First of all, so many people are posting their supposed numbers but either aren't providing screenshot proof or aren't attacking the proper OPERATION test dummy. If you are attacking any other test dummy, you ARE NOT getting an accurate reading of how much DPS you are truly capable of.

Plenty of DPS parsers have been posted validating the "supposed" numbers on the forum post I made that you linked to in your original post. If you really want me to post some screenshots then I can take you some when I get home today, but I kind of see it as a non-issue since other operative have posted screen shots with numbers that almost mirror the results that I was achieving.

If you really think these numbers are not tested on the operation test dummies, then you might be in denial, or just upset that you are not able to pull the same numbers.

Perhaps your gear needs to be tweaked with the correct mods / enhancements? Or your DPS rotation needs work, either way your passive aggressive disbelief does not help anybody, nor do I see you posting any numbers at all for that matter. Just the same old crap I see everyday, no helpful information, just links to shadowpriest and other WoW affiliated theory crafting sites.

This is not world of warcraft, the numbers are different. World of Warcraft theory crafting is not a constant that you can base all future MMO theory crafting off of.

Could one of y'all post the rotation you are using?

Also are there any numbers on the Legacy PVP dummies?

Could one of y'all post the rotation you are using?

 

Also are there any numbers on the Legacy PVP dummies?

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=409392

Here are the rotations I was using for concealment and lethality. The DPS being pulled from each spec is also listed in the post.

The misinformed OP was trying to bash the thread, claiming their were not screenshots posted, yet as you can see from this thread, those numbers are achievable and the OP just has a very weak understanding of the class.

Most top guilds are sponsored. What I said were examples. It is easier to get examples from top guilds, and top guilds matter whereas everything after the top 100 doesn't (in this context as they don't play competitive). Paragon is one of the many hardcore raiding guilds. I never said I was currently a hardcore raider in WoW, I went to play that game casual long ago. Paragon, like other hardcore raiding guilds, would indeed class stack if it'd get them the kill earlier:.

Paragon is not like other hardcore raiding guilds. They are a world-class professional raiding community. By your definition only .01% of raiding guilds (not all guilds, just RAIDING guild) qualify as hardcore raiding guilds. Developers NEVER balance classes in PvE based around what this immeasurably small minority of players does because it is utterly non-representational of how regular hardcore raiding guilds function. Most TOP guilds are sponsored. That's because they represent the top 20 guilds out of 12 million players. They are hardcore professionally, not to be confused with regular hardcore guilds.

Also: "Certain classes are always better in special situations than others but after the recent nerfs all classes are good enough. Class stacking is obviously always helpful but that doesn't mean it's required and it has most effect during progress raids anyway when you have to get the absolutely best performance out of the raid."

Did you not read the article you cited or were you just trusting no one would read it? Like I said, Paragon might class stack to get a world first kill, but its not their predominant method of clearing content.

I can ignore everything else you've said because you're a poser who doesn't have a clue how competitive raiding works.

Fully buffed with stim (no adrenal), 4pc Rakata, 1 Columi, a few BM pieces because I like the stats (ear/implants). Also, I screwed up the rotation a few times (around 150 seconds and at 250-300 I was low on Energy because of another screw up) so the DPS is lower than it could be, but in an Operation it's likely that even this is a bit high.

Spec: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#401McZGIrRdzMdhoZhM.1 (it's /almost/ optimal, but I like the TA gen and faster heal on KI in Ops. Super useful.)

Parse: http://www.fryingtime.com/?filename=combat_2012-04-18_00_49_58_658867.txt

Overview:

Duration - 5min

Damage - 352,694

DPS - 1175

Maurader (guildie, full buffs, stim, and likely adrenal as he's a Biochem, and equivalent gear)

Duration - 5min

Damage - 422,519

DPS - 1389.5

Conclusion:

That doesn't look like 5% to me. Also, energy is annoying to hold on to, especially in the initial burst, but later in the fights, the laceration/shiv rotation helps maintain energy at 70-80, which is certainly nice. I just wish the AB+BS 20 energy hit wasn't so noticeable.

snip

Thanks for sharing! You can hardly squeeze more dps out of your Operative than with the spec that you used, so your dps will be very near to the top of what Operatives in Rakata gear can achieve. This is a very good reference.

