Everything I have ever read on the subject, guides, conventional wisdom, community consensus suggest that we should be at or as close to 100% accuracy (ranged) and therefore 110% tech accuracy so as to deal with boss mitigation which has been puported to be 10%.

I have very diligently balanced my spec around this principle with all other factors being considered. Within the crit threshold, at the surge diminshing returns cap etc.

Recently however I have become concerned that this accuracy cap assertion may not be correct in practice and am therefore polling the gunnery community for their input.

I have a fellow gunnery guildie who sits at 90% accuracy (ranged) and swears he never misses. In place of that accuracy he is stacking additional crit and power. He is parsing exceptionally well in HM TFB roughly 150 dps better than our other commandos in the other raid groups who are accuracy capped in equivalent gear.

Just looking for the thoughts of the community here with respect to this seemingly contrarian finding.

I would really like to see his parses because it does make a difference for me. You also cannot stack more crit and power by lowering your accuracy, its on a different tier. You could however stack more surge but wouldnt gain any significant amount.

Even at 97% I noticed a difference now that im at 99.9%. Using all 61's you should be at 285 Accuracy/Surge is what I figured. Gets you 99.89% accuracy and 75.82% surge.

If he is out dps'ing your other commandos then my feelings are your other commandos arent that good at their rotation's. Check your parses and APM's, that might tell the story to your other commandos. I get between 26-28 APM's. Check his and compare, if hes got a few more than your other commandos its a rotation or ammo management issue not accuracy.

You never need accuracy to guarantee a hit with a Tech attack. Bosses have a small Defense chance (I've heard numbers between 6% and 10%, but nothing guaranteed), but no Resist chance. As such, the default 100% chance to hit with Force/Tech powers is all that you ever need (this is why DPS sages have no need to stack accuracy whatsoever).

As Gunnery, you need to look at what your attacks break down as. Grav Round is Tech, Demolition Round is Tech, Sticky Grenade and Plasma Grenade are both Tech, Full Auto is ranged, Hammer Shot is ranged, and HiB is ranged. From my understanding of Gunnery's DPS spread, a pretty substantial majority of your damage is going to be Tech based and, as such, get no real benefit from accuracy. Since you're only getting partial benefits from accuracy, it's entirely plausible that you could eke more damage out of your itemization by getting rid of some degree of accuracy and replacing it with Surge or Alacrity.

Never missing with attacks whilst having no bonus to accuracy implies one of three things:

He's fantastically, statistics-defyingly lucky.

He's not actually noticing when he misses.

He doesn't use Full Auto, High Impact Bolt or Hammer Shot.

After the (easily obtainable) soft cap to surge rating, its worth as a stat nosedives. If he's dropped all accuracy for surge and is doing around 150 dps more than your other commandos, they're doing something wrong.

From my understanding of Gunnery's DPS spread, a pretty substantial majority of your damage is going to be Tech based and, as such, get no real benefit from accuracy.

Unless we're AoEing things, gunnery tech damage isn't really a 'substantial majority'.

From my understanding of Gunnery's DPS spread, a pretty substantial majority of your damage is going to be Tech based and, as such, get no real benefit from accuracy. Since you're only getting partial benefits from accuracy, it's entirely plausible that you could eke more damage out of your itemization by getting rid of some degree of accuracy and replacing it with Surge or Alacrity.

i can assure you that there is no partial benefit from accuracy.

i'm assuming that the person mentioned in the OP doesn't parse (or doesn't use a parser that keeps track of misses). i upload a lot of my parses to askmrrobot.com and i can assure you that i missed quite a lot when i didn't have a lot of accuracy, and no amount of accuracy stacking is going to make hammershot never miss.

not that it's a huge deal if hammershot misses, but he's obviously lying if he says he never misses.

(not to mention that he can't add crit and power in lieu of accuracy)

that said, i wouldn't be opposed to someone doing tests and confirming if this were true, however, from what i can tell:

a 10% drop in accuracy would equate to a ~5% drop in dps

if i were to put all of this into surge, i would get a 5% boost on crits only, and i don't see that making up for and surpassing the difference.

Unless we're AoEing things, gunnery tech damage isn't really a 'substantial majority'.

