I like having options for PvE on a fight by fight basis that Utility points don't give me with Tacticals that actually change the spec playstyle like Legendaries in WoW from Legion. Amplifiers will probably just be rush Armour Pen, Force Buff or Tech depending on the DPS class you play so it will be somewhat linear from my testing so far.

Is literally no one else giving meaningful feedback apart from me and banth "Test" Server. Also are the devs communicating with us at all or are they going to respond all at once in the next wave?

This 100%!!!!!!!!!!! We need more communication on this because it will change class balance so much, certain specs being able to take advantage of this more than others and will others be compinsated for this?

(THIS WRITE UP IS ALSO IN A WORD DOCUMENT ON GOOGLE DRIVE FOUND HERE AND IS BETTER FORMATTED & EASIER TO READ) Hello fellow testers my name is Thrax and I’ve been playing Sniper since 2013 and have mainly raided in world first Nightmare progression guilds such as <Drop It Like It’s Hoth> (World First TFB & S&V), ToFN Pug Groupxd World 3rd Revan & <Phantoms>. I have also raided top 50 World in WoW during Legion with <Security>, <Halcyon> and wrote the 4.0 Dulfy Class Guides for Sniper http://dulfy.net/author/thrax/ so I’d like to think I’m experience and have good game knowledge. I’ve recently returned to game and thought I’d give my opinions on the current state of the Sniper Specs on PTS. I feel like with the tactical items Bioware are giving more tools to classes to specialise or have niches within a combat scenario but I’m not sure it will fix the fundamental problem some classes/specs face without some ability overhauls though I could be wrong. My opinion on Tactical Items for PvE: (Parses are for Single Target Tactical Items) Sniper • Holodefense - Hololocate increases your melee and ranged defense by 30% for 10 seconds when you return. For PVP I guess otherwise useless in PVE. • Suppression - Enemies take 10% more damage while under Suppresive Fire. Does not affect Ops bosses. Could be good raid utility for specific add heavy fights that Scattershot/Engineering otherwise can’t handle but looks pretty poor, maybe 15-20% and It would start to turn heads. • Tech Debt - Shatter Shot applies Tech Debt to its target. Whenever the target is healed, you will also receive a small amount of healing. Bad for PvE and is probably more useful in PvP would scrap this too to be honest or have the healing actually be meaningful to make people think crap I have shattershot on me rather than shatterwhat?. Random ideas for something “Energy Probe increases damage/crit/alacrity by X% for 10/15s” or something? • Orbital Heal - Orbital Strike heals allies in the area for a small amount whenever it ticks. Orbital Strike ticks for like 4k-5k so I can’t imagine a Universe where you take this over literally any other option, Even if it heals 1:1 damage you probably wouldn’t take it ever. I would honestly scrap this and make something new maybe “Enemies take 10% more damage while in Orbital Strike” or something completely different Marksman • Scattershot - Penetrating Blast does splash damage to targets around the primary target and causes your next Follow-through to deal splash damage. This trait may give life to the long dead Marksman giving it a tool to equal out the disparity between Marksman and the all-powerful Virulence. This is one of the most well thought out traits they have come up with to give this spec purpose in a Unique way. • Sniper's Ambush- Activating Covered Escape or returning to your marker with Hololocate makes your next Ambush activate instantly and deal 20% more damage. This is great for PvP and from my initial testing it added a good 10-20k damage onto Ambush (I managed a 75k Crit with Relics, Laze Target and Roll Buff) it might be viable in situations where you can’t snipe to get the reduced cast time. • Corrosive Follow-through - Corrosive Dart deals more damage and Follow-through refreshes its bleed effect on any target it damages. Marksman struggles at the moment because of how strong Virulence is in both sustained single target and Burst because of 3 Cull with double Laze Target and essentially deletes marksman from the game as it offers Multitarget dotting alongside easier movement. This trait already eliminates the need to reapply Cdart saving you a GCD and Energy to dump into Snipe though it feels a bit clunky when you play. When you equip this trait, it increases your corrosive dart damage by (18407-16734 = 1673) which is around 9.1-ish% which is pretty unnoticeable to be honest and with snipes high energy cost it’s pretty easy to OOM when you have a missing GCD that is almost required to be a snipe, In saying that though it feels a lot cleaner in execute without having to waste gcd’s on dart when you are weaving in Takedowns. I feel like you could do so much instead of this too to add something interesting like; • Takedown increases all damage done by (15%) for (12s) when it hits a target below 30%HP • Each Followthrough <30% increases damage done by (1-2%) for 5s stacking to (15-20)? • Or Each follow-through increases corrosive darts damage by (1-2%) for 5s stacking to (20-30)?. Each of these suggestions gives skill expression and something to look forward to and play around when you equip and plan around implementing the trait. I don’t mind being weaker to start off but to ramp up later in a fight think of WoW’s Warrior Execute, Shadow Priest Twist of Fate (After damaging a target below 35% health, you gain 10% increased damage and healing for 8 sec.) or Hunter’s Marksmanship Bullseye Trait (When