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Gunnery Commando PvE Guide


jesseleeca

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I'm a Gunnery/Combat Medic commando who almost exclusively PvEs, raiding weekly with my guild <Rude Dudes>, we're (Pre-2.0) 5/5 HM TFB, 4/4 NiM EC, 10 stack Dreadtooth, and Dreadful Entity, 7/7 16M HM S&V, HM 16M GF, 5/5 16M HM DF, 5/5 16M HM DP, and Hateful Entity. I couldn't seem to find a up to date Gunnery Commando DPS PvE guide so I decided to throw in my two cents. Since a lot of the basic mechanics of commandos have already been discussed quite well in other threads I won't further elaborate on them.

 

Special thanks to oaceen, deadandburied, and ArchangelLBC for the many excellent and insightful suggestions, many of which have been incorporated into this guide. Much thanks will also go to the very impolite gang at <Rude Dudes> (Formerly <Chocolate>, <Cowards>, <Moon Crickets>, and <Garys Guild> on The Fatman). We have spent many nights together raiding, wiping on trash, getting Fearful (STEW!!), pulling birds (Yuseke the rude), inpersonating Oesliki, pwning fully geared people in rateds and regular PvP, getting owned by scrubs, and generally being the best "garbo try-hards" on whichever server we are on.

 

 

To Do List:

 

 

More editing and formatting. (This never ends.)

Check QoL and ammo changes from CoF change in 2.7 to update rotation/make it more concrete.

Add NiM DF strats for: 2& 3rd bosses + 4& 5th once we down them.

Finish Dread Master Calphayus guide (3rd boss of DP).

Get back to finish NiM TFB and S&V guides sometime before they are totally irrelevant, if they aren't already.

 

 

 

Acronyms

 

 

EN = Electro Net

FA = Full Auto

GR = Grav Round

HiB = High Impact Bolt

DR = Demolition (Demo) Round

RP = Reserve Powercell

PG = Plasma Grenade

SG = Sticky Grenade

TO = Tech Override

CoF = Curtain of Fire

HtL: Hold the Line

 

 

Post-2.0 Update

 

 

Comparison to Pre-2.0 (No longer that relevant)

Skill Tree changes

Personally, I'm not happy with the changes, yes we have increased survivability, mobility and a 6% increase to most of our attacks (except the hardest hitting one, FA) are nice but in exchange we lost the reduced CD to Reserve Powercell and we're forced to take sh*t talents. What do I mean by sh*t talents? Keeping in mind that this is a PvE-centric view, reduced CD to Tenacity, Concussive Round, and the root on stockstrike are all pretty much useless. Overclock would be nice if it didn't replace Reserve Round, but the sight increase in mobility by allowing 2 instant cast abilities doesn't change much. Reflexive Shield is nice but we're a DPS class, we need talents to increase our DPS not survivability, I would be much happier if they switched this and Rapid Recharge from the Assault tree, which lowers the CD of both ammo regen abilities by 30 sec.

 

2.0 New Abilities

 

Hold the Line: Good for movement phases to give you more time dpsing the boss, so not as meh as I thought.

 

Electro Net: This one is interesting. It's a boss move in PvP and it has some potential in PvE. The main issue is its long CD, 90 sec, which means it won't do much in terms of DPS.

 

Kolto Bomb: What used to be a healer-exclusive ability. Nice addition but won't change much, I think.

 

Other Significant Changes

 

This is, as someone said, at least not a nerf, which we should all be happy about since it seems that its the most gunnery commandos can hope for :(. It means that we'll have a shorter set up time for armour pen and DR, resulting in situational higher burst while not affecting our long term DPS. Some people have suggested that this means we can use Charged Bolts, which seem to have a slightly higher damage, in between GRs. However, unless they change Charged Barrels, we'll still need to spam GR to get our procs for HiB.

This overall seems to be a slight QoL improvement that does nothing to solve the two main problems we seem to have in the expansion.

Edited: There also seems to be a 16% buff to DR damage, that's a roughly 2% increase to our total DPS which classifies it as a slight buff in boss fights and a bigger buff in burst.

1) Ammo management: Reserve Powercell will now have a 30 sec longer CD. Non-free HiB.

Edited: HiB is free again but the issue regarding RP still remains.

Edited again: HiB is free with 4 piece from old gear but it isn't with new gear. What the heck is this BW?:mad:

Edited: It isn't that bad but it is slightly worse than before.

 

2) Lagging DPS. Edited: It's a lie, we dps just fine. You most likely won't be the top dps if there is any sort of movement, but you shouldn't do too badly either. p.s. Getting smoked by gunslingers is totally ok. :p

 

 

Rotation

 

Post 2.7: Given the changes to CoF procs, the rotation will be changed to something much less RNG dependant. Put basically, you will have 5 GCDs (+one spent casting GR) between procs that you can use, two will be spent on FA giving you three to work with each rotation. It also means that FA should always be used to open a fight (barring the presence of EN), since you'll have it back up anyway.

Now you just have to fit HiB and DR into the 3 GCDs available. At the moment, going to have to test it out to see how ammo works out when the update drops, I would go for using DR for the first GCD, then a GR followed by HiB, which only has 4 charges.

Later rotations will take into mind several priorities:

1) Use DR and HiB whenever they are up, do not delay them for a rotation.

2) Use procced FA every rotation, two GCDs every rotation are ALWAYS going to be reserved for this.

3) Get 5 stacks of Charged Barrel (the HiB stacking buff). You should be able to this except for the opening rotation given the CDs involved.

4) And as always, watch your ammo, using RP with FA whenever need be.

 

The opening rotation: (EN)-FA-GR-DR-GR-HiB-FA-GR (start of rotation)

General rotation: GR-5 GCDs (two for FA)-GR.....

 

Skill tree

 

My build is this.

Concussive Force is interchangeable with Tenacious Defense since they don't affect much and are basically fillers. Cell Capacitor is taken because ammo is always an issue for Gunnery and it gives us our only "offensive CD" with it's 10% alacrity boost.

 

Stats and Gearing

 

The optimal stats are a bit fuzzy so take these (except alacrity and accuracy) with a grain of salt.

 

Alacrity: None.

 

Accuracy: Same, still need 100%. I've been trying out using 3 accuracy pieces and 2 accuracy augs, which brings accuracy to 100.07%. The loss of aim seems to be offset by the gain in surge.

 

Crit: Apparently the goal is to get anywhere from 200~320 currently testing them out.

 

Power: As always, go for as much as possible.

 

Surge: Just get whatever amount the enhancements give.

 

Gearing:

This should be obvious, get the Eliminator 4 piece and tinker around with the mods and enhancements. As of 2.4.3, proc power relics no longer stack so best in slot right now is proc power + main stat.

 

 

Operation Strategies

 

Fundamental Raiding Rules.

