Seems this debate comes up every few threads: Some lethality snipers will post huge damage numbers, marksman snipers look at them and feel insecure because they can't match those numbers then they will come up with arguments saying "LOL damage doesn't mean anything, Marksman kills people faster which is what matters".

 

Anyway, in my experience killing people slower is a desirable feature, not a bug.

 

You may be thinking, huh?

 

Consider a typical pitched battle scenario in Voidstar (side door, roughly 4v4) or Alderaan (mid turret, 4v4).

 

The marksman sniper will burst the enemy targets one by one, with a marauder jumping on their healer to stop him healing. Sniper pops trinkets and cheers when his Snipe+Ambush+Followthrough+Takedown crit for huge numbers, killing the first enemy. He then works on the 2nd, then 3rd. But by the time his team kills the last enemy, the first one has already respawned and has returned to the battle

 

Compare this to a Lethality sniper. Again, your Marauder jumps on their healer to prevent him healing. Lethality pops all trinkets, DOTs everyone up, effectively doing higher total damage than the marksman sniper. No one dies for the first 20 seconds, but everyone is steadily dropping lower from DOTs, and their healer is struggling to get away from the Marauder and focusing on self healing. About 30 seconds in, everyone is at 20% hp, and it's time to Cull, Takedown, Series of Shots, etc.

 

Entire enemy team dies within 10 seconds of each other, you now have a clear field to cap.

 

Players need to start treating Voidstar and Alderaan like one of those raidboss encounters where you have "4 enemy mobs that need to die within 10 seconds of each other or else the encounter resets". Lethality naturally lends itself to this playstyle.

 

Conclusion: Not only does Lethality do more damage overall, it's also more useful damage because it allows you to kill their entire team at once. Marksman thinks small - they only focus on one target. Lethality thinks big - they want to kill the entire enemy team at once.

what about cleanse? so if they have 1 healer but a trooper also?

 

second what about if they sent a stealth to go after you only preventing you from dotting anyone?

 

Not trying to disprove what your saying just a question or two.

You are missing the point (which is pretty impressive, since it's stated in the 5000 lethality vs mm threads just like this one).

 

The problem is not the envy MM snipers feel towards the throbbing 600k damage lethality epeen, but rather the fact that lethality has:

 

1. No cleanse resistance / punishment for cleanse on it's dots. While negligible in pugs (i enjoy solo queueing as lethality spec to pubstomp as much as the next guy), any premade will be able to completely ignore you aside from throwing out the occasional cleanse.

 

2. Horrible energy efficiency. The 2 energy per crit makes lethality workable in PvE, not so much in PvP - even if you spread your dots around instead of focusing down a target with cull, your teammates will still kill your dot targets before the dots have run their course / your dots will be cleansed.

 

3. Inability to kill healers. Go find yourself a BM operative healer and try to kill him as lethality. He will dance/lol at you while keeping himself cleansed and healing his entire team in the process. With mm spec I do not instagib bm healers by any means, but I do force them to focus on healing themselves / waste time running from me to attempt to los. Which is again, time not spent healing.

 

 

Personally, I think the lethality playstyle is extremely fun. I would prefer to use it over mm when playing premade vs premade. But as it is right now, it is only viable if the healers on the other team don't know what they're doing.

In larger fights Snipers will win the dispel war, since cleanse has a 4.5 second cooldown, in which time we can apply 3-5 dots. The primary reason there aren't dispels however is that the most popular class (Sorcs/Sages) cannot dispel our dots. Non heal specced Troopers spend more time and more resources dispelling than it costs to apply the dot in the first place.

 

Melee classes will cripple marksman dps far more than it cripples lethality dps, so that is actually a point in favour of lethality.

 

This mindset of killing enemies in a short time frame should impact healer triage as well: suppose you are a healer on defense, and you judge you have a healing deficit in that fight of 16k every 15 seconds. That means you could in theory lose 1 player every 15 seconds. By rationing your heals you can to some degree affect when the deaths occur.

 

The normal healer always tries to prevent deaths by healing the lowest hp person, but this actually makes things worse - if you had 4 players, and you always healed the lowest hp person, and the enemies didn't focus fire (say) you could keep everyone at alive but at low hp, until some point where all of you would die at once.

