HIB should be used on cooldown, proc or not. =)

You're very right. In order to absolutely maximize damage, parallectic combat stims would be an increase. Essentially, the 4 points in the first 3 teirs of assault are preference points. I choose the endurance for the extra survivability and found that parallectic stims was beneficial but only affects for 3 bosses. For my group I end up dps offtanking most of the time so I choose the extra survivability.

I apologize for my late reply, been very busy lately. You had a very good idea in trying to calculate the rough dps output for vanguards, however i'd like to note that my little comparison was simply to compare one spec vs. another. You had a great idea in trying to use it to get a rough dps estimate, but there are several factors which are not included which would boost the dps numbers significantly. First and more important are crits. Second are cooldowns. Our relics/battlefocus are huge dps increases if timed right. It non-crit values might be lower as well because of course, you do have to rotate hammershot in a practical rotation in order to keep ammo values above 60%. But essentially crits are a huge part of our dps, especially considering that most of our main abilities have a 30% increased crit damage buff on top of our surge.

The dps set for troopers is combat tech, which is a HUGE boost to our dps. On top of that, i'd like to know that it is best for dps to pick up 4 pieces of rakata, plus the eliminator boots because it has more aim than the rakata boots.

Yes, essentially all you would need to kill any boss in the whole world is an ops group of 25 vanguards. We should commence rerolling immediately.

^^. Thank you for the reply. To be honest, I feel that the build simply does not have much damage potential. You do not have ionic accelerator, which is probably the biggest reason to be assault, and the ammo consumption in the spec would be rather steep. I think you'd end up using hammer shot a lot more than you'd like because you lack the ammo regen from high impact bolt, or high energy cell from tactics. For pve dps, I would probably shy away. For pvp utility, it might be ok, but more of a tanky build.

as an assault vanguard,I can tell you that sorcs are my FAVORITE target. Your general squishiness makes me squirm whenever I see one with low hp, and I tend to zoom in on them. The assault burst is crazy because one of our main abilities: Assault Plastique, has a delay on damage. Meaning when we use it, it sticks onto you for about 3 seconds BEFORE it blows up, and hits very hard. On top of that, I can get High-Impact bolt crits of upwards to 4-5k with my cooldowns. So you can imagine, if I can get an Incendiary Round dot ticks, + plasma round ticks + a High impact bolt, followed by Assault plastique blowing up into a stockstrike, thats a lot of damage. Best counter, would be to survive the initial burst. Without our cooldowns, we dont hit as hard, and rely on HIB procs to dish out the real pain. Keep your distance, and use your cc right off the bat if you see us pop any cooldown. We have our relic, adrenal, and Battle Focus (increases crit by 25%), so if you see those pop, cc right off the bat, get away as fast as possible, and while we're chasing you, if you see us pop our trinket, follow with a whirlwind. Dont ever try to stand toe to toe with a vanguard, you're in light armor, and they're in heavy. We have keep us slowed and pillar hump us all day and there wont be much we can do.

Static field DOES stack with other accuracy reducing effects. I dont think bioware fully intended for this, but ALL ABILITIES stack on top of each other. So sunder armor stacks, any accuracy debuffs (esp. the guardians' 10% debuff) stacks, even the commando's grav round applications stack, meaning having 3-4 commandos in the same group is optimal for dps since they can ALL stack their grav rounds and ALL share the damage boost they get from it. We had 3 commandos in our group at once point, and they pointed out that their demo rounds were critting for about 8-9k on some of the bosses. Absolutely silly. =P

For the most we dont need CC. Try picking up 2 points in sweltering heat and kite mobs around if you're having trouble. Utilize your interrupts to mitigate damage, and for the most part, use elara dorne if you're finding it too difficult. We are probably the most mobile class in the game as far as damage goes, so utilize it as much as you can.

Haha i'm just having a little bit of fun. =) Like i said, valid points from you and helping out healers is always a plus. For the most part, however I find that careful use of defensive cooldowns and avoidance of mechanics saves my butt a lot more than a couple of talent points, so I try to maximize my dps. Essentially my view is, the faster things die, the less damage the healers have to heal through.

