I second what Captain Terrible says, the first time I parsed a Boss dummy with this build I got 1770 DPS for 3+ mins. I do throw in XSFF on the dummy, but in real fights it is a little tough. I average around ~1650 DPS on dummy.. will see how it does in OPs tonight. Darkhawk Omega Guard The Harbinger

Along the same lines: What are the soft caps for Crit and Surge for Gunslingers? I've read 40/80 but haven't really gotten to test it out. I'll post gear/stats later (at work now) but stats I am around 1950 Cunning, 1150 Primary Damage, 35% crit, 78% surge. My biggest plans for now (after getting War Hero main/offhand and switching a few mods) are finishing off my augments to boost my crit rating another 4-5%. I'm in mostly Rakata gear with a lot of mods replaced with BH level ones. On a target dummy I currently parse around 1500 DPS, my biggest problem that I'm trying to work on is keeping that DPS up for boss fights, I find usually after a 7-8 min fight that it drops down a few hundred.

Unless you actually test it, in which case there is a slight nerf to the sharpshooter tree. Basically Burst volley in no longer always active as soon as possible, you have to activate it... the energy regen is on a 10 sec timer and 45 cooldown. They also made it so you can't triple hit Speed Shot with Rapid Fire (SS RF SS SS) which was one of our main burst combos, so overall i'm seeing about 60-100 DPS lower and far lower Burst damage (1 min fights on dummy used to be around ~1450, now the highest i'm getting is ~1280). My only issue is that these #'s aren't a true comparison as I upgraded 2 pieces of gear to (BH Gloves and WH Offhand) right before 1.3 went live, so I should actually be seeing slightly higher DPS, not lower.

Honestly can't say I've tried to interrupt it, but I was under the impression it was not as well.

Having a Valor Rank 60+ Gunslinger and (before 1.2) Guardian, I'd say the Gunslinger is by far the better of those 2 for burst. Guardians were great when we could focus bomb groups but it was still situational (heavily grouped up people/mobs) and you could do 5-7k damage in one hit to everthing in radius (force sweep). Now that number is around 4-5k at best and it is one of few really powerful attack as a focus guardian. Gunslinger just has so many powerful attacks, and you can fire them off very quickly (frontload dmg) to take someone from full HP to nothing in a few seconds. Sentinels from what I've played are great at sustained high DPS but they are lower burst than either of the others (obviously not counting focus sentinels as they are the same as focus guardians)... not so sure on shadows bursty-ness.

^^ I'd check the Mara/Assassin forums and try to get an idea of the actual DPS that each class is capable of. For PvP it probably isn't as big a deal but in raids there is a significant difference in DPS. Mara/Sentinels are by far the highest DPS class right now capable of putting up 1500+ (rumored 1800 with campaign gear) DPS on boss fights in OPs. I've never seen a Shadow Inf (assassin) post anything near that,

I am always amazed at the negativity towards this game. I think a lot of it comes from peoples expectations being way to high in the first place. Yes there are many features that can be added and improved (give time they will) but the main priority for any MMO on release is getting a stable & working game, then adding to that. Anyway, I enjoy my time (mult 50's and 2 Valor Rank 60+'s) and there is still a lot of content I have not seen. The main thing I'd like to see is a focus brought back to open world and incentivised (DAoC Style) warfare. There is so much potential with the SW title that could be added to the game. Player built bases/walkers/speeders usable for PvP etc ... but we'll see what direction they take it.

I'm pretty sure I 'realize' how sab charge works, still I feel it is not needed, nor worth it for the energy. I do use it occasionaly but it is not a priority.

I pretty much always figure I will grab agro and have surrender ready as soon as the boss turns. The only class that can keep agro over the 2 SS Gunslingers we have is our Shadow tank.

I'd like to see the timer increased on Dodge, make it similair to the sentinel dmg reduction.. (though honestly that needs to be reduced a bit, so maybe meet both in the middle)

Lay Low is so overlooked, both XS (control points) and Hunker are great (yes I know hunker is 'broke'... just use it on the right classes ..sages/inqs). Pandemonium is the only thing I might change, as CB is already given instant burst when you go in and out of cover, and casting it too often will be a energy drain. Rapid Fire is great burst, keep it. Also, I think percussive shot is a life-saver.. I use it followed by leg shot and it buys me a good 4-5 secs of getting them pesky sentinels from destroying me.

With a SS build I disagree about Sab Charge, I use it if other abilities aren't up, but otherwise I feel there are better abilities. My main PvP rotation to frontload damage is basically what Lightning said. Cover, Aimed Shot, instant CB, Trick-shot, Speed shot, rapid fire, 2 more Speed shots. QD when available. This will rip any light armor wearer to shreds and put a serious hurt on any other class. You could most certainly add Sab charge to the start of that, but I don't feel the damage is worth the time.

I always throw Vital Shot and XS Freighter Fly-By (assuming the boss isn't goint to run out of it) in to my rotation, as it gives a little more lee-way (DoTs) when I have to move around, which is most OP boss fights. Even on training dummies I parse higher using both DoTs than I do without. I am now in mostly Rakata with some Columi pieces and I generally parse about 1300 sustained on the ship dummy and around 1150 on boss fights. I tend to start fights with fly-by, vital shot and flourish shot (re-applying when needed). After that its just a matter of using Aimed shot, speed shot (rapid fire) and trickshot whenever I possibly can, and quickdraw after 30%. Make sure to jump in and out of cover to take advantage of charged burst instant casting followed by trickshot, but don't spam CB as you will quickly be out of power. I also use my relics/stims generally right before I do a Aimed shot, trickshot, speed shot, rapid fire, speed, speed combo. Typically if I get below 40% energy I'll pop Cool Head or Illegal Mods

That indeed is what was happening, the air fling was being completed and we weren't being dropped till a few seconds after his shield went up. The mind trap part didn't seem to be any problem and he wasn't popping his shield till people were out of the trap and it seemed to give us time to run around. Before they added the platform we used to just hold DPS, which is why we tried that strategy again, but it didn't seem to be working. Everyone knew to run around the outside, and it was impossible all of the 5-6 tries even with 3 people who could rescue. That is what was so frustrating in conjunction with the 2nd issue of not being able to rez on the ground floor.

