AoE: Area of Effect: Abilities that affect more than 1 target in an area.

CD: Cooldown: How long it takes an ability to become usable after the previous use.

CC: Crowd Control: Abilities that stun, stop, and otherwise inhibit your enemies’ ability to move or attack.

DoT: Damage over Time: Damage that lingers, affecting the target at intervals for the duration of the effect.

DPE: Damage per Energy: A measure of combat efficiency. The more damage an attack can do per energy it uses, the more efficient that attack is. For instance, if your attack does 30 damage at the cost of 10 energy, then it has a DPE of 3.

DPS: Damage Per Second: Another measure of combat efficiency. How much damage an attack (or series of attacks) does, divided down to the second. For instance, if you do 30 damage over 10 seconds, you are doing 3 DPS.

DPCT: Damage Per Cast Time: Another measure of combat efficiency. How much damage an attack can do in relation to how long it takes the attack to go off. For instance, if your attack does 30 damage but takes 3 seconds to cast, it has a DPCT of 10.

GCD: Global Cooldown: The 1.5 seconds it takes to use any ability after any other ability has been used (applies only to those abilities affected by the GCD).

As I’m sure you’re well-aware by now, the Sniper is a pure dps class. Your job is simply to cause as much damage as possible to your targets. While that sounds like a simple task (and a good Sniper player can definitely make it look simple), it actually requires quite a bit of planning and precision execution. The 2 most important things you must learn as a Sniper are how to manage your energy reserves and how to effectively use the Cover system. Both will be covered in-depth in their own sections.

The Sniper handles much differently than any other class in the game due to its reliance on the Cover system. Unless you specifically spec your character to be mobile, most of your combat time will be spent hunkered down behind cover, doing large amounts of single-target dps. Yes, you will have access to some of the best AoE abilities in the game, but your single-target damage is where you really shine, even as an Engineer spec. If digging in and dishing out serious damage is your thing, then you will enjoy playing a Sniper.

*additional note: It is possible to spec into what are called "mobility build", which are just Sniper builds that try to circumvent the cover system altogether. I currently don't have a lot of information on the validity of such builds, so if you have any such information please feel free to post it and hopefully I can flesh out a good section of the guide on mobility builds. Thanks!

Now let’s talk about what stats are important to a Sniper. Of the Primary Statistics (Strength, Endurance, Aim, Cunning, Willpower, Presence, and Expertise), the most important are going to be Endurance and Cunning (I’ll cover Presence and Expertise in a second). It’s natural to assume that Aim would be important to us, and to some extent it is. The problem with Aim is that most of a Sniper’s attacks are “Tech” attacks, which are covered under Cunning. So while it definitely won't hurt to have a high Aim stat, you should really be concerning yourself with Cunning and Endurance. The only exceptions to this are Presence and Expertise. Presence increases your companions’ health, damage, and healing, making it a good choice for solo players. Expertise increase your damage, healing, and defense in PvP, making it a vital stat for PvP players.

Things get a little more complicated when you start to factor in Secondary Statistics (Absorption, Accuracy Rating, Alacrity, Armor, Critical Rating, Defense Rating, Force Power, Power, Shield, Surge, and Tech Power). Obviously some of those we don’t need to concern ourselves with, such as Force Power, so I’m only going to concentrate on the Secondary Stats that significantly benefit a Sniper or are mistakenly thought to benefit us.

Accuracy Rating: This increases your chance to hit with attacks. Once you get it past 100%, it starts to reduce your opponent’s defense (their chance to avoid attacks) and their resistance to certain types of damage (such as Internal or Elemental). This one is definitely worth your time. Higher accuracy translates directly into more damage, so being a dps class, it's a no-brainer to boost your accuracy.

Alacrity: This supposedly decreases the cooldowns and charge-up times on most abilities. There's quite a bit of debate on what Alacrity actually affects. Please take any information you read about Alacrity with a grain of salt. As more concrete information comes out, I'll be sure to get it posted. My personal feeling about Alacrity is the same for all stats and abilities that reduce cooldowns: they only allow you to burn through your energy that much faster without doing any additional damage. That's just my opinion on the matter, though. I know a lot of players who are all about Alacrity. I’ll get into this in more detail in a later section. What I can tell you know is that you really shouldn't be too worried about boosting your Alacrity. You're going to be trying to boost your Accuracy, Crit, Surge, Power, and possibly Expertise long before you want to even consider boosting Alacrity. Despite however useful you think it may be (and again, there's a lot of debate on the subject), it can't be argued that those other stats are just far more important for a dps class.

Armor: This reduces the amount of damage you take from kinetic and energy attacks. Armor does not reduce the effect of attacks which deal Internal or Elemental damage. If a weapon or attack doesn’t specify a damage type, odds are it is either Kinetic or Energy, and will be affected by armor. As a Sniper, you should be more focused on doing damage than taking damage. This stat also takes care of itself, for the most part, so you really don’t need to give it too much thought.

