SWTOR 7.0 Darkness Assassin PvP Guide (Tank) for beginners and more experienced veterans: Skills, Choices, Rotations, Gearing, Builds, and helpful PvP tips!

This guide is written for VULKK.com by Siow

Introduction to Darkness Assassin Darkness Abilities Explained Darkness Ability Tree Choices Gearing and Stat Priorities Best Builds for Darkness Assassin in PvP Rotations and Ability Priorities Basic Tanking Tips for Darkness Assassin in PvP Tips on how to fight other classes Unranked Warzone Maps Tips Arenas Maps Tips Ranked PvP Tips Conclusion About the Author Addendum: The Math

Hello there! I am Siow and I will be going over the Darkness in Star Wars: The Old Republic. This is the class I have played the most in The Old Republic (at least the Jedi variant) and I would like to teach others on how to excel at it as well! This has always been my favorite class to play in SWTOR because I love the versatility this class offers. You’re a stealthy tank that can adjust their damage output to either weapon damage or Force damage, and your kit allows you to handle anything that comes your way with confidence!

I will be going over the basics of the Darkness Assassin, how gearing works for us in 7.0, and much more. When it comes to explaining stats, I prefer to use percentages over flat numbers unlike most guides.

So you might be wondering, why would I use a Darkness Assassin over an Immortal Juggernaut or a Shield Tech Powertech? The Immortal Juggernaut can be seen as one of the best defenders in PvP as they can jump to an ally to reduce their incoming damage. The Shield Tech Powertech got some fun new toys such as using their Grapple Hook on allies. Here’s why you would want to play as a Darkness Assassin in PvP…

You have the best Shield Chance of the 3 Tank options which is valuable in PvP to reduce Force/Tech damage. The best Area of Effect abilities of the 3 Tanks in terms of Offensive and Utility abilities. High Mobility with the Force Speed and Phantom Stride abilities. You have Defensive Abilities that can prepare you for any situation you’re thrown in.. And most importantly of all, you can exit combat while in PvP zones at your leisure with the Force Cloak ability allowing you to reassess your situation.

So the 7.0 Expansion has brought in a lot of changes. Abilities have been pruned for classes or made into choices on our ability trees, utilities were lost in favor of a flexible ability tree while some previous utilities are worked into the abilities by default, and some passive abilities are now hidden away but still present.

Fortunately for Darkness Assassins, your overall kit remains relatively untouched though there are some noticeable changes such as…

As you can see, there are a good amount of significant changes. While many of our 6.0 Passives abilities are merged into newer variations of old ones, some aspects of old passives are lost entirely, and we don’t get all of our old abilities by default. But do not worry, you’ll still be able to perform just as well, if not better, than you did in 6.0.

With that said, let’s get started with the Darkness Assassin!

This section will feature your abilities sorted out by Weapon Attacks, Force Attacks, Offensive Cooldowns (OCDs), Defensive Cooldowns (DCDs), and Control & Utility Abilities. I won’t be discussing passive abilities by themselves, instead I’ll bring them up in abilities where they become relevant.

“Deals X-X weapon damage spread across a flurry of 3 melee attacks.”  This is a single target melee attack that you generally use if you run out of Force and need to do something. It’s mostly useless but has the flashiest killing blow animations.

“Strikes the target twice, dealing X-X weapon damage with each hit and inflicting Trauma, which reduces all the healing received from all sources by 20% for 6 seconds” This is your primary Melee attack against a single target and should be the only melee weapon attack you should be using unless you’re against a group of enemies where you can instead use Lacerate or Severing Slash, or use Maul if it is glowing, or if you can use Assassinate against a target. Use this against a single target to apply the Trauma debuff to reduce their incoming healing by 20%.

“Deals X-X weapon damage to up to 8 targets within 5 meters inflicting them with Trauma, which reduces the healing received from all sources by 20% for 6 seconds. Requires a double-bladed lightsaber or electrostaff.” This is your primary Area of Effect (AoE) Weapon Attack. A slight edge we have above other tanks is our ability to spam an AoE weapon attack far more often than they could ever dream to. Don’t use this against a single target as you’ll be losing potential damage output, though using this against a group of enemies can be a great way to proc your passive effects or relics effects. Use this against groups of targets to apply the Trauma debuff to reduce their incoming healing by 20%.

“Attempts to assassinate the target, dealing X-X weapon damage. Only usable on targets at or below 30% max health.“ This is your hardest hitting melee weapon attack and you want to use it against a target whenever you can. While it’s often limited to low HP targets, there is an Ability Tree choice, Reaper’s Rush, that allows you to use it against a target regardless of their HP after using Phantom Stride. We’ll go more in-depth about that in the Skill Tree Choices portion of the guide.

“Deals X-X weapon damage to a single target if used from behind the target or Y-Y weapon damage otherwise. Requires a double-bladed lightsaber or electrostaff.” This is a strong melee attack that DPS Assassins would need to get behind a target to use it to its full damage potential. Darkness Assassins have the Passive Ability, Conspirator’s Cloak, that lets us use Maul at 50% it’s Force Cost and deal its full damage regardless of the target’s position in relation to you. This is activated by using Thrash, Lacerate, Assassinate, and Phantom Stride and will cause the Maul icon to glow on the hotbar. Only use this ability if the icon is glowing otherwise you’re wasting Force.

“Strikes targets in a 5 meter cone, dealing X-X weapon damage, slowing their movement speed by 50% and applies Charged Veil to you for 3 seconds. Charged Veil increases your Damage Reduction by 5% for each target hit with Severing Slash. Requires a double-bladed lightsaber or electrostaff.” This ability was introduced in 6.0 and was rather controversial for many Assassins. It was a very niche ability that had limited use even with the niche builds. However it is actually useful now! The effects this ability provides to Assassins depends on their current discipline. With the Darkness Assassin, you gain extra damage reduction for each target hit. 

While it doesn’t state a limit to the amount of Charged Veil stacks you can get with this ability, there is indeed one. Like your other Area of Effect abilities, it can only affect up to 8 targets. This means that you can gain between 5%-40% added Damage Reduction for 3 seconds. This makes it a great ability if you like to fight in the PvP mosh pits.

“Strikes up to 8 nearby enemies with dark energy, dealing X-X internal damage and generating a high amount of threat.”  You’ll be using this ability on your target(s) as an Area of Effect ability. The area in which this affects targets is not centered around you, but instead your target. This means that using Discharge on a group of targets close together 10 meters away will damage all of them.

Applying Discharge to a target as a Darkness Assassin makes your targets Unsteady for 45 seconds which reduces their melee and ranged accuracy by 5% as well as taking 15% more damage from your Lacerate ability. This is due to your Torment passive.

“Causes up to 8 targets to wither under the weight of the Force, dealing X-X kinetic damage, slowing the movement of all affected targets by 30% for 10 seconds, and weakening all targets for 45 seconds. Weakened targets deal 5% less melee and ranged damage. Does not damage sleeping, lifted, or incapacitated enemies. This ability generates a high amount of threat.” This is one of your Bread and Butter abilities. This can be used against a single target or multiple targets to deal Force damage, slow them, and reduce their weapon damage a tad.

“Shocks the target for X-X energy damage. Standard and weak targets are additionally stunned for 0.5 seconds.”  You chuck a bolt of lightning at a person, good stuff. You have a passive ability that increases its damage by 30% which is nice, but more importantly your passive ability Energize gives you a 30% chance to have Shock finish its cooldown early and make your next Shock a critical hit. You can tell when this is the case when Shock has a glowing border around it.

Additionally, if you use a glowing Shock with a stack of Recklessness, its critical hit damage is increased by 50%. This ability REALLY hurts if you’re using a Skank Tank build (high endurance and crit).

A common mistake I see is that people new to Darkness will use Lacerate against a single target to proc the Energize passive. Against a Single Target, you’ll want to use Thrash to have a higher chance to proc Energize. For groups of 3 or more, you’ll want to use Lacerate. If you would like to see the odds of proccing Energize, please see Section 2 of the Math Chapter at the end of this guide.

“Deals X energy damage to a target and consumes 40 Force over the duration of the channel. Slows the movement speed of the target by 50% and stuns weak or standard enemies while channeled. This ability can be channeled while moving.“ You chuck multiple bolts of lightning at a person, good stuff. Now this ability acts as both an offensive and defensive ability. Whenever you use Shock or Wither, you gain a stack of Harnessed Darkness. At 3 stacks, your Depredating Volts begin to glow. This is the only time you want to use Depredating Volts. When empowered like this it deals 45% additional damage, you cannot be interrupted, you don’t experience Pushback (meaning the duration of the channel isn’t slowed by getting attacked), and each successful landing of a volt increases your damage reduction by 1%, up to a maximum of 4% for 12 seconds.

With 7.0, Depredating Volts was made into one of your augmentable abilities and this will be covered in the Ability Tree Choices portion of this guide.

I’d like to point out that while the following abilities are commonly referred to as Offensive Cooldowns, the Darkness discipline also transforms them into Defensive Cooldowns as well as they have added defensive effects. I would also like to point out that while the tooltips no longer state it, both Recklessness and Overcharge Saber do not break stealth.

“Grants 2 charges of Recklessness, which increases the Force critical chance of your direct attacks and heals by 60%. Each time a direct Force ability or each time a channeled Force ability is activated, 1 charge is consumed. Lasts 20 seconds. Activating Recklessness grants 30% Shield Absorption for 20 seconds” This ability is shared among Sorcerers and Assassins which is why it lists direct attacks and heals as gaining extra crit chance. As an Assassin, you use this for the increased Force attack damage. This additional critical chance is additive and not multiplicative, meaning if you have a 40% critical hit chance, you gain 100% critical hit chance with your direct Force attacks while you have stacks of Recklessness.

However, Recklessness gains an additional effect as a Darkness Assassin. Activating Recklessness will grant you an additional 30% Shield Absorption for 20 seconds, this is a good way to mitigate damage further. Whether you use this Offensively or Defensively is entirely dependent on your playstyle and I will be offering builds that work with either scenario.

“Overcharges your lightsaber charge for 15 seconds, immediately restoring 15% of your max health, increasing the damage of all Techniques by 50%, increasing the chance to trigger their effects by 25%, and healing you for X when their effects are triggered. The triggered healing cannot occur more than once per second.” While this does have good offensive potential, I generally use it for its defensive properties rather than its offensive properties. As a Darkness Assassin, you’ll be using the Dark Charge which grants a 50% chance to deal around 464 internal damage with your melee strikes. While Overcharge Saber is active, you have a 75% chance to deal an extra 696 internal damage with your melee strikes. 

You have the passive ability, Premonition, that makes Overcharge Saber provide an extra 25% Damage Reduction for the duration. This makes this a great Defensive Cooldown ability to deal with large amounts of incoming burst damage. If you’re against a single target, use Thrash to attempt to proc the additional healing effect, or use Severing Slash or Lacerate against multiple targets to proc the heal tick. It’s not that great of a heal but it’s better than nothing.

Defensive Cooldown abilities (commonly referred to as DCDs) are abilities used for defensive purposes. DCDs for the Darkness Assassin come in many forms, each of which has a specific purpose to counteract certain types of damage. As you’ve read above, your Offensive Cooldown Abilities are transformed into DCDs as well. But below are dedicated DCDs you’ll be using often.

“Increases your ranged and melee defenses by 50% for 12 seconds. Requires a melee weapon.” This one is fairly straight-forward. This increases your defense chance by 50% allowing you to potentially ignore Weapon Damage (also known as White Damage). This is great against Gunslingers/Snipers, Guardians/Juggernauts, and Sentinels/Marauders as these units are heavily reliant on weapon damage.

Though it gains a secondary effect when you are a Darkness Assassin, this is through the Mounting Darkness passive. Deflection also creates an aura with an 8 meter radius that causes enemies found within it to deal 15% Force/Tech damage (also known as Yellow Damage). This effect is particularly useful for lowering the threat of Shadows/Assassins, Sages/Sorcerers, Scoundrels/Operatives, Commandos/Mercenaries, and Vanguards/Powertechs who use a lot of Force/Tech abilities. If you use it for the secondary effect, do so when you’re surrounded by these threats or if you want to aid a group fight by applying this debuff to enemies.

“Surrounds you in a dark ward with 15 charges that increases your shield chance by 18% for 20 seconds. Each time you successfully shield, Dark Ward loses 1 charge. Does not break stealth.” How you use this ability defines if you are good at Darkness or bad at it. It’s often said that the Assassin Tank is the hardest of the three tanks to learn as you have numerous buffs and debuffs to manage. This right here is your primary buff you need to manage.

Some may pop Dark Ward the moment it’s off cooldown, but you really only want to refresh it if it’s down entirely or if it’s about to go down. You gain a passive called Dark Bulwark which increases your Shield Absorption for every stack of Dark Ward consumed, so the more Dark Ward Stacks are consumed, the stronger your shields will be. This is why you want to hang onto Dark Ward for as long as possible before refreshing it as when you do, you lose the extra Shield Absorption.

As of 7.0, Dark Ward can be augmented in one of three ways and will be discussed in the Ability Tree Choices portion of this guide.

“Purges all hostile removable effects and increases your chance to resist Force and Tech attacks by 200% for 3 seconds. Does not break stealth.” This is a great ability for purging hostile effects such as slows, debuffs, and Damage Over Time (DoTs) abilities. You could also use this when you expect to receive large amounts of Force/Tech damage as you become immune to them for the duration of this ability. You can extend the duration of Force Shroud with the Shroud of a Shadow tactical, gaining up to an extra 3.75 seconds of Force/Tech immunity. You used to be able to extend the base duration by 2 seconds with a utility, but since utilities are gone this is no longer the case.

“Uses the Force to make you vanish from sight, immediately exiting combat and entering stealth mode. For 10 seconds, you become virtually undetectable.” This is your “Nope” button, in that you use this to exit a fight and go into stealth. You have a utility that applies Resilience for 2 seconds when Force Cloak is activated so this can be used as a cleansing ability. This ability has only risen in popularity with the Tactical that grants 2 stacks of Force Cloak, allowing you to use it again without waiting for the cooldown to finish. 

A good combo to use with this is to use Force Cloak, use Mind Trap on your target, exit stealth and use Meditation to restore your health. Though this is generally done if you have the luxury of doing so if you’re in a 1v1 and they already used their Crowd Control breaker ability.

“Summons an unbreakable will, immediately purging all incapacitating and movement-impairing effects.” This is your Crowd Control breaker, meaning it removes stuns and slows. When you use this defines your overall skill as a PvPer. It can be tempting to use this the moment you get stunned but you must learn to recognize the various stuns and incapacitates there are. 

Is the stun you’re under broken by damage? It might be better to wait it out. Will getting hit by a hard stun determine your failure in a battle? If not, better to save it. Will using this prevent an enemy from obtaining an objective? If not, it’s better to save it. It all comes down to your personal judgment and this judgment can only be refined with experience, insight, and retrospect.

