It's not that using Blazing Bolts has a high priority, but triggering Barrage does. As for the opener, pre-casting is essentially free damage so it makes sense so lead with Tracer. It also applies the armour debuff early and avoids delaying Heatseeker.

You posted an "opener" by your own words. By definition, Rail Shot cannot be on cooldown in an opener. Awfully hostile when all I've done is stated facts. But sure, go right ahead.

Power Surge doesn't increase burst damage in the opener, all it does is frontload the damage of two Tracer Missiles - the spec's weakest ability. Explosive Dart can create higher damage spikes within a very narrow time frame, but this only has a use in PvE on targets with temporary immunities. Rarely if ever suitable for an opener. It's fine against scrubs in PvP but dubious against anyone with a clue as the dart is clearly telegraphed and will prompt your target to LoS you, CC you or use defensive cooldowns. Even ignoring the above two points, your opener delays Heatseeker Missiles and Rail Shot in favour of Blazing Bolts. Blazing Bolts isn't limited by its natural cooldown, so it's a low priority ability until there's 4.5s left on Barrage's lockout.

Opening with Priming Shot has merit if you have other ranged DPS that would benefit from having it up early, sure. But the rest... why use Explosive Dart and why delay key abilities like Heatseeker Missiles and Rail Shot? Why waste Power Surge like that where there are legitimate uses for it later on? There's no Electro Net mentioned either which, barring auto-crit HSM with the set bonus, is the hardest hitting ability Mercs have access to. Makes no sense.

Well, the barebones rotation has an APM of 36. Any increase comes from Alacrity and/or abilities that are off the GCD (Supercharged Gas, Thermal Sensor Override, Vent Heat, Adrenals).

Why are we getting different numbers though? How are you accounting for the different weapons used by mercs and mandos? Isn't average damage/hit a more accurate metric, especially when comparing between mirror classes?

Hmm, the total damage number I ended up with was higher, about 1.3 million... clearly we're doing something differently. So, the way I did it was to go by total damage dealt and divide by number of activations (or in the case of DoTs, total number of ticks). For instance, in Fascinate's parse he activates Unload 13 times and deals 169187 damage = 13014 damage per activation. Using this method, I ended up with these damage per activation values: Mag Shot - 9043 Unload - 13014 Incendiary Missile: Burning - 1709 Serrated Shot: Bleeding - 1646 Combustible Gas Cylinder - 965 Power Shot - 3193 Thermal Detonator - 7311 Supercharged Burn - 2169 Electro Net - 1217 Missile Blast - 6742 Incendiary Missile - 1661 Serrated Shot - 1436 Rapid Shots - 2289 Then I applied these averages to the number of activations in my parse for their totals: Mag Shot - 9043 * 33 = 298419 Unload - 13014 * 17 = 221238 Incendiary Missile: Burning - 1709 * 79 = 135011 Serrated Shot: Bleeding - 1646 * 77 = 126742 Combustible Gas Cylinder - 965 * 121 = 116765 Power Shot - 3193 * 29 = 92597 Thermal Detonator - 7311 * 16 = 116976 Supercharged Burn - 2169 * 25 = 54225 Electro Net - 1217 * 30 = 36510 Missile Blast - 6742 * 5 = 33710 Incendiary Missile - 1661 * 16 = 26576 Serrated Shot - 1436 * 16 = 22976 Rapid Shots - 2289 * 13 = 29757 Grand total: 1311502, add in the Fusion Missile I used (5170 damage in my parse, not sure what it would've been for you guys) and we get 1316672. Divide by 247.7s for ~5315 DPS. Before you say it, I realise my Mag Shot value may not be entirely accurate because there's an uneven number of hits logged in Fascinate's parse (I'm assuming the last Mag Shot killed the dummy so the off-hand hit never happened). However even if the "missing" hit was 0 damage, it would only affect the average by ~173. This would translate into a total damage loss of ~5700 in my parse, but I think it should be a fair estimate considering I lost 4 DoT pulses to lag and didn't scale my Fusion Missile numbers due to lack of data. Again please do point out any errors on my end, I did all this late at night.

His. I used damage/activation and damage/DoT pulse.

