The Church of Alvis

This is what I'm looking at doing for a full SS build with Tplush, you slingers see anything I should move around or suggestions for how to make it better...

I would say you can drop Bravado from the Sab tree, as you really shouldnt have need of the extra energy. With the build below, at lvl 46 I can top out my DPS at about 1k (with standard craptastic leveling gear), and my average is 700-900. I also havent found alot of issue with power managment either since this respec.

Understanding the "trauma" benefits, I'd still also recommend dropping all points from "Kneecappin" as Leg shot is completely useless at endgame. Those are the points I allocated in "Head's Up" instead.

Speed Shot, Trick Shot, Charged Burst, and Aimed shot are the bread and butter here. Speed Shot> Trick Shot> 2xCharged Burst (at reduced cost)> Trick Shot> Aimed Shot (using the Charged Aim proc)> Trick Shot and so on. Also fit in Vital Shot, Flourish Shot and Sabotage Charge. This is all in generalities of course.

Other than that, you've basically got what I am playing with (though im not 55 yet):

I don't see the benefit of Head's Up is the thing, while Kneecappin has little use, but some is better than none. I mean in a raid how often am I going ot be moving within second of using Hunker down, plus how many movement imparing effects am I going to be dealing with. None I could think of. The extra 6 seconds of debuff on flourish means not having to waste a GCD on it quite as often leaving me more time to use the higher DPS abilities.

That was my theory anyway on why I specced the way I did.

Good points sir!

Since I havent gotten to that point (and I'm not even 50 yet) then I definitely couldn't back up my allocation with hard fact, just seemed more survivability than anything. Probably just the tank in me taking over....

But yeah I do agree with the add it gives to the trauma

Maiz is our resident raiding sharpshooter, I found it hard to keep track of all the procs and going in and out of cover, (stupid DPSer, after all) and haven't played with it much in 2.0. Still rolling hybrid sab/df myself and can talk your ear off about that if you're interested.

When we raid I build to Sharpshooter. While leveling and doing the story I build to Saboteur - With 3 big AOE's most of the mobs are dead before they can get a shot off and even in the groups with 2 boss mobs, they are all down within seconds.

For Sharpshooter, I personalily like keeping Bravado, even with the faster regen rate, it is still very easy to blow through you stack in normal rotation. I love the 2.0 change to Trickshot where they added speed shot to the list of activations and the addition of Recoil control makes it aways usable. With smoking barrels, I need to play with my rotations to use charged burst more often. As for the leg shot I only throw it in when waiting on cooldowns of my other rotations on larger mobs or when forced to run around doging missles.

I think there was a comment by Joun or Njess about not relying on your criticals as are part of your damage and I fully agree with that, especially now that other stats are required more. I do not take No holds bars, but instead Bravado and Diversion, very use on the trash and adds. And I will sometimes take Percussive Shot, just to piss the tank off.

My 2 credits.

Maizan.

Maizan wrote:I think there was a comment by Joun or Njess about not relying on your criticals as are part of your damage and I fully agree with that, especially now that other stats are required more. I do not take No holds bars, but instead Bravado and Diversion, very use on the trash and adds. And I will sometimes take Percussive Shot, just to piss the tank off.

My 2 credits.

Maizan.

Crit is worth less than the other stats on gear now from what I've read, however I don't think that applies as firmly to talent points. Looking over the available talent points and where you can move some around and not put any in No Hold Barred I don't see another set of talent points that would give as much DPS gain on average except possibly Independant Anarchy if you are going full SS.

I remember saying in healing crit is not to be sought after because you want to have a good idea of how big a heal you will get when comparing it to who needs what.

Crit on DPS rarely should be a top priority (general terms not specific to any particular class or spec). Unlike with healing where a poor ability output could lead to death, DPS is about aggregate damage output. So if you have base damage of 100 and 10% cit which pushes your DPS to 130 compared to a base damage 80 with 40% crit makes your average DPS in the 140 range you'd have to seriously consider the later. That is the thing I like about DPS is that you are basically solving your DPS output and seeing if you can maintain that rotation and applying test dummy tactics versus real life.

