Engineering Sniper (Saboteur Gunslinger) Compendium

[felicity]

@Tibbel: I was proposing Prec Ambush vs Ballistic, not Prec Ambush vs Lethality.

@Leafblight: Versus the dummy, I got 1315 dps. I did Denova story mode last night as well. Interro, Plasma and Series of Shots make up the majority of my damage, Ambush is a close 4th. But too much Rifle Shotting on my part - I forgot I skilled Calculated Pursuit. And Plasma Probe doesn't seem very bueno for Kephess, if you're still looking for examples of fights where Plasma Probe isn't that great.

Anyway, I don't think combat logs are really going to put a numerical value on Ballistic Dampers for you.

[VulcanLogic]

(04-14-2012 04:58 AM)felicity Wrote:  @Tibbel: I was proposing Prec Ambush vs Ballistic, not Prec Ambush vs Lethality.

Well this would be an interesting conversation to have. I'm not convinced that ballistic dampers is required, and with the two tier 2 talents in lethality, corrosive dart hits slightly harder than interrogation probe over the same 18 second duration, at a cost of 4 more energy. The average tick hits harder, and averages an extra half tick over IP due to corrosive microbes (talented CD ticks 6 times, +25% chance for an extra, over IP's 7 ticks). It also hits almost twice as hard snipe for the same energy, and the cooldown of interrogation probe is an easy indicator that you need to recast CD (especially with multiple agents using the ability and the UI's general inability to relay which is yours).

The real tradeoff would be the loss of 3 points in marksmanship, but the rakata gear is dripping with accuracy. I'm at 101%/111% with no skill points allocated, and until you can part out your enhancements so that you'd actually need to spec into marksmanship, I can't see how snipe filler is going to be better than talented corrosive dart.

[Leafblight]

(04-14-2012 04:58 AM)felicity Wrote:  @Leafblight: Versus the dummy, I got 1315 dps. I did Denova story mode last night as well. Interro, Plasma and Series of Shots make up the majority of my damage, Ambush is a close 4th. But too much Rifle Shotting on my part - I forgot I skilled Calculated Pursuit. And Plasma Probe doesn't seem very bueno for Kephess, if you're still looking for examples of fights where Plasma Probe isn't that great.

Anyway, I don't think combat logs are really going to put a numerical value on Ballistic Dampers for you.

The links aren't working atm, so I'll check them out later. Furthermore, I would hope your dps would be higher on a dummy as you can just sit there and dps without pause; obviously, Ballistic Dampers is wasted skill points in such a situation. As soon as BW gets around to redesigning all Operation Bosses as dummies that don't attack and just sit there while I wail on them, I'll be sure to respec.

Would you expound on why PP is bad for Kephess? I just checked a few kill videos on youtube and it looks like PP excels (stationary targets up for 12s+, clusters of adds, etc.) for all but the last half of his final phase. Just eyeballing it that looks like 15% or so of the fight. Not something I really like to see, but not exactly disastrous.

And no, parses won't quantify Ballistic Dampers, but they can just how useful (or useless) Precision Ambush is.

(04-14-2012 09:33 AM)VulcanLogic Wrote:  

(04-14-2012 04:58 AM)felicity Wrote:  @Tibbel: I was proposing Prec Ambush vs Ballistic, not Prec Ambush vs Lethality.

Well this would be an interesting conversation to have. I'm not convinced that ballistic dampers is required, and with the two tier 2 talents in lethality, corrosive dart hits slightly harder than interrogation probe over the same 18 second duration, at a cost of 4 more energy. The average tick hits harder, and averages an extra half tick over IP due to corrosive microbes (talented CD ticks 6 times, +25% chance for an extra, over IP's 7 ticks). It also hits almost twice as hard snipe for the same energy, and the cooldown of interrogation probe is an easy indicator that you need to recast CD (especially with multiple agents using the ability and the UI's general inability to relay which is yours).

