To start off with, im the guy who wrote those guides linked in OP (though I haven't commented here in a long time) With that out of the way: PTs/VGs are in their best state ever for PvE DPS. As such, if you want to complain, you should look to either complain about our PvP capabilities, or our tanking. For PvP, Its mostly because of our complete lack of defensive cooldowns (Oh look, I have 1. And a half. WOOOOOOOOO) For tanks, see the PvP excuse. Despite this, Powertechs/Vanguards still have their ludicrous advantages of the past when they go into a raid. Almost no melee abilities and no casted/channeled abilities make it stupidly easy to keep the rotation up. In fact, they're in an even better state than before, as they can now move during the replacement Mortar Volley/Death from Above, while its on a much lower cooldown and does comparable damage (since its buff). To add to that, there is also the fact that Pyrotech no longer has to channel flamethrower, making their rotation just as mobile as Advanced Prototype. So we end up with a class with dps specs that are actually better than what we had in the 3.x-4.x cycle, and we've still got Pyro Shield and Reflexive armor to make our in-raid damage even higher. Add to that Pyrotechs getting 30% AoE damage reduction and honestly, there is no excuse for you having problems as a PT or VG in a raid, unless tanking. TL;DR - PT/VG are better in the only case the OP linked (also the only time they are better)

For AP, the high crit build (~740 alacrity) is about 1% weaker than the high Alacrity build. HOWEVER When going for the high crit build, you want to augment for Mastery, not critical. It performs better. By about 1.5% (High Crit + Crit Augments is about 2.5% behind high alacrity)

Oh god I put the wrong enhance/aug numbers in - I've got a spreadsheet to figure these things out and I accidentally went with "Remaining" instead of "Used" for alacrity

Accuracy: 1 Stim 3 Augments 1 Enhancement Alacrity 5 Augments 6 Enhancements Critical 2x Crystals 6 Augments 3 Enhancements Crit from Relics/Stim Note: Enhancements can also be earpiece/implants Relics, you want a serendipitous assault and a focused retribution Note: This holds true with all PT/VG DPS specs, and all tiers of augments for rating 248 gear

Also, using nefra is cheating - that DoT is an AoE

The dulfy one is up to date for rotation, but I do agree a new one could be put out since then. Which is why I intend to put out a guide with patch 5.9, including gearing for rating 230/236/242/246/248 gear, 228/236/240 augments, low/high alacrity gearing, and a recommendation for which one to use based off your gear level The main issue though is that low number next to Pyro ST DPS. It should be a 9

For tier 1 gear (and tier 2 gear), Going for high alacrity sacrifices a bit too much crit for it to be worth it. If you're fully augmenting, you want 794 Accuracy and 724 Alacrity when running 230 rating gear, or if using 236 augments your accuracy will jump to 798. This is done with 2 accuracy pieces, 2 accuracy augments, an accuracy stim, and 4 alacrity pieces. Everything else in crit (though at such a low gear level, power/mastery augs can work at about a 50/50 split with crit. Though dont get em, cause they dont go as well with your gear improvements as crit augs)

Blade Barrier AND Guardianship: 1 HP Shield per Bonus Healing Focused Defense: 2.35 HP restored per Bonus Healing Bonus healing = 0.23 per point of power, 0.2 per point of mastery, which is then boosted by force valor/force might/etc...

Both are pretty close range, with most of the rotation being 10m abilities, though both of them using their version of Stockstrike (4m ability) on cooldown (every 9 seconds). As for the difference between them? Tactics is a burst spec, which uses a priority list for the rotation. Plasmatech is an AoE Sustained spec, which uses a set rotation, and while its not as bursty as Tactics is, it does AoE as part of its rotation naturally and is about 10% stronger on average

This. Also I made a type on the original post, I meant 246+, not 146+ Im still in the past NOTE: This is an estimation, not a confirmation. I might do some actual maths on this later to see what optimal gearing for each level (230/236/242/248, with 228 and 236 augments, would be)

It all depends on your gear rating, and if you're using augments or not. If you are using augments, and have a rating of ~246+, Then go the high alacrity build. Otherwise, go with the low alacrity build. To reach the threshold without the high item rating/augments, you give up too much crit for it to be worth it.

The only things out of date in regards to dulfy are: 1: DPS rankings, there was some rebalancing since then that made some classes better and some worse (e.g. pyro went from really bad to about an 8/10 in terms of its rank, Lethality Ops were top and are now around Pyro PTs, etc...) 2: The gearing is off, as since the guides came out people discovered alacrity only affects the GCD in .1 second increments, so it has thresholds of 7.15% (~704 alacrity) and 15.39% (~1860 alacrity) Hell, the 3.0 AP PT guide (for rotation) is still valid despite the fact I wrote it some 3 years ago. The only reason Pyro isn't still relevant is because they changed how flamethrower works.

Since the gold augments are pretty much the old purple augments in crit/acc/alacrity, (its only +2 to the stat), get the same ones. The difference between purple and gold is the gold ones also have +power to go with endurance + [Crit/acc/alac]. So in other words, its the same either way. Now, when the next tier of augments comes out, this might change, but thats still a while off. Im probably just gonna stick with the purples until then anyway.

