Reading up on everything has left me in total confusion and the guides for actual modding gear for PVE Marksmanship. Any help on what mods I should be using in a gear set like Established Foothold?

 

People talk about upper limits on alacrity, critical, etc, but I have no idea how to apply that to modding and all guides I've seen about that are back several years. And all the actual guides I see are for PvP and I only want to do Ops and MM FPs so I'm not sure the guides apply.

Reading up on everything has left me in total confusion and the guides for actual modding gear for PVE Marksmanship. Any help on what mods I should be using in a gear set like Established Foothold?

 

People talk about upper limits on alacrity, critical, etc, but I have no idea how to apply that to modding and all guides I've seen about that are back several years. And all the actual guides I see are for PvP and I only want to do Ops and MM FPs so I'm not sure the guides apply.

 

There is no upper limit on alacrity rating. All tertiary stats, which includes alacrity rating, suffer from diminishing returns: the more you stack or accumulate of a stat, the less benefit you get out of it. Alacrity itself, also has another "limit" so to speak ... it isn't so much a hard limit or cap as much as a difference between the way alacrity reduces individual ability cooldowns/activation times, versus how it reduces the global cooldown (GCD). Alacrity can affect ability cooldowns to the hundredths of a second, but reductions in the interval of the GCD are rounded up to the nearest tenth. That means that a reduction in the GCD to 1.32, or 1.35, or 1.39 seconds, are all rounded up to 1.4s.

 

Thus, there are certain goal thresholds for alacrity percentage, and therefore alacrity rating. Since you are a marksman sniper, your discipline does not include any fixed innate alacrity percentage bonuses. I'll also assume that you are not part of a guild that has the Quickness set bonus guild flagship perk. Most guilds do not.

 

GCD interval (seconds) // Needed alacrity percentage // Needed Alacrity Rating

1.5 // Base // 0

1.4 // 7.14% // 1213

1.3 // 15.39% // 3208

 

Most dps classes, including marksman, aim for the 1.4s global cooldown, or a final alacrity percentage of 7.14% which is 1213 alacrity rating.

 

Accuracy Rating, and your accuracy percentage, is similar to alacrity rating in that you are aiming for a fixed target. Because most operations bosses and flashpoint bosses have an innate 10% defense chance, the goal for most players is to get to 110% accuracy percentage. That means that your attacks cannot miss the boss under normal conditions. There will be of course certain boss mechanics which might provide complete immunity to player attacks, but that's unique to the mechanic and you could never overcome it anyway. I know you said you do not pvp, but just in case someone reading is, sages/sorcerers have 10% defense chance innately and all other non-tank player characters have 5%. For this reason, some people in pvp often run with less accuracy.

 

Characters who have finished the entire series of companion mission conversations for one of their class companions gain a permanent, legacy-wide, 1% accuracy bonus. The companion that unlocks it is different for each class, and I don't recall all of them, but you can find them under the legacy window under the perks.

 

 

 

It is for this reason, the companion legacy accuracy perk of 1%, that we say you need enough accuracy rating to reach 109%. This is usually 1590 accuracy rating. If you have not completed those conversations with whatever agent companion grants that (I forget at the moment), rather than stacking more accuracy to make up the difference you are actually better off stopping what you are doing and finishing those conversations!

 

The only other stat you want is critical rating, and the more of that the better, after you reach your goal alacrity rating of 1213 and goal accuracy rating of 1590. It is important to mention that normally you won't find item modifications that allow you to hit exactly those numbers ... in most cases you will be a bit over. That's fine.

 

Regarding the types of item modifications with which you will want to fill your Established Foothold shells, you need to be looking for

Lethal 80 unlettered or R-1 through R-5

 

Enhancements:

Nimble 80s any*

Adept 80s any*

Initiative 80s any*

 

Barrels/Armorings:

Versatile 80 unlettered or R-1 are best, but keep anything that has 0.84% or higher Weapon Expertise amplifiers on them.

 

* technically there are certain ones that are better than others. Since you are operating at a very basic level I'm keeping it very simple. See spoiler tag for more details:

 

 

However, you always want to keep the item modifications that have a higher item rating than what you currently have equipped. This applies to enhancements, mods, barrels, implants, everything. Always keep the highest item rating gear piece or item modification that you have, and ensure it is equipped whenever you open a box/crate of reward gear, like a Renown Crate or a Small Conquest Reward crate. This means keeping, for example, a Lethal A mod over an unlettered Lethal mod, if the Lethal A mod is a rating 306 (so for example Lethal 80AR-7) over a lower item rating version (e.g., Lethal 78R-2 which is item rating 304). This even includes using, for example, tank enhancements (ones with shield or absorb) over dps enhancements simply by virtue of the higher item rating. I'm not suggesting you would want to keep those forever, of course! You will want to replace them with proper dps enhancements when feasible. But in terms of determining what item rating your loot drops will be, whether it is from a flashpoint boss or a renown crate, you will want to have the highest item rating possible.

 

I would recommend looking at:

https://swtorista.com/articles/

and

https://vulkk.com/category/swtor/

for up to date guides. Recent stuff isn't really that hard to find ... but Google is not your friend in this case. I pity you poor millenials who never had to use a card catalog. SWTORISTA has tons of information about gearing and Vulkk hosts many class guides.

Edited August 10, 2020 by phalczen

Thank you! This is a ton of information clarified everything I understand. Most people that were talking about things were good at it and a beginner like me were totally confused! This should be pinned since it explains everything very well!

There is no upper limit on alacrity rating...

 

Excellent summary. Nice job.

@phalczen Outstanding explanation Thank you. Edited October 9, 2020 by Confusi