Hail of Bolts is a ranged attack, so the only AoE Tech attacks a Commando gets are Mortar Volley, Plasma Grenade, and Sticky Grenade. If a majority of your AoE damage comes from those instead of HoB, I'd be curious what you define "AoEing" as (I generally define it as spending more than just 2-3 GCDs every 15 seconds but I guess you could count only Mortar Volley + Plasma Grenade occasions as the only times you really "AoE").

Like I said, I'm not a Commando DPS, much less a Gunnery Commando, so I don't know how the Tech/ranged spread for your damage ends up turning out, but, even if Tech and ranged damage are roughly evenly split, all of that accuracy itemization is only benefiting one-half of your total damage, which still amounts to realistically partial returns. It would be like replacing the Power on your armor with Tech Power. It's only benefiting half of your DPS whereas all of the other stats you can stack would benefit a larger portion so there is some logical consistency to the supposition that getting rid of accuracy and replacing it with surge or alacrity would increase your overall DPS.

Like I said, I'm not a Commando DPS, much less a Gunnery Commando.

i'm not sure i see the logic in making such strong assertions about the class then.

i'm not sure i see the logic in making such strong assertions about the class then.

It's about basic theorycrafting and logic. If 50% of your DPS doesn't benefit from a stat that already has questionable DPS value, then there is some logical foundation to the idea that getting rid of it to improve your DPS.

Ranged Accuracy should be at 100%, thus making Tech 110%. If you were to try a fight with under 90% ranged accuracy and then switch to 100%, you will see a huge difference.

As of Game Update 1.3, dps Commando's became an armor pen class. Thus, having 100% ranged accuracy is a must, so that Full Auto and HiB benefit from it.

Now whether you want to be a crit/surge, a power/surge, or a power/crit/surge is up to you.

Now if you have never made a specific class, don't talk about it like you know what you are talking about. Even if you are theory crafting, do not talk about it. You will miss a lot of aspects of the class.

It's about basic theorycrafting and logic. If 50% of your DPS doesn't benefit from a stat that already has questionable DPS value, then there is some logical foundation to the idea that getting rid of it to improve your DPS.

Both our ranged and tech attacks do benefit from accuracy. After 100% accuracy is achieved, anything beyond that adds to armor penetration which helps out tech attacks.

Our most damaging attacks are our ranged attacks, Full Auto and HiB, and unless someone is doing something drastically wrong, or unless it was nothing but a zerg attack by handfuls of weak mobs, these two attacks are going to be doing more damage that Demo Round, Grav Round, Inc Grenade, Pulse Cannon, and Sticky Grenade combined.

That makes accuracy worth it.

Both our ranged and tech attacks do benefit from accuracy. After 100% accuracy is achieved, anything beyond that adds to armor penetration which helps out tech attacks.

That's not true and hasn't been true for over a year. Redundant accuracy provides no benefit whatsoever. The "reduced defense" that is described refers to a reduction in the target's defense chance (re: the chance that someone has to make you miss with an attack), not a reduction in the target's armor rating. It's for this explicit reason that you'll never see an intelligent DPS Sage/Sorc with any accuracy: all of their attacks are Force attacks and, since they start off with 100% hit chance and NPCs have no default Resist chance, they get no benefit from it *whatsoever*.

Our most damaging attacks are our ranged attacks, Full Auto and HiB, and unless someone is doing something drastically wrong, or unless it was nothing but a zerg attack by handfuls of weak mobs, these two attacks are going to be doing more damage that Demo Round, Grav Round, Inc Grenade, Pulse Cannon, and Sticky Grenade combined.

Actually checking out the various parses for Gunnery Commandos on TORParse, it's pretty obvious that ranged attacks (Full Auto + HiB + Hammer Shot) comprise roughly 50% of total damage and Tech attacks (Grav Round, Demo Round) comprise the other 50%. Full Auto hits like a truck and comes up quite often, causing it to provide the single largest portion of overall damage, but HiB doesn't comprise nearly the same degree of total damage dealt thanks to its CD. Demo Round hits harder than HiB, by a surprisingly substantial margin, even though it's on the same CD, and Grav Round is your default spam attack (and should be used 5 times every 15 seconds and, discounting alacrity, accounts for upwards of half of your actual time). Like I've been assuming, it's a 50/50 split that lends credence to my assessment that accuracy is partially wasted since it only benefits 50% of your actual damage. You may not see great big angry numbers like you do out of an HiB crit or get to laugh while a target literally melts while you wail on him with a CoF Full Auto when you use your Tech attacks, but they're used often enough and hit hard enough that they make up fully half of your total damage dealt.

