Hammer Shot hits three times, once for ~25%, once for ~50% and once for ~25%. Those numbers might be wrong, but it's definitely three hits, with the middle one being the largest. It is interesting to note that the three hits for Hammer Shot appear to roll independently for avoidance, but not for the proc on Plasma Cell. Also, I would recommend against a Hybrid build, especially for PvE. You really want to get the top 31 point talent in the tree if you are going more than 10 points in it. The bottoms of Assault and Combat Medic force you to spend a lot of points in their related cells. But you can only have one active at a time, switching requires a 1.5s cast, so that's basically causing you to lose talent points, where as if you went up to the top of a tree you don't really have any wasted points. Most hybrid specs are a solo PvP kind of thing. The only real hybrid I can come up with is a Combat Medic, Gunnery build. Mostly because gunnery still benefits from Combat Support Cell. But the problem with hybrid specs is that it's easier to justify spending one more point in your primary tree, the one with the most points in it, than it is to spend a point in a secondary tree.

I hope that's not true, otherwise Assault falls even farther behind IMO. If it's each hit, just spamming Hammer Shot gets you a 41% chance per GCD, otherwise the slow on Plasma Cell just went from a decent kiting ability if you start at range, to a RNG roller coaster. IMO that's the biggest problem with Assault, most of the damage/functionality comes from procs. Increased Crit damage, slow on Plasma Cell Damage, chance to reset HIB cooldown from FA/CB, and the cooldown reduction on Adrenaline Rush/Reactive shield. For a "pvp" talent tree it's super dependent on RNG and not in a good way since most of the RNG forces you to react, not your opponent. On the other hand, Gunnery is very consistent, you know the exact benefits of everything that you do, which IMO is much better for PvP.

Wow. I said that AP does more damage on targets with less than 60% Kinetic Reduction and less on targets with more, and that somehow doesn't include that your targets can have different amounts of armor? How much better does it scale? 30% extra crit damage, or 35%(46%) armor pen? Which one do you think will scale better? The one that's dependent on RNG or the one that applies to everything you do? What is the point of Assault then? If it's not damage what is it? Crowd Control? lol Mobility? You have the same types of spells, anything you can do with Assault you could create an equivalent to it with Gunnery. The same could be said about Assault, unless you want to run around spamming Hammer Shot just to proc the slow, but then you'd be doing low amounts of damage. Or you think tab DOTing with incendiary is good dps. Other than having to get a critical hit on a 15second cooldown ability. Also, Grav round is the go to ability for Gunnery, just like Charged Bolts is for Assault. Again I will ask, what is the point of Assault? If you are going to say more mobility please try and show it with examples and something resembling theorycraft. Maybe a few numbers too. I would think most Lvl 50 Gunnery builds will have the energy return, and I would contest the usefulness of increased stealth detect. Just like Assault HIB depends on Charged Bolts to be utilized to its fullest potential? If you can't get a 1.5s cast with a 15second debuff down, you lost the battle anyway. Assault might be better when you're hit by a stealth class, but even then the only advantage you would have is a slow on Hammer Shot, which even an Assassin could outdamage you at range. Gunnery also has a longer knockback to make leading with Grav round easier, instead of having to depend on an RNG effect with Assault. Why do you keep saying this? How? Gunnery has to start it's rotation with a 1.5s cast, 2 ammo ability, while Assault has to start with an instacast, 3 ammo ability? One instacast ability at the start of a rotation on a ranged class is the difference between a turret and a headless chicken? How is Gunnery more hurt by target switching than Assault? With assault you need the burn effect for your spec to function, meaning you lead off with a 3 ammo ability or you pray for a Plasma Cell proc. Gunnery needs to lead off with a 1.5s cast 2 ammo ability(which becomes 1 cell on a crit!), in my experience so far, that's not very hard. Or you wait until you can get off a safe Grav Round while using your many other skills. I think most of you playing Assault would have a lot more fun playing Vanguard. It's really the class that you seem to think Assault spec is.

