So last night I went back to the Engineering/Lethality hybrid with EMP instead of Cull. It may be a coincidence, but I did much better - not just in damage, but in win-loss. I'm thinking me running around taking 25-30% off of everyone makes it easier for my teammates to finish them off. I don't run out of energy either so I can keep spamming grenades like crazy (sometimes *too* crazy ). I've also noticed that I get killed far less. I theorize that this is because 1) I'm constantly moving and it's annoying to try to click on a moving target, 2) many players use "Next Enemy" and "Nearest Enemy" keys for target selection and I'm at range, and 3) I'm not obviously attacking any one person so they don't come looking for me. And since I'm always moving, I have more opportunities to find fights I can jump in and enemies at low health I can finish off. Having 3 DoTs I can put on a target I'm LoS'ing is hella fun too. I found a poor MM Sniper with one of the Huttball burners between us. I kept a pole between us and kept peeking out to drop DoTs and grenades on him. He kept queueing up Snipe and Ambush but it kept cancelling on him. I felt so sorry for him.

The latest change to PvP gear bags makes it trivial to get Centurion/Champion gear in a short time period.

Pray tell how you get defense in Voidstar and Huttball.

Any class that works together could do the same thing.

These aren't hard to get: 75k damage Killing blow 2.5k damage in one hit 1v1 kill 10 kills 25 kills These will take some gear and work to get: 300k damage 5k damage in one hit These are only in Civil War: 1000 defense 2500 defense I have recently seen Snipers get the 2.5k and 5k healing medals but I'm not sure how they managed that. No heals I do seem to trigger those.

I switch back to close to this build tonight and went 3 for 3 in WZs. Probably a coincidence.

I ran this for a while. It does a lot of damage and you don't often want for energy, but you won't be killing anyone 1v1. Spread grenades and darts around to everyone. Don't stop moving. I eventually moved away from this because I didn't feel like I was really helping win. I'm full Lethality at the moment and I still feel the same way so I may be going back.

I'd like to get some feedback from the Sniper community about what they do in each warzone to help win. I often feel like, as a Sniper, I'm making it harder for my team to win since I don't have the utility of a healer or tank. This is evidenced by my horrid record in warzones - my team only wins one in 3 or one in 4 most days (I don't do pre-mades). I get on bad streaks too - it's Tuesday now and I still haven't finished Sunday's daily PvP quest! I do my part damage-wise, usually getting near the top of the leaderboard in that category, but that's obviously not enough. In Huttball, I have to go into cover to knock someone off the grating and that extra split second it takes to drop down is usually enough for my target to shift enough to block what I was planning. God forbid I get the ball! I get squished quick! I try to run ahead of the ball-carrier to a place where I can take a pass, but even when I get it, if I'm not almost to the goal, I'm just not going to make it. I have no speed or jump abilities so I have no way to speed up getting to a destination and shield probe is all I have to prevent damage while moving. In Civil War, I'm good at the middle turret because I can stay in the rafters and most people don't seem to notice me up there. So as long as I have teammates down below, I can keep the enemy from taking the turret. I'm just too squishy to defend or take the side turrets, though, and they are LoS nightmares if you try to stay off the platforms. Voidstar is where I can put out some serious damage. I marvel at how little people pay attention to what is happening outside of the immediate door area. My DoTs and Orbital Strike make it terrible for anyone to take a door I'm defending too. But if anyone looks my way, it's lights-out for me. I'd also like to hear how you all deal with various classes. I seem to be permanently snared and stunned and it seems like other classes have no problems dealing with my flash bang, debilitate, and leg shot - I can't seem to get distance for kiting. I don't see many snipers in PvP. Am I just the last one to realize I'm banging my head against a wall?

Here's a screenshot I just took of my female Chiss with and without Dark V corruption... Chiss Female Dark V Corruption On a better computer the veins are more prominent, but this gives you an idea of how pale they get.

Fixed. I think the test is statistically significant based on what Tibbel put in one of my other threads, so I'll leave further tests on this, specifically, to others.

To be clear, you do get some benefit from Aim, so don't bypass the Aim datacrons. It's only Willpower and Strength that we get no benefit from.

I know, I know! But I'm still doing double ticks on Corrosive Dart and I'm completely untrained in Corrosive Microbes so I can't even assume I'm really untrained in skills I've untrained! GAH! I'm all tested out for today though. Just adding Corrosive Grenade and Orbital Strike now.

Added Corrosive Dart test results. Incidentally, during this test I was surprised to find Corrosive Dart proc'ing double ticks. I had specifically spec'd out of Corrosive Microbes to prevent double ticks during this test. So it appears that Corrosive Microbes has another bug - if you untrain it, it still works. At least this one works in my favor.

