Marksmanship Sniper/Sharpshooter Gunslinger Compendium

[Deshane]

Hi guys,

Relatively new Sniper in nearly full 72s but not really overly optomized, main is a tank. Been working on my rotation as the full 69 Marauder managed to spank me fairly heavily today.

My rotation is below, it's rather long and I'd like some advice on squeezing out as much damage as I can, especially on stationary mobs:

Start with orbital
crouch
SoS > FT
Sniper Volley
SoS > FT
Explosive Probe
Instant Snipe > Stand > Duck
Instant Snipe > FT
Ambush > FT

Then lag permitting / speed permitting SoS will have 1 - 2 seconds of cooldown left, so throw in a corrosive dart

Without Sniper Volley up the rotation changes to

crouch
SoS > FT
Explosive Probe
Instant Snipe > Stand > Duck
Instant Snipe > FT
Ambush > FT

Then repeat, the added alacrity in Sniper Volley seems to be the decider when adding in a corrosive dart at the end.

Managed to squeeze out - 2341 DPS but have managed 2500> DPS on the dummy, that attempt had a few bits of lag (ambush twice popped GCD without firing), and had a fair whack of resists (need 3% more accuracy).

This was with a Juggernaut adding sunder and nano-infused skill stim, aka raid scenario.

Any advice on the rotation would be great.

Cheers,

Deshane

http://www.torparse.com/a/235561

[jmdatcs]

A couple things about your use of explosive probe.

Explosive probe is, at best, a filler ability. Never use it , or anything else, but Orbital, SoS, or Ambush when one is available, with the exception of snipex2>FT, if you haven't procced the cast of ambush to 1.5 sec.

Even as a filler ability, I think you will find the use of 25 energy isn't worth the damage. If you use explosive probe as filler you will find yourself using a lot of rifle shots when your energy gets low. For a pure MM, the dmg/energy for explosive probe is terrible.

When you find yourself needing a filler ability, use corrosive dart. It won't hurt your energy management and it does 5 tics to help your relics proc more often.

Remove EP, add CD to the end, when sniper volley gives you extra time, use that time to refresh shatter shot when applicable, or use another snipe. When your rotation, and energy management get messed up for any reason during a fight use target acquired (if you have the set bonus) to get back on top. Doing this properly, you should never need a rifle shot for energy management and you'll forget you even have adrenaline probe. (Don't substitute snipex2>FT for corrosive dart>snipe when sniper volley gives you the extra time. The extra 1.5 sec wasted after SoS and ambush are off CD and losing the 5 tics of corrosive dart are not worth the extra FT proc.)

You mentioned fighting a mara, in PvP against melee cover pulse, leg shot, covered escape, and flashbang>run away are important.

I also have a question. I keep seeing people mention all this standing and ducking to proc insta-snipe, why? In extended dps against a boss, what does this do for you? You shouldn't be getting any pushback in a boss fight so what is the difference in waiting 1.5 sec for a cast then immediately doing another ability because the GCD is done at the same time and sniping instantly then waiting 1.5 sec for the GCD? Either way is one ability in 1.5 sec then on to the next. My combat logs show no difference between the time I activate an insta-snipe and FT and the time I activate a normal snipe and FT. It seems to me all you do is prevent yourself from using entrench fully (bosses with a knockback and all that trash with knockbacks in S&V would be a pain in the ass, not to mention a significant dps loss, without entrench), lose all the benifits of cover for a split sec, lose the reduced cast time for ambush sooner (because you start the timer sooner), and don't gain anything except cover screen and a new set of ballistic dampeners, which do nothing for dps. I can see squeezing in a quick reposition after a FT to get the def bonuses and help out the healers when entrench isn't up (and I do), but making a point of it for insta-snipe doesn't seem efficient or helpful to dps in any way. I always just looked at insta-snipe as a nice bonus to one-shot a second weak mob (after ambush one-shots the first) at the start of a fight while doing dailies. Am I missing something?