 

The smarter thing to do would be to continually heal the group but let one person soak damage and die first - so about 20-25 seconds in you will have 3 quite healthy players and 1 dead player - so that the 1 dead player can respawn and rejoin the group before your 3 healthy players die too.

 

This is triage in the case of having a healing / damage deficit of course, you're making the best of a losing position but played right you can sustain this indefinitely as you're always getting respawns. If you're in the happy situation of having more healing than damage then this calculation doesn't even apply, just heal all incoming damage.

"...Marksman kills people faster which is what matters"

 

I see quite a few people say this, but I've yet to see it hold up to anecdotal experience.

 

I'm not saying Marksmanship is weak. It's plenty potent in a 1v1 scenario. But while I haven't given the tree anywhere near as much playtime as I have Lethality, I've always found Lethality to kill quicker in a 1v1 encounter than Marksmanship. In fact, more often than not, when I come across an enemy gunslinger/Sniper, they usually end up losing.

 

Now, that's not to say I agree with the OP. Lethality is definitely easier to use in a PvP environment, but I wouldn't say it's definitively better. Marksmanship snipers have a significantly easier time with energy management (I've never felt the need to use Rifle shot as an MM sniper, for example, whereas I have with Engineer & Lethality), not to mention they aren't dependent upon early Debuff/DoT 'investments' like Lethality and Engineering are. This in an out of itself is a fairly significant benefit of Marksmanship snipers.

Lethality's problem isn't cleanses. Once you get dots rolling on multiple targets in a large fight, there isn't a human brain in the world that's capable of processing information fast enough to cleanse your dots before you Cull your chosen target. There's just too much going on and the UI doesn't display the information well enough.

 

Lethality's problem isn't energy. It does require much more careful energy management than Marks, but between your 90 second Adrenaline Probe and your dot tick energy, you won't run into problems once you get the hang of it.

 

Lethality's problem is reacting to the battle field on demand. Once your Corrosive Grenade goes out, you can't hurt anyone else until the cooldown is up. The ball gets passed, or a higher priority target joins the fight? Too bad, wait 15 seconds. Marks is much more likely to be capable of doing what you need to do, when you need to do it.

 

That said, for solo queue-ing pug warzones, I run Lethality. Tanks are popular classes. When you spec Marksmanship, you're giving up your ability to do any real damage to 25-50% of the enemy team depending on the luck of the draw right out of the gate, and you can't count on having capable team mates to fill the tank killer role.

 

When ranked warzones come along, Marks will be the superior spec though. Nothing in the game can burst down a soft healer the way a Marks Sniper can, and that's a very valuable skill to have in organized pvp. Marks is also just as capable of spreading it's damage around as Lethality if you need to smoke the whole team simultaneously, there's not a rule that says Marks can't tab target while going through a rotation =p

You're right when talking about Huttball. Lethality is certainly much less reactive than MM. Lethality looks at the battlefield, and makes an action plan and sticks to it: dart everyone, wait until you get a good cluster of enemies then grenade then wb and cull. You do overall damage, but you can't switch target to the ball carrier.

 

On the other hand, Lethality gets an AOE snare that cannot be dodged or deflected, which is something that MM does not have.

 

For emergency situations, when you absolutely need to kill the ball carrier, I've found that Series of shots hurts a fair bit (there's a fair number of talents that boost it in the Lethality tree) and so does Explosive Probe with the +15% talent, which you should be getting anyway for the +15% to grenade. If the target was below 50%, you could Explosive Probe+SoS+Takedown for a kill, maybe.

 

For Marksman in that situation, assume their crucial dps skill is on cooldown as well (Ambush) and they need to take someone out immediately - it would likely go Probe+Snipe+Followthrough+Takedown for more damage, but not all that much more.

You're right when talking about Huttball. Lethality is certainly much less reactive than MM. Lethality looks at the battlefield, and makes an action plan and sticks to it: dart everyone, wait until you get a good cluster of enemies then grenade then wb and cull. You do overall damage, but you can't switch target to the ball carrier.

 

On the other hand, Lethality gets an AOE snare that cannot be dodged or deflected, which is something that MM does not have.

