So you had that crit rate on HIB without the eliminator setbonus ? even more impressive. Anyway we finally started clearing some bosses in NiM so i got my hands on some loot since last parse : KD implant, Shadowed Earpiece, KD bracer, 1 lvl 75 armoring Did a new parse tonight. So update on Thoric - Vanguard - Hybrid - 2/22/22 - 3184

Hmm ... yea is possible ... even though it would require alot of "stars" to be aligned for 2 parsers to give that kind of result

Comparing your log to mine and considering that you stacked more crit, everything seems normal (even though the crit is off the roof, blame that on lucky parse) ... what doesn't really fit is the fact that your High Impact Bolt max and min hit are higher than mine, even though every other ability is much lower than mine. Were using a different spec maybe ? because if you used the 2/22/22 is impossible that your max HIB hit is higher than mine. My max hit was made during power relic, adrenal and power surge being active. Impossible to hit higher ... unless there is a armor reduction on the target, but you didn't had armor reduction since everything else is lower, as they should.

Update on Thoric, same 2/22/22 spec, same level of gear as last time 3120 Fiddled a bit with my crit : Droped the crit rating down to 143 and power up to 1207 (no stim)

Well i like to think it is, is a personal choice , going with 250 crit. 0 crit builds don't appeal to me, especially in this case it makes more sense since, you have 30% extra dmg on HiB, IP and the 2 burning effects ... more crit more chance to do the 30% extra dmg than usual, rather than just stacking only power. But that is MY choice, maybe others will have the same results or even better with full power build. You just have to know the fight and when to expect movement, delaying,if necessary, Pulse cannon by 1 HiB refresh rotation. On heavy movement fights, or on those damn cores from operator IX, you may have better results with full Assault spec (no pulse cannon in rotation). At the begining of a boss fight everyone should have all their cooldowns ready, so yes, that is how i start every fight, maybe a sticky grenade from afar before getting in range of IM. Wasting cooldowns on the last pack of trash is a mistake, but if does happen. either delay the pull (if it is an important boss fight) or as you said, just skip IM. Oh, and i dont mind you "translating" the thread for the Powertechs.

9.42 accuracy (388 rating), 71% surge (395 rating) 250 crit rating, 1100 power(no stim), using BA and SA relics UW grade 3001 main stat (no stim), using 4 Partisan Eliminator Armorings for the pvp setbonus. Epic Aim augments all around

Well yes, you do have a chance to waste it, but then again using SS when you don't have a chance to refresh HiB is wrong too. I just pick the "wrong" that helps the rotation the most The reason why i do IP and then SS is because IP is a filler within those 2 spare abilities and then SS for a 60% chance to refresh HiB. Doing it the other way around will give me the same dps , but only with a 45% chance to refresh (even if i do get the SS proc with this last IP , SS will be on cooldown)

I decided to make this thread since there are quite a few people asking me on forums and in-game about how the hybrid works. Please bear with me as this is my first Guide and maybe everything will not be as clear as i wanted to be, so any suggestions or mentioning things that you don't understand well enough will be more than welcome. Hybrid 2/22/22 : http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#801bZrsMrobRMZfG0rzRr.3 Hybrid 8/22/16 : http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#801hMhZrsMrobRMZfG0rzo.3 In order to understand the hybrid rotation we need to start from the most basic Assault Spec rotation. Since this has already been done in a very comprehensive thread, i urge anyone interested in learning hybrid to start by reading Suryi's thread An uncomfortably close look at Assault PvE DPS Rotation (and Specs) I know it is alot to read and it talks about the Assault pre 2.0 but i do recommend it. A small legend before starting: IA - Ionic Accelerator HiB - High Impact Bolt IP - Ion pulse SS - StockStrike HS - Hammer Shot GCD - Global Cooldown Having said that i will extract the things which i find the most important to understand this thread: 1) Understanding the 4 GCD rule: IP/SS (Procs IA) --GCD1-- HiB (free) --GCD2-- ABILITY1 --GCD3-- ABILITY2 --GCD4-- IP/SS (Procs IA) --- As you can see you have 2 spare abilities between IA procs that you can use or a 3 sec channel one : pulse cannon 2) Assault is RNG(luck) based and as such a rigid priority list is suboptimal What ability you will do next depends of a variety of things: - how much ammo you have - what dots are applied on the target - At what step from the 4GCD you find yourself in or out of it (Unlucky IA proc) 3) What to do with those 2 spare Abilites that we have between IA procs And this is where we begin the talk about hybrid spec. The maximum damage you can with those 2 spare abilities is obviously Pulse cannon with 3 stacks. The next most damaging ability is Pulse cannon with 2 stacks. The next most damaging ability is Pulse cannon with 1 stack. You see where i am going with this ? ... Pulse cannon is the best use of those 2 spare abilities. Before you use pulse cannon though you have to watch for 2 things: - You have at least 85% ammo (we don't want to get below 60% ammo) - The target is affected by Gut. If the target is not affected by gut, you will have to refresh it and then use pulse cannon. But that means you will delay the chance to proc IA by 1 GCD, is it worth it ? YES , especially if you have 3 pulse cannon stacks ! Rather than delaying gut+pulse cannon by 4 more GCD's you are much better off delaying HiB refresh by 1 GCD. Never underestimate the importance of Gut. Initial damage + the full duration of Gut is in average the 2nd highest damaging ability after pulse cannon (HiB and IR comes right after). The reason why you have to make sure it is applied before doing pulse cannon or for that matter any sort of damaging ability is because of the 3% extra damage you do on a target affected by Gut. So ALWAYS make sure the target is affected by Gut. When do we use IR ? This is mainly for the 2/22/22 spec and it is the hardest question to answer to, since this is the reason why so many people have ammo management issues with it. Unlike Gut you don't have to keep it all times unless you can afford it. Lets talk about its damage, in average it does as much as HiB. IR + HammerShot does more or less as much damage as 2xIP(+4 ticks of plasma cell) IR + HS = 22 energy 2xIP = 36 energy So to start answering the question lets imagine a couple of situations we would find ourselves into starting from GCD2: IP/SS (Procs IA) --GCD1-- HiB (free) --GCD2-- : 1st situation : target is affected by Gut, target is NOT affected by IR and pulse cannon is on cooldown. - bellow 75% ammo and we dont have the free SS proc : 2 x HS - 60% - 75% ammo but with a SS proc : HS + IP followed by the free SS - 75% - 90% ammo : HS + IR - more than 90% ammo w/o SS proc : IR + HS - more than 90% ammo with SS proc : IR + IP followed by SS 2nd situation : target is NOT affected by Gut, target is NOT affected by IR and pulse cannon is on cooldown - bellow 68% - 2 x HS - 68 - 82 % - HS + Gut - more than 82% w/o SS proc : Gut + IP - more than 82% with SS proc : Gut + IR followed by SS 3rd situation : Pulse cannon is NOT on cooldown, target is NOT affected by IR, target is NOT affected by GUT - bellow 68% - 2 x HS - 68 - 82 % - HS + Gut - 82% - 90% w/o SS proc : Pulse cannon - 82% - 90% with SS proc : Gut + Pulse cannon - over 90% : Gut + Pulse cannon Note that IR is not applied at all, because is on a lower priority compared to Gut and Pulse cannon So as you can see using IR is very, very situational, depending on how much ammo, If Gut is applied, if Pulse cannon is on cooldown, if we have the SS proc. If you find it too difficult to maintain IR too in your rotation switch to the 8/22/16 Hybrid that doesn't require the use of IR at all. I think this pretty much covers the BASIC hybrid rotation , yes i said basic because with practice you will learn little tricks that will come natural only after using the spec for quite a while. A couple of examples of such "tricks": - delaying using HiB right after refresh because using HiB will get you to 100% ammo, and that means wasted ammo, but being mindful at what step you are within the 4GCD - delaying the chance to refresh HiB because pulse cannon is about to go off cooldown : IP/SS (Procs IA) --GCD1-- HiB (free) --GCD2-- (pulse cannon will be off cooldown at the next GCD) HS - pulse cannon - IP/SS(procs IA) - clipping Gut within those 2 spare abilities because you know you will not have the chance at the next set of 4GCD(either raid movement or pulse cannon will be off cooldown then)