[Roovin]

Jmdatcs, I am going to have to disagree with you that CD > EE; however, it depends on what build you use with MM and in the situation. I currently run a 36/9/1 with 3/3 in Explosive Engineering.

While it is undeniable that CD does more damage per energy if you spec into 3/3 EE I have found that EP does slightly more damage overall. Why is this important? Well I have also found that I always have 1 free GCD to use after the first Ambush > FT cycle immediately following a Sniper Volley cycle. In case that didn't make sense what I am talking about:

SoS > FT > SV > SoS > FT > Snipe > Snipe > FT > Ambush > FT > X

and X is where I use EP since I am close to 100% energy at this time. This allows me to cast SoS and continue on with my rotation without waiting at all.

Here are a couple of my parses doing this

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...3Tnc#gid=0


Edit: Just realized you recommend using Shatter Shot where I use EP. I normally refresh SS either right before or right after an OS.

Also, in reference to your question about the Snap Shot buff and its usefulness, of course it's useful. It cuts out 1.5 seconds (1 full GCD) of casting time.
Snap Shot Snipe + Normal Snipe = 4.5 seconds total before you can use the next ability (insta snipe + 1.5 GCD + 1.5 Snipe + 1.5 GCD) versus
Normal Snipe + Normal Snipe = 6 seconds total before you can use the next ability (1.5 Snipe + 1.5 GCD + 1.5 Snipe + 1.5 GCD)

Every cycle that you don't take advantage of Snap Shot you are losing a free GCD. Here's an excerpt from my guilds website

http://suckafish.enjin.com/forum/page/1/...ionsbuilds
I hope posting a link to my guilds site isn't against any rules but if it is I can take it down no problem, I am Northkorea btw on the site.

"One last thing that I found myself not taking advantage of that I believe a lot of other MM snipers forget is Snap Shot. Snap Shot allows you to cast Snipe without any channeling time and it refreshes for the first snipe in the rotations line above. Your first Snipe after a SoS should always be using the Snap Shot buff. It is a very tiring thing to do but it is worth it once you start to get the hang of it"

Once you get good with it you can uncrouch then re-crouch before the GCD from casting Followthrough refreshes.

[jmdatcs]

Roovin,

If you don't get too low on energy using EP, and you don't think the 5 tics helping you proc make up for the extra damage, by all means, use it. Especially in the rotation immediately following SV, but I don't see how it doesn't have a negative effect on energy management during a non-SV rotation unless you have an unusual amount of downtime. It you do have some downtime EP can be useful in preventing you from sitting at 100% energy, that's the only time I even consider throwing it in, and I will only do so if lots of movement has screwed up my rotation to the point I don't need to refresh corrosive dart. I other words, very rarely, not even worth mentioning. Although secondary to the very poor dmg/energy ratio, those 5 tics are a big deal for procing your relic. A 30% to proc means 98% of the time it takes ~3.1 tries to hit (the other 2% it takes more than 12.) Outside of SoS and orbital, we only get one hit every 1.5 sec. On a non-SV rotation, we get 11 hits in 12.6 sec with EP. With corrosive dart you get 15.2 hits, a 38% increase (average over time if it is up continuously.) On a SV rotation we get 15 with EP and 20.4 with corrosive dart, a 36% increase (again, average.) If you are averaging more than a third more hits, you are lowering your proc time by more than a quarter, on average. For one PvE serendipitous assault relic this has the effect of increasing your average power over the course of the fight by ~20. If your stacking 2 PvP relics and specing one point into heal it's ~60 (while the ~20 is accurate the ~60 is an guess based on stacking two buffs that are up more often because, although heal and dmg don't stack on the same relic, they do refresh each other, I don't use that so I haven't done the numbers). Choosing to ignore that in favor of a filler ability with a little more damage that has one of the worst dmg/energy ratios a MM has is a very poor choice.

Edit: I just realized that post you linked is you. You have a rifle shot in your rotation. That is all anyone should need to know EP is detrimental to your energy management. With my rotation, I might as well take it off my ability bar. It is never used. For me, energy management means keeping myself from sitting on 100%, not going below 70%. If a small damage increase for your filler ability is causing you to use rifle shot instead of using real abilities, it is a bad choice.