Some things are universal across all operations, bosses, and trash. While some of these seem like common sense, seeing how often people, including me, don't follow them, I thought it would be a good idea to list them.

 

 

1) Get a voice chat server. I don't care whether it's TS, Vent or Mumble, get one. These are invaluable if your guild plans on raiding regularly, typing out "I need a cleanse" in ops chat won't work and will get you killed. This helps organization of raid and makes everyone's life easier, besides it makes it easier to troll people.

 

2) DON'T PULL AGGRO!!! Tanks will hate you for it and threaten to kill your cat, you will take unneeded damage and in some cases, kill half the raid, and basically ruin everybody's day. Use your aggro drop and don't go in both barrels blazing at the start of boss fights, let the tanks get some aggro before you do anything drastic.

 

3) Focus fire. This applies more to trash than bosses but given how often trash seems harder than the bosses, our guild considered renaming ourselves <We Wipe on Trash> in the past, try to focus on important targets. Mark targets, call out which one you're targeting. In a lot of the new raids, adds are major parts of the boss fight so this is more important than ever.

 

4) Utilize your CCs. This makes life easier for everyone.

 

5) Don't pull extra trash. There is no reason to spend extra time on trash so don't pull extra mobs which if your group isn't really geared will wipe you.

 

6) Don't stand in sh*t. If you see a giant red/yellow/green circle on the ground beneath you, chances are that it's not good, get out of it. Whichever boss/mob does it, remember, THEY DON'T LIKE YOU, so they certainly aren't throwing Salvation down for you.

 

7) Stand in AOE heals. The exception that proves the previous rule is Salvation, stand in it, it heals everyone for a sh*t ton saves the healers a lot of work.

 

8) Cleanse yourself. There are classes that can't cleanse themselves and need to be cleansed, you are not one of them. In many of the fights the DoTs thrown on you can be cleansed by you, do it, don't make the healers waste a GCD and ability cooldown cleansing it off you. If you see a tech/physical debuff on you, cleanse it.

 

9) Keep Gravity Vortex on whenever you can. 20% armor reduction is nothing to scoff at and it helps everyone else's dps out.

 

10) Find a good spot. In many fights the boss(es) run around and since movement makes our DPS go to sh*t, try to find a place where you can move the least and still keep DPS on the boss.

 

11) You can heal. You have 3 heals, including an AoE heal that can be cast on the go, use them. There are often boss phases where you have downtime/on the move, healing at those times helps lighten the load of the healers. So do it while taking into account your ammo.

 

12) Use HtL when you need to run around. If you need to follow the boss/raid around 30% extra speed helps.

 

 

That's all I can think of for now, feel free to suggest additions, but above all, use your common sense and don't wipe the raid.

 

Individual Boss Strategies

 

Keep in mind that (most of) these will be strats for 16 man runs since our guild has gone for 16m.

 

NiM Dread Fortress

No more 8 man stuff since we're fully 16 man now, I'll extrapolate how some of the stuff that might be different if need be.

 

 

Nefra

 

This boss is still more or less a joke, with not much changing from HM. The only two changes that should be noted are that the droids now jump to their target instead of walking, giving you a bit less time to react, and the boss needs to be turned around to face the raid when it does the NiM Twin Attack, you have to be behind the boss for this but it is mostly a tank thing. Otherwise, same stuff from HM holds and it's easy enough that it can be done with much less than 16 people.

 

Gate Commander Draxus

 

There are quite a few changes from HM to this boss which I'll list along with going into how they affect the strat.

 

1) The Subteroths give a debuff for increased damage taken when they explode. What we do is let the tanks grab all of them before starting the AoEs to prevent them from running around. Use the standard group of AoE skills (TO+RP+PG, SG, MV) and if any run after you use HtL to bring them out of the raid, one explosion you can take easily but any more and it's a repair bill.

2) The Corrupters can only be interrupted once by each person. It's not an issue when there is only one of them per side since they should die extremely fast but during the "double Corrupter both sides" phase it's a good idea to let healers do the first interrupt so you can get some more damage out. This will likely be significantly more difficult on 8M since there are less interrupts to go around.

3) Despoilers need to be interrupted as they heal the adds. This will likely not be your job if there is a melee who has a stupidly short CD on interrupt (i.e. Sentinel).

4) Bulwarks need to be killed before their cast finishes or they will do massive damage to the raid. Since the Dispatchers (lightning dudes) can pretty much be ignored, in the three bubble phase, after killing those in the back, kill the Bulwarks, switch to boss and then Dispatchers.

5) Boss can't be damaged until all adds are down in final phase. This would be a good time to bring up the Guardian's smash, which one-shots now, be careful, don't pull threat and it's loot time.

 

Grob'Thok aka The Cyborg Rancor

 

Corrupter Zero

 

Dread Master Brontes

 

 

 

 

HM Dread Fortress

 

 

Nefra

 

The first boss is, for lack of better words, a joke, in other words not really worthy of HM.

For commandos there are only 3 things you need to do: pewpew, cleanse the DoT the boss throws on you, and get out of the red circle the droids that come out cast around them. It's pretty much a tank-and-spank.

 

16M: No noticeable difference.

 

Gate Commander Draxus

 

Many, many different phases so I'm not going to go in order, there's dulfy if you want to see the order of phase.

So just a few points in no particular order.

1. Subteroths blow up when they die, don't be near them when that happens. Use your AoEs and get the heck out.

2. Interrupt Corrupters so they don't get the DoT off.

3. Pull threat on Dismantlers so they don't go for the tanks or healers.

4.Get under shields to do damage, the visual of the shield can be misleading so get really inside.

5. If the boss is up that phase you can leave an add up and DPS the boss and switch back when he's gone.

6. Don't stand in stupid sh*t.

 

16M: No noticeable difference, more people to interrupt is good.

 

Grob'Thok aka The Cyborg Rancor

 

The fight can be massively annoying for gunnery and any specs that rely on cast times if the tanks don't know what they're doing. If that is the case the boss does constant ground pounds, interrupting everything and generally being a pain. So the most important job for you as a commando is to make sure your tanks know what the heck they should be doing.

Other than that, 2 things, AoE the mobs that come out since they hurt and if you get the drill droid (?) on you, run out of the group. All in all this is an easy fight and we downed it on our second try, or our first serious one since the first started with someone pulling a Leeroy Jenkins.

 

16M: No noticeable difference.

 

Corrupter Zero

 

3 things to focus on, getting the adds down, killing the boss, and keeping ammo up. There will be many waves of add, AoE them down with everything you have. Kill the healbots first and remember that they (all the adds) can be CCed and interrupted so do so if need be. As has been brought up before, this fight can be tough on ammo sometimes since PG will most likely be used every time the adds are up so be careful with it.