Before 2.0 Crit was pretty easy to get; Skig had 40 percent crit chance and more than 75 surge without even trying that much. The same gear gave me about 30 percent crit chance in 2.0, and removing it all didn't hurt that much. I think I'm close to 25 percent crit chance with nearly nothing in Crit, and the overall damage has gone up considerably with points dedicated to accuracy (110), power and surge with a dab of alacrity. I would assume Slingers are similar, although I know Timmah's build relies on crit for energy management. Still, I think he's dumped all his crit and not suffered for it.

People seem to be going far afield from the original point here. I'm not advocating crit on gear. Current itemization says that crit on your gear is less valuable than the other stats you could use in it's place. I'm discussing the crit TALENT vs other TALENTS for DPS output.

Assuming 36 points in SS the one I linked above seem to be the optimium use as I see it. There are a few that are really discressionary IMO, like Heads Up vs Kneecappin' for instance, neither one will have an appreciable effect on your DPS as I see it and are discressionary filler points. Ballistic Dampers, Diversion and Percussive Shot are the same, some points have to be spent there to get up the tree, but they are discressionary as they will have little to no effect on your DPS.

That leaves 10 points to play with between 6 possible talents.
Cool Under Pressure (2) - net survivability gain
Bravado (2) - more energy, unsure how it's needed with SS but probably can't hurt
Streetwise (3) - 3% cunning/pt - it's basically a must have
Independent Anarchy (3)- 5% per pt damage increase to Flyby, Sab charge, thermal grenade, sweeping gunfire (SS applicable skills) note IA is also a tier 2 ability so would need either Bravado or CUP to be talented to get access
Black Market Mods (2) - 1% alacrity/pt
No Holds Barred (3) - 1% crit/pt

So given those options it's really just 7 points to play. And the top 3 contenders are BMM, NHB and IA for more DPS, it's just a matter of properly determining comparative worth for those 3 and that I was hoping to get some input from those who know.

No hold's barred seems like the best of the bunch imo.

I would rank them as:

1. Streetwise (3) - 3% cunning/pt - Mandatory. Cunning is also your major source of added crit in 2.0
2. No Holds Barred (3) - 1% crit/pt - your other major source of added crit
3. Independent Anarchy (3)- massive damage increase to flyby, which should always be on cooldown. Most of the other abilities it buffs are for trash or situational groups of adds during boss fights (sweeping gunfire, thermal grenade), or are not part of this build (contingency charges, scatter bombs, incendiary grenade).
4 (or 5). Bravado (2) - whatever can keep you in that max energy regen range. This isn't much, but every bit helps
5 (or 4). Cool Under Pressure (2) - torn on this one, it's not reeally a lot of added survivability...but slingers suck at surviving. I don't use it, and you'll be in and out of cover a lot to proc snap shot so that might reduce its effectiveness some.
6. Black Market Mods (2) - 1% alacrity/pt - It's my opinion that alacrity is useless for a slinger. We're already managing a lot of cooldowns, so alacrity just means hurry up and wait (Alacrity, as far as I know, does nothing to cooldowns). I do have this though, as I had to get *something* to get to the next level in DF

I originally had bravado as #2, but it really only makes your max energy regen range 4 points bigger (66-110 vs 60-100) so it's not a major boost. I'm going to play around with removing this from my build for CUP.

So this means for 10 points, I'd say 3 streetwise, 3 no holds barred, 2 bravado (or 2 CUP), 2 IA. I might even take a point out of kneecappin' and get that third IA point, that 5% more damage for flyby should outweigh the extra few seconds of flourish shot. Also, if you raid with anyone else with an armor debuff, flourish shot isn't needed.

All of this, of course, IMHO. Probably better to talk some of this through next time you're on, I changed rankings like 5 times as I wrote this
Maiz, do you have points in IA for your SS build?

I use IA and it is noticable. I have also been playing with the utility belt instead of cool under pressure. I have no points in the dirty fighting tree.

Question for all. What is your option off Burst Volley (top the ss tree). I am on the fence about it and thinking it is not that great. I am toying with the idea of dropping and the leg shot enhancements and thinking of taking contingency charges and shock charge/dealers discount.