It's about basic theorycrafting and logic. If 50% of your DPS doesn't benefit from a stat that already has questionable DPS value, then there is some logical foundation to the idea that getting rid of it to improve your DPS.

i can understand that you have a solid understanding of game mechanics and theorycrafting and can contribute to this conversation, but a lot of the assertions you're making about gunnery rotations and mechanics of the class simply aren't true (like having to use 5 grav rounds every 15s or hail of bolts being the highest contributor of AOE dmg rather than the lowest).

also, i think it's misleading to say that accuracy 'only' affects 50% of gunnery's damage and surge/alacrity will affect everything.

surge only affects crits, which are about 1/3 of all attacks and an extra 15% bonus crit chance on grav round

alacrity affects grav round and full auto (which together are about 65% of my total damage)

i think everyone can agree that the OP's argument, that one can hit every attack without any accuracy and switching out accuracy for power and crit, is rather absurd, so i don't think anyone can really say that accuracy has questionable value.

but honestly, i don't think any argument by itself can be made that alacrity or surge are more useful than accuracy.

i do however, think that tests could potentially be done to determine if surge or alacrity will help more, but as far as theorycrafting goes:

changing out accuracy for surge is most likely not going to have a positive impact. it is very easy to reach 10% accuracy and 25% surge by splitting the itemization evenly, so exchanging 10% accuracy will gain only about 5% surge. 5% bonus to crits is simply not going to make up for and surpass a drop of 5% in overall dps

tests could show otherwise, but the logic isn't there to support it.

exchanging 10% accuracy will net about 10% alacrity, and alacrity will speed up the cast times of grav round and full auto. grav round and full auto together make up ~65% of my overall damage, so that's certainly more than 50%

it's safe to say that all things being equal, alacrity will have a bigger impact on dps than accuracy.

however, commandos need to stay above 8 ammo because they have a tiered ammo regen system.

another variable is the long-standing discussion about whether or not 4% alacrity, 5% alacrity for 6s on crits, or 2% alacrity with 5% alacrity half the time on crits is the best way to spec for gunnery (and with that in mind, if adding alacrity beyond it would be more beneficial than keeping the accuracy)

it could go either way. tests certainly could show that alacrity if more beneficial than accuracy, but, because of that ammo regen mechanic, personal choice in skill setup, and familiarity with 2-7% alacrity, one would be hard-pressed to simply state that adding alacrity in lieu of accuracy will make a huge difference in dps without actually testing it out.

and then, all of that said, it might be better to replace surge instead of accuracy.

i find that highly doubtful though; just making a point that a lot of theorycrafting can be thrown around, but i think it'll be very difficult for anyone to make a solid argument to go against the commonly held belief that one should itemize accuracy up to 10% and put the rest into surge without posting some logs

Actually checking out the various parses for Gunnery Commandos on TORParse, it's pretty obvious that ranged attacks (Full Auto + HiB + Hammer Shot) comprise roughly 50% of total damage and Tech attacks (Grav Round, Demo Round) comprise the other 50%. Full Auto hits like a truck and comes up quite often, causing it to provide the single largest portion of overall damage, but HiB doesn't comprise nearly the same degree of total damage dealt thanks to its CD. Demo Round hits harder than HiB, by a surprisingly substantial margin, even though it's on the same CD, and Grav Round is your default spam attack (and should be used 5 times every 15 seconds and, discounting alacrity, accounts for upwards of half of your actual time). Like I've been assuming, it's a 50/50 split that lends credence to my assessment that accuracy is partially wasted since it only benefits 50% of your actual damage. You may not see great big angry numbers like you do out of an HiB crit or get to laugh while a target literally melts while you wail on him with a CoF Full Auto when you use your Tech attacks, but they're used often enough and hit hard enough that they make up fully half of your total damage dealt.

There are also parses that show ranged doing far more damage than tech. In some cases 20% more.

Whether or not they make up half of your total damage is totally reliant on the procs of CoF and if the individual is using FA every time that it is off of its cool down.