The boss throws a mine on people, run it to the boss or you'll kill yourself and bring half the raid with you.

Other then that just deal with the mechanics (like the big laser), and kill the boss. It's not hard.

 

16M: No noticeable difference.

 

Dread Master Brontes

 

There are many phases to this fight so I'll try to go through them one by one.

 

1) Big tentacles spawn (bigtentaclesbigtentaclesbigtentaclesbigtentacles, anyone from the Fatman should get the joke.) focus down the fingers, aka small tentacles first, they hurt. Afterwards, FF on one big one, kill the fingers when they spawn again, and kill the other one.

2) Run around. Literally, pop HtL and run around the outside of the room and try not to get caught in a stream of lightning, it kills.

3) Boss is up, FF boss and then...... NEW KE$HA!! We have more copies of Kephess, they throw DoTs and AoE, cleanse any DoT that gets on you (or trust your healers) and focus them down. This part is going to be mostly composed of switching between new KE$HA and the boss. There will be lightning balls spawning and unlike in Soa, you actually kite them for a while. Ideally wait till the stacks on the ball go up to 17ish before you pop your defensive, ask you friendly neighbourhood sage for a bubble and run to pop it. Rinse repeat till phase change.

4) More running. Kill the bots before the bosses beam reaches them. You should be utilizing TO and all of your insta-cast abilities including the ones not generally used (i.e. Stockstrike, SG, ER etc). If you get the time, throw in a few GRs and FAs while using HtL to keep ahead of the beam.

5) More tenti, 8 to be exact, 2 large, 6 small. Choose a small one and stand close to it. FF on small tenti in the order of melee->healers->ranged, this is a good time to pop your shield if it's up to help the healers out. After the small tenti are down, split DPS and get the 2 big ones down at about the same time.

6)Boss back+2 big tentacles. The boss will be throwing out DoTs, DPS her until you get around 10 stacks then go pewpew a tentacle and stand under the shield which cleanses the DoT, heal up and rinse repeat. After the second time it's burn phase, do what you normally do for burn phase while staying alive.

In the later phases there will be purple circles on the ground, DO NOT STAND IN THE CIRCLES, that is all.

 

16M: In the first phase after the 1st tentacle goes down the second time when the fingers come up they will be targeting the healers and can one shot them. Healers should be told to drop aggro and pop CDs, you should get threat on the fingers fast to get them off the healers. Other than that there are a lot more balls (I've had 3 on me at the same time) and more DPS is needed for the robots in the 4th phase.

 

 

 

HM Dread Palace

 

 

Bestia

 

There are basically 2 phases to this fight, the first where the boss isn't out and you're fighting adds and the second where she is.

In the 1st there are 3 types of adds, the Larva (small ones), Monsters (big ones), and the tentacles (which need to be interrupted). As a rDPS, your job is to blow the larvae up ASAP, only afterwards to you switch your focus to the others. When the boss comes down there should only be, at most, 1 monster still up, kill it and get on Bestia.

There are 2 types of puddles in the 2nd phase, the big ones show up as a big circle around you on the ground, run them out of the raid and pop defensive CDs; the small ones drop as a small circle under people, when you see one run out of them ASAP, they hurt. In this phase given the nature of our class, you should have ample time to look around, if you see someone drop a puddle or standing in one, call it out. When Bestia's health goes down she'll start summoning adds from the 1st phase, rinse repeat and kill her.

 

16M: The AoEs from the larvae hurt a lot now and given that there are way more people in the room, attention needs to be paid in spreading out and it is even more vital for them to go down quickly. We often just assign a melee (guardian/sentinel) to interrupt and kill the tentacles while everyone else focuses on the monsters which have a lot more health. And when Bestia summons adds later, we just have tanks pick up the monsters and ignore them.

 

Tyrans

 

This is a fight where there is significant movement so the right thing to do would be switch to a DoT spec (aka Assault Specialist), but since a) this is a Gunnery guide; b) movement can be dealt with if you know your class; and c) I'm just lazy (don't want to switch specs) and much better at Gunnery I'll talk about how you should play Gunnery for this fight.

 

Key Points:

1) There are 2 things the boss throws out on people: Simplification and Inferno. If you get Simplification, run fast, immediately, PRONTO . Drop it somewhere that won't affect your raid's movement later. This is the fast one that you have to get out ASAP.

2) On the other hand, Inferno drops a small AoE when the debuff falls off and has a longer timer. If you are a nice guy (pfft) you can run it out of the group, pewpew and run back after you drop it. If you aren't (like me) and you know that DPS/healing isn't and issue (like in our raids), just stay wherever you are and drop it then move out. The reason I'm stressing this is while the 2nd method lets you do more DPS (and reduce the work you need to do) by reducing the movement, it can be a d*ck move and it may force more than one person to move=lower DPS=potential wipe, so only do it if you're confident.

3) The boss also throws a DoT, nothing you can do except pop your defensive CD.

4) Don't stand in front of the boss the cleave hurts. This should be the tank's job and as long as they're competent and not trying to snipe people you should be fine.

5) On a sort of side-note, it is extremely easy to pull threat in the beginning of this fight. For the last few times I've managed to pull threat before half way through my rotation (EN+GR+DR) before I even used FA. While it can be hilarious and is one of the factors contributing to making this fight one of the most fun fights in the game, try not to do it too much if your raid isn't 100% confident at the fight since it can cause problems.

 

All in all, not a tough fight as long as you get the movement down and it is one of the most fun fights in DP, IMO, especially when people drop the wrong tile and movement becomes hectic.

 

16M: No noticeable difference.

 

Calphayus

 

To be added.

 

Raptus aka You Cannot Comprehend Why My Mechanics Work as They Do

 

You shoot the boss, he teleports everyone up, end of 1st phase. Once you're up, grab the de/buff from the red crystal (it helps you DPS harder so take it). Afterwards just DPS the boss, avoid his knockback if your tanks suck, and run out of the group (or into it if you're a a troll/jerk) when you get the swirly-circle-thingy under your feet, it teleports everyone in its radius to face the bridge boss, you just have to run back and not fall off. He will then challenge a DPS, if it's you, stay and kite him; if not, get to the DPS portal (they surround the area, you can identify the DPS one by the symbol on top) and go in together at the same time and kill the add. Come back DPS the boss till he goes invulnerable then grab your crystal. Rinse repeat, except the second time grab your crystal as soon as you come out of the portal. Last phase you just focus the boss and deal with mechanics, easy peasy.

 

16M: No noticeable difference.

 

Dread Council

 

There are 4 main phases to this fight, and, as in a lot of other fights, Assault can be better for this fight, especially in the last phase, which I'll explain later.

