Update 2: 2/26/14

Google doc for questions and voting

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtS6aucNXnGndFNtdDN5UTJGLW9ZNGcydEFOUTR2aFE&usp=sharing.

Like the previous round of brainstorming, submit your questions in this thread, and i will add them to the google doc. Before our deadline is up we will vote on which questions we want to ask the Combat Team. I am thinking first week of June for voting with the week after for paraphrasing, fine-tuning, editting of the chosen questions.

You can submit as many questions as you like.... but please keep in mind one person submitting too many questions may end up convuliting the entire process. I suggest pick a handful of quality questions and avoid questions that are similar to one another, questions that do not open dialogue with the combat team, avoid yes or no questions, avoid questions that try to compare against melee classes, no questions about why Pyro Mercs are OP (they are bugged) and lastly avoid questions that can be answered by the forum community itself.

Reference: http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=7243376&postcount=14

Update 1: Original post

Starting up brainstorming on what the forum Snipers and Gunslingers want to ask the devs this coming June 6th 2014.

Eric has given the go signal to start brainstorming on the class questions

Instead of creating two separate threads for Snipers and Gunslingers, I'd like to put all the discussion in one place.

Similar to the previous round of Class Rep questions, i think it would be best to have two separate discussion threads, one for PvE and another for PvP. Anyone can submit their questions and after a period of time (we have until June) , we will vote on which 6 questions we want to ask the Developers about our class.

To start up the PvE discussion, here is a repost from the Calling on all snipers - stop the OS nerf thread:

Rough draft

Context1:

With BW spending several months on trying to find a fix for Orbital, i was expecting to see the dps buffs/changes to come soon after the Orbital nerf. The prospect of waiting for a year or even half a year for a fix to our nerfed AoE capabilities in my opinion is "unreasonable" and "leaves a bad taste in the mouth" -__-

Context2:

Eric sent a message about the class rep program starting again and was wondering if we should start as early as now so we can have the best 6 questions to ask the dev several months from now. Initially I was "slightly ok" and "slightly understood" their intent to nerf our AoE but after hearing that 2.7 will have NOTHING to give us our AoE capabilities back, i feel that we need an answer or vision of what Bioware has in store for our class. 2.7 is 1-2 months from now? and 2.8 is around june-july.. Hopefully the promised buffs will come in 2.8 and NOT on the next expansion... I messaged eric asking when we can start brainstorming..

Anyway for comparison i think it is fair that we compare ourselves to only 2 DPS classes, Sorcerers and Mercenaries which are the only other ranged DPS classes/specs in the game. My opinion is that we should leave Operative DPS, Juggernauts, Assassins, Marauders out of our comparison. I can "accept" the fact that some if not all of these classes can out DPS a Sniper if that is what BW wants because these classes are melee and have to deal with the limitations of only being able to DPS from a ~5m range.

Personally my biggest concern right now is that we have no "working as intended" AoE spec at the moment. Marksmanship's borked Orbital Strike is hardly AoE in current content. Lethality being a dot spec is far from an AoE spec as well (they nerfed Lethality's AoE variant, the Hybrid spec). That leaves Engineering which is 1) not working as intended 2) requires too much work to be optimal DPS, 3) the only spec dependent on the environment to do its max DPS and 4) i quote BW "does not have a fluid rotation." A question on what they have in store for us with regards to our AoE capabilities (something which our class was very good at befor 2.6...) AND a timeline to go with it (i know this one is asking too much) is one thing hopefully i'll be able to add in this round's Sniper/Slinger Q&A.

What does everyone think? Also Escarli please step in for the PvP crowd . I'm looking at the 2.7 PVP defensive changes and I think they are pretty darn awesome. Dodge (when under Cover) resisting Force and Tech attacks (both single target and aoe) means it should be something like a Force Shroud now isn't it? Force Shroud for 3 seconds in Snipers/Slingers o_o. And a lower cooldown on Shield Probe as well.

~ Question:

1. I understand the reasoning behind the 2.6 Orbital nerf, but whether intended or not, this specific method of nerfing our single target DPS (to remove Orbital from our single target rotation or flat out just lower our DPS to be comparable to other ranged DPS specs) had the end result of lowering the overall AoE output of the class as well. So much so that the advanced class has turned from having the best AoE DPS to a class that barely has none. In terms of AoE, Marksman offers very little compared to Lightning (Sorcerer's burst spec) and Arsenal (Mercenary's burst spec) while Lethality pales in comparison to Pyrotech (Mercenary's dot spec). This is because in 2.6, Death From Above is now simply better than Orbital Strike.

Engineering as you mentioned is our AoE specialization but the lack of any info or timeline for the promised changes to this spec AND the promised buffs to Lethality is a bit of a concern. Given the recent and huge nerf to our advanced class, one can not blame the avid Snipe and Gunslinger players of this game for looking forward and eagerly awaiting these buffs to come out sooner rather than later on the patch notes. What is your stance on our AoE DPS and is it possible to for these changes to be expedited to Patch 2.8? Preferably in this same year?

