.

Gearing and Stats Priorities

Tactical Items

The Awakened Flame
Effect: When Ball Lightning deals damage, it causes its target to become electrified, dealing energy damage over 6 seconds.
Recommendation: This is your primary sustained DPS tactical. It offers the greatest single-target DPS increase out of all the options available. The damage dealt by the full duration of the DoT is slightly less than your average Voltaic Slash.

May Cause Injury
Effect: Gaining or refreshing a stack of Voltage causes your next Discharge to arc, damaging up to 8 enemies within 8m of the primary target
Recommendation: This is your AoE tactical. You can deal a pretty insane amount of AoE damage combined by using this tactical and Discharge alongside Shadowcraft and Recklessness, enough to wipe out the entire group of trash with a single ability activation. If you’re consistently hitting at secondary target that needs to die, it can be competitive in terms of single-target sustained DPS in boss fights as well, especially if you’re being smart about resetting the cooldown of Phantom Stride when you defeat an enemy.

Blade of the Elements
Effect: Each stack of Voltage now also increases the critical chance of Reaping Strike by 50% (max 100%). In addition, critically hitting with Voltaic Slash reduces the active cooldown of Reaping Strike by 1.5s.
Recommendation: This is an alternative single-target DPS tactical. With its accompanying build, you can achieve slightly better damage output compared to what’s possible The Awakened Flame. However, the priority system is significantly more difficult to execute as it’s somewhat unpredictable. You will be more prone to making mistakes, preventing you from attaining the higher DPS potential or messing up mechanics.

In our Catalog of all Tacticals in SWTOR you will find information about all other Tacticals that we didn’t list in this guide. You may find something adequate that is also cheaper and easier to obtain for your needs while you work on getting the recommended one for your combat style and build.

Legendary Implants

Broadsword has removed set bonuses from the game and replaced them with Legendary Items, which are just implants with old 4 or 6-piece set bonus effects on them, so rather than needing to collect 4 pieces of a gear set to get the 4-piece set bonus, or 6 pieces for the 6-piece, you’ll get either a 4 or 6-piece set bonus effect on an implant. 

This was done to improve customization (now you can mix and match set bonus effects), make them easier to obtain, and consume less inventory space. Here are the Legendary Items you should use as a Deception Assassin:

• Shadowcraft – Using Phantom Stride from stealth grants Shadowcraft, increasing your critical chance by 100% for 6 seconds. Force Cloak resets the cooldown of Phantom Stride.
• Force Training – Melee and Force attacks deal 3% more damage.  
• Dynamic Force – The cooldown of Recklessness is reduced by 15s.

As an Assassin DPS, you have 3 viable implants to purchase. The optimal combination of implants depends on your build.

Shadowcraft

Shadowcraft is one of the most powerful implants in the game. Thanks to supercrit and the total number of affected GCDs, its damage boost is roughly equivalent to 2 of Deception’s Recklessness activations. That said, you only get that damage boost once per fight in PvE group content, which can tarnish Shadowcraft’s supremacy.

Force Training

Force Training offers a consistent, minor buff to damage output. Since it is uncommon for both Shadowcraft and Dynamic Force to offer their optimal damage boost in the same build, you’ll typically be using Force Training alongside only one of them.

Dynamic Force

Dynamic Force is one of the weakest implants in the game. It takes ~7.5 mins for Recklessness to contribute a single additional activation of Recklessness. However, it is essential in specific situations because it lowers the cooldown enough to close the gap and enable Recklessness to be available when needed.

I have a guide on Legendary Items in SWTOR 7.0. It explains how to unlock Legendary Implants and contains a full list of them.

Stat Priority

As a DPS, you’ll need to care about 3 different stats: Accuracy, Alacrity, and Critical Rating. There are thresholds associated with Accuracy and Alacrity, so you need to prioritize reaching those thresholds to get the full benefit from each stat point.

