I tried the spreadsheet but it gave inaccurate gains, in comparison to my character sheet and the whole rotation thing is way over my head....im lethality and it tells me not to use Weakening Blast lol. Wtb a guide for us weaker minded people.

Experienced the Lightning Ball bug tonight, our first attempts on Soa NM. the first 2 times i got one on me it was fine, the third and foruth time, i took 2 ticks of the dmg, leaving me at <5% health, the last attempt, i got thrown into the air after taking 2 ticks, meaning instant death.

Cunning > Crit (350) > Surge (180) > Power > Crit (+350) > Surge (+180) Accuracy is dependent on spec. Sadly the only good Enhancements all contain Accuracy which in some specs, we do not need. and the crit/surge one deliver an undesirable amount of crit, if they reversed the numbers it would be more usable. Atm i am switching my Accuraccy/Power and Crit Surge enhancements, to Accuracy Crit, with Lethality talents adding alot more crit% of the DR i feel focussing on crit is the way to go.

I too disagree with your comment on Lethality, in my gear set i have no issues with power as Lethality. I can use Cull every time it is available, you just need to use a sustained rotation and not waste power on abilities that will put you at low energy regen rates.

This is in no way sustainable and as such on bosses would prove terrible, Sniper dps should not be evaluated on this test, it is not an accurate portayal of what we are capable of.

As a pure dps class, i find it hard to believe we do not have access to a "berserk" type of ability, both Mercs and Marauders have a dps boost ability, i feel Snipers should have one

I logged in 5 minutes after server start, after 50 kills, it stopped working. Getting to 50 took alot longer than last week, which was fine, its the sharp stop that is wrong.

For me it seems they have increased the invisible debuff when you die. The player kill should be calculated per person and not on the player. If player A dies to player B, releases, and player C kill player A, player C should get full Valor and credit.

Power is a secondary stat, you will always get Str on your gear, the only decision you need to make Strength wise is wether you want more Endurance or Strength.

The point he is trying to make is not even valid there but for 6 Classes (the tank classes) every other class listed there, if our Dmg was listed as Tech, would fair no worse than they do this very day as they're base Defence Rating is 5% just like every other non tank class.

I think you will find its 3 tiers of gear. All will become clear once they release the next tier of PvP gear, then we will know where we stand and what direction Bioware is making us head. ATM to be functional in high level Pre-made vs Pre-made you are forced to go Lethality or your team has to carry you, somewhat.

I "could" calculate that and take it into account, but I see no reason to as every other class in the game scales with every set of gear, a Mercenary will get just as far in front as they were before, as they do not suffer Deflects on most of they're Arsenal. Don't confuse this with Jedi Gay Shield, i know everyone suffers from the 12 second immunity. The further it goes, the more it will drag us down.

Our gain damage will not increase. If our accuracy is decreasing vs tanks with every new gear set. You also have to take into account that tanks (who have no armour reduction applied) have around 8-9k armour currently, that is 50% dmg reduction straight up, and is increasing with every gear level. Our Shatter reduces it to 40% or 6k armour. As diminishing returns kicks in, that 20% of armour reduction from Shatter will equate to less and less reduced Damage Reduction. Then you have to take into account Absorption Rating for our hits that do not crit. Then there are Damage Shields from other classes Then there is the Guard Mechanic Then there is the Taunt Mechanic I'll state it again, 90% of other classes ignore the Defence Rating, completely.

First of all SI Assassin/Shadow Tanks are not squishy, they gain a stance that gives them the highest innate defence in the game. With Dark Ward up, Assassins have the following base mitigation with 0 rating. 16%Defense Concerning the part highlighted in red. All the other classes you mentioned (apart from Warrior). Have main Damage Abilities ( Grave Round/Tracer, All Lightening Attacks, Warrior Bleeds, Powertech Fire) that are Tech/Force based. Sniper has a FULL ROTATION....Shatter>Snipe>Ambush>Followthrough>Series of Shots....That are ALL Ranged Damage attacks and are subject to each and every one of them missing completely. Every other class hits guaranteed. If Marksman hits, it still follows the same rules as every other class when it comes to Damage Reduction through means of Armour and Absorb. There will come a point in the future, where a Heal Spec Jedi Sage throwing pebbles will do more damage to a Tank, than a Sniper in the best gear available to him, simply due to miss rating.