*sigh

Thanks for stepping up again Paowee, you did a great job last time and I'm sure you'll do awesome again given we have a ton of time now to come up with questions. I'll just give some brief commentary on my general thoughts moving forward and what you brought up.

Six questions is a ton of questions! I thought it was difficult for the Sniper/Slinger community to come up with three good questions let alone six. Since we have six questions we should focus on making the questions very specific so we work towards facilitating a better answer from the devs (i.e. don't have questions that are like "What will our AOE abilities be like in the future," but rather "What is the combat team's vision for Gunslingers/Snipers AOE capabilities and how may future changes reflect this vision"). Also, I know last time out of fairness we split the questions as one PvP, one PvE, and one other. I recommend that we don't do a 3/3 split as this could restrict us fro asking strong questions. If we do decide to do a split, I would say split it three ways so that two are guaranteed to be PvE centric, two are PvP focused, and two can be PvE, PvP, a mixture of both, or questions that apply to both gameplay areas. This would provide us a greater flexibility in the questions we ask.

Now in response to what you've brought up so far concerning PvE questions, I do think the Orbital/Flyby change merits discussion with the devs. However, it will be important to note in our question that the Orbital/Flyby change didn't accomplish the intended goal as all Sniper/Slinger specs use it rotationally. Instead, all it achieved was severely decreasing Sniper/Slinger burst, AOE capabilities, and sustained DPS. I'm in full agreement that we should only compare Snipers/Slingers to other ranged DPS as they play similarly and share roles with Snipers/Slingers. Noting that Pyro bug is also important as BW may turn their "our metrics say" card on us when we compare DPS percentage gaps.

As for the Engineering/Saboteur question we have to be very careful how we word it and make our question clear. We already asked BW a question about that spec so we don't want to get a repeat answer. However, I do think it's important we bring Engineering up as it needs a lot of TLC. Compared to the other specs Engineering looks broken, left out, and sad.

Side thought: Would reducing the CD and duration of Plasma Probe be a possible solution for its up-time problems in endgame PvE (e.g. make bosses moving out of it less of a issue)? This may be a topic for another thread but the thought just occurred to me and I felt like throwing it out.

Understood! It's a rough draft and i know my thoughts tend to go all over the place...

Like i mentioned above... 2.7 and the lack of the DPS buffs is really unfortunate and quite disappointing. I sincerely do not want to wait for 6 months or a year for our other fixes to come out. Fixing Orbital Strike down also means fixing the other affected specs up.

→ 08.08.2013 - BW reveals plans to nerf Orbital Strike

→ Somewhere around 09.XX.2013 - Galactic Starfighter PTS - Dev responded that they are still working on the Orbital changes and are taking their time

→ 02.XX.2014 - Patch 2.6 brings Orbital Strike nerf

→ 04.08.2014 - Game Update 2.7 - Sniper (AOE) DPS still down due to 2.6 nerf with no news for the fixes to our broken middle spec and promised buffs made 8 months ago

→ 06.10.2014: Game Update 2.8 - since i genuinely doubt any DPS buffs will push forward in 2.7, the earliest we can hope the Sniper changes will be is in June 2014, around 10 months since they started looking into Orbital (August 2013) and 4 months since they rolled out the major Sniper nerf.

4 months is relatively short compared to what other classes had to wait for (Vengeance, Concealment, Assassins). Some of them are even still waiting. But we are not those other classes -.-

And yeah 2 PVE , 2 PVP and 2 wildcard, same as last round.

Also thought i'd add this here:

Snipers vs Sorcs

1. Lunagazer - Gunslinger - Dirty Fighting - 5/5/36 - 4'22.751s

2. Zah'ik - Sniper - Hybrid - 5/18/23 - 4'23.355s

3. Grey - Gunslinger - Dirty Fighting - 5/5/36 - 4'24.169s

4. Malow - Gunslinger - Dirty Fighting - 5/5/36 - 4'24.78s

5. Claimed - Gunslinger - Sharpshooter - 36/4/6 - 4'25.809s

1. Handcuff - Sage - Telekinetics - 3/36/7 - 4'31.893s

2. Saph'ryn - Sage - Telekinetics - 3/36/7 - 4'33.705s

3. Jurbsy - Sage - Telekinetics - 3/36/7 - 4'34.273s

4. Heartilly - Telekinetics - 3/36/7 - 4'34.377s

5. Rosalyn - Sage - Telekinetics - 3/36/7 - 4'36.900s

From the leaderboards. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=685275

We don't really want to compare with Pyrotech Mercenaries as that is a broken spec right now and is not working as intended. So against Sorcs, the nerf lowered the DPS gap. I guess that is a good thing. It is a good thing for tank and spank boss fights. But bosses are rarely that way. TK/Lightning is better AoE and if you go as far and try to compare with non ranged classes, like Smash, our AoE is very lacking. And versus Mercs/Mandos, the fact is Orbital < DFA/MV in its current iteration.

I can hope to think that they have the buffs to our specs sitting around on a paper in someone's desk, the question is how long are we going to wait for them (to bring our DPS and) fix Engineering and Lethality back up?

