MM snipers will be able to sit an aoe if they wish, with nearly complete impunity. Alot of people are forgetting about the talent ballistic dampers(grants 3 charges of a shield that absorbs 30% of incoming damage upon entering cover). Exit/Reenter cover > pop entrench > shield probe = 90% damage reduction + an absorb from shield probe applied to the small amount of remaining damage.

Yeah alot of people keep the 61 cunning + 11 crit/power mods heh. Most I'd say actually.

I actually meant to say enhancements and all slots but 2 ;P But I also have the mod for every single slot haha.

This is doable too, but I prefer the 58 enhancements since I have been able to get them from nightmare 16 ops for all the slots I would use then in but 2 so far. Also you don't need to have too much surge, I just sim myself using Tibbel's spreadsheet and then switch an enhancement for crit surge when crit's value reaches .90 power or above. The spreadsheet was also how I got my best distribution of expertise compared to other stats from a dps standpoint.. I'd reccomend you try it ;D

You switch out your mods from 61 cunning 11 crit to 48 cunning 37 power - a huge dps increase but a loss in crit chance.

I 100% agree with this though.

Because power is worth like double crit's value for mm.. even at the cost of slightly less rng burst?

Well go look at alot of the later pages in the MM sniper dps compendium. It was quite solidly proven using Tibbel's spreadsheet that the lethality hybrid has more burst over a 12 second window then either of the other pve specs even with 5x armor debuff on the target and no chance of your abilities being deflected, and that the dps disparity only increased when the armor debuff on the target was changed from 5 stacks to 3 and so on. There were also quite a few people saying that the lethality hybrid does more damage in pve even with 5x armor debuff in sustained based on both in game tests and the spreadsheet.. although not by an incredibly large margin or anything. And yes I know this was for pve so really none of that can be taken as fact for a pvp arguement.. just replying to your claim that tibbel said lethality was below the other spec's for sustained or anything else, which he never did.

Yes 20k+ burst is only possible every 3 minutes or so at the max and I was never claiming that it happens all the time, but you can easily have tons of 12-15k(depending on ability combinations) burst scenario's consistently throughout an entire warzone. P.S. I play mm/eng, pure eng, and mm/lethality for pvp and I do very well in all 3. My only point is that with my nearly BiS gear I burst people alot faster in lethality/eng then I do in either other spec. Yes mm/eng can have perfect burst situations with adrenal and relic up where they do 5kish ambush > 3.5k EP > 3.5k FT > 6.5k+ (SoS + Cluster Bombs) , for a total of around 18.5k damage over ~5 globals if everything crits and nothing is deflected etc. The difference is that you require alot more rng then lethality/eng does to see situations like that.

I definitely agree with you that burst doesn't mean 20k damage, and 5-6k damage could be small burst. I just wouldn't consider snipe > ft really burst unless ofc both crit, which mm snipers ussually have as low as 30-35% crit.

As far as sustained damage, a geared sniper using a lethality/eng hybrid will not have any energy problems vs a single target over any period of time if played correctly. But yes it does take a bit more management then mm or mm/eng snipers who often don't even have to think about their energy in pvp.

I play in a mix of Rakata and BM gear, with 4 x 28 cunning augments in my gear. And I get my 53% crit due to having a talent that increases crit by 12% for dot effects (CD,CG,Cull). Marks based specs can not burst more frequently under any circumstances.. lol. I do agree that MM can burst a target without the 1-2 gcds of setup, but it's burst is entirely reliant on using two 15 second cd abilities(sos and ambush) and a 30 second cd ability(Ep) for their burst. Lethality/eng on the otherhand has Cull (9 second CD), as well as a harder hitting SoS (15 sec CD) + EP (30 sec CD) for a second (albeit slightly weaker) burst while waiting for your 9 second Cull CD. P.S. I have not and never was debating how viable this spec would be for rated warzones - I have said this multiple times. And here is a quote from the poster I was discussing this with - "I am not arguing which spec has more burst, nor am I comparing them in a rated environment."

