Hirokinae

February 9, 2012

I have tested your spec, full assault spec and other hybrid specs in HM ops and none of them do nearly as much dmg as Tactics

Also, when you say something like that, you're already putting yourself in a hole and a rather... common fallacy.

Unless you're sitting there writing down each and every number as you do the rotation perfectly, we dont really have a way of saying "this spec definitely does more damage because i've tested and used them both."

I have tested and used many many specs as well, but I can only still offer what i "feel" does more damage, before going through later on and trying to work a formula to try and compare them.

I am definitely not 100% correct, I am only offering data, and solid calculations on speculations. When you start speaking in absolutes, "This definitely does more damage" based off... a whim, its a bit rough to take it as fact.

February 9, 2012

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#801hMhZMsrrorfoksZb.1

If your going for pve HM dps than imho Tactics is far superior, as im sure everyone is aware by now elemental dmg is the premium dmg type and tactics revolves almost 100% around this. By going tactics your using your High Energy Cells which inc Internal and Elemental dmg by 5% add by going up tactics line you get an extra 3% from Blaster Augs and if you spec this way you also get an extra 6% elemental dmg so just in passive dmg buffs all your elemental skills(highest most effective dmging skills) are increased by 14%. With this setup your ammo is constantly regening so ammo is almost never an issue, I will ussually start out with gut,fire pulse(makes stockstrike free) stockstrike, then ion pulse with hammer shot mixed in untill my pulse generator is maxed at 5 then pop Pulse Cannon which with the +50% dmg from pulse generator does a base of 5,362 dmg.

So just to go over this a little bit:
ammo regen is higher
high dmg skills cost less ammo than assualt
Ion pulse does 2k-3k dmg(depending on crits) and is spamable
Fire Pulse does 1.5-3k + free stockstrike
Pulse Cannon does 5k-10k dmg and has a reduced cd
you have a 6s interupt(really only useful for FP HMs)
and you still retain the same DoT as assault spec as Gut tics for just as much as incen round when fully specd

I have tested your spec, full assault spec and other hybrid specs in HM ops and none of them do nearly as much dmg as Tactics

You do have some valid points my friend, but one thing you have to note, is that much of assault's damage is ALSO unaffected by armor.

high impact bolt is 90% armor piercing, and hits MUCH harder than in tactics and is refreshed more often.

Incendiary round is pure elemental damage

Plasma Cell does a SIGNIFICANT portion of our damage, which is also unaffected by armor

The tactics vs assault debate is still ongoing, but from what i've read, most of it leans in favor of assault.

The pro/cons are mostly as follows:

Gut vs Incendiary Round. Incendiary is more expensive, but is definitely the superior ability as far as damage, especially considering gut's initial damage is kinetic

HIB in tactics vs. assault. - High impact bolt is by far the vanguards hardest hitting ability. With tactics, the only advantage HIB gains is 25% chance to garuntee a crit. Whereas in Assault, HIB is used over 2-3 times more, does 9% more base damage, has 30% more armor-piercing value, crits 30% harder, and restores 1 energy instead of spending 2, making it 3 ammo cheaper.

Fire pulse: Its a great ability, but the damage really isn't all that amazing. Usually in the 15 second window, you can use 1 fire pulse, and 1 HIB. In tactics, in the same 15 second window, you can usually get in at least 2 HIB's. With its armor piercing value, 2x HIB would definitely do more damage than a fire pulse and a HIB. Its a great ability, but not enough to warrent an advantage.

High Energy Cell vs. Plasma Cell. High energy cell is definitely easier on the ammo than plasma cell, but there is no doubt that plasma cell equates to more damage. in my current level of gear, it does 1,200 damage over 6 seconds. With HIB refreshing it, ion pulse putting it on 100% of the time, and a 12% chance to proc off ANY damage, its pretty much got almost 100% uptime on most of my targets, and is a HUGE dps boost over high energy cell, at the cost of not being able to regenerate ammo.

That leaves the advantages of tactics, which is that you use stockstrike more often, and ion pulse crits 30% harder. This is certainly good, but given that stockstrike and ion pulse do 9% more base damage in assault, the advantage is kind of further diminished.

The problem with tactics, is that ALOT of the points are wasted in utility. 8 points must be put into talents which are more utility, and really dont have anything to do with damage on a raid boss. This is great, but when you're talking about pure damage numbers, its sort of makes tactics less appealing for the numbers, where assault only spends 4 points in survival/utility.

when you list only the advantages of tactics, and you dont compare them with something else, you risk creating the illusion that one has all of these bonuses, while the other has nothing.