No no, I use Corrosive Dart, Frag Grenade, Explosive Probe, Cover Pulse, Debilitate and Leg Shot on a regular basis when I'm chasing or running away. None of these skills will a person tho. You seem to be looking at this topic through the eyes of a Lethality Sniper where your only issue is a lack of energy and are not facing the problem that Marksman faces.

Lethality is Ranged and they do not suffer the same, how do you explain this? A Sniper cannot kite a tank due to 50% of our CC being Defensible. Changing the DMG type of our abilities to tech does nothing to change the paradigm of Tank > Melee Caster > Tank. It will only affect Tanks leaving Marksman in the same boat as everyone else, on a 1 roll defence system. Armour has nothing to do with Defense Rating, all Marksmen Attacks are subject to Armour Rating if pass roll 1 the same as every other class in the game. No comment......

My argument has never changed once, Marksman Sniper need Tech Damage abilities instead of Ranged Damage due to diminishing returns on Accuracy in its correlations to Defense Rating. Only Marksman and Carnage Suffer a 2 roll system, why?

I heard another class suffered from the same situation but in melee but i want aware which one and so did not add it. Is it Carnage? if so i can add that to my initial post. I am unsure as to Assassin, most of them are Madness spec that i know so i am unable to confirm that on my end.

Flash Bang fill 99% resolve and breaks on dmg, a poor choice, can be trinketed (remove cc) can be cleansed, only other option is Leg Shot, which is subject to Defence Rolls..GG. Dude, just stop..please.. This ISNT about people having defenses... It is about Marksman Snipers having to go through 2 Defences when everyone else has to go through 1. A tanks main dmg reduction should come from Armour and Absorption/Shielding this is what happens for 99% of the classes (even Lethality Sniper) the 1% (Marksmen) is the only one that suffers. I want to know why, is that so bad? Good job on making something meant to be informative into a trollfest that should probably get deleted, well played sir. This community.....

And what are you going to do when Tanks have 30% Defence Rating? instead of the 8-10% they have now in mixed PvP gear that is not focussed on Def Rating (only 5 or 6 of 12 slots have Defense Rating) This post is not about the current situation, stop reading it as a whine that I can't kill a Tank. This is about where our class is headed, and the pitfalls that lay before it. You are by your own admission a Lethality Sniper and as such 90% of your main abilities are Tech Damage and not Ranged Damage.

I never said that, this post is to bring light on what I think, will be the single major issue progressing forward as a Marksman Sniper in competitive PvP. I am saying, as Tanks close to the Defence Cap (30%) 20% of our shots, will not see any damage. Of the shots that do get through, they will see a 50-70% damage reduction as Armour and Absorb Rating is taken into consideration. Add to that Guard and Taunt and i think you can do the math. Accuracy has a soft cap of 100%, you will never see a Sniper with 130% Accuracy, he would have to sacrifice too much.

The problem isn't the damage reduction, its the complete damage negation. Shatter Shot, even Leg Shot, can be dodged/parried/deflected as it is a Ranged Attack. Type. I don't think you understand the problem the Marksman faces, using our 3 weakest attacks is not going to cut it once Defence Rating is nearing cap. Shatter Shot does nothing to lower Defence Rating as Armour has nothing to do with Defence Rating. Shatter Shot only increases the damage of the shots that actually get through the first roll.

Nope, i simply want to do damage to them, like every other single class with Tech/Force mechanics do damage to them.

