I don't think anyone is saying that Pyros aren't viable DPS because they don't have a threat drop. Spamming rapid shots for a few few global CDs, waiting to open up with TD + Explosive Fuel, having guard etc. are all obvious ways to avoid pulling aggro and I'm sure any decent Pyro does at least one of the above. However, every single "argument" (ask for guard/intercede/sorc pull) could be made about any DPS class and yet they all still have an aggro drop. Other classes do better sustained DPS and still have an aggro drop (which makes less sense due to taunt stacking). The more "bursty" a class is, the stronger the argument that an aggro drop is "needed". Yet despite having arguably the best burst DPS in the game, Pyros are oddly enough the only DPS class without any means of dropping aggro. An aggro drop would even take a little more skill than other more "traditional" rotation classes. On my sniper, I more or less know the best point in my opening rotation to drop aggro. Pyros, on the other hand, would have to watch not only for PPA procs, but also if rail shot had crit or not. Sometimes the best time to drop aggro would be after your first RS, sometimes the second...or maybe even further down the line. It all depends on PPA procs and the corresponding rail shot crits. It's not much more difficult, but effectively using an aggro drop would take a little more skill than a traditional rotation class. For the record, I fully support this idea and have done full HM EC runs as dps (Pyro and Leth. Sniper) and tank (shieldtech). Again, Pyros are viable DPS w/o the aggro drop, but that doesn't change the equality or class mechanics arguments.

I agree with this. My other raiding toon is a Sniper and I don't really have to hold back because I know when I tend to pull aggro and thus know the best time to use my aggro drop. This allows me to aggressively open up without (too much) worry about pulling aggro. Part of being a skilled DPS is knowing your class and rotation well enough that you know the optimal time to use your aggro drop. PT DPS is already one of the more simple specs to play; having an aggro drop would give us one more thing to keep track of and not only make it better for the raid, but a tad more fun to play.

1. How do you think your Powertech spec is perceived by other classes? PvE Shieldtech: The easiest of the 3 tanks to heal generally speaking. No problems with holding single target threat and arguably the best at holding AOE threat. PvP Shieldtech: The least effective of the 3 tanks. An annoyance, if anything. PvP Pyro: Overpowered because of the few times they get hit by back to back Railshot crits. 2. How do you perceive your own spec? PvE Shieldtech: I share the sentiment that Powertechs are probably the best PvE tanks overall. However, I do have a few minor complaints regarding PvE shieldtech: 1. All 3 tanks have some sort of mechanic that has a chance to proc when they shield. However, of the 3 tanks, Powertechs are the only ones where dodging an attack hurts this mechanic. If I dodge, then I have zero chance to shield which means a zero percent chance to vent heat or reset rocket punch. 2. Powertech tanks cannot reasonably get the "+2% defense" talent as it is a 3rd tier talent in our Pyro tree. 3. Powertech tanking is too passive. Apart from watching for Rocket Punch resets and keeping heat blast on CD, there is nothing interesting to do in our rotation. Maintaining 4 stacks of Heat Screen will happen regardless if you're trying to or not. 4. There are at least two fights in Denova where the 1.3 change to railshot actually is detrimental. In any fight where AOE should not be used (IE: shield phase on Firebrand/Stormcaller and Trandoshian adds phase on Kephess), we cannot use railshot. PvP Shieldtech: Perhaps a common complaint among all tanks especially after 1.3, but we don't do enough damage. Taunting is not unique to Shieldtechs (every Powertech can do this) and guard is again simply too passive. Given the amount of attacks that cannot be shielded or defended against in PvP, there is not enough of a survivability/utility gain to justify the DPS lost by speccing into Shield tech. PvP Pyro: A strong spec that probably could stand a tiny nerf, but it's not as bad as everyone claims. Everyone remembers the time when they were burst down by a Pyro, but forgets (or doesn't even notice) when they don't get any PPA procs at all. Compared to Marauders, Pyros don't have the same kind of survivability, so any potential nerf to Pyro burst should be countered by an increase in survivability. Pyros are also a bore to play. PvP AP/Pyro Hybrid (http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc/#301MsrrobfzZfhrbzh.2): The spec that I am currently running for PvP and am absolutely in love with. A solid balance of single target burst, AOE damage, and utility, it is a spec that is an absolute blast to play. General thoughts: Except for the hybrid I mentioned, Powertechs don't have much in the way of hybrid specs. This is especially true for shield techs as every shield tech hybrid was nerfed to the point of being unplayable/undesirable (Carolina Parakeet and Ironfist). If Bioware wants to focus more on "pure" builds, that is fine, but full Shield tech and Pyro simply aren't that interesting to play in terms of the current mechanics. If creative hybrids are discouraged, the pure builds need to be more engaging to play.