Critical Rating: This increases your chance to score critical hits with all types of abilities, from attacks to heals. This skill is incredibly important to Snipers of all builds. PvP players will find it especially useful for maxing out their burst damage potential.

Defense Rating: This is your chance to avoid attacks outright. Your Cover ability grants you a 20% bonus to your defense vs ranged attacks. Since the Sniper is a fairly "squishy" class in general, the ability to avoid damage outright seems to be more important that your damage mitigation. It's a nice stat to have, but don't go out of your way to boost it.

Power: This increases the base damage of all your abilities and is probably the most powerful stat you have. Though you hit diminishing returns when trying to boost specific stats by stacking equipment, you can use Stims and Adrenals to temporarily boost your Power to great effect. Since Power increases your base damage, and Crit and Surge ratings are based off of your base damage, when you score a critical hit while your Power is boosted, the damage you cause can be quite absurd. There’s an excellent article on Power as it pertains to Snipers here.

Surge: This increases the damage you do with a successful critical hit. While it is a very important stat for Snipers to boost, make sure that your chance to get critical hits has been raised to an acceptable level before you start focusing on Surge. For instance, if you had a 1% chance to score a critical hit, it wouldn’t really matter how high your Surge rating was because it would almost never come into effect.

Tech Power: This increases the strength of tech abilities. Since the Sniper uses a lot of tech-based abilities, this is an incredibly important stat. Basically any attack you use that doesn't involve your sniper rifle is a Tech ability. For instance, Snipe, Ambush, SoS, Takedown, and Suppressive Fire all count as basic ranged attacks while Frag Grenade, Explosive Probe, Shiv, and Corrosive Dart count as Tech abilities. (That was in no way a comprehensive list, but just a small selection of examples to illustrate my point).

And finally, here’s one last little bit of stat-centric information for you. All primary stats give 1% crit for every 140 points once you hit level 50. While each primary stat affects a different type of damage, Cunning gives 0.2 tech damage. Keep this in mind as you start to mod and customize your high-end equipment.

The most important thing to remember is not to get too caught up in maximizing the efficiency of your gear until you are very high level. In fact, the only real way to gimp your character is by trying to max out 1 or 2 stats at the expense of others. It may seem like a good idea, but there is a ton of research that proves it only makes the character weaker. Also remember that this was just a general crash-course in Sniper stats. Later, when I get into specific Sniper builds, I’ll talk about what stats are more or less important to what builds.

Now that we’ve got a clear understand of what stats are important to our Sniper, let’s move on to understanding the “Cover” mechanic. “Cover” is the backbone of most Sniper builds, and learning to use it effectively is paramount to achieving success with your Sniper. You gain a 20% bonus to your defense vs ranged attacks while you are in Cover. Most of your best combat abilities, such as Snipe, Ambush, and Explosive Probe can only be used while you are in Cover. There are 2 types of Cover you need to be familiar with:

1. Basic Cover: If you have an enemy targeted, odds are you will see a green figure appear somewhere nearby. If you press the “Cover” button, your Sniper will roll into the spot occupied by the green figure and crouch down. This is your basic Cover stance. Not only do you gain the 20% bonus to defense, but you become immune to any basic attacks from any enemy within a 45-degree cone in front of you as long as you stay inactive (ducked behind your cover). If you choose to use pretty much any ability, your Sniper will stand up. While standing, you still receive the 20% bonus to defense, but you lose the immunity to basic attacks. *Note: When I say "Basic Attacks", I mean any straight-shooting attacks, like Snipe and Ambush. Most Tech and AoE attacks, like Frag Grenade, Interrogation Probe, and Orbital Strike will still hit you.

2. Crouch in Place: You use this when you need to access your cover-only abilities (like Snipe) but don’t have access to a cover spot. Instead of rolling into a cover spot, your Sniper will simply crouch in place. Initially this grants none of the benefits associated with being in Cover, aside from granting access to your cover-only abilities. However, once you hit level 10 you will deploy an energy shield that grants you the 20% bonus to defense vs ranged attacks. This does not grant the immunity to basic attacks. However, if you choose to Crouch-in-Place behind a natural cover location, you will still receive the immunity to basic attacks.

A lot of players dislike using Basic Cover because it can sometimes cause them to accidentally roll into a previously unseen cover spot, perhaps gaining the attention of nearby enemies. I pretty much use “Crouch in Place” exclusively, in order to avoid such problems. The only time I ever really use the Basic Cover option is when I’m facing a particularly tough ranged enemy, so that I can sit back and relax while his powerful ranged attacks impact harmlessly on my cover.