When comparing the pro/cons of both side by side, you can kind of get the idea that as far as pure damage, assault definitely wins out, although you could note that the ammo usage for tactics is much less restricting than assault. Another thing to consider, would be that for aoe, tactics would definitely win out, since pulse cannon in tactics is far superior than assault.

In short, tactics is certainly much more ammo-friendly, but as far as pure damage output, it seems inferior to assault. Couple that with the fact that generally have to be in melee at all times, makes it much less appealing than assault, where you only have to be in melee every 9 seconds for stockstrike.

Thank you for your input however, and as i've said, with bioware failing to provide us with combat logs, the most we can do is speculate and debate.

February 9, 2012

Ah, i'd also like to note that the hybrid spec is catered mostly to pve rather than pvp. For pvp i honestly believe the burst from AP is much more valuable, but I believe the hybrid is a better PVE raiding option.

February 9, 2012

Hey there. I've recently done some testing and caculations on a pure assault spec which has Assault plastique, vs an assault hybrid spec which focuses on refreshing and using high impact bolt. My findings are here:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=2691241#post2691241

to sum it up, The final results of my little investigation show that the hybrid spec barely edges out the assault plastique spec when ammo is not taken into consideration, and assuming a perfect rotation. I believe this is due to the fact that assault plastique is so heavily affected by armor, that as sustained damage, it is simply not as effective as a rotation which allows you to use high impact bolt more. In addition, the greater damage output from all of your other abilities from being being able to pick up other talents makes the 4/6/31 build slightly inferior.

Another very important fact to note, is that the assault plastique spec is much more ammo intensive then the hybrid, because the ammo saved from using more free high impact bolts, vs. spending 2 ammo on Assault plastique is tremendous, especially in the assault's ammo hungry build.

The advantage that I would see with the AP build, is that the burst is of course higher than the hybrids, and the fact that it is slightly less RNG dependant.

All in all, in terms of PURE DAMAGE, the two are pretty even, and one doesn't completely trump the other.

I suppose it comes down to preference. The two main differences between the specs is that one has much more burst potential and less RNG, while the other is much less ammo intensive, which might lead to higher sustained damage because the ammo saved can go into using main abilities instead of hammershot.

Like always, I am just trying to find out which spec is the best, and provide those all of you out there with something tangible to help guide you on your path. In the future, i plan to use a similar method in order to compare this hybrid to a mostly tactics one, and then a full tactics spec, although as you can imagine, that would be slightly more difficult.

Please share your thoughts and concerns, and I hope you all find my work of help to you in your min-maxing endeavours. =)

February 9, 2012

Alright, so after racking my brains, I came up with a method of ROUGHLY calculating the damage output of having assault plastique vs. a pure ion pulse/stockstrike/HIB rotation.

I came up with what I thought to be the best method without the use of a combat log. I wanted to find the raw damage output of one spec versus another, so I basically decided to calculate results by ignoring ammo consumption. Essentially, I just wanted to find the raw damage output of abilities, if you were not forced to hammer shot to conserve ammo.

With the two specs, I mapped out a timeline of 150 seconds, or 100 GCDS. Both specs essentially use the same rotation, so I obeyed the following rules for both specs.

Priority list, in descending order:

1) Incendiary Round is refreshed every 15 seconds

2) HIB is used as a priority below only IR

3) Assault Plastique is used every time its available

4) Stockstrike is used if IR/AP is not availible

5) Ion pulse is used if all others are on cooldown

With high impact bolt, I assumed 1 would be used right off the start, and in order to calculate the refresh rate, I assumed that 45% of all stockstrikes would give a chance for 1 HIB, while 30% of ion pulse would give a chance for 1 HIB.

For example: If i were to use up 13 GCDs and 9 of them were stockstrikes, then at a 45% refresh chance, on average 4 of those will be HIB's.

So with this in mind, I set out to calculate a rough breakdown of how many times you would use each ability

The results ---

8/8/25:

Incendiary Round --11

Assault Plastique --13

Stockstrike ---------11

Ion Pulse -----------54

High Impact Bolt --24

4/6/31:

Incendiary Round --11

Assault Plastique --13

Stockstrike ---------11

Ion Pulse -----------46

High Impact Bolt --19

After this, I calculated rough damage values for each spec using my own character, who's in mostly rakata combat tech, and using the tooltips which are fairly accurate for gauging damage.