The real tradeoff would be the loss of 3 points in marksmanship, but the rakata gear is dripping with accuracy. I'm at 101%/111% with no skill points allocated, and until you can part out your enhancements so that you'd actually need to spec into marksmanship, I can't see how snipe filler is going to be better than talented corrosive dart.

Ballistic Dampers isn't required by any stretch, but I'm of the belief you do your raid/healers a disservice by not taking it. That aside, its becoming apparent to me that many in the Eng community don't like Ballistic Dampers (which is fine). You all will be happy to know that the 1.2 Eng guide (which I had been working on prior to that 11th hour 1.2 launch announcement and which is near completion) takes this into account and attempts to present both sides. Hopefully that'll appease you malcontents.

As for CD being better than IP: Here's the issue. You are suggesting that we spend five additional points in the Leth tree (2 more in tier 1 to gain access to tier 2 and then 3 more for Corrosive Microbes & Lethal Injectors) for an ability that does an additional ~11% dmg (quick math in Tibbel's sheet; feel free to present your own figures) for a disproportionate energy increase of 25%. Furthermore, CD is a better choice than snipe, except that CD can't activate CB nor benefit from Laze Target.

Now, you do have a valid point that Rakata comes just saturated with Accuracy, but its easy enough to trade out a few mods to balance things back out, or even trade out a few of the pieces that don't confer the set bonus. I'm a tidge over 110% myself with the Marksmanship skill, which allows me to invest a lot more of my "gear score" into power, cunning, and crit/surge.

So, to summarize, you make a good point about talented CD being quite effective, but there in lies the crux: You have to put a fair bit of your skill points into improving one skill. But, we have the ability now to show and not just tell: Could you be a doll and give us a parse on a dummy? Out of curiosity, do you put the needed 2 other points from tier 1 into Deadly Directive or Razor Edge (and why)?

[felicity]

RE: Kephess.

> (stationary targets up for 12s+, clusters of adds, etc.)

The Warrior mob in that cluster of adds causes AoE to get reflected back at you. You have to kill him with single target attacks before you can use AoE, and after you do kill the warrior, the other mobs die in 2 seconds.

> for all but the last half of his final phase

Well, you don't just make it to that phase then auto-win. After a while, he channeled a skill (Blessing of the Masters) and 1hko our tank, so we had to kite him around to kill him. We assume this is some kind of enrage.

Anyway, I've respecced to Lethality and plan to raid as Lethality. Peace, Engineers!

[VulcanLogic]

(04-14-2012 11:10 PM)Leafblight Wrote:  So, to summarize, you make a good point about talented CD being quite effective, but there in lies the crux: You have to put a fair bit of your skill points into improving one skill. But, we have the ability now to show and not just tell: Could you be a doll and give us a parse on a dummy? Out of curiosity, do you put the needed 2 other points from tier 1 into Deadly Directive or Razor Edge (and why)?

Here: Nightmare mode Foreman Crusher. Fight is 19:20-25:31.

These are not ideal conditions, obviously, but with all the movement required in the fight, the talented corrosive dart comes in very handy. Your snipes, orbital strikes, SoS, and everything else will get interrupted. Often. It's why I take deadly directive. Wasting itemization points on alacrity would be useless. Talented alacrity when there's nothing else to choose is at least neutral. Every so often, you'll get your shot off and move without taking AoE damage. I'm convinced that the lethality tree isn't worth it under ideal conditions where you never have to move, as I have trouble with getting to 1250 self buffed on the dummy. I only have 6 rakata pieces (rest columi except trinkets, which are the tionese 300 power and the matrix cube), but in this fight and several others, you have to move around quite a bit.

I didn't play it anywhere near perfectly. But as you can see from the parse, corrosive dart simply hits harder than interrogation probe, by about 10%. Talented, it does 50% more damage (20% from added duration, 25% from double ticks) than untalented. One has to be very careful about casting it, as the cooldowns of interrogation probe and plasma probe match up to the same length as talented CD duration, and you can't play it like a shadow priest chaining three dots or you'll run out of energy too often. It has to be used sparingly and at lower priority, but 9.2% of damage is pretty significant. Not sure the math on how the itemization budget would compare. Too many variables for me.