I highly recommend changing your default keybinding for Cover and Crouch in Place. In your preferences menu there is an option to change the keybindings that directly affect Cover and Crouch. Make sure you are using these, and not hotkeys, as this will save you 2 hotkey slots on your quickbars. In other words, Cover and Crouch-in-Place should never be located on your quickbars. When you make a new Sniper you will have to delete them from your quickbar, as they are there by default.

Energy management is probably the single most important thing you need to learn in order to play an effective Sniper. At first glance it seems to be a simple system: abilities cost energy, so when you use an ability it subtracts from your energy bar, which continuously regenerates the lost energy over time. And while this is true, there is one factor that significantly complicates matters: the more energy you use, the slower it regenerates. You can tell how fast your energy is regenerating based on the small “arrows” to the right of your energy bar. As you use up your energy, you will notice the arrows start to fade, indicating that your energy regeneration rate has slowed. Here are the exact numbers and ratios (as of the time of this writing):

Energy: 60 to 100+ = 5 energy per second (eps)

Energy: 20 to 60 = 3 eps

Energy: 0 to 20 = 2 eps

Let’s do some math!

Agent Robocop keeps his energy level above 60, allowing him to regenerate 5 eps. Over the course of a 5-minute fight (or 5 minutes of pvp), this allows him to spend (5 x 300 seconds =) 1,500 energy freely without ever dipping below the 60 energy threshold.

On the other hand, Agent Fancypants spams his hardest-hitting attacks immediately, taking his energy down to below 20, allowing him only a 2 eps. Although he got off to a better start, during the course of that 5-minute fight he was only able to spend 600 energy!

Agent Robocop was able to use more than twice as much energy as Agent Fancypants purely because he didn’t blow all of his energy on his best attacks up front! In case you were wondering, twice as much energy basically equates to twice as much damage. Robocop was able to do more than twice as much damage as Fancypants in the same amount of time simply by conserving his energy.

Now don’t get me wrong, different situations call for different tactics. That’s why I’m going to talk about sustained dps vs burst dps.

The situation described above would be an example of sustained dps. It is almost always a good idea to keep a reserve of energy built up. Most good Snipers try to stay above 60 energy at all times in order to maintain a 5 eps (though it's perfectly acceptable to temporarily dip down into 3 eps territory, even when trying to maintain sustained dps). Every now and then, however, you will want to convert to “burst” dps, busting out all of your most powerful attacks in order to take down an opponent as quickly as possible. As you play your Sniper, you will start to get a feel for when to resort to burst dps and when to maintain sustained dps. A good rule of thumb is not to initiate burst dps unless you have a target that has to die “right now”, or you have access to an ability that will allow you to jump back up to the over-60 mark, such as Adrenaline Probe. Even if you think you are safe burning through your energy reserves, you never know when you might get attacked, and you definitely don’t want to get caught with your pants down, so to speak.

One last thing to consider is that energy management isn’t a black-and-white ordeal. You might use sustained dps through the majority of a fight before transitioning to burst dps in order to finish off the last enemy. Just remember that it’s a lot easier to transition from sustained dps to burst dps than it is the other way around.

Ok, so now that we know the importance to energy management, how do we do any decent amount of damage while staying above 60 energy? We do this by planning out our attack rotations. What is an attack rotation? An attack rotation is a series of abilities executed in a specific sequence in order to maximize their combat effectiveness. Because there are so many different situations you can find yourself in, I’m not going to lay out every rotation imaginable. What I will do is lay out some theory so that you can begin to intelligently craft your own rotations to get you through whatever combat scenarios you find yourself in.

When putting together your rotation, you need to know exactly how your abilities work. For instance, Snipe has a 1.5-second charge-up period. However, your energy continues to regenerate during this period, and doesn’t actually lose the 20 energy for Snipe until the shot is actually fired. This means that if you’re in the middle of combat with full energy, you are essentially wasting energy if you use Snipe. You would be better off using an instant ability like Shiv or Fragmentation Grenade before activating your Snipe, in order to make sure that the 1.5-second charge-up period is put to good use by allowing your energy to regenerate. Thus, knowing when an ability uses energy is almost as important as knowing how much energy the ability uses. When initiating combat, such things don’t particularly matter. I enjoy using Ambush as a combat-starter because, although it has a 2.5-second start-up, combat hasn’t started yet so I’m not wasting any time or energy by using the ability. In fact, I see using abilities with long start-ups to initiate combat as an efficient use of time. It’s almost like getting an instant use of the ability.