Also like rolling for Engineer, rolling for Lethality is part of its max DPS rotation. It creates a weird/unsual/"fun" playstyle but i doubt this is their intention as well. I'm looking forward to the promised buffs, but not looking forward to the idea of a year long wait.

*insert "suck it up snipers" here. you've been op far too long* >_<

And yeah 2 PVE , 2 PVP and 2 wildcard, same as last round.

 

Also thought i'd add this here:

 

Snipers vs Sorcs

 

1. Lunagazer - Gunslinger - Dirty Fighting - 5/5/36 - 4'22.751s

2. Zah'ik - Sniper - Hybrid - 5/18/23 - 4'23.355s

3. Grey - Gunslinger - Dirty Fighting - 5/5/36 - 4'24.169s

4. Malow - Gunslinger - Dirty Fighting - 5/5/36 - 4'24.78s

5. Claimed - Gunslinger - Sharpshooter - 36/4/6 - 4'25.809s

 

1. Handcuff - Sage - Telekinetics - 3/36/7 - 4'31.893s

2. Saph'ryn - Sage - Telekinetics - 3/36/7 - 4'33.705s

3. Jurbsy - Sage - Telekinetics - 3/36/7 - 4'34.273s

4. Heartilly - Telekinetics - 3/36/7 - 4'34.377s

5. Rosalyn - Sage - Telekinetics - 3/36/7 - 4'36.900s

 

From the leaderboards. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=685275

 

We don't really want to compare with Pyrotech Mercenaries as that is a broken spec right now and is not working as intended. So against Sorcs, the nerf lowered the DPS gap. I guess that is a good thing. It is a good thing for tank and spank boss fights. But bosses are rarely that way. TK/Lightning is better AoE and if you go as far and try to compare with non ranged classes, like Smash, our AoE is very lacking. And versus Mercs/Mandos, the fact is Orbital < DFA/MV in its current iteration.

 

I can hope to think that they have the buffs to our specs sitting around on a paper in someone's desk, the question is how long are we going to wait for them (to bring our DPS and) fix Engineering and Lethality back up?

 

Also like rolling for Engineer, rolling for Lethality is part of its max DPS rotation. It creates a weird/unsual/"fun" playstyle but i doubt this is their intention as well. I'm looking forward to the promised buffs, but not looking forward to the idea of a year long wait.

 

*insert "suck it up snipers" here. you've been op far too long* >_<

I'm going to have to stop you there.

You're not incorrect in saying that the orbital nerf closed gap between Sages and Gunslingers, and the playing field should be more even come 2.7 when both Telekinetics and Balance get a buff (PTS goes live soon, should start seeing data in the next few days). If the Bioware's goal was to make Sages more competitive compared to the other RDPS, then the buff coming in 2.7 is the obvious and only solution.

Your mention of smash really does irk me (sorry) because you're comparing single-target DPS specs to an AoE DPS spec, which are designed for fundamentally different purposes. Focus has a much lower single-target DPS potential than Vigilance but in any situation where you can consistently attack more than 1 target in melee range, Focus is the runaway winner for DPS output. It makes sense that a class designed for strong AoE would perform worse on single-target. You can argue that the same is true for Sages, with AoE abilities (Force in Balance / Telekinetic Wave) being a significant part of their strength in AoE situations, but then again neither spec is designed for the sole purpose of AoE. In a nutshell it is fine that single-target gunslinger specs (think: Sharpshooter, Hybrid, Dirty Fighting) would have a lower AoE potential than a spec which is designed around doing AoE damage. It just makes sense.

THAT SAID I think gunslinger AoE is in a weird place at the moment, with no real AoE burst outside of Saboteur, which plays a lot more clunky since the orbital nerf anyway. Dirty Fighting has mainly DoT AoE effects which is kind of useless for a fight like Corruptor Zero, while Sharpshooter has nothing special outside of being able to cast flyby in one GCD. Hybrid can pretty much spam Shrap Bomb and use Thermal Grenade on cooldown, which is energy sustainable and does reasonable damage, but requires mobs to be grouped a bit more tightly and is often impractical.

So I've babbled a bit and, if anything, probably come across like I don't give a **** what happens to gunslingers and snipers in the future, but I really do. I just think it's important to take a step back and try and view the changes holistically rather than tunneling on and gunslingers and getting angry because x ability does less damage than y ability or whatever it may be.

[EDIT: Just realized I used almost exclusively republic terms in the sniper forums. whoops.]

Nice to see, that we're getting started. SamuelAU brought up some very important points in the post above. I don't think MM and Lethality are supposed to excel in AoE situation, their strength in single target situations is already really high. We should have some AoE, no doubt, but we don't need to be able to compete with AoE-burst trees.

In addition, comparing with Melee dps trees/classes seems dangerous to me, because when I look at the classes, I think that Melee dps is supposed to bring different strengths to the field than ranged dps. Given the recent changes to several classes, it seems like AoE-burst is in the domain of Melee dps. (I also expect DfA to be nerfed in the 'near' future.)

