A number of the lower tier ST talents are actually dps boosting, in no small part the +9% aim talent is very nice. Overall your dps is less than a pure dps build, but you also take less dmg that has to be healed up out of combat. I'd honestly recommend go for ST talents up to Jet charge (what I miss most when going pyro dps spec), then poach some of the dps boost talents from the other 2 trees first tier. Iron Fist in particular is very useful since it meshes very well with Flame Surge and Flame Shield. Back to back Rocket Punch is always good times. Overall my feeling while leveling was I did less dmg, so things take longer to kill. But I rarely had to ever stop and heal up (using Mako), and only deaths I recall were occasionally on the toughest elite "quest boss" type mobs. So overall it's just gogogo non-stop while questing and probably evens out more or less in the end.

5-5-31 1215.35 DPS 8-31-2 1208.34 DPS Seeing only ~7dps diff between the 2 different dps trees for the AC... it almost makes me think BW knows what they're doing! Any chance you have data on what the standard 31/8/2 shield tech tree does dps-wise (with same dps gear)? I'm just curious for comparison.

sithwarrior BH forums, check the powertech threads. I am not saying they are gospel, but it's some folks actually trying to really figure this stuff out with hard #'s instead of just saying this is better than that because I say so.

The only real analysis/simulations I've seen on this actually points to TD builds outperforming any other variant w/o TD. My guess as to why is simply that TD hits hard enough, that w/o it you can't make up the difference even with extra aim. Assuming you don't take TD, you'll be using FB in it's place. Right off the bat, TD definitely hits for more, significantly more on crit, so that's the delta you need to make up elsewhere. Yes you can end up getting more free RS with the extra FB, but it's a 30% chance and you are only getting 1 more FB every 15 seconds, so it's not like you'll be getting a massive # of extra PPA procs. A somewhat quick easy test (even moreso if biochem), go take some #'s on your abilities, then take a reflex stim for the aim boost. The 128 on the biochem stim is right about 9% of 1400, which is probably a fair #, give or take a bit. After taking the stim, recheck #'s and see if the increase would add up to the difference between what FB and TD hit for. (This is really a pretty huge oversimplification I admit) I'd also add, we're not playing WoW here, no one is doing 30,000 DPS. We're seemingly in the mid 1K range. At those levels, I think fight mechanics, RNG, player skill, lag, *bugs*, whatever, matter as much as where your last 4 points go, if not more. If you get lucky in a fight with lots of PPA procs, you'll be doing very well (until you pull aggro and die ), if you use all your luck up that fight, and can't buy a PPA to save your life on next boss, you could be doing 100's of DPS less.