Another thing to consider is your damage per energy, or dpe. This is a direct measure of your attack’s efficiency. You can calculate this by dividing the damage of your ability by the amount of energy it costs. If the ability has a charge-up period like Snipe, you can even subtract the amount of energy that will recharge during the charge-up period from the ability’s energy cost (I would average the recharge rate at 3 eps, just to be on the safe side). So for instance, let’s say Snipe, which has an energy cost of 20, does 5,000 damage. During the charge-up period I’m going to regenerate approximately 6 energy, meaning I should calculate 5,000/14, which equals a dpe of 357.14. Not too bad. Even without accounting for the charge-up regeneration, you’re still looking at a dpe of 250. Now let’s say that for some odd reason I throw a Frag Grenade at a single enemy. The Frag Grenade costs 20 energy, and because it’s an instant-cast ability we can keep its calculation at 20. It does approximately 1,600 damage to up to 5 enemies, but since we are only attacking a single target, we are looking at a dpe of (1,600/20=) 80. Yuck! Let’s imagine that we managed to catch the maximum of 5 enemies in the blast. At that point we would be up to a 400 epa, making the Frag Grenade more efficient than Snipe in that situation. (These damage values are in no way representative of actual values you will see in the game. They are merely being used to demonstrate a point.)

Now let’s look at the other factor for measuring combat efficiency: damage/second, or dps. Since Snipe has a 1.5-second charge-up period and we’re assuming it does 5,000 damage, you’re looking at a dps of 3333.33/second. Fragmentation Grenade, on the other hand, would have a dps of 1,600 per enemy affected. Thus it would take 3 enemies caught in the blast in order to make Frag Grenades a more efficient attack than Snipe, even considering the fact that Snipe has a charge-up period and can only target a single opponent at a time. Again, though these numbers are not be representative of actual in-game values, they demonstrate my point of what to consider when determining your attack rotations.

One last thing to consider is what I call “leeway period”. There is a period of about .5 seconds (you can actually make it longer in your preferences) during the final moment of charge-up abilities where you can input the command for the next ability to execute. Assuming the next ability is an instant ability, both abilities will execute at almost the same time. So, for instance, a lot of people are using this fact to cast Snipe or Ambush, wait utill it’s almost fully charged, and then cast Explosive Probe. This causes the Probe to launch at the same time as the Snipe or Ambush, causing the Snipe or Ambush to immediately ignite the Explosive Probe. This results in a devastating burst of damage to your opponent. Experiment with your abilities to see where you can shave off a few seconds of GCD by queuing up your moves in this manner.

So now that we’ve got energy management and the theory of rotations covered, let’s look at the 3 different Sniper Trees. What you will find below are links to the torhead.com calculator showing each of the builds, as well as a level-by-level walk-through of when each point was invested and why. These are fairly generic builds with no real emphasis towards PvP or PvE. Feel free to make any changes you deem necessary.

Marksman

The Engineer

You'll notice with both the Marksman and Engineer builds that I ignored Deadly Directive. This was not only because I felt that the points were put to much better use elsewhere, but because of my opinions that Alacrity can easily work as much against you as for you by allowing you to burn through your energy without seeing any increased returns. It's been argued that a high enough Alacrity can allow you to get off an extra Rifle Shot on occasion, but it just seems to me like the reward is not worth the cost. As always, the choice is up to you.

Lethality

Hybrid Builds

Final Thoughts

This can be one of the most frustrating aspects of playing an mmo. Before you know it, you're going to have access to more abilities than you know what to do with. Trying to figure out where to put all of these abilities can be a matter of great contention, but hopefully with a little planning and practice we can work out a system that is easy to use and remember.

I want to start by addressing something that applies specifically to the cover-oriented classes: the cover bar. This is an ability bar that only shows up while you are in cover. While this is a good idea in theory, I find that it messes me up more often than not. For instance, if I am in cover and go to use an ability, there is a chance that I can get knocked out of cover and end up using the wrong ability when my bar changes. While some people find the cover bar quite useful, I have found combat to go much smoother with it disabled. It's totally just a matter of personal choice.

So with that out of the way, the first thing you want to do is enable your left, right, and bottom-center ability bars. The option to do so can be found in your Preferences menu. Once those are enabled, you want to start to think about how you want your abilities to be organized. This is going to be a constant issue as you continue to gain new abilities. Very rarely will you gain an ability that you simply don't ever use. And you never want to make the mistake of not using an ability because you can't find a convenient quickslot for it, or are too lazy to mess with it.

In a little bit I'm going to show you my setup, but as always what works for me may not work for you, especially if you don't play an Engineer spec. In the meantime, let's cover a little theory about what makes a good setup.