 

For emergency situations, when you absolutely need to kill the ball carrier, I've found that Series of shots hurts a fair bit (there's a fair number of talents that boost it in the Lethality tree) and so does Explosive Probe with the +15% talent, which you should be getting anyway for the +15% to grenade. If the target was below 50%, you could Explosive Probe+SoS+Takedown for a kill, maybe.

 

For Marksman in that situation, assume their crucial dps skill is on cooldown as well (Ambush) and they need to take someone out immediately - it would likely go Probe+Snipe+Followthrough+Takedown for more damage, but not all that much more.

 

Considering that Snipe is instant, and that all your snipes etc. get 30% more damage I would say that you would do a lot more damage. For the same rotation you get an extra snipe + followthru wich is incredible in that it deals lots of damage, is an instant and costs only 6 energy.

 

All in all why would I play Sniper if I am not snipin'?

I'm MM spec and when I PvP im always top damage, kills, least deaths, and 70% of the time most medals, i understand what your saying about Lethality spec, but I've had 0 problems with MM spec in PvP, and whenever the scenario you posted in your first post happens I have had no problem killing them all and taking the objective ( I feel its just player preference at this time until something gets buffed or nerfed, plus if you have a team that works together like me, always have a team of 4 in vent we win majority of the time. )

 

 

I've seen and fought several Lethality spec snipers (or smuggler equivalent) and i usually kill them before they can cull, however they probably arnt very good and don't know how to properly use the spec, but once dual spec comes out i plan on using both specs and determining which one is best for myself.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Stuggottzz

I'm MM spec and when I PvP im always top damage, kills, least deaths, and 70% of the time most medals, i understand what your saying about Lethality spec, but I've had 0 problems with MM spec in PvP, and whenever the scenario you posted in your first post happens I have had no problem killing them all and taking the objective ( I feel its just player preference at this time until something gets buffed or nerfed, plus if you have a team that works together like me, always have a team of 4 in vent we win majority of the time. )

 

 

I've seen and fought several Lethality spec snipers (or smuggler equivalent) and i usually kill them before they can cull, however they probably arnt very good and don't know how to properly use the spec, but once dual spec comes out i plan on using both specs and determining which one is best for myself.

 

after viewing some of your posts, I have come to the conclusion you are either a compulsive exaggerator/liar or you play against the worst players on the planet. you kill lethality snipers before they can cull, huh? evasion negates your MM damage, but will not stop dart/corr grenade. 70% of the time most medals... what a joke. you're a joke. please stop posting. I am a fan of MM, but you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. again, stop posting.

since your response ive already posted 2 things and will continue to do so regardless of what you say, your a guy behind a computer just like me you think im going to listen to a threat from you lol, now thats a joke

Please add "Most Medals 70% of the time" to your sig so that the reader may know not to take anything you say seriously.

Most medals I've seen in a game was 11 and that was from a sorcerer hlr/dps spec who was helping out ball carrier in huttball, and ive only been beaten by hlrs and the occasional mercenary who uses that healing item that gives them the 5k heal medal.

(which ive only known of 3 people using)

 

BTW still posting

Edited February 17, 2012 by Stuggottzz

I think the problem you run into in your Voidstar scenario is that you are relying on someone to cause problems for the healer. I would argue that the best way to kill a group at the same time is to put a MM on the healer, with the task of not killing him. This goes along the lines of "self preservation". A healer or player will turn their focus 100% to themselves if you drop them to say 25%, thus the heals to the group stop. If you continue to hold the healer at low health and keep them occupied healing themselves then the rest of their group will slowly die and you can pop the healer dead before the last one dies. essentially the same result with less reliance on the variable of someone occupying the healer.

Honestly, for the many reasons Lethality is good, you managed to pick and showcase the reason why it is bad...

 

Way to go. You could even write, IF there is only one healer for the enemy team AND all of your team is playing some huge waiting game and waiting for ALL the enemy players to get low, WHILE keeping the ONLY ONE enemy healer busy, then you MAY create a window of opportunity in 20 seconds to kill EVERYONE in a 10 seconds window so that you MAY cap door before they respawn. Also make sure you don't die to those players, while they run around slaughtering and cc'ing everyone for 20 seconds at least.