If you have Power and Mastery to sacrifice, do that. If not, sacrifice crit. Also, after a year of not being around, Im back! Time to update that sig...

Oh god i missed the "Hits" box, no wonder why I thought it was so far off. Yeah, I screwed up, Pyro's probably gonna suck

Someone posted it on reddit. And Bant, if you're still here, you missed 10/11 ticks on scorch/Plastmatize with Pyro/Plasmatech. Might want to fix that up

Good point, for some reason I was thinking AP/Tactics, not Pyro/Plasmatech (even though Plasmatech was clearly stated in the original post). There will be a new rotation come 5.0, which I have written down somewhere and will use to get a new guide out (unless dulfy found someone who's playing more often than me to write it, which im perfectly fine with)

The 3.0 guide for the Vanguard DPS rotation is still relevant (and should be relevant when 5.0 drops). Im not sure if the link is still in the PT guide, but you can find the 3.0 VG guide in my sig. The only difference really is the addition of Storm (Jet Charge) to the opener in the event you need to (which is almost never), and gearing which is faction neutral anyway.

There are 2 ways to get into an operation. Either someone will be forming it on fleet (they'll be saying something like LFG 1/2 tank, 1-4 heals, 1-10 dps [operation name] [sM/HM]), in which case you'd respond if they're looking for DPS and its an SM mode. This method, you have to go to the entrance of the operation itself to do it (Eternity Vault (EV), Karaggas Palace (KP), Explosive Conflict (EC), The Terror from Beyond (TFB) and Scum and Villainy (SnV) are found on the fleet, The Dread Fortress (DF) and The Dread Palace (DP) are found on Oricon, The Ravagers (Rav) is found in Rishi and The Temple of Sacrifice (ToS) is found on Yavin IV), and i'd also recommend sticking to EV/KP for your first couple of runs (there are a lot more mechanics in operations than in flashpoints, for example). The alternative is to use group finder, which has a different operation every day - simply untick all the flashpoint options and it will queue you into the current operation. Though people tend to form a group on fleet and queue up that way anyway most of the time. Its important to note that you can only do each operation once per week, so once you have completed eternity vault you have to wait for the reset (which for me in Eastern Australia is Tuesday night 10-11pm depending on daylight savings) to do it again, though you can do all 9 operations every week. Also important to note - everyone in the group will probably want some of the gear, so unless you get a really nice group of fully geared out people, you may end up with 0-1 set bonus pieces per run. It takes a while really. Its also important to note that going into a story mode operation gives you bolster, so as long as you have gear in every slot, you shouldn't worry about your gear screwing your teammates over.

To get better schematics for mods, you have to go into an operation, kill the boss, get the token, then rip the mod out of the piece of gear you get from the token, then Reverse Engineer it. That will give you better mod schematics. As for what happens when you respec - all your effort put into your current tree isn't wasted. In fact, its 100% refunded and automatically assigned when you choose your alternative spec. E.g. you want to go from Plasmatech to Tactics? When you choose tactics, you'll have every passive and also 7 utility points to assign. As for which is better - Tactics is better burst/mobility, Plasmatech is better AoE, and they're about even on damage output.

Well the best armor set for levelling is the DvL Armor that gives you a 50% XP boost, but other than that the crew skill depends on what you plan on doing for your levelling and how you intend to end-game. Other than that, a set of armor that you like the look of is what to go for as almost everything is moddable nowdays and the mods for armor are very easy to get. E.g. doing flashpoints? Get crew skills that help you with the shortcuts (only ones I can think of right now are Archeology/Slicing) doing PvP? Go Biochem and its supporting skills for self-made stimpacks. Wanting to make a lot of money? Grab crew skills to make augment kits.

Unload to proc 1 mag shot, power shot (instant) for the other. Since everything is a 15 second cool down you can be creative with the ordering. E.g. SS -> IM -> UL -> Filler -> MS -> TD -> PS -> MS -> Filler Filler is Power Shot, Rapid Shots or an execute-proceed missile blast. Only Serrated Shot forces you to stand still for that rotation

If you add 1% alacrity without losing anything, than yes its 1% more dps (from the base of 0% alacrity). However, if you're at, say, 8% alacrity, that 1% alacrity will be worth 0.93% more dps (not the full 1%), plus you'd also lose some DPS from dropping the crit to hit that alacrity (8% - 9% alacrity is ~112 alacrity rating, which converts to ~2% crit rating AND crit damage)

Ah, the good old days of 2.0 -> 2.4 (2.4 onwards you needed a super nintendo controller so you had the extra buttons for Assault Plastique + Incendiary Round) To have a legitimate DPS spec with Ion Pulse + Stockstrike once again, that's the dream

The armor debuff is applied, and as its a DPS model its actually done over infinite health. However, the reason behind you doing less DPS is explained throughout this thread TL;DR of it being that the engine tends to add about a ~0.1 second delay to the GCD, which means that @ 10% alacrity (randomly selected value), the DPS loss would equate to about a 6.8% DPS loss - or ~410 DPS in 216s, ~425 dps loss in 220s and ~442 dps loss in 224s