1. Accuracy to 110.00% – Before investing in any other stats, make sure you hit 110% Accuracy because attacks that miss deal 0 damage, and no other stats matter if the attack doesn’t land. Furthermore, many procs require you to actually deal damage, not just activate the ability, so you can mess up your rotation if an attack misses. You need 110% Accuracy in PvE and not just 100% because bosses have a 10% chance to dodge/resist player attacks, and any percentage over 100% reduces this chance. Anything over 110% is not helpful in PvE, so you do want to go over 110%, but with as little excess as possible.
2. Alacrity to ~7.5% – Once your Accuracy is above 110.00%, it’s time to think about Alacrity. It has the second-highest priority because you do not get the full benefit of the stat unless you surpass one of the GCD thresholds. It’s less important than Accuracy because your attacks still need to hit. You need 7.15% Alacrity to get from the 1.5s GCD to the 1.4s GCDs. However, as you approach 7.15%, you actually start getting a mix of 1.4s and 1.5s GCD, resulting in an experience that feels clunky and inconsistent. You need roughly 0.4-0.5% more Alacrity past the exact threshold to effectively eliminate those 1.5s GCDs.
3. Critical gets the rest – After you’ve got your thresholded stats sorted out, you can start investing in crit. To be clear, Critical Rating is still valuable; it just has the lowest priority because it does not have a threshold associated with it that you need to meet to get the most out of each point of stat as the other tertiary stats you care about do. Critical Rating increases both your Critical Chance and Critical Damage. If you have a single effect that increases your Critical Chance by 100% all on its own (it can’t be from multiple effects combined), all of the Critical Chance percentage for that attack gets added to your Critical Damage percentage, causing the attack to deal supercritical damage.

Find out which mods to purchase from Hyde and Zeek in SWTOR on the Fleet to minimize spending and optimize your build. The dedicated guide contains tips for all roles in both PvE and PvP.

Augments

Augments allow you to put additional stats on every piece of gear except tactical items. Since Augments allow you to put additional stats on every piece of gear except tactical items. Since the stats come in much smaller amounts, augments allow you to fine-tune your gear to provide almost as much of each total stat as you want.

To equip an augment, you must first use an Augmentation Kit that matches the crafting grade of the augment (ex. Grade 11 augments require MK-11 Kits).

The 296, 302, 310, and 318 iRating augments released with 7.6 and 7.7 are BiS. The higher the iRating, the more stats they offer and the more expensive they are to make or buy, though most of the benefit is provided by having augments at all, and the base-rarity blue 296 augments are the cheapest.

Almost everyone should buy the blue 296 augments because they provide the greatest bang for the buck, but you do have multiple options:

• Gold 318 augments (Superior [Type] Augment 86). These are overall best-in-slot (BiS) and offer ~25% more stat than gold 300 augments, which is roughly equivalent to 4 additional gold augments. They’re extremely expensive and completely unnecessary for all content in the game, so I only recommend them to the wealthiest individuals. 
• Purple 310 augments (Advanced [Type] Augment 86). They offer ~13% more stat than gold 300 augments, which is roughly equivalent to 2 additional gold 300 augments worth of stat. They are cheaper than the gold 318s, but they’re in the same price bracket in terms of affordability, so there’s no reason for anyone to use them at this point.
• Blue 302 augments ([Type] Augment 76) are the mid-tier augments. For all intents and purposes, these are equivalent to the gold 300 augments from 6.0. I only recommend them if you’re close to a stat threshold or don’t already have gold 300 augments and want something a bit better than the blue 296s.
• Blue 296 augments ([Type] Augment 83) are the most basic tier of augments for level 80 players. They are pretty cheap as only the schematic comes from the associated lair boss, Propagator Core XR-53. You don’t need any Corrupted Bioprocessors to craft these augments.

Check out our 7.7 Augments Guide for everything you need to know about augmenting gear!

Earpiece

Which Earpiece you use will depend on what specific tertiary stats the rest of your gear and augments provide. Typically, you’ll need to use either an Accuracy (Initiative, yellow icon) or Alacrity (Quick Savant / Nimble, green icon) Earpiece.

Crystals

Advanced Eviscerating Crystals are the best. They are the only type of crystal that increases one of your tertiary stats. Since the stat pool for tertiary stats is much smaller than that of primary or secondary stats, adding 41 is a more significant upgrade than it would be if you were to add 41 to one of the primary or secondary stats (mastery, power, or endurance).