No, no, and no. Please read the thread, none of what you just typed is true. Again, everything you type is hyperbole. Assault does the same damage as sticky on a target with 60% Kinetic Reduction.. HIB deals more damage with Gunnery, the only way for them to be close is to chain cast Charged Bolts to max out the cooldown resets, AKA you are just as "immobile" as Gunnery. You forgot the HIB that Gunnery can also cast in there and the Incendiary Round that AS has to get off before using Charged Bolts or HIB. Charged Bolts dealing more damage than Grav Round? If somehow your .33 ratio weapon damage and 9% damage on burning targets can over come a .12 tech damage bonus, .41 base damage bonus, and a 35% armor pen. Then yes CB will out damage Grav Round, but in reality it will not. Again, why are you comparing HIB to Demo Round? They are not the abilities you should be comparing. How many times are you going to get this wrong? Demo is the Gunnery Equivalent of Incendiary Round in AS HIB is the Gunnery equivalent of HIB in AS. No. It has a 3second cooldown, it just doesn't need to be a stated cooldown. If you cast HIB, you can cast Charged Bolts, 1.5s, cast HIB, 1.5s, cast Charged Bolts, 1.5s, cast HIB. It ends up having a cooldown of 3 seconds. Curtain of Fire and Ionic Acceleration have the same chance to proc. More movement does not necessitate more survivability. But you seem to be ignoring the fact that Gunnery also has better CC tools, lower cooldown on Tenacity and Conc Charge, knock back on stockstrike, longer knock back on Conc Charge, Slow on Full auto, 10% damage reduction on Grav Round. Compared to AS's slow on Plasma cell procs, Reduced cooldown on Adrenaline rush(amount dependent on the number of Critical hits), reduced cooldown on Reactive Shield(amount dependent on the number of times you are hit), reactive shield removes CC. Looks like Gunnery wins that category too.

If you want to be a healer I would highly recommend you roll a Sage/Scoundrel. There was a post earlier that compared the three specs, and basically Combat Medic comes in last due to a very limiting resource pool(you basically have no burst out side a 2 minute cooldown), lack of HOTs(leading to you having trouble being a group healer, most of our abilities are great at keeping one target alive, not a whole group), and extremely boring play(mostly due to our lack of spells, you just spam Medical probe for 75% of your casts, compared to the other classes having rotations and more priority abilities). I'll try to find the post, but basically Sage was the most complete healer, while Scoundrel seemed to be a kind of pvp healer, while the Medic was the least complete class.

Go back and read the thread. You deal less damage with AS on all of your attacks, save for Assault Plastique over Sticky Grenade, even then it's almost a wash. Please read the entire post before commenting, I've already made many posts detailing this, if there's anything you think I did wrong or don't understand, I would be happy to expand upon it.

You really haven't noticed that the 3 "shots" in Hammer Shot deal different damage? The first and last one deal like 15% of the total damage and the middle one deals 70% of the total damage, so the math you tried to do is completely wrong. Not to mention that you calculated the average damage wrong. You even said in your stats you can't reach the require damage on a target with Zero damage reduction. Comon, at least try to make a reasonable post. You also ignored everything else I posted just to target that one part. Like the part where you give evidence to support your claims, or try and do some number based theorycraft.

No need for aggro at all. Spec your character the way you want to play and enjoy the game. You don't need to worry about holding aggro as the tanking in a group. Just enjoy the game the way it's made. If you want to know how you fare tank wise, try different builds and see what holds aggro better. Enjoy the game by playing how you enjoy it. No need in making a job of it to keep the top build. No need for damage for a healer to heal at all. Spec your character the way you want to play and enjoy the game. You don't need to worry about healing the group in a group. Just enjoy the game the way it's made. If you want to know how well you fare at healing a group, try different builds and see if you can keep the group alive better. Enjoy the game by playing how you enjoy it. No need in making a job of it to keep the top build. Do you see the hypocracy? It's easy to see when a tank fails to do his job, the mobs are running around everywhere hitting the squishy characters. It's easy to see when a healer is failing, everyone in the group is dying from raid damage. BUT we can't see how well a DPS class is doing because that information is his and his alone. His ability has no impact on the experience for others? For all of you people against DPS meters, are you also against having the boss in an encounter have an aggro table? Should you just pick the target you want to have the boss beat on and click a button and that happens. What about healers? should there be no damage because the healers just want to play the way they enjoy and having to spec into certain talents ruins their fun? Why are DPS classes exempt from Responsibility?