Overview The tooltip for Lethal Dose says it "increases the critical hit chance of all periodic effects by 4%/8%/12%." But what Sniper abilities are considered "periodic effects"? Candidates, both likely and unlikely, would be: Corrosive Dart Corrosive Grenade Interrogation Probe Orbital Strike Series of Shots Suppressive Fire Cull Cull bonus damage Explosive Probe fire on standard/weak mobs To test these, I first respec'd my skill points. In the gear I had on and without my self-buff, my crit chance was: 23.85% for Ranged 23.00% for Tech After I trained Lethality 3 and Gearhead 3, my crit chance went up to: 30.48% for Ranged 29.63% for Tech All tests were performed on a mix of level 49/50 mobs, both normal and strong. I did not use my IA crit chance buff (or any other buffs) for any of these tests because I didn't want to accidentally let it expire during the tests, thereby skewing the results. Interrogation Probe I chose to test Interrogation Probe first because it was the biggest unknown for Lethal Dose. If Lethal Dose doesn't work, I would expect a ~30% crit rate. If it does work, the crit rate should go up to ~42%. In all I observed 413 Interrogation Probe ticks. Of those, 134 critted. That's a 32.4% crit rate. In order to visualize how long I would have to test to be reasonably certain of the statistical significance, I graphed the crit rate over the length of the test: http://imgur.com/otyaA You can see I started out pretty "lucky" on crits, but after about 250 ticks I settled in the 32-34% range. It's interesting that I stayed a couple percentage points above 30%. That could just mean I was slightly luckier than I should have been, or it could be that Lethal Dose has a *multiplicative* effect on Interrogation Probe crit rate instead of an *additive* one. 30%*1.12 = 33.6%. If this is the case, it would be contrary to the way other buffs work in the game, so it would be reasonable to consider it bugged. Verdict: No (or minimal) impact. Corrosive Dart If Lethal Dose doesn't work, I would expect a ~30% crit rate. If it does work, the crit rate should go up to ~42%. In all I observed 228 Corrosive Dart ticks. Of those, 91 critted. That's a 39.9% crit rate. Again, I graphed the crit rate over the length of the test: http://imgur.com/KiaaA I settled in the 40% range. I would have liked it to be a couple percentage points higher to feel good in saying we get the full, expected impact from this skill, but at least it's measurably better than the previous test. Verdict: Appears to be working. Corrosive Grenade If Lethal Dose doesn't work, I would expect a ~30% crit rate. If it does work, the crit rate should go up to ~42%. In all I observed 312 Corrosive Grenade ticks. Of those, 139 critted. That's a 44.6% crit rate. Verdict: Appears to be working. Orbital Strike If Lethal Dose doesn't work, I would expect a ~30% crit rate. If it does work, the crit rate should go up to ~42%. In all I observed 220 Orbital Strike ticks. Of those, 67 critted. That's a 30.5% crit rate. Verdict: No impact.

I've noticed that same thing happening in quests as I leveled up closer to 50. It wouldn't bother me so much except that the grenades do much more damage than mine do - like 3k-4k each! If you're going to be using AE attacks, let your tank know so he can generate threat on all of the targets - he should be doing this anyhow, but treat your tanks and healers well.

I haven't yet tested Lethal Dose with Interrogation Probe. Testing crit chance is such a pain! I'd have to do hundreds of attacks before I was satisfied the test was statistically valid. And the term "periodic effects" is so vague. Corrosive Dart and Grenade are clearly periodic. Interrogation Probe really is too, so I'd assume it should be impacted. But what about Orbital Strike? For that matter, what about Series of Shots or Suppressive Fire or Cull? An argument could be made that those are periodic, but I doubt they're included. But would I be surprised to find something working that shouldn't? Ha!

It might be a bad idea energy-wise, but I tend to drop into cover for Explosive Probe + Series of Shots. Good burst of damage at least for when someone needs to go down.

Well, there you go then. Statistically valid. Thanks Tibbel! I got a response back to my in-game ticket thanking me for my valuable input. So I presume that means it's in their bug database anyhow. Maybe I'm being optomistic though. BTW "LFL in Alderaan Places" is my guild name.

I got an unhelpful reply back thanking me for reporting that Orbital Strikes and Fragmentation Grenade are affected by Explosive Engineering - only part of the last sentence of what I actually reported. GG cut-and-paste! They suggested that I post my results on the forums if I wanted them to go to the right people. So here's hoping the devs actually read this stuff.

