While on the subject of Hardmare. Eric? can we please make sure that next time we get a proper veteran mode again? This Hardmare thing is getting a tad annoying. While I like a challenge, I rather have my challenge in master mode. The Gods bosses are hardly veteran bosses. You qualify SM as a mode where you can enjoy the story while not needing to learn to many tactics. Veteran is a slight step up where you need to go think about what you need to do. Master is something where you really need to focus. Currently with Gods the SM is slightly to difficult to be considered a normal SM. I'm not saying its hard, I think its still easy. But when comparing it to Rav and ToS ...... The Veteran Gods are definitly NOT veteran. I won't dare comparing Tyth to for example TfB Kephess. Difficulty wise: easiest eSM ( EV - KP SM ) easy SM ( EC - TfB - Scum - DF - DP - Rav - ToS) eVM ( EV - KP ) eMM (Nefra) (side note: sorry but you really need to fix the enrage timer. DPS-wise you need 19,5k raidDPS which equals to about 3k DPS needed per dps. This means you can do this one with 6 good geared tanks and 2 healers. Fun fact: Nefra's dps check is lower than any boss in EV or KP VM) veteran VM ( EC - TfB - Scum - DF - DP - Rav 3/5 - ToS 4/5 ) master/hardmare VM (M&B - Birdy & co - Revan - all Gods) MM (all MM except for Nefra)

Owh I agree on that one. Sabengies are by far the lesser offenders and other classes have it hard on energy too. True. When in a real fight you have to deal with lapses in focus which automaticly make the energy management easier. However in the stand and shoot fights/phases I do notice the limitations of the spec. But like Cooperjf was saying earlier, I try to play the spec aggressivly on the edge. Whoa! Hold your horse Cooper. Maybe my post might have suggested the feeling but I don't think sabengies aren't viable on a few fights. Like my sig is saying. I have always been playing saboteur and never ever was I feeling nor being a detriment to my group. Well. I was but that had more to do with my at time unorthodox ideas (and not informing my team/raidleader ) My 1st toon was a sentinel (because whats better than 1 lightsaber? ..... ). But when I made my 2nd toon back during launch I fell in love with Saboteur and never strayed. Except for when it was needed to play something different. To be fair. The rotation I listed in the OP isn't the one I am using. My own rotation uses Flyby on cooldown (which makes it even harder I guess). Also cool head and illegal mods were already in my calculations. Sadly the cooldown on cool head is slightly to long. The grenade thing is a good idea I guess. Although a bit costly

Thx for the reply shyroman. I appreciate the feedback. I'll adapt my openings post later in the weekend. You are 100% correct on this one. I checked my logs via parsec and noticed a trend of spending 56 energy in 1 block and 76 in the other one. (with 11 / 17 regen respectivly) Besides flurry and hightail. Which other ability would you suggest than? A few weeks ago balance sages could just use TK-trow an extra time to regen their force. For single target fights the goal is to use the highest possible damage rotation. Artificially lowering the energy consumption by dealing less damage is not an ideal thing. Now don't get me wrong. I don't mind sabengies staying as they are but I do want to make the point clear to Bioware that we are and were not in a lake of energy. If we stay like this I'll just use a few flurries to reduce my damage and energy. I agree you wouldn't notice the 4 energy. With 4 energy you could go several minutes without needing cool head. But again this number 4 is done by lowering your damage output. I realize there are fights that feature downtimes but those less than 50%. Out of the 52 instanced ops bosses only 20 feature large or frequent breaks. Bosses with forced breaks 2/5 EV = pylons, Soa 0/5 KP = none 2/4 EC = minefield, Kephess (tanks has a few times to deal lower damage to regen energy 2/6 TfB = Operator, Terror (bonus boss = no breaks) 4/8 Scum = Dash (only when getting lost), titan, thrasher, olok (bonus boss = no breaks) 2/5 DF = Czero has a few short moments (when he jumps away for lasers on Master), brontes 3/5 DP = Calph, 4th boss (always mix up Tyrans and Raptus lol), council 2/5 Rav = Master Blaster, Rugar 2/5 ToS = Rev commanders, Revan (to state the obvious note: underlurker doesn't have a forced break in dps) 0/2 GoM = none 1/1 TC = yes 0/1 Monolith = no breaks 0/1 Eyeless = no breaks 0/1 Xeno = there are a few breaks but those are not frequent and long enough recouperate