Anyway, here are three or four topics/questions, that I would like to suggest:

1) Marksman currently lacks a fitting filler to blow through all the energy this tree has. Pre-2.6 we would use OS to burn through the overflowing energy during Sniper Volley. Currently, I try to do the same with Explosive Probe, however Explosive Probe has a shorter cooldown and can be used more frequently with smart use of Adrenaline Probe and our 2pc PvE setbonus.

This leads to the situation where we start spamming Snipe again and more than two Snipes in a row is simply dull and it feels like a huge waste of energy. This situation also devalues Sniper Volley, since the boost to alacrity and the additional energy no longer give room for additional 'special' abilities, but mostly for the only spammable attack that already appears in our rotation (and sometimes Rifle Shot or Explosive Probe).

With this in mind I would like to ask, whether MM can get one or more interesting filler abilities that work well together with Sniper Volley, or whether Sniper Volley could be redesigned so that the Alacrity boost no longer backfires on us (the cooldown reset on Followthrough is no longer enough to give us enough abilities to use while Sniper Volley is up) and the Energy regen boost is more fitting to our actual needs and we get a bonus of some other sort instead.

As it is, MM cannot take full use from Sniper Volley, because we cannot use all the energy it gives us and the alacrity allows us to go through our abilites so fast, that they aren't available again, once we're through with SoS, Ambush and SnipeSnipe.

2) Engineering has lost damage potential with the OS-changes which has made the tree even more situational. This tree relies heavily on its targets not moving too much and on the use of Scatter Bombs. In Operations, these conditions are rarely satisfied.

Is there a chance that we can get a thorough rework of the tree to make its strengths less situational and to bring it more in line with the spirit we have read about in the Q&A of Sentinels? Can we see such a rework with the next larger expansion?

3) Can we have a roadmap of the changes to Orbital Strike and all the related changes which you have hinted at in the PTS-forum before the launch of 2.6? Including an explanation what the reasoning is behind each change.

A remark about 3): The comment on the PTS-forum made me feel like we see some of the Sniper trees going through several incomplete forms when the final product has been decided already. This is simply repulsive.

We could ask to get all those changes at once.

4) I've heard several comments that Orbital Strike remains used in Single Target situations, because at some point it is the best filler attack left to use. This might be another thing to bring up, but I can't say much about it.

Edit: Just remembered another question: 5) What happened to our petition about Laze Target?

Made a reply to your pvp thread dude.

Regarding your comments on engineering there appears to be so many questions you could ask about it. There are people out there who think engineering is fine but then they're probably the people who feel that there's nothing at all wrong with scatter bombs. Every spec in the game has it's issues but for our class I do feel that Engineering is the one that is the most odd.

On the face of it, it has high utlity and has a fantastic feel to it (with the aid of emp discharge, brilliant skill imho), plasma probe is just simply awesome as both utility and damage. Very good burst with explosive probe and series of shots and then there's wall banging. So what's the problem? BW's own description of it being clunky is the best description for me.

The way I would describe it is engineering has a multiple personality disorder. It has AOE skills, single target skills and excellent utility/movement but the first two (aoe and single target) just aren't fluid. The spec works.....but it doesn't work.

At a basic level I'd like to see an indepth answer on just what they want the spec to be, what is meant to be it's strength...how do they want it to be played and exactly what changes are they going to do. We've known that they aren't happy with the spec but they have been far too quiet on what their plans are.

Edit: oh btw I've read a lot about the hybrid build and I'd like to find a way for that to be scrapped. From what I've read from pve snipers......that spec is causing too many problems.

Edit: Just remembered another question: 5) What happened to our petition about Laze Target?

No further response from any BW employee or dev. Here are both threads related to the topic that were sent in to Eric.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=674592

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=675601

Also, good replies everyone. I like the ideas popping up already.

No further response from any BW employee or dev. Here are both threads related to the topic that were sent in to Eric.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=674592

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=675601

 

Also, good replies everyone. I like the ideas popping up already.

That's why I was suggesting to ask the combat team about it. It was an attempt to continue the dialogue opened with our three question and they ignored it until now. I want to take this communication up again, because that's what this Class Rep stuff is for, I thought (opening a dialogue).

One thing, I'm wondering , you are all posting dps parses from people who are abusing the relics bug (with a 75/78 relic). If they ever fix the bug. What would our dps be with 2 78 relics. How much dps would we lose and how would we compare with sorcs. If we lose a lot of dps from that fix, we might actually be behind them dps wise (even worse with mercs).

So that's one thing we might have to take into consideration when we compare ourselves.

Everything else you guys said is correct (MM missing filler, engineering need to be reworked and every spec needs a little better aoe especially compared to mercs/sorcs with Death from above, etc).

AGREE 1) You're not incorrect in saying that the orbital nerf closed gap between Sages and Gunslingers, and the playing field should be more even come 2.7 when both Telekinetics and Balance get a buff (PTS goes live soon, should start seeing data in the next few days). If the Bioware's goal was to make Sages more competitive compared to the other RDPS, then the buff coming in 2.7 is the obvious and only solution.