“Electrocutes the target, dealing X-X energy damage and stuns the target for 4 seconds’ It stuns a single target, it’s very useful but be wise when using it as it has a lengthy cooldown. The cooldown of Electrocute can be reduced by 15 seconds with an Ability Tree choice. You generally want to use it to hold down an enemy player posing a huge threat to you or an ally, to hold a target in place so you and your allies can gang up on them, or as a last ditch effort to end a channel of an enemy if there are no other means available.

“Spikes the target upon an overloaded lightsaber, dealing X-X energy damage and stunning the target for 2 seconds. Standard and weak enemies are additionally knocked down. Requires a double-bladed lightsaber or electrostaff.” This ability counts as a Force ability so it can be reflected by certain defensive abilities such as Saber Reflect and negated by Resilience and Force Shroud. This is great for killing someone’s momentum, stopping a channel if your interrupt is on cooldown, and it doesn’t fill the enemy’s white bar too much making them open to longer stuns.

“Deals X-X kinetic damage and slows the target’s movement speed by 50% for 6 seconds.” This is a great ability to use against a single target to keep them slowed down. Use this when you’re still building stacks of Harnessed Darkness for Depredating Volts to have a 50% slow on a target.

“Uses the Force to draw the target in, instantly pulling it to your location and generating a high amount of threat. Does not work against targets in cover.” You want to use this ability to pull a target that’s running away towards you, or to pull them out of an area to follow it up with a Force Lift to keep that enemy out of the way for a bit. It’s also another way to interrupt a channel if other means are not available. A fun trick is to pull an enemy towards a cliff and use Force Wave to push them off, efficiently dealing with them.

“Deals X-X energy damage and knocks back up to 8 enemies within a 15-meter cone in front of you, unbalancing them and immobilizing them for 5 seconds. Standard and weak enemies are additionally knocked down for 3 seconds. Direct damage dealt after 2 seconds ends the immobilize effect prematurely. This is a great group control ability as it’s quite powerful under the right circumstances. While non-direct damage abilities such as Damage Over Time abilities will not break the root at all, you have 2 seconds to hit your target(s) with direct damage abilities such as Shock, Assassinate, or anything else without breaking the root.

“Traps the target in a whirlwind for 8 seconds. Non-player, non-standard and non-weak enemies heal rapidly while lifted out of harm’s way. Damage will break the effect prematurely and stun the target for 2 seconds.” This ability also got a buff with the loss of Utilities. This used to have a 2 second channel to cast but now it’s instant! Along with that, breaking the damage now applies a 2 second stun. Sounds great, right? With this you’ll be able to keep a target still for 10 seconds. Except that using this ability this way with the lift and the 2 second stun is a waste in my opinion. Doing so will completely fill a target’s Resolve Bar and make them immune to Control abilities for a bit. Instead, use Electrocute to keep them pinned down for 12 seconds instead of 10 seconds if you’re going to end up filling their resolve bar in the event you need to. Better yet, have an ally that can use something like Awe or Flash Grenade to incapacitate them for 16 seconds total. You could also go into stealth and use Mind Maze on a target to pin them down for 16 seconds.

“Interrupts the target’s current action and prevents that ability from being used for 4 seconds.” This is an excellent ability and you have no excuse not to use it under the proper circumstances. Many powerful abilities are channeled, these can be hard hitting offensive abilities or Healing Abilities. You can use this interrupt to break the flow of an opponent’s offense or to negate the healing of a healer performing a channeled heal. Just to make it clear, if you can, use this ability to stop channeled healing abilities!

“Controls the mind of the target, forcing it to attack you for 6 seconds. Player targets deal 30% less damage for 6 seconds when attacking anyone other than you” This is your Taunt ability. I don’t bother using this if I’m alone guarding an objective but if there’s at least 1 ally fighting alongside me, I make sure I constantly use this against an enemy we’re fighting so my ally will take less damage. Prioritize enemies that can deal large amounts of damage such as Shadows/Assassins, DPS Vanguards/Powertechs, Sentinels/Marauders, or Gunslingers/Snipers.

“Forces all enemies within 15 meters to attack you for 6 seconds if Combat Technique is active. If Combat Technique is not active, threat towards all current enemies is immediately reduced. Player targets deal 30% less damage for 6 seconds when attacking anyone other than you.” It’s your AoE Taunt, use this against multiple targets or if you REALLY need to protect an ally under fire and Mind Control is on cooldown, though do try to save it for groups of enemies.

“Increases your movement speed by 150% for 2 seconds. Does not break Stealth.” This ability right here makes both of the other tanks green with envy. This is a great movement speed buff with a rather short cooldown and is great for reaching objectives, chasing enemies, and looking good overall.

“Use the Force to move through time and space, appearing at your enemy target and increasing your movement speed by 75% for 3 seconds. Does not break stealth. Cannot be used against targets in cover. Requires a double-bladed lightsaber or electrostaff.” There are many opponents you will face that will attempt to run away from you to the best of their ability. Pahtom Stride makes things otherwise as using this along with Force Speed helps you catch up to and stay on top of a target.

“Enters stealth mode, increasing your stealth level by 15 and making you difficult to detect. While in stealth, movement speed is slowed by 15%. Your companion will not react to enemy attacks while in stealth. Most hostile actions prematurely end the effect. Cannot be used in combat.” This ability makes you invisible to other players, though this comes at the cost of reducing your movement speed by 15%. It is possible for other players to see you if you get too close or if they have Passive or Active abilities that allow them to detect stealthed units. Using offensive abilities while stealth is active will break stealth but you have numerous abilities you can use that won’t break stealth. Such abilities will be stated of this capability in bold lettering.

“Traps the target’s mind, leaving it bewildered and unable to act for 60 seconds (8 seconds for Player targets). Damage will break the effect prematurely. This ability is only usable in stealth mode and cannot be used against a target in combat. Only one target can be incapacitated at any given time. Cannot be used on droids.” In PvP Warzones, you generally use this ability to stun a target while you capture an objective. This will often force enemy players to waste their Stun Breaker making them more susceptible to uninterrupted Crowd Control abilities. You can Mind Trap on a target twice though I would only recommend doing so to keep a DPS from joining their allies in a group battle or to allow an ally to capture an objective unhindered.

“While active, the guarded player takes 5% less damage and generates 25% less threat. In addition, so long as you remain within 15 meters of the guarded player, 50% of all incoming damage from enemy players is transferred back to you.” This is your primary ability to reduce incoming damage for your ally in need. Be sure to stay within 15 meters of them so you can absorb their incoming damage in a warzone. Redirected damage can be shielded AND dodged as well! If you enter stealth mode and take damage from Guard’s damage transfer, it will break stealth.

The following consumables can be used within PvP Warzones. Each has their strengths and weaknesses and it will be described in their notes. The great thing about Warzone Medpacs and Adrenals is that they’re both very cheap to purchase at 1,000 credits a piece, but you also get them from completing Daily and Weekly missions! You’ll never be short on these.

The grenades listed here are crafted by using Cybertech. While they only scaled up to level 65 since they were introduced a couple expansions ago, they’re still quite useful. You’re not using them for their damage but rather their utility. Targets recently hit by one of these grenades will become immune to them for 3 minutes, so you can’t have your team chuck these one after another to chain their effects. Use them wisely.

Advanced V-9 Cartel Waste Grenade

Advanced V-9 Rakata Freeze Bomb

Notes: Like Overload’s root effect, any damage done within the first 2 seconds does not break the root. You can use this grenade to root a group of targets if you chose Whirlwind, OR you can use this after using Overload to keep targets rooted for a total of 11 seconds! Since this is a root, this will not fill an opponent’s Resolve Bar but will have no effect if their Resolve Bar is full and have immunity to CC, instead applying a 50% slow.

As a bonus, targets affected by the freeze bomb have their legs caught in a block of ice which is really funny.

You’ll notice that there have been significant changes to how we optimize our builds. Instead of Utilities, you instead have Ability Tree choices at levels 23, 27, 39, 43, 51, 64, 68, and 73. Some of these choices used to be Utilities in 6.0, while we have some entirely new abilities as well. Though the most fun portion are the choices at levels 23 and 39 that directly affect how your Depredating Volts and Dark Ward functions. 

Do note that you will be unable to change your chosen abilities while in Queue for PvP or if you’re already in a PvP match. Choose wisely.

With the release of 7.0, we saw a noticeable change in how gearing works in SWTOR. First off, we lost moddable gear as any current end-game gear has its stats preset with no option to fine tune them via gear armorings, mods, and enhancements. This is temporary as the Devs have stated they plan to release a gear mod vendor that will allow us to fine tune our stats, as well as introducing the highest level of gear to be available, 336 gear. That brings us to my second point, the highest gear that benefits PvP is 326 rated gear, anything higher will be scaled back. It is unknown at this time what the PvP gear cap will be in 7.1 and how it will affect our overall stats. Due to this, this portion of the guide will be updated when relevant information is presented.

With the latest expansion, the way our stats scale seems to have changed. We don’t seem to scale quite as much with certain stats as we used to. In 6.0, we could get 52% Shield Chance (70% with Dark Ward), 45% Shield Absorption, 38% Defense Chance, and 37.5% base damage reduction. Now our base Damage Reduction without the Implant is around 35% since we lost that 2% extra DR from a former passive, and now our Defense Chance sits around 30%. This may change when we have access to 336 gear mods when those are released but for the time being follow these stat priorities. By getting 42% shield chance, your shield chance becomes 60% when Dark Ward is active. Everything else should go into Shield Absorption to help increase your survivability. At the moment with our current gear available, this is one of your better options when playing as a Full Tank. If you wish to learn more about the Net Damage Reduction gained from your Shield Chance and Shield Absorption, refer to Section 3 of the Math Chapter found at the end of this guide.

Gearing up is a bit odd right now as our choices are very limited. Current tank gear sets are known as the Duelist Set (built for Assassins), Bulwark Set (built for Juggernauts), and the Demolisher Set (built for Powertechs). By default, any gear drops for you will be the Duelist Set though you can gain access to the Bulwark set if you have Juggernaut as your secondary combat style and set your loot preference to Immortal Juggernaut. If you want anything from the Demolisher set, you’ll need an alt that has access to the Powertech combat style or use a Gear Vendor. The names aren’t particularly important though I recommend getting gear from other classes to help balance out your stats. The Duelist Set has 3 pieces that grant Absorption and 2 pieces that grant Shield Chance. The Bulwark and Demolisher set both have 3 pieces that grant Shield Chance and 2 pieces that grant Absorption. Which piece this is varies but I’ll save you some trouble and tell you my setup.

I opted for the Bulwark Gloves and Boots as these granted me Shield Rating whereas the Duelist Gloves and Boots would grant Absorption. These stats do not currently reflect 326 Thysian gear as many of the gear scales the same at 326 with a few exceptions. One being that the Thrysian Duelist Saberstaff or the NiM Ops Rakata variant offer higher defense chance than the Noble Decurion (Green) or Supreme Decurion (Blue) variants. I myself will worry about min-maxing stats the moment I’m able to but let’s use these for the time being until we get a wider variety of options. This is a good and safe setup if you don’t like to min-max nor want to in the future when gear mods come out.

This is my own personal setup so you don’t have to copy it exactly, you can get the stats you need from an all Duelist Armor Piece set along with Augments. This will be explained in the Builds portion of the guide.

If you’re like me and like to get into the nitty gritty of stat juggling, then you’ll be disappointed as this is not an option available right now. When 7.1 comes around and assuming there are no delays with gear mods, I will update this portion of the guide as soon as I can. It may not be immediate as I too need time to work up to Best in Slot (BiS) gear.

Use 136 Indestructible Crystals (Endurance) for Full Tank builds and 136 Eviscerating Crystals (Critical Rating) for Skank Tank builds.

I recommend a 326 Bastion Device for the added Shield Chance as that’s the primary stat you want to upgrade.

There are 3 Legendary Implants that offer anything beneficial to a Darkness Assassin. These would be the…

The Force Resistance Package is essentially our replacement for your old Shroud of Darkness passive which granted 2% damage reduction. You gain an extra 1% overall so your Damage Reduction sits at around 38% at 326 gear. Though it would have been nicer to keep Shroud of Darkness so we could have a base 40% damage reduction but I digress. This is a mandatory implant for either a full tank or skank tank build.

The Ballast Point Package is useful in PvP as there are a lot of slows and physics going around. By physics, I mean pushes and pulls while knockdowns may stem from grenades that knock down targets in an area. A solid choice but it only lasts 6 seconds with a 2 minute cooldown on Deflection. I would have much preferred an implant that granted an extra 2 seconds of Force Shroud.

The Dynamic Force Package is good for a skank tank build as you have a reduced cooldown on Recklessness allowing you to use your burst damage combo more often.

For relics, I recommend the following for a Full Tank setup…

I like these relics as these provide the most raw stats and given that we currently don’t scale like we used to, we need more raw stats to make up for it. Alternatively, if you wish to go for a Skank Tank build, I’d recommend the…

Having an increase to your Mastery and Power is useful as you should be obtaining enough critical hit chance from other sources with a Skank Tank build. If you want to choose when you get your Power buff, go with Boundless Ages. Though this has a 2 minute cooldown versus the 40 second cooldown of Serendipitous Assault as that one is activated by chance.

If you’re going as a Full Tank, you’ll be looking at Advanced Shield Augment 74’s and Advanced Absorb Augment 74’s. The number may change depending on which gear pieces you’re using but if you follow the gearing suggestions from earlier you will need…

If you’re going as a Skank Tank, you’ll want the following…

By getting at least 30% Critical Hit Chance plus the 10% from the Antagonizing Volts ability, you’re guaranteed to critically hit with each rock from Depredating Volts when it’s empowered by Recklessness. The added critical multiplier from your Critical Rating will also increase the damage done by your empowered Shocks. 14 Advanced Critical Augment 74’s will get you to that level even when using Full Tank gear instead of DPS gear.

I will be offering two build variants, a Full Tank build and a Skank Tank build. The full tank is your traditional tank that uses tank stats. The Skank Tank sacrifices some defenses in favor of damage through a higher critical hit chance. Both builds are valid in PvP despite what some people may say. Most are in favor of Skank Tank builds since the mitigation stats of tanks are often unreliable or ineffective against the most powerful attacks like the Vanguard’s/Powertech’s Cell Burst/Energy Burst. I however prefer control and defense through a Full Tank build as better tank stats mean I can lower the cooldown of certain abilities such as Force Cloak and Force Shroud.

Keep in mind that these are guidelines, you may change an option here or there to suit your needs.

This is your traditional Full Tank build. Some might tell you that you should never use a Full Tank build in PvP but I’ve always ran this and excelled at it. You’re just sacrificing damage output in favor of defense (isn’t that the point of being a tank?). By using Full Tank stats, you’re able to shield and dodge more often, meaning you increase your survivability by reducing the cooldown of Force Shroud. Though this build is best suited for Unranked or World PvP, I would use the following build for Ranked PvP.

