Hello fellow Snipers and Slingers!

Since Bant's work and the optimal stats guide is yet to be updated, I am curious to know any suggestions on min/maxing with the current 236 augments and gearing altogether. Currently, I've been messing around with alacrity and mastery augments. My alacrity is currently at 1218(Avg Parse APM 40.9) but could be anywhere from 1100 to 1600 rating. My crit is currently at 1974 but I believe that number to be too high. I'd like to know your opinions and thanks in advance!

I believe if you are asking this question you haven't been following at all the discussions around how alacrity works (that surfaced a few months ago on a fury mara thread).

You should definitely read this:

Which alacrity threshold you want to reach is at your discretion (I haven't really tested with snipers). Also if you are a big virulence player then there might be other interesting thresholds (these were calculated for a 1.5s ability, but 2s - cull - have different thresholds). Hope it helps balance out alac and crit intelligently.

Hello fellow Snipers and Slingers!

 

Since Bant's work and the optimal stats guide is yet to be updated, I am curious to know any suggestions on min/maxing with the current 236 augments and gearing altogether. Currently, I've been messing around with alacrity and mastery augments. My alacrity is currently at 1218(Avg Parse APM 40.9) but could be anywhere from 1100 to 1600 rating. My crit is currently at 1974 but I believe that number to be too high. I'd like to know your opinions and thanks in advance!

are you asking for pve or pvp? the answer is very different depending because of the accuracy. if you never do hard modes, then you don't need any accuracy at all. unfortunately, it is a lot harder to min/max in the 5.X era than it used to be and unless you are running nim ops, i would say not to worry about it overmuch, and even then, the difference between 1200 crit and 1200 alac vs. 1500 crit and 900 alac is not going to be noticeable in game. my advice would be to run with the stock pieces with 1 acc augment and the others split between mostly crit and some alacrity. that gets you into the correct ballpark and if you want better than that, you will have to run a **** ton of parses to see what works best for your spec and class. don't expect to see a lot though. the reason you need a **** ton of parses is because the differences really are tiny. contrary to what bads try (repeatedly and loudly) to tell you, gear doesn't matter. especially in pve.

after 1800 crit starts to take some serious diminishing returns, dont invest in it after that point.

note my advice here is mostly regarding pvp.

stat priority is still gonna be the same crit > alacrity > mastery/power. i personally rely on stims to give me accuracy.

for optimal numbers for those stats look at old 5.x guides.

From my experiments in Alacrity in Virulence spec, I've found little increase in DPS after 1300, and as for Crit Little use after 1660. Once I've gotten those I've actually started Augmenting for Power in the past. However since 5.6.1 those Power Augments have switched to Mastery.

When I say I've noticed no difference I say this because 1) Dummy parsing while useful to see how good you are at your rotation, It is also MEANINGLESS. 2) when it comes to Operation Bosses I found little use for more then 1300 alacrity because the reduction in the GCD was minimal for one thing (1.4 sec, goes to roughly 1.3 with 1880 Alac), and for another you do not capitalize as much with the higher alacrity due to the fact you have to do mechanics while in the boss fights.

As for critical, my experience is my dps really doesn't change at all from 1660 to 1850. For me this is because critical is to RNG based so your not going to consistently crit more just because you have a higher rating. I've found some of my highest DPS parses had lower Critical rating (1660), and had Higher % of crits in them then a parse with 1850 critical and less power or mastery.

For Engineering sniper in particular, are there the same benefits from 1860 alacrity as for other classes? We have mostly instant attacks and Series of Shots' channel seems to be accounting for each alacrity point.

So it's probably worth going for it, right?

For Engineering sniper in particular, are there the same benefits from 1860 alacrity as for other classes? We have mostly instant attacks and Series of Shots' channel seems to be accounting for each alacrity point.

 

So it's probably worth going for it, right?

Yep, that’s what I use.

Yep, that’s what I use.

So I was parsing whole last night trying to hit 10k DPS with Engineering... Unsuccessfully. I really don't understand what is the problem, is it just RNG? 10+ parses with 9884 DPS being the best (http://parsely.io/parser/view/340290/0 this one). In the later parses i got tired I guess, so I was making some mistakes but overall I seem to be doing everything correctly.

P.S. Took a deep breath and a drink -> http://parsely.io/parser/view/340293

P.P.S. Okay, throwing in an orbital strike is what I needed to learn http://parsely.io/parser/view/340299/6

There is still 100-200 DPS to be found somewhere but I am happy I hit the magical 10k number

So I was parsing whole last night trying to hit 10k DPS with Engineering... Unsuccessfully. I really don't understand what is the problem, is it just RNG? 10+ parses with 9884 DPS being the best (http://parsely.io/parser/view/340290/0 this one). In the later parses i got tired I guess, so I was making some mistakes but overall I seem to be doing everything correctly.

 

P.S. Took a deep breath and a drink -> http://parsely.io/parser/view/340293

P.P.S. Okay, throwing in an orbital strike is what I needed to learn http://parsely.io/parser/view/340299/6

There is still 100-200 DPS to be found somewhere but I am happy I hit the magical 10k number

Sorry it took so long for me to respond, yeah the orbital strike was the main thing that increased dps and it's important to use it as much as possible with an energy cd. What I do is I don't snipe after the opening orbital since I'm always just under what I need for energy when I do that and try to stretch my energy cd's for orbital. Looks like you generally do what I do with pairing orbitals with energy cd's except for 1 time since you don't have anything else up. Also another time you flashbanged since you didn't have anything else.

To avoid that, you want to use roll in the first filler window when you will be using roll and thermal grenade for the 2 filler spots. That way you can roll in the second filler spot for the next rotation and the only time where you will have more than 2 rotations back to back where this will be broken is after the first adrenaline probe when you have 3 rotations in a row with those 2 fillers. That's when you use imperial preparation to be able to do that 3rd rotation. Takes a bit of practice to get used to that and not always using thermal grenade in first filler window but it's better for parsing because you can roll more.

Also it doesn't look like you're quite hitting abilities fast enough (specifically plasma probe) since you're using plasma probe and series of shots .2 seconds slower on average than my parses. It's easier to hit it on time right after SoS but as long as you double tap the ability and the second tap is a few tenths of a second before the gcd ends then it should be good.

Getting a bit luckier helps with getting top parses too. Best of luck