AGREE 2)

In a nutshell it is fine that single-target gunslinger specs (think: Sharpshooter, Hybrid, Dirty Fighting) would have a lower AoE potential than a spec which is designed around doing AoE damage. It just makes sense.

Oh i absolutely agree. I did not think that such a short phrase about Smash could be interpreted so deeply. Ofcourse Rage is an AoE spec and should put out more DPS than single target specs (MM and Lethality)

AGREE 3)

THAT SAID I think gunslinger AoE is in a weird place at the moment, with no real AoE burst outside of Saboteur, which plays a lot more clunky since the orbital nerf anyway. Dirty Fighting has mainly DoT AoE effects which is kind of useless for a fight like Corruptor Zero, while Sharpshooter has nothing special outside of being able to cast flyby in one GCD. Hybrid can pretty much spam Shrap Bomb and use Thermal Grenade on cooldown, which is energy sustainable and does reasonable damage, but requires mobs to be grouped a bit more tightly and is often impractical.

It is in a weird place. For its purpose it is an impractical spec and is the only spec dependent on its environment (you can count rolling lethality here as well but more on engineering tbh).

4)

So I've babbled a bit and, if anything, probably come across like I don't give a **** what happens to gunslingers and snipers in the future, but I really do. I just think it's important to take a step back and try and view the changes holistically rather than tunneling on and gunslingers and getting angry because x ability does less damage than y ability or whatever it may be.

I don't think anyone in this thread is anything like this at all.

[EDIT: Just realized I used almost exclusively republic terms in the sniper forums. whoops.]

AGREE 5)

In addition, comparing with Melee dps trees/classes seems dangerous to me, because when I look at the classes, I think that Melee dps is supposed to bring different strengths to the field than ranged dps.

Anyway for comparison i think it is fair that we compare ourselves to only 2 DPS classes, Sorcerers and Mercenaries which are the only other ranged DPS classes/specs in the game. My opinion is that we should leave Operative DPS, Juggernauts, Assassins, Marauders out of our comparison. I can "accept" the fact that some if not all of these classes can out DPS a Sniper if that is what BW wants because these classes are melee and have to deal with the limitations of only being able to DPS from a ~5m range.

Also i think i'm going to make a google doc again. We have until June and im sure we will have a lot of questions from snipers/slingers.

I like Mathemagica's 1) question on MM and also quite curious about

A remark about 3): The comment on the PTS-forum made me feel like we see some of the Sniper trees going through several incomplete forms when the final product has been decided already. This is simply repulsive.

We could ask to get all those changes at once.

From the dev responses that ive read (don't have link) , it feels like the Sniper changes are slated/staggered to come out over a period of time. Beginning with the Orbital nerf and working their way up towards the promised Engineering and Lethality buffs / fixes and probably even the Laze Target petition that they asked from us.

For me that question about laze target was a waste of time, I honestly hope we don't end up wasting another question on it Granted in the first round of questions we were in a good state without that many issues and whilst we are still in a pretty good state compared to say concealment operatives we have a lot more issues now.

Laze target is soooooooooooo far down the list in my book it's not even worth mentioning.

Google doc for questions and voting

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtS6aucNXnGndFNtdDN5UTJGLW9ZNGcydEFOUTR2aFE&usp=sharing.

Like the previous round of brainstorming, submit your question(s) in this thread, and i will add it to the google doc. Before our deadline is up we will vote on which questions we want to ask the Combat Team. I am thinking first week of June for voting with the week after for paraphrasing, fine-tuning, editing of the winning questions. The [sniper/Slinger] forums will have 2 PVE, 2 PVP and 2 other questions.

You can submit as many questions as you like.... but please keep in mind one person submitting too many questions may end up convuliting the entire process. I suggest picking a handful of quality questions and avoid questions that are similar to one another, questions that do not open dialogue with the combat team, avoid yes or no questions, avoid questions that try to compare against melee classes, no questions "about why Pyro Mercs are OP" and lastly avoid questions that can be answered by the forum community itself.

Also before a ton of draft questions come out, some beginner questions/ideas we would want to ask about our AC:

PVE

MM's / Lethality / Engineering's DPS?

(Promised) Fixes to Lethality and Engineering?

MM's "new and odd" Sniper Volley rotation?

Offensive cooldowns? (Laze Target)

Any problems, QoL wishlist for PVE Snipers/Slingers?

PVP

Defensive cooldowns and survivability?

Mobility?

Any problems, QoL wishlist for PVP Snipers/Slingers?

====================================================

EDIT: Also @SamuelAU i think this is a better way of trying to say what i meant with the Smash comparison.

I agree that DPS numbers wise, we should compare our dps output with ranged DPS and not melee DPS. What i was trying to say about the Smash comment is that:

Both Snipers and Marauders are pure DPS specs. Our DPS specializations are similar and specific to 3 different roles. Marksman/Carnage for burst, Annihilation/Lethality for sustained DOT oriented DPS, and Rage/Engineering for AoE DPS. UNLIKE Smash/Focus, our Engineering/Saboteur faces several problems that is non existent with the AoE DPS spec of our melee pure DPS variant.