While you can fight in a mosh pit, I feel the Darkness Assassin’s best strength is being able to defend themselves for extended periods of time. This is why I primarily play as an Objective Guardian when I’m a Full Tank. With Overload and Spike, you have more control over any opponents trying to steal or capture an objective from you. When you are familiar with your class and other classes, you’ll be able to win any 1v1 when defending a point. If you experience more than one opponent, your duty is to survive and hold the point for as long as possible until reinforcements arrive.

For gear you’ll want:

For stats you’ll want:

As an Assassin, you’ll be able to get these gear from various endgame sources like your PvP Weekly Crates. Those PvP Weekly crates will drop a guaranteed upgrade for you, replacing the lowest ranked item you’re currently wearing.

Once you have the gear above, you’ll want to use Augmentation Kits MK-11’s to add an augment slot to each piece of gear. From there, you’ll want to add an Advanced Shield Augment 74 (Item Rating 286) Into your gear until you hit 42% Shield Chance. This way, when you activate your Dark Ward you’ll have 60% Shield Chance with around 40%+ Shield Absorption. Any remaining Augment slots you’ll want to fill with Advanced Absorb Augment 74s to give a boost to your base Absorption rating.

Remember to not augment your gear pieces until they reach Item Rating 326 as when you upgrade a piece, they lose their augmentation slot.

Now let’s discuss ability tree options.

For the level 23 Option, you’ll want either Antagonizing Volts or Energized Volts depending on your preferred playstyle. If you want to fight in the mosh pits or you run with a coordinated PvP group, I’d recommend Antagonizing Volts so you can get a consistent damage buff while saving your taunts for enemies targeting your allies. If you like to run solo and prefer Objective Guarding, I would recommend the Energized Volts option so you have increased damage in a 1v1 scenario. If you want the math on this, please refer to Section 4 of the Math Chapter found at the end of this guide.

At level 73, you’ll want either Avoidance or Shroud of Madness. Both are incredibly useful so it comes down to personal preference. The safest option would be Avoidance as having a reduced cooldown on your CC Breaker and Interrupt is always useful. I myself prefer Shroud of Madness to ensure no Force/Tech AoEs knock me out of stealth if I need to cloak out. Along with that, this allows me to avoid burst damage from Force/Tech sources even more as I can use this two times with the Two Cloaks tactical.

With this build, you’ll be able to defend points and hold off multiple opponents for a great deal of time. Gearing and abilities are only half the key to victory, knowing your rotations and timing your DCDs is far more important. You aren’t trying to outburst or out-damage them, you’re surviving and wearing them down until they are defeated. Like I’ve said, you’re pretty much able to win any 1v1 with enough skill when using this build. Why do you think the armor set for Darkness Assassins is called the Duelist set?

This is the kind of setup you’ll often find used by PvP Darkness Assassin. The most common mentality is “the sooner I can kill my opponent, the sooner I can win”. In some scenarios, this is definitely the case such as 4v4 Arenas. Because of this, I highly recommend using this build over the Darth Zannah Build when in Ranked PvP. Since you play as a tank, you have 111% Accuracy so you’re going to be hitting all of your Force attacks such as Shock and Depredating Volts.

In both variants of the Skank Tank, choose Antagonizing Volts over Energized Volts as it’ll always increase your Depredating Volts’ damage more due to your higher Critical Multiplier, that and the additional 10% Critical Chance on Depredating Volts.

Whether you go Reckless Defense or Overcharge Saber is up to you, though I would suggest using Reckless Defense when doing Ranked PvP as the 15% extra damage on allies plus the 5% reduced damage on your guarded ally will greatly increase their odds of survival. 

When it comes down to the choice of Dusk Ward or Twilight Ward, that’s going to depend on the situation you want to put yourself in. If you’re in a Ranked PvP battle or like fighting in the mosh pits, Dusk Ward wins hands down. The 20% Accuracy debuff is a massive drop in DPS for the enemy and it helps keep yourself and your allies alive that much longer. If you prefer unranked and like to go alone to capture or defend objectives, Twilight Ward will be a good option for you as it boosts your dueling power.

Gearing for Skank Tank isn’t quite as straightforward as it used to be but perhaps this will change when we have access to moddable gear in 7.1. In the past, I recommended high critical chance with high endurance mods and enhancements with tank armorings. There are two approaches you can take for the Skank Tank now. 

You can use Full Tank armor with Critical Rating Earpiece, Double-bladed Lightsaber, and DPS relics with Critical Augments to boost your Critical Chance to 30% with a Critical Multiplier of 60%. 

I recommend the following setup:

For stats you’ll want:

This option is somewhere between Full Tank and Full Crit Tank, think of it as an Off-Tank build if you wish. With this setup, you’ll have a 100% Critical Hit Chance when using Depredating Volts with Recklessness. Your tanking stats will be weaker compared to the Full Tank but your primary source of survival here will be through your DCDs and killing your opponent before they kill you. 

You’ll want to increase your Shield Chance as high as you can to more easily proc the effects of Dusk Ward or Twilight Ward. Remember that using Recklessness will grant you +30% Absorption Rating for 20 seconds which makes up for your weak base Absorption rating with this setup. 

If you have access to Trooper/Powertech or Guardian/Juggernaut alts or use the Gear Vendor, you can swap out the Chest, Boots, Gloves, and your Focused Retribution Relic with a Relic of the Shield Matrix so you can hit that 60% Shield Chance with this build when using Shield Augments. The Net Damage Reduction of using all Duelist Gear vs this Mixed Gear setup will be in Section 3 of the Math Chapterat the end of this guide.

You could go with a Full Critical DPS set while using a Shield on your offhand to gain Shield Chance.

For stats you’ll want:

This is more in line as to how Skank Tanks are traditionally played. Using a DPS Set, you’ll have a higher Mastery and Power rating so your attacks will hit much harder. However you are sacrificing any amount of Shield Chance you’d get from tank gear meaning you’ll be unable to use your Dusk Ward or Twilight Ward passives as often. With a Force Resistance Package, your Shield Chance will be at 23%. With Dark Ward, you’ll have around 41% Shield Chance with about 26-27% Shield Absorption. Don’t use any Accuracy armor pieces as you already gain a +10% buff to Accuracy just by playing a Tank discipline.

When you’re gathering gear for this build variant, a great way to gather gear with critical and alacrity stats only is if you chose the Sorcerer as your second combat style. You can then set your loot discipline to Corruption (Healer) and any drops from Weekly Chests, FPs, and OPs will grant you Healer gear. Any gaps such as the Legs can be filled in with a Gear Vendor.

So there are two crucial rotations you really need to know, which I will dub the Defensive Rotation and the Offensive Rotation. The thing about the Darkness Assassin is that they’re very versatile in how they can fight their opponents. Need to fight a melee enemy? Kite them between 5-9 meters to prevent them charging or pulling you while preventing melee strikes. Dealing with a kiter? Force Pull them or chase them with Force Speed and Phantom Stride. Enemy immune to Force and Tech for a bit? You have plenty of melee weapon options. Commando/Mercenary using their Single Target Reflect Shield? You have AoEs that can bypass the shield. You get the idea.

What’s more important is how you use Recklessness and your other DCDs. It’s a common newbie mistake to pop all of your DCDs at once, but then you’re weak afterwards as you have no way to defend yourself outside of shielding attacks. If you’re dealing with Force/Tech attacks, pop Force Shroud. Getting hit by weapon attacks? Use Deflection or Recklessness if Deflection is Down. Expecting large bursts of damage? Use Overcharge Saber. A lot of it is improvisation and adaptation to the current situation you are in.

This is your core basic rotation for maintaining slows, debuffs, dealing damage, and maintaining Dark Protection. With each Shock and Wither, you’ll be building a stack of Harnessed Darkness. At 3 stacks, you’ll have an empowered Depredating Volts meaning it’ll deal +45% increased damage, increase your Damage Reduction by 1% for every volt hit, it can’t be interrupted, and it experiences no ability pushback if you take damage. 

Now ideally, you want to work in an empowered Shock procced by a melee strike so you can use the empowered Shock followed by the empowered Depredating Volts to deal more damage to your opponent. If you were unable to proc an empowered Shock at step 7, you can use your empowered Maul in an attempt to proc Shock again. Once your target reaches 30% HP or lower, use Assassinate whenever you can as this is your hardest hitting melee ability and will often end up being the finishing blow against a target.

This rotation is primarily used when Recklessness is available and is the Skank Tank’s favorite combo. It’s pretty much the same as the Defensive Rotation though once you proc the empowered Shock, you want to use Recklessness, Empowered Shock, then Empowered Depredating Volts. All of these shocks will critically hit with the Skank Tank build.

If you’re a Skank Tank, your Empowered Shock with Recklessness will deal an average of 37,000 damage against a training dummy. Each tick of Depredating Volts when fully empowered and critically hitting with Recklessness will deal about 15,000 damage per tick. Against a training dummy, you’ll deal between 97,000 energy damage. Keep in mind this number will vary on actual targets with varying amounts of armor. Now you can increase this even further through relics.

When you gain Power from your relics from either the Relic of Serendipitous Assault or the Relic of Boundless Ages, your empowered Shock with Recklessness will hit for around 40,000 energy damage. Each critical tick of empowered Depredating Volts will deal around 16,000 energy damage for a total of around 64,000 damage. This will make your damage from these two abilities around 104,000 energy damage against the training dummy.

This rotation is similar to the offensive rotation and is used to keep Reckless Defense up for as long as possible. Instead of using Recklessness on your Shock, you’re saving it for Depredating Volts only. After your first Depredating Volts, only use melee attacks such as Thrash, Maul (if procced) or Assassinate (if available) until Depredating Volts is off cooldown. Avoid using Force Attacks like Shock or Spike so you don’t consume the last stack of Recklessness. Only use the second Depredating Volts right before Reckless Defense is about to wear off so you can grant yourself and your allies 12 seconds of +15% Damage Reduction.

It is imperative to know how to swap Guard when fighting alongside two or more allies. To do this, you’ll need the Guard Ability set to something quick to access (I use the F key). Next you’ll need to open your Interface Editor to make sure the “Target of Target” window is enabled. This should allow you to see something like this…

Nadia is looking at me and her target (me) is on the far right. This is what the “Target of Target” window enables. So if you’re in a battlefield, you can press Tab to swap enemy targets in front of you to see who they’re targeting. If the enemy is someone like a Sentinel/Marauder, Shadow/Assassin, or other enemies that can deal high damage to your ally, you need to guard the ally they are targeting.

The fastest way to do this is to set a hotkey to acquire the target of your target. To set this hotkey, go to Preferences > Key Bindings > Targeting and scroll down until you find “Acquire Target’s Target”. Set the key to something you can quickly and easily access (I use the `~ key, the one right next to the 1 key). Now you have no excuse to NOT protect your allies in an efficient manner!

Stay within 15 meters of your guarded ally so their damage is reduced by 50%. The other 50% of that damage will be transferred to you. This damage can be reduced through your tank stats such as Damage Reduction, Defense Chance, and Shield Chance! Guard Damage will break Stealth.

In an arena warzone like that found in Ranked Warzones, the enemy group will likely begin to focus on another target that you aren’t guarding. It is then your responsibility to find out who they’re focusing next, target their target, and guard that ally and repeat this process as necessary. The ability to Guard Swap is one of the core skills that separates the bad tanks from the good tanks in PvP alongside DCD timing and Resolve Bar management.

What is the Resolve Bar? The Resolve Bar is a PvP specific bar used for measuring how many more hard Crowd Control effects a unit can take. Hard Crowd Control includes Stuns, Incapacitates, Sleeps, and Physics such as Pushes and Pulls. If the white bar becomes full, the unit will gain several seconds of Crowd Control Immunity after they have recovered from their previous effect.

Resolve is measured in units of 0-1,000. When the Resolve Bar hits 1,000, the unit gains Crowd Control Immunity after the latest effect ends. The amount of Resolve you fill depends on the duration of the stun you use. Generally, 1 second of Stun = 200 Resolve filled.

Your own personal Resolve Bar will appear as follows…

When it’s gray, you’re still vulnerable to Crowd Control effects. When the bar is white, you’ll be free from Stuns and Physics for the time being until it drains. It’s always good to keep your eye on this bar as if you’re hit by a particularly long stun such as a Flash Bomb, Force Lift, or a Fear and your bar is full, it might be a good time to use your Unbreakable Will to break the effects early and gain some time free from Crowd Control. But that all depends on how much you’re needed at the moment. If you get Mezzed and white barred while guarding an objective, but allies are holding off the enemy from the objective, then you can more likely get away with saving your Unbreakable Will.

The best time to use your CC Breaker, Unbreakable Will, is when the White Bar is full and you have no time to spare to capture/defend an objective or when you need to protect an ally with taunt and/or a guard swap. 

On your opponent it will appear as follows…

It is also very important to keep an eye on your opponent’s Resolve Bar as well as this can mean the difference between Victory and Defeat. Your task is to not fill the bar on an opponent for as long as possible so they can be susceptible to more powerful Stuns or Stun Chain targets. It only takes about 2 good stuns to fully fill the Resolve Bar of a target, as a Darkness Assassin this means using Spike and Electrocute in succession will fill your target’s Resolve Bar.

Now there are some times where you’ll have to fill an opponent’s Resolve Bar. Say you’re on Voidstar trying to lay a bomb on a door, you find one opponent guarding it. You use Mind Trap on them filling 800 Resolve. You decloak to then plant the bomb, this forces them to pop their CC Break where you then Whirlwind them, filling their white bar, leaving them to float for 8 seconds as you plant the bomb.

Now if you were to be working with a Juggernaut Tank, you can apply two small stuns and not fill their Resolve Bar. Your Spike and their Backhand will fill a total of 800 Resolve, leaving them open to another 4-8 seconds of being stunned by a Electrocute, Force Choke, or incapacitating effect. You’ve then negated 8+ seconds of their ability to act. Keep in mind of timing your Stuns and Incapacitates so you don’t give your opponent an opportunity to retaliate.

It’s because of the Resolve Bar I’ve come to favor the use of various Slows in my personal utility setup (The Darth Zannah Build). Slows are what’s considered Soft Crowd Control, this only hinders their movements and doesn’t outright prevent them from acting. They may not be stunned but being slowed to a crawl is by far the next best thing.

Roots applied by either offensive abilities (like the Sorcerer’s Creeping Terror Ability) or those applied by other Crowd Control (Overload) will not fill the opponent’s Resolve Bar additionally, so roots are a great way to circumvent the Resolve Bar. Just note that roots won’t apply if the target’s Resolve Bar is full, instead they will apply a 50% slow. This is still really good to have on an opponent.

