I have played both Operative lethality and Sniper lethality, and they both seem a little lackluster in pvp currently. It's not a bad spec, you can kill stuff too with these in PvP but to me they don't feel like a self-sufficient specs. It's like some sort of a support DPS, good when your enemy is busy with your friends, quite terrible when they get to fight you.

 

Marksmanship, Engineering are so much more self-sufficient, reliable in any fight against most of the classes.

Yeah, it's true i do usually 200k more damage with leth than marksmanshim and about 50k-150k more than engineering but these big damage numbers don't feel like they contribute to my team winning, the game will be still decided by that jug tank carrying the huttball or that rage mara smashing everyone on voidstar.

 

On huttball it's terrible. By the time your poisons will start to kick in, the ball will already get into your goal line. On voidstar it's horrible against any zerging, and poisons no longer interrupt capping. Engineering is so damn good against melee zerg.

 

Here is my gripe with lethality, i will focus mostly on sniper lethality:

 

Operative lethality problems:

1. Tactical Advantage requirement, you just don't have a way to get those without getting into melee range. If you go for for HoTs from medicine tree to get TA, you dont get weakening blast.

 

Sniper lethality problems:

1. Still big energy problems here. Yes we have that +2 energy from every crit poison, but you need to wait till you can reap the rewards. In the mean time your target can just end up dead and you have to say bye bye to your poisons. If you go for corrosive darting everyone in your LoS, you are not actually killing anybody.

 

2. Worst glass cannon: it's terrible. A lethality sniper is so damn squishy, that if anybody accidentally sneezed at him, he would probably die. The problem here lies in ballistic dampers being in a quite incovenient MM tier 2 to grab it. if you have 31 pts in lethality, you have to sacrifice either +10 energy from Engineering (which further exacerbates pt. 1), or even worse sacrifice cunning. No ballistic dampers? Have fun eating smashes, thermal detonators at their full damage. MM and engineering just have to take cover when they hear the bomb ticking, and instantly they got -30% less damage.

 

I can live with other pre-designed weaknesses: like target switching troubles, longer set-up time and so on. Lethality gets to destroy tanks instead. It's crap against healers. And the lingering poisons talent, instead of making lethality a counter to stealth classes, is made obsolete by their ability to have double cleansing (clease + evasion) or complete removal of them by the *i hate it* force shroud.

 

So all these weaknesses just to be capable to kill tanks? Pyrotech is already eating tanks for breakfast and they don't have to deal with all this crap that lethality does. What's the usual assassin resistance to internal damage by the way, tanks and non-tanks?

 

So to sum it up: lethality just doesn't feel on par with MM and Engineering currently. It lacks the control and burst of MM and it has zero survivability compared to Engineering,

 

Perhaps we could get some Rage/Focus treatment for this skill tree as well?

Edited November 28, 2012 by NoTomorrow

Lastly when I played against a Lethality sniper with my Shadow, it seemed that Resillience doesn't perfectly remove his DoTs like before, now I remove the main DoT, and get stuck with the "Lingering" DoT.

 

But I agree Lethality is a bit lacking in comparison of other specs. Most of the time if you try to throw Culls you end with the guy killed by a mate during the setup or before Cull end, meanig you've just waste energy and time dealing few damage. Lethality is stuck to focus the guy who the group doesn't focus.

 

Now speaking about Cull (Sniper version)... its damage is good/nice but it's nothing amazing. At most it's as good if not inferior to a Marksman's Ambush + Followthrough, while Marksman being simpler and shorter to setup, more energy friendly and more bursty.

Since launch (I started my Snipe as Lethality), I felt like Cull is missing one hit. I mean, why when all 3s-channeled abilities have 4 hits (apart from Master Strike and Ravage which are a bit special in their way of damaging), and Cull only 3 ? I wonder if there are some people who reminds the old animation of Cull... There was clearly 4 shots, but 3 hits.

The cull damage potential is something arround ~500-700 white damage X3, 800-1000 yellow damage x6 so more or less it's arround 7200, which frankly speaking is not that extremely far from Series of Shots, which requires no set-up at all. Of course series of shots is crap against Deflection, Saberward and tanks overall.

 

I would like to shorten the set up time, but i cannot affort to ignore weakening blast, as I loose a lot of DPS with it, and since weakening blast is a free energy action, i miss the opportunity to regen some energy after wasting 40 energy on corrosive dart + corrosive grenade. If I cull immediately after those, I end up in slow energy regen bracket, which is terrible.

