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!

It's impossible to tell where the miss comes from, but I'm pretty sure each individual shot (tick) in Cull/SoS checks your accuracy and when you miss, you miss one tick, not the entire cast. My assumption comes from the fact that Rifle Shot has two shots and when one shot is dodged, the other shot typically hits. Tibbel listed the lethality abilities that are not affected accuracy, so I won't list it again. However, I would like to reiterate that while the internal portion of cull cannot be dodged, it will not proc if the white damage misses. Thus when you miss a cull white damage tick, you are missing out on "two" attacks. Cull's internal damage thus necessarily depends on accuracy. The thing about accuracy is that there is only one stat you can trade for it: surge. As far as I can tell, every single item in the game pairs our relevant secondary stats in the following ways: 1. Power/Surge 2. Crit/Surge 3. Power/Accuracy 4. Crit/Accuracy. Power/Crit is never paired together. With the severe diminishing returns on surge, it makes sense to have at least some accuracy on your gear. You might be right about the lower crit chance (I need to get the enhancements and mods to test this myself), but I'm a firm believer that accuracy better contributes to your DPS once you hit surge DRs. There is another thread on the hybrid lethality/eng build. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=503513. Metaldragen seems to have a good grasp on the hybrid mechanics and I'm waiting on a response from him. As far as your clusters are concerned, while you cannot rely on others to proc it for you, it is a mechanic that you have to account for. You might find the ideal spot to use EP and its cluster bombs when you're by yourself, but the same might not be true when you're in a group. Also, I went full engineering because the topic asks if engineering is better than lethality. So far, I am convinced that it is not (no surprise). I have not Min-maxed my gear for engineering (I should pull two accuracy enhancements for power/surge as I am way over the accuracy cap with the standard build), but the only time my DPS was even close to lethality was when OS had a crit rate of at least 40%. Keeping Scatter Shot up on the test dummy did help some, but it was not enough. I do want to try putting points into an improved corrosive dart instead of ambush/accuracy from MM. Despite what the guide says, I think this would be the better choice overall for DPS. Here's a final note and maybe needs its own thread (esp since stacking lethality snipers is a DPS loss): Is 1.3 Engineering Better than Marksman against Ops Bosses?

Metaldragen, it seems like you have a solid idea of how to play Hybrid lethality/engineering, so a couple questions. 1. What rotation are you using? Sure, IP does more damage than taking WB, but it's also another skill that costs energy. 2. Related to 1, how do you avoid energy starving yourself? Another sniper on the forums tried the hybrid out, but said that he could only maximize DPS for about 1 1/2 minutes. Given the randomness of poison crits for regen, how does EP and Imperial Methodology actually work out in an Ops setting?

If you upload a log to askmrrobot or torparse, you can see if you are missing and the percentage of misses. I think 80% is a bit of an over estimation. About 30% of my damage comes from poison and 30% from cull. I know for a fact that Cull and SoS can miss, so I presume ambush and takedown can as well. Bonethrasher is not exactly an Ops training dummy (your corrosive grenade and orbital strike can hit the two cat adds, thus inflating your numbers), but your numbers are nevertheless fantastic. I'd be interest to know what you find. I tried to work out a rotation earlier, but it's all theory crafting and nothing beats a good actual test. Keep in mind that other blaster classes can also set off your cluster bombs, so you might want to bring a few merc/sniper buddies to help you find the best rotation. That said, I think our discussion of lethality sort of hijacked this thread. To bring things back on topic, once I found out that multiple lethality snipers could hurt each other's dps, I decided to explore Engineering (as it was the only tree I've never really played). My tests show that engineering is consistently about 100 dps behind lethality, although it might be due to my inexperience with the spec. The guide I used (and the comments on this thread from Engineering Snipers) suggest that there really isn't an optimal and consistent rotation. The spec seems to be more "priority based" depending on your energy level and cool downs. You can find the guide at: http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/Thread-Engineering-Sniper-Saboteur-Gunslinger-Compendium. In some ways, I like that there is no true rotation; you always have to be watching your cooldowns and have to make a lot of split second decisions as to which ability to use next. On the other hand, Engineering can feel like pure chaos. The Engineer's skill set just don't seem to mesh with each other that well in terms of CDs. I always felt like all of my "big hitters" came off CD at about the same time and that there were too many windows where I had to wait .5-1 seconds for another skill to become available. Also, playing Engineering reminded me how much Snipe sucks if you're not a MM Sniper. Anyone think this is ironic? I'm going to give it some more practice, but I really don't know. Plasma probe is kind of fun and EMP is great for using OS pretty much whenever it's up, but I may just end up rolling MM when NM Denova rolls around if stacking Lethality snipers is really that bad. I just feel like I always had too much energy with no way to spend it or not enough; it's definitely a bizarre and unique spec.

Out of curiosity, how long was the parse? And if you are getting 50% crit rate, I think my crit is broken. I'm getting a 52-53% crit rate, despite having 5-6% more crit. Are you basing your misses off of what you've observed or combat logs? Personally, with all the numbers flying around, I've never actually observed a miss on cull/SoS, but my logs from our last Denova shows that I missed .3% of my Culls and .2% of my SoS and I'm at 99.89% ranged accuracy. My rifle shots had a miss rate of about 10%. I honestly think that the mobs have some sort of innate defense that increases their chance to dodge our attacks. Anyways, I guess we're pulling hairs here. If we're doing about the same DPS, I suppose it doesn't really matter in the end haha.