Slightly better parse for analysis Lower APM due to lag, which also caused me to inadvertently clip IM once and SS 3 times. Heat capped for about a second with each Vent Heat use and finished on too high heat, so I know I could've done better. Replacing my damage values with Fascinate's I ended up with ~5320 DPS over the ~248s (some guesswork was involved in extrapolating Fusion Missile's damage, but it was a fairly conservative estimate). If I add in the damage from the 4 lost DoT pulses, I get ~5350. Again please do point out any potential errors on my end, it's rather late in my time zone. Rotation used is the same as in my previous post, except for adding Fusion Missile to the opener.

I'm obviously not cs_zoltan, but I figured more data would be useful; so I'll submit some of my own to further the discussion. My parse (Sorry for the Commando parse, Merc is my only <55 class) Fascinate's latest parse that I used as comparison, note that our APM is similar Applying his average damage values to my parse, I got 5293 DPS over my parse's ~230s. Please do let me know if I made any mistakes in calculating the average values. Now, this is a difference of only 14 DPS (and as you pointed out earlier it's not a perfect comparison), but I do not consider myself to have mastered the spec at all and am sure I could do better (my 12 Hammer Shots vs Fasc's 6 Rapid Shots is testament to that). This is how I've been playing IO so far: Opener (Pre-cast) Serrated Shot - Incendiary Missile - Electro Net - Supercharge - Mag Shot - Unload - Mag Shot - Thermal Detonator - Power Shot - Power Surge - Power Shot (start rotation block 1) Block 1 Power Shot - Serrated Shot - Mag Shot - Incendiary Missile - Filler Block 2 Unload - Filler - Thermal Detonator - Mag Shot Speed to Burn is triggered by the Mag Shot in block 2 and consumed immediately (by the Power Shot in block 1) for consistency. FWIW my Commando does not have any level 60 set bonus. Thoughts?

When you ding 30 or 55 while in a warzone (or while you have a warzone pop), the game thinks you left the instance/queue and brings someone else in. I've seen a 10v8 warzone when a friend and I both hit 30 before taking a pop.

The damage is comparable, but the range isn't, and comparing abilities side by side without the context of other class abilities etc isn't completely fair either. If the cast time was changed, something else would have to give, and I'd rather not make that trade personally. The point was that Shock, LS, LS, Shock might be an awful lot of mobility for the still decent damage it deals. Once would probably be okay though. It's only spammable in Madness, and Lightning mostly uses it with Barrage, so it's only a single global of snare. I think it'd be an acceptable loss.

I agree that Salvation|Revivification could use some tweaking, and would be completely fine with what you propose above. Another option that I think could work would be to apply a heal over time to anyone leaving the circle. Weaken Mind|Affliction, no way. People will macro that to tabdot everything in sight in a second, the potential is too OP. Force Armour|Static Barrier would be fine, as long as it's limited to bubbles cast on yourself. While I'd love to see this for Mind Crush|Crushing Darkness, Turbulence|Thundering Blast would probably be a little much. Considering how powerful the ability is, I think it needs to keep the cast time for the risk/reward ratio to be reasonable. I would however be okay with some kind of stacking buff that grants temporary interrupt immunity after being interrupted X amount of times. No disagreement here, would be especially nice for Telekinetic Throw|Force Lightning. I'm unsure about this. While potentially nice, it would mean filling 600 Resolve when the bubble pops, which could be very disadvantageous against, say, a Combat Sentinel|Carnage Marauder. This would be extremely nice. Yes please. 4 meters might be slightly too much (hard to say without seeing it in action), but I wouldn't say no to a more powerful knockback and while we might not need it if we get some of the other suggestions, it probably wouldn't be too OP either. I know what you're getting at here, but for slightly improved mobility without being too over the top I'd rather have Turbulence|Thundering Blast buff Project|Shock somehow. We already have Upheaval|Chain Shock in the skill tree, so I think this would make more sense than Disturbance|Lightning Strike and it would avoid the spec becoming *too* mobile. While I agree that Balance|Madness is over the top right now, I'm not sure if this is the way to fix it. I'd start by taking the snare off Telekinetic Throw|Force Lightning (it can stay in PvE) and see how that changes things.

Update: Team 1 is recruiting a tank. Team 2 (formerly team 3) is recruiting a DPS. Preferred method of contact is through our website.

