Earlier in the thread it was explained that accuracy does not reduce armor, just the enemy's defense. Defense in this game is equivalent to avoidance in other games. That means chance to dodge or deflect. Our main attacks cannot be dodged or deflected.

Yep above poster has it right. Basically if you want to cast heals while you have DoTs ticking on you or while you're kiting and getting hit, this is an important ability. My go to scrapper spec has smuggled technology 2/2 (7/31/3) just because of this benefit.

Honestly couldn't tell you, but I can't remember seeing any resists/misses when doing EV hardmode or any of the 4mans.

I would try to hit at least 36-38% crit or so with your self buff up before really jumping into POWER over crit. With the current enhancement choices in this game at level 50, you don't have to choose between surge and crit. It's either 23end 34power 48surge or 23end 34crit 48surge.

I have tried the "hot and dot" spec that you suggest, but I vastly prefer the 23 sawbones 18 scrapper. You get a lot more healing and more energy efficient DPS with less setup time on top of all the great stealth/defensive utility in scrapper. With this spec I have seen 300k dmg/300k heal in a few voidstars and have healed over 500k. Also, wounding shots primary hit is white damage and can be shielded/dodged/deflected by tanks who tend to have very high shielding and defense. Considering all my gear is min/maxed for 100% tech damage I don't have any accuracy. After testing both, I find sucker punch to hit tanks harder on average than a fully buffed wounding shots, even though the 2x extra hits are internal. Like I said, I really want dirty fighting to be a viable spec but currently it's just not strong enough to compete with other specs that use scrapper more heavily.

Agreed. I tried very hard to make dirty fighting work with a bunch of different specs and it's just inferior. Really needs some work...

And all of this is without even considering that wounding shots takes 2 high energy cost attacks worth of setup before it does reasonable damage. One of those being a 12s cooldown so it can be difficult to change targets quickly in fast paced battles, especially when assisting other DPS. Not only that, but the primary hit on wounding shots is a white hit that can be shielded and dodged/deflected while sucker punch is a tech attack that can only be resisted. Considering everybody has 0.0% resist unless under the effect of a cooldown (assassin 100% tech bubble for example), this is another big advantage in that scrappers can avoid accuracy all together. I really, really want dirty fighting to be a strong spec line, but as it stands it's just inferior. Even with the nerf to scrapper, it is inferior. WTB some redesigning.

Well having 23 points in sawbones, you will deliver probably ~85% of the healing that a 31 point sawbones is capable of, or deliver ~80% of the DPS of a full scrapper... It just gives you massive versatility and incredible soloing ability. Losing flechette round is a necessary sacrifice for having so much healing, can't have it all.

I am guessing there are some companions that use aim and can equip a shotgun. The aim ones are definitely not scoundrel weapons.

With everything having been said in this thread... I will give this advice. DO NOT throw away your accuracy mods, especially the lvl 58 ones in your battlemaster gear. Just save them in the bank. I am hopeful that BW will eventually see the imbalance with some classes needing accuracy and others not and make some changes.

If your shotgun has aim, it's not intended for a scoundrel to use it. There are plenty of shotguns out there with cunning.

Yes, that is using a 136 cunning stim.

I have tried dirty fighting many times, 31 point specs, hybrids... and every single spec is inferior to the scrapper variety. Scrapper gives sucker punch which is lower in the tree than wounding shots, does not require accuracy (wounding shots primary hit is a white hit), costs less energy, can regrant upper hand with spec points, and does not require setup. You can get both sucker punch and emergency medpac which is huge... you can't get wounding shots and EMP. With scrapper you can be healed after you vanish (HUGE with hybrid specs), get the movement speed bonus, extra HoT on pugnacity, stealth detection, 0 energy cost on back blast, high energy efficiency in general on the DPS output, and the ability to spec a 2 second root. Dirty fighting just doesn't offer anything that matches up. There are some nice abilities in the tree, but at the cost of your stealth ability, damage without setup, and energy efficiency when a hybrid spec is already a bit energy starved.