Also interesting is the 1% miss when I'm sitting 100.32% accuracy (110.32% tech), but that's a better discussion for the mechanics section. My best guess is that there may be a discrepancy between the display and actual accuracy for those who have maxed affection with SCORPIO.

[Leafblight]

Guide has been updated to full 1.2 compatibility. Hope its still helpful

[Dack]

(04-28-2012 07:09 AM)Dimes Stax Wrote:  I'm going to use Gunslinger terminology to explain my point so pardon my french since I realize for the most part you guys have been speaking in IA language till this point.

Good to see other Gunslingers here (especially dirty fighting!)

(04-28-2012 07:09 AM)Dimes Stax Wrote:  Situational Abilities:
Shock Charge - The target has to live longer than 18 seconds for you to get it's full tick value. This is horrible for boss fights that have short phases or spawn multiple mobs at a time with small amounts of HP. Furthermore it is almost useless for clearing most trash mobs with the exception of the beefier ones, even still you have to make sure you apply it immediately in order for it to be efficient.

Shock charge is amazing in most boss fights. It's amazing in all of KP (except the carbonizer droids) all of EV (except the pylons) and all of Denova. For Denova I can see the Firebrand and Stormcaller fight being a concern with this move because of the trandoshan adds which spawn, but you just need to apply your shock charge to the one you're not going to immediately burn down in order to see it's fullest effect. The Baradium Bombers in the kephess encounter will take most of the damage from that move, more so than the damage from your Shrap Bomb. Also, don't stress to much about trash; trash is trash and we don't care, they don't have enrage timers.

(04-28-2012 07:09 AM)Dimes Stax Wrote:  Incendiary Grenade - Great for AoE situations in which you don't need to CC, however most raid trash pulls need to be CCed and only a handful are actually AoEd unless your guild is already all geared out and you just overpower the Op. Furthermore, in cases where you actually can use AoE, mobs generally have low amounts of HP and die rather quickly to a raid force, and you typically have to use several different AoE's in succession to take out a series of group mobs in different locations. The raid isnt likely to fight 2 different AoE group pulls in the same spot, so the long cooldown of Incendiary Grenade and the fact that it's stationary makes it inefficient to use consistently and effectively in all types of AoE situations. Let alone situations where bosses or mobs are frequently moving which is actually quite a few bosses. Some bosses make this talent completely worthless to use and others can make it so you have to pay extremely careful attention to how and when you use it to maximize it's effectiveness.

Once again, don't sweat the trash, focus on what will kill bosses the fastest. The incinerary grenade CD is only 15 seconds, same as speed shot and aimed shot, both of which are key components to the Sharpshooter and Dirty Fighting rotations. I'm going to focus on Denova here since it's the most recent Operation, but this applies to other bosses as well: Toth and Zorn shouldn't be moving much (only during Toth's jump, and that's only Toth who moves for a short period of time), Firebrand and Stormcaller don't move, Vorgath doesn't move, and the probe shouldn't be moving once it's in position, and Kephess does move, but should be positioned very quickly into one static place for his two phases, the walker is in one place, the trandoshan adds, as well as the pulsar droids, are going to be in one place, and the Baradium Bomber doesn't move much either. Most of these boss fights do not have the target moving much as part of their mechanics.

(04-28-2012 07:09 AM)Dimes Stax Wrote:  Orbital Strike - While not directly included as a talent in a full Engineering build, you all seem to agree that it is a critical ability in your damage rotation since AoE's are buffed to extremes in this build. This ability is much like Incendiary Grenade in how it functions except I have to add that it's even more situational since it takes so long to wind up and has an even longer cooldown.

This should already be a part of your rotation as a Dirty Fighting Gunslinger. (And Orbital Strike is the dirty Imperial terminology :) This move has a larger DPCT than Speed Shot and is on the same cast time/channel time respectively. The amount of time you have to cast it is not a problem.

