Maybe my math is wrong, but it still appears to be the same amount of grinding as before to get to end gear, except this time it's EWH instead of WH. Before you had to grind WZ comms to BM, then grind ranked to get WH, while trading in your BM pieces. Now you'll have to grind the same amount of WZ comms (but you get WH gear), then gind the same amount of ranked comms as before but you get EWH. with WH trade in. The only reduction in the grind is to get to WH, but the grind isn't done because a new tier exists.

All MM attack abilities have a 1.5 GCD. The only abilities without GCD are clickies, TA and sniper volley. The channelled abilities that are over 1.5 seconds , you won't notice the GCD but you can watch your other abilities and see you can't use them for the first 1.5 seconds Snipe also, so even if your cast time was reduced to 1.3 for snipe, you still have to wait .2 seconds after, before using another ability. So my point is. There No reason to reduce snipe to 1.3 seconds. You may be spamming, but there is a .2 second delay you aren't noticing. In the same vein(because of GCD)-There is also no reason to use insta Snipe if you need to follow up with a second ability- Here's why: regular Snipe takes 1.5 seconds when you select it before it hits the target. Then the GCD is complete and you can followthru . So it's 1.5 sec, hit, hit ,1.5 seconds Insta Snipe shoots and hits the instant you select it, but you have to wait 1.5 second for the GCD before you can select followthru. So it's Hit, 1.5 sec, hit, 1.5 sec. No DPS advantage.

90 % of all PVP players in MMO's are arrogant jerks , just like me. I can barely stand myself, what makes you think I want to group up with 3 or 7 of ME to form a group.

Let's assume that stacking alacrity wouldn't gimp your surge or accuracy. Because of the GCD, getting any abilities below 1.5 second cast time is useless. So what abilities will we channel faster? Ambush- This is already reduced to 1.5 when you Crit. You should crit enough that this rarely takes 2.5 seconds to cast anyway. Series of Shots- Ok you can get this down to 1.5. Orbital strike- Ok, this could be down to 1.5 cast THAT's IT. Really not enough burst to justify the drop in accuracy or surge. IMHO

Damage is the same per tick. with 1 extra tick. TESTED-CONFIRMED. EX. Before set bonus 3 ticks of 1500 damage each total 4500 damage After set bonus 4 ticks of 1500 damage each total 6000 damage It is one of the best 2 pc set bonus in the game, USE IT.

As stated, to get equal DPS in MM on the test dummy you really need to practice and perfect your rotation. The most misleading part of MM rotation is the animations. If you watch them, they will mess you up, because you can and should queue your next ability before animation ends. You really have to pay attention to the cast bar, and push the abilities thru the queue. My objective in MM is to have followthru doing more total damage per fight then the rest. Then SoS. If Snipe is topping your damage then you need to work on your rotation. If you can't push the limit on queueing you abilities, you'll do better with lethality If the OP fight requires lots of moving Lethality excels. On the OP dummy I can easily pull over 2000 DPS using MM for a 1 minute fight. I can't do that on Lethality. On longer (dummy)fights Lethality usually does slightly better than MM(on average) but not by more than 20 dps. If the crit gods favor you(RNG), Marksman can put out ridiculously high numbers

What are you talking about? MM and cull? You need to check your trees. CUll is lethality, hybrid at best. In MM TREE Only SOS and Ambush are channelled and with a guaranteed CRIT on your snipe, your ambush is only 1.5 seconds cast. Marksman spec 'd rotation uses..... laze target-TA- SS-insta snipe-followthru-ambush-SOS-EP-followthru-takedown for burst. A quicker rotation for near death targets is..... laze target- SS-insta snipe-EP-Ambush-followthru-takedown Those 2 are burst. DPS drops after the first rotation, so get up move and find another target , This will do 3 things, reset your dampners, reset insta-snipe and make it harder for the stealthers to gank you. Marauders/sent should never be an issue , You can Cover pulse to knockback, ambush knockback or debilitate. Root them and move. They can't leap to you so they are basically sitting ducks.