hey man, I can tell you're sincere and I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but I've seen some of your other posts and I think some people may have misinformed you about some aspects of the game. I know you're trying to be helpful, but you're doing more harm than good if you don't have your facts straight. Heavy Fabricator is NOT a good indicator of your overall average DPS for the very reason you said, so I hope you don't go around claiming you do 2200 DPS. Now that I think about it, I honestly think I parsed once on Heavy Fabricator at 3300 DPS over the entire fight (although the people working the puzzle were very good and we used the "fire only the right terminal" strat). Thanks for this Tibbel, would you mind if I updated my original post with this (I'll give credit where credit is due ) As far as raid utility is concerned, I understand it is subjective and situational. The way I looked at it, though, was that Snipers really only have defensive raid utility. We don't have blood thirst or pulls that easily reposition mobs. We can only prevent damage, either to ourselves or the raid (hence why I lumped them together). I actually somewhat agree with this. There was a guy another thread saying "Our MM snipers switched to lethality, but did worse so they switched back" and claimed that as proof that MM was better. It doesn't prove that one spec is better than another; it could also prove that his snipers are taking the full advantage of MM, but not lethality. That said, we have a ton of circumstantial evidence that suggests that lethality is our highest ST DPS. Many experienced Snipers have run countless tests between MM and Lethality and most, if not all, came to the conclusion that Lethality is superior. Coupled with the fact that virtually all of a MM's sniper damage is mitigated in some way, all of this circumstantial evidence points in favor of Lethality. Before you knock on circumstantial evidence, keep in mind that it is sufficient to convict criminals, even if the potential sentence is death. And you use circumstantial evidence more in your every day life than you realize; for instance, every time you drive through an intersection, you just used circumstantial evidence. You saw that your light was green and "knew" that it was safe to go through. But did you actually know that it was safe? You can't actually see if the light is red for the cross traffic...it is entirely possible that the traffic light is malfunctioning, so you don't actually know that it's working as intended. Yet despite this possibility, I'm sure you drive through your green light without giving it a second thought. The situation is analogous to the comparison between Lethality and MM. You're absolutely correct in saying that we don't actually know if Lethality is the best. But the experience for the vast majority of Snipers has shown that Lethality beats out MM. In the traffic light example, you could stop your car, hop out, check if the light was red and only then proceed through the intersection. In this case, we could run a big scientific study to compare the damage potential of the 3 specs and make sure the combat logs are working correctly. However, in the end, you'll end up finding out what you already knew from the circumstantial evidence: the light is green...just like the sludge from Lethality's corrosive grenade. Now, I'm not saying that this means the community should just stop and accept that Lethality is the best. Given the fact that I see many MM Snipers "complaining" that they have energy to spare makes me wonder if a MM stacking alacrity could do more DPS by spending the excess energy faster. Tests like these should still be done. However, I feel that a test to ensure that the combat log is working correctly is excessive and unnecessary.

That's because we're not really Snipers, we're more like your standard Rifleman. Real world Snipers are one shot, one kill. Many Sniper teams often camp out for days watching their target, waiting for the opportune moment to strike. They learn their target's habits, lifestyle, and to a certain extent, the target's personality. It has a psychological impact on some Snipers. Video Game Snipers are still typically one shot, one kill, but of course it has a quicker pace. Relative to assault rifle and machine gun users, though, a miss is still much more costly. SWTOR Snipers are nothing like the previous two. Our longest cast time for a single shot ability is Ambush and its 2.5 seconds. SoS is more like a semi-automatic rifle while Cull sounds more like a full auto gun. Lethality uses a grenade in its normal rotation. If you forget the fact that we're called Snipers, the class sounds a lot more like an "Assault" class from CoD/BF3. If they were to give us more range with gear, it wouldn't make any sense from a mirror perspective. Gunslingers are our mirror class and would have to receive the same benefit. How does it make sense that a Gunslinger have better range than a Trooper with a battle rifle or assault cannon? The final nail in the coffin: Snipe, the namesake of our class and the ability that should define us, is one of our most garbage skills. Irony much?

