My parses were quite normal in terms of crit rate. My values are correct. When you are able to get near 3,9k dps without rolling through the dummy, we can talk again. Whatever that paragraph has to do with my Quote (nothing). As i asked show me parses (from your awesome arsenal for example) that do similar damage on a rapid target swaping fight (like Brontes). The dot accounts for 10% of your dps and eats 10% of your global cooldowns. Unless the target has a lot more then 200k health and you have to do 3 full rotations on that target, there's no DPS loss without reapplying the dot. You constantly forget that we are talking about target swapping and not about dummy dps..... Assuming 8 man: It's not worth for It's a bad lethality rotation without fillers. And i understand how it works. Additionally your posted rotation is not very good. I've tried a couple of things that easily increase the dps. Woah you have the #1 spot for rolling through the dummy, awesome! (may include sarcasm) I've got the #1 parses for every non-rolling sniper spec, but i can't be asked to abuse bugs for fights (as rolling-in-place is an exploit). Not my way of game play.

I did 2 single marksmann parses in 2.7. I did 4 single parses for hybrid. Very lucky, of course . Others run dozen of parses until they reach 4k.... I did over 3,8k on average with hybrid after testing it out a bit. I've not done enough parses with mm to call an average but i suppose it will be around 3,7k. I don't think you can comment on that anyway, if you think these parses are very lucky. I suggest you get more experience with sniper/gunslinger rotation. If you show me specs that deal more then 3k damage on Nightmare Brontes, feel free to do so. Arsenal has heat issues when rapidly target swapping. The dot is just a very minor damage increase and doesn't need to be reapplied. Applying your armor debuff is a dps loss, when the target has less then 100-150k hp. For rapid target switching (on most of the brontes stuff for example) pretty useless. You can show me the awesome parses of the Arsenal spec on fights like Brontes Nightmare Mode then, if it's superior to marksmann in target swapping. As far as i know Bioware doesn't care about AoE damage, unless the spec has AoE inside his single target Rotation (and not even then they do most of the time). The Rotation is clunky, not aligning and without rolling-in-place Engineering is just a very bad lethality spec without proper fillers.

Ok, I will write my thoughts about Snipers: In Terms of pure dummy parsing, snipers are currently okay. My latest parses on Live (3760 MM, 3870 Hybrid) and Pts (3760 Hybrid should've been over 3,8k tough with proper relics and better rotation) with 4 DF pieces indicate that. Still, raid fights are not comparable to dummy parsing. Marksmann: Marksmann will still be the top sustained spec on average for ranged non-dots specs. Additionally the other 2 comparable specs (Arsenal and Lightning) have more issues with target swapping. You can quite easily see that on a fight like Brontes (short phases, fast target swapping...), were Marksmann Sniper overall dps is better then any other class in this game. Marksmann Snipers are the only class in this game, that can instantly at any point during the whole rotation switch to another target (with a 35m range!), without any disadvantage. The amount of defensive abilities, especially Marksmann Snipers have is not comparable to any other range class and it's also not comparable to some of the melee classes. With 60% AoE Reduction + Ballistic Dampers and the possibility to resist nearly every damaging mechanic with roll, Marksmann snipers are probably the easiest class to Keep up in a raid. The only problem i have with Marksmann is, that a lot of the abilities (most importantly Series of Shot + Followthrough), have 100% Surge and that Marksmann Snipers generally don't do many hits per global cooldown. Because of these 2 factors, the damage of Marksmann Snipers has a big variety and is really RNG dependant. Additionally this spec doesn't have much possibilities for AoE damage, but that is mostly recognizeable because Engineering is currently not working properly. I always compare Marksmann with Carnage, Lethality with Anni and Engineering with Rage. Still this spec does more damage on average then any other non-dot ranged spec and will therefore continue to be the top chosen spec/class for any fight with target swapping and short uptimes. Overall I don't see any possibility for this spec to receive any buffs (unless you want to massively screw sorcs and mercs) and as this spec has about Zero Quality of Life Issues (did you ever run out of energy with marksmann? ) i wouldn't really make any question about Marksmann. Engineering: Yes, i know that this spec is the only viable spec for Snipers in Yolo Queue. But: Rolling-In-Place is just not good for PvE. Yes you can currently easily do it, reach very high numbers on any fights, but Snipers are not a melee dps spec. Get rid of Scatter Bombs, put them into Orbital Strike, increase the damage of Plasma Probe (currently Plasma Probe deals about as much damage as Corrosive Grenade over the same amount of time and is not spamable, that's simply a bad top Tier talent). Make Engineering similar to rage. Low single target sustained spec, heavy AoE. That's a spec snipers are really missing currently and should also get. Lethality: I personally play the Lethality Hybrid and I personally think Lethality Hybrid is the stronger spec, but nevermind. Yes i am aware, that most classes on the pts can do slightly more sustained damage (we are talking about a 5% difference here) on the dummy. Still most of these classes don't have the uptime, the 35m range, the insane multi-dot possibilities... Even without counting Raid-Wide Ballistic Shield, i would say that Lethality Snipers are in the middle of the pack of the sustained dps specs, for raid viability after the 2.8 changes (with Pyro Powertechs leading the pack ) But you could argue that some specs are definitly better with 2.8 in terms of damage potential in raids (most notable: Pyro Powertechs). As i've read something about Marksmann Quality of Life issues, my 2 Cents: That is completely stupid and completely wrong, marksmann sniper is the spec in this game that has the fewest Quality of Life issues by far! Marksmann Snipers have close to no Quality of life Problems. No Energy Problem, no target switching problem, no uptime problem, 90%+ straight damage.... If you ask the delevopers something about reworking "Quality of Life" issues for marksmann snipers, they will just laugh and will not take anything for serious that we actually ask. Top issues of Sniper: a) Engineering Tree should be completely reworked (that would also be my question 2 and 3 tbh) b) Viability of Snipers in Ranked Arenas (especially regarding Engineering changes) c) Very slight changes for Lethality Sniper (especially regarding Pyro Powertechs changes for example)