The part where you just say things without giving any explanations or doing anything resembling theorycraft or a combat parse. Also, you arn't comparing the right abilities, I already did this earlier in the thread and somehow you still get it wrong. Assault Plastique is the AS version of Sticky Grenade. It even starts the cooldown on both of them. Yes, it does more damage, roughly 1.5 better scaling on tech bonus damage. For the scaling difference to beat out the armor pen from Gunery, Just counting the AP cell would be anything below 60% damage reduction on your target, which I think would be most targets you cast it on. But the damage difference is less than it looks by just looking at the scaling difference. Hammer Shot with AS is not better than Hammer Shot with Gunnery, I've already showed you the math on that one multiple times. Please read the thread. HIB with Gunnery Equals the damage with AS if you ignore armor penetration and try to maximize the amount of cooldown resets you get as AS spec, meaning you spend most of your time chain casting Charged Bolts. Again, another post I already made that shows this, please go back and read it. Incendiary Round is not the equivalent of Explosive round, it is the equivalent of Demo Round. I haven't done the math on this one yet but, a quite looks show Demo to have a coefficient of 2.0 with a 15 second cooldown while Incendiary Round has a 2.3 coefficient with an 18 second cooldown. Demo Round has much higher burst, but the sustained damage looks roughly the same, assuming you ignore the armor pen in Gunnery and the Damage buff from casting Grav Round. Because both of them provide passive % increases to damage. Correct, but most attacks don't hit 3 times in one global cooldown. And the scaling isn't very good to make this viable, 1:1 scaling on weapon damage and ~.15 scaling on bonus tech damage. Every other ability we have scales better than that. Do you now see how hyperbole and a lack of evidence is not helping this discussion? That's what we in the business of theorycraft call Decoy Talents. You've see one crit for 975 and now all of your hits are for 1k, The highest damage weapon in the game has a max of 597 damage, to simply get to 1k damage you would need to have 400 bonus damage from Aim/Power, which would equate to having roughly 2000ish power/aim. Which would require you to have the best gear in the game to pull that off, and I'm not even sure you would get close to that. And of course your target to have no armor or base stats. It would also stack with another Gunnery Commando, with full grav round stacks from each other you would have roughly 58% armor pen and much higher burst.

Again, show me how. Please don't just say, "oh i know i'm doing more damage even though the math says i'm not." Again more claims without any proof. Sorry man, that's not how math works. You're right, I just quoted the part about the 9% extra damage on burning targets talent, not Rain of fire the talent that gives 9%extra damage on burning targets. You seem to be implying that the damage is much closer than it really is. It's not 16% times three, it's .84 ^ 3 to not have the proc. Somehow I doubt that, very few attacks deal elemental damage, Plasma Cell, the burn on Plasma Grenade, Incendiary Round, and Pulse Cannon. That just leaves soo much time for you to be doing other things that I just can't believe that half your damage is elemental. And impossible to prove without some theorycraft on your part or a combat log parse, which you can't provide. The statement was less effective. Not using Plasma Cell has an effect on all of those talents I listed, even if it is small. If there is any talent you disagree with please say which one. But ultimately the point is that with a Gunnery Spec I don't have any "wasted talents," I may have some that are situational, but none of them are less effective than the description based on how I play. That was in the context of the amount of damage dealt by Hammer Shot, which deals weapon damage aka Energy damage. AP cell has no effect on Elemental or Internal damage, but at the same time neither does Plasma Cell. The damage that both specs deal with elemental attacks is the same, save for Burnout and Assault Trooper talents. If grav Round hits for like 1400 damage, your Hammer Shot is not hitting for 1k damage, which is what I was saying. But my point was how does an AS spec handle this situation better? If you CC is on cooldown it comes back faster with a Gunnery Spec. You have the same number of instacast spells you can use on the move, most of which will deal more damage than with an AS spec, save for Assault Plastique I think. The point I'm trying to make is that AS is a weak spec that needs some improvements from Bioware.

Could you then say the reverse for AS? That since we both have the same skills, as gunnery I could be just as mobile as you? Or does it only benefit the way you play? Again what abilities are you using as AS that can't be done with Gunnery? There's this thing called statistics. Please go learn how probability works before saying things like this. 50% crit benefits all abilities the same, except for abilities with increased crit damage, which Hammer Shot does not have. Cool math you did there. Did you miss the part where AP cell beats out Rain of Fire at 18% damage reduction. AKA every target you hit, and it doesn't need you to either hit a 16% proc or waste 3 ammo on a low dps ability. Again, math must not be your strong point. 35% armor pen =/= 35% damage increase, it depends on how much armor your Target has for the damage % increase. Also the amount of elemental damage you deal, even as an AS spec should be small compared to the amount of Kinetic damage and Energy damage you deal. Also, it isn't some effectiveness, it's 15 talents you spent points in that are less effective because you switched cells. That's 37% of your talent points that are not as effective as they could be. It's almost like you stopped spending you talent points at level 35 while playing a level 50 character. Plasma cell has a .35 ratio on bonus damage per tic, at a 16% proc rate, that's adding an average of .056 tech bonus damage per attack. To have that beat out 35% armor pen, you target would have to have like less than 7% damage reduction, AKA armor cell always beats it. Also saying that your Hammer Shot hits for 1k damage on average? That means you average hit for charged bolts/grav round would be like 4k damage.