Relics

I recommend the Relic of Focused Retribution (FR) and Relic of Serendipitous Assault (SA) for all PvE content. Each relic offers a proc; FR’s proc boosts your Mastery, whereas SA’s proc increases your Power stats. If you have the choice, purchase the Relic of Focused Retribution first because in equal amounts, and only in equal amounts, Mastery offers more of a DPS gain than Power.

Biochem Items

I recommend the Advanced Kyrprax Proficient Stim, Advanced Kyrprax Medpac, and Advanced Kyrprax Attack Adrenal for all PvE content. Grade 11 Biochem items from the crafting tier released with 6.0 remain BiS. Since they haven’t been updated to level 80, their effects are weaker than they should be, though they can still have an impact.

You should use the Proficient Stim as a DPS because it provides 2 tertiary stats that you need, Accuracy and Critical Rating, and tertiary stats are harder to come by and what you build your gear around. You should use the Attack Adrenal because it provides Power, which typically provides the greatest DPS increase, though it’s also more consistent, which is what you need for DPS checks.

Regarding the Zeal Guild Perk Alacrity Boost

If your guild uses the Zeal (cyan) guild perk set bonus, which gives a passive +5% Alacrity boost, you won’t need nearly as much Alacrity stat to reach your desired Alacrity threshold. My recommendations do not factor in these boosts, so if you have one, you’ll need to pay attention to percentage thresholds rather than the stat amounts. Just keep adding one augment at a time until you reach the desired percentage.

Guild leaders, I recommend using the Fortune (yellow) guild perk set bonus instead. It grants +5% Critical Chance and also boosts the Critical Rate and Time Efficiency of all Crew Skills by 2%. The reason for this is that you don’t have to change the way you gear in order to benefit from the effect.

Neither effect works in MM raids or PvP, so if you or your guild members do either of those activities, you’ll need to tweak your gear to reach the desired threshold depending on the activity, which I find super tedious. Even if your guild doesn’t do those activities, leaders still need to actively maintain the set bonus because your gear will become suboptimal on top of losing the bonus, whereas it’s not a big deal if your crit is a little lower for a bit.

The Alacrity boost is much stronger than the Critical Chance boost. Still, PvE content isn’t balanced around these guild perk set bonuses anyway, so I find it better to have a smaller boost I don’t have to worry about than a larger boost I have to manage.

Best Deception Assassin Builds in 7.0

These are the builds that I recommend for different types of content and situations. The Build Essentials are what I consider to be the core components that make the build viable. Without them, the build no longer accomplishes its primary function. Build Essentials can include important ability tree buffs, a tactical item, and even legendary items occasionally.

The ability tree buffs that aren’t listed as Build Essentials can be changed as needed without compromising the integrity of the build, though I have included a full set of default choices that will be most consistently helpful in accomplishing what the build sets out to do.

For Bosses: The Awakened Flame Build

This build offers the highest sustained DPS available and is meant for group content in PvE. The ability tree buffs are optimized for situations you’ll encounter in group content and emphasize survivability and consistency. If you played in 6.0, you’ll find this build to be quite similar to what you remember with the opener being the only thing that’s really different.

Shadowcraft will perform better than Dynamic Force on the dummy and offer comparable sustained DPS in most fights, but it’s a lot more annoying to use in actual combat because you must be stealthed with at least 1 stack of Voltage when the tank decides to pull or the benefit is wasted.

If you want to give up about 3k single-target DPS, you can swap to the May Cause Injury tactical to deal rotational AoE damage with Discharge, but you’re much better off swapping to Hatred or another DoT spec if your group needs additional AoE to defeat the boss.

For Normal Enemies: Solo Content Build

This build is designed and meant to be used exclusively for solo content and utilizes the May Cause Injury Tactical. The signature feature of this build is that you can take out many groups of enemies with Voltaic Slash or Severing Slash + autocrit Discharge and anything that’s still left standing gets whacked with Reaping Strike crits.

You don’t have to worry as much about building up Voltage since you’ll be getting 3 stacks of Static Charge from other sources, though you will still need to build 1 stack with Severing Slash (preferred), Lacerate, or Voltaic Slash to turn Discharge into an AoE.

Please note that the May Cause Injury build uses 2 crit implants, so you’ll need to get an extra piece of alacrity or give up Dynamic Force in favor of Force Training. Dynamic Force is more valuable with this build because it will enable you to use Recklessness for every single trash pull without having to wait around as long.

