Sith Assassin Darkness PvE - the stats

While every guide for every spec of every class in Noxxic.com does contain noteworthy mistakes and gets at least something wrong, the guides Assassin and Shadow tanks have been always been the worst of the bunch (the others are not much better, but only slightly) and seemingly they are getting worse and worse on every update.

Sith Assasin, Darkness, PvE

Part 1 Stat priority

The stat priority they suggests for Assassin tanks currently as I write this (and I doubt they will change it any time soon) looks like this:

Now before we even begin to explain what is wrong with these numbers, I would first like to point out that Noxxic completely fails to mention if the shield chance they suggest is supposed to be with or without Dark Ward activated, something I think every guide should specifically mention. We can assume that it is with Dark Ward, but we can't be sure since the number is impossible to reach either way with or without and I'm not even sure if the people behind Noxxic know how Dark Ward works.

Now as I said 65% shield chance is currently impossible to reach, so that number is wrong.

60% absorption is also currently completely impossible to reach so it is wrong too. You can't get anywhere near it, even with any new gear that will be added in the upcoming patches.

The 20% defense is at least possible, but a bit too low. Even though, especially after 2.0, the optimal stat distribution for Assassin tanks is very high on Absorption rating and low on Defense rating, even then fully geared assassin tank should end up with slightly more than that. Note that the assassin starts at 16% defense without any defense rating gear, much higher than the other tanks, and will go well above 20% with less than 300 defense rating.

Now just to point out how epicly bad noxxic is, a little history lesson.  The 65% shield and 60% absorption would have been good numbers to go for back in the past at level 50 in swtor 1.7 (although noxxic's numbers for defense is not correct for either) when the numbers to go for were more like 30% defense, 45% shield (which is 65% with dark ward) and 60% absorption. However before anyone thinks that Noxxic simply did not update their numbers when patch 2.0 hit, the sad truth is that they did. Back in 1.7 noxxic had numbers like 25%/50%/50% (which were at least possible even though not even close to optimal). So back when 65% shield and 60% absorption would have been good numbers, noxxic did not have them, but now that they no longer are correct or even possible numbers they decided to put those numbers to their guides. So somehow Noxxic manage to get from extremely bad to worse.

Also another thing wrong with Noxxic's stat priority is including "greater than" signs between stats. Optimizing tank gear is more about finding optimal proportions of how much of your stat budget goes to defense and absorption, which change as the stat budget increases, not about one stat being always better than the other, so the ">" signs give the wrong idea.

And finally Noxxic goes entirely wrong by claiming that tanks need accuracy. There is no need for any tank to have accuracy rating on their gear as they can easily hold threat without is and having it would lower their shield rating significantly ruining their mitigation. Now the shield chance Noxxic suggests is already impossible to reach even with shield rating in every possible piece of gear and 0 accuracy, but still noxxic suggests number for accuracy that would require to have more accuracy rating than shield rating in your gear.

The numbers Noxxic suggests for other tank classes are also wrong and/or impossible, but at least Noxxic no longer gives same numbers for every tank class so at least they have finally understood that different classes should go for different numbers even though they can't get anywhere near the right numbers for any class.

As for what would be better numbers, I would suggest anyone interested to go to the official SWTOR forums and read some of the posts by the people who actually know the mathematics behind the stats and follow their stat distributions. Most theorycrafters don't like giving numbers in percentages anymore  but rather list the amount of ratings for different stat budgets. I could calculate the percentages for some proposed bis setup, but we will leave that for another time as there is still much to cover.

Part 1B how stats work

Not only is Noxxic wrong about stat priority and the numbers they give for stats, but also their explanations on how the stats work have a lot of false information and outright lies too. Let's have a look.

Now the basic explanations about how defense rating, shield rating and absorption rating are mostly correct, but perhaps a bit too simple failing to mention that defense only works against melee/ranged attacks while shield since 2.0 works against both melee/ranged and force/tech attacks that deal kinetic/energy damage, and neither works against force/tech attacks that deal internal/elemental damage.

However there is a strange sentence: "You want to balance shield rating with absorption rating". What the hell is this even supposed to mean? Shield and Absorption are of course connected so more of one will make you benefit more from the other but nothing about the relationship of these stats is something I would describe as you want to "balance" one with the other. Shield rating does not compete with absorption in the gear itemization (apart from augments which you would only use for shield rating in exceptional cases for assassins). Shield rating can only be traded for alacrity or accuracy, which you don't want at all, so you simply want as much shield rating as possible. Absorption does however compete with defense rating so more absorption means less defense, so you will need to do some kind of balancing between them (which of course does not mean getting them anywhere near equal).

And the other stats...

Endurance: Saying that endurance increases your max health is of course correct. The health regeneration they mention (since they have the same text for every class) means the health if not full will very slowly regenerate even when not being healed by anything else. Personally I would not have even mentioned the regeneration part since it is so insignificant (it is not really wrong to mention it but it is pointless and confuses new players easily).
However the main problem is that they completely forget to mention here that assassin tanks have self-heals that heal a percentage of max health so endurance does increase the self-healing of an assassin tank. Failing to at least mention that is a huge flaw.

Willpower: It is correct that main stat increases damage and crit chance. Still Noxxic is very wrong when saying that willpower increases healing for assassins. Willpower increases healing for Sorcerers and Sages, but for assassins it does not. This is again where Noxxic is being epicly stupid by copy/pasting same text for different classes even when the same does not apply for both.
What does it matter? Well it matters because self-healing is a big part of assassin tank's rotation and survivability, but none of those heals are affected by willpower but either heal a percentage of max health (Force Lightning with harnessed darkness and Overcharge saber) in which case the only stat that affects them is endurance or heal a fixed amount (Dark Charge procs) in which case no stats affect them. Claiming that willpower increases assassin's healing when it does not is giving misinformation to any new players trying to figure out their stats.

Accuracy rating: While Noxxic's explanation of how accuracy works (which is the same that they had before 2.0) is no longer as badly wrong as it was before 2.0 (another history lesson: before 2.0 force and tech attacks did not benefit at all by accuracy, yet the whole time noxxic lied that they did) it is still partially wrong.
First of all tanks should not be gearing for accuracy at all. A DPS player does of course want 100% melee basic accuracy, 110% melee special attack accuracy and 110% force/tech accuracy
And unlike noxxic falsely claims a special attack is not the same thing as force/tech attack. Also all melee/ranged attacks also are not all "normal" attacks with 90% base accuracy. Only one attack for each class (Saber Strike for Inquisitors) is a basic attack with 90% base accuracy, and all others are special attacks. You will find special attacks listed under melee (or ranged for ranged classes) tab if you move mouse over the melee accuracy and they have 100 base accuracy, though you do need accuracy for the melee special attacks to fully hit since accuracy over 100% reduces the target's defense chance, which is 10% for endgame content. Accuracy over 100% for force attacks reduces the target's resist chance (not defense) which (since 2.0) is also 10% for endgame content.


We continue reviewing Noxxic's guide for Assassin tanks in the next post
http://noxxicsucks.blogspot.fi/2013/06/sith-assassin-darkness-pve-part-2.html