I have to laugh when I see these posts. I played Dark Age of Camelot when it came out and solo'd almost all of 1-50. There were no Recuperation-type abilities so after each fight you had to sit and regenerate the health naturally - about the same rate it does in this game. Took me 42 days /played to get to 50. I feel so spoiled by this game. 6 days /played to 50, I think it was, again mostly soloing.

FYI, I created a ticket in-game for this issue.

FYI, I submitted bug 3403433 in-game for this issue.

Cull is nearly impossible to test without a combat log. Too many numbers flying around overlapping each other. I haven't submitted a bug yet for this or the other test I did. I really should get around to that.

Incidentally, I did spec back into full Lethality last night and better gear really did make a noticable difference. Last time I tried Lethality I always felt like my targets had too much health left after I went through all my abilities. Now, though, I really do chew through any target if I get both DoTs, WB, and Cull off. I keep imagining the other player laughing at my pitiful damage up until Cull starts doing its thing.

Overview I had heard some people saying that Corrosive Microbes might not be working. I just respec'ed to Lethality so I decided to test out some of that tree's skills. Lethal Injectors - Increases the duration of Corrosive Dart by 3 seconds. Devouring Microbes - Increases the damage dealt by poison effects by [5%/10%/15%] on targets below 30% of max health. Corrosive Microbes - Corrosive Dart has a [12.5%/25%] chance to tick twice when it inflicts damage. I tested against level 49/50 turrets southwest of the Business District terminal on Corellia. They're nice because I can back out of range of them and just watch the ticks. I used Fraps to record each attack so I didn't have to write them down quickly (and because of a quirk with Corrosive Microbes [see that section]). Corrosive Dart usually does its damage in 5 ticks over 15 seconds. The ticks happen at 3/6/9/12/15 seconds. For a given target, each tick does one amount of damage for non-crits and a higher amount of damage for each crit (based on Crit Multiplier). For instance, on a level 50 target my Corrosive Dart did: 314 522 314 314 522 The 314s are non-crits and the 522s are crits. Incidentally, the ticks were the same on the 49 turrets as well as the 50s - not sure if it does the same damage regardless of level, but I suspect it would. I fired 18 Corrosive Darts at the level 50 turrets (108 ticks) and 8 at level 49 turrets (45 ticks - some died before the last tick). Lethal Injectors Lethal Injectors simply adds a 6th tick which does the same amount of damage as the other ticks and this was born out in every one of my test shots. Verdict: Working Devouring Microbes Since my Corrosive Dart ticks always do 314/522 damage per tick, Devouring Microbes 3 should make that 361/600 when the target is below 30% health. In all of my tests, my ticks below 30% health were 362/600. So it seems my 314 ticks are really something like 314.4 rounded down. Additionally, I never saw these larger ticks at health above 30% - even a fraction of a percent above. Verdict: Working Corrosive Microbes The description of this skill seems very straightforward. With level 2, on average we should expect to see 1 or 2 "double ticks" per Corrosive Dart. Obviously, sometimes you'd see more and sometimes you might not get any. Also, the description does not specify that the level of the target should make any difference to the frequency of double ticks. Before I decided to more formally test this skill, I was running around Ilum attacking mobs with just Corrosive Dart to see how it worked. For instance, did the double ticks appear simultaneously (yes) or was another tick added to the end (no)? At first, I thought it was completely broken; I didn't see any double ticks at all on the first 4 mobs I tried. Finally I saw one on the 5th one. So I went to my usual test area and played around before really testing and noticed that I seemed to get more double ticks on level 49 turrets than on level 50s. That's when I decided to test it more strictly. I used Fraps to record the tests because I noticed that rarely some double ticks did the same amount of damage each and the numbers nearly overlapped each other visually. I could only tell that there was a double tick by the amount of health the target lost. By recording the fights, I could do the necessary subtraction to find those "hidden" double ticks. In the end, of the 108 opportunities (i.e. ticks) on level 50 turrets, I only got 8 double ticks (7.4%). On the level 49 turrets, I got 6 double ticks on 45 opportunities (13.3%). Overall, that's 14 double ticks out of 153 opportunities - 9.2%, well below the advertised 25%. Is this enough to be statistically valid? Incidentally, I had another 24 shots in my test that didn't get recorded (forgot to hit Record) and none of them appeared to have a double tick, but I didn't include them in my results since I couldn't be sure without the video that I had no overlapping double ticks. Verdict: Working, but probably not as well as the tooltip suggests. Could use more testing by others! This test plus my other one - where I showed that Experimental Explosives didn't impact Corrosive Grenade - makes me wonder just how many of our skills are actually broken.