"enable the secondary movable windows" option solved my problem.

This table is not real : it is a sophisticated calculation made from each class abilities and perefect rotations (with optimal stuff) on one full debuffed target for infinite (or at least very long) combat duration. This length is the way to nullify the crit variations. This model is Bant's one, but many other contributors did checked and pointed improvements for years to achieve this result (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=847112 if you want to check - 749 replies since the 4.0 version of the model). Of course, as it is a calculation, it should deviate from "real" fights (as if a video game could be real ). And it does not show the DPS on multi target, nor the burst in 10 sec with all the offensive CD up, for example. And the defensive/utility abilities are not considered either. So the pertinence of this table is moderate for PvP considerations. However, it shows that sage/sorcerer global dps potential is quite weak compare to other dps, especially in PvE , were the fights are not based on bursting short-life targets like it is in PvP. Hurting more the sage/sorcerer dps would prevent any of them to reach the end-game-HL-PvE content (if it is not already the case as it is planned to be in next patch).

I disagree ! Especially since the sage force regen nerf. For Nim Ops, one of the heal of my raid group switched from sage to commando heal, because of the heal burst the commando is able to provide at almost anytime. Our previous comp was two sages, now our cassical comp is sage/commado. It is the best overall compromise we found up to now. We tried sage/scoundrel too, but we found that on some fights, the scoundrel lacks burst on the tanks. Having one dead tank while everybody esle were above 90% life was not effective for us . That said, the best for us is not the best overall. All the hardest nim boss got downed with any kind of heal comp. It all depends on the tank and the DPS comp, their skill in damage avoidace, and the performance of the heals on their characters. But for me (us) commando is more than OK for Nim content (and we miss "only" 5 nim bosses since 4.0 patch).

I didn't checked if someone already wrote about this one, so i say it : Damages from fire pits are redirected to Trasher in Nightmare.

I did check on guardian and shadow : I was wrong. No need to taget to spread dots. My bad.

I'm a bit surprised. I'll test this out next time I play my guardian.

I found loooong time ago that for dot spread (on any class), you have to target ("select in your interface") one that has the dot while hitting it with the AOE. Otherwise, no spread.

I can't help for the rotations prior to lvl 65. But my advice for the spec to choose is to play a gunnery commando. Levelling with heal is quite long, since you rely on partners for DPS, and the assault spec is more difficult to play, while not good on mob packs.

I do agree with Adjeyo (the previous post guy). I speak from a PvE point of view. 1- Melee DPS should provide more DPS than ranged ? NO. The multi-target DPS and the target change swiftness have WAY more impact than range on boss fights. 2- Pure DPS class should provide more DPS than the other ones. NO. If you want to play HL DPS, you should play sentinel or sniper only... What a nice idea ! Variety in comps should remain, as it allows each raid group to adapt the strategy to the comp. Or the comp to the stragegy... Much more fun !

I used to play assault spec before 4.x on almost every boss. I was switching to gunnery when burst or zone DPS were needed. At that time, the gap on dummy was around 400 DSP between the two specs (personnal evaluation). Now I only play gunnery, even if I prefer assault gameplay. At best, I do the same DPS (on HM/Nim bosses) with assault, while bothering with ammo management, less mobility, and having no bust nor multi-target DPS. Assault has only troubles to offer compare to gunnery. I hope it changes someday, tho ! ^^

The optimal stat tread bases on theorical calculations. Things like serveur ping and bugs are not considered. Other things like off-cd actions are not considered as well. Thus the "42 apm" is a ballpark figure (google trad, i hope it means sthg oO'). What do high ranked players achieve is better comparation-wise.

Troll ?

The protection value cannot crit. I'm not fully aware of the exact value (depends on the healing bonus, and I don't know the formula). However, whatever the exact value of the shield, it is quite high considering it is a instant ability you can apply "for later", and with a 20 sec cooldown on the target (not the spell). Let's say it is around 7k (my personal evaluation in PvE when lvl 65), it ads roughly 10% of your health every 20 sec. Consider also that it functions on any damage type and protects 100% of a total value, unlike majority of defensive abilities that have a longer CD, that protect from a %damage taken or that function only against a specific damage type. It is a spell that will provide moderate toughness on will, not a godmode button you will use to delay your death by 10 sec. But wait... you have another spell that looks like that

I would prefer a no-stack raid buff, like sages. Otherwise I'll use the instant-10-stacks-ability to increase the DPS or the ammo regen

yeah, sure. That's why I say it is almost useless !