 

As for resilence, thanks for pointing that out. Does that mean that when resilence ends, the lingering poisons start damage the shadow? If this is true, than we probably got a pretty decent tool to push assasins out of stealth.

 

Sniper cull was always 3 shots, series of shots however: 4. I still think that my highest PvE damage was with SoS: 10 000 damage (2500 per hit, 4 crits).

Edited November 28, 2012 by NoTomorrow

Reminds me of when Ops ruled the galaxy and you were guaranteed to have darts flying at you like an Indiana Jones movie.

 

My GS is saboteur, and sub-50 sniper MM. I think DF is good but just don't enjoy it as much as the other trees. I rolled them though partially because I get my fill of DOT for force user toons, and just wanted to shoot/burst the hell out of things.

 

I'm interested in seeing what any sniper lethality for pvp proponents post...

I'm interested in seeing what any sniper lethality for pvp proponents post...

 

Their arguments will be the following:

1. Lethality hard counters tanks, something that MM has big trouble handling. (so you killed that tank, not eat the dirty from that marauder, assassin or any other DPS)

2. Lethality does most damage, probably providing PvP screenshots with 1m damage (all those millions of damage gets to be healed nicely by a healer, nobody dying (compared to MM burst that can actually overwhelm a healer)

3. Solving lethality energy problems, would make the poisons spamable and thus the whole spec OP (poisons alone don't kill anything)

4. If Lethality would not be squishy, than there would be no point in playing other specs. (which is of course very wrong)

Lethality is good in Huttball and PvE. It can shine in other areas depending on your enemies.

 

Having more than one can be a liability though.

Just FYI Ballistic Dampers x3 can nearly absorb a full derpsmash, so it's more than just a 30% reduction. Add in the talented ability further up in marksman while entrench is active to reduce AoE damage by 30/60% and just watch the tears roll

How do you plan to use lethality in huttball? you will break any mezzes and stuns, this is not something i would like to do on huttballer. And its target switching weakness is heavily felt in this map when hutball jumps from one player to another.

 

You cannot kill fast a dude that needs to die ASAP

Just FYI Ballistic Dampers x3 can nearly absorb a full derpsmash, so it's more than just a 30% reduction. Add in the talented ability further up in marksman while entrench is active to reduce AoE damage by 30/60% and just watch the tears roll

 

Ballistic dampers has 3 charges, each can absorb 30%. I don't know how all these DR numbers stack, especially siege bunker 60%, ballistic dampers 30% and armor 25%. (smash is kinetic damage). Of course when you have BF and entrench up with MM siege bunker, smash will be a joke. But we are talking about lethality which has to make big sacrifices to get ballistic dampers, like this one for example:

 

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#400bcMZ0cZGbbkrMGdhR.2

 

You dont get energy tanks, no corrosive grenade snare, while hold your ground is pretty damn important.

Edited November 28, 2012 by NoTomorrow

Well not to mention you have to have an insane Crit% in order to even have a chance of reaping the benefits of a possibility to regen energy. Indeed one of the biggest drawbacks is energy and the extremely long windup to damage. Nothing more ticks me off then to set up a target with my poisons, weakening blast, then just as I'm about to cull a derpsmasher rolls through and decimates them, leaving me with a corrosive grenade CD to wait on

How do you plan to use lethality in huttball? you will break any mezzes and stuns, this is not something i would like to do on huttballer. And its target switching weakness is heavily felt in this map when hutball jumps from one player to another.

 

You cannot kill fast a dude that needs to die ASAP

 

Well tactics vary depending on who you're playing with and against. I can explain how to nuke a ball carrier, but you'd probably say " he could throw the ball to X or he can get cleansed or ....". But "they could" and "they will" are two different things. This is why I don't explain viability with hypothetical situations / team comps since fully outlining a scenario would become a TL;DR affair.

 

 

I will say your last line is wrong, though. Poisons + cull do more damage than you think.

Overall i think Sniper/ Gunslinger is in a good place and i very much enjoy playing mine in all kinds of specs.

 

I have played both Operative lethality and Sniper lethality, and they both seem a little lackluster in pvp currently. It's not a bad spec, you can kill stuff too with these in PvP but to me they don't feel like a self-sufficient specs. It's like some sort of a support DPS, good when your enemy is busy with your friends, quite terrible when they get to fight you.

 

 

Lethality is a DPS support spec no doubt about it. As you noted It can produce very high damage totals but cannot burst on demand, which is why it can only function well with a complementary team composition i.e. for ranked you will need other DPS in your team capable of fulfilling the burst role well. Lethality can put massive pressure on the opposing team and healers which is why i believe there can be a place for it but it is very situational (thankfully respecs are free and relatively quick to do). Mopping up the rest before the healers have a chance to return can be easier with poisons ticking everywhere.