Sorry for coming back a bit late at this. Had a real busy week. As I kinda wanted to do some numbers on this matter I thought this was as good a time as any. Anyways. The numbers themselves don't lie. It's a fact that a sabslinger rotation is and was a net loss. The other (and real) reason I wanted to make this post is that bioware is thinking sabs and engies were swimming in energy. I get it that a gunslinger doesn't work the same as a sage and that we will never see energy management like the balance sages currently have (seriously, can they even run out force anymore?) Enough blah blah. On to my post. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Obviously I am talking about the highest damage rotation. You can always weave in an ability that deals less damage like a hightailed scatterbombing or a flurry. With the same reason you could say a few weeks ago that balance sages could just use more TK-trow. Problem solved right? Regarding the rotation: Based on 0% alacrity A normal sabslinger rotational block takes 18 seconds. In these 18 seconds you have 2 sub blocks sub block 1 20 - speedshot 15 - inc nade 10 - shock charge 15 - sabotage -5 - thermal nade (net gain of 5 energy) total cost = 55 energy sub block 2 20 - speedshot 15 - inc nade 15 - vital shot 10 - thermal nade -3 - explosive charge (net gain of 3 energy) total cost = 57 energy Total cost per block of 18 seconds = 112 energy In 18 seconds you will regain about 90 energy (5 energy x 18s) This means you will lose about 22 energy per block. Cool head = 50 energy gain Illegal mods = 15 energy gain Our goal is to stay above 60% energy to keep ourself in the high ranges. The tipping point at 60% energy happens at 66 energy, which means you have a total of 44 to spend without getting into the lower regen zone. This means we have a total of about 110 energy (45 + 50 + 15). 110 energy / 22 energy loss per block = 5 blocks / 90 seconds. With some good managing you could stretch this maybe to 100 minutes (with dipping below the mark a bit). While cool head has a cooldown of 90 seconds it sadly doesn't allign with the loss. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So ..... our options are: Weave in low hitting abilities Hope for a forced downtime in the fight A change to our energy management to make it easier to maintain. (hint hint Eric/Keith?) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A few additional thoughts Even higher damage rotations (at higher costs) Take in mind that for the highest damage rotation you want to use flyby as a filler. This means once a while you lose an extra 5 energy. To make the numbers easier to display in this post I ignored this for now. In essence this means the situation is worse than displayed. Illegal mods This 15 energy gain by illegal mods is dependent on setboni to remain as is for the next patch or patches. Also in real fights you tend to use illegal mods right at the start to sync it with relic procs, setbonus procs and (passive) raidbuffs. hightail deals good damage. Why not include it? It deals good damage for sure.................... on a dummy. Using hightail in bossfights can be done but not in all cases. In quite a few cases where you can land all 5 bombs on the target you don't want to risk the roll. Hence I didn't include it as hightail is mostly used for a fun bit of extra damage except for a few exceptions. State of the sabengie before the 5.3 nerf Well. Calling it a nerf goes to far when looking at energy. We went from 4x 5 energy to 3x 6 energy. Translating 2 extra energy gives us 5,5 blocks instead of 5. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some ideas for improvement

Erik, any word on smoothing the negative energy management for saboteur/engi?

Quite hilarious. Not really groupfinder related but close enough (SM ops via gen chat). At about 18:30 a guildy and I decided to join a forming group for TfB SM. We had ops at 20:00 but figured that 1,5 hours would be enough to clear it, even with some bad luck. Sadly the opsleader had issues getting the group together and kicked 1 (maybe 2? dont remember) out in order to invite the correct roles. Anyways. On we went and boy oh boy. Trashpulls went horrible, healers were having a hard time keeping people alive and at times the tanks forgot to tank (not sure how else healers can die from to much aggro). But we managed to keep ourselves alive on almost every pull so I didn't really cared. Sadly due to the slower trashkills and a few wipes on operator my guildy and I ran out of time. I thought to be nice and inform the opsleader that my guildy and I were running late for ops and that we might need to leave soon. Apparently the opsleader wasn't fond of it and had forgotten we joined in with more than enough time on the clock as his reply was along the lines of 'why did you even started with the run than?' It was now 20 minutes past my guildopstime and my raidleader started to get a bit anxious. So after a succesfull kill on Kephess I decided to leave as the terror itself would have taken to long. The next day I had the following conversation: https://imgur.com/a/OZNGC I'm not sure which failure the opsleader was referring at, but the beauty was that we left after a succesfull kill. Also even though the group wasn't brilliant, the Terror would go down in 2, maybe 3 attempts. Lastly i guess a quitter would have left after the trashpull before dreadguards where all but 2 people died

Agent = havent played this class enough to get a feeling for how the companions are Warrior = Two girls with a serious case of needing a shrink. One of them even brainwashed BH = again a simplistic minded person Inquisitor = havent played this class enough to get a feeling for how the companions are Trooper = annoying brat who only want to follow rules and can site them probably by hart. I don't see ANY reason why this sounds appealing in a relation ship. Unless you are the type who fancies that sort of stuff Knight = really? Who know what left inside her mind. I wouldn't trust brainwashed people like that Consular = serious case of over achievness. Nah .... Smuggler = Okey, having the possibility to become king sounds nice but erhm. Thats kinda a romance for the money. Not sure if thats your idea of love but hey .... whatever makes you tick right? Akavi. Way to aggressive. Wouldnt want to expose my children to someone like her ever ...... Ohw ..... and just an FYI. Have you ever heard of the world 'lgbtqiap'? This post seems awefully narrowminded to me. (besides the point that a company by definition CAN'T like nor dislike anyone as a company isn't a living breathing organism. But I get what you were meaning to say.)