I recommend taking Lightning Critical to boost your damage output, but it isn’t required. Don’t bother trying to maintain the crit chance from Voltaic Engine on regular trash, though is a significant damage boost against higher-health enemies and even the one stack is a 10% damage boost under Shadowcraft.

Overload and Fade are less valuable in solo content, so don’t hesitate to switch them if you want something else. However, Force Phase is pretty nice for getting rid of those annoying slows and roots between pulls.

For Bosses: Blade of the Elements

The focal point of the Blade of the Elements build is the tactical item that shares its namesake. It’s meant to be used against bosses and is an alternative to The Awakened Flame build. The priority system changes a lot, and is more challenging to execute, but you are rewarded with slightly higher damage potential and a more acrobatic look to combat.

The build relies on drastically increasing how often you get to use Reaping Strike, which also becomes an autocrit. The Blade of the Elements tactical provides a small cooldown reduction to Reaping Strike when you crit with Voltaic Slash, and an autocrit with 2 stacks of Voltage.

Meanwhile, the Energized Blade and Lightning Engine talents work together to lower the cooldown of Reaping Strike by 6s whenever you critically hit with a Force attack (Discharge or Ball Lightning) and counteract the introduced Force cost increase.

It takes roughly 2 crits with Force attacks to reset the cooldown of Reaping Strike, and the priority system is built around making that happen as often as possible. Remember, the difference is small, so it’s totally fine and just as viable to keep using The Awakened Flame.

From a visuals/RP/lore standpoint, Blade of the Elements will make you look more like you’re fighting with a dualsaber as opposed to a magical catalyst, where the term saberstaff would be more appropriate. The more frequent use of Reaping Strikes as opposed to Voltaic Slash also makes using a lightsaber pike more reasonable.

Openers, Rotations, Priorities

The openers and priority systems you’ll be using as a Deception Assassin vary based on your equipped Tactical Item and associated build. You do not use a rotation as a Deception Assassin.

Single-Target Priority Systems

As a Deception Assassin, you use a priority system because it is impossible to use all of your rotational abilities on cooldown. When multiple high-damage abilities are available at the same time, a priority list is used to determine which one should be used first in order to provide the highest DPS and ensure that your most damaging abilities are being used as frequently as possible. 

The priority system is a bit different depending on whether you’re using The Awakened Flame or Blade of the Elements tactical and build, though the experience executing them is quite different. We’ll be going over both.

I have opted to explain the priority systems before going over the openers because you will need to understand the priority system in order to properly execute the opener. It’s important to practice theseon a dummy at least until you can execute it without having to constantly look at your bar. 

The key to being a great DPS is to always be DPSing. Using any damaging ability is better than just standing there not doing anything. Some DPS is better than zero DPS. Even if you mess up, keep doing the rotation! Unless there’s a mechanic that prevents you from dealing damage or forces you to stop DPSing, you should not stop DPSing. 

If a tank is telling you to stop DPS or hold off for a few seconds because they can’t keep aggro, don’t listen to them, they’re the one that doesn’t know the proper way to keep aggro. Tell them to git gud and read a tank guide!

The Awakened Flame Priority System

This priority system is for use only alongside The Awakened Flame tactical and its associated build.

1. Voltaic Slash (only if Voltage will fall off in the next GCD)
2. Discharge (only with 3 stacks of Static Charge)
3. Maul (only if Duplicity will be reprocced in the next GCD)
4. Ball Lightning
5. Reaping Strike
6. Assassinate
7. Maul (only with Duplicity)
8. Voltaic Slash
9. Force Slow (as long-range ability only)
10. Low Slash (as long-range ability only)

The priority list itself is a bit deceptive. Most of the time, Ball Lightning will be your highest priority ability because you want to use 3-stack Discharge as often as possible. The only thing you really have to consider is if the Duplicity proc for Maul is about to become available again.

It’s not the end of the world if Ball Lightning gets delayed for a GCD because your melee attacks have a chance to grant a stack of Static Charge too, but it’s ideal to make sure it’s used on cooldown as often as possible.