I'll try to clarify: We tried to rescue people, we ran as quickly as possible once landing on the platform. The first time it happened was within 1 sec of landing on the platform the floor dropped out, no rescue possible. If this is a 'mechanic' it is a lousy one as the chance of him throwing people in the air seems completely random. Other times we had 2-3 seconds but still not enough time to be rescued. We tried having our DPS stop attacking and waiting till everyone was in position and inevitably someone else would get thrown in the air. We've had several successful attempts where he was not throwing people nearly as often. One run he actually threw people at 42, 36 and 31%. I don't feel that issue 2 is a designed mechanic. Till i hear from BW that they intentionally aren't letting you rez people who died on a previous stage in the same boss fight, you won't convince me otherwise. I'm pretty sure its something to do with the placement of death being tied to whether you can be targeted or not. BW has attempted to fix this by having your corpse now actually fall all the way to the real floor, instead of some alternate dimension where you were on the floor but could not see your team or the boss, shows that they are trying to resolve this and it's not intentional. Otherwise why would they change anything, so you can watch your team die because they are short a player?? Edit: Yes I know it's possible that you can take the boss with less then a full group, we've done it before with 4 people standing at the end, we had a few new DPSers so our damage was already lowered and not being able to bring the 8th person back up was most certainly the reason we were failing.

I tried to create a ticket for this in game last night, but both times I tried it said there was a problem submitting the ticket, so I'll post it here. Our group, who has finished HM EV and KP several times, had two major glitches with Soa last night. The first was at the end of the second stage, Soa would lift someone up in the air and throw them (happened randomly from 36% to 31% before he popped his shield). Everytime this happened the person who was thrown would land on the platform and before they could get around the outside to the west the floor would drop out. This by itself wasn't a huge problem as we should have been able to rez said player at the bottom, though this issue itself was supposedly fixed already. The second Issue was that we could not rez anyone who had died on previous stages once they fell to the bottom. We had 5-6 attempts on Soa, getting him below 10% everytime and the only reason we were dying is because combat rez was not usable on the player who fell through the floor. This was an incredibly frustrating way to end what was otherwise a stellar OP. The third and smaller issue is that once mind trapped on the final stage (knowing you are going to wipe with 2-3 people in mind trap) you cannot exit area and have to wait 2 mins for the mind trap to kill you. This is frustrating, especially when the only reason you are failing is because of glitches and now you are forced to wait longer inbetween attempts.

PvP is the main reason that I'm still playing. What else is there to do after getting a few chars to 50 the storylines get a little old.. and with the lockouts I can only raid so many times a week. The only MMO that has held me for more than a year since UO was DAoC, because of the RvR (massive PvP). As it stands I don't see SWToR having the staying power it should unless some massively fun things are implemented (PvP or Group space combat, Pod Races and the like).

In my guild the top honors go to Sentinels, I would say with equal gear that the classes being within 5% seems very close to actual testing. I have a level 50 Guardian (DPS - played focus till 1.2) and a level 50 Gunslinger (SS) and they both parse dummies around ~1100-1200. The Guardian is much more deked out with gear (almost full rakata vs. mostly Columi with the GS), so I imagine as I gear the GS up more and more that he will have the slight advantage.

The black hole/campaign gear is bar none the stupidist looking end-game armor I've ever seen in a game. hahaha

Weak, really? I hadn't noticed.

Hahah, don't PvP you might die!!! (falls over laughing) Had to get that out... Anyway good job on giving it a go, it's not nearly as painful as people make it out to be. I'm not sure with the Def/Vigilance spec how hard it is to manage focus, but with Focus spec (in Soresu mode) I highly recommed getting the 4 piece Columi/Rakate set bonus so you can do saber throw at any time. I have done so and filled in all the other pieces (implants/earpiece/belt/bracers) with Battlemaster/champ gear, which still gives me around 8% expertise. I'm working on replacing them with the War Hero gear but it will take awhile.

So you haven't played another MMO before? They took the ranked warzones out because it wasn't working properly, had they left it in we would see the same 10000 posts complaining about how bugged it is.

I have also played quite a few MMO's where all people did was sit in the capital city 90% of the time, either LFG or bored. Even on my decked out 50 guardian I spend very little time sitting on the fleet... generally the only time I'm there is when I'm PvP'ing. My lvl 42 alt has spent maybe a total of an hour on the fleet. Edit: I guess it could be more server dependent, I play on Wall of Light... have seen very few spams. I'd imagine fatman / ajunta pall have a higher rate.

Haha, well done Kthx also, they actively remove gold farmers / spammers like crazy.. in-fact I haven't even gotten a gold spam email in a week now (flagged spam everyone that I got).

I was just talking about this with another guildmate last night, even though we've seen a large decline in the amount of active play time most of our guild is playing, we're still having a ton of fun and think this is one of the best MMO's in quite some time. Yes there are a number of bugs and things that should be added, but a ton of bugs have been fixed and there few game-breaking bugs left. I think it boils down to a few things; a lot of people want to do one thing exclusively (most seem to be get to 50 and do endgame raids while others are strictly PvP players). In my guild the ones that I see staying around the most (yes we still raid 3 days a week) are the ones that do a variety of things, between PvP, Raids, and leveling alts.