But how handy is the question. To find out, follow Tibbel's Simple Guide to Determining How Handy That Energy Is: Which ability is the best one that you can't use on cooldown because of energy?: _________ ____ How much energy does that ability cost?: ___ Let's call that E. How much damage does that ability do on average (accounting for both crits and non-crits)?: ___ Call this D. Take the 10 energy from the set bonus and divide it by E: ___ We'll call this N. This is how many uses of that ability you'll get for 'free' each time you use Target Acquired with the set bonus. Multiply D by N to find how much damage you gain per use of Target Acquired: ___ Divide this by TA's 120-second cooldown to determine the DPS gained: ___ DPS Note how low this number is. Weep. Pull self together. Recall that the 4pc PvP set bonus doesn't add any damage at all, so you'll be getting the 2pc PvE bonus anyway (in PvE), and therefore there's probably not a whole lot of thought that needs to go into it. Shrug.

Very much this. Simply not pushing enough buttons is by far the biggest thing most players do that reduces their DPS.

I'm actually not sure how often passive energy regeneration is added. In-game, the energy level appears to update on the UI once per second; however, this doesn't necessarily indicate that it's only regenerated once per second. In the spreadsheet, energy regeneration is modeled as continuous, and for most purposes that approximation gives accurate results. I don't see how the timing of casts would affect this. Abilities with an activation time deduct their cost immediately as the activation time ends. Conversely, channeled abilities deduct their energy cost immediately as the activation begins.

The Noxxic sniper guide is heavily lacking. Most of the information within it is either oversimplified or flat-out incorrect. A couple of examples: It recommends 330 accuracy rating to get to +10%, despite its recommended spec already including 3% from skill points. It talks about surge and crit rating decreasing above certain points, which suggests some kind of soft cap. Of course, a soft cap does not exist for either of these stats, and their value (especially for crit) depend on more than just your current rating. It still has surge stackable up toward +50%, which hasn't been possible since before patch 1.1.3. It lists Corrosive Dart ahead of Orbital Strike on the ability priority list. Wrong-o. We should absolutely prioritize OS over CD when we have the opportunity to hit with all 3 (or 4) OS ticks, or against multiple targets. It doesn't talk about the importance of utilizing Snap Shot in maintaining the rotation while moving. It only talks about the WHY for one single suggestion (using Laze Target even if Snipe is not our next ability). Beyond that, there's no discussion about how the conclusions in the guide have been reached, meaning someone who's relying on it might be left without the information needed to make situational adjustments. But not that you asked about that, sorry. Regarding the rotation, there are actually two types of rotations: 1. The "burst phase" rotation -- This is actually not a rotation at all, but instead a priority list of abilities ranked by DPCT ("damage per cast time" = Damage / {GCD for instants or activation time for non-instants}). During a burst phase, we are aiming to output as much damage in as little time as possible, without regard to energy costs. An important add needs to die, the boss is entering a period of extra vulnerability, or we're about to run off and stop attacking for a bit, for example. Another time for bursting is when Adrenaline Probe is available (or about to come off cooldown), and we can afford to drop low on energy before using AP so that we don't cap our energy during its effect. We usually can't burst for more than a short time before we must resume a sustainable rotation. 2. The sustainable rotation -- This is what we typically spend the most time doing during a fight. Since our sustained damage is limited by our energy availability, we use a rotation during these "regular" times that sustains our energy in the highest-regen bracket (60%+). During this time, we prioritize abilities based primarily on their DPE ("damage per energy"). As MM snipers, we have Followthrough, which has a DPE far higher than any of our other abilities. This leads to our prioritizing it highly during a sustained rotation, and since it has a short 6-second cooldown, we very naturally fall into a consistent cycle: (3s of filler) - Ambush - FT (3s of filler) - Snipe - FT (3s of filler) - Snipe - FT Naturally, Takedown should be used in place of Snipe whenever possible. We use the 3 seconds of "filler" as time to prioritize other abilities by DPE -- generally, SoS > OS > CD > EP > Snipe -- however, keep in mind that any energy regeneration that is lost during that ability's usage (by hitting the cap or dropping into a lower bracket) should also count toward that ability's energy cost. What this means in practice is often one of the filler abilities in a cycle will be Rifle Shot and one will be either OS, CD, or Explosive Probe. Making the right choice for fillers is part of what helps us deal great DPS. If you are interested in more details and discussion about the MM rotation, stats, abilities, etc, I recommend reading through the compendium linked in my signature.

Crit's diminishing returns are well-understood. Besides that, 1 DPS is well within the margin of error based on just those 2 data points. For comparison, running 1000 5-minute simulationcraft trials (i.e. no variation in execution) seems to result in a margin of error (for 95% confidence) of ~2 DPS. (Here's an example.) It's true that power contributes more to "bonus damage" than cunning does (although that difference is greatly diminished when taking into account group buffs). However, cunning also gives crit chance (on a separate DR from crit rating), whereas power does not. In the end, cunning is better than power by somewhere between 10-20%, depending on spec, gear, and ability selection.

Do you have a source for this? I haven't seen this claim before.

Interesting topic! I could see the Imperial Agent's 3rd AC being 'Officer' (maybe with 'Captain' as the Smuggler mirror). Mechanics-wise, I would like them to be either DPS, with an emphasis on group cooldowns/synergy/etc and use of a pistol or blaster rifle with a tech knife, and/or perhaps given the option of tanking using a pistol/rifle with a shield generator. With group sizes of only 4 players in this game, it may not make sense to develop a full-on support role, but I could see an officer/captain AC leaning in that direction, at least thematically. One cool idea (IMO) related to the shared skill trees would be to share a different tree than the tree already shared by the existing two ACs. For example, sharing the Engineering/Saboteur tree with snipers/gunslingers would not only fit well with the officer/captain theme, but also would not require diluting and generalizing the Lethality/Dirty Fighting tree too much in trying to keep it relevant for all 3 ACs.