 

1) In this phase, you will start out by burning Bestia since she comes down 1st, we usually stop at about 60% and wait till Tyrans comes down. When he's down, switch to him and keep in mind the 3 mechanics he has: his pull, he will pull 2 people to him each time after he teleports, pop HtL when he teleports to prevent him doing that to you; Thundering Blast, his ranged attack which hits everyone around the straight line to his target, spread out to lessen the AoE damage taken; Deathmark, he throws out a debuff, if you get it on you cleanse it. Push all the bosses to around 50% and start pushing them past, you have 40 seconds to do this after the 1st one is pushed.

2) Kill Stryak (on his Kell dragon) 1st and try to use all your AoEs whenever the 2 bosses are close together. Don't sttand towards the door when Brontes starts doing her death-beam.

3) Generally same as phase, push percentage is 15%. Start on Bestia, push to ~20%, get on Raptus, push everyone close, phase.

4) This is when Assault shines with the defensive from their threat-dump. The bosses get in the middle and start AoEing everyone use all defensives and medpac. While it may be tempting, don't AoE, focus fire one by one to bring them down, once the 1st and 2nd are down the damage is much more manageable.

 

16M: No noticeable difference.

 

 

 

 

HM Golden Fury

 

 

The strategy we used made my job ridiculously easy.

We prep the canisters (or whatever they are called) so that the tanks could get them down easily and the start the fight. The place I usually stand is at the right side of the room just next to the stairs closest to the boss. There's a spot where you can DPS the boss and not get shot by its giant laser. With 2 gunslinger+tank+heals on the droids that spawn, you can just stand there and pewpew non-stop. The boss is invulnerable when casting its laser, so that 's a good time to regen ammo, precasting GR when the boss' cast is running out save a tiny bit of time. Keeping in mind the rotation, using shield if the boss targets you with the AoE thingy, and watching your ammo makes this a easy fight.

 

 

HM Scum & Villainy (S&V)

 

Dash’roode

 

This is a fight with basically two phases repeated, back to the wall dps phase and run & gun phase.

When you're in the stationary dps phase it's business as usual. Run through your rotation while keeping your back to the wall present at all the points and AOE when the Xuvvas come, they kill the shields so take them down with MV etc.

When the shield energy runs out, the whole raid will have to move to another location, this is when HtL, KB, and the new TO come into play. Popping HtL allows you to run faster and not get slowed when running through yellow circles. Use all your insta-cast abilities while running (SG, HiB, DR) and use TO to throw in a PG and GR. If you're out of insta-cast stuff and aren't at full health Kolto Bomb (KB) is your friend. There is a chance of you being "lost in the storm, " if that is the case pop the personal environmental shield and HtL and run back to the raid.

Rinse and repeat a couple times and this fight is done.

 

Titan 6 aka Ballin' Robot

 

There are a few things for ranged dps that I can think of:

1) Stay away from other people when the boss is shooting missiles at everyone, damage stacks if you're too close and it hurts.

2) The usual, stay out of the red circle on the ground for airstrike, this should be obvious.

3) When he starts to launch you have a few seconds to run and find a rock to hide behind. This is an excellent time to use HtL and I usually can dps a slight bit longer due to this.

4) When you're behind a rock, heal yourself and anyone else you can, this helps the healers out.

5) After launch, many many probes will spawn. A good idea is to get everyone to stack close to the boss and AoE them down. You have a lot of AoEs, use them.

6) Burn phase, pewpew and HtL run out if you're pulled in, the end (either of the boss or your raid :p).

 

Thrasher

 

The main thing about this fight is getting knocked up to the snipers by the boss. When the snipers spawn, pop HtL and get to the wall underneath them where your tank should be leading the boss. After you're punted up, pewpew the Demolitionist and burn down the snipers, who unlike in SM, hit for a decent amount. This is a good time to use your AoEs. Once they're done stay up and return to the boss. Once the next group of snipers spawn, HtL and get there quick, rinse and repeat.

If you don't get knocked up, staying on the boss should be just fine. In the case that you get targeted by a Firebug, run it to one of the 4 entrance-like spots on the map, do NOT run it to where the snipers might spawn, this is a pain in the a** for the tank who has to get Thrasher over to "Roar" at the snipers' shields.

 

Operations Chief

 

The 1st half, the infiltration part, is easy, get to your group's spot while trying not to pull too many robots; pewpew the targets and remember to interrupt and run to the boss chamber.

The 2nd half is the actual boss who is actually quite weak. He throws demo packs (or whatever it's called) on people, it's like the thing smugglers/IAs do, if you get it cleanse yourself. Afterwards he summons turrets, kill them quickly since they have a decent damage output and get back onto the boss. The boss apparently has a shield thingy, so if he's pointing it at you move so it's not blocking your attacks. Other then that it's just a tank and spank.

 

 

 

 

 

NiM TFB and S&V are sorta proceeding will add stuff when I get down to it.

 

NiM Terror From Beyond (TFB)

Adding stuff as we progress, the stuff from HM, which are all still present, are in the Pre-2.0 ops guides.

 

 

The Writhing Horror

The mechanics mostly are the same with the exception of the DoT going out much more often and the boss no longer "burrowing" in a set pattern, otherwise it's just a very healing intensive fight, due the boss hitting like a boss :p and the general increase raid damage, that, at least for us, hasn't changed that much.

Some quick reminders: don't stand near the flowers, get out of the AoE dropped from the DoT and use all your AoEs when the small adds spawn. This is more or less a straight-up pewpew fight for us with some movement involved but the importance of cleansing DoTs and getting out of the AoEs has been upped greatly since they actually hurt a lot now.

Since there are chances for AoEs, you should have pretty good DPS on this fight. I was doing ~2k when my computer was buggy and wouldn't let me see the adds, therefore doing no AoE, and 2.3~2.4+k in fights where I did.

On a side note, 16M is much harder in respect to mechanics than 8M due to the higher number of DoTs thrown around leading to an increased number of AoEs in the same amount of room.

 

 

 

 

NiM Scum & Villany (S&V)

 

Will add when I get to adding it.

 

Pre-2.0

 

 

Individual Boss Strategies

 

I'll try not to go into too much detail about the fight mechanics, except for NiM EC. since people have posted them all over the internet and focus on how the mechanics influence us and our rotations.

 

HM EC

 

Toth & Zorn (T&Z)

 

1) Stay at max range. Your raid should have at least 2 ranged dps for this fight so you and him will be on Zorn at all times. Stay at >29 meters so you don't get Fearful, which gets handed out to people closer to Zorn when Toth jumps to him, and either kill yourself or screw up the damage since you'll have to switch targets. A good place to stand is towards the cave in between the two bosses, this way you spend almost no time moving when the bosses leap around.