Have you read the discussion? Did you just read the title and decide to respond? Look at some of the earlier posts i made and realize that this figment of your imagination know as "AS having more mobility" is just that, not true. You literally have the same number of cast time and instacast spells, it is not possible for AS to be more mobile, unless you are just spamming Hammer Shot while running around like a headless chicken or tab dotting everyone with incendiary round. Both of which deal useless damage. What is wrong with theorycraft? It's telling you that your perferred style of play might not be the best in there is? It can't take into account everything that can happen? It's something those nerds down the hall do? What is wrong with good theorycrafting? And if you could, what part of my theorycraft was wrong/do you disagree with? Oh wait, I missed this gem: No wonder you think Gunnery is bad, you don't know how or just didn't play it correctly. You facetank'd a melee class and expected to win? You didn't even use a knockback/stun and try to kite? Did you somehow lose the ability to cast Demo Round, High Impact Bolt, Stockstrike, Explosive Round, Hammershot, and Sticky Grenade? It's hard to take your critique of Gunnery seriously when you don't play it correctly and then proceed to come here and complain.

That's impossible, simply impossible for Hammer Shot to deal more damage than Charged Bolts. Hammer Shot's damage is the same as your weapon damage, while Charged Bolts scales better than 1:1 on weapon damage, includes ranged bonus damage, and has a base damage. There is no possible way for Hammer Shot to deal the same damage as Charged Bolts.

Hence the statement that I was comparing "best" case scenarios. Nope. Sticky Grenade - Assault Plastique Full Auto - Full auto Grav Round - charged Bolts Demo Round - Inc Round HIB - HIB Looks like the same to me. Not really sure if you are just ignorant of how Gunnery works in a pvp environment or you are deliberately misconstruing how the spec is played. In a PvE situation what you said is mostly correct except for there being a priority system not a strict rotation. A better opening for Gunnery is usually Sticky Grenade -> Grav Round -> Demo Round -> HIB. Only one of those abilities is a cast time spell. Again, you are forgetting that Gunnery has the same abilities or an equivalent. The same could be said about Grav Round. You might want to count again, but I'll be nice and do it for you: Superheated Plasma - 3 points Sweltering Heat - 2 points High Friction Bolts - 2 points Rain of Fire - 3 points Assault Trooper - 2 points Burnout - 3 points Adds up to 15 talent points that are less effective if you switch to Armor Piercing Cell with an AS spec. What do you use that is more effective or can't be done with Gunnery? Just a reminder that Armor Piercing Cell beats out Rain of Fire at about 17% damage reduction on your target. Hence the term best case scenario. Considering Grav round does more than just reduce armor, it also provides a damage reduction, buff to HIB, and buff to Demo Round, and it's also my go to ability considering how efficient it is with ammo I would have to say that it is worth it. You wouldn't spend 3.75 seconds to get 13% more damage on every ability you use except for Plasma Cell, Plasma Grenade, Incendiary Round, and Pulse Cannon? Might want to look at that talent again. It only effects HIB at a 30% chance on charged bolts, which you said you dont use very much, and 60% Full auto, which has a 15second cooldown. While the Gunnery ammo talent is 1 cell every time you crit with Demo Round, Grav Round, Full auto. So I would be hesitant to say AS will always win out. The problem with AS is that even with movement Gunnery seems to do very comparable damage, maybe even better. I admit I have yet to do the full theorycraft on this yet, but if Gunnery >>>>> AS when standing still and AS is comparable to Gunnery on the move, it would make sense that Gunnery is the superior spec. And we haven't even begun to discuss the better CC options in Gunnery compared to AS.