Voltage falling off is not usually a concern, but becomes a bit more of a challenge sub-30% and sometimes during your Recklessness windows since you have more non-Voltaic Slash abilities to use. It’s better to delay a higher damage ability to avoid having to spend 2 GCDs to reapply Voltage if it completely falls off.

Remember to maintain Voltage during downtime by using Lacerate, but also remember that you’ll have to use Voltaic Slash to regain the +20% crit chance whenever you do use Lacerate, so Voltaic Slash should typically be the first ability you use after downtime.

You can use Force Slow and Low Slash if you’re outside of melee range. and your higher priority attacks aren’t available. Typically, you’ll want to use Low Slash alongside Force Speed. Force Slow should only be used if there’s just something dangerous and you have to take a step back from the boss with only melee attacks available.

Blade of the Elements Priority System

This priority system is for use only alongside Blade of the Elements tactical and its associated build.

1. Voltaic Slash (only if Voltage will fall off in the next GCD)
2. Reaping Strike
3. Discharge (only with 3 stacks of Static Charge)
4. Ball Lightning
5. Maul (if affordable)
6. Assassinate ( Voltage-permitting)
7. Voltaic Slash
8. Force Slow (as long-range ability only)
9. Low Slash (as long-range ability only)

The priority system is quite similar to that of the Awakened Flame build. The only real difference is the position of Reaping Strike. However, it feels quite different to play because you really want to prioritize Reaping Strike and have several other abilities will lower its cooldown when they critically hit.

The main abilities are Discharge (6s), Ball Lightning (6s), and Voltaic Slash (1.5s). Keep in mind that Ball Lightning and Voltaic Slash can/will hit a second time, meaning those cooldown reductions can be double.

Force Slow and Electrocute (yes, your hard stun) also deal Force damage, you should never use them exclusively to get the cooldown reduction. Think of them as additional benefits to attacks usable between 4 and 10m away from the boss.

Typically, you’ll want to use Low Slash alongside Force Speed if you’re more than 10m away from the boss. Force Slow should only be used if there’s just something dangerous and you have to take a step back from the boss with only melee attacks available.

Don’t get hung up on the remaining amount of time until Reaping Strike is available. Some of the cooldown reduction will get wasted sometimes, as will the occasional Surging Charge stack.

It’s more likely that Voltage and Dark Embrace will fall off because you have fewer free GCDs. Sometimes, you will need to prioritize Voltaic Slash and Maul to maintain those procs and that’s fine. Be opportunistic.

If I see there’s only a second left before Reaping Strike’s cooldown is up and I have Maul procced or Voltage doesn’t have much time left, I’ll use them over Discharge or Ball Lightning. Something is gonna get delayed eventually to keep all of your procs active.

Assassinate just ruins everything sub-30, so be cautious about using it. The attack does not refresh Voltage nor lower the cooldown of Reaping Strike (even though it should be 3s on crit or guaranteed 1.5s) nor have as high a chance to build Static Charge.

Keep in mind that Recklessness, especially combined with Phantom Stride will guarantee a fresh cooldown reset on Reaping Strike, and with Twin Surge, Ball Lightning can do that on its own.

Thanks to Lightning Engine’s excessive Force generation, you’ll see top parses using Maul, even if it isn’t procced. This is a more advanced maneuver that does result in higher DPS, at the cost of making the rotation more challenging and less predictable.

Openers

This is the rotation you use at the very beginning of the fight and for burst DPS checks. It can be a little different than the standard rotation because everything is off cooldown, including your OCDs and relic procs. It’s important to get as much damage as possible while all of your damage boosts are available to maximize their impact. 

Since Deception’s priority system has a lot of RNG-based procs, you have to incorporate the priority system into the opener itself. For example, you need to build 3 stacks of Static Charge before you can activate Discharge. Openers are by far the hardest part of Deception’s rotation because you have additional factors to consider on top of the priority. 

Awakened Flame Opener

This opener is for use only alongside The Awakened Flame tactical and its associated build.