 

2) When feet phase (aka Giant red spikes want to kill you phase) comes you will most likely not have time to stand still and cast anything so use your SG and RP+TO+PG and also HiB and DR to try to keep up your dps. And while you're running around remember not to get too close to Zorn since Toth often jumps right after feet phase. When you have a little respite, throw a GR of FA on the boss.

 

3) A good time to pop the adrenal+relic=825 power combo is after a tank swap when the tanks have used taunt. Using it at the start of the fight after getting everything set up gives you more time to use it again but can be deadly if you pull threat of the tank and Toth decides to jump, giving both the ranged dps Fearful.

 

4) If you get the yellow reticle under you in Toth's berserk phase, run it to him, all the while trying to keep dps on Zorn. Just use the same abilities listed for feet phase.

 

Firebrand & Stormcaller (F&S)

 

There are two big ways of doing this, you can either a) focus all the dps on one tank to get the shield phases out of the way and then switch to the other or b) split the dps.

If you're on Firebrand just tunnel vision dps and remember to drop threat and not pull aggro. If you're on Stormcaller it's roughly the same except the tank should be running Double Destruction to you and the other dps and let you take it, save your defensive CD for this.

Other than that it's a pretty straight forward fight. But for the love of God, don't AOE in the shields.

 

Colonel Vorgath aka Minefield

 

Pretty straight forward fight for a commando.

1. Kill big droid.

 

2. Help interrupt Overload. Your raid should have a rotation of who's going to interrupt. Usually the melee should be able to do it but be ready if need be.

 

3. Kill/CC the assassin droids. They explode so don't let them get close to the raid.

 

4. In the 2nd phase when you're fighting Vorgath, stand close to the cave entrance so you don't get targeted by the turrets, leave those for the end of the fight. The standard don't stand in circles or bring it to people also applies.

 

Kephess aka Ke$ha

 

It's a multi-phased fight so I'll try to divide the different phases. Remember that before the walker goes down, it will be doing an AOE attack which should be avoided.

 

Start Phase: 3 Droids. FF them one at a time and burn them down.

 

Bomber Phase: Kill the bomber, and whoever get's the bomb runs under the walker.

 

Burn Phase: Pop everything and burn the walker, you should get him down to <67% or you don't have enough dps, shouldn't be a problem given that we can, on occasion, bring it down to <50%.

 

Trandoshan Phase: Get someone who can leap to root the Warrior and AOE the sh*t out of the Trenchcutters. Use all your AOE moves (MV, PG, SG etc.). Rinse repeat 3 times.

 

Bomber+ Burn Phase: Same as before.

 

Two Droid Phase: Run and stay underneath the droid that isn't AOEing and switch when they switch. Try not to attack before everyone gets to the droid since it seems to start shooting people for ~15k.

 

Kephess drops down+ Bomber+ Burn: Same as before except one of the tanks wil be getting Kephess.

 

Kephess Phase: For dps it's pretty easy, just keep attacking him, don't stand in circles or in front of the boss etc. The only thing worth noting is at 60% (not quite sure if that's the number, haven't done it for quite some time), he pulls everyone in for an AOE. You should be standing close to him for this and pop your defensive, med pack and self heal while running out.

 

 

NiM EC

 

Toth & Zorn (T&Z)

 

Not much has changed except for the addition of, IMO, the worse mechanic in any boss fight. When the fight starts and you run in, wait for a debuff which can be cleansed off by, and only by using a medpack, forcing everyone, except the stealthers, to do the boss fight without a medpack.

Other than that not much has changed from HM, damage has been increased, T&Z's health have gone up, and Baridium Heave now one shots, other than that, it's a rather easy fight on 8 man.

 

Firebrand & Stormcaller (F&S)

 

This fight is a big dps check on NiM so don't be surprised if you hit the enrage timer, which is ~6 min 20 sec. There are two main changes to the mechanics of this fight. First, Double D puts a much longer DoT on you and while you have the dot, eating another one will one-shot you. Second, during shield phase one of the adds will explode when killed, potentially damaging everyone in the shield and killing the shield generator.

 

What we did was have 2 ranged dps stand on Firebrand and have everyone focus fire Stormcaller down, through 3 shield phases, to 20% to get through the shield phases faster so there was only one DD per shield phase and we didn't have to rotate for that. During the shield phases we either had our Guardian tank push the exploding add out and kill it or leave it with almost no health and range dps it down on the way back to the tanks.

 

During the second phase, we put the melee dps on Firebrand and have everyone kill it. This is the part that gets tricky if you have 2 melee. Since DD will come before the DoT falls off you will have to rotate people taking it, if you have 3 ranged, it's a piece of cake, if you have only two, the healers will have to switch. What we did when we had 2 melee was have a ranged dps and the healer on Stormcaller eat the first DD, have that healer switch with the one running lightning on the ground and have that healer take the next one with the other ranged dps and just rinse repeat. And whatever you do, don't kill Stormcaller before Firebrand, F's soft enrage is crazy. And if you have more than 2 melee dps, sorry guy, you're screwed and should probably think about changing your raid comp, and besides, how the hell did you do Z&T?

Edited: namesaretough pointed out

If you DPS firebrand down first and your melee swap to stormcaller for the focused burn, you can have 3 dps and a healer (or 4 dps) rotating taking DDs, and no hopping up/down is required. It may make your healers a little happier.

There doesn't seem to be any reason why this wouldn'r work out, you'll just be switching Stormcaller and Firebrand whenever they are mentioned in my strat. I would still recommend killing Firebrand first as Stormcaller's soft enrage is much more manageable.

 

Colonel Vorgath aka Minefield

 

A few changes to the fight from HM, but otherwise it's a pretty straight forward fight.

1. The knockback is now instantaneous. The path is always on the left side so just stack up against the wall.

 

2. The cleaves should be interrupted. This is usually done by the melee but just keep it in mind.

 

3. Assassin droids can no longer be cc'ed. Just range them down.

 

Kephess aka Ke$ha

 

We're still on him ( Got him down to 75k and wiped) but we've got most of the strats down. Same phase sequence with changes to some of them.

 

Start Phase: 3 Droids. They have a cast that has to be interrupted or they hit like a truck and can't be damaged. What we do is have 3 ranged on the middle, tank and 2 healers on the left, the other tank and the melee on the right one.

 

Bomber Phase: No change from HM.

 

Burn Phase: No change except for the walker has more health.

 

Trandoshan Phase: There are two warriors per group now and the groups come out much faster. What we do is have the dps and a tank stand behind the walker, have the other tanks get all the warriors and the trenchcutters all come to the dps. As for how that works I'm not sure but somehow it does, if anyone knows how it work, feel free to tell everyone. Otherwise, AOE adds, and then go help the tank take down the warriors.

 

Two Droid Phase: No change

 

Kephess drops down+ Bomber+ Burn: Same as before except one of the tanks will be getting Kephess.