Honestly, flame surge is helpful for initial AOE threat/damage only. I'm not trying to hate on hybrid specs, I've played a lot of them (I used Ironfist alot and am currently playing the "Extreme Prototype" AP/Pyro hybrid), but for shield techs, it's best to use the standard spec and just wear some DPS gear when you're soloing...or deck out Torian.

Wall of text with so much misinformation, my eyes and brain are bleeding. Okay, first off, the Ops test dummy does have armor, about 30%. People test their DPS on the Ops test dummy because it's a decent indicator of your maximum potential ST DPS in a perfect situation. Look, once you get around the surge cap (and run into severe DRs), I'm one of those guys who will say that you should go with accuracy. But come on, this is an over-exaggeration. Pretty much all of our attacks besides Rifle Shot use our tech accuracy. The reason why you still miss with special attacks is because Bosses/mobs have 10% defense that lowers your accuracy. Also, don't forget that there are plenty of skills that will never miss regardless of accuracy. So increasing your accuracy by 2% won't increase your damage by 2%. 41% is such a specific number...anyways, yeah ~40% is what I was told for Lethality, but I've seen other Lethality snipers around here with like 33% who claim 1800+ DPS parses, so I dunno bout this one. Cunning doesn't give you surge so...dunno what that's all about.

Unfamiliarity with the spec and different itemization priorities between the three trees can skew the numbers. I do about 1800-1850 DPS on the test dummy as Lethality, so if your Snipers have almost all 61 items, this suggests that Lethality is generally better. In order to get a true comparison, you need to either have tests from a Sniper who is comfortable with both specs (and can min max accordingly) or compare two similarly geared and skilled players. Our (now former) MM Sniper has about the same gear level as I do and played his MM very well in my opinion. Nevertheless, I consistently edged him our as Lethality in almost all of our Ops fights and he soon switched after that.

I think the aggro droppers used to be bugged awhile ago so that it was only dropping .25% as opposed to the 25% aggro drop that it does now. If your guildmate still insists this is not worth it, counter with the fact that the aggro drop is off the GCD, so there is no point NOT to use it. With the increase to tank threat generation in 1.3, aggro droppers aren't as important, but they still should be used. Even with the threat buffs, don't forget that there are min-maxed DPSers running around with fully augmented gear. When the stars all align and they get a bunch of crits with their heavy hitters right after popping their adrenals, the tank will still lose aggro and be forced to taunt. This may have saved your butt for the time being, but you may have endangered the raid if a tank swap is quickly coming up. Being an elite DPS isn't just about knowing your rotation and how to gear your character. Part of it is knowing the best point to use your aggro dropper in the opening moments of the fight so you don't endanger yourself or the raid.

I refuse to buy Field Respec because I was so against it in the form that went live. I admit that combined with the reduced respec costs, it's not horrible, but I will hold out as long as possible; it's the principle of the matter! That said, I don't think changing specs according to the boss fight is currently necessary, even for HM Denova. For instance, my guild DPSes Zorn and Toth down so fast that we have issues with the switch because the first tank still has fearful. Backing up a little early before the jump actually helps in some ways. So why did I bother to include things like "burst DPS" and "AOE DPS" as categories? Well, in the future NM fights may not be so forgiving. For instance, maybe your particular Ops group is low on AOE DPS and suddenly you find yourself struggling with the Trandoshian adds phase during Kephess. Switching to Engineering for that one fight might make all the difference.

Also, Tibbel, you seem to be a household name in the Sniper community. I know absolutely nothing about the MM/Engineering hybrid. Could you share your thoughts on how MM/Engineering hybrid stacks up against the 3 "pure" specs in the 5 categories?

You average 2100 DPS? Sorry, I have a tough time believing this. Most min-maxed Snipers claim/show parses of around 1800-1900 DPS on a single target for an Ops test dummy. Let's not even talk about how most boss fights have some sort of mechanic that lowers your DPS (movement, periods of immunity/down time with nothing to DPS etc.) I think the one time I had 2100+ DPS on a mostly single target fight was the last fight in HM LI, but that's because of the increased damage the boss takes in phase 3. My DPS can spike past 2000 DPS in the opening moments of a fight with OS and adrenals, but I don't know anyone who can sustain that. I'd like to see a parse showing you actually do 2100 DPS over at least 3 minutes on a single target.

Any build that goes that deep into shield tech without taking heat blast is going to have major heat issues. Outside of heat blast, your only resource management comes from shielding, which is not enough to prevent you from over heating. It's tough to say, but if the fight lasts longer than a minute, I'd say you will have a DPS loss since you can only use rapid shots once your start over heating.