Parse: http://www.fryingtime.com/?filename=combat_2012-04-18_00_49_58_658867.txt

Thanks for the info - really useful!

Here is a basic ability breakdown using your numbers to help people with their rotations (ordered by DPE):

• Rifle Shot - Damage = 848, DPE = Infinite
  
• Backstab (No AB) - Damage = 2597, DPE = 519.4
  
• Orbital Strike - Damage = 6417, DPE = 213.9, DPEE* = 279
  
• Backstab (+ AB) - Damage = 5435, DPE = 271.8
  
• Hidden Strike (+ AB) - Damage = 6715 (note: crit), DPE = 209.8
  
• Acid Blade DoT - Damage = 2838, DPE = 189.2
  
• Lacerate (+ CS) - Damage = 1853, DPE = 185.3
  
• Corrosive Dart - Damage = 2790, DPE = 139.5
  
• Explosive Probe - Damage = 2348, DPE = 117.4
  
• Shiv - Damage = 1602, DPE = 106.8
  
• Overload Shot** - Damage = 1209, DPE = 71.1
  

* DPEE = Damage per Effective Energy. I've adjusted Orbital Strike's energy cost to account for the extra GCD of regen you get over other abilities during the cast.

** Overload Shot taken from an earlier parse by Furiasara

It's interesting to note that AB+BS is actually above AB+HS in DPE. This highlights the importance of pre-loading your AB with enough time for the energy to regen before you start the fight. Also interesting to see that, although we need to keep it on CD as much as possible for TA generation, Shiv is actually our lowest DPE ability (other than Overload Shot which is abysmal)

Edit: Added BS without AB and AB Dot in their appropriate places

Thanks for sharing! You can hardly squeeze more dps out of your Operative than with the spec that you used, so your dps will be very near to the top of what Operatives in Rakata gear can achieve. This is a very good reference.

That's not exactly true. There were a couple rotation issues where (s)he dropped into low energy zones, which probably lead to the other issues in the sample (e.g. 75% Corrosive Dart uptime which may have lead to 4* fewer TA being generated by CS procs on an un-DoT'd target; 33 out of a possible 49 Shiv's; 20 out of a possible 25 Backstabs; etc).

Edit: *There are 4 possible TA which are missing (1 + 33 + 12 - 7 - 35). Either these dropped off, were over-written, or were never proc'd because CS hit an un-DoT'd target

IMO if you *really* want to get some accurate numbers between classes you need to get people to collaberate and make sure your both using the same "ilvl" gear. The easiest way to do this is to just have both classes get naked in every slot but their weapons, and to make sure both toons have the same level of weapons. Get all toons involved fully buffed with the 4 class buffs, but no stims or adrenals. This will just be a somewhat accurate baseline for each class, and with enough people using the same methods (maybe have everyone use normal mode BT weapons to keep everyone fairly normalized?) then you can get even more accurate numbers to account for skill levels.

So basically:

-Naked using ONLY BT weapons (this is going to be tough for op's since i don't think vibroknives drop from there, suggestions?)

-all 4 class buffs

-NO adrena/stims

-Set duration (5 mins? maybe 10 to help round off RNG crit/misses?)

One of the issues i can see from doing this is going to be accuracy rating. Op's get 100% hit on everything other than rifle shot which is only about 10% of our dps. Not sure how much other DPS classes rely on accuracy since OP is my only toon right now, so this may skew the numbers a bit.

That's not exactly true. There were a couple rotation issues where (s)he dropped into low energy zones, which probably lead to the other issues in the sample (e.g. 75% Corrosive Dart uptime which may have lead to 4* fewer TA being generated by CS procs on an un-DoT'd target; 33 out of a possible 49 Shiv's; 20 out of a possible 25 Backstabs; etc).

 

Edit: *There are 4 possible TA which are missing (1 + 33 + 12 - 7 - 35). Either these dropped off, were over-written, or were never proc'd because CS hit an un-DoT'd target

This was precisely the case. Twice I had a lag issue that lead to Lacerate hitting .25 seconds to late and pricing CS on an unpoisoned target, the lag then resulting in TA dropping off despite readying a shiv. Additionally, in the times I was in the low energy zones I avoided Corrosive Dart because of the high energy cost, attempting instead to raise my energy up and still maintain a semblance of DPS.