1. Engineering is dependent on the environment

2. MAX DPS as Engineering offers a melee playstyle that is not intended for a ranged class

3. Requires using an defensive ability in order to do DPS

4. Keeping roll on cooldown (and the melee requirement) is a huge deterrent in raids

5. Has a clunky rotation

These are the things i had in mind but was not able to type down when i made that brief comment on Sniper versus Smash/Focus spec.

I posted this in the PvP thread, but this one seems more active:

Arenas are exactly the reason for the 2.7 changes. I am glad to see most of them. Not happy about the changes to flash grenade, but not a deal breaker. I like the change to hunker down and dodge. Finally, Gunslinger/Sniper gets the equivalent of a "get out of jail free" card that every other class has had for a while. The other classes that are whining about the change to Dodge can go eat a ****. Hunker down change will help alleviate the issues of focus target AoEs and wasting the skill since you can pick up, move out of AoEs and reset with it still available for the remainder of the time. A capable Gunslinger/Sniper will draw a lot of attention and focus fire and even with our damage reduction abilities we can't withstand all of it.

Can we get Orbital Strike to at least be equal to other classes AoEs? Currently FF/OS does 3108 damage over 12 seconds, though looking at Sage's Earthquake it does 3714-4036 slows by 30% and 30% chance to knockdown in a 6 second channel. Sentinel/Guardian Cyclone Slash 1608-1856 instant cast (include Smash/Force Sweep and glad they are nerfing that a bit, but still hits way harder than any other AoE attack). I understand this is a nerf due to PvE use, but the extent of my PvE is doing Black Hole dailies and the rest of my time is on PvP. Seriously, players don't even try to get out of the way of it nowadays because it hits like an auto attack. At least before it could be used for area denial.

For Arenas and some PvE, Combat Sentinels are preferred over SS/MM GS/Sniper for single target dps. That really shouldn't be the case. It should be split, but Combat Sents bring an additional utility to the fight that other classes don't. What does a SS/MM bring to the table other than ranged dps? We don't have very many CCs compared to some other classes. Our dps does not exceed any other class. We can't heal others. We can't taunt. We can't tank. Oh, we can't be leapt to, but that is not true because Knights/Warriors have their Zealous Leap from 10m that is single target, hits for 3000-3500 and immobilizes.

What does a Gunslinger/Sniper in any spec bring to the fight/warzone that no other class(es) bring? This is the question I have for the community and the devs. We did have the ranged AoE CC, but that is getting nerfed due to the whining from other classes. Right now, the answer I see is...nothing...this is why we are commonly bypassed for other classes.

We need to speak up strongly about improving this class or we are going to continue to get nerfed due to the whining of the other classes while the other classes continue to get buffs.

I really hope Marksmanship snipers get some serious QoL buffs that discourages using OS as part of a single-target rotation. Right now, I like the 1.5 second cast time and low energy cost but it just doesn't feel right to keep using OS all the time when I have to rely on it to keep the uptime of my damage.

WTB Laze Snipe change too please.

EDIT: I think Target Acquired could make a possible buff too. Energy gain and Armor Penetration is great but considering the 10 second window... maybe adjust the MM Talent to favor TA more? (Reduced Cooldown, Additional Armor Penetration, Small Damage increase, Longer Duration)

I still don't fully understand how these spreadsheets work, so I have to ask: We aren't supposed to write our suggestions on the spreadsheet ourselves, right?

If I got this right, I would like to suggest question 1) from my original post. It might need some rewording so that it actually includes a question mark etc, but the core of the question is there.

I would also like to suggest question 3) of my original post (with or without the additional remark). We should keep in mind though, that this question might answer itself until June (three months until submission...). Therefore we should certainly have a backup-question to replace this one, if this one makes it among the top 3.

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On the topic of engineering: I spent some time thinking about the trees mechanics and tried to find all possible flaws of the spec that make it so clunky. I didn't have the opportunity to confirm certain things in-game, because I'm at work, but here's a short list of the core issues in my opinion:

1) Plasma Probe and Orbital Strikes positional requirement combined with their duration + cast time makes them weak abilities in Operation boss fights (and possibly arenas?).

2) The cooldowns of Engineering align badly. To give you an idea, I list the cooldowns of the most important abilities here (correct me, when I made a mistake).

Electrified Railgun: 6s

Series of Shots: 10.5s (because of Imperial Auto Loader)

Explosive Probe: 25.5s (because of Imperial Auto Loader)

Plasma Probe: 18s

Interrogation Probe: 18s

These cooldowns force delays of abilities and will frequently clash with each other. One of the most important change to make Engineering a fluid (or 'natural') spec is a change to these cooldowns.

(My preferred solution would be to see PP, IP and SoS have the same cooldown to prevent them from clashing in each other. In addition, their cooldown should be a multiple of 6 to align well with Electrified Railgun. Moreover, the cooldown of EP should be a multiple of the cooldown of SoS to really make them a combo.)

3) Lack of reasonable fillers. The cooldowns above also create many situations, where one is waiting for one of these cooldowns to finish. The filler abilities of Engineering cost too much Energy which leads to many situations where we either have to use Rifle Shot quite often or our energy bar behaves like a Yoyo due to Adrenaline Probe and EMP-Discharge.