Actually i should be first with a 3051 parse, but it hasnt been update yet. When you say burst you mean no hammer shot ? because it is impossible, we are not sages or slingers, we do need to do hammer shot once in a while. I did my first Hammer shot in the 50th second. And that was a parse with lucky procs. This spec is actually the most ammo friendly spec, as in the spec that requires the least amount of hammer shots, because you have 2 procs that give you free abilites, Stock strike and HiB. The only trick is keeping the ammo between 60-99% at all times, this way you have the maximum regeneration rate and you dont waste any surplus of ammo either. It is all in the practice, i dont think you have a lvl 55 vanguard for long, so with time you will get used to the rotation. Practice makes perfect. Incendiary round needs to be on the target as often as you can afford, but it is pretty low in the priority list. Not using it at all is a dps loss.

The reason why i haven't been uploading great parses on torparse is because since 2.0 i have been experiencing extremely low fps, hindering my ability to do the maximum dps that i can. Also i usually uploaded on torparse pre 2.0 because the competition as dps in my guild wasn't that high, so i searched it somewhere else, but now we have some very good dps competing for top damage every fight . You see, i search for competiton everywhere, not to somehow prove to someone that i am the best or anything , but healthy competition increases the overall skill of me and everyone participating in the challenge. Now regarding using different specs for different fights, pre 2.0 there was only 1 spec viable for VG and that required you to do pulse cannon on cooldown, that is not very mobile, and is same case as with the 8/7/31 spec. Why use a spec that requires you to do pulse cannon on CD and not use the best spec that maximizes the dmg for pulse cannon and keeps HiB damage more than decent. So in my opinion, 2/22/22 has the same mobility as 8/7/31. If i really want mobility i just go Full Assault and stay at 10 m at all time and not be constricted to do pulse cannon ever. AP's dmg has been seriously buffed for pve.

im only full 72 so w/o stim i have 1100 power

There is a single boss fight in the whole game up until now in which i prefer Full Assault over Hybryd , and that is Dread Guards on TFB. All the other are more than viable for hybryd spec. And i did say my stats : 9.42 accuracy (388 rating), 71% surge (395 rating) 250 crit rating, rest power, using BA and SA relics. 3001 main stat (no stim), using 4 Partisan Eliminator Armorings for the pvp setbonus.

Nice to see some competition as a vanguard. Makes me do better. As a result i made some modifications in my gear , dropped below 10%(9.42) accuracy to got the 71% surge and it worked better. Also the 75 OH armoring helped. Have 250 crit rating. Update on my parse: Thoric - Vanguard 2/22/22 - 3051.9

No, i started with 3 stacks of Pulse cannon I now just read one of the rules that states this : 10. Prestacking buffs using in-combat related moves is not allowed. But i stacked it using the "fart"(explosive surge), a thing that i do before every boss fight aswell. This is a 1 month old parse and it wasn't adapted to this thread rules.

ok then reposting ... Thoric - 2/22/22 - 2949