[edit: thinking of droping charged shot and dealers discount for cool under pressure, or maybe just dealers discount]
[edit2: dropped dealers discount point and took no holds barred]
Also I am adjusting my core rotations at bit as we seem to enter and exit cover more often and use the effects of snap shot and charged aim more.

What I am thinking is something like
1. Frieghter flyby
2. thermal grenade
3. enter cover
4. charged burst x2 - first is instant, trickshot
5. Aim shot (reduced time by 40%), trickshot
6. speed shot, trickshot
7. Exit cover
8. if up, the big low heath kill shot (don't remember it's name atm), trickshot
9. go to 3 and repeat. 2nd charged burst will have reduced engry cost

And when up add in the Dot shot and the thermal grenade when they come off of their respecitive cool downs. And waiting for the rotation add in the zero energy shot.

Will test out later on today and see. The one negitive I do see is the exiting and entering cover more often will through the dps calculaters out.

Still liking my smuggler.

Maizan

My admittedly inexperienced thoughts on Burst Volley is that it is solid and worth having, especially for burst phases. From my experience Speed Shot is one of the highest DPS moves available, so being able to reset it's cooldown so you could in theory use it back to back, is a significant DPS increase. The bonus energy plus the alacrity increase which increases your regen rate alone makes it worth having almost as a mini recovery cooldown.

Looking at the way it has been created makes me think that with the alacrity increase for 10 seconds, resetting the cooldown on speedshot and the increased energy regen from it as well that it's almost perfect to pair it with flyby. So when flyby coming close to off CD you would SS, BV, SS, flyby. And that would be ALOT of damage in a very short period.

Just to have more info, I have used this thread quite a bit in helping determine how I'm leveling my SS as well.

Thought I'd throw it in here to share:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=640261

In the guide, and someone else in the thread asks the same question as I'm about to open for discussion is the instant charged burst from entering cover. In the primary rotation he talks about leaving and reentering cover to proc the instant CB. And I guess I just don't see the point. CB has a 1.5 second cast time, same length as the GCD. So really the only difference between using it instant is applying the damage immediately or in 1.5 seconds. You can't cast sooner anyway, so is all the cover juggling really worth it? I'm not seeing the benefit unless the mob is about to die in the next 1.5 seconds to breaking then rentering cover just to proc the instant CB. Am I missing something here? I don't think I am but wanted to throw it out there for internal discussion.

I don't think u are missing anything. I have tried the cover breaking mechanics and it just slows my DPS way down. It may be that I was breaking at inopportune moments since I'm still learning this class, but I agree that I really don't see a large benefit to it.

Sent using smoke signals from my campfire.

Marrkin wrote:I don't think u are missing anything. I have tried the cover breaking mechanics and it just slows my DPS way down. It may be that I was breaking at inopportune moments since I'm still learning this class, but I agree that I really don't see a large benefit to it.

Sent using smoke signals from my campfire.

I think it is intended to be used as a band-aid talent to keep DPS up in a motion fight.

I can however see one advantage to it, and that is to refresh Ballistic Dampers and/or gain Cover Screen, providing those are spec'd.

Those would be benefits of leaving and reentering cover, but from the perspective of "you need to be doing this or you are costing yourself DPS" which is what the guide seems to imply, I don't see it.

Heck prior to 2.0 alacrity did NOT effect the GCD so you could argue that with black market mods giving enough alacrity to shave your cast time on CB to 1.4 you were costing yourself dps by using the instant CB because of the 1.5 GCD being longer than the 1.4 second cast time.

Furiel wrote:Those would be benefits of leaving and reentering cover, but from the perspective of "you need to be doing this or you are costing yourself DPS" which is what the guide seems to imply, I don't see it.

I definitely agree

I have my mouse side button for entering cover and the thumbstick on my g13 for movement. Tap the thumbstick and click the mouse. up and down in about half a second or one full second off normal, trickshot a full second sooner and aim shot is off a full second sooner. To me that is a gain, which I am seeing tonight. I am working in Sab Charge and shock charge into the rotation, currently they are accounting for about 15 to 20 % of the damage total, and both of those do not require cover to use.

I will probably switch back to full ss in a day or two to compare it as a counter point.

Maizan.