Just one thing: Driving Thrust will happen at random times, no matter if you stand in melee range or not (as a tank).

There's no bug, that Calphayus "ignores Shadow Tank mitigation". However there's a bug, when you Vanish during past/future phases while your raid wipes, or sometimes even just when your raid wipes. During that bug, the tree in these phases will not despawn and therefore Calphayus will hit double as hard as intended (most likely kill the tanks), because there are 2 trees alive instead of one.

Cropping seems not to work properly (atleast not for my latest parses). I was just calculating the time between "enters combat" and "kills Operations Training Dummy". I think your is 4m 25'604. 13:26:15.151 Tianna enters combat. 13:30:40.755 Tianna kills Operations Training Dummy.

Did 2 marksmann parses after a horrible raid (needed to kill something): Figured that would be honorable mentions for Marksmann: Zah'ik - Marksmann Sniper - 36/4/6 - 4m 25'309 http://www.torparse.com/a/678283/time/1400621976/1400622241/0/Log 23:39:36.210 Zah'ik enters combat. 23:44:01.519 Zah'ik kills Operations Training Dummy. AMR: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/41e1ecb4-6a45-4bf5-886a-7e8c9f7a3004 Hybrid: Zah'ik - Hybrid Sniper - 5/18/23 - 4m 18'813 http://www.torparse.com/a/685988/time/1401385821/1401386080/0/Log 19:50:21.681 Zah'ik enters combat. 19:54:40.494 Zah'ik kills Operations Training Dummy. AMR: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/4c464f33-4d23-44d3-b5d5-29f0038109a2

Yes it works. You can easily verify that via a tool like Parsec. The average hit of my CG is 809, the average crit hit is 1663 on hybrid (over 100% more), my surge is something like 73%. Yes this skill gives corrosive grenade a 30% surge bonus . And actually Corrosive Grenade is normally used every 18 seconds (every 2 culls). Otherwise you would delay your culls and as Lethality doesnt have any more filler you would lose dps.