And now here is where we learn the various buffs and animations you should look out for to ensure you don’t end up assisting your enemy instead of harming them. It is important to spend time to understand the abilities of your opponents because there’s one key difference with Assassin Tanks when compared to Juggernaut or Powertech Tanks, they are Proactive Tanks and not Reactive Tanks.

What is the difference between a Proactive Tank and a Reactive Tank? Simply put, a Reactive Tank will likely pop their DCDs as a response to receiving incoming damage. These DCDs are rather simple like a flat Damage Reduction buff or a Self Heal. Meanwhile, Assassin Tanks have different DCDs that affect specific Defensive Stats. Dark Ward increases Shield Chance, Recklessness increases Shield Absorption, Overcharge Saber increases Damage Reduction, Deflection increases Defense Chance, Force Shroud grants Force/Tech immunity for a short time, you should know all of this by now.

Because we have very specific DCDs, we must know the best time to use them. In order to do this, we must understand our opponents. The sooner we find clues to their specific discipline, the sooner we can adapt our fighting style to deal with them specifically. Darkness Assassins make excellent duelists that can 1v1 almost any class in the game due to their adaptable DCDs and mix of AoEs, Single Target Force and Weapon attacks, and their ability to subvert combat flow entirely with their Stealth.

These opponents fight you by flinging you around like a ragdoll to have you fight on their terms. You on the other hand can kite them rather easily by applying Force Slow, Wither,  and Depredating Volts. While tricky, it’s worth practicing kiting melee opponents by staying between 5-9 meters away from them. Their melee attacks only extend to 4 meters so you’re out of range for them to hit. Meanwhile, their charge has a minimum length of 10 meters which means you’ll have to not go beyond that range so they can’t catch up to you.

There’s one key buff you REALLY want to look out for, and that’s the Focused/Enraged Defense Buff like the ones seen above. There’s no obvious animation for it so you need to keep an eye on their buff bar. They’ll gain 12 stacks of Focused/Enraged Defense which will heal them every time they receive damage. When fully consumed, this can easily bring them back to full health. When you see these buffs, do not attack them, wait it out until it’s gone!

Guardians and Juggernauts have a chosen passive ability that decreases the Cooldown of these abilities by 30 seconds bringing its cooldown down from 2 minutes to 1 minute 30 seconds. You want to avoid prolonged battles with Guardians and Juggernauts as their self healing capabilities are MUCH better than yours. You must learn to be patient and wait it out so you don’t heal them.

Another buff to keep an eye out for is Saber Reflect. When this effect is active, all single target ranged, Force, and Tech attacks back to the attacker. The damage returned is capped so you wouldn’t be receiving the full damage but it still adds up. Guardians/Juggernauts will often use this when you are using your Depredating Volts. Should that happen, stop your channel by casting another ability so long as it’s a melee attack or an AoE. Spike counts as a single target Force attack so it will get reflected.

Defense Guardians and Immortal Juggernauts (Tank)

The primary thing you should look out for when fighting a Tank Guardian/Juggernaut is the Warding Call/Invincible buff. This reduces all incoming damage by 40% for 10 seconds. This ability alone makes Tank Guardians/Juggernauts a very popular pick in PvP. Avoid using your Offensive Rotation while this is active so you don’t waste your damage potential. Aside from this, it’s a matter of kiting while whittling them down and not healing them with their Focused/Enraged Defense.

Vigilance Guardians and Vengeance Juggernauts (DoT DPS)

If you’re against a Guardian/Juggernaut using the DoT Spec, look for the buffs seen above. These are the Robust and Brawn buffs. After using Force Leap, they gain immunity to CC and their damage reduction is increased by 20% for 4 seconds. While this buff is active, do not use any CC abilities or they will be wasted.

Focus Guardians and Rage Juggernauts (Burst DPS)

Burst DPS Guardians and Juggernauts will be much harder to effectively kite as they gain a short-range leap attack to deal with kiters like you. Burst DPS is also your greatest weakness so these foes are not to be taken lightly. After they use a leap at you, look for these buffs. This will make their next Focused Burst/Raging Burst critically hit against you. These are Force-based attacks so you can negate it with Force Shroud. If Force SHroud is on cooldown, I suggest Overcharge Saber to increase your Damage Reduction since these attacks deal Kinetic Damage.

Above are the Guarded by the Force (Sentinel) and Undying Rage (Marauder) buffs. This reduces all incoming damage on the Sentinel/Marauder by 99% for 6 seconds. Don’t waste your Recklessness, Shock, and Depredating Volts combo while this buff is active.

Above are the Rebuke (Sentinel) and Cloak of Pain (Marauder) buffs. These act as a personal shield to the Sentinel/Marauder that reduces all damage taken by 20% for 6 seconds. Every time they are attacked, the duration refreshes and they reflect energy damage back to the attacker. If you see them use this buff, stop attacking for 6 seconds so it wears off. This ability can be refreshed to last a total of 30 seconds and you don’t want to give them 20% damage reduction for 30 seconds.

Watchman Sentinels and Annihilation Marauders (DoT DPS)

A key thing to look out for is the amount of stacks they have in Merciless Slash (Sentinel)/Annihilate (Marauder). This buff can stack up to 4 times and at max stats, they can more often use the Merciless Slash/Annihilate ability which is the strongest burst melee attack available for the class. These are weapon attacks so you can dodge or shield them but do be careful that the longer you are in a battle with a DoT Sentinel/Marauder, the more damage they’ll do thanks to their Juyo Form buff which increases damage the longer they are in combat.

Combat Sentinels and Carnage Marauders (Sustained DPS)

These Sentinels/Marauders don’t quite focus on Burst or DoTs, rather, they focus on maintaining a high rate of attacks to keep up a sustained damage output. These units favor weapon attacks and will occasionally unleash a burst of Force energy damage to up to 10 meters. Deflection is especially useful against these units though there are some things you need to be aware of…

Above are the Precision (Sentinel) and Ferocity (Marauder) buffs that are one of two giveaways that you’re fighting a Combat Sentinel/Carnage Marauder. This buff grants either 2 stacks of Precision/Ferocity, allowing their next melee attack of Clashing/Devastating Blast to ignore 100% of the target’s armor. They will hurt when this is active, but these attacks can be ignored entirely by having a good Defense Chance or using Force Shroud to negate their blast ability.

Above are the Lance (Sentinel) and Gore (Marauder) icons, you’ll find these against yourself as a debuff so remember these icons. You’ll know when they perform this attack when the Sentinel/Marauder stabs you with both lightsabers. For the next 1.5 seconds, you’ll be unable to use Force Speed, Phantom Stride, or Force Cloak while under the effects of Lance/Gore. This ability has a 15 second cooldown (likely even less since these units love to build Alacrity which lowers cooldowns ever so slightly) so they’ll use this to kill your flow.

This is a good example on why you should kite your melee opponents. This ability is melee and has a 4 meter range, so staying between 5-9 meters while kiting will prevent them from using Lance/Gore on you. As of 7.0, Sentinels/Marauders can augment this ability by making it into a 10 meter dash known as Driving Lance/Driving Gore. If they have this variant, you’ll have a harder time getting them off you. Like any weapon attack, it can be dodged so as a Full Tank you have a 30% chance of ignoring this ability entirely. At the time of writing this in patch 7.0.1, this Driving variant of Lance/Gore is bugged as it can be cast without having the user dash to their target so long as the user is moving.

Concentration Sentinels and Fury Marauders (Burst DPS)

Burst Sentinels/Marauders receive the same buff, Gravity Vortex, after using their Force Exhaustion/Force Crush ability. Force Exhaustion/Force Crush is noticeable when you progressively get slower and receive a burst of damage when the slow expires. Once they use them, they receive the Gravity Vortex Buff which makes them immune to CC and Interrupts for 6 seconds. Fortunately this effect can only occur once every 30 seconds but it’s important to keep an eye out for this buff so you don’t waste any stuns.

As an Assassin yourself, you should be well aware of your own strengths and weaknesses. This applies to the same as Shadows as they are your mirror class. In PvP you’ll mainly see Burst Shadows and Assassins with tanks often guarding objectives. DoT Shadows/Assassins are more common in Ranked Arenas due to their good mixture of DoTs, Burst, and being able to stay on top of a target.

Above are the Resilience (Shadow) and Force Shroud (Assassin) buffs. As you should already know, this makes them immune to Force and Tech abilities for 3 seconds. Don’t waste CC while these are active nor waste your powerful combos. Instead use your lightsaber melee attacks to continue doing damage to them.

Above are the Deflection buffs for the Shadow and Assassin respectively. When this is activated, you’ll want to use more Force based attacks as melee attacks will miss more often during the 12 second duration. Do note that if they’re a tank, they’ll create an aura around them that will lower the power of your Force attacks so stay between 9-10 meters so you can apply Force Attacks at full power.

Kinetic Combat Shadows and Darkness Assassins (Tank)

This is your own spec and the mirrored version of your spec. If you don’t know what they can do then scroll back up and reread everything since you weren’t paying attention the first time. 

Infiltration Shadows and Deception Assassins (Burst DPS)

Burst Shadows and Assassins are a great class for quickly killing a single target, allowing them to dispatch a guard with ease and capture an objective. You’re one of the best tanks suited for combatting burst Shadows/Assassins due to your use of Force Shroud. You can easily discern a burst Shadow/Assassin if they use the floating, spinning saber attack against you.

The key thing here is to recognize the Force Potency (Shadow) and Recklessness (Assassin) buffs. This is made obvious when a Shadow’s hands glow with blue orb energy while the Assassin’s hands begin to spark with electricity. This means that their Force breach is fully empowered and their next Force Breach will deal MASSIVE internal damage which can’t be mitigated. UNLESS!!! You pop Force Shroud the moment you see their hands glow with energy then they’ll waste their empowered Force Breach/Discharge. If they use Shadow Stride/Phantom Stride on you, they’ll have a fully empowered Force Breach/Discharge ready. 

If they use Force Cloak, their cooldown on Force Potency/Recklessness is reduced by 1 minute, so be prepared to deal with another set of critically hitting empowered Force Breaches/Discharges the moment they exit stealth. This is one reason why the Two Cloaks Tactical is so popular among Shadows and Assassins, this helps them gain more offensive potential by actively lowering the cooldown of Force Potency/Recklessness.

Here’s a tip for dealing with any stealthers in general. If they cloak out and exit combat while in a 1v1 scenario, immediately use your Meditation ability to restore HP. This will give them one of two choices depending on how much they were hurt in the previous battle. If they were low on HP, they either have to retreat to heal up themselves or they’ll be forced to attack you instead of taking the time to run away and heal. This allows you to finish them off since you can out-tank them easily. This trick will not work outside of a 1v1 scenario.

Serenity Shadows and Hatred Assassins (DoT DPS)

These are technically the squishiest of the three Shadow/Assassin disciplines, but do not be fooled by this as they too are likely aware of this. These units can deal a solid mixture between Damage Over Time abilities with hard hitting melee weapon attacks that can quickly dispatch a target.

Above is the Force in Balance/Death Field AoE used by DoT Shadows/Assassins. While the animation for this ability only lasts for a second, it’s hard to miss due to the large AoE seen. If you get hit by this, you’ll gain 15 stacks of Force Suppression/Dearthmark which increases the damage from DoTs by 15%. You can cleanse this effect with Resilience to lower the overall damage done to you though it may be better to save your Resilience to cleanse the DoTs placed onto you by these units.

Above are the Mind and Body (Shadow) and Nefarious Methods (Assassin) buffs unique to their DoT disciplines. If you see this, they have their Mass Mind Control (AoE Taunt) to increase their Damage Reduction by 30% for 6 seconds. They’ll often use this buff when they are going in for melee strikes or expect large bursts of damage in return. Their base damage reduction is 15% but becomes 45% when this buff is active. Between this buff, Resilience/Force Shroud, and Cloaking for another Resilience/Force Shroud, these units can be deceptively tanky at the right moments.

Another thing to watch out for is this stacking buff. If you see the Shadow/Assassin gain this buff with a number between 1-4, you’ll know they’re using the Quick Escalation Tactical. This makes them extremely dangerous as this allows their Serenity Strike/Leeching Strike to chain Critical Hits up to 4 times in a row.

Serenity/Leeching Strike is a melee weapon attack that deals a lot of damage while also healing the user for 100% of the damage dealt.

If they critically hit with their Serenity Strike/Leeching Strike, they can instantly use Serenity/Leeching Strike up to 4 times in succession, each strike gaining another 25% critical hit chance. Their second strike will have a 60%+ Critical chance, their next has a 85%+, and their last will be a guaranteed critical hit. After this 4th hit, their ability will finally go on cooldown. But even then, it’s a 10 second cooldown so they can potentially crit chain again shortly and restore lots of HP for themselves. If they’re using the Shadowcraft Package, they can have their critical hit chance increased by 100% for 6 seconds so they can jump start this critical chain if they so choose.

Some key things to defend against this is to know that the more of their 3 DoTs are on a target, the more damage they’ll do with Serenity/Leeching Strike on targets below 30% health, thus this means they heal even more. If you’re their focus, cleanse the DoTs and apply Trauma with Thrash or Lacerate to reduce their healing.

In order to deal with Sages and Sorcerers, you must be able to discern what their discipline is purely based on their animations. I will be providing images to help you identify which Sages/Sorcerers are which. Regardless of their discipline, you’ll want to use Jolt against their many channeled abilities. Using Jolt is even more important to use if the Sage/Sorcerer is a healer.

If you see the following buff on a Sage/Sorcerer, you’ll know that they used their Mental Alacrity/Polarity Shift ability. When activated, they gain 20% Alacrity and become immune to Ability Pushback and Interrupts for 10 seconds. If you try hitting them while they channel an ability when this is active, the casting bar won’t be pushed back. You also can’t interrupt them during this time, so what do you do? Use your Crowd Control! Spike, Overload, Electrocute, Mind Trap, Whirlwind, you name it. This will cancel their ability and waste their limited time they have for Mental Alacrity/Polarity Shift.

The most powerful DCD for the Sage/Sorcerer is the ability known as Force Barrier. They will channel a bubble around them that makes them immune to all damage and hostile effects for up to 8 seconds. If they are attacked while bubbled, they’ll gain stacks of Enduring Bastion which will act as a damage absorbing shield that lasts for several seconds after Force Barrier is channeled. The more you attack them while Force Barrier is up, the more stacks of Enduring Bastion they’ll have. Having Enduring Bastion will make them immune to interrupts so long as this buff is up. Don’t attack them when their super bubble is up, they can’t do anything anyways while channeling it and you’ll only make them more vulnerable when they inevitably come out.

Phasewalk was an ability stolen from Shadows/Assassins only to be given to Sages/Sorcs then later removed from Shadows/Assassins entirely because it “made us too mobile”. I’m still salty about that. What this does is that it allows the Sage/Sorcerer to mark a spot with what appears like some ghostly flame. If they are within 60 meters of this spot, they can reactivate Phasewalk to immediately teleport to that spot. This can be done even while under the effects of stuns. If you see one of these marked locations, make a mental note of it in case a Sage/Sorcerer teleports away.