First off, I'm going to assume you use WASD to navigate. I hold down the right mouse button while I move, allowing "A" and "D" to function as my strafe keys, freeing up "Q" and "E" for use as ability keys. So since you know your left hand is going to be in the general area of the WASD keys, it only makes sense to start branching out from there for your keybindings. A few things to consider when determining what should be mapped where are as follows:

1. When am I going to be using this ability? If it's an ability that you will be using on the move, you want to place it where you can easily access it while still navigating with WASD. For example, I mapped my basic attack to the "E" button, so that I can easily fire off free shots while chasing, fleeing, or changing positions. On the other hand, I know that any cover-based ability, like Snipe, can only be used while I'm immobile. Thus I used that as an opportunity to map those skills using the shift-key modifier and keys "q", "w", and "e". Since I'm staying stationary, I have no problems using the shift-key in addition to another key, and now my "W" key serves a purpose while in cover. One last example involves your out-of-combat abilities like Recuperate, and your ability to check your Inventory Screen. Any ability that isn't used in combat should not have a hotkey. Period. You are going to need access to every free key you can find, and having your inventory mapped to "I" may be convenient now, but it won't save your life when you're being attacked by rebels. Non-combat abilities like Recuperate and Quick Travel I keep slotted in the upper section of my right toolbar, out of the way of my other abilities. I don't hotkey them, I just click them when I need them.

2. How often am I going to be using this ability? If this is one of my bread-and-butter abilities, then I need it to be within easy reach from my position over the WASD keys. As an Engineer, I rely heavily on Fragmentation Grenade as my primary source of AoE damage. Thus I mapped my Frag Grenade to the "F" key. Not only does that make logical sense in my mind ("F" for Frag), but I barely have to move my index finger away from the "D" key in order to access it. It's comfortable, easy, and memorable, making it a perfect fit.

3. How does this ability relate to my other abilities? Having your abilities keyed into a perfect pattern on your keyboard won't do you any good if you can't remember what keys activate what abilities. Mapping your abilities out in a logical progressions helps you remember where you mapped them. For example, I keep my 3 melee abilities mapped to "1", "2", and "3". Not only is that close to my WASD home, but the idea of melee skills being related to smaller numbers makes sense in my mind. And the fact that they are grouped together not only helped me remember where they are mapped, but it actually makes my life in combat easier as I tend to use them 1 after another, anyway.

4. How easily will I need to access this ability? If I had to press ctrl+alt+shift+"p" every time I needed to use "Escape", the effect would be over by the time I was able to escape it! Any reactive abilities, such as Escape, Distract, and even Medpacks, should be mapped to easily-accessible keys. You should be able to trigger those abilities on reflex alone. If you have to stop and think about how to activate the ability, or stop and look at your keyboard to find the ability key, then you need to reevaluate your setup or just practice using them.

5. Do I need to pay attention to the ability's cooldown? If you do, then you should probably put it with all of your other main abilities in an easy-to-see location on your screen. I keep all of my major combat abilities on the top and bottom middle bars, going from left to right. This allows me to easily keep track of my cooldowns without having to take my attention off of what's happening on screen.

Ok, so that about covers the theory behind my keybinding philosophy. Just remember to stay organized, and keep everything up to date with your newest abilities, and you should be fine. I do have one last very important thing to remember. I know trying to learn a new setup can be frustrating, but don't fall into the trap of ignoring your keybindings and just clicking on the skills. You won't get any better this way, and will only be hurting yourself in the long run. Force yourself to use your keybindings. Sure, it might be a little slow at first. It might take you an extra 4 or 5 seconds to remember where you put that Stim Pack, and it might even get you killed a few times. But in the long run, knowing your keybindings is what will separate you from the mediocre players. Also, make sure to use all of your abilities regularly. I am bad about not using Leg Shot, and I know as soon as I start doing more pvp it's going to come back to bite me, as I fumble around my keyboard trying to remember which key will stop the rampaging Marauder from reaching me.

In any case, here is the setup that I currently use. Please remember that I am purely posting this as an example, and that what works for me might not work for you. You can check out a screenshot of my setup screenshot here. For some reason the imagine is a lot smaller and fuzzier that it should be, so I might need to replace it with something better. If you can't read the text that I've added to the screenshot, please let me know and I'll try to get a better image up. In the meantime, here's the basis of my layout:

I've got the left, right, and bottom-middle hotbars enabled, and my cover bar disabled. Since the chat box slightly overlaps with the top slots of the left bar, I decided that was a low-priority slot and would be a good place to map my basic attack. As I mentioned, my basic attack is mapped to "E" so that I can easily access it while navigating with WASD. Directly below my basic attack is Overload Shot, which is mapped to "Q". Since I basically never use Overload Shot, I'll probably be changing that up soon.

In any case, going down to the bottom of that bar, I've got all of my in-combat recovery abilities and consumables. At the very bottom I've got Shield Probe and Entrench mapped to F1 and F2. Since they aren't bound by the GCD, I can press both buttons simultaneously in order to activate both abilities. This grants me a nice, instant, easily accessible buff at a moment's notice. I do the same thing with my relic and adrenal mapped to F6 and F7. Pressing those grants me a huge 15-second bonus to Power and my Critical Rating.

Moving over to the right bar, you can see that I've got all my out-of-combat abilities grouped together, but not bound to any keyboard shortcuts. I just click them when I need them. At the very bottom of the right bar I've got a few of my "oh crap" abilities mapped to keyboard shortcuts.