As for shattershot, I did say where applicable, not every time, of course. Like you, I generally use it with orbital since both are part of my opener so orbital off CD is a good reminder to refresh.

On snapshot, your reasoning is 100% wrong.

Snapshot does not ignore the GCD.

I don't know where this idea came from, but people need to stop propagating it. It's just plain wrong and detrimental to your energy management, because you realize your energy cost for snapshot immediately instead of 1.5 sec later after you have regained 9 energy increasing your chances of falling into the next tier for too long. Just watch the GCD refresh after using it, it takes no effort to verify it, you don't even need combat logs to do it, but those provide even more verification. With snapshot you get an instant ability then you wait till the 1.5 sec GCD is over (like FT). Without it you wait 1.5 sec, fire, then immediately go into your next ability (like a reduced activation ambush.)

Both take 1.5 sec from the end of the last ability/GCD to the start of your next ability.

Check your combat logs, they go into 1000th of a sec. any difference between the two is able to be credited to reaction time/lag. Just do a snapshot>FT and a reg snipe>FT. Look at the lines where it shows snipe started and followthrough started. The time between is the same.

The only reason I ask about snapshot is I thought maybe I was missing something beneficial that proced from it. If the only reason is to do it at the beginning of the 1.5 sec instead of the end, there is no reason to use it in group fights where you won't experience pushback. (except for the def buffs mentioned above, and those are secondary to maintaining dps and taking advantage of entrench in fights like dash where it is useful)

Please take 10 sec to check this out instead of believing your guildmate and making a knee-jerk response to this post that only propagates this misinformation.

Edit: I would add this is a PvE argument only. Snapshot is very useful in PvP. Split-second crouch with snapshot and a FT on the move is a necessary muscle memory to have to PvP at your best.

[Roovin]

(05-19-2013 07:04 AM)jmdatcs Wrote:  Roovin,

If you don't get too low on energy using EP, and you don't think the 5 tics helping you proc make up for the extra damage, by all means, use it. Especially in the rotation immediately following SV, but I don't see how it doesn't have a negative effect on energy management during a non-SV rotation unless you have an unusual amount of downtime. It you do have some downtime EP can be useful in preventing you from sitting at 100% energy, that's the only time I even consider throwing it in, and I will only do so if lots of movement has screwed up my rotation to the point I don't need to refresh corrosive dart. I other words, very rarely, not even worth mentioning. Although secondary to the very poor dmg/energy ratio, those 5 tics are a big deal for procing your relic. A 30% to proc means 98% of the time it takes ~3.1 tries to hit (the other 2% it takes more than 12.) Outside of SoS and orbital, we only get one hit every 1.5 sec. On a non-SV rotation, we get 11 hits in 12.6 sec with EP. With corrosive dart you get 15.2 hits, a 38% increase (average over time if it is up continuously.) On a SV rotation we get 15 with EP and 20.4 with corrosive dart, a 36% increase (again, average.) If you are averaging more than a third more hits, you are lowering your proc time by more than a quarter, on average. For one PvE serendipitous assault relic this has the effect of increasing your average power over the course of the fight by ~20. If your stacking 2 PvP relics and specing one point into heal it's ~60 (while the ~20 is accurate the ~60 is an guess based on stacking two buffs that are up more often because, although heal and dmg don't stack on the same relic, they do refresh each other, I don't use that so I haven't done the numbers). Choosing to ignore that in favor of a filler ability with a little more damage that has one of the worst dmg/energy ratios a MM has is a very poor choice.

Edit: I just realized that post you linked is you. You have a rifle shot in your rotation. That is all anyone should need to know EP is detrimental to your energy management. With my rotation, I might as well take it off my ability bar. It is never used. For me, energy management means keeping myself from sitting on 100%, not going below 70%. If a small damage increase for your filler ability is causing you to use rifle shot instead of using real abilities, it is a bad choice.

