I went from level 1 to 50 as a saboteur specced gunslinger with no problems. Both classes are pretty good at solo pve. It's really just a case of playstyle.

Maybe the freighter has better flight computers than the interceptor.

I dunno... all those skills have cooldowns. In between a speedshot you can fit in ten gobal cooldowns. In between a sab charge you can fit in twenty. In between a thermal grenade you can fit in one. So there's really no exuse for not vital shotting people up. Speedshot - thermal - VS - thermal - VS - thermal -VS leaves you with three cooldowns to go. and because you didn't use shrap bomb, you have a lot more energy to do that with. Personally I see the main tradeoff as bombastic. But otherwise the two specs aren't that different. You can either go this for IG, more energy to spam VS: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#700ZrI0bRRbRrsZhMbz.1 Or this for shrap and bombastic - more direct DPS but less energy: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#700ZrI0rRRboMcZhMrkM.1 Pick your poison I guess. But if you're relying on shrap to do everything than I think you're not using other abilities effectively. The real question is not between shrap bomb and IG alone. It's does shrap bomb, flash powder (or dirty escape), underworld hardships, and bombastic outweigh IG, riot screen, seize the moment, and steady shots? That's a harder question. Arguably, in that analysis, the more DPS comes from bombastic, not shrap bomb. Because vital shot and thermal grenade are going to be your two big pressure damage dealers anyway, regardless of which spec you take. So any talent that adds even moar DPS to thermal grenade is going to be great. On the other hand, both have the same defense, but the pure sab build has more energy. This is good if you're making a big use out of vital shot and flyby. If anything else, the flyby/IG combo is the hardest hitting AoE in the game. And properly timed with sabotage it costs 20 less energy than the equivalent shrap bomb combo. That's neat.

It's not really a new spec. The issue is with sustained DPS from energy.

It's not ok because you're using game mechanics as a god mode. If you want to RP, then the other character should be able to punch you in the face and steal the item back. But you're taking advantage of the bind on pickup mechanic to god mode your stealing and shield yourself from viable repercussions. So I would see you as a god modder - the worst kind of RPer.

Gunslingers can beat ops easily if they can anticipate their attack. That's the main hard part.

You never need a DoT to fully tick for its duration. The full damage is a bit misleading. It's just rolling pressure damage. If someone wants to put cleanse down instead of trying to heal the burst damage from sabotage charge or wounding shots, then... yay?

The character sheet misses a decimal point in between the third and fourth number. Damage is always in the hundreds, not the thousands. You're really doing 126.2-174.2.

You need dealer's discount if you want to manage energy in a sab build. It's the major energy talent. Otherwise I agree with the posts about energy for hybrids. Hybrids will do a lot of damage, but I do have serious doubts about energy.

The enforcer guns are the only offhand ones. Field medic is 'officially' for scoundrels, so lacks a dedicated off hand. I would personally recommend just going with duel enforcer pistols, just so you match...

I know, but you always want to time it with your burst as needed damage, if you need it... IMO, anyway. The major problem with shrap bomb is it requires such a huge investment in dirty fighting to get. IMO, incendiary grenade + 6% to your main direct fire abilities (from SS steady shots) is better than wasting points in dirty fighting just to make it up to shrap bomb. And taking shrap bomb means you need more points in energy management in the sab tree. So you're easily wasting four points (energy talents you'd never otherwise need, plus extra points in alacrity or a utility ability like dirty escape or falshpowder that you sacrifice damage for), just to get a slightly crappy AoE (that lacks its addon talents, which are important for making it viable). I don't see shrap bomb as worth all this. It doesn't even do a lot of damage. If you really want a DoT, you have shock charge and buffed vital shot, which together will do a good chunk of damage. As the above poster said, you can just spam vital shots if you want to keep people dotted.

You'll definitely need it later on... smugglers have heaps of abilities.

Biochem always.

You're lacking a fair bit of synergy here. Hot pursuit doesn't do anything by itself - it has no synergy with snap shot (the only talent that meshes well with hot pursuit is pandemonium), You also take the extra crit damage talent in sharpshooter, but don't take the extra crit chance from dirty fighting.

Glad to know it's working out for you.

Aimed shot still hits pretty hard for a sab.

I think the issue is that 'item of our choice' does not mean centurion gear. I find centurion gear a poor 'if I really have to' alternative to champ gear. The only way it seems to be viable for me is if I do PvE operations to get level 56 mods to re-mod it (or remod it with duplicate champ gear I can pull the mods out of). I really prefer the current RNG-based system. I've been able to get 75% champ gear within 2 weeks, and under the proposed new system, that sounds like it's impossible.