(04-28-2012 07:09 AM)Dimes Stax Wrote:  Contingency Charges – A low damage attack the is applied when you hit the target with blaster fire over a t least a minimum of 4.5 seconds. Again this assumes that the target is alive long enough, doesn’t change phases, and that you hit it with blaster fire before the charges expire.

The boss will live long enough, 4.5 seconds isn't close to a phase change on T&Z, Fire&Storm, nor Kephess; the phase changes are well defined and you'll have enough time before they happen to adjust. Also, if you use Speed Shot right after you use Sabotage Charge that should be enough to drop most of them if not all with 1.3's buff.

(04-28-2012 07:09 AM)Dimes Stax Wrote:  Aside from situation offensive abilities, the Saboteur tree is full of defensive/situational abilities that are of little help to a raider suchas: Coolhead healing you for 6% of your max health over 3 seconds, instant use of charged blast after pulse detonator is activated (almost completely useless in PvE & PvP) and 30% snare applied to Shock Charge (almost useless in PvE). While the improved defensive screen, increased endurance, and increased cover absorption aren’t completely useless in PvE, they also aren’t extremely necessary abilities for PVErs to have. As a traditional Ranged DPS class, you should always be looking for talents to maximize your dps and only take the minimum defensive talents necessary to keep yourself alive and pumping out damage. I’m sure having one or two of these talents may come in handy from time to time, but you would more likely benefit from increasing your offensive abilities more.

Don't need to spec the Cool Head skill, the instant charged burst, nor the 30% slow on Shock Charge. Improved Defense Screen is useful in Toth and Zorn: Toth's berzerk(having rocks thrown at you and if you get the yellow circle), Fire and Storm: Double Destruction DoTs, Vorgath: the bombs Vorgath puts on you, and Kephess: when you get the Baradium Bomb and have to walk under the walker. These are all things that don't necessarily help your DPS but help the raid by putting less stress on the healers, possibly saving someone from dying, which might result in a wipe. Your damage doesn't mean anything if you're dead Defensive screen works the same way (Extremely helpful on T&Z and Kephess).

(04-28-2012 07:09 AM)Dimes Stax Wrote:  As far as energy regeneration goes; the Sharpshooter and Lethality specced Gunslingers regain most of their energy through passive abilities while they DPS, while on the other hand Saboteurs are required to use global cooldowns to activate Sabotage and Coolhead every minute and keep them on a steady timer to help manage their energy. The energy regained from Contingency Charges is at a maximum of 15 energy over 4.5 seconds and requires you to continually hit your target with blaster fire. You must also take into consideration that Sabotage Charge requires 16 energy to use (assuming specced to reduce energy cost of it), so in the end the energy regained from it is merely canceling out the energy used to apply it in the first place. The passive form of energy management that Saboteur has over the other two specs is that it reduces the cost of most of your most energy intensive abilities to help make them more manageable, however the energy efficiency of this is offset by the fact that all of these abilities have long cooldowns so you’re forced to use more standard abilities that you are not specced into more frequently in between cooldowns.

The cooldown on Cool Head is 2 minutes, and the cooldown on Sabotage is 1 minute. So you would probably pop Cool Head asap (right after your first rotation with XS Freighter Flyby) then burst and throw away a lot of energy then use sabotage and pop cool head again to go back into that last bracket. From there you've got one more minute until you can use Cool Head. Just keep using it as soon as possible. You should be able to use Cool Head 8 times throughout a fight that lasts over 6 minutes. That's a very large amount of energy regenerated, but I don't have the empirical data on how it measures up to the other specs. (that's going to be my next project) Being forced to use these moves isn't anything that should be new.
As Tibbel can be quoted: "Sniper damage is limited by our energy. To maximize our damage over any period of time, we have two objectives:

A. Use as much energy as we can.
This means our energy should start at full, finish at empty, and regenerate as much as possible in between. Over long fights, starting and ending energy levels make a much smaller difference than total energy regenerated...
B. Convert energy into damage at the highest possible rate..."

