Tis you who need to consider liberal arts. He's right. P.S. This is coming from another engineer IRL.

I beg to differ with a number of the posts that have been made; the armor doesn't look rushed at all. What we are seeing is very deliberate in that a considerable amount of thought and effort had to have been put into the design to make it as atrocious as it is. You don't just end up with a helmet like that after 20 minutes of messing around. Normally, I could care less about appearances and wouldn't waste my time even commenting, but this armor has to be the ugliest and most inappropriate design for a set ever across all mmo's. It is like the artist was disgruntled and wanted to give the finger to Bioware... but Bioware didn't realize it was all a joke. Honestly, what are we going to see next for smuggler helmet designs? Am I going to be wearing a fruit basket on my head during 1.3? A sofa in 1.4? I love this game and can't say enough good things about this game, especially PvP, but they need to fire the artist immediately along with the quality control team that let this abortion through... In the future, my advice to Bioware is that they ask themselves one question when releasing any new armor designs for the smuggler class: "Would Han Solo or Lando Calrissian be caught dead wearing what we are about to release?" That simple question would have prevented this insult from ever being inflicted upon us.

The theoretical savings from Efficient Engineering are the most difficult to achieve due to the fact that you must use three skills on cooldown to achieve the savings you stated. Furthermore, you have to spend energy like crazy to achieve this savings. I'll put it this way: EMP discharge is 20 bucks for free, Efficient Engineering is a 20 dollar savings for spending 80 bucks. Unless you have at least 80 bucks in your wallet, the 20 dollar savings just can't be realized in the latter case. The investment required to achieve the energy savings is often too great given the limited energy budget, which is what makes efficient engineering so bad. A couple more points that affect the energy sustainability of each specification: The numbers you posted are theoretical maximums. The ratio of actual energy savings to theoretical energy savings will be different for each of the trees. The engineering tree must use 5 skills on cooldown to acheive the numbers you posted. The other specs have different requirements, so only looking at theoretical maximums is misleading. The other side of the equation, energy requirements for each specification's preferred rotation, is just as important to overall energy sustainability. These are also different for each spec. Trying to match each specification's theoretical maximum energy savings is a mistake, as it is only one piece of the puzzle. Anecdotally, I've heard lethality snipers have the worst problems with energy. I also question whether hybrid specifications are the most popular, but I'm not sure either of us can support our claims because that data just isn't available like it is in other games. P.S. Reread your writeup on plasma probe in your first post. You limited it to three charges total, which means the damage increases stated in your second post are incorrect. I'll still take an ground targeted AoE over a DoT, regardless of damage. P.P.S. I like the work you've done on sithwarrior.com

I'm glad you're not in charge over at Bioware, because you just singlehandedly destroyed the engineering tree with the above two changes. Imperial methodology is one of only two useful energy management talents in the tree, the other being EMP discharge. The expected energy return per minute of the other two talents (efficient engineering and energy overrides) is atrocious, not to mention that taking both of these talents together actually reduces the expected energy return per talent point when compared to choosing one or the other. The only draw of plasma probe is that it is NOT a DoT but an area effect. This means (I believe) that it still prevents node captures in voidstar and alderaan. If it worked like you proposed, there would be officially no reason to take it over corrosive grenade. And since when are hybrid Sniper specs popular? I never realized that was a problem, and even if it is, it is more likely because the top of the talent trees are relatively worthless, not because there is too much synergy with hybrid specs. We aren't anything like Sages/Sorcs... In short, fix the cover while rooted "bug", and that is all. P.S. Stay off my Engineering tree lawn! *shakes fist*

Sniper says hello.

I'm not jumping in the middle of this debate except to say that our root is not terribly useful due to the fact that it breaks on damage. Especially considering two of our specs are heavily DoT reliant, you are pretty much guaranteed that it lasts two seconds and no more. What's worse, the slow in the engineer/sabotuer tree is also a DoT, meaning our snare prevents the use of our root and vice versa. Even if you somehow avoid breaking your root, you can be sure some mouth breathing force user will pounce immediately thus breaking the root, preventing you from gaining any distance, and thus ensuring your untimely death. With regard to the ability to damage the rootee for two seconds without worry of breaking the root, the previous poster is discounting the fact that 1.5 of the two "free" seconds is taken up by the global cooldown, meaning you can really only cast one of two incredibly weak instants with no travel time. Not worth the risk...

I'm not jumping in the middle of this debate except to say that our root is not terribly useful due to the fact that it breaks on damage. Especially considering two of our specs are heavily DoT reliant, you are pretty much guaranteed that it lasts two seconds and no more. What's worse, the slow in the engineer/sabotuer tree is also a DoT, meaning our snare prevents the use of our root and vice versa. Even if you somehow avoid breaking your root, you can be sure some mouth breathing force user will pounce immediately thus breaking the root, preventing you from gaining any distance, and thus ensuring your untimely death. With regard to the ability to damage the rootee for two seconds without worry of breaking the root, the previous poster is discounting the fact that 1.5 of the two "free" seconds is taken up by the global cooldown, meaning you can really only cast one of two incredibly weak instants with no travel time. Not worth the risk...

It's pretty obvious you don't know anything about how snipers work. Almost all of our attacks ARE weapon damage, and therefore mitigated by everything. FACE.

As I understand it, incendiary grenade functions such that it "pulses" every three seconds for 18 seconds, and each "pulse" applies a 9 second dot which damages once every three seconds. If that is correct, I would assume that incendiary grenade will NOT stop a cap. Can someone confirm?

That isn't even the funny one. This: http://www.torhead.com/ability/99CSgbY/incendiary-grenade Is the funny one. Even better: It is a 31 point talent. Bioware is trolling gunslingers with this talent.

Can anyone think of a reason to pick the "premier" 31 point talent in the saboteur tree anymore?

Go ahead and read the tooltip for incendiary grenade. Note the damage, the radius, and the number of affected people limitation. Take into account the fact that a slingers best two methods of keeping an enemy within that radius break on damage. Would you take that skill over, say, corrosive grenade? Besides doors or turrets, when do you think would be a good time to lay down an area targeted aoe dot?

Maybe it was cheese, but now there is no reason to AoE DoT anything.

A welcome "nerf" for Snipers/Slingers.

Ugh. There goes the ONLY reason to take the 31 point talent in the Engineering/Saboteur spec. If we're going to do this, can we make it so DoTs don't break my two most useful CCs?