Marksmanship Sniper/Sharpshooter Gunslinger Discussion 1.0-1.2

[woks]

(11-22-2011 09:37 PM)Sol Wrote:  Hi woks, welcome to the forums =)

Firstly, your English is fine sometimes the question just needs a little explanation. Now to answer your question you will definitely ahve moments of high energy use for burst situation or for keeping high damage abilities on cool down. This is why they have given classes abilities like Adrenaline Probe that instantly restore energy/heat/ammo. This leads me to believe that you are correct. You will want to open up with your high cool down burst abilities, use your regen and settle into a normal rotation then repeat this again when your abilities come of cool down. This would be for a standard fight, however the principle is the same if you needed to save your burst for adds etc. You are going to be constantly juggling the need for energy conservation in the top tiers for faster regen, with times where you will be required to blow excess amounts for added burst.

Thank you Sol.

I do Understand that I need to try and use the cd as often as possible and at the best moment during the fights. My question was more toward the spread sheet JB had posted which was covering only a normal rotation setup. But yes I do agree that I'm still struggling toward the mechanism of the Energy vs its regen has In my previous pve raiding experience I always played mana users. To me the energy mechanism is fairly new.

I really apreciate the time that you guys are putting toward this and I hope being able to contribute myself when I finnaly get to play the class at lvl 50.

[Sol]

No worries woks. As for the spreadsheet, I would say that it would be pretty damn hard if not impossible to get all the variables right for a complete rotation including burst. Without speaking for JB I would say that the spreadsheet would be used to determine the optimum regular rotation and you would need to work in your burst/CD's around this as best fit the situation.

I really like the energy regen mechanic and firmly believe it will sort out the regular players from the greats!

[LB_StorM]

(11-22-2011 09:13 PM)woks Wrote:  Also with your permission I was going to edit (well try to) your sheet into Imperial Sniper version, just so it reads easier for sniper players and I was going to share it with my guildmates.

Sure, go ahead.

(11-22-2011 09:24 PM)Kaladris Wrote:  I think it is also clear that you should try to figure out one standart "energy-conserving-maximal-sustained-DPS" rotation and one for maximal Burst, which you could use whenever an energy restoring CD is ready.
The optimal action would be to coodinate your efforts!

Yeah, I was only looking into regular sustained DPS. If we want burst DPS, or if we take into account Adrenaline Probe, the rotation should look different.

And I agree with Sol. We should have different rotations in different situations.

[Tibbel]

Hey folks!
It's great to finally find some people talking numbers.

My first question while reading through this thread was: Do we think alacrity will have much value at all?

Assuming alacrity does not increase our energy regeneration rate, then all alacrity will give us is more filler shots (Rifle Shot/Blaster Fire). Even then, it'd take a full 2.56% alacrity to gain just 1 more filler shot over 60 seconds.

Now I've only had the chance to mess around at low levels, but from what I could tell, our filler shot wasn't hitting for nearly enough to make alacrity sound appealing.

Am I missing something?

[woks]

If im not wrong Alicrity would also reduce the activation time of your key abilities.

[Vor]

(11-24-2011 01:59 AM)woks Wrote:  If im not wrong Alicrity would also reduce the activation time of your key abilities.

Alacrity will be pretty huge IMO. I saw a screen shot of an operative with one of their standard 2.5s cast heals listed a 1.83 in their tooltip. In fact for a Marksman it will affect Series of Shots, our class defining skill, the most since it is a 3s channel to start out.

1. Target Acquired (20% Alacrity buff for 10s)
2. Series of Shots
3. Rapid Fire Buff
4. Series of Shots
5. Series of Shots

If you have 9% alacrity from gear you can get a 33% reduction total (Target Acquired 20%, 4% lethality tree, 9% gear). That would mean a 2s channeled SoS. Effectively putting out 3 SoS in the time it took to get off 2 (non alacrity buffed). I think 3 SoS in 6 seconds would be a pretty big burst.

As someone already pointed out you can gain more free resource Rifle Shots per encounter with high alacrity.

Another way to think about it is most boss fight encounters will not allow you to be a stationary turret for long. The quicker you can get a burst off and move to another cover location, the better.

[Tibbel]

(11-24-2011 04:02 AM)Vor Wrote:  As someone already pointed out you can gain more free resource Rifle Shots per encounter with high alacrity.

Another way to think about it is most boss fight encounters will not allow you to be a stationary turret for long. The quicker you can get a burst off and move to another cover location, the better.

While there will most certainly be boss fights that involve movement, most of our hard-hitting shots require cover (and stand-still activation times), so therefore our usual goal will be to find a place where we can be stationary for as long as possible. Of course when we must move, it will be nice to have shorter activation times on our abilities, but that's often going to be difficult to predict and nearly impossible to quantify.

As for gaining more Rifle Shots with higher alacrity, that's really not the case until we can squeeze an entire extra GCD (or most of one) in every 15 seconds. We're not likely going to want to delay our Ambush or Series of Shots (whichever turns out to be higher priority) too much beyond its cooldown. If we do delay those big shots, then we're essentially gaining a Rifle Shot by trading away part of an Ambush. It might be worth it to a certain point, but just judging by the damage difference between those two shots that I've seen, Ambush is far far better than Rifle Shot.

In addition, since alacrity doesn't shorten the GCD, then there's no time gained by speeding up Snipe (nor Ambush when Reactive Shot procs, either). Series of Shots is the only long-activation-time rotation ability left (Orbital Strike is on a long cooldown and Suppressive Fire is AoE). With Series of Shots only taking up 3 seconds out of every 15, we'd need 100% alacrity before we could fit in an additional Rifle Shot. With less than 100% alacrity, the options are to delay the next big shot (possibly optimal, depending on damage values) or to simply wait that extra short time (which wastes all of the time we just saved).

Vor pointed out that fast Series of Shots during Rapid Fire sound pretty sweet. I agree about that.
(However, alacrity doesn't reduce activation time directly, but instead increases activation speed. So 33% alacrity takes a 3s cast to 2.26s.)

I'm just interested to discover if it's worth keeping all that static alacrity around for the other 83 out of every 90 seconds.

[Kaladris]

The main problem about all this math is that our limit in damage is not the activation time ( which it will be for sorcerers), but our energy, as we already pointed out before.
Even if alacrity wouldn't cap at 1.5 seconds GCD, we would still be just out of energy faster than before, gaining a higher DPS first (since we burned all energy faster than we could if we hadn't that much alacrity), but falling in a deep, deep energy hole after that, assumingly lowering our total DPS and total DMG dealt in toto significantly.

We just don't regenerate our resource like Hunters in WoW, where you try to squeeze as much resource-gaining shots in between your spenders (the SW works that way), we are played like a rogue, and, furthermore, marksman-sniper will be played as a rogue with no included passive energy-recovery mechnic besides our 2-minuteCD worth 50 energy.

Without any mechnic at the horizon that will give you a chance to regen energy faster, you will *always* be limited by your energy the *same* way you will start with at level 50, unlike e.g. an Assassination rogue, whose energy reg would sclae with his crit chance, your rotation won't change significantly, you will just be able to put more DMG out when better gear is gained.

Resumee: As far as we know now, it would probably be best for us to concentrate your itemisation focus on of course cunning, tech dmg, general dmg and crit & surge (which will have a very interesting way to synergize with each other), and accuracy, which will give other benefits once you reach 100 chance to hit.

So long,
Kala

[woks]

(11-24-2011 08:40 AM)Kaladris Wrote:  The main problem about all this math is that our limit in damage is not the activation time ( which it will be for sorcerers), but our energy, as we already pointed out before.
Even if alacrity wouldn't cap at 1.5 seconds GCD, we would still be just out of energy faster than before, gaining a higher DPS first (since we burned all energy faster than we could if we hadn't that much alacrity), but falling in a deep, deep energy hole after that, assumingly lowering our total DPS and total DMG dealt in toto significantly.

We just don't regenerate our resource like Hunters in WoW, where you try to squeeze as much resource-gaining shots in between your spenders (the SW works that way), we are played like a rogue, and, furthermore, marksman-sniper will be played as a rogue with no included passive energy-recovery mechnic besides our 2-minuteCD worth 50 energy.

Without any mechnic at the horizon that will give you a chance to regen energy faster, you will *always* be limited by your energy the *same* way you will start with at level 50, unlike e.g. an Assassination rogue, whose energy reg would sclae with his crit chance, your rotation won't change significantly, you will just be able to put more DMG out when better gear is gained.

Resumee: As far as we know now, it would probably be best for us to concentrate your itemisation focus on of course cunning, tech dmg, general dmg and crit & surge (which will have a very interesting way to synergize with each other), and accuracy, which will give other benefits once you reach 100 chance to hit.

So long,
Kala

Not trying to get our hopes up too much or anything, but it is certain that the chance of a mechanic increasing our energy regain could appear in the future. It is really difficult right now to evaluate precisely the balance between all the classes in a lvl 50 pve environment when not an enormous amount of operations boss have been tested. Pointing out that most of the other dps class have certain mechanic outside of their cd that permit them to gain ressources, it is likely that we could still be under the radar for it. Or else assume that maybe bioware judged our dps high enough to not need it.

As for not as you said we can focus on Imteization. But it would be in the game's interest to add something that will make us want to rework our rotation and stats focus once we reach a certain lvl of gear.

[LB_StorM]

Something that's irking me a bit right now is I can't decide whether to use Rapid Fire right away or wait. For instance, if the CD on RF finishes and the CD on SoS has 5 or 6 seconds, should we wait 5 or 6 seconds, or just use RF then?