I do agree with that. But if the question was "do merc/mando DPS bring enough utilities compare to other classes to be used by competition-oriented PvP players", the answer would be "NO". One of the thing that bothers me most in the commando kit is the ****** stealth detection : it is not large enough to protect from being mezzed by a random stealth player when the detection is ON. Just because the mezz distance is larger than the detection zone radius... How usefull !

you can change the display of the group into the raid one, that is much more clear, compact, and customizable. The wrong point is that you will loose track of the companions.

Concerning balance downtime, it is bad but not that much : it is OK to let the dots fade in order to get boosted ones with the next mental alacrity. Not optimal, but could be done without a huge DPS drop. I don't play this spec, but I'm sure it is OK. For TK sage, if the dot fades and if the mental alac is off, you're screwed. On many bosses, it is possible to keep it up even through switches, but it's a mess and I'm not sure it would be always worth, as it would cost 1 CDG downtime on the target that maters. I'm sure some players already manage things like this, even without using the trick, tho... Anyhow, on bosses, this trick is to be used by high-skilled players only.

I may not understand well, but i think you're wrong. The dot mechanism seems to be an 'independant' debuff on the target. So the alacrity changes on the caster do not affect the dots when they are on the target (increase or decraese). When applying a dot (on a target that has not the debuff on it) under alacrity bonus (polarity shift, adrenal, commando class buff), the debuff duration on the target is reduced, and the tickrate increase in proportion. When refreshing this dot (I mean applying the dot on a target that already has it active), the debuff timer restarts from 0. So as long the debuff does not fade on the target, the "alacrity effect" from the buffed one remains. If you pop polarity shift before refreshing a "normal" dot on a target, the effect is... nul. The duration of the "active dot" will be set to 0, the alacrity will not have any effect on the duration and the tickrate of the dot. What you point with rotation issues is true, tho. Any dot cannot be used this way : to be effective, the dot HAS to be re-applied before it fades. Depending the spec used, that should be very tricky to find proper rotations that reaapply the dot just before it fades (minimum loss) without delaying anything important. Some other spec have automatic-dot-re-applied-side-effect. And concerning the dot spreading, I never did any test. It could function... or not. It depends on how the spread was coded.

When reading the topic, I remembered the old time I was learning about SWTOR, MMO and tanking at the same time. I was told to put the guard on healer in flashpoints because I was unable to maintain aggro on the large mobs packs. And my DPS mates were unable to quick-kill the weak mobs... Adapt the strategy to the situation, including the players gameplay.

Now it's 58 views and 1 (useless) reply.

if you miss a dummy in a corridor, I can't do anything for you, my friend. May be try with a light saber ?

Hi, thanks to take time to answer me again I checked on combatlogs, and you're right, the affliction refresh process makes the debuff tick at the refresh time. Quite difficult to modelize, as the increase tick rate depends on some small time. On combatlogs, the ping seems to have influence, but I'm not sure -_-. And sometimes there is an extra tick comming from nowhere (2 ticks at the refresh). Weird. I also applied the CD reduction for the polarity shift. Not that sure my equation is right, but I find more or less the same as you. I still can't match the damage output on the dummy. After all this work and calculations, I think my main problem is to match the APM the model calculates. Even when only spam telekinetic burst and mental alacrity, I still get less than 45 APM, when the model says it should be more than 49, just counting the damage spells. The ping should be an explanation, but not enough to justify 4.5 APM loss. Whatever, thanks for your patience with me, and the work you share here.

