Marksmanship Sniper/Sharpshooter Gunslinger Compendium

[Sogui]

I'd like to challenge the assumptions about alacrity for pure MM/SS in PvP.

I've been running combat parsers for about 20 warzones today and I've found that my AoE damage + Sabotage Charge almost always falls between 6-13% of my total damage. My personal best was one game where I was literally suiciding into the side node on Civil War to keep 7 enemies from capping. Between the grenades and massive flyby damage (one Flyby earned 33k damage), AoE + Sabotage Charge was around 22%.

Meanwhile I've found that my rotations are much less clean in PvP and that around 55-70% of all my damage is channeled. Using some averages I've concluded that the 2% alacrity per talent point will give a slight DPS edge over the 5% AoE Damage per talent point that your post suggests we use. With the new burst volley, it actually very possible to squeeze in an extra GCD or two in most skirmishes. Furthermore alacrity synergizes with the new burst volley since the best way to take advantage of the energy "surge" is to pop off as many shots as possible since it is extremely difficult to run down energy during this window. Getting the burst volley to go off with illegal mods active had me firing off a 1-second aimed shot - my burst got really crazy for a few seconds and I started having second thoughts about alacrity.

Lastly, 1.2 nerfed healing and buffed damage relative to defenses. With the new healing debuff on flourish shot, the old strategy of overwhelming healers with AoE isn't necessary anymore. It's much easier to use our burst to focus down a healer quickly and with flourish shot to ensure that any instant heals/cross-healing won't be enough to keep them up. Alacrity fits better into this strategy compared to +AOE damage.

Therefore, I would argue that +4% alacrity is a smarter choice than +10% AOE damage. Plus I'm a gunslinger, our Flyby is the most obvious AOE in the game. Even the worst players know the rule about "Don't stand in the fire" and I've noticed that while it's great for area denial - it simply doesn't put out enough damage relative to our other abilities to justify taking +10% AOE.