I figure that in an Ops, however, this is likely to be the case as you very rarely have a perfect rotation. I estimate that I'm likely to have 1050-1150dps over the course of an Operation simply because of fight mechanics.

Thanks for the info - really useful!

 

Here is a basic ability breakdown using your numbers to help people with their rotations (ordered by DPE):

• Rifle Shot - Damage = 848, DPE = Infinite
  
• Orbital Strike - Damage = 6417, DPE = 213.9, DPEE* = 279
  
• Backstab (+ AB) - Damage = 5435, DPE = 271.8
  
• Hidden Strike (+ AB) - Damage = 6715 (note: crit), DPE = 209.8
  
• Lacerate (+ CS) - Damage = 1853, DPE = 185.3
  
• Corrosive Dart - Damage = 2790, DPE = 139.5
  
• Explosive Probe - Damage = 2348, DPE = 117.4
  
• Shiv - Damage = 1602, DPE = 106.8
  
• Overload Shot** - Damage = 1209, DPE = 71.1
  

* DPEE = Damage per Effective Energy. I've adjusted Orbital Strike's energy cost to account for the extra GCD of regen you get over other abilities during the cast.

** Overload Shot taken from an earlier parse by Furiasara

 

It's interesting to note that AB+BS is actually above AB+HS in DPE. This highlights the importance of pre-loading your AB with enough time for the energy to regen before you start the fight. Also interesting to see that, although we need to keep it on CD as much as possible for TA generation, Shiv is actually our lowest DPE ability (other than Overload Shot which is abysmal)

This is fantastic.

Thanks for sharing. Which buffs did you use? Did you use stim/adrenal/relic?

Sorry I should have mentioned this. I have a 50 juggernaut alt so I buff with the warrior buff as well as my own in addition to rakata cunning stim and used the rakata power adrenal 1 time during that parse.

I think something to be noted here is that in almost every single post from an operative talking about DPS rotations or anything similar you often hear them say "it could be higher but I messed up my rotation" or "I screwed up and got energy starved" or something similar. I think it just goes to show that operatives, even if capable of X DPS, have such a complex and difficult to sustain rotation that it can all go wrong with just a single out of place ability. With only 1 way to come back from such a mistake (adrenaline probe) DPSing as operative becomes a challenge of fighting your class mechanic rather than fighting the boss.

It's hard to compare us to a class like marauder who effectively cannot starve themselves of their resource like can be done with energy AND can more quickly get into combat to boot. By comparison, as long as a marauder is not as max or 0 resource and is using their most efficient moves on priority, their rotation can't be "messed up" the way ours can.

IMO if you *really* want to get some accurate numbers between classes you need to get people to collaberate and make sure your both using the same "ilvl" gear. The easiest way to do this is to just have both classes get naked in every slot but their weapons, and to make sure both toons have the same level of weapons. Get all toons involved fully buffed with the 4 class buffs, but no stims or adrenals. This will just be a somewhat accurate baseline for each class, and with enough people using the same methods (maybe have everyone use normal mode BT weapons to keep everyone fairly normalized?) then you can get even more accurate numbers to account for skill levels.

 

So basically:

-Naked using ONLY BT weapons (this is going to be tough for op's since i don't think vibroknives drop from there, suggestions?)

-all 4 class buffs

-NO adrena/stims

-Set duration (5 mins? maybe 10 to help round off RNG crit/misses?)

 

 

One of the issues i can see from doing this is going to be accuracy rating. Op's get 100% hit on everything other than rifle shot which is only about 10% of our dps. Not sure how much other DPS classes rely on accuracy since OP is my only toon right now, so this may skew the numbers a bit.

You do realize that different classes scale differently with gear, right?

I think something to be noted here is that in almost every single post from an operative talking about DPS rotations or anything similar you often hear them say "it could be higher but I messed up my rotation" or "I screwed up and got energy starved" or something similar. I think it just goes to show that operatives, even if capable of X DPS, have such a complex and difficult to sustain rotation that it can all go wrong with just a single out of place ability. With only 1 way to come back from such a mistake (adrenaline probe) DPSing as operative becomes a challenge of fighting your class mechanic rather than fighting the boss.