It's very discourteous to ask for a discussion and not even read what the people presenting another point of view are saying. You missed my point. I was countering the fact that you have more mobility while using AS spec because in order to get a "significant" improvement in movement(in this "best" case scenario it's trading a 1.5s cast time for an instacast spell every 15seconds) you have to spend a large amount of time standing still spamming cast time abilities. Both AS and Gunnery have the same amount of instacast spells and cast time spells. Yes, you could waste roughly ~15 talent points, but something tells me that just puts you even further behind Gunnery. I realize that, the point I would make is that the cooldown reset on Charged Bolts and the damage increase from Charged Barrel on Grav round is roughly the same per cast. So it's a moot point, except for the fact that it requires only two casts of grav round every 15seconds to beat out the damage buff from Rain of Fire and that doesn't include the armor reduction associated with Grav round. So if you don't get a cooldown reset Gunnery would always win out. I find it hard to believe that you couldn't cast two 1.5second abilities every 15seconds. Not even sure what you are trying to say here. If you cut Charged Barrel and Grav round's damage in half you would also have to cut Charged Bolt's and Ionic Accelerator's damage in half, due to them having similar numbers. You can eliminate the armor pen from Armor Piercing Cell, but you can't eliminate the armor reduction from Gravity vortex. And you also make ~15 of your talent points useless or half as effective. I was going to do my best job at a very good theorycraft of damage output which would also include the ammo costs of both builds, but if this is the kind of response I'm going to be getting, I think I'm going to wait until after the holidays.

You really proved your point there with all of your math and such. AS: High Friction Bolts: 30% armor pen Rain of Fire: Conditional 9% damage on burning targets Assault Trooper: 30% extra crit damage Ionic Accelorator: Full Auto(60%)/CB(30%) to reset HIB Cooldown Gunnery Armor Piercing Cell: 35% armor penetration Grav Round x 5 : 20 % armor reduction Charged Barrel: 30% Damage buff after 5 Grav rounds More comparable than you let on. The only real edge that AS would have over on Gunnery on HIB would be the cooldown reset, but considering you completely missed my point on that. My point was that you in no meaningful way have more mobility with AS than Gunnery especially since the one ability that is even comparable between the two requires you to spam a lot of Charged Bolts and Full auto, both channeled abilities which would be counter to the point that you can deal more damage while retaining more movement. Math: Assualt: Assuming you hit your target with Incid Round to get the burn effect going, then hit with HIB to get the bonus damage from burning and the ammo reduction. You have to remain stationary for 0 seconds. Damage : Inc Round + HIB Gunnery: Start with grav round into HIB. you have to remain stationary for 1.5 seconds. Damage : Grav round + HIB Gunnery: The next part for this is easy to figure out. Spam Full Auto/Grav round/Demo round until HIB cooldown is finished. Assualt: Somewhat more difficult, but we can look at the average amount of times the cooldown is reset over a 15s duration to compare the potential damage of AS to a fully buffed Gunnery HIB that will be available after it's cooldown is up. Full auto: 3s channel, 15second cooldown 60% chance to reset. Charged Bolts: 1.5s cast, 0s cooldown, 30% chance to reset. Charged Bolt chance to reset after two casts is 51%, so it's always better to cast Full auto when it's off cooldown than spam CB. over a 13.5 period(15s-1.5s gcd) you will get 1 full auto and 6.66666 CBs. Now, each time you get the cooldown reset you lose on of the CB casts which is replaced by a HIB, which is a small dps loss, but gives you mobility because of it's an instant cast ability. For a damage comparison, one of the HIB resets that you get is basically off set by the cast of demo round for Gunnery. The average number of resets you will get during the 6 CBs is a little more than 1, so the question becomes does 1.3ish HIB deal more damage than the one cast of HIB from Gunnery at the end of the 15seconds? I would say no, due to the high level of armor pen that Gunnery will have over AS and the fact that you can also put an instacast Demo round in there meaning you would have roughly the same amount of mobility. Also you have to take into account the amount of extra damage you will deal on all of your other abilities, especially Full Auto. All in all, the mobility gain of AS is roughly one instant cast spell over a 1.5s cast every 15ish seconds.

You say that like Gunnery doesn't have the same abilities. You still kite with Gunnery, it isn't just standing around facetanking while just spamming grav/full auto. How is AS more mobile? Assualt Plastique is the same as sticky Grenade, Demo round is the same as Inc round, but can have a 25% damage buff, Grav round is better than charged bolts, Gunnery full auto is like 75% more damage than AS full auto, Gunnery HIB is better than AS HIB. AS isn't more mobile than Gunnery, if it is you are doing it wrong and not dealing as much damage as you can.