Really? Most fights in EV are stationary. Or at least the bosses stay still while you move around.

The two stats aren't that different. I took the field medic pistol because it had crit, but now regret it because there's no field medic offhand, so it looks silly. Take the enforcer if you want matching pistols.

The average damage to someone who brushes it is about 800, counting for crits. The damage has a few things going for it. First, it's elemental, so ignores armor. Second, it's affected by the independent anarchy and arsonist talents. Third, when you touch the incendiary area, you always get three ticks of damage. Its sets people on fire and that fire lasts until it goes out, which is a few ticks later. Overall it's a lot more 'bursty' than shrap bomb. Incendiary grenade is the rough damage equivalent of thermal grenade, but it costs less (16 energy compared to 20), and has more synergy with flyby. Once you learn to just treat it has low energy cost bonus damage you start to enjoy it more.

Thanks for the feedback. If you use sabotage once a minute it doesn't have energy issues. Remember you have three energy feats - dealer's discount, insurrection (makes your sabotage charges cost a total of 1 energy) and sabotage. Those three feats are be enough unless you're spamming quick shots. Incendiary grenade is better on all counts, imo. Most DoTs take too long to tick to do much without wounding shots -- do you really take 21 seconds to kill someone? Shrap bomb also drains your energy horrid. Expending 20 energy to DoT a few people up for the 10 seconds until they die isn't really worth it. That's my serious problem with shrap bomb. It costs a ton of energy, and the damage is often stopped by the target dying. The only time shrap bomb is worthwhile is to proc wounding shot damage or to constantly snare groups in a full dirty fighting build (I'd never take shrap bomb without a snare... it's just overlooking one of its key strengths). Incendiary grenade actually works better in the situations where you want a slow DoT. Namely PvE and mass world PvP. Don't get me wrong, some DoTs are good in PvP. But do you really want to load all your damage into high energy cost, 20 second DoTs?