Seer Sages and Madness Sorcerers (Healer)

Above are the animations used by Healer Sages and Sorcerers. Each of these abilities are channeled and can be stopped by your Jolt or hard CC such as your Overload or Electrocute. You must always disrupt the enemy healer from channeling their abilities whenever possible. Since you’re a tank, you’ll lack the damage to actually kill a healer so the best thing to do is be very annoying to them and stop them from healing their group.

Telekinetics Sages and Lightning Sorcerers (Burst DPS)

Above are the animations used by Burst Sages and Sorcerers. Their damage isn’t too bad, it’s just that they’re able to chain multiple telekinetics/lightning in succession and can be hard to catch up to as they’ll kite you. Oftentimes they’ll take a Utility that’ll make their bubble erupt in light blinding those nearby temporarily so you won’t be able to move if you’re caught up in that. This effect ends upon taking damage so it’s better to save your Unbreakable WIll for something less easily broken.

Prioritize Telekinetic Burst/Lightning Bolt and Turbulence/Thundering Blast for abilities you want to interrupt as this deprives them of DPS and the ability to perform chain combos.

Balance Sages and Sorcerers (DoT DPS)

Then we have the Damage Over Time Sages and Sorcerers. Their animations are more subtle than the others but you can identify them with these two animations. The AoE fields will spread their DoTs to multiple targets hit in the field assuming one of those targets already has the DoTs applied to them. This in turn allows them to heal from the DoTs in the form of HoTs on themselves. The second ability is a Force-based Leech ability that allows them to transfer life from their target to themselves, this effect grows more powerful the more DoTs they have on their target.

These Sages/Sorcerers can be especially annoying as they’ll often work in Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning which is a channeled ability that will slow your movement speed. Force Phase is great here as you can ignore the slows with Force Speed. You should have 2-3 cleanses assuming you have Force Shroud with Force Cloak, so you can always rid yourself of the DoTs. This shouldn’t be anything you can’t handle.

Vanguards and Powertechs are able to stun up to 8 enemies within a 5 meter radius for 2.5 seconds, can reveal all stealthed units in a designated area for 10 seconds and can increase their movement speed while making themselves immune to slows and controlling effects.

Where the Vanguard/Powertech shines best is their powerful durability. They can deploy a personal shield that reduces all damage by 25% for 15 seconds. They also have the ability to quickly regenerate health when below 35% HP at the cost that they can only heal themselves up to 35% hp while using this ability.

Vanguards and Powertechs can make use of a shoulder cannon which launches a small missile at a single target. It can have up to 4 charges (7 for the burst specs) and it can be used while they are stunned. This ability can be augmented with a chosen ability that makes each use of the shoulder cannon restore 3% of the user’s max hp. 

An important thing to note is that a lot of damage used by Vanguards/Powertechs is considered Elemental damage, meaning you won’t be able to shield it.

Below are the various buffs they can apply and what you should look out for.

The above buffs are known as Hold the Line (Troopers) and Hydraulic Overrides (Bounty Hunters). Both Vanguard/Powertechs and Commandos/Mercenaries have access to this DCD. While active, the unit becomes immune to movement impairing effects, knockdowns, physics, and gains 30% increased movement speed for 6 seconds. Your slows, Whirlwind, Overload, and Force Pull will have no effect on the unit while these buffs are active. For Troopers, this appears as an orange circle on the floor right beneath them. For Bounty Hunters, this is a circle shaped yellow gear on the floor right beneath them.

The Reactive Shield (Trooper) / Energy Shield (Bounty Hunter) raises the unit’s Damage Reduction by 25% for 15 seconds. DPS Vanguards/Powertechs have chosen abilities that can pop up when activating Reactive Shield/Energy Shield. These will be covered in their respective portions of the guide.

Adrenaline Rush (Trooper) and Kolto Overload (Bounty Hunter) share the same buff icon. This buff can prepare up to 1 minute in advance of getting below 35% HP. It can also be activated when getting below 35% HP. When activated, this restores 35% of the unit’s health over 8 seconds but cannot exceed 35% total HP. Once this is over they’ll end up with 35% HP or less but it’ll be very difficult to kill them during this time. Remember to use Double Strike or Whirling Blow to apply Trauma which will reduce their healing by 20%. This will reduce their overall healing from 35% HP recovered to 28% HP recovered.

Stealth Scan is a Utility AoE ability that reveals stealthed units within a 12 meter diameter circle. This circle can be cast up to a 30 meter range and will root any stealthed units it catches for 3 seconds. On top of this, any of their allies in the Stealth Scan’s area have +50% increased movement speed so long as they are within the area which lingers 6 seconds after they leave the area. 

It’s an annoying tool to be sure as this will remove you from stealth if you’re caught in it. It’s often used on bridges or tight spaces with high traffic to expose stealthers and it is also used near turrets, pylons, control points, etc when one team is trying to capture it and keeping an eye out for stealthers. It makes a bright green circle with Probe Droids spinning around in it so it’s hard to miss. Don’t step into it, though sometimes they’ll use it the moment you cloak out with Force Cloak. Just run out of there with Force Speed or jump to a nearby target with Phantom Stride to reduce your chances of getting caught.

The Shoulder Cannon ability is an ability available to both Vanguards and Powertechs. This can be activated and store up to 4 charges, when fired these home in on their target to deal a small amount of Kinetic Damage. What makes this annoying is that the Shoulder Cannon can be fired even when the Vanguard/Powertech is stunned. Many will choose a passive ability that allows them to restore 3% of their HP with each rocket fired, for a total of 12% HP restored. Burst Vanguards and Powertechs gain 7 charges which means they can restore 21% of their HP if they have the appropriate passive ability.

In 7.0, the Power Yield Ability used by Vanguards and Powertechs got an update. Depending on their selected discipline, Power Yield will have a new title and new effects specific to their selected discipline. The one thing they have in common is that this acts as a stacking armor buff that can stack up to 5 times. Each stack will grant the Vanguard/Powertech +40% armor rating. This effect is multiplicative and not additive, so they won’t become immune to all damage. We’ll go over specific effects they provide for their respective disciplines in their discipline sections.

If you see this buff when a Vanguard/Powertech uses their Power Yield variant, this means they’re using a tank implant. Regardless of their discipline, the Supercommando Buff and Implant can absorb 1.6 million damage for 3 seconds after they use their Power Yield. If you see this buff, avoid using any of your empowered damaging abilities as they’ll just get absorbed.

Shield Specialist Vanguards/Shield Tech Powertechs (Tank)

You’ll not often find Tank Vanguards/Powertechs in PvP that often as many people opt out to be a Burst Vanguard/Powertech. If you do find one, you’ll often find that they’re fighting in the mosh pits as they lack the damage to effectively 1v1 someone in a timely manner like how a Guardian/Juggernaut or Shadow/Assassin can. Instead they focus primarily on debuffing groups of opponents to reduce their damage, accuracy, speed, etc. all while whittling away at their health with elemental attacks to avoid shields.

An ability Tank Vanguards/Powertechs will use is Riot Gas/Oil Slick. Riot Gas will appear as a red cloud of gas that’s low to the ground while Oil Slick will appear as a black puddle on the ground. These effects slow your movement speed by 70% and reduce your melee and ranged accuracy by 15%. Just get out of the area and you’ll be fine or if for some reason you can’t leave, use Force attacks until it goes away.

The Tank Vanguard/Powertech get Infused Kolto Packs/Energy Yield as their variant of Power Yield. This grants a stack of Tactical Armor/Energy Yield and adds another stack (up to 5 stacks) with each stack granting 40% additional armor. Since this is multiplicative, they’ll have around 60%+ damage reduction at full stacks. Pairing this with Reactive Shield/Energy Shield can grant around 91%+ damage reduction for 15 seconds.

This ability will also heal them as every time they gain a stack of Tactical Armor/Energy Yield, they gain a stack of Infused Kolto Pack/Energy Heal which after 15 seconds, restores 6% of their HP per stack. Now the most insidious part of this ability is that it has a 1 minute cooldown, lasts 15 seconds meaning it has a 25% uptime. You can avoid attacking them to prevent stacks but then they’re getting no damage for 15 seconds. There’s no real easy way around this outside of using Whirlwind, Mind Trap, or other control abilities. Fortunately their damage is low as they’re built around debuffing groups of enemies so they’re more annoying than a threat if you find yourself in a 1v1 against them. Just chuck them off some terrain and you’re good.

Tactics Vanguards/Advanced Prototype Powertechs (Burst DPS) These particular units will be a pain as they are a counter to Darkness Assassins. They’re able to deal large bursts of elemental damage with Cell Burst/Energy Burst which cannot be shielded along with their Assault Plastique/Thermal Detonator which can be shielded. Basically the best way to defeat these units is to kill them before they can kill you. As a Full Tank build, you’re at a disadvantage as you’re weak against burst damage and these units do nothing but burst damage. If you’re a Skank Tank, you have better odds of defeating them due to your powerful use of chucking lightning at their face.

Above is what the Energy Lode buff looks like. When the Vanguard/Powertech gains one of these, they’re able to use Cell Burst/Energy Burst which will appear as a big red energy ball of death. Cell Burst/Energy Burst deal Elemental damage so you will be unable to shield this attack. 

There are two ways you can get around this (sort of), you can pop Force Shroud however this only delays the Burst attack as targets that resist Cell Burst/Energy Burst end up giving the Vanguard/Powertech a refund on all Energy Lodes used meaning they get to use it again immediately after. They may end up wasting their combo of using 2 Cell Bursts/Energy Bursts in a row while Force Shroud is active, so they’ll be left with only one of the refunded bursts after Force Shroud ends. Alternatively, use Overcharge Saber and a Warzone Adrenal to decrease the amount of burst damage taken from this ability.

Alongside Cell Burst/Energy Burst, Assault Plastique/Thermal Detonator will be one of their primary sources of damage. They’ll lob this explosive on you where it’ll stick and beep, once the beep gets high pitched it’ll blow. These deal kinetic damage so you can shield them using Recklessness to increase your Shield Absorption. It’s because of abilities like these that I suggest a 60% shield chance over a 50% shield chance so you can better deal with burst damage.

Above are the Balmorran Advanced Weaponry and Power Yield Buffs. This instantly grants 5 stacks of Power Yield, increasing their armor by 40% per stack or around 153% total for 10 seconds as well as granting 4 stacks of Energy Lodes. This means their damage reduction will be around 50% for 10 seconds but the buffs don’t end there. Their next Cell Burst/Energy Burst will have a 100% Critical Hit chance and any other critical hits they get from abilities will grant a stack of Energy Lode. This is when Burst Vanguards/Powertechs are at their most dangerous.

This ability also has a 1 minute cooldown so extended battles with them are not ideal. You may need help from a friend to deal with them efficiently. Burst Vanguards/Powertechs will typically pop this right after using their first Cell Burst/Energy Burst so they can instantly use another one as they get 4 stacks from this ability. When you see them at 4 stacks of Energy Lodes before they use this ability, pop Force Shroud to reduce the damage of refunded Cell Bursts/Energy Bursts.

Using your Overcharge Saber when you see they build 4 stacks of Energy Lodes is also a good choice as they’re just going to follow up with another Cell Burst/Energy Burst in an attempt to burst you down. Since the duration of your +25% Damage Reduction lasts 15 seconds, you should be able to cover their first two Cell Bursts/Energy Bursts with it and outlast Balmorran Advanced Weaponry/Power Yield.

Above is the War Machine/Advanced Shielding passive sometimes used by Vanguards/Powertechs. Once they obtain this after using their Reactive Shield/Energy Shield, they can receive one of two effects…

How they use this passive will likely depend on their situation. If they are low on health and need to be defensive, they’ll likely use this for the heals from Adrenaline Rush/Kolto Overload. If they use their shield while high on health, they’re going to use this offensively. Keep in mind that if they use this for their Advanced Weaponry/Power Yield, they’ll have their increased armor rating for 15 seconds instead of 10 making them rather nasty.

Honestly the best way to deal with them is to chuck them off a cliff or have someone with DoTs deal with them as they have no way to cleanse themselves.

Plasmatech Vanguards/Pyrotech Powertechs (DoT DPS)

You never see them in PvP that often as people like the raw elemental burst damage that the Burst Vanguard/Powertech offers. It’s still good to know what you’re fighting and what to watch out for though. Truth be told, I never really learned tricks to fight DoT Vanguards/Powertechs since I so rarely run into them in PvP, they typically prefer PvE.

What makes DoT Vanguards/Powertechs unique compared to other DoT classes available is that they have access to the longest DoT available in the game, Plasmatize/Scorch. This annoying ability can be cast on a target within 10 meters dealing elemental damage over 30 seconds. Under most circumstances, you can deal with this via your cleanses from Force Shroud. Though if you don’t have an instance of Force Shroud available and you try to run away, you’ll be stuck in combat until it wears off, you cleanse it, or you die. This also keeps the Vanguard/Powertech in combat too, so this inability to heal out of combat goes both ways. This will also give you the debuff Susceptible, which increases damage from tech attacks by 5%.

The DoT Vanguard’s/Powertech’s Power Yield is transformed into the Durasteel Armor/Thermal Yield Ability. Its effects are simple yet powerful. They gain a stack of Durasteel Armor/Thermal Yield increasing armor rating by 40% per stack up to 5 stacks and increasing their damage by 20% per stack. The kicker here is that it lasts 30 seconds on a 1 minute cooldown, meaning it has a 50% uptime. There’s no getting around this in terms of not granting them stacks so you just have to whittle away at them with Internal damage such as that you gain from Discharge or from Dark Charge’s internal damage bonus on melee attacks.

The above buffs are known as Hold the Line (Troopers) and Hydraulic Overrides (Bounty Hunters). Both Vanguard/Powertechs and Commandos/Mercenaries have access to this DCD. While active, the unit becomes immune to movement impairing effects, knockdowns, physics, and gains 30% increased movement speed for 6 seconds. Your slows, Whirlwind, Overload, and Force Pull will have no effect on the unit while these buffs are active. For Troopers, this appears as an orange circle on the floor right beneath them. For Bounty Hunters, this is a circle shaped yellow gear on the floor right beneath them.

Adrenaline Rush (Trooper) and Kolto Overload (Bounty Hunter) share the same buff icon. This buff can prepare up to 1 minute in advance of getting below 35% HP. It can also be activated when getting below 35% HP. When activated, this restores 35% of the unit’s health over 6 seconds but cannot exceed 35% total HP. Once this is over they’ll end up with 35% HP or less but it’ll be very difficult to kill them during this time. Remember to use Thrash or Lacerate to apply Trauma which will reduce their healing by 20%. This will reduce their overall healing from 35% HP recovered to 28% HP recovered.