Update on current recruitment status: Raid Team 2 is currently recruiting for 3 DPS positions. Current progress is 10/10 DF/DP HM, 1/5 DF NiM. Raid Team 3 is a new team that's just recently started forming, and is currently looking for either a DPS or a Tank (Assassin/Juggernaut) to complete the team. We are looking to raid Thursdays and Sundays at 19:30 CEST (17:30 UTC). The intention is to fully clear DF/DP NiM and beyond. If you are interested in joining either team, you can contact: Krehea on enjin / Kressea in-game (GM) Var'nesh on enjin or in-game (raid leader, Team 2) Myself on these boards / Conrad on enjin / Circumspectus in-game (raid leader, Team 3) You can also find more info on our website: http://movealong.enjin.com/join

First of all, your Sage co-healer would save some time by casting Salvation at 2 stacks of Resplendence, as the cast time will be less than a global cooldown. That said, two stacks of SRMP should be superior to UWM as long as the target lives for at least ~15s. Similarly, both KC and KP are significantly stronger than UWM if the target lives for 9s. In terms of HPCT (healing per cast time), EMP is the worst heal you have bar Diagnostic Scan. I haven't personally needed to play my healer on this fight in NiM, but on HM I used to do: Pugnacity > (Triage adrenal) > SRMP > SRMP > KC > KP > spam UWM until energy is at 30-40 > Cool Head > resume spamming UWM, start throwing EMP in if UWM would put you below 60 energy.

That would work for Force Exhaustion/Crush, but Zen/Berserk and Combat Focus/Enrage requiring a target wouldn't be much better.

The advantage of keeping Singularity/Shockwave as a self-buff is that the auto-crit debuff could be attached to Zealous Leap/Obliterate. This way, Sweep/Smash wouldn't require a target.

Exactly, the damage per tick is far, far too weak on the PTS right now. Removing one tick from the base ability would be much better both in terms of practicality and visual appeal (it's just downright ridiculous that an orbital bombardment deals less damage per hit than Snipe).

I don't really have a problem with nerfing Orbital Strike, but the way they're going about it is an absolute farce. How about just removing one tick instead? It'd deal half the damage it does now on single targets but would still be a useful AoE ability since weak adds tend to die quite quickly anyway. And most importantly, each hit would still feel powerful. The developers seem to have forgotten that the strongest AoE abilities of every other class are either instant or 3s channels. Orbital Strike needs to be more powerful as long as it deals its damage over such a long time.

That was certainly a much quicker fix than I'd have expected. Thanks to everyone who bug reported this!

Don't mind the necro, I was about to bump this thread for visibility anyway (more bug reports should hopefully get this fixed). While the bug you refer to has indeed been fixed, it does raise an interesting question. If Shock Charge used to proc Wounding Shots, it must've been treated as a bleed effect, which *may* be why it's affected by Black Market Equipment in the first place. That doesn't explain why it works with Electrified Railgun though, so probably not. Animations don't affect DPS, although I'll agree that it can be somewhat of an annoyance at times.

I've noticed this too on my Shadow and have honestly wondered if it's really working as intended... might be worth bug reporting.

Right, I knew Rifle Shot was broken up into 2 hits but wasn't sure if both the Flurry ones used the main hand or not.

Yeah, I hope Lethal Dose is fixed eventually, although I don't have high hopes considering BioWare's general dislike of hybrid specs. I did get a response to the bug report I made back when I created the thread, saying that the information would be passed on to the appropriate team, so there's that. What I meant was that since misses register as hits on torparse, all the off-hand misses skew the overall crit numbers on gunslinger parses compared to snipers (same thing with mercs and commandos). Yeah, IIRC I decided to try delaying Adrenaline Probe and my adrenal by one rotation, so I could catch half my Orbital Strike as well as Series of Shots in the adrenal's duration. It's impossible to use Adrenaline Probe more than 3 times anyway, so I decided to try it for one parse and it turned out okay - hardly something I'd do every time during actual Ops encounters though. Nope, Ctrl+F "activates Flurry" and "activates Rifle" when viewing the respective logs and you get 18 hits for both. I guess Flurry of Bolts lacks an off-hand component since Torparse lists 32 hits for both. I have a Gunslinger but never really considered that. It's uncanny how similar the ability distributions actually are. Ignoring the fact that it took me one more round of DoTs and a Cull+SoS to kill the dummy (which I'm fairly certain is where the APM variance comes from), the only differences are that you have one more Charged Burst where I have one more Ambush (IIRC I opted for Ambush as I could not afford Snipe's 20 energy at the time), and I have one more Series of Shots because I delayed Adrenaline Probe by ~20s that one time.