1. Lacerate (pre-cast for Voltage)
2. Stealth (for Dark Embrace and Shadowcraft)
3. Phantom Stride (from Stealth only, builds 3 Static Charge)
4. ( Shadowcraft begins)
5. Adrenal
6. Voltaic Slash (activates Voltaic Engine)
7. Discharge
8. Recklessness (builds 3 Static Charge)
9. Discharge
10. Overcharge Saber
11. Ball Lightning
12. ( Shadowcraft ends)
13. Maul
14. Reaping Strike
15. Assassinate
16. Ball Lightning
17. Force Cloak (resets Phantom Stride, lowers Recklessness cooldown)
18. Priority

The exact duration of the opener is ill-defined because you get another round of burst from the second activation of Recklessness that you have to make sure to activate it when you (ideally) have 0 stacks of Static Charge, but we’ll come back to this second Recklessness later.

The very first Voltaic Slash has a high chance to trigger Surging Charge, but we can’t avoid wasting that one since we need to refresh our Voltage stacks and activate the 20% crit chance from Voltaic Engine. It doesn’t matter anyway since we’ll be spending the next 3 GCDs doing things that can’t affect its rate limit Surging Charge, so it’ll be available in time for that 5th GCD that’s a melee attack.

Recklessness should be activated early, and subsequent activations should typically only be activated immediately after a regular Discharge. The first Recklessness stack should be consumed on the Discharge granted by Recklessness, the second and possibly third will be consumed by Ball Lightning and its Twin Surge. Otherwise, the third will be consumed by the next Ball Lightning.

You’ll have to use Ball Lightning during the Shadowcraft window, either in the second GCD or the fourth, and the fourth is better.

You do miss out on a tick from the Awakened Flame and complete overlap of the Adrenal and Overcharge Saber, but those boosts pale in comparison to the supercritical damage and a stack of Static Charge. You’ll still get an autocrit tick of Surging Overcharge with this approach too.

This isn’t the only sensible opener either. You can do both Recklessness activations back-to-back if you want additional immediate burst, but you’ll be delaying your strong melee abilities and wasting stacks of Static Charge.

In the same vein, Overcharge Saber can be used alongside the Adrenal and Discharges if you want more concentrated burst, but you’re spending a lot of GCDs on attacks that won’t be able to benefit from it, so if you want maximum sustained DPS, it should be delayed until after Recklessness has been used.

Overall, Deception’s opener requires making a judgment call based on the specific situation you find yourself in. You can spread your OCDs out for more sustained damage, or you can use them all closer together to deal more damage in a shorter window at the cost of less damage overall. The latter is preferred for short burst checks while the former is preferred for the beginning of most boss fights.

When you just have Recklessness floating around mid-fight, I recommend doing the following:

1. Discharge (only with 3 Static Charge built naturally)
2. Recklessness (builds 3 Static Charge)
3. Discharge
4. Phantom Stride (builds 3 Static Charge)
5. Discharge
6. Ball Lightning

You want to go into a Recklessness window with a 3-stack Discharge obtained without Recklessness or Phantom Stride. You also want to make sure that Voltage and Dark Embrace were refreshed recently and, ideally, Reaping Strike isn’t coming off cooldown, but those are more just nice-to-haves.

Blade of the Elements Opener

This opener is for use only alongside Blade of the Elements tactical and its associated build.

1. Lacerate (pre-cast for Voltage)
2. Stealth (for Dark Embrace and Shadowcraft)
3. Phantom Stride (from Stealth only, builds 3 Static Charge)
4. ( Shadowcraft begins)
5. Adrenal
6. Voltaic Slash (activates Voltaic Engine)
7. Reaping Strike
8. Discharge
9. Recklessness
10. Discharge
11. ( Shadowcraft ends)
12. Reaping Strike
13. Ball Lightning
14. Reaping Strike (if applicable)
15. Maul
16. Force Cloak (resets Phantom Stride, lowers Recklessness cooldown)
17. Priority

The Blade of the Elements opener leverages Shadowcraft and Recklessness boosting your critical chance to effectively alternate Reaping Strike and Force attacks for the first several GCDs.

You must remember to begin by Phantom Striding from stealth with at least 1 stack of Voltage and use Voltaic Slash as your first attack.

It is unfortunate that we have to waste one of our precious Shadowcraft GCDs on Voltaic Slash, but the 20% critical chance gets turned off whenever we use Lacerate and only gets turned back on when we use Voltaic Slash. You also need to have 2 stacks of Voltage for Blade of the Elements to autocrit.