Thanks for the reply! As far as simulations are concerned, I question their validity (as you predicted that many would). Simulationcraft, for instance, must have had a really weird Lethality rotation because SoS was my top damage in the scenarios I tested. For the "sit still and do nothing" option, I can achieve about the same DPS that Simulationcraft averaged using the standard Lethality rotation. I honestly don't have the time nor the desire to figure out how to tweak the priority system of these simulators. In the end, we are humans and cannot perfectly emulate what the simulators suggest due to server lag, user lag, and user ability. Conversely, a computer cannot make the same split second decisions that a human can depending on the particular situation at hand. The evidence I can offer (or anyone else for that matter) is at best, anecdotal. For example, even if I was able to dig up the Denova parses between myself and our (now former) MM sniper, there are simply too many variables. Perhaps the other sniper had an off day and wasn't using the "optimal" MM rotation or maybe his stats aren't "balanced" correctly. In any case, despite our similar gear level and player abilities, the MM sniper consistently did a little less DPS than my Lethality sniper. Personally, I also do less overall DPS on the test dummy as a MM (I haven't seriously tried since 1.2 though). Engineering becomes even more hectic. As a priority based build, the spec lends itself even more to human error as there is no simple rotation that lets you go on "auto pilot". A computer can instantly determine the best next ability that should be used based on the CDs of the other skills and current energy level. A human can only go by a VERY vague ranking system. Again, my personal parses show that Engineering does about 100-150 less DPS than Lethality on the Ops test dummy. (http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/combatlog/510adc3b-3213-47d3-93c8-c763f0246cfc/overview#d=0,t=1,b=1) The only time Engineering could match Lethality was if I opened up with OS and if I was lucky with those OS crits. I admit, given my lack of experience with the build, I may be doing it wrong and I welcome the advice of experienced Engineering Snipers who can do better DPS than Lethality. In fact, I hope that someone can show me otherwise, as it's always fun to perfect a new build. That all said, anecdotal evidence is really all we have to go by. Simulations cannot account for the specific mechanics of each fight or the particular situations a Sniper may find him/herself in. Perhaps my ranking system is incorrect if each spec is played to absolute perfection, but some things just aren't possible for 99% of the player population.

Future Nightmare content has been described as content that only the "best of the best" can accomplish. With the growing popularity of Snipers, I think it would be helpful to break down our three trees and analyze what each spec has to offer. I have ranked each spec (1st being best, 3rd worst) in 5 categories. Almost all of my experience comes from playing Lethality, so any added insight for the other two trees would be especially appreciated. Please keep discussion limited to PvE specs in an Ops situation. Lethality (http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#400bIZGbbkrMGdhRZb.2) Sustained Single Target DPS: 1st Burst Single Target DPS: 2nd AOE DPS: 2nd (tied with MM) Mobility: 2nd Survivability/Raid Utility: 3rd Discussion: Marksman (http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#400bfZhZbsrbdRsRGo.2) Sustained Single Target DPS: 2nd Burst Single Target DPS: 1st AOE DPS: 2nd (tied with MM) Mobility: 3rd Survivability/Raid Utility: 2nd Discussion: Engineering (http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#400rI0bRorRrsZhZbcM.2) Sustained Single Target DPS: 3rd Burst Single Target DPS: 3rd AOE DPS: 1st Mobility: 1st Survivability/Raid Utility: 1st Discussion: Conclusions (TLDR) (Note: I will update these as I get more information from either personal testing or discussion from other snipers) -If you are the only sniper in your Ops, Lethality is the way to go. Our primary job is DPS and the Burst/AOE DPS categories are specific to only some of the Ops fights. Sustained ST DPS will always be important, so Lethality is the best overall PvE spec. -If there are multiple Snipers in your Ops group, consider going Marksman. Further testing needs to be done, but stacking Lethality Snipers may be a DPS loss for the raid in the end and MM is the next best choice. -If the fight is healing intensive and your healers are struggling, consider going Engineering. While Engineering probably has the worst DPS of the 3 specs in most situations, it also has the best survivability for both you and your Ops. Never forget the old MMO addage: "You can't DPS if you're dead". In the end, if your Ops group can consistently down all the end game content, play the spec you most enjoy! This post/discussion is intended to help those looking to squeeze out every advantage for the needs of their particular Ops group. Discuss away!