The top middle bar I basically left mapped to "1" - "=". You can see I've got my 3 melee abilities grouped together at 1, 2, and 3. I made sure Distraction was mapped to "4" so that I would have easy access to it, since it is used often and on reaction. Past that I've just got a random assortment of abilities that I have gotten used to having in that order. I'll probably better organize them later, but in the meantime that order has served me well.

The bottom middle bar is where things start to get interesting. You can see that the 3 left abilities are greyed out. These are my 3 main cover abilities, Ambush, Explosive Probe, and Snipe. They are mapped with the shift-key modifier to "Q", "W", and "E", allowing effortless activation during combat. I keep Laze Target next to Snipe, and mapped to shift+R so that I can easily press shift+R-E in order to do my auto-crit Snipe. Takedown is next, mapped to shift+T, both for easy access and because of the logical sense of "T" for "Takedown". I'll probably end up moving Shatter Shot, Cover Fire, and Leg Shot down into that group sometime soon, in order to keep my main Sniper attacks grouped together.

Next I've got a lot of my good Engineer-spec utility abilities grouped together. My 2 DoTs, Corrosive Dart and Interrogation Probe, are mapped to "R" and "T" respectively, allowing easy access during a fight. My Frag Grenade, as already stated, is mapped to "F". Cover Pulse, I'm embarrassed to admit, is not currently mapped to a keyboard shortcut.

I hope you can see the pattern of how I reserve specific areas of the keyboard for specific types of abilities, such as recovery, attack, defense, and travel. I also hope you can see how all of my most important abilities orbit around my left hand's resting area, just waiting to be activated. As I continue to gain new abilities I will start to make use of the bottom row of letters ("z" through "m"). My layout is far from perfect, but it should suffice in showing you my keybinding methods.

Mapping Cover

Cover is such an integral part of the Sniper's gameplay, I went ahead and mapped "Crouch in Place" to my space bar. The standard "Take Cover" ability is mapped to shift+space. This means I never have to worry about missing the Cover button or hitting it accidentally. I mapped jump to "B", just so I can tap it with my thumb when need be. Because I rely so heavily on Ballistic Dampers, during combat I can tap "W", "space-bar" in rapid succession in order to quickly leave and re-enter cover, thus gaining 3 new charges of Ballistic Dampers. The exiting and re-entering of cover occurs so quickly that this maneuver has no detrimental effects on my combat rotations.

This chapter is not going to be a lesson on Crew Skills in general, but only on Crew Skills as they apply to the Sniper class. Thus, if you are not familiar with the Crew Skills system, I recommend you check out this wonderful post.

The Crew Skills that are most likely to apply to your Sniper are going to be:

Gathering

Bioanalysis

Scavenging

Slicing

Crafting

Armortech

Armstech

Biochem

Cybertech

Mission

Diplomacy

Investigation

Underworld Trading

My Recommendations

Hands-down, Biochem is the best crafting skill for you to take, at least at high levels. Normally I wouldn't make such a statement, but it really is no comparison. Biochem is practically a necessity for any pure warrior class, and as a pure dps class you are no exception. The meds, stims, adrenals, and implants you can craft are just too good to pass up and they currently require you to have a high-enough Biochem skill to use, meaning it won't do you any good to buy them from other players. Some of these items are going to be the only way you can cap out certain stats, such as Power. You can find 2 fantastic articles on the usefulness of Biochem as it applies to Snipers here and here.

I do want to note that the reusables you really want can't be used until level 50, so one option you have is to take a different Crafting Skill, such as Cybertech, and then drop it when you hit level 50 in order to pick up Biochem and craft your powerful reusables. This will allow you to have the best gear of the type you choose (armor, weapons, or mods) and also allows you to have access to the powerful high-level Biochem reusables. I honestly wish I had gone that route, because I'm not seeing a lot of purple mods in the AH, and what mods I do see are posted at horribly inflated prices. Plus, leveling a Crew Skill from 1 to 400 takes very little time once you hit 50, because you are able to afford AH materials and assign 5 crew members to work on leveling the skill.

With that being said, your Gathering skill should be an obvious choice, based around whatever Crafting skill you decided to go with. Thus you should most likely pick Scavenging if you are starting with Armstech, Armortech, or Cybertech, and Bioanalysis if you are starting with Biochem. You also have Slicing as a choice, but honestly the credits you will save by gathering your own materials far outweigh the credits you will gain from Slicing.