Commandos/Mercenaries can increase the max HP threshold of Adrenaline Rush/Kolto Overload by choosing a passive. This will change the numbers listed above from 35% to 65%. Same rules apply, apply trauma to reduce their overall healing.

The Reactive Shield of the Commando/Mercenary only lasts 12 seconds instead of the 15 seconds that Vanguards/Powertechs get. They can choose a passive ability known as Trauma Stabilizers/Trauma Regulators. If they have this passive, they will gain a stack of Trauma Stabilizers/Trauma Regulators and can gain a maximum of 10 stacks. When their shield ends after 15 seconds, they’ll restore 4% of their HP for each stack of Trauma. This allows them to restore 40% of their HP at max stacks.

If you hit them with the shield up and you see them gain a stack of Trauma, stop attacking them. Use non-violent actions to disable them such as Force Lift or cloaking out and using Mind-Maze until their shield is gone. Your next best option is to use Force Stun to reduce their offensive potential while their shield is up. They want you to stop attacking so they can attack you freely in return, don’t give them the satisfaction.

This ability is known as Echoing Deterrence/Responsive Safeguards. All single target direct attacks have 50% of their damage reflected back to the attacker, absorbs that damage so they don’t take the damage, and heals them for 5% of their HP for every single target attack that hits them. This ability’s effect lasts for 6 seconds. When you see these shields, only use Wither, Discharge, Severing Slash, Lacerate, and Overload. These abilities will attack them at full power, not reflect the damage, and not heal them. Don’t confuse these with Reactive Shield/Energy Shield, you can tell them apart by their colors and the numerous lines on the bubble.

The ability Electro Net is a hard counter to you as an Assassin. While under the effects of electronet, your speed is reduced by 50%, you take energy damage for the duration of 9 seconds. The worst part is, whenever you move you take 20% more damage from Electro Net. This extra damage can stack up to 10 times for a bonus of +200% damage to you with electronet. If you’re hit by this ability, don’t move and wait it out. Just turn to face your opponent and use your ranged abilities to fight in the meantime or Force Pull them so they fight you face to face (they’ll probably just run away though but that’s more time running and less time shooting).

Identifying a Healer Commando/Mercenary

This is easily done for a Commando, if you see them firing a persistent, large, green laser at an ally repeatedly, you have yourself a Commando Healer. Healer Mercenaries are more subtle so you have to pay attention to the animations. They’ll be firing a small greet dart from their wrist launchers. While any discipline of Commando/Mercenary can use these healing abilities, they’re primarily used by healers to gain stacks of Supercharge which can be used later on to increase their healing output. The DPS Commandos/Mercenaries have other means of gaining stacks of Supercharge.

If you see a rocket fired on the ground that releases green healing goo followed by green clouds, that’s also a good indication that you got yourself a Healer Commando/Mercenary. Apply Trauma with Double Strike or Whirling Blow to their healing target(s) to reduce their healing received.

These classes are very similar to Shadow’s and Assassins. Both rely on stealth, have similar abilities, but where the Scoundrel/Operative lacks in Potency that we Shadows/Assassins have, they make up for in consistency. The most common type of Scoundrel/Operative you’ll find in PvP is the Burst DPS discipline. This is because they deal good damage, have great damage mitigation abilities, and I’ve seen operatives kite and tank 4 enemy players at the same time and live. Though that was back during 6.0 and prior.

Since 7.0 came out, they can’t quite get the mixture of passive abilities they choose like how they used to. They have to choose their single target hard stun, blink, AoE incapacitate, and AoE Stealth Generator. After seeing these units cause so much trouble for a DPS unit, I felt this was a long time coming. Personal biases aside, let’s identify Scoundrels/Operatives!

This green bubble indicates that they’ll dodge all melee attacks for 3 seconds, and with a selectable passive, will reflect all Single Target Force and Tech attacks back to the attacker at 150% of the damage.

The ability to reflect 150% of incoming Single Target Force and Tech attacks is actually an ability tree choice they take at level 73, they can opt out for another passive ability. But this is PvP, mixing a reflect with a dodge ability is too good to pass up especially with the abundance of Force and Tech attacks everywhere. Keep an eye out for these buffs on them when they’re dodging, if they don’t have these you can damage them with Force and Tech attacks.

If you do see this buff, DO NOT USE EMPOWERED SHOCK OR DEPREDATING VOLTS WHEN YOU SEE THIS. Sometimes you may not have a choice since they will use it as a reaction to you using Depredating Volts. Use Overload to cancel your channel and prevent yourself from getting the reflected damage. Wither, Discharge, and Overload should be able to hurt them while this buff is active

Scraper Scoundrels and Concealment Operatives (Burst DPS)

These are the most common Scoundrels/Operatives in PvP Warzones. They are easily identified because they’ll run circles around you while stabbing you with a knife or shooting a shotgun at your back. If you find yourself rooted and unable to turn while getting stabbed/punched a lot, you’re fighting a Burst Scoundrel/Operative. Do note that like Burst Vanguards/Powertechs, these units are a hard counter to Darkness Assassins due to their ability to mitigate incoming damage consistently and that they deal bursts of Internal damage which cannot be shielded.

A passive unique to the Burst Scoundrel/Operative is the Slippery Devil/Shadow Operative Elite passive. This is gained when they use their Scamper/Exfiltrate ability (this is when they roll forward). When they use Scamper/Exfiltrate, Slippery Devil/Shadow Operative Elite makes them dodge and resist all incoming attacks for 1.5 seconds. It’s an Invincibility Frame (iFrames) passive that’s rather annoying. They’ll use this to reduce damage from your Depredating Volts.

Blood Boiler/Volatile Substance is what’s going to kill you if you stay in a battle with a burst operative too long. They will apply this debuff to you which initially does nothing, but the moment a DoT ability from them will cause a large burst of elemental damage. This will also make you Assailable, meaning you take 7% increased damage from elemental and tech sources. You can’t shield this ability so you can either cleanse it off you with Force Shroud or brace yourself with Overcharge Saber.

Ruffian Scoundrels and Lethality Operatives (DoT DPS)

While not often seen, these Scoundrels/Operatives can be a considerable threat especially if their opponents are grouping close together. They’re able to lob an AoE Grenade at a spot with a 5 meter radius that causes enemies affected by it to take Internal Damage over 24 seconds. They will continue to unload more DoTs on their opponents which further increase the power of some of their blaster attacks. To know how to defend yourself against a DoT Scoundrel/Operative, you must keep an eye out for 3 Damage Over Time abilities that they will stack on you. Rare but dangerous, don’t group up close if you spot a DoT Scoundrel/Operative. Keep an eye out for the following DoTs…

Vital Shot (Scoundrel) / Corrosive Dart (Operative) is a base class single DoT that, while weak alone, will add up with their numerous DoTs and abilities. This itself is not an indicator that you’re fighting a DoT Scoundrel/Operative as any of their disciplines can use it. Only when it’s paired with the following effects should you be careful.

Shrap Grenade (Scoundrel) / Corrosive Grenade (Operative) is a discipline-specific AoE attack that will cause all affected targets within its 5 meter AoE to take Internal Damage Over Time. Targets hit by this will also be slowed by 30% so long as they have this DoT on them.

Sanguinary Shot (Scoundrel) / Toxic Blast (Operative) is their third DoT. It initially deals weapon damage and causes the target to take additional weapon damage whenever they take damage from the Scoundrel’s/Operative’s other DoTs. Since this is considered weapon damage, you’re able to dodge and shield this damage!

Once all 3 DoTs are applied, the Scoundrel/Operative is ready to use Brutal Shots/Corrosive Assault. This is a blaster attack that will deal weapon damage while proccing damage from all active DoTs that they applied. They’ll be able to fire this off 3 times with their combo as this consumes Upper Hand/Tactical Advantage stacks. 

Since you’re dealing with weapon damage, you’re able to shield the damage or dodge this ability entirely. You could also ruin their day by cleansing all 3 of the DoTs with Force Shroud. This can force them to use a weakened Brutal Shots/Corrosive Assault thus reducing their damage output. If Deflection or Force Shroud are not an option, Overcharge Saber is a good way to reduce the incoming damage. You have a lot more tools to defend against DoT Scoundrels/Operatives than Burst Scoundrels/Operatives.

Sawbones Scoundrels and Medicine Operatives (Healer)

These units are nowhere near as common as Burst Scoundrels and Operatives, you must still be familiar with their heal animations to determine if they’re healer or DPS. Once you determine they’re a healer, they’re more of an annoyance than a threat unless they’re grouped up with their allies. Many of their healing abilities are Heal Over Time abilities (also known as HoTs) which are instantly activated, only three of their heals are channeled. Keep an eye out for these animations to identify a Scoundrel/Operative healer.

Out of all the healers, these ones have the best Area of Effect heals all found in the form of HoTs, using Lacerate against a group of enemies benefitting from these heals would be prudent so you can mitigate their heals received.

There isn’t too much to say about these guys, I’ve never considered them a threat and they’re annoying at best, though they’re much more of a threat to your squishier allies. They may be a bit more of a threat if you’re a Skank Tank as you’ll have less chance to dodge and shield their weapon attacks. If they are under cover, they cannot be dashed to with Phantom Stride so you’ll have to run to them.

If you see that their portable cover gains floating borders, they are immune to Crowd Control abilities for 20 seconds so long as they are in that cover.

You’ll want to pressure them with damage and make them feel helpless by negating all their damage through your DCDs. Deflection is especially good against them. Force them to roll away and lose their CC Immunity. You’ll notice that like the Scoundrels/Operatives, Gunslingers/Snipers also have a dodge. But unlike the Scoundrels/Operatives, they can’t reflect Force/Tech Damage so use Force attacks when you see the green dodge bubble animation.

Above is the Ready For Anything/Spotter passive. This grants the Gunslinger/Sniper a boost to their Stealth Detection. This can stack up to 30 times with 1 stack per second, meaning that at 30 stacks they are more likely to see a stealthed target up to 30 meters away. Since your stealth ability increases your stealth level by 15, they will spot you from about 15 meters. Regardless, when you see they have a large number of stacks of this passive, go in from the sides or behind as they’re less likely to spot you due to you being out of their field of view.

Hideout (Gunslinger) / Hololocate (Sniper) is an ability that is essentially a mirror of the Sage’s/Sorcerer’s Phasewalk. They set a point which looks like a small tech circle with pillars of light emanating from the center where they can teleport to at any time so long as they’re within 60 meters of the point. Keep an eye out for these spots as they’re more subtle than Phasewalk spots.

Scrambling Field (Gunslinger) / Ballistic Shield (Sniper) is a large AoE that projects from the point of casting for 25 seconds. This shield has a 10 meter radius and reduces damage of the Gunslinger/Sniper and their allies within it by 20% so long as they remain within the field. This is easily noticed by the giant green semi-sphere on the map.

Sharpshooter Gunslingers and Marksman Snipers (Burst DPS)

When you’re against these units, expect to get shot a LOT as after many of their damaging abilities, they can quickly follow up with Trickshot/Followthrough which only aim to pick off even more of your HP. Deflection as a Full Tank is great against these units but keep an eye out for this ability…

Penetrating Shots (Gunslinger) and Penetrating Blast (Sniper) is a channeled, single target attack that rapidly fires shots at the target. This reduces their armor by 20% and depending on their chosen abilities, Penetrating Shots/Penetrating Blast may root you for the duration of this ability. Force Speed empowered with Force Phase is a great way to counter this slow as your Force Speed lasts between 2-3 seconds.

Gunslingers/Snipers have an ability that instantly resets the cooldown of Penetrating Shots/Penetrating Blast so they may root an opponent for about 4 seconds while dealing heavy damage to them. Though knowing the PvP crowd, they’re going to favor the +20% Critical Chance and Critical Damage passive over the root for this ability. Deflection is good versus this ability as this is their hardest hitting ability that requires numerous ticks, so each of those ticks you have a chance at dodging.

Above is the icon for the ability Aimed Shot/Ambush. This is a hard hitting ability used by Sharpshooters and Marksman that will deal a large amount of weapon damage and ignore 20% of the target’s armor. With the tactical B-0 Differential Targeting System, they can instantly cast this ability after using their roll, Hightail It/Covered Escape, or after using their Hideout/Hololocate ability. This ability is easy to spot as they’ll stop firing as the animation for this ability will create a laser targeting you for 2 seconds before firing.

When the Gunslinger/Sniper gains the Smuggler’s Luck/Laze Target in the Burst discipline, their next Aimed Shot/Ambush will critically hit. Overcharge Saber is good here to guarantee lowered damage or if you want to use your shields and chance it, use Recklessness to increase the damage absorbed if you shield it.

Saboteur Gunslingers and Engineering Snipers (Hybrid AoE DPS)

These disciplines aren’t often seen in PvP due to them requiring a good chunk of setup time but hoo-boy can they be annoying. These units will deal Weapon, Kinetic, Energy, Elemental, and Internal damage on their targets so it can be tricky to defend against them efficiently.

The primary damage ability of Hybrid Gunslingers/Snipers is Explosive Charge/Explosive Probe. This applies a debuff on you which by itself does nothing, but the moment you take damage from any source it’s going to explode and deal kinetic damage. It will also apply the Contingency Charge/Cluster Bomb debuff after the detonation.

Contingency Charge/Cluster Bomb will stack on you 3 times when you’re hit by the Explosive Charge/Explosive Probe detonation. The next 3 times you take damage from any source, one of the stacks will be consumed and create an explosion on you dealing Kinetic Damage. The damage from Explosive Charge/Explosive Probe and Contingency Charge/Cluster Bomb can be negated by Resilience.

The Shock Charge (Gunslinger)/Interrogation Probe (Sniper) is a DoT that also slows its target by 30% for 18 seconds. Be careful if you see this on yourself or your allies as those with this DoT are now able to be attacked by their Sabotage/EMP Discharge burst ability. Sabotage/EMP Discharge will damage the target with Shock Charge/Interrogation Probe to take a burst of energy damage and if they are also affected by Incendiary Grenade/Plasma Probe, they will also become stunned for 2 seconds.

Incendiary Grenade/Plasma Probe will create a circular field of fire that deals elemental damage over 8 seconds. Targets also in this AoE will be slowed by 50% while they are in the affected area. Do your best to stay out of this field, especially if you have Shock Charge/Interrogation Probe on you as you can get stunned here. This ability can be recasted immediately as it has a negligible energy cost and has no cooldown, meaning it can have a 100% uptime. Force Shroud and/or Force Speed with Force Phase will get you out of this field.

The Hybrid Gunslinger/Sniper can use the Target Hack/Targeting Systems buff, making their next Explosive Charge/Explosive Probe critically hit. Along with that, any damage done by their Charges/Probes and Incendiary Grenade/Plasma Probe will deal an additional 10% damage for 20 seconds.