Hi, thanks for the extensive answer ! Concernig rotation, I did some different choices. I was even more rude with reality than you, when I decided to ignore the possibility of two spell being up at the same time, except for the lightning bolts, that is used when nothing else is up. Thinking that way allowed me to simplify a lot and to ignore the concept of priority for the calculation. I also considered this way of thinking should artificially increase the DPS expected, instead of lowering it. But even with that way of thinking, the "use ratios per ability" I calculated and the "Avg Use per second" from your spreadsheet are very close, except for the affliction. One tricky difference we have is I choosed to count time with CDG and not seconds until I apply alacrity at the end. It is a cosmetic difference, but it complexifies a bit the comparation of the spreadsheets. The bigest difference I found is the way we deal with affliction. Like you, I had to treat affliction in a weird way. I found in game a fun fact : when re-applying affliction, the game does not delete the old debuff to create a new one, but just resets the duration remaining on the old one, without changing its duration (*). As a correct rotation impose the affliction to be reset before it fades, I just considered the ticks to be regular until the end of the fight. So in my model, the affliction is considered as a spell with a 2 cdg colldown (=3 sec) and no cast time. My model is surely wrong cause it does not count the first time you cast the spell, but the more the "theorical fight" goes on, the less the gap is. I gave 0.5% use percentage to the immaginary spell "affliction tick". That value in my table should be equal to "3" instead of "=min(3,(1/(1/F321+1/C321+ 1/3))+0.2)" in your table. I may be wrong, but I think your model treats affliction as if there could be two up at the same time on the target. Here are my modeling choices concernig the spells and the rotation. I don't know if what I did can be usefull to improve yours, but I hope so. I have to admit I just discovered a stupid mistake I did while checking my alacrity calculation : I forgot to put the polarity shift in, that makes quite a difference (just noticed after working for 2 hour on your anwser -_-'). After I correct my formula, I still I have a doubt on how to calculate the general alacrity value. The formula I used is CDGduration=1.5-(1.5*(gearalactrity+buffalacrity+averagepolarityshift)), with averagepolarityshift=15/(90-(90*(gearalactrity+buffalacrity)))*20%. It seems there is a difference in the way we calculate it. Do I mess up again ? At this point, I gess the major differences between our two models are : - the alacrity calculation (I find less than you) - the way we consider how the affliction applies (damages I calculate are lower). Anyhow, I have my general question answered : I still have to improve. Thanks a lot for the work you provides here. (*) There is a trick to use for all the dot-based specs here ! When applying the affliction the first time with maximum affliction I can have (mental alacrity + alac adrenal), the duration of the debuff on the dummy is around 13sec, instead of around 18sec when 0 alacrity. Even when you refresh the debuff using the spell, as long you do before the old fades, the alacrity effect remains. May be this trick is famous and I missed something for long, but if not, i'm surprised nobody thought about it before me.

Hi everyone ! At fisrt, let me thank you for the hard work here. I've a concern about the DSP ranking list. I'm a sage player, and as far as I know, none of us reache the average DPS calculated on a regular basis with the telekinesis spec. Even fat-crit tries do not reach the "target". Up to now on parsely leaderbord, there are only 9 parses higher than 6000 DPS on the 1.5mill dummy with TK spec (sage & sorcerers mixed). I may consider I'm not as good as I think, but I have some clues that I'm not the only one facing difficulties with TK sage. I made some home calculations based on the damages from my combat-logs. I found the average DPS for my stuff (almost full optimized 220 stuff) on the dummy should be around 5700 DPS, that is 500DPS lower than the one your model gives. My calculations are not reliable, so I looked for explanations by myself. I had a deep look on the calculation spreadsheet linked on the first page. The way we considered TK abilities is rather the same, with almost the same use percentage per ability. So the gap between our results comes from the "primary damages per ability" differencies, or the "secondary damage buffs" calculations, like crits or alacrity. As I took my damage datas from what was mesured, I can not consider they are completely wrong (inaccurate, yes, but still not so wrong). And what I calculated from crits and alacrity matches with the results I get on dummy. I can't go further with the spreadsheet work, I'm blocked. So is my problem. I would be happy if someone could show me I'm just bad and I just need to get better. The way I'm in now is I just have to switch to another class if I want to keep on playing HL. Can anyone help ? P.S. sorry for the strangeness of my english