 

Kephess Phase:

Most of the work is up to tanks and healers , just remember a few points and pewpew.

1. He now pulls the person closest to him when he drops down, so stay away from the red circle.

 

2. The tanks usually take the middles so stay out and derp.

 

3. Don't die (obviously), he goes invulnerable and AOEs everyone.

 

 

HM TFB

 

The Writhing Horror

 

Not a hard fight at all just a few key things to remember.

1. Don't, whatever you do, stand anywhere near the 3 groups of flowers on the ground. Those are where the pheromones (red circles) spawn and you do not want to accidentally get one spawned on you. Get a rotation of who's doing the pheromones before hand and having the ranged/healers stack in the middle of the map is a good way to avoid it.

 

2. You can cleanse the DoT that you get. Just get outside of the group and cleanse it quick.

 

3. Focus fire down the "Jealous Mate" and the small adds that spawn.

 

And that's about it.

 

Dread Council aka Heirad , Ciphas,and Kel’sara

 

This fight is spread between three phases, each corresponding to the boss you are focus firing on.

 

Heirad: He has a random aggro table so just unload on him. There are two mechanics that need to be dealt with. First, he casts "Surge Lightning" (Or something like that) and Ciphas jumps over to shield him. Focus fire on Ciphas to burn down the bubble, interrupt, and get back to work on Heirad. I usually just throw three GRs on Ciphas and switch back, by the time the next GR is off, the shield is usually down. Second, he casts "Lightning Field" a big AOE ability that radiates out from each player. Get away from everyone else once he starts channeling, pop your defensive, and run back to the center for AOE heals after. I sometimes start casting Medical Probe, in time to finish just after it goes down, just for sh*ts and giggles and a bit of healing. Rinse repeat until he's dead.

 

Ciphas: Two mechanics: green circles and Doom. You will see two balls floating around you, when you see this get away from other people, drop your circle and get out of it. Occasionally he Dooms someone, if it's you run through three circles to get rid of it or you get one shot. He also leaps to a random person and chokes them, interrupt this since it hurts a lot.

 

Kel'sara: Try to stand at max range and away from other people for this phase of the fight to give you more time to run when she marks you for death and to decrease the number of people hit by the AOE she does. Otherwise just burn her and whenever she calls adds, kill the ones with castbars first and it should be an easy fight.

 

Operator IX aka Tron

 

This is a deceptively simple boss, in terms of mechanics, it helps to do it a few times. Before starting, divide your raid into 4 groups of 2, each of which will choose a color.

 

First half: When it gets to your color phase, get in the middle (you shouldn't be channeling) kill the adds and one of the floating ball of your color. Otherwise just kill datacores and adds.

 

Second half: DPS boss, get in your colored circle when it is casting black obtuse, and if you need to shield someone who gets targeted with your color, both run to the middle.

 

Kephess the Undying aka Why the hell didn't we finish him off the last time?

 

Just wanted to add this first given how awesome this fight makes you feel. Ke$ha is back form the dead and you're gonna have to deal with him again.

There are a few main points for this fight:

1) Try to get the balls during the first phase. It's a pain the *** to have to switch targets and kill the lightning balls but if you're taking one, it means that a tank/healer doesn't have to do it.

 

2) Keep near him. Even if you have to kill a ball, try to stay close to him so you are close enough to get in front of the pillar if you are targeted. Getting 4 stacks of the debuff on him helps a lot on the dps.

 

3) Save everything you have for the burn phases. I usually pop my adrenal+relic during the first burn phase, this is the phase that makes you feel b****s. I got a 21.5k DR on him last raid and if everything crits you can easily get GR(~9k)+FA(~15k*3)+HiB(~18k)+DR(~21k)=~93k in 5 GCDs, it's awesome.

 

4) During the second half for "space aids" we usually wait for the first person to get 3 stacks and break the tower after he jumps. Same things apply as 1st half of the fight, pop everything you have for this.

 

5) Leave him at ~12% health for the last tower. If your dps is good you should get him down to 13~14% with the 2nd to last pillar, get him to 12% and stop dps, using the last pillar to push him into the "soft enrage" aka missiles everywhere phase. This helps shorten the final phase since he'll be spending half of it face down on the floor.

 

Terror From Beyond (TFB)

 

This is one of the longest and most boring fights in the game due to the repetitive 1st half, but it's not a hard fight by any reckoning.

 

Tentacle Phase: We have the healers run the acid so you can just stand 5-10 m away from the tentacle and pew-pew . Kill the adds that spawn before they reach the tank, and avoid the adds that spawn between tentacles.

 

TFB phase: Get to one of the platforms, there are two, with the tentacle asap and start dpsing. These tentacles do two things: spawn irregularities and slam, have a high mobility/burst dps (most likely melee) kill the irregularities

and get of the platforms when it slams. There are three of the phases (front, back, front) with ball phases in between where you hop around and kill the balls that spawn (can't remember their names). Afterwards the boss throws a "tantrum" where he starts randomly targeting people and slamming the platforms they are on. Everyone should be spread out for this phase and the tanks should try to taunt the boss whenever he switches targets, save your shield for this phase if it targets you. The boss goes down at 5%.

 

 

 

Feel free to comment about anything and ask questions, I'll be editing/adding stuff that I think of later or somebody points out.

Edited by jesseleeca
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Weapon Calibrations: Never saw the point of alacrity in gunnery. Half of the time you'll be spamming grav round (GR), which has a 1.5s cast time, lowering it just makes you hit GCD.

You don't want alacrity as a stat as gunnery, primarily due to it replacing other more useful stats on equipment. You absolutely want either Weapon Calibrations or First Responder (or a mix of both, as I've seen some people use). They're categorically demonstrated dps boosts.

 

Besides, Cover Fire is hardly ever useful for anything in pve.

Edited by Bleeters
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Your crit is a bit to high based on your current gear and damage values. You'd do better by increasing your power. Swap out the Advanced Agile Mod 26A's for Advanced Agile Mod 26's or if possible a 27. While you can argue all you want about critting more you'd be wrong in your assumption based on the gear you posted. Granted as you said people in the past were saying 35% crit buffed. This was actually correct in that you didn't want to be above 35% crit fully buffed. But that was with the gear and talents at that time. And you are correctly pointing out that this does need to be updated. However having 783 power and 39.67% crit is not optimal either. It's a balance of stats. As your damage and power increases crit becomes more valuable. As your crit increases power becomes more valuable. You're currently on the side where power is way more valuable to you.

 

When i was simming the new gear back in July i came up with the following. FYI this is based on 63 gear, using all high power armorings, using 27 Agile and 27 Nimble crit and power mods ie no 27A's or B's and 2 War Hero Relics. Which is optimal and which has a lower overall crit %. So take that into concideration when looking at the below.