Dirty Fighting Sniper and Virulence Sniper (DoT DPS)

While rare as well, these units should not be left alone as when they are, they can deal devastating internal damage to a target of their choosing. They’ll stack numerous DoTs on their target and use their Wounding Shots/Cull Ability that causes each DoT effect they have on their target to tick as they are hit with Wounding Shots/Cull. Internal damage cannot be mitigated easily so don’t underestimate them simply because they appear to not be doing a lot of damage to you at first. You should either be using Force Shroud to cleanse, hope that your Defense Chance kicks in and you avoid the shot (and therefore the DoT), or use Overcharge Saber to temporarily increase your Internal Damage Reduction.

Vital Shot (Scoundrel) / Corrosive Dart (Operative) is a base class single DoT that, while weak alone, will add up with their numerous DoTs and abilities. This itself is not an indicator that you’re fighting a DoT Scoundrel/Operative as any of their disciplines can use it. Only when it’s paired with the following effects should you be careful.

Shrap Grenade (Scoundrel) / Corrosive Grenade (Operative) is a discipline-specific AoE attack that will cause all affected targets within its 5 meter AoE to take Internal Damage Over Time. Targets hit by this will also be slowed by 30% so long as they have this DoT on them.

Above are the Wounding Shots/Cull abilities used by these disciplines. This ability is channeled over 3 seconds getting 4 weapon attacks on their target. Each time one of these hits land, each of their DoTs proc their damage. The more DoTs on their target, the more damage Wounding Shots/Cull will do.

The DoT Gunslinger/Sniper gain the Blood Sights/Viral Targeting buff. This causes their next Wounding Shots/Cull to critically hit and have each of their DoTs critically hit automatically for the next 10 seconds. This buff is what will make DoT Gunslingers/Snipers very dangerous.

And now we get down to the nitty gritty. In this portion of the guide, we’ll be going over the most common scenarios you’ll encounter in these maps and what you can do for your team to help ensure victory.

From my experience when working with a random group, people (particularly those new to PvP) are more concerned with getting kills, high damage numbers and feeling like a bad*ss and not on objectives. DO NOT BE LIKE THESE PEOPLE!!! PvP is a group effort and in order to win, everyone has to work with each other.

Below are the various warzones you’ll encounter with maps. On these maps are various symbols and I will be explaining these now.

“Disclaimer: I might have missed a couple buff locations. Some maps might lack the following symbols as they may not apply or because unit movement is either too random or erratic to use the movement lines. More will be discussed in their respective sections.”

You might notice some new symbols on certain maps, those will be explained in those sections. And now, let us continue with the warzones.

In the Alderaan Civil War map, the two teams will be fighting to control the turrets to deal damage to the opponent’s capital ship. Once the ship is out of health, that team loses. As both a Tank and a Stealth unit, you’ll have 3 options you can choose from.

When guarding a turret, remember to communicate with your team. Say for example, you’re guarding grass and see 3 incoming enemies. Type in chat “3 inc grass” or “3 inc G”. I like to use full words for less chance of confusion but this alerts allies that you’re going to need backup. Try to include the number so they can send an equal amount of people otherwise they might send everyone leaving mid free for the taking.

This is basically the same thing as Alderaan Civil War so the same rules apply here.

This map is similar to Alderaan Civil War in that there are three turrets that the teams try to capture. However, this one differs in that you NEED at least two turrets to reduce the enemy base’s HP. Most of the action will be at the south turret. If you’re attempting to capture an enemy controlled turret, you’ll need 8 seconds to do so, though you can decrease this time if multiple people capture it at the same time. You also don’t need to be right in front of the terminal to capture it as you’ll notice a semi circle border on the ground that indicates the maximum distance you can capture a turret from. Capture from this distance if you’re capturing a side turret at the start of a match.

Your 3 options for Novare Coast are the same as Alderaan Civil War.

There are only two points to capture, the pylons to the west and east. Your goal is to capture at least one of the pylons and hold them while the rest of the team goes mid to either capture orbs or kill enemy players. By capturing orbs or by killing enemy players, you’ll give your team more points.

As a Darkness Assassin, I say your time is more valuable spent protecting your team’s pylon or trying to take the opponent’s. The less information you give the opponent the better, so remaining stealthed while guarding a pylon can have an opponent drop their guard.

When it comes to messing with the team’s pylon, you use your various CC abilities and tankiness to distract them. With Overload, you can push off groups of enemies from taking their pylon. This will in turn, aggro them and they’ll attack you as a group. Since you’re a tank, you can actively mitigate this damage through your DCDs and run to the back for a Healing Node if need be. By distracting them, you’ll draw their team to you, allowing your team to more securely grab orbs for your own team’s pylon.

Keep an eye on the timer as you’ll want to run away when it hits 7 seconds, this should give you ample time to reach the center or side rooms where you’ll be shielded from the AoE that kills anyone outside of the rooms. You can also cloak out and Mind Trap an opponent to ensure they get caught in the AoE.

This is one of the more frustrating maps to deal with whether you’re defending or attacking. The goal for the attackers is to reach the doors or terminals and to either place explosives on the doors or slice the terminals. Eventually, they must reach the central computer and capture it, which requires a half second. The defending team must prevent the enemy team from progressing at all costs.

Each door or terminal requires 8 seconds to capture and the door bombs require 20 seconds to explode. The defending team can diffuse the bombs but require 2 seconds to do so.

If you’re defending the Voidstar, here’s the most important thing to keep in mind about defending the doors… DO NOT CHASE ENEMIES FAR OUT, DO NOT SEEK ONE ON ONE DUELS AND FIGHT AT THE DOOR, NOT NEAR IT, NOT AROUND IT, AT IT. I cannot stress this enough. Since many of your main abilities are AoE attacks, you can actively prevent someone from capping the door/terminal without trying. As a Darkness Assassin, your access to Lacerate also lets you spam AoEs at the door indefinitely.

Another thing to keep in mind if you’re defending is to keep an eye out on all the objectives and pay attention to the chat in case someone calls for help. At the start of the match, people will call the west door “right” and the east door “left”. This can be confusing at first and the doors are called “left” or “right” as that’s where they appear from the spawn door. If you’re defending the final zone, do not forget the door to the east. People always prefer to go to the north door where the action is but they will neglect the other door leaving it open to capture.

This map is my personal favorite. In Odessen Proving Grounds, you want to maintain control of capture points. In order to capture or defend said points, you have to remain in this cramped area. This forces opponents within this area to be affected by your Wither and Discharge, Mounting Darkness debuff, and easily hit by Overload and Severing Slash.

When the timer goes out and you’re preparing for the next control points to appear, cloak out if you’re in a battle and get out of the immediate area to avoid AoEs. You’re now a step ahead of the enemy team as you have a head start to capture any control points that are activating. Capture those points and defend them.

Up to the north you’ll be led outside, this is a great area to push a group of enemies off the ledge with Overload. Be careful as the same can be done to you as well.

Whether you’re part of the Republic or the Empire, I’m sure that we can agree that the Hutts are jerks and shouldn’t be allowed to create sports. Regardless, we have to deal with Huttball. This game is akin to football only you can die and there are traps everywhere. Someone must capture the Huttball and carry it to the enemy’s goal line (it’s hard to miss, it’s a giant purple/yellow line on the ground and arrows will point the way for the Huttball carrier).

This one requires a great amount of teamwork to win. NEVER leave your team’s Huttball carrier to fend for themselves, you must protect them through your Guard, CC, and debuffs. It’s very important to use your taunts on this map as the entire enemy team’s focus will be on your Huttball carrier.

You might relate this game to football and want to assume the role of goalie, DO NOT DO THIS. DO NOT stand near your goal line as the enemy Huttball carrier can potentially jump to you, ignoring the traps and ledges to instantly score a point. Also, be mindful of your stuns to prevent the enemy Huttball carrier from White-Barring, making them immune to CC and free to reach the goal line without interference (though they are still susceptible to slows).

Teamwork is key here. Getting scores with the Huttball is a far more effective way to ensure victory for your team.

There are two Huttball maps at the moment, one on Quesh (the one with the sickly green hue) and one on Nar Shaddaa (the one with the sickly orange hue).

This is the more infuriating of the two Huttball maps. Traversing the ledges without getting pushed off and into the pit is a challenge to say the least. You’re also at the whim of the fire traps that activate every few seconds. Don’t stand in these for obvious reasons and be careful when you’re near them as the enemy will often attempt to push you into the fire or stun you as you attempt to walk across them.

Near the Huttball are acid pits. Should you get into these, they’ll slow you and you’ll take damage. The damage isn’t much but it adds up so it’s best to get out of there as soon as you can. To the north and south of the Huttball are these pads shooting out air. If you stand on these, you’ll be launched into the air and thrown into a random location. Sometimes it’ll take you to a nearby ledge and sometimes it’ll place you in the center of the map. Do not rely on this for transportation if you have the Huttball.

The layout of this map is a bit confusing as it’s built of three layers. The bottom layer has the Huttball and 4 speed boosts. The second or middle layer has two healing nodes and is the most stable zone. The top layer is built up of the goal lines and a thin pipe that connects the two goal lines. Beware the toxic sludge pipes as indicated by large green circles on the map. These will slow you and kill you in a second.

Last but not least, we have the arena maps. These are 4 vs 4 Deathmatch arenas provided courtesy of the Hutt Cartel. This map is the true test of your skill and your team’s ability to cooperate. There are no warzone buffs, no healing nodes, no speed boost, just the terrain and the people inside it. This is also the only type of warzone you’ll encounter in Ranked PvP. It’s 2 out of 3, so win 2 times to ensure victory.

At the start of a match, you can tell who’s on the enemy team and if they’re a tank, dps or a healer. From there, you must check to see if anyone is being guarded. If their healer is being guarded, place your focus on the DPS that has the least HP or is the easiest to kill due to game mechanics. Once you select your target, everyone must work together to bring them down ASAP. If you each go off attacking your own targets, you’ll get nothing done and chances are you won’t kill anyone and end up getting your teammates killed.

As much as I would prefer it not be, this really comes down to a roll of the dice. Some classes are just simply better than others in terms of damage output and dueling ability. In order to do well in this warzone, you must work with your team and know your abilities as well as the abilities of your enemy.

There are currently five maps available for arenas, Makeb, Corellia, Tatooine, Rishi, and the Mandalorian Battle Ring.

The general rule of thumb is to avoid fighting on elevated areas such as bridges or ledges to avoid being pushed off, leaving your team to be outnumbered.

If your opponents have the higher ground, pull them back down with Force Pull. If your team has the high ground, use Overload to push 3 of the opposing team’s members off so your team can single out the one that remains. You can also use Whirlwind to single out an opponent, leaving their team to fight a 3v4 for 8 seconds. Using this on an enemy healer is a good strategy but only do so if you know for sure they used their CC breakers.

So, you’ve come this far in both PvP and in reading this guide (congrats!). Do you think you’re ready to take on the best of the best?

If you have said no to any of these, then I do not believe you are ready for a Ranked PvP setting. This is not a place for casuals as many people here are attempting to get placed high on the leaderboard and chances are, they know exactly what they’re doing and how to fight anyone that comes their way.

Ranked PvP takes place solely in Arenas, so you only have your allies and warzone adrenals to depend on. You’re best off doing Ranked PvP with friends you can depend on and are able to talk through via Discord. You need to keep everyone updated instantly and this is best done through voice communication. You can’t afford to waste a second. Hesitation is the main source of defeat in PvP, do NOT hesitate. If voice communication is not an option, work out a plan with your teammates through the Ops or Party chat.

You’re going up against the best of the best. Your lightsaber, your blaster nor your use of the Force won’t let you prevail. The most dangerous weapon you can bring into Ranked PvP warzones is your mind and the knowledge it contains. I realize that this guide has been rather text heavy but it should teach you everything you need to know in the event you choose to join the ranks of Ranked PvP players. It might seem to be a lot of information to retain but it can be done.

If you tell yourself that you can’t remember this information or if you’re not able to do ranked PvP, know that these are self imposed barriers. Both of these can be obtained through practice and studying. You have a lot of potential, it’s up to you and ONLY you to reach that potential. Your knowledge and cooperation with your team ensures victory.

Be sure to pack Advanced V-9 Seismic Grenades, Fortitude Stims, and keep up the guard swapping!

Your most common Tank found in Ranked PvP will be Guardian/Juggernaut tanks due to their good DCDs and Self Healing abilities. If you’re against a team with 3 DPS and one tank, you can try focusing entirely on the tank with your team so they lose their defensive potential. This can happen to you if the situation is reversed however.

Oftentimes, people’s first instinct will be to run to a higher elevation and fight up on a bridge or scaffolding. Before you run off like a lemming to these points, assess the situation. Do they have units with an AoE push and if so, how many? Does your team have lots of AoE pushes? These pushes can be used to knock down enemy teammates on either side which can leave your guarded target more vulnerable. 

If their team has the better high ground comp, stay on the low ground and use Force pull to drag a target to you. Ranged units will try to attack you from above in an attempt to kill or bait you, simply bring their ally under the bridge or scaffolding so they can’t attack you where their ally has to run away from you gravely injured or their team has to come down to save them.

Well, you’ve reached the end of this guide. Thank you for taking the time to read up and I hope this serves useful to you in some manner! Before you go, I wish to teach you one more lesson, this one is about attitude.

In my experience, it does not occur to many that attitude is an important factor to winning a match. Some might think that “I’m so effing bad*ss that I can handle anything with little effort!” or perhaps they’re thinking “GRRR!!! I’LL MAKE THE SHADOW WHO KILLED ME PAY!!!” (Hoo-boy, I’ve been on the receiving end of that many times -Siow). PvP is a competitive scene and some people can take this way too seriously.

Sometimes, you’ll encounter people who whine, give up, troll or pm you after a match telling you how bad you are even though you scored higher than them. It’s best to either ignore, block or kick these people from the match. You must avoid doing this behavior yourself. Negative attitudes spread easily throughout your team, bumming them out and possibly affecting their performance.

From personal experience, the best way to keep your performance up is to remain calm and stay focused on your task. Don’t let other people distract you, and don’t take things too seriously, it’s a video game after all. Be sure you’re having fun with it! But if you’re not, don’t bring others down with you. At the end of a match, it’s always good sportsmanship to say “gg” or “good game” after a match and you can also say this in /say chat so your opponents can read what you said as well.

These attitudes are greatly exacerbated in Ranked PvP. The best you can do is remain nice and positive as it takes 1 positive attitude to make a world of difference. One time, I was doing Ranked PvP to obtain the Black-Silver Crystals and the atmosphere was getting to me. But there was one Powertech that was always supportive, nice, cooperative, and did a good job. That person kept me going because I ended up being queued on their team and we worked our way to victory.

Be the change you want to see and others will follow.

Good luck out there and may the Force be with you!

