Pyro Powertechs OP?

just switching from Combustible Gas to Ion isnt gonna do any good.

you have to equipe Shield Gen instead of Power Gen > You gimp your DPS
In order to have any decent amount of shield % you need Tank Gear > You gimp your DPS
To gain any substantial benefit from actually using Ion you need to spend a good amount of Talent Points in ST Tree > You gimp your DPS

essentially using Ion Gas and all that comes with it over DPS is trading a lot of DPS for a little survivability. If you claim 31pt. Pyro spec gets good survivability just by switching to Ion you dont really have a clue what youre talking about.

Pyro is squishy and HAS TO BE squishy, its a glass cannon.

Small ammount of luck ?

you are aware the chance for Rocket Punch or Flameburst to reset Railshot is only 30% & 45% right ?

so to actually pull off what you described RS > RP > RS > FB > RS you need insane luck.

now what you can pull off on a regular basis(and by regular i mean every 2-3min.) without luck is this:

Explosive Fuels
Adrenal
Relic
Incendiary Missile
TD
Railshot
Rocket Punch & Flameburst if youre in range.

that will amount to roughly 10-12k damage but you just burned 3 cooldowns and generated a lot of heat.

apparently everything is OP

The statistical odds of being able to perform the combo you suggested are 15% This is not an on demand capability, just as critting is not an on demand capability.

without crits such a combo would perform

1600 1200 1700 800 1700, or 7k dmg

with full crits such a combo would perform

13k dmg

The odds of critting on every railshot is 12%

this would make you deal 12k dmg with this combo

The odds of dealing 12k with this combo are less than 2%

Thanks for playing but any class that has a top 2% positive outcome event will win a fight, that's called luck and every class has it.

Completely, absolutely back to front.

Switching from Combustible to Ion is the single biggest survivability increase you can get, it offers you significant mitigation to physical damage, as well as a significant 5% pure damage reduction straight up to all damage.

On the other hand, shield is hugely broken in PvP, and doesn't mitigate the vast majority of damage from any class but a sniper. The same is true of defense. Shield and defense only work vs. damage that shows up as white on the floating combat text, which for many classes is just auto attack, and not even that for casters (since they don't really have an autoattack that they use).


Here is a hugely indepth thread about the shear uselessness of defense stats in PvP.

The value of Ion Cylinder there probably isn't a thread for, but you can think for yourself on that one - you gain 5% damage reduction on all damage, ~10-15% damage reduction on physical damage, and guards, and you lose a meager dot. The biggest loss is the abilities that work off that dot, but they are easy to sidestep.


TL;DR: Shield/defense are extremely weak in PvP, while tank stance is extremely good value for little loss.

marksman snipers is one of the [few] specs that a powertech bounty hunter actually can shield against (the only ranged spec tbh). marksman snipers can also only ignore at the most 20% armor - powertech have lots of heavy armor - and have very few abilities that deal internal or elemental damage (i can only think of corrosive dart, which is mostly used by lethality specs - not marksman). swtor game mechanics will cause a marksman sniper to spend quite a while to kill a powertech bounty hunter.

sniper only have medium armor and are not very mobile. staying in melee range (which is the sweet spot for power tech bounty hunter since he want to proc them rail shots) is not that hard.

pyro have some serious rng burst. when stars align you might get destroyed in a few seconds. as happend in this case i guess....

1) That thread is laden with fallacies and you're a victim of believing the internet. The counterproofs, evidence, and corrections have been pointed out to the author multiple times but he remains oblivious to reason and prefers to spread propaganda and lies.
2) Like many MMOs, shields are only useful against a very small number of classes, however armor in this one is useful against nearly all of them. This causes you to believe the shields are weaker than they are due to the relative defenses of each. Abilities are also premitigated by damage type to remove the need for things like resistances, allowing for a more even playing field for all classes rather than hard counters.
3) Making effective use of Ion Cell with a DPS Assault spec requires reallocating skills to regain the lost utility. Damage will decrease. The DoT damage is far from meager and it penetrates armor. Ion Cell DoT damage does not and lasts too short a time. HIB can refresh Plasma Cell DoTs preventing you from needing to reapply them. Ion Pulse can also apply the DoT, preventing you from needing to spam Hammershot, and that's before mentioning the three points you'd have to spend in the shield tree to make up for the snare and DoT that plasma cell provides as part of it's 31 points.

Yes, Ion Cell gives you defense. You lose a LOT of damage in exchange and spam Hammershot more than you should have to.

Also - For claiming shields/defense are weak, they are the ONLY defense against Rail Shot/High Impact Bolt due to the armor penetration, which these specs hinge on.

Lol, got some reeeeeeeeeeeeeally defensive Pyrotechs in here. Like I said, potential is all that matters. I mean, that's why Operatives were nerfed; because of their potential damage.

No, operatives were nerfed because they had the highest single hitting ability on a class that has the highest crit and surge rates. They were nerfed because Acid Blades was penetrating half of all armor AND throwing out an armor-bypassing DoT. They were nerfed because they were destroying tanks like their defenses did not exist while bursting down squishies who literally had no defenses.

In short, Operatives were killing everyone and everything. Now they only kill wizards.

On my assault vanguard, I get 9k hits all the time. Now, it's not a single 9k hit. It's 2 4k+ hits and a dot that crits for 900 that is happening at the exact same time. So in a split second, there is 9k+ damage happening to the target (if the damage is critting)

Assault vanguard is the pyrotech.

I start with 'assault plastique', while running up I hit ion which slows and puts the high damage dot, stockstrike as I enter melee range, and now I high impact bolt. When High impact bolt hits, assault plastique blows up, and the dot ticks. Assault plastique if using consumbles hits for 4k, high impact bolts hits for 4k+, and i've seen my dot tick for almost 1k. with the added stock strike, this is more then 9k damage (hoping they crit). But adding into the level 50 vanguard skill called "battle focus", which gives me a 25% extra crit chance on top of everything else for 15 seconds, I am always criting.

I can kill someone... anyone.. without question, once every 2 minutes. There is nothing they can do about it. It doesn't matter what class or what spec. They will die. As long as I have my tenacity and battle focus off cooldown, someone will die.