Classes that have mostly armor-mitigated DPS, such as Marks Snipers or Tracer Mercs will see reduction in DPS. Although with the buffs to some of the talents Mercs might remaind unchanged.

Classes that have armor-bypassing DPS will be even higher. Such as Marauders and Pyro Powertechs.

The top overall dps, on a static fight with little-to-no movement, is:

Annihilation/Watchmen Mara/Sent

Lethality/Dirty Fighting Sniper/Gunslinger

Madness/Balance Sorc/Sage

Pyrotech/Assault Specialist Powertech/Vanguards (Unlike the other specs, you really can't be an idiot and play PT and expect great numbers.)

Quick note: these are all DoT classes, which the game HEAVILY favors at this time due to the fact that most DoT's completely ignore armor, while straight damage classes use kinetic or energy damage, which the actual damage is mitigated by a significant amount, even with armor debuffs from talents buffs, or from sunder armor. You may also ask "why aren't madness assassins and lethality operatives on here?" Well, I know absolutely 0 lethality operatives and have not found pertinent data as 75% of operatives that I know are healing, and the rest are concealment, which does not even come close. Madness assassins also get a significant amount of damage from physical attacks, such as Shock (project), which is mandatory, Thrash (Double strike), Assasinate (Spinning Kick?), and Maul (Shadow Strike?).

To be honest, those are the best dps classes, but any almost any class/spec is useful. The downside to these maintained dps is that not all fights are sustained dps. Burst is an amazing thing, and alot of these dot classes can't manage the burst as well as some others. That is why many MM/Sharpshooter Snipers/Slingers are seen in raids, because they have the necessary burst as well as comparable sustained damage (although Lethality/Dirty is still the best for their class). Deception/Infiltration assassins, while complete crap until you're practically in full Rakata/BH, are great for fights like Kephess and Fabricator, where your massive burst (I can burst for over 2k on non-fabricator fights in my offspec, but I quickly fall down to about 1200 otherwise) comes in handy. Carnage is another nice burst spec, but very situational.

In short, don't focus so much on the FOTM specs/classes (coughmaraudercough) that people are rolling, because this game is about what YOU want to play. You want to roll FotM? Go ahead. Roll FotM. I did, and I regret it (rolled a mara, which is fun to play and I can out dps a full rakata merc in my columi gear, but that's not saying much, then I rolled a jugg, and its alot more fun at lower levels than my marauder was.)

I answered your question to the best of my ability, and I hope that helped. I know I do not have numbers to support it, but you can find those on dpsmeter.com and I'm fairly sure they will back me up.

To the above Poster:

Lightning is a better DPS specc over Madness for Sorcerers currently.

And our Snipers went Leth with 1.3, but are now back to Marks and are still doing better.

The top overall dps, on a static fight with little-to-no movement, is:

 

Annihilation/Watchmen Mara/Sent

Lethality/Dirty Fighting Sniper/Gunslinger

Madness/Balance Sorc/Sage

Pyrotech/Assault Specialist Powertech/Vanguards (Unlike the other specs, you really can't be an idiot and play PT and expect great numbers.)

 

Quick note: these are all DoT classes, which the game HEAVILY favors at this time due to the fact that most DoT's completely ignore armor, while straight damage classes use kinetic or energy damage, which the actual damage is mitigated by a significant amount, even with armor debuffs from talents buffs, or from sunder armor. You may also ask "why aren't madness assassins and lethality operatives on here?" Well, I know absolutely 0 lethality operatives and have not found pertinent data as 75% of operatives that I know are healing, and the rest are concealment, which does not even come close. Madness assassins also get a significant amount of damage from physical attacks, such as Shock (project), which is mandatory, Thrash (Double strike), Assasinate (Spinning Kick?), and Maul (Shadow Strike?).

 

To be honest, those are the best dps classes, but any almost any class/spec is useful. The downside to these maintained dps is that not all fights are sustained dps. Burst is an amazing thing, and alot of these dot classes can't manage the burst as well as some others. That is why many MM/Sharpshooter Snipers/Slingers are seen in raids, because they have the necessary burst as well as comparable sustained damage (although Lethality/Dirty is still the best for their class). Deception/Infiltration assassins, while complete crap until you're practically in full Rakata/BH, are great for fights like Kephess and Fabricator, where your massive burst (I can burst for over 2k on non-fabricator fights in my offspec, but I quickly fall down to about 1200 otherwise) comes in handy. Carnage is another nice burst spec, but very situational.