Let's now take an in-depth look at your Mission crew skills. Here are your top choices:

Slicing: I can no longer recommend taking Slicing. As most of you know, it got nerfed, and now you are just as likely to lose money from using it as you are to make a profit. With how much money you can save by obtaining your own crafting materials, as well as how much money you can gain from selling excess materials on the AH. there is just literally no reason whatsoever to take Slicing. It is just outshined in every way imaginable by every other Crew Skill. I ended up dropping mine with it being maxed out at 400, and am already making a huge increase in revenue with my 150 points in Diplomacy. Hopefully Bioware can see what an enormous waste the Slicing skill is, and they will fix it, but until then you should steer clear.

Diplomacy: This is a good choice because it directly supports Biochem. There are some ingredients you will need that you can only gain from Diplomacy. You can certainly buy those items off the Global Trade Network, but they tend to be a bit pricey. I ended up dropping Slicing in order to pick up Diplomacy, and I really wish I had done so a long time ago. If you go Biochem, then this skill will save you thousands upon thousands of credits, as well as net you some dark-side/light-side points. Even if you don't go Biochem, the medical supplies you gain from Diplomacy sell for insane prices on the AH. I went from 56 credits to over 450,000 credits in the span of 3 hours with only 150 points in Diplomacy. It really is quite absurd. Also, the companion gifts you gain directly increase your mission and crafting productivity. The only real downside to Diplomacy, as with any mission-based skill, is that it can be hard to level. Once you've got 3 or 4 companions, things start to go smoother, but it can be a rough ride getting there.

Underworld Trading: This is a good choice for a few reasons. First off, Kaliyo gains a bonus to Underworld Trading missions, making her quite efficient at carrying them out. 2nd, the companion gifts you are likely to receive as a result of this skill will work towards increase your companions crew skill efficiency, meaning faster Biochem results. 3rd, Underworld Trading directly benefits the other big Sniper crafting skills, Armstech, Armortech, and Cybertech. You can also take advantage of Kaliyo's increased mission efficiency in order to obtain mass quantities of materials to sell in the Auction House. Though I really think Diplomacy is the way to go, this could theoretically be a better choice for those of you who decided to pick up a non-Biochem crafting skill.

Crew Skill Tips

Crafting can be an expensive and time-consuming endeavor. In order to save you some headaches, I'm going to provide some tips to help you get best results with the least amount of work.

Play the Auction House

People on the AH seem to love jacking up the prices on crafting materials (particularly Biochem supplies). If you are lucky enough to find someone selling an ingredient at an exceptionally low price, go ahead and sort the AH results by seller and browse all of their auctions. Odds are, you will see that they are selling all of their ingredients for much cheaper than anyone else. At this point, if you have enough money and the auctions are marked down by a large enough percentage, I recommend grabbing up everything that person is selling. Since you will be needing most of these items eventually, you are saving yourself a ton of money in the long run. If you do end up picking up some items you don't need, you can just resell them on the AH for a profit. I did this with Alien Blood Samples (since I didn't initially take Diplomacy) and wound up getting almost a lifetime supply of the stuff for about 95% off, in addition to a ton of other ingredients I would need in the future. I've been able to use this strategy successfully several times now. This is a good reason to keep an emergency fund of around 20,000 credits at all times, so you can take full advantage of such opportunities on the AH. At this point the only way I will pay market price for something is if I need it "right now" and there are only 1 or 2 price-gougers selling it.

Know What Level Missions to Do

If you look at your ingredients list, each ingredient will say something along the lines of "Grade 2 Biochemical Compound". This is important, because it means even if your Bioanalysis skill is 400 and you do the highest-cost missions, you will never see a single Grade 2 Biochemical Compound. The only way to get a Grade 2 component is to do a Grade 2 mission (or get lucky and loot one). I will typically have as many companions as possible mining the exact grade of material I want. However, you will often find that you have something like 3 companions, but only 2 missions of the type you want. In these scenarios, which pop up often, I will typically either have the extra companion start crafting or send him on the highest level mission I have available. This allows me to advance the skill and net some high-end materials in the process.

Craft What You Need, and Craft to Advance

Your goal with Biochem is to gain access to the best reusable comsumables for your current level. Once you have crafted an appropriate-level resusable that is relevant to your skills, you probably don't want to make any more of that reusable. After all, you only need 1. At that point, you want to start crafting purely to increase your Biochem skill. This means you want to craft only basic-level, or "green", items. It appears that crafting a basic-level item nets you just as much experience as crafting its reusable (purple) equivalent. Since the green items use the least amount of materials, you will want to focus on creating and reverse engineering these items. Always try to do this with items of Orange or Yellow difficulty first. Make sure to stop your crew members from crafting an item if its difficulty drops to grey, as you won't gain any experience from crafting these items.

This chapter is going to be broken up into 2 aspects of the Companion system, as it relates to the Sniper class. First I'm going to provide a full list of Sniper companions, complete with detailed notes on each. Second, I'm going to provide a section with assorted Companion tips and information on how to get the most use out of the companion system as a whole.