Since FA is the most damaging attack that gunny commandos have, why hamper it by not allowing it to actually do its full damage?

I will agree the accuracy is wasted on half of a commando's attacks.

But not on half of it's damage.

FYI, you do not want alacrity on a Gunnery Commando. It actually hurts FA more than anything, as FA does damage by the second.

Uhh, no.

FA does its damage in 3 ticks. By default this is spread over three seconds, but can be sped up. In no way is it harmed by alacrity (although other than tree points, I wouldn't bother taking any alacrity as the benefit is minor).

I think I get the general consensus. For the record if your re-read my post it was theorycrafting question for the community. You could conceivably swap out the Advanced Inititative Enhancements for Advanced Asaault Enhancements. The question is whether giving up the potentially 150 points of accuracy assuming (3) is worth the crit gain. And I see that the general consensus from the community is no.

Didn't come here to start a flame war simply posing a theorycrafting question to the community.

I think I get the general consensus. For the record if your re-read my post it was theorycrafting question for the community. You could conceivably swap out the Advanced Inititative Enhancements for Advanced Asaault Enhancements. The question is whether giving up the potentially 150 points of accuracy assuming (3) is worth the crit gain. And I see that the general consensus from the community is no.

 

Didn't come here to start a flame war simply posing a theorycrafting question to the community.

i don't think anyone felt that you did, and honestly, i like when discussions like these happen so i and everyone else can get a clearer understanding of game mechanics and play their class better, however they choose to do so.

also, the swap you are suggesting is power AND accuracy for crit AND surge

you are not swapping accuracy for crit

all dps/healing enhancements have 3 stat slots

the first slot will always have endurance and only endurance. it's only relation to other stats is how much endurance vs how much of other stats you have

the second slot will always have power OR crit

the third slot will have either alacrity, accuracy, OR surge

1: endurance

2: power / crit

3: accuracy / alacrity / surge

so that said, you can ONLY trade accuracy for either alacrity, surge, NOT crit or power.

similarly, you can only trade power for crit (and vice-versa), not for alacrity, surge, or accuracy

you can of course make multiple stat swaps with one enhancement swap, such as the one you suggested, swapping power for crit and accuracy for surge.

applying all of this to the theorycrafting you presented in the thread, the real question is: is accuracy less useful than adding more alacrity or surge?

i think that it's a valid discussion that could use some tests (though i'm fine with going with common knowledge myself), but your guildmate who suggested that he went with all crit instead of accuracy simply doesn't know how itemization works. if it's working for him, more power to him, but i wouldn't take what he's saying at face value.

This question re acuracy has been asked allot in my guild recently. So between my self and 3 other commandos. (Myself using a Vanguard DPS and Commando) We played arround with acuracy. We have tried varying accuracy values from 90% to 100%.

We have all seemed to find that the magic number lies at arround 98%. At this value during our operations parses we noticed the only avoids we see are usualy on Hammer shot. Any lower than 98% and we then start to also see misses/avoids on full auto and HiB. When we went to 100% then no avoids seen on anything.

Now we are still working on this and watching the parses on each fight to make sure that 98% is enough, but so far its looking good. Hammer shot misses we can live with. Any FA or HiB misses then we re asses.

This question re acuracy has been asked allot in my guild recently. So between my self and 3 other commandos. (Myself using a Vanguard DPS and Commando) We played arround with acuracy. We have tried varying accuracy values from 90% to 100%.

 

We have all seemed to find that the magic number lies at arround 98%. At this value during our operations parses we noticed the only avoids we see are usualy on Hammer shot. Any lower than 98% and we then start to also see misses/avoids on full auto and HiB. When we went to 100% then no avoids seen on anything.

 

Now we are still working on this and watching the parses on each fight to make sure that 98% is enough, but so far its looking good. Hammer shot misses we can live with. Any FA or HiB misses then we re asses.

I've also been playing around with accuracy, and right now at 99.89% the only misses I've seen in my parses are from hammer shot. I've also taken all the alacrity skills in both the combat medic tree (first responder) and the 4% skill in the assault tree, no additional alacrity on gear. The big difference I've seen is with FA channeling at 2.7 instead of 2.9 and a minimal change with grav round. Also, this does cause a need to watch your ammo a little more, but that's what the recharge cells and reserve power cells are for.