As for shattershot, I did say where applicable, not every time, of course. Like you, I generally use it with orbital since both are part of my opener so orbital off CD is a good reminder to refresh.

On snapshot, your reasoning is 100% wrong.

Snapshot does not ignore the GCD.

I don't know where this idea came from, but people need to stop propagating it. It's just plain wrong and detrimental to your energy management, because you realize your energy cost for snapshot immediately instead of 1.5 sec later after you have regained 9 energy increasing your chances of falling into the next tier for too long. Just watch the GCD refresh after using it, it takes no effort to verify it, you don't even need combat logs to do it, but those provide even more verification. With snapshot you get an instant ability then you wait till the 1.5 sec GCD is over (like FT). Without it you wait 1.5 sec, fire, then immediately go into your next ability (like a reduced activation ambush.)

Both take 1.5 sec from the end of the last ability/GCD to the start of your next ability.

Check your combat logs, they go into 1000th of a sec. any difference between the two is able to be credited to reaction time/lag. Just do a snapshot>FT and a reg snipe>FT. Look at the lines where it shows snipe started and followthrough started. The time between is the same.

The only reason I ask about snapshot is I thought maybe I was missing something beneficial that proced from it. If the only reason is to do it at the beginning of the 1.5 sec instead of the end, there is no reason to use it in group fights where you won't experience pushback. (except for the def buffs mentioned above, and those are secondary to maintaining dps and taking advantage of entrench in fights like dash where it is useful)

Please take 10 sec to check this out instead of believing your guildmate and making a knee-jerk response to this post that only propagates this misinformation.

Edit: I would add this is a PvE argument only. Snapshot is very useful in PvP. Split-second crouch with snapshot and a FT on the move is a necessary muscle memory to have to PvP at your best.

Jeez, no need to sound to critical about certain things. I write almost everything about my findings at 3 in the morning and I frequently make mistakes and find myself going back to correct things midday the next day.

Regarding the Snap Shot, you seem to be right on this account. I know I'm missing something really logical right now but I just don't see how making a 1.5 second cast into an instant cast is a bad thing, regardless this is essentially a meaningless issue.

As for the EP. You are assuming I am Rifle Shotting to recover energy because of EP, I am not. Right as OS ends its cast I am at or very close to 100% energy. Rifle Shotting comes in handy here when AP is not up so you can cast Shatter Shot (I've been trying to parse if applying CD would benefit here since when I raid we always have a merc). I do understand your point about energy regen and the instant snipe issue and I am trying to parse right now but it keeps bugging whenever I cast orbital so I can't get any results ATM.

Finally, I wouldn't be so quick so throw out an idea just because it may go against common sense. I've shown you evidence based on my rotations and based on some cursory tests my highest DPS parses have involved the highest rates of Rifle Shot's. In fact, the highest MM parse in the world atm (5 minutes) belongs to me and I was Rifle Shotting every 24.673 seconds.

I don't want to come across as abrasive though (and I apologize if I have), we are brothers as MM Snipers. I want this spec to consistently beat all others and this is really my first time stepping into the whole theory crafting world.

Off topic, have you ever found a solution to the OP's dummy evading? It gets very annoying

[jmdatcs]

Roovin,

Sorry if my tone got a little over the top, it wasn't intended.

Here is the thing about snapshot. It's 1.5 sec either way, the only differences are mobility and the point at which your energy cost is realized.

Take this scenario: Your energy just increased, you are at 84 energy and you have done FT recently (of course) so muzzle fluting is active. With snapshot you get charged 15 energy immediately taking you to 69, 1 sec later you go to 74, .5 sec later you fire FT taking you to 69, .5 sec later you go to 74, 1 sec later you go to 80 and are ready to fire your next ability. With a normal snipe you activate, 1 sec later you are at 90, .5 sec later snipe fires and you go to 75, you immediately fire FT and you are at 70, .5 sec later you go to 76, 1 sec later you go to 82 and are ready to fire your next ability. The difference is only two energy, but they stack up over time with the result being that you spend longer and longer periods in lower tiers and possibly having to take a GCD to regain energy with no increase to dps to offset that.