 

In short, don't focus so much on the FOTM specs/classes (coughmaraudercough) that people are rolling, because this game is about what YOU want to play. You want to roll FotM? Go ahead. Roll FotM. I did, and I regret it (rolled a mara, which is fun to play and I can out dps a full rakata merc in my columi gear, but that's not saying much, then I rolled a jugg, and its alot more fun at lower levels than my marauder was.)

 

I answered your question to the best of my ability, and I hope that helped. I know I do not have numbers to support it, but you can find those on dpsmeter.com and I'm fairly sure they will back me up.

hey what about the trooper they do alot of dps i have a friend who is always 1st or 2nd in pvp even though he hasn't played for a couple months and comes back and tops chart. it's dump. i always see a trooper merc or a sniper at top for dps in pvp.

hey what about the trooper they do alot of dps i have a friend who is always 1st or 2nd in pvp even though he hasn't played for a couple months and comes back and tops chart. it's dump. i always see a trooper merc or a sniper at top for dps in pvp.

This thread isn't about PvP.

Mara's are up there probably at the top, becasue of their utility to gap close, ease of use as a whole class (probably the easiest to use to pump out the most damage and not really gear dependent in comparison to other classes/specs). Deffo the 'FOTM' class that hasn't gone away

It's very hard to say whats 'best', they are ALL competetive and apart from Mara's due to the above everyone is pretty close really, just knowledge and skill comes into play to min-max damage. The OP didnt mention melee scoundrel's either?! combination of armor pen, a fair few DoT's/bleeds and has nice burst (granted less than 1.2) along with being close to medium range...they tear through shiz with gear (most gear dependant class I'd say though) just a massively underplayed class becasue you need a more of a brain to play one especially in T2 FP('s) as they have weak armor, so getting popped early is a problem

Any well played Arsenal Merc/Marks Sniper/Anni Mara/Lightning Sorc can top charts. But if I had to rate it I would say

1. Anni Mara

2. Marks Sniper

3. Arsenal Merc/Lightning Sorc

Like I said, any of these classes can take the top spot, just from my own perspective, if all classes are played equally well, this is what the final ranking would be.

I have never seen a DPS PT or sin in raids, so I have no idea what kind of DPS they do. And our Vengeance Jugg doesn't sync up to Mox so I've never seen any numbers from her.

1/mara

2/leth sniper

3/MM/hybrid sniper

4/merc

Leth still own MM. I pull 200DPS more as a lethality than MM sniper. 1400 vs 1200. The change to the MM tree didn't really help to remove those 200DPS. And the nerf to stacking debuffs is in favor to any internal build.

1/mara

2/leth sniper

3/MM/hybrid sniper

4/merc

 

Leth still own MM. I pull 200DPS more as a lethality than MM sniper. 1400 vs 1200. The change to the MM tree didn't really help to remove those 200DPS. And the nerf to stacking debuffs is in favor to any internal build.

Umm our Marks snipers pull 1500+ on bosses and 1700+ on the dummy. They've both tried Leth and say that Marks is still better.

Umm our Marks snipers pull 1500+ on bosses and 1700+ on the dummy. They've both tried Leth and say that Marks is still better.

I agree with the person you quoted. I pull more as DF than SS. By a good 150-200 dps.

Umm our Marks snipers pull 1500+ on bosses and 1700+ on the dummy. They've both tried Leth and say that Marks is still better.

Yeah, I get 1,850 with leth on the dummy though.

As an assault vanguard on dummies I've pulled 1.8 - 1.85k (depending on mild variations in spec) on long parses, while sentinels in my guild claim (and I believe) they can pull over 2k. According to what I've seen on dpsmeter.com on stationary fights sents/maras do indeeed pull those numbers.

So far in raids this has hold true with either me or one of the sents on the top (depending on fight) then gunslingers then, well, everything else. This is just what I've observed in guild raids.

Umm our Marks snipers pull 1500+ on bosses and 1700+ on the dummy. They've both tried Leth and say that Marks is still better.

Unfamiliarity with the spec and different itemization priorities between the three trees can skew the numbers. I do about 1800-1850 DPS on the test dummy as Lethality, so if your Snipers have almost all 61 items, this suggests that Lethality is generally better.