Why read this guide? These forums have a lot of gunslinger guides, but every saboteur guide suggests the use of some whacky hybrid spec. The 31 point (full) saboteur build is viable for both PvP and PvE, and so this guide focuses solely on this build. The recommended build is a 2/31/8 build, which I've coined the 'assault saboteur' due to its tendency to charge people and slap them in the face: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#700bZMIbbRRrorsZhMbz.1 Why play this build over others? The main reason to play this build is flexibility. It doesn’t have the sustained single target burst of sharpshooter, but its sabotage charge, aimed shots, blazing speed shots, mobile charged burst, blaster whip and quick draw rotation will still cause serious pain. It doesn’t have the DoTs of dirty fighting, but you can easily expend a lot of energy firing your shock charge, blazing speed shots, and vital shot. It doesn’t have the melee of scoundrel, but charging someone with your mobile charged burst, thermal grenade, blaster whip, and quick draw will still cause surprising damage. I’ve blaster whipped other players for over 2,000 damage... And in PvE and mass world PvP, its AoE damage capabilities are significant. All these mean that you get a lot of tools with this build. You can’t have tunnel vision and sit around trying to do just one thing, but if you’re able to quickly adapt you’ll have the tools to perform in any situation. The caveat, of course, is that you have to use all these tools. While other builds load more power into a smaller range of tools, many of your abilities are on higher cooldowns – you can’t just spam trick shot or wounding shots ftw. This means you’ll need to be constantly dotting people up, focus firing from cover, and assaulting people in melee... all at the same time. Which brings us to... Damage rotations The saboteur build doesn’t have a set rotation. One of the main skills you’ll need to master is when to use different skills. In this guide I’ve included a few basic rotations for different situations, and these can be modified to suit. Major DPS PvP rotation (one every 30 seconds) This rotation is your bread and butter. It’s worth practising in solo pve to just get used to it. Staying too long out of, or in cover will reduce your DPS. This means the saboteur rotation has three stages: setup, damage, and assault. Setup You start out of cover, hunting for a suitable target to kill. The first two abilities to use are shock charge and vital shot to start damage ticking and making it harder for the target to escape. Damage You then drop into cover, hunker down to ensure you don’t get interrupted, and your choice of relic, adrenal, or illegal mods for burst. You then throw sabotage charge, fire aimed shot, and shoot speed shots in sequence. Assault Now you break cover again – staying in cover to charged burst spam will leave you out of DPS steam, vulnerable to attack, and give your target the time to line of sight escape. At this point you need to get moving again and run down your target with instant burst attacks. Start by activating cover pulse and smuggler’s luck. This will knock any attackers back, and give you an instant critical charged burst you can fire on the run (with the pandemonium and hot pursuit combo). You move towards your target, firing from the hip. After the charged burst finishes, follow up with a thermal grenade, and continue to close range to blaster whip – blaster whip will do significantly more damage than other attacks like quick shots or thermal grenade. To finish off a target, hit quick draw and sabotage at the same time. If they’re still standing, you can continue to run them down with thermal grenades, dirty kick, and more blaster whips. Once you’ve ran your opponent down, use your mobility to take a breather and come up with your next attack plan. Ideally you should have isolated your target with your cover pulse, and so charged out of the combat instead of into a huge brawl. Fast PvP focus fire rotation (one every thirty seconds) This rotation sacrifices total damage for speed. It’s used when a target needs burning down quickly, but may not have a lot of health. Generally you don’t want to do this too much – blowing your sabotage charge as a ‘finisher’ on low health targets will hurt your total damage. But sometimes it’s needed. Setup This rotation forgoes setup skills to save time on global cooldowns. Damage Open up with a sabotage charge, and follow with speed shots to detonate the contingency charges straight away. Assault Pop cover pulse, and break cover with charged burst. If the target’s health is low, you can finish off with the usual quick draw, grenades and blaster whip. If the target’s health is high, you can delay them with a dirty kick, leg shot, or flash grenade, and retake cover to roll into an aimed shot. Then break cover and blaster whip them again, obviously. Minor PvP DPS burst rotation (one every 15 seconds) The minor DPS rotation is used when you don’t have sabotage charge and cover pulse available. However, you can still kill people – you just need to prioritize focus firing people at low health to get them quickly out of the way. Use normal rotations but take out sabotage charge, cover pulse, and charged burst. To help compensate, throw in a few more utility skills like flourish shot and incendiary grenade, and lean more on thermal grenade spam. This also keeps pressure on the enemy for when your major DPS rotation is off cooldown. If you already put a flourish shot on someone during your downtime, and weakened everyone with grenades, it’ll just make your main attack run hit harder. Setup Flourish shot, vital shot, shock charge, thermal grenade, and incendiary grenade. Damage Aimed shot and speed shots. Assault Thermal grenade, blaster whip, quick shots, and quick draw. Sustained PvE damage rotation For PvE, you may not necessarily want to charge the target... but you still can for high mobility fights. However, your skills of incendiary grenade and XS Freighter Flyby will be much more useful in a PvE encounter, and leaning on these (and keeping vital shots and shock charge up) is key to sustaining damage. In this case, keep all your dots up, and use charged burst spam for long, static encounters. The nice thing about saboteur is even with only a few energy management feats (even forgoing Bravado and Seize the Moment like I do), you’ll still sustain charged burst effectively. Another useful PvE trick is the combination of thermal grenades and headshot. A grenade followed by an instant headshot will often kill a trash mob, and if not, quick draw finishes the job. When headshot is on cooldown, quick shots and quick draw will do the job as well. Utility rotations You can break up time between DPS cooldowns by using a utility rotation. The saboteur has a few you want to learn how to use and ensure you’re always doing something useful rather than staying in cover spamming charged burst, or running around spamming thermal grenade. Both are poor options you want to try and avoid, and use these utility rotations instead: PvP healer harassment Your skills of distraction, flash grenade, and dirty kick are all interrupts that when chained, can prevent a healer from getting a heal off for good amount of time. Learn to start with distraction, then move into