I've also been playing around with accuracy, and right now at 99.89% the only misses I've seen in my parses are from hammer shot. I've also taken all the alacrity skills in both the combat medic tree (first responder) and the 4% skill in the assault tree, no additional alacrity on gear. The big difference I've seen is with FA channeling at 2.7 instead of 2.9 and a minimal change with grav round. Also, this does cause a need to watch your ammo a little more, but that's what the recharge cells and reserve power cells are for.

so you're not taking demo round?

i don't really see how the boost to alacrity is a fair tradeoff for the highest-hitting attack we have

I did full testing of accuracy quite a while ago as i hadn't seen any confirmations. There was speculation only at the time. My full testing showed you need +10% to not miss with Full Auto and High Impact Bolt. I did test at +9.5% in case you're wondering. Test all you want. But if you get a different number then you haven't done enough testing and you would be wrong.

To the OP. Accuracy to +10% is on average the best way to gear. Simcraft shows this and so do my parses.

Depending on the fight the commandos using +10% accuracy should be at the top of the charts. If they aren't then they really need to l2p.

The only question about accuracy is with Ilevel63 gear and wether we should gear to +10.27% or drop to +8.68%. With Ilevel61 gear we hit +9.89% which was optimal. Personally i'm currently at this stage of Ilevel63 gearing and i'm going with +8.68% accuracy as i believe it's more beneficial than exceeding +10% by .27%. A Merc would benefit more by going with +10.27% as exceeding 10% would benefit their Unload offhand. Simcraft confirms this as well. Since simcraft doesn't work with commandos i can only speculate that dropping to +8.68% is best. So i won't confirm that it really is best for commandos. I think it's so close you could go either way and not notice a difference.

I did full testing of accuracy quite a while ago as i hadn't seen any confirmations. There was speculation only at the time. My full testing showed you need +10% to not miss with Full Auto and High Impact Bolt. I did test at +9.5% in case you're wondering. Test all you want. But if you get a different number then you haven't done enough testing and you would be wrong.

 

To the OP. Accuracy to +10% is on average the best way to gear. Simcraft shows this and so do my parses.

 

Depending on the fight the commandos using +10% accuracy should be at the top of the charts. If they aren't then they really need to l2p.

 

The only question about accuracy is with Ilevel63 gear and wether we should gear to +10.27% or drop to +8.68%. With Ilevel61 gear we hit +9.89% which was optimal. Personally i'm currently at this stage of Ilevel63 gearing and i'm going with +8.68% accuracy as i believe it's more beneficial than exceeding +10% by .27%. A Merc would benefit more by going with +10.27% as exceeding 10% would benefit their Unload offhand. Simcraft confirms this as well. Since simcraft doesn't work with commandos i can only speculate that dropping to +8.68% is best. So i won't confirm that it really is best for commandos. I think it's so close you could go either way and not notice a difference.

Thanks for the tests. This is my thinking as well.

The only question about accuracy is with Ilevel63 gear and wether we should gear to +10.27% or drop to +8.68%. With Ilevel61 gear we hit +9.89% which was optimal. Personally i'm currently at this stage of Ilevel63 gearing and i'm going with +8.68% accuracy as i believe it's more beneficial than exceeding +10% by .27%. A Merc would benefit more by going with +10.27% as exceeding 10% would benefit their Unload offhand. Simcraft confirms this as well. Since simcraft doesn't work with commandos i can only speculate that dropping to +8.68% is best. So i won't confirm that it really is best for commandos. I think it's so close you could go either way and not notice a difference.

Would it be possible to get a list (or a character on AskMrRobot) with the ideal/suggested mods/enhancements? There was one around here somewhere for the BH/Campaign gear level & that helped me work out what I needed to get in order to get (near) BiS.

Can do. Let me know if this link works for ya. http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/8eacc5ff-2bf2-4542-9124-681663c15d2c

I recently moved so don't have my notes on hand. With Ilevel63 gear it should be close to the above. At this level of gear and if memory serves i believe you can swap out some power for crit rating. As crit rating surpasses power until DR makes power more valuable. I simmed this out previously to 308 crit rating. It's just a balance of power and crit rating. You want about 1000 power. But you can't really just give it a number as it always depends on your current gear.