In order to get a true comparison, you need to either have tests from a Sniper who is comfortable with both specs (and can min max accordingly) or compare two similarly geared and skilled players. Our (now former) MM Sniper has about the same gear level as I do and played his MM very well in my opinion. Nevertheless, I consistently edged him our as Lethality in almost all of our Ops fights and he soon switched after that.

Unfamiliarity with the spec and different itemization priorities between the three trees can skew the numbers. I do about 1800-1850 DPS on the test dummy as Lethality, so if your Snipers have almost all 61 items, this suggests that Lethality is generally better.

 

In order to get a true comparison, you need to either have tests from a Sniper who is comfortable with both specs (and can min max accordingly) or compare two similarly geared and skilled players. Our (now former) MM Sniper has about the same gear level as I do and played his MM very well in my opinion. Nevertheless, I consistently edged him our as Lethality in almost all of our Ops fights and he soon switched after that.

I don't pretend to know much about snipers but we have 1 who runs Leth and 2 who run MM, and both of our MM snipers come out on top on just about every fight. There are obviously fights every once in a while where they don't, but that's usually due to 1 of them dying or not paying attention. We haven't done dummy parses in a while, most people are playing alts because they're bored out of their minds right now.

1. Annihilation Marauders

2. Lethality Snipers

3. Pyro Powertechs.

4. Arsenal Mercs and Lightning Sorcs (very similar dps)

5. Anything else.

*I didn't include other specs from the same AC.

Umm our Marks snipers pull 1500+ on bosses and 1700+ on the dummy. They've both tried Leth and say that Marks is still better.

Its fight dependant really. I'm giving MM a whirl at the moment because it really seems like many fights in EC cater towards it more with a lot of 'kill this add quick/burn phase' and even the extra range for T+Z. However heavy movement lethality will edge ahead and in a pure tank n spank leth will be a few hundred dps ahead. MM is also a lot harder to do a perfect rotation with.

I don't really understand those rankings, considering one of our PTs is top DPS literally 98%+ of the time in RWZ (100% in normal).

They lose to Mara's 1v1, but simply put up better numbers overall every single time.

I don't really understand those rankings, considering one of our PTs is top DPS literally 98%+ of the time in RWZ (100% in normal).

 

They lose to Mara's 1v1, but simply put up better numbers overall every single time.

Thread isn't talking about pvp dps, which depends on much more than pve.

I see a LOT of posts here saying that Anni Marauders are great and this and that, but not a single one about Carnage. My question is this. Has Carnage been nerfed since the last time I played or do people simply not know how to play it right? After 1.3 I switched to Carnage and the amount of burst it did in pve situations seemed to make it far superior to Anni. Anni was great for consistant damage, but overall Carnage pulled ahead. It also gave me a bit more survivability on fights with the less aoe damage and defensive forms as well.

I havent played the game recently due to no time. But it just seemed to me that Carnage was a far better fit for my playstyle, AND did so much damage that no one in my guild was able to beat my damage. Has this changed or do people simply not know how to play Carnage right so they go with Annihilation because it was what was best to begin with and now they are comfortable with it.

Has Carnage been nerfed since the last time I played or do people simply not know how to play it right?

 

Has this changed or do people simply not know how to play Carnage right so they go with Annihilation because it was what was best to begin with and now they are comfortable with it.

I find it highly unlikely that the people who spend a majority of their playtime each week (hours in the double digit range) working with a parser and the dummies so they can maximize their dps havent tried other options of what talent points they use....

Annihilation is higher, and I don't know hardly anything about maras.

I see a LOT of posts here saying that Anni Marauders are great and this and that, but not a single one about Carnage. My question is this. Has Carnage been nerfed since the last time I played or do people simply not know how to play it right? After 1.3 I switched to Carnage and the amount of burst it did in pve situations seemed to make it far superior to Anni. Anni was great for consistant damage, but overall Carnage pulled ahead. It also gave me a bit more survivability on fights with the less aoe damage and defensive forms as well.

 

I havent played the game recently due to no time. But it just seemed to me that Carnage was a far better fit for my playstyle, AND did so much damage that no one in my guild was able to beat my damage. Has this changed or do people simply not know how to play Carnage right so they go with Annihilation because it was what was best to begin with and now they are comfortable with it.

It's higher using simulations and the highest parses in the game have been posted by annihilation marauders, it also has much more survivability with the self-heals. All carnage has over it is the on-demand burst.