Simply, yes

Boundless Ages and Serendipitous Assault are BiS. Boundless Ages is great because you can time it to burn phases.

Don't forget Powertech AP-spec, we have one in my raid team that does massive amounts of AoE.. I can only reliably beat him on trash with full Engineer

Not directed at you in particular: Eric Musco has stated _very_ clearly that they read and relay suggestions/concerns (even angry QQs) in the "Top questions" threads (+much more) and at the same time it is unrealistic that they can answer every post/concern/suggestion etc. The best thing the community can do is to keep a cool head, no caps lock or stupid colours, because it just makes you look angry/stupid and degrades your entire post/point. They ARE listening. You will be taken much more seriously if you post in a calm level headed manner with good reasoning and understandable language. But, do not expect them to jump at any of the issues and fix it the way YOU feel is correct the very next patch, it is unrealistic (and childish). We all have a chance to influence the combat team here, embrace it.

I guess it was inevitable From what they're saying I doubt they'll drastically change the mechanic itself, long channel followed by bombardment over time. Perhaps they'll make a really simple change, globally reduce CD to 45 seconds baseline and relocate the cool down _and_ cast time reduction from MM to Engineer with damage reduction as they see fit. Thus all specs can use OS more often and 45 secs CD feels more in line with current AoE mechanics in raids. I know I hate the extra 15 seconds in Engineer and Lethality/Hybrid just because of this. I'd actually like to see the time between ticks reduced by half 1.5-2 sec instead of 3 sec. Engineer will still be the master of guarding in PvP and make it in general feel more bursty. Damage would probably have to be reduced further if they do something like this. Now, they should really take a look at the 4-set PvE set bonus as well to make up for their intention of nuking (pun intended) OS' usefulness outside Engineering. Ranged damage boost would nice. PS. Remember that BW also said they wanted to basically kill the Hybrid spec, lets just hope they don't cripple the entire class

That's what I meant, I see many Snipers stack crit rating to 30%+ and that is definitely bad, especially for Marksmanship. Crit Vs. Power is somewhat debatable, I'm not a theorycrafter, but having a little crit rating (sub 250s?) won't hurt you (skill is more important than a few misplaced points). I just switched out my last Mod and Enhancement to Power and I can't really tell the difference in how often I crit except that I hit harder. I just used a higher rated Crit mod instead of lower rated Power mod until I got the token to upgrade. PS. Those Kell Dragon stats looks mighty sweet

It's very simple for MM Sniper: All Power, no Critical rating. Though it doesn't hurt to have a little crit while you get your mods sorted out. Ranged Accuracy as close to 100% as possible, I choose to have over 100% instead of 99.5%ish.. I hate to miss. You can check my AMR-profile in my signature, it's not BiS but not too far away in the Underworld tier

Indeed, X approaches infinity..

Thanks for catching that bad grammar and just incorrect sentence lol Post embarrassingly corrected to what I really meant!

I'll just reiterate my own reply here. There is not a Surge hard cap for PvE. You can "gamble" with going below 100% Accuracy, but I hate to miss so I sacrifice like 1% surge for that certain hit.

Helpful tip: Go to your Preferences and bind "Take cover in place" to an easy to reach key, I use "F" and Shift+F for Covered Escape. Dot NOT use the skill on your bar, it is terrible. This little adjustment makes a world of difference

Cover is awesome! Playing my other ranged alts always makes me miss my Sniper with it's sweet and sexy unleapable, uninterruptable, ability nonpushbacky Cover system! Ooooh! Yes! YEEES!! <3

Very interesting.. but, from the total damage category I see Energy is 43.8% total, this is all avoidable damage type by using Dodge/Evasion or just simply dodging it. I'm a bit tired, so probably not reading it all correctly.. Assassinate, Takedown and V.Throw are finishing moves and more likely to be a killing shot, perfect time to save that Dodge/Evasion. Ambush is rarely a killer, as a Sniper myself I use Ambush to set up a kill shot followed by Takedown++. It's more nuanced than what simple statistics (metrics) can tell us. Nice stuff, you should do one of these every month or so! Edit: I never argued tech/force was _not_ killer abilities, just that energy is not to be underestimated. There are many abilities Dodge/Evasion works against, that _will_ save your life. Much more interesting discussion IMO

You can, but you'll deal less damage. Sniper rifles have higher ranged weapon damage values.