- Not being defensive, just pointing out that if you are comparing burst for any spec you are gonna want to include cds ;P - More then half of my attacks critting is a common scenario when I have over 50% crit ;P - Yes I did say that it procs multiple times, however you were implying that it is not a common occurrence when it actually procs pretty much every other global, all of the time, when you have dots on the target ;P - Debilitate is in no way required for my burst, in fact it slows it down a bit. I only used it because my target was a good merc healer who knew how to dispel, and he was running towards me with the ball carrier. Here is how I see it, lethality has a small bit of setup to be able to execute it's burst. But when it does burst successfully, it can indeed do 20k in the space of 3 globals bringing most players to no hp before they have time to react. Especially if say I was playing on voidstar vs say 2 BM sorcs. I dot the first but he notices and runs behind LoS, I then switch to the second and throw CD > EP > Cull > Takedown > Dead. I kill people like this all the time. And if I get low hp centurion/random blue gear or especially tionese/random blue geared players It goes more like CD > Cull > Dead. This is assuming that I get corrosive grenade on 2+ targets allowing for easy target swapping(I click to select my target not tabbing which is terrible in this game) - if it isn't already on the target then ofc I have to add an extra global to apply CG.

Not when they give alot more total stats, and you just remod your other gear etc =/ I don't have any of these 4 stat pieces like you, and yet I am within 2 accuracy points of 148 rating (which is the soft cap) I have a ton of power, and just enough crit and surge

It works on nightmare 16m foreman crusher, preventing you from being knocked back by his aoe knockback. It does not work on Bonethrasher... because that would be insanely overpowered ;P

Or.. you could do 15% more damage with OS + EP at no increased energy cost, rather then just using OS slightly more often which also increases the amount of energy you spend on OS over the course of the fight.

Or you could get a columi crit implant

Well its not exactly an aoe compared to say, frag grenade or orbital but ya ;P That is yet another reason it works well for target swapping and then bursting.

First, I did say that I didn't think that it would work well in a rated environment. Second, The cds being up applies to MM's burst as well. Third, not nearly all of my attacks crit. I said my explosive probe does 5k on average including the cluster bombs not everything critting etc. Fourth, the trinket proc happens almost every 1.5 seconds for me as a lethality hybrid.. all of the time ;P Fifth, the target was cleansing my dots on the ball carrier - which was why i switched to him. I through the debilitate on him so that the stun + the surpise target switch would delay him till my burst was already under way so that his only chance of surviving was to heal himself.

I was talking about burst.. that the healer wasn't expecting >.> I already had corrosive grenade on him from when I had been targeting the marauder next to him who had the ball.

I had expertise adrenal + rakata power relic + target acquired popped. My explosive probe does about 5k dmg on average including the cluster bombs, my takedown hit for 4.3k, my cull does 12-14k on average with everything popped and the dots on him did about 3k i'd assume. I also have the pve rakata trinket from G4 which most likely procced 2-3 times during that. Ah I did forget to respond to your other comment about someone else helping, which there was a merc from my team using DFA, so thats probably another 3-4k damage to the healer. But either way i'm merely saying it can burst harder then pure mm or mm/eng

Actually it is their speciality/focus, even more so then mm, considering the lethality hybrid get more cc talents then mm does including a reduced CD on flashbang ;P Or at least it should be if your a good sniper. Also add in the 30% 3 person slow from corrosive grenade and the 30% single target slow from IP which u can use on ppl chasing your ball carrier.... ;P

You don't have to be mm to cc.... I use lethality as a primarily single target burst spec, and I cc ppl all the time for my team to score.. lol.

I have a little over 5% Total alacrity(including the talent) + Target Acquired = 25% Alacrity, so no it was not "6 globals" My cull lasted ~2.25 seconds, so Explosive probe (1 global) + Cull(1.5 globals) + Takedown(1 global) = 3.5 globals to go from 96% to 0% hp. No I do not count my stun as the first global involved in the burst since it doesn't really do damage, and especially considering that he escaped from it and cast 1 heal with that interupt immunity that mercs have (which also decreases the damage he takes by 20% so that put his damage reduction higher then a BM sorc healer's >.>) Also if you don't believe that I can do that kind of damage, here is a screenshot from Huttball. http://imageshack.us/f/444/screenshot2012031905202.jpg/ Nearly all single target, the only non single target comes from 2x I used orbital on 3-5 people... which I would have also done in an mm or mm/eng build.

10k+? Lol ;P I have burst a full BM merc healer with 20k hp for 100% of his hp in 3 globals on a target swap in huttball. Marauder has the ball + pocket heals. I threw corrosive grenade + dart at the marauder(corrosive splashed onto the heals). The healer proceeded to cleanse the marauder. The second i saw my first dot dissapear, I targeted the healer hit him with corrosive dart > debilitate > explosive probe (while he used escape on my stun) > cull > takedown on his last 6% hp > dead. However, I do believe that in 1.2 with ranked pvp and 8 man grps, lethality and lethality hybrids will be next to useless for pvp when there are multiple good heals cleansing your dots.