 

power=920-1020 (if power is towards the low side then crit should be towards the high side)

crit rating=200-308 (if crit rating is towards the low side then power should be towards the high side)

 

Your talent spec is incorrect as well. Either go with 6/31/4 or 5/31/5. Here's my MrRobot talent build and gearing i'm going for. Can swap out 2 power mods or 2 power crystals for crit rating. Just don't exceed 308 crit rating. When 65 gear comes out i'll update the values as needed. Can swap out 1 War Hero relic for the new +power/kinetic damage proc relic. http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/8eacc5ff-2bf2-4542-9124-681663c15d2c

Edited by deadandburied
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Besides, Cover Fire is hardly ever useful for anything in pve.

 

Cover Fire was my bad thanks for pointing that out, guess it's a relic of leveling that I never remembered to take out gonna switch it out.

 

You don't want alacrity as a stat as gunnery, primarily due to it replacing other more useful stats on equipment. You absolutely want either Weapon Calibrations or First Responder (or a mix of both, as I've seen some people use). They're categorically demonstrated dps boosts.

 

Since I now have two more points to spend I might throw it in to Weapon Calibrations and go try it on the dummy but I still feel like it might not be worth the loss of survivability since I could just go for the extra endurance.

The thing with alacrity is that we only have one ability, FA, which is really helped by it (GR just hits GCD) and without testing it out, I'm skeptical of how much of an increase in dps that is and what it does to ammo regen, but I'm definitely going to try it out.

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Your crit is a bit to high based on your current gear and damage values. You'd do better by increasing your power. Swap out the Advanced Agile Mod 26A's for Advanced Agile Mod 26's or if possible a 27. While you can argue all you want about critting more you'd be wrong in your assumption based on the gear you posted.

 

As I said in the post, my gear isn't nearly as optimized as I like and I'm gonna start doing more of that once I can get more gear either from HM TFB to switch out mods or upgrades from NiM EC.

 

However having 783 power and 39.67% crit is not optimal either. It's a balance of stats. As your damage and power increases crit becomes more valuable. As your crit increases power becomes more valuable. You're currently on the side where power is way more valuable to you.

 

You raise a good point of the two stats helping boost each others effectiveness. Haven't done dummy testing of crit vs. power mods since Campaign just came out, at which time I found that crit gave me a higher dps than power, but things might have changed and I'm going to go back to the dummy to do some testing and see how that goes.

 

Your talent spec is incorrect as well. Either go with 6/31/4 or 5/31/5.

 

That was just me being dumb, I've changed it.

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I've recently started Power stacking. Down to 35% Crit rate and some change buffed (36% Tech Crit) but over 1100 Tech Bonus damage and I've really enjoyed the results. Also that's around the balance Aerro recommends and you can't argue with his results. Also trying out a Mix of Weapon Calibrations and First Responder. The alacrity isn't there to help with Grav Round (which you won't hit the GCD with lower cast times. You can definitely still chain cast it) but to get off Full Auto that much quicker. It really adds up over time.
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Checked other threads and tested it out myself, the results show that, as some people have been saying, touch can lower the cast time of GR below 1.5s which lowers the gcd for it to its actual cast time.

A response in another thread explains it best.

Alacrity can affect it in some cases. The GCD can be lowered by alacrity for spells that have a cast time of at least 1.5s and no other cooldown.

Which means we can chain cast GR faster than once every 1.5s. Going edit my original post to reflect this, and do some more testing to see the effect that has on ammo regen.

 

Kudos to ArchangelLBC and oaceen for pointing that out.

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Also you recommended taking power over aim when the trade off is good, as it is in the Agile/Nimble Mod 26/27s over the lettered version. They have 53/56 Aim and 41/44 power.

 

I know you said your AMR profile isn't optimized yet, but since it's a guide it might behoove you to make an optimized profile so people know what they're aiming for (pardon the pun).

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I know you said your AMR profile isn't optimized yet, but since it's a guide it might behoove you to make an optimized profile so people know what they're aiming for (pardon the pun).

 

Good idea, going to put the optimized version in the wishlist section of AMR.

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Something that hasn't been talked about much is what to do when you hit cap from accuracy and surge. I'm now at cap for accuracy and above cap for surge. Something that hasn't been tested yet is whether we should start adding in a little alacrity at that point.

 

Trading out one of my surge enhancements for an alacrity one would drop my surge to just short of DR (74.5%) and add 2-3% of alacrity.

 

I'll sim it out soon.

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Good idea, going to put the optimized version in the wishlist section of AMR.

 

You still have a few mistakes in your wish list build.

 

Commando 27 barrel in the mainhand needs to be changed to a reflex 27 barrel.

Nimble 27A mod in the bracer needs to be changed to the Nimble 27 mod.

Change the reflex stim from rakata to Exotech.

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Something that hasn't been talked about much is what to do when you hit cap from accuracy and surge. I'm now at cap for accuracy and above cap for surge. Something that hasn't been tested yet is whether we should start adding in a little alacrity at that point.

 

Trading out one of my surge enhancements for an alacrity one would drop my surge to just short of DR (74.5%) and add 2-3% of alacrity.

 

I'll sim it out soon.

 

I would say go for the power/surge ones just for the power (the extra surge doesn't hurt either), but without testing it I can't be sure. A thing to keep in mind when you add alacrity is how that affects your ammo regen.

 

You still have a few mistakes in your wish list build.

 

Commando 27 barrel in the mainhand needs to be changed to a reflex 27 barrel.

Nimble 27A mod in the bracer needs to be changed to the Nimble 27 mod.

Change the reflex stim from rakata to Exotech.

 

Good point on the barrel, thought BW would have optimized it so I didn't check.

As for the mod in the bracers, losing 16 aim for 31 crit is something I don't think i as clear cut, it's trading 3.8 bonus damage for ~1% crit chance, and since the set already gives 35% crit, I went for more aim.

As for the stim, bah, didn't think much of it but I've changed it to reflect bis (IMHO)+best buffed, but then I guess you could add in all the datacrons, which I will but that's not something I'll actually gonna do in game.

Edited by jesseleeca
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As for the mod in the bracers, losing 16 aim for 31 crit is something I don't think i as clear cut, it's trading 3.8 bonus damage for ~1% crit chance, and since the set already gives 35% crit, I went for more aim.

 

In my current build I just dropped from a 180 crit rating to a 170 crit rating.

On my last run in HM TFB & NiM EC I noticed a difference in the amount of crits I was getting on full auto. The 10 points in rating didn't seem like it was that much, but the 180 crit rating seems to be more of a sweet spot and I had better results with it.

 

I'm making the change in my build that I suggested in your wish list, in bringing the crit rating up to 176, to see if I have better results with it.

 

The current sim results from the merc side put the BiS crit rating higher, between the 214-258 crit rating.