your abilities damage a target below 20% health, you gain 1% increased critical strike chance for 6 sec, stacking up to 30 times.). All of these specs have great varied kit that secure themselves within a raid. These are just some random examples off the top of my head that could spice up Marksman and give it a new lease of life. 10 Parses on 2.5mill dummy with armour debuff my DPS was: Corrosive Follow-through - 16.8k-17k Sniper's Ambush - 15.5k-16k Marksman still lagging behind Engi which is top performing by 1.5k-2.5k Engineering • Blasting Caps - Cluster Bombs deal damage to all enemies around their target. More Cleave = Good while keeping the same core rotation from 4.0/5.3. • Explosive Trigger - Explosive Probe now only triggers from EMP Discharge and deals 50% more damage. Honestly this was hard to play due to not being able to Series of Shots the clusters to regain energy as the rotation loops back into Explosive Probe. I would maybe suggest a -5/-10 energy cost reduction for EMP Discharge and this could be traded off -5%/-10% in Explosive Probe damage. IT WAS EXTREMELY HARD TO PLAY AND I FINNISHED EVERY PARSE AT 0 ENERGY. • Ruthless Interrogation - Series of Shots refreshes Interrogation Probe and ticks its damage every time it hits. Again this frees up a gcd to Orbital/snipe/dart to keep up electrified railgun while giving you a perma dot on the target It kinda feels clunky to play but it’s an interesting concept. Honestly All of these are Interesting and bring different things to subtly alter the rotation or add damage. It’s in a good state for a cleave AoE spec that doesn’t fall off too hard on single target. Though the problem Engineering has is when and where to play it since It’s hard to implement on some bosses. 10 Parses on 2.5mill dummy with armour debuff my DPS was roughly around: Explosive Trigger - 18.9k-19.2k Ruthless Interrogation - 17.9k-18.3k Virulence • Poison Splash - Corrosive Grenade spreads Weakening Blast's effect. Lethal Shot does splash damage to all targets affected by Corrosive Grenade. It seems that Lethal Shot is hitting twice on single target is that intended or a bug? • Poison Choke - Weakening Blast finishes off all your poison effects at once, dealing all their remaining damage. Weakening Blast's cooldown is increased by 6 seconds. This could be interesting but honestly it just makes everything feel like a mess forcing you to spam fillers during downtime maybe more focused at PVP? • Culling Shots - Weakening Blast deals 50% more damage. Literally unnoticeable it adds 600 damage to an already 0 damage ability. I honestly couldn’t parse above 17k in any variation around the same as Marksman. Maybe BW need to rethink these maybe add a specific trait to encourage multi dotting, maybe when you dot multiple targets it increases your energy regen so you are able to dump more lethal shots without filler and give Virul an Identity? Also why isn’t Cull proccing Takedown 100% of the time it via Lethal Takedown, it completely ****s the entire rotation and feels awful when you are unlucky and is just RNG for RNG’s sake. (Happened twice while parsing >:[) My opinion on Set Bonus for PvE: Set Bonuses Active Reload - (4) The energy cost of Takedown is reduced by 3. (6) Killing an enemy within 3 seconds of damaging them with Takedown resets the cooldown of Takedown and gives you a 5% damage buff. This stacks up to 3 times and lasts 10 seconds. 4 set – Pretty self-explanatory maybe too simple? Room to add something more interesting? 6 set – As Mentioned in the Marksman Trait section around the Takedown Execute idea I feel this could be an interesting idea around Takedown being some sort of Execute buff because it would make Sniper unique. I prefer my suggestions rather than this because this set would need to be strong to compete with Lazer Focus because Triple Autocrit and extra energy is massive. Maybe instead atleast this? “. (6) Killing an enemy within 5 seconds of damaging them with Takedown resets the cooldown of Takedown and gives you a 10% damage buff. This stacks up to 3 times and lasts 10/15/20 seconds.” This would make this set competitive and actually give you a chance to pick your targets to takedown and get ready to set up around the damage buff. Lazer Focus - (4) Reduces the cooldown of Target Acquired by 15 seconds and activating it restores 15 energy. (6) Laze Targets gets 3 charges and its cooldown is reduced by 15 seconds. 4 set – Good source of energy regen and the extra -15s is nice on an underrated ability. 6 set – I like the idea of having charges but compared to the live set bonus over a 3 minute time period we miss out on 2/3 Autocrits as stated in the forums which is massive especially to Marksman since Ambush is your main burst ability and the identity of the spec. I guess I’m fine with it if the numbers compliment all 3 specs fairly since we are due a change from playing Virulence on every fight no matter the circumstances which really ruins the class-spec identity of Okay we need burst I guess I’ll play Marksman or we need heavy cleave guess I’ll play Engi. Entrenched Offense - (4) The cooldown of Entrenched is reduced by 10 seconds. (6) While Entrenched, you build stacks of Entrenched Offense, increasing damage by 1% per stack while you remain Entrenched. Stacks up to 5 times. Breaking cover or Entrench being removed removes this. Reposition - (4) The cooldown of Cover Pulse is reduced by 5 seconds. (6) Evasion finishes the cooldown of Covered Escape and increases you and your allies movement speed by 50% for 6 seconds. These are both PVP oriented set bonuses and probably never used within PVE.

