Thanks alot for the info and the amazing resources! Now to put em to good use.

Hey guys, pretty new to snipers, can I ask where the poison damage is coming from? Also, is a low crit rating (1-2 enchancements) the way to go? Is this because of the free cit from the tree? Just a few questions I had a in mind and wanted to ask as I prepare my sniper. Also, is there anything like clipping snipe, series of shots early, etc like clipping a ravage early? It seems it could be done .1 seconds, so just wanted to ask. edit: I plan to play mm, I really enjoy the style.

Thanks for the replies guys, I knew it was possible, just wanted to see the community's views on it. I will relay this to them and hopefully I can change their minds. I just wanted to optimize because they are part of my guild's first hm group and I want them to be the best they can for nightmare.

So I'm arguing with these two tanks in my guild about opening threat. They're of the mentality that the DPS waiting "4 seconds" for the tank to grab aggro is the right way to start a fight. I keep saying that it's possible to hold threat right off the bat, but I really am getting no support. I know in some fights it might be beneficial to wait a few seconds such as Tyrans or Writhing Horror just to make sure nothing goes wrong the rest of the fight. But it's that iron clad mentality of waiting that really bugs me. The DPS gets blamed if they pull aggro and they refuse to acknowledge their own opening threat gen. So what I'm asking is essentially, who's right? I know it might be a petty way of asking this, but I just want to see everyone's opinions on this. Also, can anyone post their openers, just to get an idea of how you guys deal with threat in the first few GCD's? Also, this is in 8m (I know in 16m it's a different story in some cases) HM and NiM, and my guildies are a powertech and a jugg, while I'm a sin tank. I know sin tank is pretty threat gen. friendly, but I know it's still doable for the other two, especially a powertech. Any insight on this is appreciated, I just wanna stop arguing either way.

Yea its around 5.5k per hit at max. And I believe Twin Strike hits 3 times.

The only thing right now I can think of as to why I'm taking alot of damage would be that I have alot of B mods. I have been keeping up stacks of protection most of the time, using cds spaced out, adrenal, and medpac. I guess it'll get better with time and some more gear. But yea, I'll go through the other parses listed and compare them to mine. Thanks again for the help everyone!

Ah thanks, yea I've actually watched some of your past videos from your stream I believe, not sure when you actually stream lol. Tried Nefra tonight again, downed it in 5 tries, and averaged around 2.27 dtps over those tries. I felt way more comfortable this time, we ran with an offheal sorc so we had double puddle and an extra cleanse. As to the opener and threat generation, I think I've been following your version mostly, though I should be using discharge more often than I am after looking at my parses more closely. I'm gonna try to get my tanks in guild to change to armor adrenal then, thanks for the confirmation. Mind if I pm you down the road if I get any further questions? @AAAAzrael, yea I think we just have to get better with cleanses as a group and coordinate those better, hopefully that'll get better over time since it was only our first attempt with that particular group/

@xnightshadex I have read that guide, but just to clarify, I should be reactivating Dark Ward when the stacks of the ward itself run out and not when the absorption stacks run out right? If so, then I was doing that before and I should go back to that xD. @Methoxa Yea I feel so uneasy just tanking nefra on my sin, just so painful. I have not been paying to my dtps, which I see now is a bad thing, I'll pay more attention to that. Last time we did it, we ran 2 melee and 2 ranged, with a merc and a sniper, so I'm thinking it was not so cleanse friendly. We're going to try again tonight, but might end up pugging, but I will pay more attention to dtps. Oh, just found the logs, how do I upload them to a post? After looking at them though, my average dtps over about 15 tries was 2.1. But they ranged from 1800-2.7 I believe? some were 3k+ but I think those were due to early wipes or the single hit spike when only one tank is on her. Also, am I understanding Nefra's attacks correctly? Does she split the dmg between two tanks evenly or more to the one that has her threat? This is in reference to nightshade's having the other tank guard me. Our usual tank is me(sin) and my friend a jugg. I think he takes just about as much damage is me so I don't know if him guarding me is going to work. I have to ask him what his dtps is the next time I see him. I looked over his stats and I think he has 100-150 def lower than the optimal values from keyboardninja's thread just for the average values and not even for df. Oh another general question I have is whether or not absorb adrenals or armor adrenals are better for powertechs and juggs. I know armor are better for sins, but I did a few quick calcutions and I think armor are also better for the other two? My math wasn't too complex based on a few assumptions, so a confirmation would be helpful hehe. Anyway, thanks very much to both of you! I'm going to give it another go today with reactive warding and pay more attention to our raid's numbers overall. You guys really got me thinking seriously about values and stats again so thanks =D!

Hey guys, I have some questions about my sin tank as I'm about to hit hard mode df and dp and I really want to clean up my play. Right now my profile is: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/78cc7770-c9c2-4002-8fe2-ea8e1127f20d Some differences from it for some reason are: armor: 7880, 23.45% Defense (same rating), 44.8k hp, and I have 3 pieces of a set bonus. I know I need to change my implant that has accuracy, I think my guildy can make a shield and absorb one...I'll have to get on that. 1) When do I refresh dark ward? I used to refresh it on cd, but lately I've been delaying it to use the absorb stacks, but I don't know the optimal time to refresh it. 2) I usually don't have threat problems but I need to practice my opening rotation on my own and see which variances will give me the best opener. If anyone has any advice on an opener, it would be appreciated. 3) My biggest problem atm is Nefra, I have done it a few times, but the damage I take is absurd. I take about I think 5.5k damage per hit of twin strike unmitigated. I'm wondering if I NEED a 4th set piece to help with this or my current gear is enough. My group has tried it with 3 healers (like a merc switching to heals for cleanse and extra heals) and I really do not like doing that. I don't know if it's a healing issue, a cleanse issue, or an issue on my side, but I haven't comfortably downed Nefra. I have downed it, but it's usually been with 3 heals, 1 being an offheal sorc or merc. I guess this is a really annoying issue for me lol. Anyway, any advice and info would be appreciated. I just really want to clean up my play for df and dp hm. Thanks!

Yep it definitely did help, thanks for the reply!

Hey folks, so I've been focusing alot on my marauder lately and I had some questions about annihilation: 1) Is it a good idea to open with frenzy + berserk? (with 3 stacks of saber ofc) 2) I saw on the 2.4 Dps leaderboards (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=685275), all the anni players had annihilate as their most % dmg, when I parse I usually have deadly saber ticks as the most, but a few times I had annihilate when I concentrated on using it right away on cd. Both times the dps was around the same. Is this something I should improve on? 3) I tend to saber strike/auto attack a few times to get rage to annihilate - is this indicative of poor rage management? Or is using saber strike a few times ok. 4) I have a habit of using force charge with deadly saber since they're the same cd - good or bad habit? 5) How often do you guys use force scream? I haven't been using it while parsing but sometimes in raids I do use it. Sorry for the specific questions, I've just become really serious about cleaning up my mara play and I want to excel at it. I will focus on learning carnage + rage, but my set has stats for anni so that's a future project and I wasn't too comfortable using it at first.

I see, I have alot of work to do it seems. Most of my gear is comm gear and after using the gear editor it just hit me that I have so many B mods. I'll work on getting those replaced asap. Redoubt relic definitely seems like the right choice now and I guess I'll look around more threads and see what people's views are on relics as a whole. But thanks for your help guys, really put me in perspective.

Oh here's what I have so far: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/78cc7770-c9c2-4002-8fe2-ea8e1127f20d I'm pretty sure I entered everything right...but there were some slight differences for some reason. My in-game stats are: 325 Defense Rating (with STIM): 20.61% chance, 623 shield: 32.71%, and 952 absorb: 44.80%. And damage reduction says 37.75% with an armor rating of 7790. Bleh hopefully I didn't mess up inputting during gear editor.

Hey folks, So I'm part of a group that is going to start running hm's regularly starting with tfb and snv and then work our way up. I'm a decently geared sin tank atm with 72s, a few 78s, and a 2 piece 69 set bonus. My question is if the 69 set bonus is worth keeping over the 78 non-set bonus armoring. I figure the 5% shield chance is worth it, but I just wanted to ask to be sure. Or would it be wise to keep the bonus until I work my way up to the 72 and eventually the 78 ones? Another random question I have is how good are sin tanks in aoe tanking compared to the others? For some reason, I feel very squishy in aoe pulls without using cds. And finally my last question is my def rating is a little (ok a bit more than little) lower than the optimal values and I run with an absorb proc relic + a reactive warding one, so would switching to a def proc relic to get closer to the optimal value be a good idea? Sorry if these questions are random, but I'm really trying to focus on being ready for hardmodes. Thanks for any help!

had to change original thread, not sure how to delete, if someone could close this, would help.