 

Boy, this is probably the dumbest tactic I ever seen, not to mention that it is impossible to execute with all those IFs, ONLYs and MAYs.

after viewing some of your posts, I have come to the conclusion you are either a compulsive exaggerator/liar or you play against the worst players on the planet. you kill lethality snipers before they can cull, huh? evasion negates your MM damage, but will not stop dart/corr grenade. 70% of the time most medals... what a joke. you're a joke. please stop posting. I am a fan of MM, but you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. again, stop posting.

 

 

Assuming the lethality sniper and my sniper both are aware of each other, he's not likely to get a cull off on me (or at least it will be delayed) if I have flash grenade and diversion up. Many of the lethality snipers I see use the predictable corrosive dart, corrosive grenade set up (which they pretty much need to so no fault of their own). Then it's a matter of looking for the WB debuff on me or to see if they take cover/entrench for the obvious cull.

 

If they don't entrench, I immediately throw the flash grenade once I've been hit with corrosive grenade usually followed by a quick repositioning for an instant snipe/leg shot to prevent from taking cover again for a couple of seconds. Obviously if they start cull at that point I'm waiting to interrupt. I'm already entrenched (if the cooldown was up) so I'm not worried about them attempting to flash bang me. If they try to take cover/entrench then cull, I'll use diversion and interrupt the cull at that point.

 

They're much more difficult to kill if I didn't seem them first or if my cooldowns aren't available. The few times I have an actual slugging match against one, it's 50/50 who wins as I can typically die from his dots even after he's dead.

 

Each spec has its merits. If for what ever reason, Boiware changes DoTs preventing node captures, Lethality will have even less a place in pvp. Operatives/Scoundrals and Commandos/Mercs can already remove 2 tech dots on friendly targets which already impacts lethality specs against organized teams. My commando's cleanse is instant and spammable so long as I have ammo. My marksman sniper only feels encumbered attacking tanks alone.

 

Edit : Null, I'm not really defending the guy you quoted. Him stating he gets most medals 70% of the time seems a bit unrealistic based on my own warzone experiences where tank-capable classes can get 10-12+ medals fairly easily.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Mythicrose

I personally like Lethality more then MM in PvP. However, "DoTing" everyone up as a Lethalitiy spec is a horrible way to play it. Corrosive Dart and Corrosive Grenade maybe 4-5k Damage over around 20s? If there is even one healer on the other side they have that covered and you just wasted your time while that healer outperformed you.

 

If that healer was a Sorc, you should have DoT'd it up and Culled it. If that healer was an Operative or Merc, you should test to see if they are going to dispel themselves with a Corrosive Dart. If they don't, you can Cull them. If they do you use Explosive Probe, Ambush, and Series of Shtos. The best way to play Lethality is to kill the high value targets just like it is with Marksman.

 

The strength of Lethality isn't it's ability to multi-DoT... I'd say it's actually quite horrible at that because even with Lethal Purpose you don't generate that much energy in return and the DoTs in SWTOR do not deal a significant amount of damage due to their long durations. Lethality's strength is to remain much more useful then usual while mobile, being able to avoid many mitigation mechanics, and have absolutely amazing delayed burst on Cull. The only reason to multi-dot is to prevent objective capping and you will be horribly drained on energy by doing such if you had to rely on Corrosive Dart.

 

If you want to wear down a group you either need to get them in an Orbital Strike and throw multiple Frag Grenades. Corrosive Grenade isn't a bad idea, but Corrosive Dart is a terrible way to wear down a group. It simply doesn't apply any pressure. Honestly, for AoE Pressure you should be playing a Sorc or Mercenary instead. A Sniper's strength is it's single target burst damage. This is with both Marksman and Lethality while they are able to burn through energy before needing to weave in Rifle Shots. That alone is the only thing I miss from being a Sniper while I'm on my Sorc.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Ayestes

What about when your fighting 8 healers? was in one WZ like that ( actually I think they had a tank or two) but the only way we won was concentrating all attacks on one target, even then it took a long time to take anyone out. I dont think a lethality would have been of much use there.

 

its a rock paper scissors system, its not a question of which sniper spec beats which other sniper spec, its a question of which sniper spec beats what type of opponent.

 

Healers > Lethality > Tanks

Tanks > MM > Healers

Engineer > DD

Edited February 17, 2012 by CNova

I am disagreeing with the OP on this one.

 

Lethality's strength is the ability to move and maintain pressure on the opposing force and its ability to by pass mitigation. It's best when attacking or in very fluid situations because the sniper can adapt quickly. It can be countered by purges or by straight out heals. The lethality sniper role is not to take on a 4X1 situation. That is crazy. It is to apply pressure, keep the other side busy.

 

Marksmen strength is its ability to single target and apply pressure to one particular player (non-tanks) It has stopping power with the ability to bring huge numbers in relatively short period of time. It's weakness is that it is a turret. It plays best in a defensive role where it can use its range to defeat stragglers, and players who are already engaged and to burst down more lightly armored characters.

 

To those posters who claim high medal counts. Talk is cheap. Lets hear exactly how you get a high medal count. Cause lets see

 

Low hanging fruit

 

1. 2.5 hit

2. 1 Quick draw

3. Solo kill

4. 75K damage

5. 10 kills

 

Easy to achieve in longer match

 

6. 25 kills

 

Harder to get,

 

7. 300K damage

8. 5 K hit (rare)

9. 2.5 Heal

 

Possible but improbable.

 

10 5K Heal

 

Most people (who are not lying) will get between 4-6 medals a match.

I am disagreeing with the OP on this one.

 

To those posters who claim high medal counts. Talk is cheap. Lets hear exactly how you get a high medal count. Cause lets see

 

Low hanging fruit

 

1. 2.5 hit

2. 1 Quick draw

3. Solo kill

4. 75K damage

5. 10 kills

 

Easy to achieve in longer match

 

6. 25 kills

 

Harder to get,

 

7. 300K damage

8. 5 K hit (rare)

9. 2.5 Heal

 

Possible but improbable.

 

10 5K Heal

 

Most people (who are not lying) will get between 4-6 medals a match.

 

Heal medals aren't achievable now.

 

There are 10 medals achievable for pure DPS like snipers.

 

Guaranteed Medals

 

75k Damage Done

300k Damage Done (if you don't get this you're doing something wrong)

10 kills

25 kills

Killing Blow

2.5k hit

 

That's 4 you should get as baseline, without any effort. Now the other 4 medals will require you to do specific things.

 

5k hit (make sure you have the gear to make this happen, find a sorc/sage, force him to burn his bubble, pop your trinket and adrenal and fire your ambush at him. 40% crit chance, gogo. engineering spec snipers can achieve this with a trinketed orbital strike too)

 

Solo kill (the sorc in the back you scored your 5k medal on? you can probably burn the rest of his HP down before anyone interferes)

 

1k defense (keep attacking the enemy ball carrier in huttball and you'll get this eventually)

2.5k defense (you should get these 2 by default on alderaan, but you won't be able to get this on any other map).

 

Voidstar - 8 medals

Huttball - 9 medals

Alderaan - 10 medals

 

5k hit takes some luck, you may only get it every other game. Solo kill as well. Sometimes the stars align and you'll get 10 medals on Alderaan. But if you're not pulling 300k minimum + 25 kills every full length game for the baseline 6 medals, there's room for improvement. Average medals should be 7-9.

 

Entire enemy team dies within 10 seconds of each other, you now have a clear field to cap.

 

 

I'm MM sniper btw and i like all of the diversity in the community here, and no build is right and no build is wrong, as long as it all works for you. Every single point anyone makes here is situational.

 

My MM sniper will be terrible in some situations, while LTH snipers will be terrible in other one.....I don't get why everyone has to be right all the time.

 

If you think your build is best, why shove it down other peoples throats. If it really is, why would you want other people to be in on it haha? that's more competition lol.

 

For my one arguement with the OP...haha...that quote...I'm sorry dude, I've got nothing against you....but no compitent team would ever let a sniper and a healer take out a whole team...maybe 3 people if they are weakend first, but not 4 or more

 

that said dont get caught up in that last paragraph. If you take anything from this take it from the stuff before that.

Heal medals aren't achievable now.

 

There are 10 medals achievable for pure DPS like snipers.

 

Guaranteed Medals

 

75k Damage Done

300k Damage Done (if you don't get this you're doing something wrong)

10 kills

25 kills

Killing Blow

2.5k hit

 

That's 4 you should get as baseline, without any effort. Now the other 4 medals will require you to do specific things.

 

That's 6.

Honestly, for the many reasons Lethality is good, you managed to pick and showcase the reason why it is bad...

 

Way to go. You could even write, IF there is only one healer for the enemy team AND all of your team is playing some huge waiting game and waiting for ALL the enemy players to get low, WHILE keeping the ONLY ONE enemy healer busy, then you MAY create a window of opportunity in 20 seconds to kill EVERYONE in a 10 seconds window so that you MAY cap door before they respawn. Also make sure you don't die to those players, while they run around slaughtering and cc'ing everyone for 20 seconds at least.

 

Boy, this is probably the dumbest tactic I ever seen, not to mention that it is impossible to execute with all those IFs, ONLYs and MAYs.

 

^

This.

 

What if there are 2 healers, or 3? DoT's on the rest of the group will be ignored and healed through, while a Marksman will take down all three healers at an incredibly fast rate.

 

Under the condition that the opposing team has only one healer and everyone on your team is coordinated enough to kill everyone on their team at the same time, your idea is sound.

 

If you have that good of coordination though, why not just assist and focus fire targets down one by one? The end result is overwhelming damage a healer wouldn't be able to keep up with anyway, and kills so fast they may as well all be dying at the same time.

Assuming the lethality sniper and my sniper both are aware of each other, he's not likely to get a cull off on me (or at least it will be delayed) if I have flash grenade and diversion up. Many of the lethality snipers I see use the predictable corrosive dart, corrosive grenade set up (which they pretty much need to so no fault of their own). Then it's a matter of looking for the WB debuff on me or to see if they take cover/entrench for the obvious cull.

 

If they don't entrench, I immediately throw the flash grenade once I've been hit with corrosive grenade usually followed by a quick repositioning for an instant snipe/leg shot to prevent from taking cover again for a couple of seconds. Obviously if they start cull at that point I'm waiting to interrupt. I'm already entrenched (if the cooldown was up) so I'm not worried about them attempting to flash bang me. If they try to take cover/entrench then cull, I'll use diversion and interrupt the cull at that point.

 

They're much more difficult to kill if I didn't seem them first or if my cooldowns aren't available. The few times I have an actual slugging match against one, it's 50/50 who wins as I can typically die from his dots even after he's dead.

 

Each spec has its merits. If for what ever reason, Boiware changes DoTs preventing node captures, Lethality will have even less a place in pvp. Operatives/Scoundrals and Commandos/Mercs can already remove 2 tech dots on friendly targets which already impacts lethality specs against organized teams. My commando's cleanse is instant and spammable so long as I have ammo. My marksman sniper only feels encumbered attacking tanks alone.

 

Edit : Null, I'm not really defending the guy you quoted. Him stating he gets most medals 70% of the time seems a bit unrealistic based on my own warzone experiences where tank-capable classes can get 10-12+ medals fairly easily.

 

I play against MM snipers just by aplying 3 dots and then LOS them (dot 1, los, dot2, los, dot 3. No chance for them to use anything except instaskills). Then its fun to see what are they going to do next as they know they can't win against dots&los. There is no way to beat that with mm sniper. Although on the open mm sniper might have the upper hand.

 

I hated los as a mm sniper but now its me who can los as lethality

I play against MM snipers just by aplying 3 dots and then LOS them (dot 1, los, dot2, los, dot 3. No chance for them to use anything except instaskills). Then its fun to see what are they going to do next as they know they can't win against dots&los. There is no way to beat that with mm sniper. Although on the open mm sniper might have the upper hand.

 

I hated los as a mm sniper but now its me who can los as lethality

 

 

When I'm on the receiving end of that I pack up and leave... find another fight to pick.

The Marksman who doesn't do that is on the same level of intelligence as the Lethality player that stands toe to toe with a Marksman.

 

Either one is pretty easy prey =)