That leaves mobility and def buffs as the only benefits, which makes this mostly a PvP ability. Which isn't to say it's never useful in PvE (snapshot and FT on the run will accumulate a lot of dps on dash'roode, for example), it's just not beneficial to dps when you are able to turret.

First, I apologize for not providing actual numbers for the next parts. I'm at work right now so I don't have access to the actual tooltips I would need, and I didn't keep my numbers after dismissing EP before. I considered using EP but it didn't even pass a general feasibility thought experiment before I even got to a practical use comparison.

This is the reason I dismissed EP: First there are the energy problems. At 25 energy it is unlikely that you will often get to use EP without dropping a tier in energy regeneration and, being an instant ability, if it follows a casted ability (which make up a large part of our rotation), it will drop you a tier every time. That makes the actual cost in energy more than 25. But let's set that aside for a minute and consider what you can do with 75 energy. You can use EP 3 times. You can also use snipe 5 times (I know I advocate using corrosive dart in its place, but this is just a thought experiment to determine feasibility and using round numbers makes it easier, to start, snipe vs. corrosive dart comes later.) Using EP this leaves you with two GCDs that you can fill with rifle shot without any additional energy cost. An additional benefit to using EP along with 3 in explosive engineering is an additional 5% dmg to orbital (I assume you wouldn't spec this way just for orbital.) An additional cost associated it the loss of 1% crit from lethality. To determine the actual cost from lethality to dps you need to take a few parses, remove the effect of crit to get a dps with no crits, take 1% of that and multiply that by your surge (Don't forget to take Imperial Assassin into account in your surge calculation).

Now you have the following, where x is the number of times you use EP in a fight divided by 3 for a given parse (for orbital damage, several parses averaged would be better of course, but in leiu of that, using the tooltip average*crit%*surge would help smooth it out) with a known duration and dmg numbers for EP, rifleshot, and snipe taken from the tooltip (tooltip with 3/3 explosive engineering for EP) to easily estimate dmg without crit without worrying about parses that might be too high or low:

x*(EPdmg*3+rifleshotdmg*2) + totalorbitaldmg*5/115 vs. x*(snipedmg*5) + (total dmg without crit)*.01*(surge+imperial assassin)

Just doing that was enough for me to dismiss EP without even taking energy headaches into account.

After that, substituting corrosive dart for snipe was a matter of comparing the lower dmg + increased energy cost of corrosive dart vs. 5 tics reducing relic proc time by ~25%. Corrosive dart came out on top.

Because you said you're 9 in engineering, I assume you're speced into vital regulators to stack PvP serendipitous assault relics. You may want to reconsider this.

Again, sorry about the lack of solid numbers (for dps estimates, I have the numbers for the relics off askmrrobot), I'm working off memory.

First, what are you losing by taking a point away from lethality? You have your number of dps loss from the above thought experiment, now it would be helpful to translate that into power.

If I remember correctly, I came up with a low estimate of a loss of 20 dps (I use a low estimate in my thought experiment to bolster my case that losing this (along with other negatives) is worse than what you gain.) In a previous post I used a low estimate of the dps result for 1 point of power (it was a low estimate (~.4) to bolster my case that even a low estimate for power beats even a high estimate for crit) for this I want to use a high estimate for power to reduce the "power equlivant cost" to further bolster my case that the PvP relics aren't worth it, I think I used .5 dps per point of power when I did it before. This turns a ~20 dps loss into a low estimate of 40 power loss equivalent.

Additional negatives to the Conqueror instead of the Underworld serendipitous assault relic are 12 less power and 115 less for 6 sec when it procs.

An additional negative to using the partisan relic of serendipitous assault instead of the underworld boundless ages is 14 less power.