Remember, you should be able to do another Recklessness window right after you build up 3 stacks of Static Charge. Be sure to save Phantom Stride for that second Discharge.

You’ll be able to alternate between Reaping Strike and Discharge just like the first one, but I want to make sure we’re on the same page so here is your Recklessness window written out.

1. Voltaic Slash (refreshes Voltage)
2. Maul (refreshes Dark Embrace)
3. Discharge (only with 3 Static Charge built naturally)
4. Reaping Strike (if applicable)
5. Recklessness (builds 3 Static Charge)
6. Discharge
7. Reaping Strike (if applicable)
8. Phantom Stride (builds 3 Static Charge)
9. Discharge
10. Reaping Strike (if applicable)
11. Ball Lightning
12. Reaping Strike (if applicable)
13. Assassinate
14. Maul (refreshes Dark Embrace)
15. Voltaic Slash (refreshes Voltage)

It’s important to maintain Voltage and Dark Embrace, so you’ll want to bookend Voltaic Slash and Maul (with Duplicity) at the beginning and end of this window. You will waste a few stacks of Static Charge throughout this process and that’s fine because you’re using Discharge as often as possible already.

The goal is the same to spend Recklessness on Discharge (1), Discharge (2), and Ball Lightning (3). Reaping Strike can happen between every 2 Force critical hits, so you won’t use it in all of the spots I noted above. It depends on your luck with crits from before Recklessness became available and if you trigger Twin Surge with Ball Lightning.

Don’t forget to use Force Cloak as soon as it becomes available. Thanks to Shadowcraft, you’ll be able to use Phantom Stride with your second activation of Recklessness, resulting in superior consistency and damage output.

May Cause Injury Solo Content Opener

This opener is for use only alongside May Cause Injury tactical and its associated build for solo content. Since trash mobs don’t live very long, this opener constitutes the entirety of most fights.

1. Stealth
2. Phantom Stride (for Shadowcraft)
3. Recklessness
4. Voltaic Slash or Severing Slash (to build 1 Voltage)
5. Discharge
6. Reaping Strike ( spam to kill lowest-health enemy)
7. Priority

The core idea of this opener is that you Phantom Stride in from stealth to get Shadowcraft, use Severing Slash to proc Charged Veil and also build a stack of Voltage that will grant May Cause Injury, so Discharge deals boosted AoE damage that will also be a supercrit thanks to Recklessness and Shadowcraft. 

This Discharge will likely take out the standard and weak enemies you hit with Severing Slash, but the rest will have to be finished off with Reaping Strikes. 

Make sure to start with the enemies that have the lowest health and work your way up. If you don’t think Reaping Strike will be enough, use Maul + Ball Lightning first or Phantom Stride ▶ Severing Slash ▶ Discharge to do another (weaker) hit of AoE Discharge. After that, you should be able to wipe out everything with consecutive Reaping Strikes. 

If Reaping Strike wasn’t enough to defeat your target, follow it up with Assassinate and another Ball Lightning or Maul. If you manage to kill the target within 2 GCDs of using Reaping Strike, you’ll still get the Reaper proc and cooldown reset.

I don’t typically do more than 1 AoE Discharge per group because I want to guarantee that I don’t have to wait for Severing Slash to come off cooldown on the next group and the second AoE Discharge is typically enough to wipe out the whole group, so there won’t be anything the Reaping Strike to reset the cooldown. You can definitely get away with multiple in Heroics though. 

You may have noticed that this opener does not make use of several optimizations of the other openers including building Voltage before pulling and being efficient with Discharge and Recklessness; there are good reasons for this.

You won’t need Voltage to generate stacks of Discharge against trash because Recklessness and Phantom Stride will take care of that. The crit chance is an unfortunate loss, but you don’t get the crit chance with Lacerate until you do Voltaic Slash and they aren’t necessary anyway, so I think they just make the rotation more clunky.

It would be nice if Broadsword made it so that Phantom Striding from stealth also granted 2 stacks of Voltage and made the Voltaic Slash ability tree buffs work with Voltage in general rather than specifically require Voltaic Slash, but again, it’s not essential. Meanwhile, wasting 3 stacks of Static Charge by using Recklessness and Phantom Stride at the same time is unavoidable if you want the AoE Discharge to supercrit in each pack of trash.