For Example:

spec 1 HIB damage = 1678.5

spec 2 HIB damage = 1739

On top of that I gave an armor value of 20%, in order to reflect the armor on an operation boss (currently unknown, this is only a hypothetical value)

This means that Abilities such as IR and ion pulse which are not affected by armor do not change, while Assault plastique and stockstrike both have their damage reduced by 20% because they deal kinetic damage.

High Impact Bolt only has its damage reduced by 2% since it is 90% armor piercing.

My ultimate results were as follows:

TOTAL DAMAGE VALUES:

8/8/25:

Incendiary Round --20,460

Assault Plastique -- 0

Stockstrike ---------14,749

Ion Pulse -----------55,265

High Impact Bolt --40,901

TOTAL:

131,375 damage

4/6/31:[/u]

Incendiary Round -- 19,431

Assault Plastique -- 20,181

Stockstrike --------- 14,264

Ion Pulse ----------- 42,159

High Impact Bolt -- 31,253

TOTAL:

127,288 damage

The final results of my little investigation show that the hybrid spec barely edges out the assault plastique spec when ammo is not taken into consideration, and assuming a perfect rotation. I believe this is due to the fact that assault plastique is so heavily affected by armor, that as sustained damage, it is simply not as effective as a rotation which allows you to use high impact bolt more. In addition, the greater damage output from all of your other abilities from being being able to pick up other talents makes the 4/6/31 build slightly inferior.

Another very important fact to note, is that the assault plastique spec is much more ammo intensive then the hybrid, because the ammo saved from using more free high impact bolts, vs. spending 2 ammo on Assault plastique is tremendous, especially in the assault's ammo hungry build.

The advantage that I would see with the AP build, is that the burst is of course higher than the hybrids, and the fact that it is slightly less RNG dependant.

All in all, in terms of PURE DAMAGE, the two are pretty even, and one doesn't completely trump the other.

I suppose it comes down to preference. The two main differences between the specs is that one has much more burst potential and less RNG, while the other is much less ammo intensive, which might lead to higher sustained damage because the ammo saved can go into using main abilities instead of hammershot.

Like always, I am just trying to find out which spec is the best, and provide those all of you out there with something tangible to help guide you on your path. In the future, i plan to use a similar method in order to compare this hybrid to a mostly tactics one, and then a full tactics spec, although as you can imagine, that would be slightly more difficult.

Please share your thoughts and concerns, and I hope you all find my work of help to you in your min-maxing endeavours. =)

February 9, 2012

Just a couple of updates with some AMAZING results after some testing, and number crunching.

Ok, so essentially I set out to compare a 4/6/31 spec, like this one,

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#801bMZMsZfIobzGhrs.1

vs an 8/8/25 like this

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#801hMhZMsMZfIobzGhM.1

The results i've found are very interesting indeed. First thing's first, I set out to find whether high impact bolt or Assault plastique hits harder. Testing on a player, I first had then strip down to 20% armor mitigation, then 30%.

AT ALL THREE LEVELS, assault plastique did less than HIB, while at 30% armor mitgation, there was abo****ely no comparison. Here are the results

30% armor mitigation

HIB average damage: 1703

HIB average crit dmg: 3604

AP average damage: 1425

AP average crit dmg: 3099

20% armor mitigation

HIB average damage: 1783

HIB average crit dmg: 3714

AP average damage: 1556

AP average crit dmg: 3267

10% armor mitigation

HIB average damage: 1810

HIB average crit dmg: 3801

AP average damage: 1687

AP average crit dmg: 3489

High impact bolt is the obvious winner, and provided me with some insight as to whether or not assault plastique has value during an operation Boss encounter.

With this knowledge in mind, I set out to try to map out whether or not assault plastique is truly worth it.

February 8, 2012

I'm currently 5/5 nightmare EV and Karraga's and can tell you that vanguard is certainly viable in ops. I actually kill my add faster 100% of the time in the EV council fight, and the utility i provde as an emergency offtank is invaluable. I've tried most specs, including hybrids, pure assault, and tactics, and find that a hybrid assault is currently what works best for me, although other specs are certainly "viable". If you're an amazing player, generally you can make any class competitive.

February 8, 2012

if your assault spec then crits lower your recharge cells, or what ever the free ability is. this helps out a LOT more then you think it does. crit surge imo, but dont sacrifice them to replace worse mods.