As a sniper, you are the easiest target for the DPS-Scoundrel/ OP. Your only defense when you know one is after you is entrench, and you don't get it till much later. Even at level 50, the good ones will still own you, however they are very few that still play at 50 because they really only have 1 rock to their paper(YOU). Every other class is scissors to them.

Had this happen yesterday in Foundry. The Sorc came in as healer but wasn't a healer. He was specc'd as DPS and just forgot to uncheck heal role. It's annoying that the role selection resets all possible roles. Anyway the tank rage quit after first pull when he got no heals. This wasn't an issue, we q'd to replace the tank, but in the meantime I summoned Kaliyo and we facerolled thru the first boss, all the way to HK. At HK I replaced Kaliyo with Lokin for some extra heals for the adds-(Plus Kaliyo likes to get crushed by the chamber). We killed HK easliy and we even lost Lokin for the last 10 % of the fight when the replacement Tank entered the instance. My point is, HM FP's are so easy if you are geared that you can easily replace the rage quitter with a (geared)companion and still complete your daily quest.

Regarding the original question. USE SKILL AUGS. I HAVE TESTED THIS. The SKILL AUGS give a slight dps (less than 20 dps ) advantage at optimal end game stats . It also add's a minimal crit chance (< 1%) advantage over OVERKILL augs TESTING PROCEDURES Fully modified end game BH gear equip 14 Skill AUGS. RUN test, Then equip 14 overkill augs and run test. TEST consists of---6 minute DPS on OP dummy on my ship with MARKSMAN SPEC. Repeat 20 times.(then repeat with Full Lethality build) To ensure there were no user errors during DPS, I created a macro on my Nostromo that ran thru 8- 45 second rotations. Only user input during rotation was to start the fight then click ground for orbital strike positioning The lethality rotation time was different but also ran for 6 minutes and included Orbital Strike. Run MOX parser Record : PEAK DPS during each fight, Total Damage during each fight DPS of each fight. MY Marksman MACRO was doing 1466 dps average with SKILL - 1451 DPS average with Overkill. MY Lethality MACRO was doing 1489 dps average with SKILL - 1472 DPS average with Overkill I use these macro's now to test all potential gear changes. Very handy, even thou the DPS isn't optimal, it's repeatable.

Then 10 seconds later when your resolve drops, they stun you again, and this time you don't have a stun breaker,(my CC breaker is 2 min cooldown) so you end up stunned for 2 ability durations. For the next 2 minutes, this is how you play the warzone. If your lucky the 10 seconds that you were immune, you weren't rooted. THIS IS FUN, THANKS.

I believe a Tank in full campaign gear sitting at 25 defense, 50 shield and 50 absorbtion with 28K hitpoints will do better in regular Warzones then the same tank in full recruit gear sitting at 14-15K Hitpoints. So in this case, recruit gear is not worth using, I don't know what the MK-2 gear has to offer stat wise, mostly because I don't have a new 50 tank to get the free gear. Cost on that to buy is still too high. The problem is the old recruit gear was so bad, that even thou I got it free, it's currently unuseable. It would be great if they allowed us to trade old recruit gear for new,

You are capped at 2000 warzone comms, You can not convert those warzone comms to rated warzone comms until you get to Valor 40. You also can not use them to purchase BM gear until you reach level 50. So until you hit Valor 40 you are capped at 2000 warzone comms. I had to spend over 3000 warzone comms on WZ stims because I was capped for so long, before v40. If I was able to convert those to Rated or spend them on BM gear, I would have been better off.

Columni Juggernaut lightsaber, Soresu's razor is curved.

Yep, agree, You need to DPS STormcaller faster to beat the 2nd DD. We do this by assigning one of the ranged that stands on Firebrand to DPS Stormcaller for at least the first rotation of defensive systems. This means 3 DPS attack Stormcaller to start off. You also have to have the tank jump off Stormcaller as soon as defensive systems is called out. Because he'll be dropping the lightning spires, and if he isn't off Stormcaller when it occurs the lightning spires drop on the tank. If a DD is occurring the same time and that tank is rotating SC to the DPS for them to get DD. Have him jump completely off the tank behind the DPS, or he'll drop the lightning on the DPS.