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Something that hasn't been talked about much is what to do when you hit cap from accuracy and surge. I'm now at cap for accuracy and above cap for surge. Something that hasn't been tested yet is whether we should start adding in a little alacrity at that point.

 

Trading out one of my surge enhancements for an alacrity one would drop my surge to just short of DR (74.5%) and add 2-3% of alacrity.

 

I'll sim it out soon.

 

I've thought about this. Sim it out and let me know but I would personally keep adding surge till more of a hardcap. I definitely wouldn't like being at 74.5%. Also too much and I think we start running into regen issues with ammo and it becomes somewhat counter productive.

 

Like I said though sim it out and let me know. I'd def be interested.

 

As for the mod in the bracers, losing 16 aim for 31 crit is something I don't think i as clear cut, it's trading 3.8 bonus damage for ~1% crit chance, and since the set already gives 35% crit, I went for more aim.

As for the stim, bah, didn't think much of it but I've changed it to reflect bis (IMHO)+best buffed, but then I guess you could add in all the datacrons, which I will but that's not something I'll actually gonna do in game.

 

Imo it would definitely be worth it. If you're already that close then I'd say trade it out for an Agile Mod 27 and get way more bonus damage overall for the tradeoff.

 

I'm not enough of a min/maxer to get all the aim and cunning datacrons either, though there are days I feel I should be.

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OK, since everyone thinks its a better idea, I've switched out the mod in the bracers to the 27 one. Can't really test it until I get the gear so I'll have to wait to till I actually get the gear to do the dps parsing.

Also I've been looking around on the forums and also theorycrafting sites and the consensus seems to be that the Dreadguard proc relic+clicky is BiS, gonna try to change it but since AMR hasn't changed the relics to match BW's stealth change on live to relics, the power number's shown will be lower the the actual values. i.e. Clicky has +47 power and gives 350 power, proc does has +47 power 280 dmg.

Edited by jesseleeca
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http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/b76f5385-b0db-4ffa-b2e8-5f8e20a99308 This is my setup still missing a few armoring but for the most part i have what i want wondering if i could lose some crit and gain power but i like being balanced between the two

I would say definitely drop some crit for power and also drop the War Hero relics, they aren't best in slot anymore.

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I personally do not like to use alacrity for Gunnery. Without it, ammo regen is perfect and should always remain above 55% ammo, with only having to use Hammer Shot about 3 times per rotation. When I tried alacrity, I found that I was using hammer shot more than what I would have liked.

 

I tend to stack power over crit. I keep my crit at 35% buffed, and can't complain about the numbers I put up.

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I personally do not like to use alacrity for Gunnery. Without it, ammo regen is perfect and should always remain above 55% ammo, with only having to use Hammer Shot about 3 times per rotation. When I tried alacrity, I found that I was using hammer shot more than what I would have liked.

 

I tend to stack power over crit. I keep my crit at 35% buffed, and can't complain about the numbers I put up.

 

No one said anything about using alacrity gear, the idea is putting points into Weapon Calibrations, which gives you faster casts and since there isn't anything you could take over it for talents, it's a good idea to put points into it.

As for ammo regen, before having 4% activation speed, I've basically never had to use hammer shots unless I'm moving around. Now I occasionally run low on ammo if CoF procs too much but it doesn't happen that often and Recharge Cells is always up for it so it's not that much of a problem.

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No one said anything about using alacrity gear, the idea is putting points into Weapon Calibrations, which gives you faster casts and since there isn't anything you could take over it for talents, it's a good idea to put points into it.

As for ammo regen, before having 4% activation speed, I've basically never had to use hammer shots unless I'm moving around. Now I occasionally run low on ammo if CoF procs too much but it doesn't happen that often and Recharge Cells is always up for it so it's not that much of a problem.

 

I never said alacrity just on gear, I meant alacrity in general, which includes Weapon Calibrations. I have done more dps without the points in WeapCal. Its just one of those things that comes to play style.

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Lots of good info here, thanks for the guide, I just have a couple general theory issues I've been trying to figure out to try to squeeze out just that much more DPS. Looking through some of the dummy parses deadandburied and a few other people posted I've noticed a few uses of things like plasma grenade and such which on boss fights I almost never use, and it leads me to the next couple questions...

 

Right now on occasion due to poor luck on CoF procs, etc I'll be running through my rotation and I'll have 5 stacks of charged barrel, no CoF proc and FA, DR and HIB are all on cooldown, when that happens what do you guys do? Currently I'll cast another GR and hope for a CoF proc, obviously this wastes a potential charge of charged barrel but as FA is our hardest hitting ability my theory is it gives the most DPS potential because of the CoF proc chance, but looking at those parses I'm now wondering if that's accurate.

 

My other main question also involves the use of HIB. Right now I use it generally on CD, but I will push back it's use if I don't have 5 full stacks of charged barrel. Obviously it's rare when it will come off CD and I won't have 5 stacks, but it does happen on occasion during movement phases or if I get really lucky with CoF procs. So I'd like to know if it's worth it or not to keep pushing it back or if I should be using it on CD regardless of having 2, 4 or 5 stacks of charged barrel.

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I never said alacrity just on gear, I meant alacrity in general, which includes Weapon Calibrations. I have done more dps without the points in WeapCal. Its just one of those things that comes to play style.

 

Never used it before a week or two ago but it seems to increase my dps so I'm using it now. Just curious, what do you put points into if you don't take it?

 

Right now on occasion due to poor luck on CoF procs, etc I'll be running through my rotation and I'll have 5 stacks of charged barrel, no CoF proc and FA, DR and HIB are all on cooldown, when that happens what do you guys do? Currently I'll cast another GR and hope for a CoF proc, obviously this wastes a potential charge of charged barrel but as FA is our hardest hitting ability my theory is it gives the most DPS potential because of the CoF proc chance, but looking at those parses I'm now wondering if that's accurate.

 

My opinion is that in those situations, just keep using GR since if everything is on CD, there really isn't anything else you can do.

 

My other main question also involves the use of HIB. Right now I use it generally on CD, but I will push back it's use if I don't have 5 full stacks of charged barrel. Obviously it's rare when it will come off CD and I won't have 5 stacks, but it does happen on occasion during movement phases or if I get really lucky with CoF procs. So I'd like to know if it's worth it or not to keep pushing it back or if I should be using it on CD regardless of having 2, 4 or 5 stacks of charged barrel.

 

If it's a highly mobile phase (eg. Z&T feet phase), I would say just go through the HiB+DR rotation, since you don't really have time to stand still and cast, then go back to the normal rotation afterwards. If you're just getting good luck with CoF, I would suggest getting it up to 5 stacks given how long the CD for HiB is and wasting 6+% of damage just so you can cast it 1.5 or 3 seconds earlier doesn't seem to be worth it.

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