Let's start with a basic list of each companion you will acquire, as well as some good information about each one:

Kaliyo Djannis:

Role: DPS/Tank

Primary Stat: Aim

Armor: Heavy

Primary Weapon: Blasters (Rifle or Pistol)

Offhand: Shield Generator

Crew Skill Bonus: +10 Armstech Efficiency, +2 Underworld Trading Critical

Favorite Gifts: Weapons, Luxury, and Underworld Goods

Likes: Disrespecting authority, casual violence, anarchy for the fun of it

Dislikes: Self sacrifice for the greater good, sincerity, obedience, patriotic spirit, and being taken advantage of

Acquired: Hutta

Notes: Kaliyo is an interesting companion. On the one hand, she isn't able to put out as much DPS as you are. On the other, she is kind of fragile for a tanking role. Don't get me wrong, as a companion, she will allow you to solo through content that would have previously killed you, but don't expect her to be going toe-to-toe with elites anytime soon. Her personality falls in line with that of a dark-side character, but will probably clash with all of you Imperial patriots out there. She also serves as a possible romance option, for those of you who are into sweaty bald chicks.

2V-R8:

Role: Healer

Primary Stat:

Armor: Droid Parts

Primary Weapon: Blaster (currently bugged)

Offhand: Focus

Crew Skill Bonus: n/a

Favorite Gifts: n/a

Likes: n/a

Dislikes: n/a

Acquired: Dromund Kaas, aboard your starship

Notes: Though you can technically summon 2V-R8 as your field companion, he is probably put to better use doing crew missions or crafting. At the moment, his blaster is bugged so he will only engage in melee combat, which is kind of sad (but mostly entertaining...) to watch. His healing is sub-par, so don't expect any miracles there. If outfitted properly, you might be able to get some use out of him, but for now I'm just going to say that you are probably better off sticking with another field companion.

Vector Hyllis:

Role: Melee DPS

Primary Stat: Willpower

Armor: Light

Primary Weapon: Electrostaff

Offhand: Generator

Crew Skill Bonus: +5 Bioanalysis Efficiency, +5 Diplomacy Critical

Favorite Gifts: Imperial memorabilia, cultural items, and luxury items

Likes: Helping others, diplomacy and alien cultures

Dislikes: Greed, needless violence and prejudice

Acquired: Alderaan

Notes: I've found nothing but conflicting reports about Vector. Some people love him. Some people hate him. I, personally, have found him better suited to Biochem crafting and miscellaneous crew skill missions than actual combat. By the time you get him, you should already have a very well-equipped Kaliyo as your field-companion. If you really feel like spending the credits, I'm sure you could outfit Vector with enough level-appropriate equipment to make him useful, but I'm not sure it would be worth the credits or the hassle. Since he does get a bonus to his Bioanalysis efficiency, I find him better-suited to Bioanalysis missions.

Doctor Lokin:

Role: Healer or DPS

Primary Stat: Cunning

Armor: Medium

Primary Weapon: Blaster Pistol

Offhand: Vibroknife

Crew Skill Bonus: +15 Biochem Efficiency, +10 Investigation Efficiency

Favorite Gifts: Technology, Military Gear, Luxury

Likes: Clever solutions, long-term thinking, technology, pragmatism

Dislikes: Ideology, selfish actions without clear long-term gain

Acquired: Taris

Notes: Doctor Lokin will alter the way you play the game. Yes, he has a DPS mode, but it pales in comparison to his healing abilities. I went from barely taking on even-level Elites to completely soloing through Heroics 2 to 3 levels above me. In my opinion, there isn't even a comparison between him and Kaliyo or Vector. If you spec into some of the better defensive abilities (Ballistic Dampers...), you being practically unkillable. His heals also eliminate most downtime, effectively increasing your leveling rate. Since Lokin shares your love of Cunning and Medium armor, it is very easy to give him your hand-me-down equipment, effectively keeping him well-equipped at no real cost to you. There really is nothing negative I can say about this guy.

Ensign Raina Temple:

Role: DPS

Primary Stat: Cunning

Armor:

Primary Weapon: Blaster Pistol

Offhand: Blaster Pistol

Crew Skill Bonus: +10 Scavenging Efficiency, +2 Armortech Critical

Favorite Gifts: Imperial memorabilia, military gear, courting (from male characters)

Likes: The Empire, the Sith, duty, honor

Dislikes: Cruelty, casual violence, selfishness

Acquired: Hoth

Notes: coming soon

Scorpio:

Role:

Primary Stat: Aim

Armor:

Primary Weapon: Electrostaff

Offhand: Shield Generator

Crew Skill Bonus: +5 Bioanalysis Efficiency, +5 Diplomacy Critical

Favorite Gifts: Technology, weapons

Likes: Learning and gaining new tech, selfishness, killing threats

Dislikes: Self-sacrifice, duty, wastefulness

Acquired: Belsavis

Notes: