The "Rate my Spec"-Thread!

[Leafblight]

Alright, I know I'm rare but I was wondering if there were any other Eng Snipers out there who could share their builds? I'm currently running

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#400bcMZrIMbRobRrsZh.1

Obviously, this is PvE. I've been thinking of dropping 2 points out of Marksmanship (due to the overweening amount of accuracy that seems to be on all our gear) and put them into Cover Screen. Not really the best talent but its better than "wasting" the points I am now. Also, how do you all (I suppose, snipers of any kind) deal with all the accuracy? I'm sitting at like nearly 114% to hit right now which is far and above the useful line.

[julez]

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#701MffbzGoRdsZ0cZGb.1

This is the spec I am using currently for pvp. I see a lot of variations of specs like this one, but this has worked best for me and I will explain why. Everything here came from tons of respects. I came up with this on my own through leveling as a healer and getting a feel for what worked best.

First tier is pretty self explanatory and don't really see anything worth mentioning. I do like anatomy lessons and used it for a long time. Until i decided to go back into patient studies.

Tier 2:
Keep Cool: Great talent to sustain healing in long battle situations. A must have, but if you feel like you don't need extra energy at times. I have found 1 point can suffice as well. With this current spec Though, not much gain for 1 point.

Healing Hand and smuggled technology are must haves if your going to pvp. You could argue that you can get buy without 3 points into healing hand, but an extra 6% healing can be huge, especially when you are trying to get the most bang for you buck.

T3:
SRMP: Obviously this is a must have. Ability to move and heal in PVP is huge for any class and this does exactly that.

Prognosis: Terrible by itself. Who cares about crit healing dudes for 300+. Amazing with of course patient studies.

t4:
Patient studies: This was one of those talents i did leveling and the got rid of for a very long time when I hit 45 and through champion gear status PVP. I come from a vanilla WoW mindset where you learn to manage your resources. So energy isn't always a problem for me. I maintain it very well and didn't feel like I wanted it. As my gear got better and I was surviving assaults on the healer more, I wanted a way to get energy back. So i changed up few things in my spec. Getting rid of Anatomy lessons was first to go. Then i took 1 point out of keep cool and scar tissue. After playing for a bit i realized i don't even notice the reduction in scar tissue and put point back into keep cool.

Here is a trick I do with this talent. I use the Power trinket and Crit trinket. When you are in long battles first thing I use is keep cool when energy is getting low. When that is on cd I pop my crit trinket and diagnostic scan. It doesn't take long to fill that energy bar. When things aren't intense I do my best to scan to fill up energy bar in the downtime. Lastly one thing I love to do is disappearing act into Recuperate. If you are playing the class correctly you should always have 1of these options available to you to refill that energy bar

No Scramble!!! I get why ppl use this, but 3seconds of faster moving speed, isn't worth it to me. There are far better uses for these 2 points for which I am about to get too.

t5:
The money Tier. Everything in this tree is a win in my opinion. EMP great instant heal. Provides amazing burst with UWM. Homegrown just makes those dots stronger.

Emergent Emergency: Obvious thing here is that it buffs EMP. The not so obvious is the granting UH to targets below 30%. This is a great survival tool for healing targets and for yourself. Provides a great combo I will mention in a bit.

Psych Meds: Triage also removes mental effects. Thing everyone seems to miss is that it heals you as well. With Pugnacity up I can crit myself for 1500ish. Is that it hits TWICE. So basically i have an instant heal for 10 energy that can do about 3k healing. Which can be more than I get out of EMP. But i gets better with the next tear in survival situations.

t6
Improved Defense screen: Most peoples specs that go 31 points leave out this talent. For life of me i cannot figure out why. For 15 seconds healing take is improved by 15%. That means your HOTs are hitting for more. Your EMP hits for more. Your triage heals for more. Friendly heals heal for more. From my testing it out preforms 2 points into scramble by a LONG SHOT. Every 45seconds you can have this up. That is HUGE. One of the main reasons all the sages that I play with that are healers hate me is because I survive far better than they do. This is one of my biggest secrets.

Accomplish Sawbones: Must have if your going 31pnts for obvious reasons.

t7
Kolto cloud: I hear people complain about how slow this is. Well that may be true, but if you are focused on keeping one person up who is taking a lot of dmg. This with srmp is a great tool if for nothing else. Again stacking this with defense screen makes you hard target to kill.

Defense screen allows me to grab huttball run down to the pit drag everyone on me tank it for a bit before i pass up to someone and they get easy score.

Everything else is pretty standard in the other trees. I love dirty kick. Being able to get distance between you and attacker is best advantage you can have.

[felicity]

(03-04-2012 02:06 PM)Leafblight Wrote:  Alright, I know I'm rare but I was wondering if there were any other Eng Snipers out there who could share their builds? I'm currently running

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#400bcMZrIMbRobRrsZh.1

Obviously, this is PvE. I've been thinking of dropping 2 points out of Marksmanship (due to the overweening amount of accuracy that seems to be on all our gear) and put them into Cover Screen. Not really the best talent but its better than "wasting" the points I am now. Also, how do you all (I suppose, snipers of any kind) deal with all the accuracy? I'm sitting at like nearly 114% to hit right now which is far and above the useful line.

I use this for PvE and have my gear re-socketed for less accuracy. Nothing wrong with some rank 56 crit/surge or power/surge enhancements. There's minimal difference between 56 and 58 enhancements anyway. The most appealing thing is that I am getting ~150 points of a stat for 3 talent points, when the available alternatives aren't exactly much better, and I can't get something like, say, 150 power from a talent.

For my talent tree, I picked Vitality Serum over Vital Regulators since the time when you use Adrenaline Probe during raids isn't necessarily a time when you also want to be restoring HP. I definitely prefer Vital Regulators in PvP though. I also picked Precision Ambush over Ballistic Dampers since I'm more concerned about my damage in raids. As for Cover Screen and defensive talents in general, I'm perfectly capable of off-tanking NiM Jarg when the Carbonize Probe comes down, and eating NiM Soa lightning balls without fuss. Popping Evasion seems to help for those more than Ballistic Dampers anyway imo. HTH.

Edit: DERP didn't realize your post was 20 days old.

[meep]

(03-27-2012 12:02 PM)julez Wrote:  http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#701MffbzGoRdsZ0cZGb.1
...
No Scramble!!! I get why ppl use this, but 3seconds of faster moving speed, isn't worth it to me. There are far better uses for these 2 points for which I am about to get too.
...
Improved Defense screen: Most peoples specs that go 31 points leave out this talent. For life of me i cannot figure out why. For 15 seconds healing take is improved by 15%. That means your HOTs are hitting for more. Your EMP hits for more. Your triage heals for more. Friendly heals heal for more. From my testing it out preforms 2 points into scramble by a LONG SHOT. Every 45seconds you can have this up. That is HUGE. One of the main reasons all the sages that I play with that are healers hate me is because I survive far better than they do.
...
Everything else is pretty standard in the other trees. I love dirty kick. Being able to get distance between you and attacker is best advantage you can have.

I think that the reasoning behind taking Scramble over Improved Defense Screen falls mostly on the nature of the skill. The wording on my Operative states that the effect is applied "while Shield Probe is active", implying that the extra healing effect is removed when the shield breaks. I think many players would rather have a reliable mini-sprint. Are you sure that you get a full 15 seconds of extra healing? I'm trying it out myself after reading your post and there's no extra buff so I'm still convinced that the effect drops off with broken Shield Probe. That's not to say it isn't a good skill though, I think it is and actually just defaulted those points to Scramble without testing. In retrospect, that was probably a suboptimal choice.

Improved Defense Screen/Shield Probe probably works best combined with passive movement speed, and Scramble with Slip Away (don't know the Smuggler name off-hand). Correct me if I'm wrong, but to my knowledge movement speed buffs do not stack additively in SWTOR. That means that passive run speed makes mini-sprint procs much less valuable, so the optimal way to spec would be to either pick between on-use and passive movement speed and go all the way with it. Also, just as a general argument for Concealment over Lethality sub-spec, 15% run speed all the time is better than 20% for 4 seconds every 30. The CD reduction is very nice, as it lines up well with Flashbang, but (back when I had it) I found that I was often just using it because it was available, rather than timing it properly with respect to resolve. I don't think you're playing the class efficiently if you're using the stun as a defensive tool of first resort.

Comparing your survivability to a Sorc is kind of a moot point, IMO; we have more of it and they should be jealous of it by design.

[vaargen]

Well, this is my Gunslinger and I mostly PvE with her and basically want tips on how to improve the DPS. I will upgrade her items when campaign drops from EC HM/NP and the main thing I am looking after is to change the waist/arms when ever I get hold of any good armoring. But should I try to shift things around right now with 58/25 rated gear(there are some 61/26 on GTN but not all that I want ie Advanced Skill Armoring 26/Advanced Artful Mod 26)