 

It's hard to compare us to a class like marauder who effectively cannot starve themselves of their resource like can be done with energy AND can more quickly get into combat to boot. By comparison, as long as a marauder is not as max or 0 resource and is using their most efficient moves on priority, their rotation can't be "messed up" the way ours can.

I think this is an exceptionally valuable point. Despite what other classes may think, our damage rotation is so difficult to maintain without constant attention, and with AP having such a long cooldown, we're basically screwed if we mess anything up more than once. You can't even plan to use AP after a strong burst phase simply because you don't know when you're going to mess up a single Corrosive Dart and have the whole thing fall apart and NEED that AP to bring you back to where you need to be.

TLDR: Operative is hard D=

I think this is an exceptionally valuable point. Despite what other classes may think, our damage rotation is so difficult to maintain without constant attention, and with AP having such a long cooldown, we're basically screwed if we mess anything up more than once. You can't even plan to use AP after a strong burst phase simply because you don't know when you're going to mess up a single Corrosive Dart and have the whole thing fall apart and NEED that AP to bring you back to where you need to be.

 

TLDR: Operative is hard D=

Agreed. Knowing fight mechanics helps a lot because it gives you more uptime on the boss, and you can also anticipate times when you're going to be forced off-target and can regen that way.

This is the real reason I was looking forward to logs - because if Dev's are basing their metrics on "ideal conditions" like dummy fights, then the actual raid parses will easily highlight how much our class is penalised by movement / energy mechanics in a real fight. I do find it hard to believe that BW would make such a simple mistake, but we will see over the coming weeks / months...

Sorry I should have mentioned this. I have a 50 juggernaut alt so I buff with the warrior buff as well as my own in addition to rakata cunning stim and used the rakata power adrenal 1 time during that parse.

 

I think something to be noted here is that in almost every single post from an operative talking about DPS rotations or anything similar you often hear them say "it could be higher but I messed up my rotation" or "I screwed up and got energy starved" or something similar. I think it just goes to show that operatives, even if capable of X DPS, have such a complex and difficult to sustain rotation that it can all go wrong with just a single out of place ability. With only 1 way to come back from such a mistake (adrenaline probe) DPSing as operative becomes a challenge of fighting your class mechanic rather than fighting the boss.

 

It's hard to compare us to a class like marauder who effectively cannot starve themselves of their resource like can be done with energy AND can more quickly get into combat to boot. By comparison, as long as a marauder is not as max or 0 resource and is using their most efficient moves on priority, their rotation can't be "messed up" the way ours can.

Yes. This is exactly the reason for why I think that Kaijan's DPS result is a very good reference. He/She stated that the dps could have been slightly bigger if there hadn't been a few small mistakes in the damage rotation. But there never will be an ideal fight where you do not make a single mistake. With this class it's much easier to make a (very costly) mistake if you mess up your rotation than it is with any of the other dps classes.

So the dps result accounts for the fact that the class is more diffult to play and that it leaves more room for mistakes.

Yes. This is exactly the reason for why I think that Kaijan's DPS result is a very good reference. He/She stated that the dps could have been slightly bigger if there hadn't been a few small mistakes in the damage rotation. But there never will be an ideal fight where you do not make a single mistake. With this class it's much easier to make a (very costly) mistake if you mess up your rotation than it is with any of the other dps classes.

So the dps result accounts for the fact that the class is more diffult to play and that it leaves more room for mistakes.

Heh, who knew that me screwing up could be a good thing =P

Is it possible marauders are over tuned?

How do operatives compare to the other classes?

The worst dps is doubtful considering the abysmal parses I am seeing from shadows.

After thinking about openers because of this thread, I did the maths for BS and the AB DoT separately and added them to my earlier post.

If you're too lazy to page-back:

Backstab (No BS) - Damage = 2597, DPE = 519.4

Acid Blade DoT - Damage = 2838, DPE = 189.2

This puts the AB DoT slightly above Lacerate on DPE, which means that it is always worth attempting to get more Acid Blades into our rotation (only really valid during opener and after Cloak>HS where it is possible to use BS after the HS without AB and not lose the ArPen buff)

Is it possible marauders are over tuned?

 

How do operatives compare to the other classes?

 

The worst dps is doubtful considering the abysmal parses I am seeing from shadows.

From the information that I have seen so far it seems that Mercs/Commandos are doing the best dps right now.