 

My biggest annoyance is how it breaks cc and it can take ages to leave combat to rest due to some dot still ticking somewhere. That's just a by product of the spec and one i have to put up with.

 

It's also a very good spec for OPS bosses but that's not for here, except any changes would obviously impact PvE and the devs would need to consider that.

 

Still big energy problems here

 

Played (as a support DPS) and geared correctly there are no energy issues. Managing the energy to maximise Lethality's potential is a lot of fun and rewarding. I am surprised you raised this tbh.

 

For example you can spread your dots so they are everywhere (one corr nade/ shrap bomb can hit up to three people). You can then pick a target to go to town on. After that one is dead you can then pick another which might very well be infected with your poisons and is ready for burst right away. Rifle shot/ flurry of bullets as required.

 

Worst glass cannon: it's terrible. A lethality sniper is so damn squishy, that if anybody accidentally sneezed at him, he would probably die.

 

 

 

haha that was funny but i cannot agree. Survivability is just fine for me. Trading ballistic dampers for improved movement speed after debilitate/ dirty kick isn't too shabby. hmm actually i would like to get the cleanse Scounderals/ Operatives get when activating dodge. Make that skill class specific instead of advanced class specific and i would be happy

 

Operative lethality problems:

 

I have an Lethality Operative running around lowbie pvp atm. It is a lot of fun but yeah i agree it could do with some adjustments. Personally, I would like to see Weakening Blast tweaked a bit to have either its range extented to 30m and/ or provide TA. See how that goes.

 

Perhaps we could get some Rage/Focus treatment for this skill tree as well?

 

I just think that class needs adjusting, not others brought up to their level! Maybe by virtue of picking Focus/ Rage it removes the aoe effect of Sweep/ Smash i.e. it can still crit for high numbers to keep people who like that happy but only SINGLE target. Much like our big hitter ambush/ aimed shot. Just a suggestion.

 

 

I see you play your Sniper on Red Eclipse, may I ask your toon's name?

Edited November 28, 2012 by CrixusBoR

Well lets say we can add the corrosive grenade management to the list of spec specific skills a good sniper needs to learn in order to be a good lethality user. We are certainly expected to throw the CG on multiple enemies. More enemies hit by CG, more potential cull targets. I can live with that.

 

We do get a 12% (lethal dose) crit chance buff (+extra 3% for lethality), so its more probable to crit. Since my pvp crit chance is 40%, with these bonuses i get to smth like 50-55% crit chance, which roughly translates into every second poison giving me 2 energy. But i would never play lethality on a power stacked sniper, it's just asking for trouble.

 

If corrosive dart started ticking immediately, then this could potentially gives 2 energy back instantly, but we have to wait a few seconds until first poison tick

yup df/lethality is sub-par

sure

 

I see you play your Sniper on Red Eclipse, may I ask your toon's name?

 

at the risk of being hunted by all Red Eclipse Shadow/Assassin players (they have sworn vengeance for my assassin bashing posts ), I will tell you my name: Express Delivery (you may meet my other Delivery alts as well)

Well tactics vary depending on who you're playing with and against. I can explain how to nuke a ball carrier, but you'd probably say " he could throw the ball to X or he can get cleansed or ....". But "they could" and "they will" are two different things. This is why I don't explain viability with hypothetical situations / team comps since fully outlining a scenario would become a TL;DR affair.

 

 

I will say your last line is wrong, though. Poisons + cull do more damage than you think.

 

You have a very little window to react on huttball as a ranged DPS, If somehow i am caught with pants down by an enemy lethality sniper, i have plenty of time to get by butt out of LoS before he starts culling me.

You have a very little window to react on huttball as a ranged DPS, If somehow i am caught with pants down by an enemy lethality sniper, i have plenty of time to get by butt out of LoS before he starts culling me.

 

This is true, and I'm not saying you're wrong by any means. The best scenario to use Lethality is pegging-down an enemy tank, or raining down on people in an open area while they're being attacked by other people. (Basically any scenario where they don't notice you setting up poisons, or see it but are too pre-occupied with getting attacked by others to deal with you.) It's not a main/solo-DPS spec by any means.

 

I consider it more of the "crap, this guy bled me out while I was fighting that Marauder/Assasin/Jugg" spec.

Edited November 28, 2012 by Lexlo

DOTS?

 

Cleansed.

I hope everyone believes this post and continues to think lethality snipers are horrible. that way less ppl play them and then less QQ post about them.