Hey, come on now. We're pretty damn good in PvE too.

IRL? Did you try Amazon?

No, not at all. What I'm saying is that no matter which two points we pick, the returns are going to be different. There's nothing mathematically unique about 75% (or any other point). The returns gradually decrease as we get more of a stat. If Sniper A thinks 75% is where the returns become "too little", that's fine, but it's subjective. Sniper B may have a different opinion about what "too little" means. If Sniper C asks the math what point is best, the math is going to say, "It depends."

Well yeah, but there's not a soft cap.

Looks like this is going to be very helpful to a lot of people! Just a couple things about the stats section (4.2): Might want to specify which accuracy you're talking about (ranged vs tech/special). There's no such thing as a surge soft cap. While it's perfectly fine to say that 76% is a point at which it "feels about right", it's incorrect to say that anything significant happens to its scaling at that point.

It does not. We can roll in and activate Snipe as we're rolling. In that case, there will be a delay before Snipe hits due to the rolling animation, but the GCD will begin as soon as you hit the Snipe button, even if that's mid-roll.

31/7/3 is the standard max-DPS MM spec. Details about it are in the compendium linked in my signature.

That's technically correct, but the implication is misleading. Technically, it's correct to say that the DR is "harder" after 350 rating than it is before, but we could say that about any point. It's harder after 157 rating than it is before, and it's harder after 614 than it is before. It's like saying the sky is darker after 9:00 pm than it is before. That's true, but that doesn't mean anything special happened at 9:00. We could just as easily say it's darker after 8:30 pm than before, or that it's darker after 10:15 pm than it is before. The sky gradually gets darker throughout the evening, just as the return on stat ratings gradually decreases as we gain more. Here's a graph of the stat gain per rating point. (It shows how much you will gain from your next 1 rating, given your current rating.) We can pick any point and say, "Right here is where the DR gets too hard," but there's no mathematical basis for choosing any such point.

No, you'll see them right away. No matter how much crit rating you have now, your next 1 rating will give you slightly less than your previous 1 did. Same goes for the crit chance from cunning and aim, and for all the other stat ratings except power and tech power. Not necessarily. There's nothing magical about 40% as compared to 38% or 41.23% or whatever. There is a point at which power becomes better than crit, but it's not at any set percentage; it depends on lots of factors -- your gear, your target, your ability usage, etc -- so that crossover point isn't something we can pin to a certain rating or percentage. It might be worth checking out the MM Sniper/SS Gunslinger Compendium link in my signature if you're interested in more information about how the stats work. (The compendium is geared toward level-50 endgame considerations, but in it you can also find information about game mechanics that is useful everywhere.) It's an exponential decay function, which is visually represented by curve with a horizontal asymptote. There's a graph of all the (important) stat curves in the compendium, too.

I would prefer Cover Screen to be made useful against more types of attacks (or just redesigned).

It's not true. Critical chance does suffer from diminishing returns, but the DR starts right away. Going from 50 --> 100 crit rating is a smaller increase in critical chance than going from 0 --> 50 crit rating. In other words, there's no crit soft cap -- it's just a smooth, flattening curve. Same deal with cunning and aim. (Each of the sources of critical chance (cunning, aim, and critical rating) are on their own separate DRs.) The links in my signature have more details about stat scaling.

Why not? Laze Target is free and off the GCD. We lose absolutely nothing by using it, so we might as well guarantee a Snipe crit when we can.

The testing I have seen disagrees. With a 95% confidence, the set of test data at the link above puts boss defense between 9.40% and 10.50%.

You're right, it is semantics -- but I think it's important semantics. I very much agree with this post by Kaedis at mmo-mechanics (i.e. Daellia on these forums): Ideally, according to the MMO community's definition, "Softcap" is mostly independent of other stats, just based on skills, class, and ability information and distribution. They also tend to be something like "stack this stat to X, then keep it there", while in TOR X would be fluid and they'd need to change it with every gear upgrade. Since the SWTOR "softcaps" would be highly volatile based on the character's current stats, it's better to stop referring to them as "Softcaps", since that has a particular definition to the MMO community, and instead use terms such as "stat weights".

No, it actually doesn't have any kind of soft cap. It's just a smooth DR curve, with each point giving proportionally less than the one before it.

What AP does (and by extension, EMP) is allow us to "burst" -- which in my definition means to use abilities which are more time-efficient at the cost of being less energy-efficient -- because we have more energy than we need for just our sustained rotation. So whether it's worth it to use EMP Discharge depends a lot on what energy-cost abilities we have available to use. (For the record, EP doesn't count as energy-costing either. With 2/2 in Cluster Bombs and 2/2 in Efficient Engineering, EP is energy-neutral at worst. Still absolutely worth using at every opportunity.) It's hard to do any sort of analysis on the circumstances you mentioned because the ideal use of EMP is immediately after AP anyway. We want to spend as much energy as we can right away, then use AP as soon we're low enough that it won't cap us, followed immediately by EMP to reset its cooldown. Then we keep bursting until we're low enough where a 2nd AP won't cap us, then use AP again. At this point, we're into our sustained DPS phase, but in less than a minute EMP will be ready to use again, and we'll get another 50 energy of burst. AP shouldn't really ever get to much less than a minute left on its cooldown before it's reset by EMP. Of course, in a different situation, it's situational.

Note that this is considering single-target steady-state DPS. If we're attacking more than one target, both the on-use and static stat relics will provide proportionally higher benefits, whereas the proc relic will provide only marginally higher benefits (depending on your attack rate).

It used to look and sound so much cooler.