Can you tell us more about the 'special' part from the augments you'll be introducing? Am I right to assume the new augments will be something different than a simple stat increase of what have now? And if so, what can we expect? Or are you lot naugthy and keeping this a teaser

Lol ..... The excuses i see in this thread Its a badly written Line of code. Why should i be punished for the mistakes bioware had made? Using an exploit means you are using an exploit. It doesnt matter how bad a job bioware may have done. Good example is that my bike has been stolen with my Keys in IT. Silly mistake on my part? Sure IT was. Was the thief performing a crime? According to a few people in here apparently not. Why make us grind out this flashpoint? Its silly. Regardless how much work unlocking might be. If you dont want to put in the effort than dont get the stronghold. How is this making IT correct to steal your way into the stronghold? Stealing remains stealing. All in all. When something has been classified as exploit there is no way to bend IT into An okey thing to do. Only possible excuse is when IT happened by accident. About the possible 6th stronghold. Dont forget the official intent was 4 strongholds. After these 4 we would need to choose which ones we keep active. And when you think of IT. Where do you draw the Line? 5? 6? Or 10? Where does IT stop? Its perfectly fine to have a cap and choose the strongholds we really want. What we do need is a way to conserve the deactivated strongholds. I personally didnt had the need to deactivate strongholds but a guildy told me the decorations would auto transfer to inventory. Anyways. Please suck IT up guys and take responsability where its due. Bioware for creating the easy exploit and the exploiters for being very naughty persons. Ohw and Just run the fp with a stealther if you cant Stay alive at the last Boss.

For some reason I still have access to the traitor and can still use the companion as heal/dps/tank for me. I can also still use the companion as crafter. While I really like having access to the traitor as its my 2nd highest level crafter I don't think we are supposed to keep him/her/it as companion. I think I know the reason why we keep the companion.

Good point about the thermal hits indeed. But swapping vital for flurry doesn't really make sense as the damage done is less like that. The optimal damage rotation should contain as few flurries as possible. Just as balance sages shouldn't be required to spam tk-throw without using the procs for disturbance. I know a gunslinger will always use flurry in the rotation but thats not because its good dps. Its only to make sure we don't dip to low in energy.

Thx for the update Was getting quite anxious to see what the nerf would be for us. Changes seems fine to me. Did a quick calculation on a few bossparses of mine and in general my dps would drop by 4-6% depending the bossfight. However, and please clarify this. 1 - Why do you/bioware think we have to much energy? 2 - If you think we are 'swimming' in to much energy why only reduce the energy gain by 2 energy per 18 seconds? Our rotation is currently energy negative. A simplified rotation below. If I use this basic rotation I run out of energy pretty fast. If I would use flyby as a filler .......... 1st block = Speedshot --> incendiairy grenade --> shock charge --> Sabotage --> thermal nade 2nd block = Speedshot --> incendiairy grenade --> vital shot --> explosive charge --> any filler beside flurry Without taking alacrity into account 1st block = speedshot+inc nade + schock charge + sabotage + thermal nade costs 20+15+10+15+0 = 60 gains = 5 energy per second x 9 seconds = 45 1st block costs us 15 energy 2nd block = speedshot + inc nade + vital shot+ explosive charge + thermal nade costs 20+15+15+15+15 = 80 gains 5 energy per second x 9 seconds = 45 cont charge 4x 5 energy = 20 total gains = 65 2nd block costs us 15 energy. This means I am currently losing about 1,5 energy per second which means I can only sustain my normal rotation once without dropping below 70%. The next rotation I HAVE to either pop my coolhead / illegal mods or add in a flurry. This is truly the case for the more usual opening rotations. Now there might be changes in the above rotation during opsfights but in general our energy output vs gains wouldn't change. So where exactly are we swimming in energy?

Sry I don't speak foreign Without joking, you might want to make an english version as there are quite a few words I don't understand. Based on this sheet I can't tell what somebody should pay.