Well yeah the relationship is similar and yes it should be done like that. For every class that can also tank or heal Bioware has created a burst spec with a maximum of one dot (sometimes this spec deals Area damage in the single target rotation aswell) (AP, Arsenal, Deception, Lightning, Rage, Concealment). With the exception of Concealment (which will probably corrected and get into line with the other burst specs with ~2.9 as they are now giving Operatives the necessary Buffs for melee dps in Operations) all of these specs deal significantly less damage then the other dot dps specs (Pyro, Madness, Vengeance, Lethality). Their easier target swapping and better burst makes them really good for some of the Operation fights, tough. It's pretty much the same with snipers (and marauders). One sustained dot spec (Lethality) with the highest sustained damage on average, a burst spec (marksmann) with good target swapping and additionally an AoE spec (that is not working). It should definitly stay that way for snipers. Offtopic: But the pyro buffs are more or less completetly unecessary: For example, currently Pyro Powertechs deals already over 2,7k on Brontes (see the post in the progression thread). When that specs gets the current buffs it will deal consistently over 3k on Brontes, which will put it very far ahead of every other spec in this game (My average as a marksmann sniper on this fight is ~2,8k).

Paowee was not online for over three weeks (in the Forums).

Hmm, you have a very slight ability delay compared to me (6 GCD on a full parse probably less considering you also dotted which i didnt count). I think you sometimes are dotting wrong (you have roughly the same amount of dot ticks but your parse is slightly longer). Every dot (IP CG and CD) applies does damage every 3 seconds. Therefore you generally refresh them always on the same excact time during your 2 cull window (therefore delaying cull is so difficult and unrewarding) after 18 seconds. You can Change your 4th global cooldown with (in your case) CG to reapply CG after excact 21 seconds. After the next 2 cull window you go back to normal (15 second Duration on CG then). If you are reapplying your dots 1 gcd earlier or later, you generally lose a lot more dps then one would expect. On my dummy parses i will never switch that. All my 3 dots are reapplied excactly after 18 (or sometimes 21) seconds. On your Video I saw you sometimes reapplied dots after 16,5 seconds or 19,5 seconds. It's more the little things you can change. Our dps difference is pretty miniscule.

I think the main problem is your abilitiy delay. You are doing less abilities per second. We are doing the excact same amount of culls but you are fighting 15 seconds longer then me. Because of your ability delay you are using a different more energy unfriendly Rotation (which kinda works a bit against the dps loss), but all in all that's the main reason your dps is slightly lower then mine. Actually your abilitys are hitting slightly harder then mine (look at Explosive Probe with the excact same crit %). You are fighting for 10 gcd longer then i do. But all in all (if you count all the globals) you are (just) doing 4 globals more. My 10 snipes are mostly: 3 Snipes in the begining to burn energy ; Snipes with Laze Target ; Snipes to burn energy at the end of the parse.

You can compare one of your combat logs to one of mine (that parse is with pvp relics tough): http://www.torparse.com/a/596195/time/1392817130/1392817393/0/Overview Edit: Try now.

Read my suggestions. The Clusterbombs will be off by 2 gcd (instead of 4) because you can easily use Corrosive Grenade or Corrosive Dart 2 GCD later..... Not casting cull is a dps loss, cause your whole dot Rotation has to be set in line with the culls again + SoS and your other damaging abilities are getting delayed aswell.

Wrong starting rotation (EP before dots and 2-3 snipes instead of rifles shots and not just 1 to soak energy). Also i don't see the 3 second delaying of corrosive grenade/corrosive dart to include faster explosive probes in the Rotation. You can cast Explosive Probe faster (it's your highest damaging ability) without disadvantages (like delaying cull), but you are not doing it. Instead of casting IP - CG - CD - EP, you can cast Interrogation Probe - EP - CD - CG with the same dps Output (change it back after the next 2 cull window) but a faster Explosive Probe. Also you are delaying cull for Explosive Probe. Don't do that (DPS-loss). Instead Change your dot Rotation (like i proposed up there). Also you are not really including Takedown optimally in the sub 30%-Rotation. Hybrid Sniper can do 3,8k in 180 gear on the dummy. @Lumine: I see him casting Rifle Shots as fillers. The 2 GCD after (or before depending on cooldowns) SoS are: 1. EP + Rifle Shot 2. Laze Target Snipe + Rifle Shot 3. Orbital Strike 4. Ambush Having to cast 2 Rifle Shots in order to sustain energy, means you did something wrong previously (atleast on the dummy).

And how long did it take the devs to fix Force Shroud?

Overload and Inevitability on Calphayus are force/tech shieldable. Jolt from Brontes and Force Push from Bestia on the Dread Council fight are also force/tech shieldable. That's actually a pretty noticeable portion of the incoming damage (more then 15% of the damage post mitigation). The Council fight is far away from 100% m/r. As said previously, both first are no 100% melee/range fights (like Nefra).

Bestia is 60% m/r 40% f/t (therefore very large force/tech), also Calphayus and Council are no defense only fights.

It's just viable for some fights in HM/NiM Dread Palace and Fortress (Dread Master Brontes, Tyrans and Raptus). On other fights it's worse then the Standard (37/5/4) build. You should have Field Respec to switch between the two specs.

Answers: - Don't take Hawkeye Crystals as a tank. It's generally not okay. - If you don't have enough crit rating (some classes optimally have ~500 crit rating on their gear), a crit crystal is an easy way to get crit rating

According to the Devs, Force Shroud is fixed

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=738493 + I also have my pts data, which consist of even more runs. As you can see Nefra, Draxus and Grob'thok are all pretty high on m/r (were defense rating is best on). Additionally Draxus himself does 100% m/r damage (the f/t in the draxus logs just comes from random explosions from Subs or the Thundering Blasts from Guardians of the Fortress which i don't consider important abilities for my gearing, these abitlies dont really matter in my opinion). That means you want more or less the Maximum possible defense Rating on the first 3 bosses of Nightmare Mode Dread Fortress (more then 900 defense Rating , more then 26% defense Rating)

Actually it might still address resilience/force shroud. The patch note is not very precise, it doesn't say defense Chance, but defend against attacks (which can mean anything).

If AP Powertechs would get similar dummy damage to pyro, the spec would be overpowered. It's a heavy burst specs (more shoulder cannon ticks, just 1 dot) and a heavy aoe spec (Flamethrower deals more damage then Smash and is a big part of the single target Rotation). If it would do the same damage on a dummy as pyro, there would simply be no reason to play the pyro spec. Why choosing pyro, if you can do the same damage faster and to multiple enemys? That was sarcasm. MM and AP are a similar type of spec (aside from the fact that AP is a heavy aoe spec). Both specs have very good defensive utilities for raids (aoe reduction....), are able to target swap very fast, can deal very high burst damage and have next to zero ramp-up time. These natural advantages of the specs come very handy in an actual Boss fight, but are not at all represented in a dummy parse. There's a reason that the World 1st kills of Scum and Villainy Nightmare Mode and Dread Fortress Nightmare Mode both had an AP Powertech as a dps.

If they should do the same average dps on the dummy (and Bioware never said anything about specs staying within 5% of the dummy, they refered to proper fights!), you would simply create overpowered specs (Smash Specs, Advanced Prototype, Marksmann...) and completely unusable specs (Lethality, Vengeance, Pyro...). But yeah lets buff the damage of Smash to 15000, so that the rage spec can perform similar on the dummy, let's buff Flame Thrower from Advanced Prototype by 7500 , and so on.... I think you should read Biowares answers to all the questions for the combat team. They do not intend to give burst specs similar sustained damage to non-burst specs. (for example marauder: anni should be top sustained lowest burst, rage should be top burst, lowest sustained, carnage should be inbetween). You are basically completely off the topic, your idea of giving every spec the same dps on the dummy will simply create the most unbalanced game possible, with more then 50% of all dps specs in the game being completely unusable. But yeah, let's create Smash specs with 4000 sustained damage..... When do people recognize that this game is not balancing themselves around which spec has the highest torparse upload, but which spec is the best for clearing content. And yeah people played hybrid to get like 50 dps more out of some fights. They missed 60% aoe reduction, ballistic dampers and similar defensive stuff. For easy HM fights you can get away with that, but for previous (tfb and sv nim) and current Nightmare Progression (and i was talking about NiM the whole time) Marksmann was and is by far the more popular and better sniper spec. And yes on heavy movement fights without much aoe the hybrid is better (grob'thok for example), but that is not the standard. Previously, 4 Marksmann Snipers (maybe 3 mm sniper and 1 marauder) was the best dps combination any group could have for TFB and SV Nightmare Mode.