I believe you're thinking of "RESERVE powercells" which is much less amazing than recharge. Reserve powercells only saves you a max of 3 ammo every 2 minutes which is nice if you can line it up with IR, but otherwise not so much unforunately.

Theres a spreadsheet out there, though the accuracy is not that amazing, but essentially the stat order is currently speculated as AIM > Accuracy to 100% > POWER > CRIT > SURGE, with surge being the worst by a large margin, and power/crit being fairly close. Surge has a hard cap of 99%, meaning you cannot go above that.

February 8, 2012

You have a very interesting point. The way I see it however, is that the classes MAYBE could use one which favored ranged more, but I dont see vanguards as a PURE melee dps either, in that we dont get completely dicked over like a sentinel or a guardian/shadow when forced out of melee. In addition, even scoundrels have a psuedo-ranged tree they can utilize which makes their damage mostly based on dots.

The way I see it, Bioware has tried to balance out the classes accordingly:

Melee:

Guardian

Sentinel

Shadow

Mid-range:

Vanguard

Scoundrel

Ranged:

Commando

Gunslinger

Sage

When you look at it that way, it seems fairly balanced. Even the Scoundrel when speced into dirty fighting leans more towards ranged, while the vanguard when specced into tactics leans more towards melee.

Of course, both the vanguard and scoundrel should be in melee to maximize damage, but at the same time, think about the fact that gunslinger/commando/sage all need to be completely stationary and hardcasting everything at range to maximize dps. They aren't as mobile as a vanguard or scoundrel when at ranged because ALL of our attacks are instant, while commandos/sages get messed up when they're forced to move during a cast, and gunslingers can't even use half their abilities when not behind cover.

I think a fairy good example is the last boss in karraga's palace. As a vanguard, I find i do m ore damage than any of the other classes because of my mobility. Our sentinel is constantly messed up because if he's not in melee, he's simply just not doing damage and generating force, and its very difficult to stay in melee because of all of the fire in the ground you must avoid, on top of the chance that the gravity well can sometimes suck you in and trap you there staring at the boss herpderping twidling your thumbs.

On the other hand, Our commandos get annoyed because the gravity well constantly sucks them in mid-gravround cast. If you get interrupted mid-cast, you've essentially just wasted an entire GCD and more because of the cast time. On top of that, when trying to run and dps, they either have to pray that their HIB is up, or hammershot to victory while moving because its really the only thing they can do on the move while trying to get away from gravity wells =P

So i dont have the weakness of the sentinel, because i can still run around with my dots up, HIBing/ionpulsing/hammershotting while gettin in and out of the fire while I only have to be in melee every 9 seconds for stockstrike, and can still usually be in range to ion pulse at least when i get yanked out by the gravity.

I also dont have the weakness of the commando because all of my abilities are instant, I can do more than just hammershot while moving out of the gravity well, and never have to stand still for a second. Even if i get yanked, all of my abilities were instant anyways so I never lose a GCD.

I think its a fairly balanced tradeoff, and vanguards/scoundrels are great "inbetweens" You dont get dicked over when you're out of melee like a sentinel/guardian/shadow, and you never have to stand completely still in order to absolutely maximize your dps like a gunslinger/sage/commando does.

I'm glad the OP posted the thread with his valid concerns, and those are my thoughts, what do you guys think? =)

February 8, 2012

Its not a bad spec, and the one that I run. Although theres no hard evidence, the problem with assault plastique is that Its damage is good, but not great because its mitigated by armor. After a little testing, I found that my HIB base damage AND crit damage was higher than assault plastiques because of the armor factor. This was on a person with 10% armor reduction, 20%, and 30% and the differences scaled more as the armor values got higher.

Sooo, its a tossup atm.

February 8, 2012

Like Genesier pointed out, there's 7 other classes that have interrupt (my bad).
So my question now is, why are you doing a HM FP with only Commando's?
If not, then there should be at least one with an interrupt and Pow, your ok.

Once again, unless it's some bizarre leader that's trying to run it with four Commando's then there will be at least ONE player that can interrupt him.

If your refused to join a group because of it then either educate them or start your own.
Don't try and make this game any easier than it already is just because you can't grasp the super easy solution to a none issue.

I kind of agree with him. Seeing as how all 3 tanks classes have an interrupt, unless he's too busy herp derping, it shouldn't be a problem.

Unless you're tanking with a commando, or with a companion. In a hardmode. Without lube.

February 8, 2012