You should already be using Cool Head as much as possible in order to maximize your damage. As a Dirty Fighting Gunslinger that extra energy could mean getting out of a lower bracket because you've been slowing leaking energy with your rotation/just used a XS Freighter Flyby or it could mean an extra sabotage charge (instant DPS Boost).

(04-28-2012 07:09 AM)Dimes Stax Wrote:  Judging by the amount of situational abilities and plethora of defensive utility I would say that this spec should be better for PvP than for PvE, and that both Sharpshooter and Lethality would be far more consistent and less situational DPS than Saboteur spec. However, I am still very puzzled at the awkward defensive abilities the Devs gave to this spec and question how useful they actually are in perfoming the role as a ranged AoE spec. I’m also puzzled as to why Shock Charge is single target in an AoE Spec (Saboteur) and yet Shrap Bomb is AoE damage in DoT spec (Lethality), because it almost seems as if they should be reversed. In all I feel the entire Saboteur spec should be reworked and they could even add another filler ability that we could spec into in between the long cooldowns of our AOE abilities, or at least allow us to increase the damage of our most standard attacks like Charged Burst or Aimed Shot through talents in Saboteur spec.

I am currently a Dirty Fighting Gunslinger and I find that it is one of the best specs for both PvE and PvP in the amount of damage that it puts out as well as the survivability and resourcefulness it provides. Right now I just don’t see Saboteur as a viable spec that is anywhere close to putting up an argument for speccing into over Sharpshooter or Lethality for PvE or PvP.

Make sure when you're posting here that you're staying as objective as possible. You've told us the reasons that you don't think Saboteur is fit for PvE nor PvP, which is what we want: data and claims that can be tested and either proved or disproved. The problem here is that your post is littered with "I just don’t see Saboteur as a viable spec that is anywhere close to putting up an argument for speccing into" and "Why would you guys want to raid as a Engineering/Saboteur spec Sniper/Gunslinger?" statements. Try to eliminate anything that is purely from your perspective as well as anything that could come off as insulting to our other theory crafters.

[Tibbel]

(07-13-2012 05:47 PM)Dack Wrote:  

(04-28-2012 07:09 AM)Dimes Stax Wrote:  Contingency Charges – A low damage attack the is applied when you hit the target with blaster fire over a t least a minimum of 4.5 seconds. Again this assumes that the target is alive long enough, doesn’t change phases, and that you hit it with blaster fire before the charges expire.

The boss will live long enough, 4.5 seconds isn't close to a phase change on T&Z, Fire&Storm, nor Kephess; the phase changes are well defined and you'll have enough time before they happen to adjust. Also, if you use Speed Shot right after you use Sabotage Charge that should be enough to drop most of them if not all with 1.3's buff.

Not quite all. Series of Shots hits only 4 times, and Explosive Probe + 4 Cluster Bombs would take 5 hits to detonate them all. However, even if you're the only blaster wielder in the group and you can't find the time or energy to fit in an Ambush or LT Snipe, you will at least use another Series of Shots within CB's new 20s duration.

(Have fun translating from the perfectly pristine Imperial terminology. )

[Toleezu]

Can I get someone to take a second look at Calculated Pursuit post 1.3?
I think the 20 second cool down is broken, making it a better Rifle Shot, but I need independent verification.
I am running a survival based build to my particular playstyle: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/skills/Snipe...6e86e2l2-2
If this is not working as intended, as I suspect, then It's giving me the ability to not lean on energy tanks as much and an additional option for popping Explosive Charges post 1.3 (4 charges and 4 shots of Overload per 6 second window) when Series of Shots is on cooldown.

[Dack]

A post in the Lethality/Dirtyfighting thread has been made which outlines a rotation for the 2/16/23 Engineering/Lethality hybrid build. Here's the link: http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/th...ge-18.html