Here are my current thought's on all 3 Sniper Specs. (Word Document on Google Drive)

Big suggestion ty

I managed 6 on PTS with clipping you could maybe push 7 if you clip and press as soon as t comes off CD but the reduction from 8/9 with clipping is pretty big. Also if people want to discuss PTS stuff ingame my sniper is "Thrax" i'll be on testing stuff most times it's up.

Completley agree with this.

Yeah it's because you have to wait to get the other charges rather than having both at once and the CD being activated. I'm currently trying to min max everything available when the servers are up and make a big post with my thoughts. Which not having access to my ship training dummy and debuffs makes the process much longer since I can't transfer :> I was testing out Marksman on Tyth Nightamre/Master mode and the Penetrating Blasts tactical trait might save Marksman from the dumpster if you play around it correctly. I'm not sure on the corrosive dart and ambush ones so far since I haven't had the time to test. The dart one giving you extra snipe gcd's could be big but I hope the fundemental problem of doing almost the same burst damage as Virulence is adressed while doing negative single target in comparison. 25s Window on Live Servers (Was testing this out for Izax Anchors) Virul 280k Marksman 290k Engi 250k Also please change the endurance on the 2 set it's completley useless since we have ample defensive options in skill tree and abilities.

Only way I will ever resub is if Kephass is the last boss on the next op.

savage

Lol how the shíté do you get worse than LJN, basically cancer xd

I mean there is only really one word that i can think of that describes this; Kappa

FeelsBadMan

i'm done. //