With Established Foothold I have a ~57% uptime on 2 energy per second and 15% increased damage, and it can be reset by Imperial Preparation.

With this set bonus I'd get a variable amount of EPS and increased damage (thanks for the vague descriptor) on a ~16% uptime.

At first glance this is overspecialized and dependent on too many contingencies to be attractive and there's two things I don't like about the design.

1) Once again defensive/utility cooldowns are being morphed into damage cooldowns. Other classes with good offensive cooldowns like Powertech or Marauder are not forced to use their defensive/utilities to reach their optimal dps. Why are Sorcerers and Snipers being made to do this? Why can't you just turn Recklessness, Laze Target or Target Acquired into something worth pressing? They were garbage when I left over five years ago and they're still garbage today but rather than fix them you decide to morph our other situational cooldowns into janky offensives.

2) You're going to cause a lot of social friction by making a sniper's damage output dependent on their group's positioning. The greater the damage bonus per ally is the worse the friction will be - and what's bad is it'll have to be high for such a low uptime cooldown to compete with options already available.

I get that these set bonuses are geared toward NiM Dxun specifically but, well, that's a terrible idea anyway. Vertical progression or go home. In my experience this wouldn't make me press Ballistic Shield more than I already do - raids generally know when to use big cooldowns like this already.

I will absolutely not replace Established Foothold set bonus with this.

Seriously... why would I? Ballistic Shield is just fine the way it is.

Its not that its a BAD idea for a set bonus. Its not. Its just... its shows a lack of creativity.

I never really post anything to the forums, mostly because I have a strong belief that its equivalent to screaming out into the void about frustrations that arise in this game. HOWEVER

1) I'm not sure what the obsession with 2% mastery on the 2 piece set bonus is but it shows a serious lack of creativity. (ESPECIALLY SINCE MASTERY IS USELESS IN SCALED CONTENT)

2) Sniper doesn't have energy problems that can't be solved with the Entrench set OR EVEN THE EQUIVALENT OLD SET. The 4 piece on this new set is (putting it politely) useless with little to ZERO appeal over other sets. And quite frankly insulting that it's exclusive to NiM Dxun. If I was going into NiM Dxun for a set bonus it wouldn't be for a Ballistic Shield set unless the buffs gained effected EVERYONE standing in it. (which by the way would be an amazing Idea do that instead.)

3) The amount of DPS you'd gain from the 6 is absolutely negligible... you're also taking away from the integrity of Ballistic Shield by turning it into a DPS cooldown.... its a Defensive cool down and a raid wide one at that. Its an excellent utility. No one in their right mind would ever say "I want Ballistic Shield to be an energy recovery and DPS cooldown."

TLDR: The set is absolutely useless when put up against the other sets available. Its insulting that this is what has been finalized for NiM Dxun. You can fix all of it by doing 1 of 2 things: Go back to the drawing board or make the effects gained from pieces 4 and 6 applicable to all group members standing inside. Seriously the set would be amazing if everyone got energy/sec and a dps/prot/heal buff per role.

And to the Devs that might read this. Be creative and keep up the good work. This set just stands out as a bad idea.

Ballistic shield is 2mins and 30s cooldown which last 25s.

So not much uptime in the whole grand scheme of things.

every ally within it applies a damage buff to you, stacking up to 8 times

How much buff? 1% 5% 10% 30% 50% 100% 200%. ?

compare: ( from operative bonus set)

(6) Tactical Superiority now consumes all Tactical Advantages and scales it’s crit chance buff with amount consumed, up to 20%

I don't get how some class changes specify how much buff or reduction, but this sniper/gunslinger one remains tantalisingly vague.

All in all, I'll stick with my sets and bonuses. Solo PVE is piece-of-cake easy and I seem to do okay in WZ most games. - where the other 15 players have more of a bearing on the outcome than one set of gear or another.

Certainly not gonna join a raid group and grind out the bits for this lacklustre set. I'll pass. TY

as discussed:

1. Mastery buff is worthless in most (scaled) contents
   
2. Energy Management is not an issue at all
   
3. Please stop turning defensive cooldowns into offensive ones
   

New set bonus is useless.

Perhaps that would be better (or not):

(2) +2% Power

(4) While inside your Ballistic Shield, you heal for 2% of your maximum health every second.

(6) Reduces cooldown of Ballistic Shield by 15s. When you take damage your cooldown of Balilistic is reduced by 3s.

New set bonus is useless.

 

Perhaps that would be better (or not):

 

(2) +2% Power

(4) While inside your Ballistic Shield, you heal for 2% of your maximum health every second.

(6) Reduces cooldown of Ballistic Shield by 15s. When you take damage your cooldown of Balilistic is reduced by 3s.

I only tend to use it in PVP to buy my team a few extra seconds life. - such as defending a door in VS or waiting for reinforcements. I only see BS used once every 5-10 matches, which suggests that its not that much benefit as it is.

Since GS and Snipers are a pure DPS class, I'd rather it buffed DPS rather than added a marginal DR for my team - That's what tanks and healers are for - and are better at, if they have 1/2 a brain.

as I said before, not gonna grind out a set that isn't even as helpful as a ( albeit small) heal on freighter flyby/orb strike tactical - which I can swap out OOC at a whim. But for the record I use set bonus gear and tactical(s) only to boost DPS, since that's my role, unless we're short of heals and tanks, or people willing to guard.

This thread is buried because evidently nobody plays this class.

Here's another reason defensive and utility CDs shouldn't be turned into offensive ones:

Real offensive cooldowns get their cooldowns reduced through alacrity. Defensives and utilities do not, and putting a DPS increase on them further pigeonholes the player into a specific Utility build for maximum DPS.