I've been able to hit a 5k HIB several times with the 8/8/25 build, usually on squishier targets but occasionally on the battlemaster as well. Its mostly a pve spec, but it absolutely maximizes HIB as much as possible, and I wear pve rakata for the 4piece, while stacking pvp gear for the rest. My expertise is actually pretty low at around 400, but having the 8% bonus damage to high impact bolt REALLY helps, and you're almost guaranteed a 5k hit with an adrenal, the power trinket, and your Battle Focus

you are entirely correct, and variations of this spec to provide utility/survivability are entirely possible. However, please understand that it will not satisfy the e-peen hogging pure dps loving elitist lovers who want to see huge numbers and pad the dps meters while trying to rank on galaxy of logs. I mean...

I would say not. The spec rotates around maximizing HIB damage, and as it is, is very ammo intensive. Gut does not have very much synergy with the spec, and losing the 9% aim equates to about a 4% damage loss across the board. From my experience with trying out a similar spec with both gut and incendiary round, the ammo consumption from trying to keep up both dots at the same time was absolutely devastating. You end up falling below the optimal recharge point just from IR + GUT + HIB and then a stockstrike, not to mention you're killing your chances of proccing HIB by having to use an extra GCD on gut every 15 seconds. The reason I believe the 8/8/25 works well is because it relies on HIB to regen ammo, otherwise you're stuck using hammershot alot more than you'd like.

Its certainly a very interesting spec, and i've looked at variations of this myself. One thing is for certain: the ammo consumption of this spec is VERY VERY friendly, with you almost never having to use ion pulse. I'm not sure its the best in pvp, because dot damage isn't really what you want. Rather I would think its a more pve oriented spec. For a comparison, I do pvp with the 8/8/25 spec although I dont see it as a pvp spec, and as it stands (I really hope noone takes this the wrong way, I am being honest and do not wish to inflate my own e-peen =P) I have yet to meet any vanguard who can beat me in damage, and very rarely am I beaten in damage by other classes. I average around 300-500k damage depending on the warzone, with 300k being the low end if I am stuck guarding a turret etc. You would have to compare what you gain vs. what you're losing. A) The main problem I see with this spec, is that you have alot of "wasted" talent points. 3 points gone in superheated plasma, deguass, combat stims, etc. All of which are good for utility, but almost completely useless for PVE dps purposes. B) We are also losing 9% base damage from Rain of fire, 30% crit damage from Asault Trooper. C) The biggest thing we lose is our plasma cell, which for me does around 1300 damage every 6 seconds. This is a huge dps loss as you can imagine. D) Loss of 9% aim AND 6% elemental damage, which as you can imagine is not very nice. Now what do we gain? 1) We gain a chance to insta crit our HIB, but at the cost of it hitting for much less, although this synergizes very well with ionic accelerator 2) We now have both Gut AND incendiary round. This is a huge plus as long as you remember to keep it up at 100% uptime. With the ammo friendliness of the spec, I would imagine that it wouldn't be hard to keep up both dots either. 3) Ammo friendliness. Essentially the biggest perk of this spec is that its probably the most ammo friendly spec out there. I would imagine that you would almost never have to hammershot as high energy cell + free stockstrikes + free HIB means you can sit and spam ion pulse forever. Conclusion: Its an interesting spec, but as far as raw damage, I feel it falls way too far behind. Being able to crit high impact bolt more is certainly nice, but remember that raid buffed, you can reach almost 40% crit anyways, which further diminishes the usefulness of a garunteed crit, especially if you're critting for much less. I'm too lazy to do math atm, but on average, you would get about an extra crit every 30 seconds from stockstrike, and an extra crit every minute from Gut. so about 3 extra crits every minute on average. I'm sure you'll understand that its very underwhelming, especially since you're losing about 13% base damage on HIB, on top of 30% crit damage. Being able to use Gut is amazing, but pound for pound, Gut simply falls far behind plasma cell, which does more damage, doesn't cut a GCD, and costs no ammo/effort to keep up. All of that said, I think its a very intriguing spec, and am probably going to try it out to get a feel for it. I WISH WISH WISH, there was a combat log to track these things, but as it is, we can only go by trial and error, and good ol' pen/paper napkin math. Thank you for your insight, and I hope my opinions help you to solidify your own ideas.

There is currently no reason to believe that vanguards will be receiving nerfs. We do not have *glaring* issues such as the scoundrel burst, that need to be addressed. If our raid dps is doing well, it is because of the ingenuity of the many vanguards like those in this thread and on sithwarrior that are promoting healthy discussion of our class. If anything, I would think tactics would need a slight buff, or they need a metric system to gauge the dps of our different specs. All in due time. In the meantime, you can rest easy knowing that we are definitely not going to be pigeon-holed into a "tank only" class with the kind of numbers a decent vanguard can put out.