Hence: "for the most part".. I'm fully aware of the tech/force heavy hitters, just pointing out how much white damage there really is flying around. Many seem to forget this because of SMASH!! So Smash hits for about 8-9k and HSM up towards 9-10k, lets lets look at a few abilities if they crit: (Disclaimer: only estimates) Series of Shots in MM can do 9-14k Ambush 8-9k Cull easily 10k+ (remember that dodge can nullify Cull) Takedown 6-8k Deadly Throw 6-9k (?) Procced Maul 8-9k, non proc 6k Assassinate 6-7k Most of these can also be used more frequently than even Smash. Good thing that there are Taunts and lots of defensive CDs to negate this madness, not to mention tanks that just laugh at you Point is, Dodge/Evasion is a great but situational skill.. imagine the forum QQ if they changed it to also affect yellow damage.

The hardest hitting abilities are for the most part "white" damage, assuming we're talking PvP in no particular order: Ravage and most of what a Carnage Marauder can throw at you Deadly Throw Assassinate/Maul Unload Basically all of Marksmanship, Cull (does not deal internal damage if the white part misses), SoS, Takedown etc In short, I find Dodge/Evasion to be a great skill. I'm using the Enforcer 2-set bonus in PvP so it also lasts 4 seconds (5 secs in full Lethality!). You can also resist many debuffs that are attached to white abilities, like root from Force Charge and Low Slash. It is very situational, so you need to learn when it's best to use and that depends on the class you're fighting.

I was only adressing your complaint about "no defensive CDs", which is a pure lie. Which makes it better than Shield Probe on a lower CD. I don't see the Sorcs in my raid complain about lacking DCDs. Just from the top of my head, medium armor has about 4-4.5% more kinetic/energy damage reduction than light armor... barely relevant IMO. Your bubble and insta self heal more than makes up for it in a raid environment. PvP is a different beast, not going to touch that topic in the Sorc forums with a 10m stick..

The 4.5 sec proc dmg relics looks great on single target/dummy, but once you have adds/AoE phases the SA should be better. Reason is AFAIK the dmg proc relics only affect one target.

It's not like Sorcs have a that bubble every 30 seconds or a potent instant self heal either /sarcasm

I canned my Assassin Tank when 2.0 hit and made a Jugg instead, the extra damage mitigation from armor alone makes life so much less frustrating. I remember back in the day when Assassins had much higher armor rating, it was nerfed into the ground. Since the problem (IMO) is mainly deadly unpredictable spikes: My simple suggestion is to make Insulation (30% armor rating) available to Darkness, self healing would probably have to be slightly reduced to balance it out.

My Guilds raid team has also switched to Parsec and we love it, thank you for a great piece of software!

Personally I use key F to take cover in place and Shift+F for Covered Escape. I like to PvP with this build: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#700rRbrdRkRrfkdzZ0cZh.3 -Shorter CD on Leg Shot, for better to troll those leapers -6 seconds 50% movement speed and Root immunity after Hunker Down, really nice to avoid all those roots when you need to get away quickly -3 sec Hunker Down after Covered Escape -Longer Trauma on Flourish Shot plus a short 70% snare/slow on Leg Shot -60% AoE damage reduction while Hunkered Down, basically nullifying Smash and other AoE damage Used correctly this build is extremely mobile for a turret class, and there's a lot of synergy with other skills

I was talking about Surge, which is the topic and not at all personal. Sorry if there was any misunderstanding. DRs were changed drastically in 2.0 above level 50, to the point that Critical rating is almost useless.. That said, you can easily pull off Lethality with less than 30% Crit chance because you get 12% crit chance on poisons and 8% to Cull in the Lethality tree However, a little bit of crit will make your life easier. From what I've gathered so far, Engineer is the spec that actually prefers more crit rating than any other Sniper spec! Regarding Noxxic and their data on SWTOR, do not trust that site! It has very outdated info, even before 2.0 it wasn't very accurate. Sad but true.

Fair enough and it would be cool to Speed Shoot on the run! I still stand by what I said, every word of it is true.

I may be sticking my head into a beehive here, just want to say why Lethality received DoT protection. Because Lethality is entirely dependent on their two dots to do any damage with the main ability; Cull. The weakened dot only does 15% damage and before they removed Corrosive Grenades cool down, the spec was left completely neutered/pointless by a single cleanse. So, Cull is the reason Lethality got DoT protection. Just saying there's a difference, carry on