I'm curious to know how you manage your energy with a crit rate that low. What kind of DPS are you pulling on the operations test dummy? Even with almost 40% tech crit fully buffed and stimmed, I once in a great while find myself a little energy starved. However, I can still do a 5 minute parse no problem though and sustain around 1800 DPS. And you have no accuracy either? When my guildmate and I were trying to figure out why his DPS was lower despite an identical spec/rotation and similar gear levels, we found that his issue was his low accuracy. Low accuracy (less than 98%) means you're missing culls/SoS/Ambush. Missing cull means you also miss out on the accompanying internal damage that procs off cull. I'd like to know what you mean by this; what numbers should a fully geared lethality sniper be getting? I use a similar rotation, except I always put a rifle shot in before cull after my opener rotation (if you are doing a "perfect" rotation, you have 1.5 seconds between weakening blast and when cull comes off CD). As I stated above, I do have energy issues once in a great while, but this is only on the test dummy where I can constantly do a "perfect" rotation. In actual Ops, movement and down time make it so that I never have energy issues.

Hm, I'm assuming there's a typo seeing how we don't benefit from 2 pc eliminator at all. Did you mean 2 piece PvP Combat medic? That would be another 3 seconds for a total of 18 seconds when combined with 2pc PvE Supercommando. If the super energy shield is what you were referring to, I would absolutely kill for rebounder. On a completely unrelated note (and I feel REALLY stupid for asking this), does anyone know exactly how large the cone is? I mean, I know it has a range of 10 m, but how far does it extend from left to right at 10 m? Even after playing with this build for a few days, I can't really figure it out (our graphic isn't as distinct as Vanguard's version of Flamethrower). I also can't be 100% certain, but it sometimes feels like I'm hitting targets to the side and even slightly behind me. I'm pretty sure this is true bc I found out the hard way that even a carefully positioned flamethrower is really hard to safely use on the shield phase of Stormcaller and Firebrand.

Oh well, to each his own. I never thought that Carolina Parakeet sounded "good", but it was a name the PT/Vanguard community grew to love. I was just trying to come up with a silly name that was still relevant to the build's philosophy (I have an explanation a few posts above if you missed it). No hard feelings man. You said "The Maverick" was the first name? Well then, I'll just refer to it as the Maverick Bushwhacker then (everyone else can call it the Extreme Maverick Prototype haha *edit* actually, EMP would be a great name too. EMPs are real world AOEs that shut things down, just like this build does). But in all seriousness, let's keep the discussion going. Particularly, I'm interested in how this build (or any of the AP/Pyro hybrids really) should gear themselves. We've already talked a little bit about set bonuses, but not much about the stats we should be going after. Endurance vs. Offensive Stats Crit vs. Aim vs. Power: which stat to stack? Anyways, I'd be interested to know what you guys think, especially since I just finished rounding out my DPS PvP set (*shakes first* at the BM Supercommando Implants and War Hero Supercommando Helm rotting away in my bank).

I think we're talking a little bit past each other. I'd say that the Extreme Prototype (I will personally call it the Bushwhacker!) build is PvP only, seeing how H/O is not nearly as useful in a PvE environment. To use this build in a PvE environment, it would probably be best to take the point out of H/O and put it into charged gauntlets, esp since it's so much easier to keep RB up on your target. Once you do that, there's only a two talent point difference and I agree that the spec doesn't really do anything new in PvE that hasn't been done before. For PvP, I'd say that the simple act of changing 3 pts is a game changer. Having access to both strong AOE and reasonably strong single target burst is useful in so many different situations. This spec has caused me to rethink PvP in a lot of ways and has led me to enjoy PvPing again.

The idea may have been around for awhile, but what a difference two points can make. Terminal Velocity looks like it still plays pretty much like pure pyro. Extreme Prototype, on the other hand, is more similar to AP (my original opinion was that it was more like Pyro, but I have since changed my mind). Extreme Prototype should, when possible, follow the "12 second Rule". The difference is that our filler abilities working up to those 5 stacks of PFT are Railshots instead of rapid shots/immolate. As I grow more comfortable with how best to utilize PFT, I find that it is making up more and more of my damage. Outside of Huttball, where my grapple is usually reserved for some sort of defensive play, I find myself using grapple as a way to force even skilled players to stack up for PFT. The AOE potential of Extreme Prototype is what distinguishes it from Terminal Velocity. The former trades a little bit of single target burst (less railshot crits) for more controlled bursts/AOE damage from PFT. That said, while I think the name Extreme Prototype is fitting and kinda cool, I think we should continue the PT tradition of weird/outlandish names for the non-traditional specs (Carolina Parakeet/Maverick/NORSE). My suggestion is "The Bushwhacker". A little bit of the "official" history of Bushwhacking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushwhacker Any Mechwarrior fans might remember the Bushwhacker battle mech as being the jack of all trades, master of none. This build reflects that ideology: -Good mobility, but not as mobile as a shield tech's jet charge. -Good AOE, but Pure AP has a more efficient and 14% stronger PFT. -Good Single Target Burst, but not as bursty as a Pure Pyro. The name also lends itself well to how many players react to this build. Bushwhacked: The realization that your PT isn't a pure pyro. Typically accompanied by hopeless fidgeting while PFT roasts them alive.

welp, I decided that ya'll were right. After checking my logs after an hour and a half of PvPing, I saw that my RS crit chance was only about 58%. CG is a nice idea in theory and important if you're going to use this build in PvE. You can simply move the point from H/O though to CG if you want to PvE with this spec. For PvP, though, it's simply too unreliable. Sometimes you forget to put it on. Sometimes your target dies before it gets the full bleed off etc. etc. It's too bad I didn't check my bank before augmenting my gear and moving my mods. I completely forgot that I had a 4 pc Champion eliminators that I could use. Oh well, I guess 4 pc PvE combat tech is still pretty good...and it looks a lot better.