If the cooldowns above were shorter, such that either SoS or IP+PP is available in every window, the need for fillers would go down drastically which might also improve the energy managment of Engineering.

4) Melee requirement. The design of EMP-discharge and Scatterbomb are a huge encouragement to play in melee range, but it's just wrong to have this on a sniper. In addition, taking full advantage of EMP-discharge is quite difficult, since you want to use Covered Escape, Adrenaline Probe and Shield Probe just before using EMP-discharge without capping Energy at any point.

5) Duration of Electrified Railgun and stacking: A stacking dot that expires after 6 seconds makes the windows in between, where other abilities than Snipe and Overload Shot (and SoS) can be used, very tight. This is an even bigger problem, since Snipe and Overload Shot apply Electrified Railgun at different moments relative to the moment when their GCD starts.

Increasing the duration of Electrified Railgun by 1 second would go a long way to allow an easy switch from Overload Shot to Snipe when refreshing Electrified Railgun.

Maybe we could use one question to describe these flaws in a short but clear manner and ask if and how they could fix this (we can add suggestions, but I think the question should focus on the problems and not on specific possible solutions).

*snip*

I agree with points 1 + 2 + 5 and disagree with 3 and 4.

1) It's true that positioning of these two skills is important as there are several times where I must delay Plasma Probe as the boss is not in position. However, it's simple enough to use your other DoTs in the meantime and the fact that Plasma Probe's damage is front-loaded in the first 6 seconds for most of it helps a great deal. Orbital Strike is good only as a filler or to reach adds that your other AoE attacks can't hit due to its massive radius.

2) If Series of Shots had a 1.5 second lower cooldown (i.e. 7.5 or 9 second), it would definitely help to make sure you could get 2 of them for every 18 second rotation. Right now, using Explosive Probe after your DoTs and before SoS causes you to delay your DoTs, which creates part of the "clunkiness". It's also awkward to keep up the Electrified Railgun DoT sub-30% as our execute, Takedown, does not keep it up and the damage it does is pretty low even if you maximize its uptime like I tried in this parse . In there, I had over 70% uptime on it and it still only did barely over 8% of my total damage.

3) Our filler is supposed to be Overload Shot and it serves that purpose fairly well. The only issue I have with is our Calculated Pursuit buff that makes it free for 4 casts goes away if we have used it even once as soon as we go back into cover. You will almost never use those 4 casts because your more important cooldowns will be ready in time. I'd prefer if they made less casts available, but have them buff Overload Shot in the meantime or allow us to keep the buff when we go into cover after being used once or more.

4) Personally, I love the melee requirement of Engineering and taking it away would ruin a great deal of the fun/uniqueness that goes along with the spec. The problem right now is that the damage is either way too high if the boss fight allows for perfect rolls and too low if it does not. They should keep the roll, but make it so that the roll only does damage (at least big damage) if used after EMP Discharge to empower it. Also, instead of just dropping bombs all along the path where you roll, just place a debuff on any object in that path that you can trigger with your next attack similar to Explosive Probe.

5) This would be nice for a Quality of Life change.

I agree with points 1 + 2 and disagree with 3, 4, and 5.

 

1) It's true that positioning of these two skills is important as there are several times where I must delay Plasma Probe as the boss is not in position. However, it's simple enough to use your other DoTs in the meantime and the fact that Plasma Probe's damage is front-loaded in the first 6 seconds for most of it helps a great deal. Orbital Strike is good only as a filler or to reach adds that your other AoE attacks can't hit due to its massive radius.

 

2) If Series of Shots had a 1.5 second lower cooldown (i.e. 7.5 or 9 second), it would definitely help to make sure you could get 2 of them for every 18 second rotation. Right now, using Explosive Probe after your DoTs and before SoS causes you to delay your DoTs, which creates part of the "clunkiness". It's also awkward to keep up the Electrified Railgun DoT sub-30% as our execute, Takedown, does not keep it up and the damage it does is pretty low even if you maximize its uptime like I tried in this parse . In there, I had over 70% uptime on it and it still only did barely over 8% of my total damage.

 

3) Our filler is supposed to be Overload Shot and it serves that purpose fairly well. The only issue I have with is our Calculated Pursuit buff that makes it free for 4 casts goes away if we have used it even once as soon as we go back into cover. You will almost never use those 4 casts because your more important cooldowns will be ready in time. I'd prefer if they made less casts available, but have them buff Overload Shot in the meantime or allow us to keep the buff when we go into cover after being used once or more.

 

4) Personally, I love the melee requirement of Engineering and taking it away would ruin a great deal of the fun/uniqueness that goes along with the spec. The problem right now is that the damage is either way too high if the boss fight allows for perfect rolls and too low if it does not. They should keep the roll, but make it so that the roll only does damage (at least big damage) if used after EMP Discharge to empower it. Also, instead of just dropping bombs all along the path where you roll, just place a debuff on any object in that path that you can trigger with your next attack similar to Explosive Probe.

