By AgentPanda at 2011-12-09 19:26:17
This is a Darkness Assassin (Tankassin)'s 31 point skill. As a strong AoE tank, Wither allows us to generate huge threat on a mid-sized group (5 targets maximum). Unlike Lacerate (all nearby enemies, weapon damage, no threat modifier) which seems to have a place as boosting snap threat; Wither seems to be built for both snap threat and maintaining aggro, as it effectively has 5% mitigation built in as a debuff on your targets- making it crucial to be kept up on groups so as to not expend unnecessary Dark Ward charges.
The animation also looks awesome (can be seen in the Inquisitor Progression video).
What do you mean, not expend unnecessary Dark Ward charges? It reduces the damage they cause, not their accuracy, by 5%. And Dark Ward should be actively kept up regardless anyway. I think you're thinking about Dark Charge's Discharge effect, which handles accuracy, and won't ever disappear from a group of mobs since the Discharge should also effectively be kept up throughout as allowable. I fully agree that Wither should be kept up as well-- 5% damage reduction is very handy-- but saying it can affect Dark Ward charges is misleading.
Edit: Use of Wither, as well as Shock, now builds a stack of Harnessed Darkness on your Tankasin, a change with patch 1.1 if I am not mistaken. (If I am then that's fine) Therefore, starting on a boss fight, hitting a Wither and a Shock will not only give you damage reduction and nice starting threat, but you're practically already prepared to whip out a self-healing Force Lightning for nice extra threat. The fact that Shock and Wither both proc this means it should be easy to keep up. Don't forget to thrash with your Shocks to make them a guaranteed crit!