I think people are mostly comparing Operative dps to Marauder dps because both classes are melee.

My proprietary systems indicated that Operative DPS is 20 ~ 30% behind Anni Marauders. In addition, the Marauders provide a raid heal, can spec a short CD interrupt, have better movement, better survival, and provide a bloodlust.

 

We have removed all DPS Operatives from raiding, and the only thing that saved the Snipers was the raid wall. There's no point in having fragile, low DPS classes. My Operative, my first toon, leveled ONLY FOR PVE, is sitting on the shelf where it will remain, I wish it were otherwise, but I can't possibly sit here as a progression raid leader and ask my raiders to maximize their performance (max your companions, get all datacrons, do your dailies every day on your main and alts, etc) and then sit there on the weakest class in the game asking them to carry me.

 

All a non-healing Operative does is get carried. If you believe otherwise ("I'm super skilled but somehow magically wouldn't be super skilled at a better class") you're lying to yourself to avoid the reroll.

Give up progression raiding because it's not really for you.

I used to be a progression raider and we never considered the relative dps between classes. We wanted to bring certain players because we knew they would study the fight, learn the fight, and stay alive long enough to down the boss.

Progression raiders know that a dead marauder does less damage than a live OP. We also know that being the first or close to the first to down a boss means having the absolute minimum gear required to beat the enrage timer. In fact, we plan on downing content before people have any real gear. We strive to be first and understand what that really means. It means showing up prepared, knowing the fights, having the right spec, mods, and rotations, staying out of the fire and being willing to wipe for hours, if necessary, to kill a boss.

In short, real front running progression raiders take the player, not the toon.

3min test on Operations Dummy with full Rakata gear, self buffed, using 400 biochem stims/adrenals (1200 DPS):

http://www.fryingtime.com/?filename=latest_test12231322.txt

5min fight where we killed Nightmare Pilgrim, keeping my energy above 80 most of the time and popping Stim Boost every time is was available (still 1200 DPS):

http://www.fryingtime.com/?filename=nightmare_pilgrim.txt#20_37_01_692000

3min test on Operations Dummy from Marauder with full Rakata gear, self-buffed, using 400 biochem stims/adrenals (1500 DPS):

http://www.fryingtime.com/?filename=combat_2012-04-18_02_59_50_327410.txt#04_33_33_861000

And I will try to get the logs, but the Marauder was still pulling around 1450 DPS in raid. So yes it's pretty obvious that we are more than 5% behind. And as a result our guild no longer takes Operatives to tight DPS fights. So hopefully this gets fixed soon otherwise I will be quitting the game. Invested a lot of time into this character and don't feel like starting over with a new class. I know we have nice burst damage in PvP, so they might be afraid to make us stronger. But if they simply buff Corrosive Dart it should help us out in PvE as its generally a waste of energy to use in PvP...

I wanted to pop in and say two things:

 

First, I appreciate threads like this, and good job for putting it together.

 

Second, please be careful using training dummies for DPS tests and comparisons. As contrary to our intentions as it is, training dummies are not as of yet the fully reliable DPS testing resource we want them to be. This is because they cannot dodge or deflect attacks at the moment.

 

For Operatives, that fact doesn't have much of an impact. However, if you're going to look at Marauder and Sentinel DPS numbers and go "wow, we're nowhere near that," keep in mind that they gain a significant benefit from attacking a target that cannot defend due to their dual wield mechanic. Targets with a 0% defense chance will take significantly more offhand strikes from dual wielders than is typical.

 

On the subject of training dummy dodge and deflect, we have a fix for it that will show up in a weekly patch in the near future (don't know when off the top of my head). So, keep up the cool thread, but keep a level head about dual wielders on training dummies.

1) Holy crap, a Dev.

2) Very valid point. With the extra DPS the offhand is granting, they're likely to turn out a fair bit higher than what they actually are. Essentially, they're sitting in an optimal situation against the dummy while we're anything but.

I will, however, again state that the main difference in DPS isn't the bugged dummies. The major difference is that the rotation is FAR more forgiving and the energy maintenance is exceptionally more simple than an Operative's. With how completely unforgiving of mistakes our energy and TA is, it's no wonder Mauraders will out damage us--even when the dummies are fixed.