a flash grenade, then either dirty kick or another distraction, depending on range and urgency. Using this rotation is an excellent way to keep high pressure on the opposition even when your major DPS rotation is on cooldown. PvP melee smackdown There’ll often be times when the various melee classes are locked in a brawl with four or more people. This means your highest DPS will be from AoE spam, keeping pressure on the enemy team while you wait to be able to use your focus fire rotations. In this situation you toss an incendiary grenade, XS Freighter Flyby, and follow with a legshot to keep one target in the damage. Throw in thermal grenades to taste. This is also one of your main roles in mass world PvP. A constant barrage of airstrikes and grenades can put a lot of pressure on a zerg. Area denial If you want to defend a Voidstar door, or a Civil War turret, you can simply throw an incendiary grenade near it. As long as you stay alive, you will prevent anyone from capturing the point due to the ground DoT damage. This frees you up to focusing on damage. Defense The Saboteur has a couple of major defensive talents – hotwired defences and riot screen. To take advantage of these you should hit them outside of combat as fast as they become available, combining your scrambling field with hunker down to avoid getting knocked out. Don’t try and use these talents in the heat of combat – use them pre-emptively – they each last a good amount of time. Energy recovery Sabotage makes the saboteur energy management extremely good. Whenever your sabotage is off cooldown you should hit it and then immediately follow up with a cool head (and another defense screen). The benefit to this is it helps keep your sustained DPS high – you won’t need to use blaster volley auto attack filler too much if you’re mindful of your sabotage energy recovery. How to use incendiary grenade Many people don’t like incendiary grenade and so often recommend hybrid builds for this reason. I like it – it excels in mass world pvp and any kind of pve, so it’s well worth taking in a saboteur build. Other than that, the main problem people have with it is they over-think it. With dealer’s discount, you can easily afford to throw it any time it’s up, so don’t worry about where it lands... just throw the damn thing. Even if it hits just a few people briefly, you’ll still inflict a good bit of extra damage. Another useful way to use the talent is just as a buff to freighter flyby. Put the flyby down first, then toss an incendiary grenade straight away. Used in this way you’ll do a lot more damage than if you just used flyby on its own. I don’t like taking shrap bomb over incendiary grenade as the shrap bomb eats into energy too much, and you need all the energy you have in order to take advantage of your full utility. And taking energy talents to compensate means I can no longer afford pandemonium and hot pursuit, which are needed to make the melee charge work. I also lose steady shots from sharpshooter, and that’s important for single target DPS. Sure, take shrap bomb if all you want to do is DoT people up, but incendiary grenade is a good bit of cheap bonus damage that also lets you do other things. So just fire and forget. Gearing up You already have defense from talents, so it makes sense to prioritize burst damage in your gear. In particular, lean on high cunning, power, surge, and critical rating. The arsonist talent means critical rating has a high value for this build. Power is useful, because it affects all skills, and many skills won’t use arsonist. Accuracy, which most end game gear is filled with, is OK, but not great... you use a lot of tech attacks, which already have high accuracy. Try to swap out accuracy mods in gear for critical, power, or surge mods where possible. The champion field tech headgear contains +crit and +surge mods, so you should try to collect hats. Within these guidelines, of the three end game gear sets – field medic, enforcer, and field tech, field tech, with some mod customization for more crit damage, is best for saboteurs. Levelling up It’s best to go straight up the saboteur tree before taking the extra points in the sharp shooter and dirty fighting trees. Many talents in the main tree are designed to work together – utility belt, independent anarchy and arsonist, and hot pursuit and pandemonium (both these talents are useless without the other, but become powerful together). Once you get to incendiary grenade you’ll then find you need more single target DPS, which is what the extra points in sharpshooter and dirty fighting give. Unlike many other builds, there are no wasted points in this build—every talent is carefully chosen for its place in the rotations. This is one important factor that makes this build viable. Rather than having to take filler talents, every talent is important, and must be used. If you learn how to use each skill while levelling, you’ll do well. Keybindings I prefer to work keybindings around rotations. So vital shot and shock charge are kept together, as are sabotage charge, speed shots, and aimed shot. Finally, I keep thermal grenade, blaster whip, quick draw and charged burst near each other so I can reposition my hand when I charge someone. Regardless of what you do, you’re still going to need high dexterity to use this build. A Logitech G13 gamepad, or similar alternative to a keyboard is recommended. I also recommend keeping sabotage charge both on your cover bar, and on the side bar. This way, you have easy access to it in combat, and you can glance at the sidebar to see the remaining cooldown left on your main attack run. Summing up The 31 point saboteur build, which this particular variant I term the ‘assault saboteur’ due to its melee charge, is a fun build with a lot of tools to respond to any situation. However, it does take practice. If you like this build, I’d take it for a run in PvE just to get used to the rotations, and stick with it for at least a week. More so than any other gunslinger spec, you’ll need to be comfortable with your entire arsenal.

Act 1, but it ends at around level 30-34, so both are right...

Corso was just too much of the 'nice guy romance character' for me to put up with. He didn't really have a backbone in conversations either. It was always "Shutup Corso!" "Yes Ma'am..." Or worse... "I'm going to shoot this girl in the side of the head!" "I don't agree with that Captain, but yes Ma'am..." Just plain unlikeable. If I want to shoot someone, and he doesn't like it, then he should try and stop me, otherwise he's a limp fish. Risha on the other hand actually talked back to me and stood up for herself. Bowdaar just said random stuff about honor and glory. Bowdaar was funny because he always made the same sound and you had to read the text to find out what it was. For gameplay reasons though, Corso doesn't go very well with a gunslinger saboteur for the AoE reasons mentioned above. I want my defense screen to take the aggro, and a higher DPS companion (like Risha) to mow things down. Even if I take damage in a fight and need to stop to rest, I've still killed everything faster than anyone with a tank or healer companion... assuming I've had all the enemies stay together focusing on me to quickly AoE them down.

Stop debating and watch the films. This isn't a bug: WTFF.