Let me preface this with a little about my experience in SWTOR so far. I am a sniper, I played Sniper throught the few beta weekends that i was invited to attend. I have been level 50 for around 4-5 weeks now and have been PvPing for alot of the time i am online. I am currently Rank 63 with a few Battlemaster pieces and rest Champion. The problem i am seeing as i and others are progressing through the PvP aspect of this game, is the lack of Tech Attacks in the Snipers arsenal. Every single one of our fundamental Sniper attacks are classified as range attacks and as such are subject to both rolls when it comes to calculating hit/damage numbers. If anyone pays close attention to the streaming scene you will know of Ed Park aka Taugrim, a very knowledgable player of many MMOs who has a very informative blog. His blog concerns mostly the Bounty Hunter class, but the post i am highlighting here, http://taugrim.com/2012/01/19/understanding-swtors-avoidance-and-mitigation-mechanics-for-tanks-in-pvp/ , is what opened my eyes to the problems we may face in the future. I will highlight the main portion that pertains to my thoughts in this thread. and Accuracy Rating – (Where we are falling short) Increases the chance that any of your attacks will hit the target. Any accuracy over 100 percent will reduce the targets defense. Lets get down to some numbers. In terms of Accuracy the 3 tiers of Armor sets give as follows In full Centurion a Sniper will sit at: 101.43% In full Champion a Sniper will sit at: 100.63% In full Battlemaster gear i will be at: 101% Accuracy is a stat much like any other and is subject to diminishing returns. We see this as we put on piece by piece increasing our accuracy by smaller and smaller amounts. Centurion Set: 40/40/40/40/40/40/40/40 93 + (40x8=320) = 101.43% (8.43% Accuracy Gain) (I do not have the pieces to equip anymore so i cannot give the numbers for diminishing returns.) Champion Set: 48/48/48/48/48 93 + (48x6=288) = 100.63% (7.63% Accuracy Gain) 93 + (48) = 94.72 = 1.72 gain. 94.72 + (48) = 96.35 = 1.65 (-0.13) 96.35 + (48) = 97.88 = 1.53 (-0.12) 97.88 + (48) = 99.32 = 1.42 (-0.11) 99.32 + (48) 100.63 = 1.31 (-0.11) BattleMaster Set: 51/51/51/51/51/51 93 + (51x6=306) = ?? ~8% Accuracy Gain 93 + (51) = 94.83 = 1.83 gain. 94.83 + (51) = 96.54 = 1.71 (-0.12) I only have 2 BM items with Accuracy so i cannot complete the fall off. Judging from the numbers, Bioware only wants our Accuracy to be around 100%. What does this mean to our damage and what does it mean for future scaling down the road? Let's take a look at our worst nightmare, a Tank....We are the single worst AC to do damage to a tank, due to every single one of our SNIPER abilities using a Ranged Attack mechanic, we are one of only 2 classess (Marauder Carnage Spec) that has to go through a 2 roll system to produce our damage on every single target. Lets talk about Defense Rating and how that will affect us. Defense Rating is what every one of our abilities is blocked by. This is where you see all the Deflect/Miss/Cover, this can be capped at 30% with diminishing returns. this is taken from the Sith Assassin Tank post. Powertech for example. The Centurion set for the Powertech has 28/28/28/28/23 a total of :135 on its pieces that is an added 5% (10% total) added to our miss table. The Champion set has 27/34/27/29/29/34/34/34 a total of :248 on its pieces, that is an added 9% (14%) to our miss table. The Battlemaster set has 29/31/31/37/37/31/37/37 a total of :270 on its pieces, thats an added 10% (15%) to our miss table. If gear is going to progress at its current state then aour Accuracy will stay the same, while Tanks Defense Rating continues to climb. Please bear in mind this has not taken into account Absorption Rating, Shield Chance, Bubbles, Talents, Skill Activations, Cooldowns, Expertise, Taunts etc.... If you are reading this like i am reading it then i can only see our damage to tanks in particular going down and down, due to the fact that our Attacks use Ranged Damage as our Attack modifier, instead of Tech Damage. I for one would not mind seeing lower numbers (due to absorb/armour ratings) than seeing fully resisted completely wasted skills due to defence chance. Bioware, please give us our Tech Damage abilities, and if not, please enlighten us as to why were the stuck with Ranged Damage modifier. Thank you. Edit: I judging from the replies so far alot of people seem to think that changing our Dmg Type would be a bad thing. It wouldn't. For every class in the game other than tanks, nothing would change, as your Defence Rating is not high enough to make a difference, the only exception to this would be Knights/Warriors with the Saber Ward, which could easily be tweaked to accommodate Marksmen using Tech Damage. Let me say it again, Only Marksman Sniper and Carnage Spec Marauders suffer from this every other class is based on a 1 roll system. Why are we singled out and is it intentional?

Lethality is also terrible, good dmg wise against defences, but the ability cos and sustainability is abysmal