I agree that as long as everyone focuses same kill order, any order is fine. When I tank I set kill order as : Big guy on right then the left and middle last. here's my reasoning. The only one that can be taunted is the middle guy. I can keep him agro'd on me the whole fight by taunting him when it's up. This keeps him off the healer and everyone else. Since You can't taunt the right or left at all during the fight, they tend to bounce targets and hit the healer. I want them dead sooner to stop the healers and DPS from panicking thru the whole fight. I basically tell eveyone to stack on the middle , so the right and left don't go running around. This allows healer to aoe heal and dps to spam AOE When the left and right die the adds spawn, I AOE taunt the adds to the middle so the dps can AOE them down.

Best 1v1? -Rock says - Paper is best. Paper says - Scissors is best. Scissors says - Rock is best.

The only items where power competes for cunning on your gear is on the Aug's and in some of the mods. On the mod's that compete you have 2 choices Artful mod 26 has 53 Cunning, 32 Endurance and 41 Power Artful Mod 26A has 68 Cunning 41 Endurance and 12 power If you get similar damage results from cunning and power, then you'd never select 26A over 26. At end game gear when you have maxed Crit and surge into DR, you can swap some cunning augs for some power augs. Until then stick with cunning, but put almost equal weighting to both. Power and cunning both have identical DR, and they are basically straight lines unlike the rest of the stats that drop off sharply. So you want the most you can get with BOTH.

The accuracy from your skill tree is represented in your character sheet. 408 accuracy rating? I'm guessing you never MISS anything William Tell. Your accuracy rating is WAY too high and your surge is too low. I have: accuracy Rating 228 Crit rating 297 Surge rating 342 Power 841 I get all my accuracy and crit from Black hole- EAR,Implants and Offhand I get all my surge from the 6 adept enhancements. All my armor is Skill. All my Mods are Artful.

This is why all offhand gear should be orange moddable. Then you could optimize them so they match the main hand if desired. Currently, only the classes that can use moddable gear in offhand get this advantage. Gunslinger, Merc, Sent and Marauder.

This is PVE gear. For PVP gear the stats will all be different. This site list BIS broken down how you want it. Just select your class and spec. www.simulationcraft.org/swtor/130/Raid_Campaign_BiS.html Summarized: Gear only Cunning 1668 > This comes out over 2000 unbuffed after 9% and base added. Power 860 Surge 285 Range Accuracy 285 Range Crit 296

If you've seen DPS do this for the reason you state, You need to correct them. Threat drop does not affect Global cooldown.( It's like a stim or clicky) It can be used anytime it's up without sacrificing any abilities on GCD. I believe that games should give you as much information as they can about your personal combat experience. There are quite a few people capable of digesting , analyzing and reacting to that information in real time without compromising their performance. Hiding the details of the damage you are taking or giving is not beneficial. I have combat damage spam overlapping on my screen so much on my screen that I'd get (more useful) information from a combat chat list. It also makes it easier directly following a death to see just *** happened, so I can improve.

8 Buttons. C'mon, Mine has 17 buttons. And yes, I now have CTS.

I have five 50 toons 2 tanks 2 healers and 1 dps. the Tank q is almost instant. the healer q was a few minutes and DPS q was 30 minutes. When LFG tool q's initially gave BH comms I did 1 HM FP per toon every day. Now that all 5 of my toons have full Black hole gear(some fully optimized) , I stopped doing the HM FP's. Now I just do BH weekly and farm EC for the BH comms to optimize the rest and gear my companions. It's less stressful then pug groups. Until they come up with new Tier gear or new content, I won't be doing LFG FP's.

I would just like to see in my own combat chat channel. My own Combat messages. This really helps real time knowing that for example-all adds are smacking on you . Instead all I see is red damage on screen and die. It would also be useful to see the damage done to your target real time with mitigation numbers. Maybe then I could optimize my attacks against something that mitigates 90 % weapon damage. It would also be helpful to determine what exactly caused you to die other than the last hit for 100 points. I really don't need to see the DPS of others during real time. As long as we don't hit enrage timers , I don't care if DPS 1 is 100 DPS better than DPS 2.