Please note: Considered not viable by who? Sages are still capable of doing the content. Other classes are at times and in the correct hands better. Better doesn't all of a sudden discard the less good ones. To use Erics example. Target is 1.000 DPS, Sages are at 1.200 DPS, gunnery is at 1.800 DPS. Does this make the sage not viable? Imo not. Only less desirable for most people but still viable

Sure sure don quichotte. By any chance, do you call it Normal mode, Hard mode and Nighmare mode? I hope so. Else your statement holds little value. Now I think of it. How were the lowbe flashpoints being called before Bioware changed Normal mode to Story mode? I assume it was normal mode too? Afterwards it changed to story and now its tactical. Moral of the story. Feel free to call it however you want. If you feel good by calling it Ultimate dungeons than nobody would stand in your way. Just not how its being called Without joking / sarcasm; I get what you mean. Not sure why they changed it to master mode. But hey. They did it so I guess we'll have to live with it. Or fight against the Bioware windmills.

I really would prefer option 2 (even over having specific token drops). The reason for this is that it gives you so much more flexibility with upgrading items. The ability to choose which item to upgrade 1st is a good thing. For example I could upgrade my mainhand 1st without having to clear the specific boss that drops the mainhand. Next to the flexibility you also have the benefit of always being able to do the mastermodes that you like instead of bashing against a specific boss that some groupmembers hate. Also each bosskill WILL work towards you being fully BiS. Lastly. It gives the people who don't want to PvP an easier time to upgrade their gear too. So yes. Sign me up for option 2

Vicadin. Could you elaborate on how you calculate how much alacrity is needed? Are you using a factor to artificially lower the alacrity stat to simulate downtime in rotations for example?

Nice to see someone making a list of it Sadly no clear yet here. But in order to smooth the transition you might want to call it HM / VM & MM / NiM. I know we all like the old names of SM, HM and NiM but clinging to the past isn't needed and eventually we will call it VM and MM anyways. We are all calling the easiest mode SM afterall. Which technically should be called NM (as in normal mode) which was the name before the namechange to SM.

Big red seems to be down but I think its a different issue. My guildy who is living in the UK is still online. Another dutch guildy also disconnected. Issue seems to be location based as my UK-guildy just told me another UK person logged in Seems the UK is taking cutting ties with Europe quite serious? EDIT: can still log in but its taking veeeeeery long and its going quite slow. EDIT: still in loading screen from server select. Guess its not working atm

It used to be hard but with the current boost you het multiple levels per ops. Doing chapter 1 of 2 takes about 6 minutes and gives nearly 1 crate at cr300. This mixture keeps IT fun to do.

Whenever I can justify it I always go after snipers during warzones. I know what they can do so its not that hard to counter their moves. I have to admit in 5.0 I only played shadow as a melee but I do love messing with them

Oh yes, I do understand what you mean. I just don't like it when people use false and incorrect statements to make their points. Use valid arguements and you won't hear me about it You do have a valid arguement that slingers are very hard to take down in patch 5.0. Your points however are still to be taken with some salt. A few things on what you say above: - getting back on target after knockback 2 seconds (1 second each?) correct - 4 second hard stun, 2 second (if broken straight away soft stun) plus slows, plus evasion, correct although evasion isnt really an immunity. Would be the same to call to call any defensive an immunity - 4 seconds hunkerdown on hightail. This is a thread is about saboteur slingers. Saboteur doesnt have hunker down on hightail. They have the tickle called scatterbombs. - That's at least 14 seconds of similar effect to add. So 34 out of 45 seconds. This is not really correct statement to make. If it was a 1vs1 fight with a melee than I might agree slightly. But even than you wouldn't be able to use all the stuns you are naming purely because of resolve. When its against another ranged dps most of the stuff you name wont do a lot of good for us. Diversion sounds better than it actually is. While it does provide us with a good defensive bonus, the slow requires our enemy to be silly enough to keep standing in it (provided you even spec a utilitypoint into it. I personally don't). I do agree with you that gunslingers are currently in a very good place for PvP. Trying to go after a gunslinger as a melee means the melee will have a hard time. Aiming yourself to be in between the slinger and a wall/pillar will help a bit. It might even be considered OP. Not as much as mandos though. Also stealth classes are really underestimated I think.

You make way to much sense man. Thats not a PvP thing to do btw. I mostly do premades but thats more because after opstime we go in for some PvP fun with a few friends. We could ofc try our best to not get in the same group but that would be a tad silly. I'm in this group because I like to play with friends so ehm .... thats why some people might run into a TSS premade. And no we are not always winning since most of us are not good. Just like playing together. If you see a crazy gunslinger charging right at you 50/50 chance it will be me

You mean the 20 seconds each 45 seconds? That hunker down? Or maybe the imaginary one that has near permanent hunker down? 50% is hardly near permanent.

No offense Eric but how sure are you this time? I am following this thread for a while now and the official statements have been conflicting quite often. PS: I will keep most of my crates in my vaults regardless whether the droprate on pre 5.2 crates remains against pre 5.2 chances. In the longterm its best to keep the crates unopened. If you are not rank 300 yet you will get much better results from levelling up the remaining ranks. If you are rank 300 its best to use disintegration to gain more tier 4 crates.