Christopher Siow (known as Siow in Star Wars: The Old Republic) describes himself as “some Native-American dude who loves Star Wars and other nerd stuff”. He currently operates a Star Wars YouTube channel known as “Siow’s Holocron”, where he touches upon various Lore subjects relating to Star Wars. Such videos include Lore videos about the Jedi Temple Guard, various Occupations that the Jedi would take on, and plans to include many more in-depth lore videos over time.

The art of Siow featured in the Guide’s Intro portion was given permission to be used in this guide by original artist, Joelle Blot, of Star Dragon Art. https://star-dragon-art.tumblr.com/

I did not form the equations for the math portion myself, I had help from a programmer friend of mine who also loves calculating MMORPG math. He’s the genius here, not me, he just gave me the equations I needed to figure out the numbers myself.

So I had to use a lot of math to calculate whether this passive is better than that in X scenario, or things of that nature. Not everyone wants to read that, I get it. So any math will be placed here for us super nerds who like to crunch numbers for fun! I will be providing the equations I’ve used myself so you can have the ability to theorycraft and run numbers yourself! There’s also a tl;dr section at the end. With that said, let’s use some math!

Dark Forces is a passive ability chosen at level 43 and in PvP, it is inferior to the +15% Damage Reduction for your team from Reckless Defense and the +25% Damage Reduction with 15% Max HP Heal of Overcharge Saber. But if you’re here, you want to know the potential healing numbers regardless.

Your Global Cooldown takes a large part in calculating how much health you can regain with this ability. The base GCD is 1.5 seconds, taunts last 6 seconds, this means you can get 4 swings in with your lightsaber to heal. Versus a single target, using Thrash can get you back 8% of your HP per taunt against a single target. You can gain even more health by using Lacerate on a large group of targets. Assuming you hit a group of 8 enemies, you can restore up to 32% of your HP if those 8 targets are affected by Mass Mind Control when using Lacerate. 

If you use Force abilities on taunted targets, your healing can increase even moreso. Say you taunt 8 targets all huddled together in a compact formation, you could use Depredating Volts with the Chained Volts passive to get 4 hits per target within 3 seconds. This alone will restore 32% HP, leaving you time to work in either a Wither with Discharge combo or 2 Lacerates. This would increase your total healing to 48% maximum HP.

Sounds good right? Well not so much as it is extremely rare that the enemy will group tightly for you to hit like this. You can get CC’d ruining your chance to heal, targets will move out of the way, one will likely be guarding their objective while another is trying to sneak one of yours. PvP is unpredictable making it rather incompatible with PvP. This passive scales better with more predictable environments and unfortunately, it’s hard to take advantage of its full effects here. On demand Damage Reduction for either yourself or your team will always be better for PvP.

So, why should you use Thrash against a single target and Lacerate/Severing Slash  to proc your Energize buff? To determine this, we must use the following equation to know the odds of activating Energize: 

In this equation, x is the number of attacks that land against your target(s). For Thrash, x will be 2, and with Lacerate, x can be any number from 1 through 8 depending on how many targets you hit with it.

This gives Thrash a 51% chance to activate the Energize compared to the 30% of Assassinate, Maul, or using Lacerate against one target.

Here’s the chance that it would proc when using Lacerate…

You have a much greater chance of gaining Energize by using Lacerate if you’re in a battle against 3+ enemies, but you should rely on Thrash against a single target to proc Energize more reliably than Assassinate or Maul when fighting a single target.

So this is where math becomes a tad more complicated as Net Damage Reduction has a lot of factors that go into it. What do I mean by Net Damage Reduction? How does this differ from my Damage Reduction stat? Simply put, your Net Damage Reduction is the amount of damage one of your defensive stats reduces. For your Damage Reduction stat, what you see is what you get. For your Defense Chance, your Net Damage Reduction is equal to your Defense Chance when being attacked by white damage sources such as weapon attacks.

Where it gets complicated is when you have to calculate the Net Damage Reduction offered by your Shield Chance. Since Shield Chance is bound to your Shield Absorption, these two will always be put together when accounting for Net Damage Reduction through your shield.

If you wish to theorycraft the amount of net damage you can reduce from Shields, you may use this following equation. x*y = Net Damage Reduction In this case, x is your Shield Chance and y is your Shield Absorption (50% for either value would be written as 0.5 for the equation as an example).

Consider an attack that deals 100 damage. You have a 50% chance to mitigate 25% of damage. Out of 10 attacks, it is reasonable to assume 5 will hit unhindered and 5 will be shielded. This means 5 hits at normal (500) and 5 hits at mitigated (375) for 875 total damage, or 12.5% total reduction (875 compared to 1000).

Coincidentally, 12.5% is 1/8, which means your 1/2 chance at 1/4 reduction = 1/8 mitigation

So now let’s look at examples of Shield Chance and Absorption Combinations

With the higher chance to shield, the more likely you are to consistently reduce incoming damage, regain Force Energy, and increase your chance to reduce the Cooldown on Resilience. Now let’s look at the stats I recommended… 60% Shield Chance with 41% Absorption = 24.6% Net Reduction Now you might be thinking, “Couldn’t I go 50/50 Shield Chance and Absorption or go for 70% Shield Chance with 30% Absorption to proc passive effects more often?”. Let’s touch on that, let’s look at the following… 

The 50/50 setup will grant you 0.4% more Net Reduction than the 60/40 setup I recommended, which means you have slightly more overall damage reduction while the latter provides less Net Reduction than the stats I recommended. You may go for a 50/50 approach if you like but I still firmly believe in going 60/40 is better at the moment as you have better odds at shielding Burst damage. Assassin Tanks have always struggled against Burst Damage from White Damage sources such as Weapon attacks. Being able to shield this more often will greatly increase our survivability.

But now you’re probably wondering what your overall Net Damage Reduction is when you consider all of your Defensive Stats. I find it easier to think of it as the percentage of incoming damage received by you after going through your personal stat checks (assuming base stat percentages without buffs from Passives or DCDs). For this, we’ll use the following equation where X is the Percentage of Damage Received…

X  = (1-Defense Chance %) * (1-(Shield Chance% * Shield Absorption%)) * (1 – Damage Reduction %)

For the equation examples, I will be using my own Defense Stats without any Passive or Active Buffs.

Now let’s plug those numbers into our equation…

X will equal 0.35438575061, but to round it down we’ll say X = .35. This means we receive 35% of all incoming damage with these base stats. But now let’s add the +18% to Shield Chance from Dark Ward and the +4% to Damage Reduction from Dark Protection…

X will equal 0.30163983836 or about 30% of incoming damage was received. Maintaining your Dark Ward and Dark Protection is crucial to take 5% less damage as it can add up quickly. But now let’s look at your stats when you account for your Dark Ward, Dark Protection, AND your Dark Bulwark!

X = 0.27730959785 or about .28% of incoming damage was received when you round it off. Squeezing Dark Ward with Dark Bulwark for every last drop of Net Damage Reduction is important as it helps you survive that much longer. So for shiggles, let’s say you’re using the Ward of the Continuum Tactical to gain additional stacks of Dark Ward to better take advantage of Dark Bulwark. Since that would add an additional 3% Defense Chance, X = 0.26533423016 or 26% of incoming damage was received.

So let’s go out and see what happens when we go all out and have ALL our buffs on! I’m talking Dark Ward, Dark Bulwark, Deflection, Overcharge Saber, and Recklessness! (Keep in mind, you should space out your DCDs so you’re not left defenseless by using them all at once. This is just for theory purposes and the only instance I can think of that you’d use this is if you’re getting 1v8’d in PvP).

X = 0.04801163345 or about 5% of incoming damage is received. Though this number would only be good for about 12 seconds, then your other buffs will fall off in another 3 after that, then the last one in another 5 after that. Honestly, it’s much better to cloak out and mess with the enemies instead of tanking all their damage with all your DCDs if you end up in a 1v8. Use Overload, Force Pull, distract them and be slippery and tricky!

Though one thing I haven’t mentioned is that these previous equations accounted for Defense Chance which would only be useful when fighting against White Damage from Weapon Attacks. As a note, when you’re stunned weapon attacks ignore your Defense Chance which is why I like to take the Formless Phantom passive as it reduces your incoming damage while stunned by 30%. This is the same as your Defense Chance so you’re reducing about the same amount of damage while stunned.

In PvP there are going to be a lot of Force/Tech attacks which flat out ignore your Defense Chance. This means our equation changes ever so slightly. To differentiate the two equations, I will be using Y for the Percentage of Incoming Damage Received when referring to damage from Force/Tech sources.

Y = (1-(Shield Chance% * Shield Absorption%)) * (1 – Damage Reduction %)

Let’s use our stats when properly maintaining Dark Ward without Dark Bulwark and Dark Protection.

Y = 0.43420158106 or 43% of incoming damage was received. This amount of damage reduction is quite drastic when compared to taking damage that can be mitigated by Defense Chance. Fortunately, Assassins are excellent at negating damage from Force/Tech sources entirely thanks to Force Shroud! They can also reduce Force/Tech damage by 15% when targets are affected by our Mounting Darkness Aura that they get when they activate Deflection.

With Mounting Darkness affecting your opponent, we’ll take about 36% of incoming Force/Tech Damage from them. Feel free to test these equations out yourself to learn the Percentage of Incoming Damage Taken when accounting for Recklessness and/or Overcharge Saber buffs! I’d do it here but I feel this section is long enough and I’ve likely scared off some people with all this wonderful math. If you have read this far, congratulations on not fearing math! Knowledge is power, and knowing is half the battle!

Let’s put Full Tank theory reduction aside and focus on the Off-Tank variant of the Skank Tank build. We’ll be comparing going as an Off-Tank with a full Duelist Set vs a Mixed Armor Set.

Full Duelist Skank Tank Set PIeces

Full Duelist Skank Tank Stats

With this set, you’ll be receiving about 35% of all incoming damage when we maintain Dark Ward and Dark Protection, so about the same as a Full Tank when they’re not maintaining their Dark Protection buff and not using Dark Ward at all. You sacrifice some damage reduction in favor of hitting that 30% Critical Rating so you can have a 40% Critical Hit Chance with Depredating Volts with Antagonizing Volts, and a 100% Critical Hit Chance when using Recklessness. Now let’s see where we get when we replace pieces of our gear that have Absorption with Shield Rating.

Mixed Armor Skank Tank Set Pieces

Mixed Armor Skank Tank Stats

With this set, you’ll be receiving about 35% of incoming damage when maintaining Dark Ward and Dark Protection. I would say this is the preferable setup as you have an additional 9% more Shield Chance, granting you as much Shield Chance as a Full Tank, therefore allowing you to use your Dusk Ward or Twilight Ward more often. Though the Full Duelist Skank Tank set would be easier to get without the use of Alt Characters or using the Gear Vendors to fill in the gaps. If you get the chance, opt for the Mixed Set if you go as an Off-Tank Skank Tank.

Full Critical Skank Tank Set Pieces

Full Critical Skank Tank Stats

With this set, you’ll be receiving about 41% of all incoming damage. Needless to say this is the squishiest of the tank builds and I’m beginning to wonder why you’re not just playing as a DPS. Though you’re using this setup for damage and being able to take out ⅓ of your opponent’s HP in one combo. What’s more important here is your damage output. Which leads us to the final section of the math portion…

Let’s first determine what our Total Damage Boost gained from our passive Critical stats. To know that, we’ll be using the following equation where X equals our Average Total Damage Boost…

X  = Critical Chance*Critical Multiplier+(1-Critical Chance)

For a Full Tank, the Critical Stats will be around the following…

Then we plug this into our equation…

.2518*1.51+(1-.2518)=1.164418 or about a 16% damage boost on average.

For an Off-Tank Skank Tank, the Critical Stats will be around the following…

Then we plug this into our equation…

.3019*1.603+(1-.3019)=1.1820457 or about an 18% damage boost on average.

For a Full Critical Skank Tank, the Critical Stats will be around the following…

Then we plug this into our equation…

.4064*1.7028+(1-.4064)=1.28561792 or about a 28% damage boost on average.

Damage Boosts from Critical Stats

Keep in mind these numbers are averages, it could be less or more depending on how many abilities you critically hit.

All we have left to cover is which level 23 Passive choice is better? Antagonizing Volts or Energized Volts? This question is only important for Full Tanks as Antagonizing Volts will always be better for a Skank Tank. Keep in mind that Antagonizing Volts only increases the Critical Hit chance for Depredating Volts and not the Critical Damage. Due to the increase, this can affect our Average Total Damage Boost numbers when looking at the damage output for Depredating Volts specifically.

We’ll be looking at the damage of Depredating Volts on a Full Tank when fully empowered by Harnessed Darkness for the 45% Damage Boost.

Base Damage with Harnessed Darkness: 44,140 damage

Damage with Harnessed Darkness and Antagonizing Volts: 47,409 damage

Before we plug in our Average Damage Boost from Critical Chance, let’s first determine the average damage boost of this Depredating Volts as the numbers change due to the increased critical chance.

.3518*1.51+(1-.3518) = 1.179418 or about an 18% damage boost on average. We’ll be using this with the Antagonizing Volts numbers.

Though we’re not done yet as we have to account for the 20% damage boost of Depredating Volts when used on a target under the effect of your Mind Control…

51397.41052*1.2 = 61676.892624 or about 61,677 damage giving us the following damage results for a Full Tank

Full Tank Energized Volts Debris Damage

So Energized Volts is mathematically proven to be better for a Full Tank in terms of damage output. However it becomes a matter of when you should take Antagonizing Volts over Energized Volts. Like I’ve said earlier, if you do coordinated group combat or like fighting in the mosh pits, use Antagonizing Volts for the consistent boost to your damage and save your taunts for damage reduction purposes to help your allies. If you want to go defend an Objective such as a Turret or a Pylon where you’ll be more prone to fight 1v1s, use Energized Volts for the on-demand damage buff against a single target.

I’ll forgo writing the whole equations used when showing the damage numbers of Depredating Volts for the Off-Tank Skank Tank and the Full Critical Skank Tank…

Due to your higher Critical Multiplier, Antagonizing Volts is objectively better than Energized Volts when using either of the Skank Tank setups.

Fun Fact: If you use the Full Critical Skank Tank setup and pick the Chained Cascade passive, you can deal up to 723,656 damage assuming you hit 8 targets with all 4 rocks each while having a 100% Critical Hit Chance with Force Potency! I would say the Full Critical Skank Tank is where the Chained Cascade Passive really shines. But again, that’s a potential maximum, on average you’ll only be able to hit 4-6 depending on their team comp and how clumped up they are.

Did all that math give you a headache? Here’s a summary of what I proved with the math. Keep in mind that percentages are written as decimals when used in the equations, so something like 55.15% becomes .5512.

Here’s a list of equations I used for various things throughout this portion of the guide. Some of these equations can be used to determine numbers for your class even if you’re not a Darkness Assassin!

x*y = Net Damage Reduction x equals your Shield Chance as a decimal and y equals your Shield Absorption as a decimal.

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