Since scrapper's tech attacks can not be dodged or deflected, the point is moot. However I can confirm that dodge/deflect are 360 degree functions, as the animation on my sage when he blocks sniper blaster bolts flying at my back is pretty cool looking Again, only white damage attacks can be dodged/deflected. Our class has flurry of bolts, quick shot, charged shot (the 1.5s cast in cover) and wounding shots primary hit for the entire list of white attacks that we are capable of. Shoot first, back blast, dirty kick, blaster whip, vital shot, frag grenade, flying fists, sucker punch, sabotage charge, flechette round, hemorrhaging blast are all tech attacks (yellow damage) that can not be dodged or deflected. They can be resisted, but everybody has 0.0 chance to resist, and with 100% base accuracy on all tech attacks... you will never be resisted (except in the case of assassin 100% tech resist bubble).

My post is very true. Over 100s of warzones and way too many hours of open world pvp, the only resist I have ever seen to one of my tech damage attacks (anything with a yellow damage number) is when a sith assassin pops their 100% tech resistance bubble. Just go into your character sheet and mouse over your defense stat, and look how much "resist" stat you have. 0.00.... lol

I probably wasn't clear enough. Accuracy reduces the opponent's defense chance (avoidance) and their resistance (which nobody has) so that your attacks miss or are resisted less often past 100%. The vast majority of our attacks as a scrapper are tech damage which bypasses defense (avoidance) and is only affected by resistance (which nobody has). Only flurry of bolts and quick shot are white hits which are actually affected by avoidance. Missing a 400 damage flurry of bolts attack isn't anything to worry about and you shouldn't be using quick shot much at all. For this reason, remove all your accuracy mods and go for the surge ones. I personally have stacked 5x of the 23end 34power 48surge ones in my battlemaster gear, but the 23end 34crit 48surge are pretty good... as are the 38end 19(power/crit) 48surge if you want more HP. If you've decided to punish yourself by going dirty fighting, you may want ~200 or so accuracy rating just to guarantee hits with wounding shots main hit (white hit) against the lightsaber classes with a base 10% defense.

Well a positive with this build is that you can easily farm 9-12 medals every WZ without too much effort, once geared. I still get alot of MVPs... and tells asking how the heck i'm doing 200k dmg 400k heals and such.

Considering the fact that only flurry of bolts and quick shot benefit from accuracy, stack that surge.

Samkiel, it's going to take a few mins to respond to that post I'll get to it in the next day or so! I spent the day today trying a 31 point dirty fighting spec... about 30 total warzones. All in all, it does absolutely everything worse than scrapper. Energy, sustained damage, burst, utility, defense. It's just worse in every possible way. Even with scrapper nerfs, I am 100% confident that scrapper will still be stronger in sustained damage, burst, and all the other little stuff. WTB a dirty fighting overhaul...

I would make sure you keep at least ~36%+ crit before you start taking power over crit. Surge hits diminishing returns pretty hard above 75%, but it's still worth going up to around 80%. My current gear gives 342 surge rating (87.44%), 345 power(79.3 tech bonus), and 237 critical rating (9.01%) if that helps any. When I get a battlemaster offhand weapon, I'm going to have to swap a couple of mods to the 23end 34crit 48surge ones to make up for the crit loss.

once you hit 40 with shoot first and flechette, you'll be seeing ~3k shoot first crits and ~2k back blast/sucker punch crits. Once you get a mostly full set of champ/centurion gear at 50, you should be able to reliably get your 5k hit medal on shoot first, and 2.5-3k crits on back blast/sucker punch.

Yeah it's a a bit of a juggling act, and your adaptability to situations means you'll often spend most of your time healing if that's what is needed most. One great thing about it is those situations that all pure healers dread... DPS who don't kill anything. When you get into that situation, you can think of those DPS as sponges to take damage while you kill people instead of continuing to focus on healing them.

Scoundrel is just weak at low levels, like most melee are. Shadow is a bit of an exception because your backstab is so strong early on.

Our highest burst dps is still going to be the same 31 scrapper spec... It's really not as bad as everybody is making it out to be.

A reduction to the current strongest spec doesn't mean it won't be strong anymore. Scrapper will still be our go-to highest burst spec. It might actually make DF a little more appealing against high armor targets, though.