Using the worst case scenario (for my argument) of a fight that lasts for a multiple of two minutes that keeps the boundless uptime to a min of 25%, Stacking PvP relics loses you 172.25 (40+12+14+106.25) power that needs to be made up by refreshing procs with lower boost from partisan and the refreshing procs from conqueror.

Now for the damage part of all three relics. For a 30% chance this means that 98% of the time it will take an average of 3.1 tries to hit (the other 2% of the time it will take more than 12). For SoS>FT>snipex2>FT>ambush>FT>corrosive dart you would average 3.1 hits every 2.6 sec. That's 6 sec of uptime every 22.6 seconds, or 27%.

Now for the healing part of the PvP relics. Vital regulators tics every 3 sec, meaning if you stay crouched (and the first tic after the 20 CD is off happens 21 sec after the last proc) you will average ~7 sec. (if you stand and crouch during this time it is more likely that you will end up with longer times, but we'll ignore that) That is 6 sec up for every 27 sec, or 22%.

If you are extremely lucky and they never overlap, the most uptime possible for a single relic with both procs is 49%. If I remember correctly a more realistic expectation is ~33% but let's be generous and use a wildly optimistic 40% for uptime vs 27% for dmg procs only.

This gives you and average of 149 power for the UW SA relic vs. 174 for Con SA. This makes up for 25 of the 172.25 deficit from above leaving a deficit of 147.25 the partisan relic needs to make up for.

The partisan relic, with the 40% uptime is 164.

So, underestimating the dps loss from lethality, underestimating the power loss equivalent of that dps loss, using the worst case scenario for uptime on boundless ages, assuming you are constantly crouched and firing to maximise uptime on the PvP relics, and a very optimistic low-overlap uptime estimate for the PvP relics, you get an average increase of ~17 power over time which translates (using the .5 number from above) to ~8.5 dps. And for that, you give up the control for burn phases and lack of waste you get with the boundless ages. Even using this estimate, the control for burn phases and eliminating waste is enough for me to take the PvE relics, and I suspect if I used more realistic numbers, even that small advantage PvP relics have would more than disappear. (for instance, only adjusting the fight time from a mutiple of two to 5:30 min makes the average power from boundless ages increase by ~10 almost eliminating the gap, changing it to 5:10 min increases it ~17 making them equal, and changing it to 6:30 increases it ~24.5, and that is just one of the places I deliberately erred in favor of the PvP relics)

And if you are thinking you can just take the Conqueror relic over Underworld SA and keep boundless ages, that doesn't work either. The reason for that is the cost for losing the lethality point is now 100% on that relic alone.

Edit: I have also considered taking a point away from explosive engineering, instead of lethality, for vital regulators. The power equivalent of the loss in dps is about 13 less in my initial estimates (I also favored the PvP relics in this estimate.) For me, this is still not good enough to do do a more thorough examination. It looks like it would be pretty close to even and I prefer the control of the boundless ages relic (the PvP relics would require ~36% uptime to be even, not as far off the mark, but still high.) Boss fights have too many burn phases and too much downtime to consider stacking the PvP relics, even with a small advantage in average power over time, and I don't even think a small advantage would exist with a more exact comparison where I wasn't favoring stacking the PvP relics every step of the way.

As for the slippery op dummy, I got nothing.

[Webley]

Since my last post I've been messing about on the dummy more in an effort to sort my rotation out a bit, I tend to do this which parses 2500 ish not using adrenals but I do in raids.
72 main and offhands mostly 69's for the rest, basically no crit, 100% accuracy 2 set 63 PvP bonus (old BM shells with crafted armourings) 2set 69 PvE bonus. Old static power PvP relics, not got the power proc ones.

OS - SS
Snipe > FT
Ambush > FT
SoS > FT
SV > SoS > FT
Snipe (snapshotted) > Snipe > FT
Ambush > FT
Pretty much repeat until the 45 sec CD on Orbital is up and throw in an EP or CD for a filler.
Laze on cooldown and Target Acquired after 1st orbital for the 15 energy, I don't find myself needing adrenaline probe very often unless I mess things up.