Dark side is a lot more difficult since you have poor healers, but I already have talia at 7* since she has so so many places to farm her I havent had too much of a problem. I still had to really level up abilties before I could even do all of the normals though.
With the changes to maul and sid i think she is less important. You can now damage through the missions much easier, and dakas heal is subpar to talias.
I don't think you can use Maul as a reason to not need Daka when most players will never have him. Daka however is easily accessible and solid for not just darkside but also for galactic war and pvp.
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5 hard is where it starts getting tricky
Don't forget her resurrection ability!