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Karast

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  1. Cover is not mandatory if you go DF, but it is vital at times. You need to in order to use your heavy burst abilities. Sabo / aimed shot. I play DF and only drop into cover when the timing is right. I'll drop in do a quick sabo charge, or burn IM and do an aimed shot before moving. I also use it in choke points like in voidstar after the second sets of doors. I'll toss flyby down in front of me drop into cover hit hunker down and then use pulse detonator to knock people into it, and in general hold / distract the enemy team there as long as I can to buy time for door capping. Other then that and when I can get a good snipers nest I don't use it at all. It tends to get you killed if you do. But GS is crap in upper gearing post 50. Anyone who is saying other is either playing on a fail server or is fooling themselves. Any serious pvp team is going to **** on you instantly. You are the first target on the assist train because you are the squishiest target on the team with no escape tools worth a damn. If you try to hunker down they are just going to charge up on you. If you try to run they are just going to chain CC from range until your dead, and while they are beating the crap out of you your group is going to be powerless to really help. Even with a guard and heals. Your a paper tank, with useless defensive abilities. Without 2-3 healers spamming on you your a free kill. The only time you can do anything is when your left alone, and if your left alone, then that is a glaring sign that the other team sucks.
  2. You can replace it with flurry of bolts. The damage between them is pretty similar, but flurry doesn't cost energy so you can spam it to your hearts content. It also has a faster animation so it hits instantly. It lets you conserve or even regen energy while dps'ing on the go.
  3. If you could be asked to level a 50, and then to fight other geared 50's you'll notice just how bad the mitigation is endgame, but since you haven't and can't be asked to you'll never get a real picture of how the game is endgame. As I put in the above post, it fairly easy to see for yourself. Additionally you will do better damage on a gunslinger in PvE gear than you will in PvE gear, since you get a greater dps boost off of the PvE items than the PvP items. That extra 40-50 cunning per piece really does add up, and that expertise is worthless since your dead if a premade focuses you no matter what you do. In fact you actually get so much more dps out of the pve gear opposed to the pvp gear that it actually a bit ridiculous. Anyone saying otherwise is not playing competitive endgame pvp. There is a reason there are practically no snipers or gunslingers left on the pvp servers, in the competitive pvp guilds / premades. As much as I hate admitting it the career is just not worth the spot. A commando / merc or a sage / sorc will do better dps, provide better CC / Utility, and better survivability. I do not really need to say much though because its so blatantly obvious to anyone playing end game it's ridiculous. Eventually Bioware will take notice that we are the most underpopulated class and do something to address that but till then whether you go MM or Let. it's a crap shoot. Let. works a bit better overall since a lot of people are too stupid to find their purge button, but the difference is very negligible. Oh yeah I am not going to do all the work for you but I highly advise anyone who thinks that the damage increase from expertise is canceling out the defensive gain from expertise to actually go to tatooine with a guildmate and test it. Just because we do not have a combat log doesn't mean you can record the numbers you see when you click an ability .... Idoits.
  4. The thing to remember about both MM and Let. is that in the 50's bracket fighting geared premades that know how to play both are pretty much worthless. With MM your dps gets mitigated into the ground against a BM premade. You looking at a base 45-65% mitigation on everything when you take armor mitigation and expertise into account. That simply guts your dps, even with the armor debuff yours going to be doing piss poor burst against any medium and heavy armor, and you have the added penalty that all of our key abilities in MM can be dodged. That means other Agents / Smugglers, tanks, and especially can easily laugh off many of your key abilities with a lucky dodge. When you also take into account that a lot of the premades run heavy on commandos (high base mitigation) and sages (good mitigation + absorb + run speed for breaking LoS) MM is semi gimped. Let. works well but as many have stated it has a bit of a setup 4-5 GCD's on average and you have to watch energy consumption like a hawk. If your manage to get cull off with your dots up and follow it with a probe you can do really nasty damage. The only issue is our dots can be purged, they can actually be purged 2 at a time on a 4.5s CD ability that all of the hybrid healers get. That means commando, sage, scoundrel. All it takes is 1 member of a 4 man team to press purge on your target ever 4.5 seconds while your setting up your dots from they to destroy your dps, and since every premade is running 2-3 hybrids on average, as long as they are smart enough to have purge on their bars your done. This does not even touch on mobility issues, the fact that our CC immunity buffs serves really as a 20 second root, it does not touch the fact that without cover for the leap immunity we are sitting ducks for melee, and if we try to stay in cover we open ourselves up to be easy targets for stealthers and other ranged dps. As we crouch there and try to get a 1.5-3 second cast off they'll just hop in and out of LoS and drop dots and then heal themselves up behind a pillar. Were easily countered, heavily mitigated, and bring nothing of any real value to a group, when you compare us with the alternatives. It sucks but that's the way it is. 10-49 and 50 endgame are completely different. If your dieing to snipers and gunslingers its your own fault. They are the most easily countered class in the game bar none, and all of their abilities and rotations are blatantly obvious. The only time they are actually dangerous to anyone is in the sub 50 bracket where they actually have burst damage. 5k out of an HP pool of 12k is a lot. 3-4k out of 18k is not.
  5. There was nothing, nothing in the old system that had anything to do with hard-work. Whether you got gear or not was 100% luck dependent. Some people got full champion or near full champion in a few days, maybe a week. They'd get 1 item every 2-3 bags with very few duplicates. Other people, myself included have opened 200+ bags, and are still missing half the champion set. I have 13 extra offhands, 11 extra relics, 9 extra implants, 5 extra helms, 5 extra boots. I have entire vault slots filled with excess crap! Its 100% luck based. I could and did spend entire days grinding out bags in the old system. 6-7 bags a day with losing WZ after WZ due to republic idiocy and not get a single item for 2 weeks, while I watch fresh 50's out gear me in a week with less than a 10th of the bags I grinded out, because simply put they got "lucky" Anyone who is complaining about the new system is someone who was lucky with bags and does not have the stones to actually fight in a more balanced system. They could give every fresh 50 full champion and battlemaster and I would not complain. All it would mean is that we have PvP'ers on equal footing with gear, a leveled playing field. It makes the fights all the much more fun and rewarding.
  6. Your forgetting the sniper rifles and autocannons have higher min / max weapon damage and do not suffer from the fact that on abilities that use just the sniper rifle for ops / sniper, gunslinger / scoundrel have the chance for the second shot from their offhand to be defended. Remember it's chance to hit is only 70%. Ability for ability snipers and ops do more consistent damage with weapon based attacks, which for sniper / gunslinger makes up 7-8 of our core dps'ing abilities. You may have a case for Trooper / BH because BH's have mostly tech attacks and very few weapon attacks in standard rotation, so those extra stats are a bonus. But for a gunlsinger its a hindrance and most of us would willingly give up the double pistols for a rifle any day of the week. A MM sniper in the exact same gear as a SS GS will always hit harder due to min / max damage. If you don't believe me test it out.
  7. I have nothing against being a support dps over a full dps. But if we are a support dps rather than a full dps because of design / balance issues than that is something that needs to be addressed. Also if we are to be a support dps, we need more support tools to support that role. Otherwise a sorc or sage could readily do the same thing. I know you talk of induction time on abilities. But when you look at the channels that merc / sorc use they will do damage on par with that of our charged burst, and in some cases aimed shot, and while it is true they are channeled and can be interrupted, they do damage instantly. 2k 2k 2k 2k 2k vs us with 2k 3k 1.5 seconds 1.5 seconds 2k. So 1 ability versus 4-5 for a similar damage output, and channels have the benefit of sit firing off if the target breaks LoS. One of the reasons I am a fan of DF even with the rampant purging on my server is that wounding shots is an extremely powerful and reliable ability. If I start the channel, unless if I am CC'd all the hits will hit. Even if they break LoS or use a defensive ability that boosts dodge. Speed shot is nice for a similar reason but it takes such a nasty hit from mitigation that its very weak. 7-800 crits on anything that is not a sorc pretty much. I am pvp'ing with maxed dps as well. 1850~ cunning 521 ranged damage bonus. It just doesn't cut it when fighting a geared team that uses guard and LoS properly.
  8. its a random mid 40 drop. I think I got mine during a class quest on voss. But keep an eye on the GTN and you can get one.
  9. Do you any plans to expand / populate the outlaws den open pvp area in tatooine? This zone was something that really caught my attention in the lead up to the game. But unfortunately there is not really an incentive for players to go to the area at all. Most players do not even know it exists, and since it does not offer rewards in the ways of valor, or loot via quests as Ilum does many do not see the point in going out there. So even on a high population pvp server the area is a complete ghost town, aside from the random low levels that wonder through, or the bots that stand next to the security chests to ninja the mercenary commendations. It's really a shame, since you all did a nice job designing the layout of the area. Sincerely, Karast
  10. If your MM or Engineer spec 90% of your abilites are kinetic damage. Endgame your going to be facing base armor levels of 20-60% on top of expertise. It easy to have even squishy enemies mitigated 45%+ of your damage, and we have no bade 33% ignore like merc does, That armor debuff is mandatory, and even then it barely makes a dent in enemy mitigation levels.
  11. I'm thinking you might be on a PvE server or a server that does not have as many competitive premades. 10-49 Gunslingers work quite well in pvp. SS and DF specs especially but when you get to 50 and start doing more competitive pvp you hit a wall other classes do not. Whether your a single target spec with SS / Sabo or a dot spec with DF / Sabo your run into a problem with mitigation. On my server the most common premade teams are 3 sorc + jug / powertech. 2 sorc + merc + jug / powertech, or 2 sorc + sin + operative. In battle master with expertise and armor, a sorc is going to have a base line 45% reduction on your key abilities in SS. When you combine this with a tank that quick with guard swapping, and group support your not going to be doing much damage. Even in battle master you will be happy to see a 3k crit from aimed shot on a sorc. Simply put your dps gets mitigated into the ground as the gear levels advance, and it is not like we have a fantastic stat delve, or some kind of armor pen buff to counter this. We get a debuff that reduces armor by 20%, which is easily purged. If you go the dot spec, and focus on during internal damage you fair a bit better, since you do not have to worry about damage reduction from armor. This means your only going to face 15-20% reduction from expertise. But every hybrid class with a healer tree gets purge for free, and all of the purge abilities remove our dots. 2 dots at a time every 5 seconds~ That's actually faster than we can stack them. So a smart team with players that are not just face rolling 1-2 buttons will cleanse themselves and completely shut down your dps. There is a reason that merc / commando and sorc / sage channels crit harder than our 1.5-3 second casts per tick. It all comes down to damage type, and abilities. Merc / Commando have a base 33% armor pen. Sorc / sage get internal damage attacks that are not dots, so the damage cannot be cleansed. This also does not get into the whole issue of weapon attacks being defendable, and that we are one of the few saddle with a great many weapon attacks as our key abilities. Our attacks can be dodged, their attacks cannot. People are not trolling when they say there are clear issues with the class. a little bit of time on a merc or sorc and you'll see a huge difference in effectiveness on a level 50. I got a guildie to let me play on his commando a bit and it was really an eye openning experience. Prebattlemaster, fighting other pre battlemaster that have not caught on to purging every time its up its not that bad of a class. But When you start doing competitive pvp you're, no matter how good you are, wasting a spot on the team with a Gunslinger. If brought a commando or sage your team would be much, much better off. Sadly that's just the way it is. There is a reason there are only a handful of active 50 snipers / gunslingers on most servers despite all of the trolling, and l2p posters on these forums. In fact I only know of 1 other active gunslinger on my server, and 2 active snipers. All of the others are alts that people are shelving now that they hit 50, or toons they are giving up on. I'm hopeful though, there has to be some internal metrics tracking the population of the various classes, and we are by far the least played class, so hopefully we'll get a dev review by the next major patch.