 

5) This would be nice for a Quality of Life change.

To your fourth point, I like the melee option but it shouldn't be a requirement for viable DPS in that spec. The current DPS output for Engineering is awful without Scatter Bombs. Snipers and Gunslingers were designed as a ranged DPS, not a pseudo-melee DPS, so there should be no melee requirement for the class period. Personally, I think Scatter Bombs should be untouched and the rest of the spec just brought into a viable state ignoring how Scatter Bombs effects the output. One thing at a time.

I was thinking and, if Bioware wants Lethality to be the top Agent sustained single target DPS spec, they should either increase the damage done with Weakening Blast(it currently does less than a Rifle Shot, but that's not the point of using it, obviously) or increase it's damage bonus to poison effects by maybe 5% or more(though 5% would probably be more than enough?).

Not only would this not help the hybrid and possibly make it overtake the hybrid because Weakening Blast's bonus would be more than the hybrid's additional damage, but it would further solidify Lethality as single target sustained because i'm sure if you ask any Lethality Agent, they would tell you that it's very dumb to use WB on most little adds(obviously not the case for elites and champions with lots of health though), and therefore would improve single target sustained DPS and nothing more.

I have nothing against the hybrid and like that people can turn 3 viable trees into 4 or 5, and if Bioware has changed their stance on the Hybrid, then that's fine as long as they balance the two specs together, but our top tier skill(and being able to use Takedown frequently as well as our roll and Devouring Microbes skill) should not have the possibility of being overpowered by a DOT and some cluster bombs in another tree. This is not to say that Lethality is exactly weak at the moment, it can parse decent numbers. However, it is not parsing near as much as Pyro or Concealment, one of which isn't even a single target sustained DOT spec, which should have the highest overall DPS according to Bioware's supposed metrics(they've said this about Annihilation as well), and pretty similar numbers to the Hybrid, which is possibly not an intended spec. Even if Weakening Blast costed 5-7 energy(they talked about this once before iirc), as long as it boosted our DPS by 100-200, it would be an excellent buff to push us over the edge without increasing the Hybrid's numbers as well like a flat buff to Cull or Corrosive Grenade/Dart would(unless the Lethal Takedown damage buff to Cull was up from 3% to something a bit higher).

Additonally, since RNG is being phased out a bit, I personally think that the Lethal Takedown skill should be changed from a 45% chance to trigger Lethal Takedown from damage with Cull, to instead a 100% chance to trigger whenever Cull's additonal internal damage happens. This would remove the possibility of Lethal Takedown not proccing even from a full Cull with Grenade and Dart up and slightly further promote Culling with poison effects up, which is not to say that it isn't at the moment, but it's the best way I can think to remove the RNG.

Not regarding Lethality, Marksmanship definitely needs some QoL buffs like DieGhostDie mentioned, since one of their main skills, Orbital Strike, has been severely nerfed. Saying Orbital was not one of Marksman's main skills is like saying Snipe is not intended for the Lethality rotation whatsoever even though it recieve a buff in the tree. Maybe it and Engineering are getting reworked in 2.8 and we just don't know it yet(possible since we're getting to ask questions last, possibly stopping us from asking redundant questions that will be answered with 2.8 balances, but i'm probably grasping for straws in that assumption), but only time will tell that. That time will include an additional quarter of a year without an update to sniper DPS balance.

To your fourth point, I like the melee option but it shouldn't be a requirement for viable DPS in that spec. The current DPS output for Engineering is awful without Scatter Bombs. Snipers and Gunslingers were designed as a ranged DPS, not a pseudo-melee DPS, so there should be no melee requirement for the class period. Personally, I think Scatter Bombs should be untouched and the rest of the spec just brought into a viable state ignoring how Scatter Bombs effects the output. One thing at a time.

Fair enough. Rolling probably shouldn't be a requirement just to do decent single target DPS. They did it with Lethality for the most part as you don't need to roll, but if you do so, you gain some extra DPS as your reward.

Also, It would be great if the make Hemo blast (weakening i think) a self buff or a mob debuff that can only be eaten by the caster. It's insanely frustrating when you have 2 DF /Leth smugglers/agents in a group.

~Lunagazer

Fair enough. Rolling probably shouldn't be a requirement just to do decent single target DPS. They did it with Lethality for the most part as you don't need to roll, but if you do so, you gain some extra DPS as your reward.

I really like the way Lethality plays, including the roll, currently. If we could get Scatter Bombs to be to Engineering like Corrosive Mine is to Lethality I'd be all for that. I'm also in agreement for changing how Weakening Blast functions as that tick down from other Slingers' is very noticeable. Lethal Takedown to 100% isn't a bad idea, but I could see BW thinking that would be too good and reduce damage elsewhere in the spec.

There seems to be more concern about the Lethality tree from other players than I thought. I'll keep it in mind when thinking up possible questions.

To address what OMGITSJAD said about the takedown proc...

There is really no reason for takedown to *not* be a 100% proc. You won't get a proc maybe 1 out of every 1000 or more culls, so why not just save the frustration when it doesn't proc and make it guaranteed...