  12. I think the low HP thing is more about mitigation than it is about raw HP pool. Your absorb is fairly weak compared to a sorc, and you might not think it but a lot of the random boss mechanics are kinetic / energy. Like the lightning balls on Soa. So a commando will take less of a hit to one then a gunslinger will, and a sage with his shield can pretty much negate it. For me on hardmode even with 17k~ with my shield it'll drop me to 2-3k, where my commando and sage guildies rarely get below 50% soaking their ball. That's not a big deal for me though. Scoundrel and Sentinel have similar issues. I just feel the mechanic is working against us to an extent at times. It doesn't really feel like I am doing any more damage than any of the other dps, and I just lack the survivability and utility they can bring. The class is just missing something is all. Cover is setup as the awesome defensive mechanic, but much of its defense is negated in PvP, and in PvE you really only get to use in in quick bursts. Crouch run crouch run crouch run. Just doesn't feel very dynamic is all.
  13. Vokk is annoying. I was SS the first time I tried him with a good mix of gear. The damage on that ground AoE is about .5 seconds after it appears. So you can't run out in time. You can do it SS though. While one ground AoE is up he won't spawn another. So off the start use vital shot, a grenade, maybe open with flyby and keep running. Once he drops the first AoE hit cover, do a burst rotation. When that pink circle fades move instantly. Do not wait, keep moving until he uses it again, and drop into cover again. You'll get about a 6-7~ second window between new AoE pools. So enough time for a CB + Aimedshot + TS + speed shot / sabo charge. But you have to watch like a hawk. If you slightly slow and the punk stuff hits you then a saber throw your done. The fight is much easier as DF. But you still have to wait for the pink stuff to drop to stop to use Wounding shots. I know people talk up hybrid dot specs with SS / DF and SS / Sabo but I have found if you go SS you need the cover energy and if your running around applying dots your energy is going to pan out with the DF skill for energy on dot crit, or sabotage charge with the energy back from the dot charges. But the vokk fight is a good example. There are a lot of similar fights / boss phases in the other hard modes and in the ops.
  14. personally I like dirty fighting, but at endgame I have having a lot of issue with my dots being cleansed. So I recommend a saboteur build. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#700ZMIbboRrRrs.1 This is the core build I like you can play around with the extra 10 to get the absorb shield from SS, or the run speed from dirty kick in DF. You can also play around with the points a bit more take 2-3 points out of sabo. Drop incendiary grenade, and blazing speed, and snap shot. I like Sabo in pvp since you get a good mix of mobility and defense. Using sabotage to reset the CD on defense screen, the extra 6% damage reduction while in cover can help. Incendiary grenade has meh damage but you can keep it on a point, or under your feet 24/7. If you get ganked by stealthers a lot this can knock them out of stealth before they hit you with the opener, giving you enough time to get pulse detonator off. The dps is nice as well since you've got the dot from shock charge, and the dot type effect from sabotage charge. + the damage increase on thermal grenade. You should be able to toss one out every 3 seconds with 2kish crits at 50. It it's a spec that has some nice tools in it. Personally I do not like SS. Its to immobile for my taste. The whole crouch stand crouch stand thing, using the snap shot skill with trickshot, and to continually reapply the absorb just doesn't work for me so I always stick to more mobile spec's. Sab I feel is a good mix of the 2. AoE while mobile, ST while stationary.
  15. Glad I am not the only one, because I have been hitting my head against the wall a bit on some of these boss fights, where it feels like my class mechanic is really working against me, and its not like we get cover spots or anything in the ops, except in trash areas. Your just crouching in the open trying to get an aimed shot off while a bunch of flipping lightning balls, or crazy ridiculous CC starts spamming off all around you, and you've got to get up and high tail it because .5 before the end of the cast someone runs bonecrusher right on top of you! I've been somewhat banned from using flyby, and incendiary grenade if I spec for it, since the fire effects seem to kill the fps for every raid member using ATI cards as well. It can be fun though when your really high on the threat. I've been stacking + defense gear and defense relics for the BH bosses. I always get the boss when the MT gets probed so I run for a cover spot, pop dodge, my absorb, and then my defense relic. I can actually hit 670 defense and do a fairly decent job of face tanking him on 8 man hard mode!
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