Raid/PVE gear

[Drysdale]

I'm looking at this Tionese/Columni/Rakata gear and I'm confused at what to aim for, for PVE.

 

As a DPS Merc I would assume I want the Eliminator's set cause the main pieces have critical rating instead of alacrity like the combat medic set does, however the combat medic bracers have critical rating, where as the Eliminator's bracers have power.

 

So should I match the medic bracers to maximize my crit or stick with the Eliminator bracers for the power?

 

I'm just trying to wrap my head around our really important stats.

 

Aim and Endurance

Crit and Surge

...then power?

 

Any help clarifying any of this would help a lot. Thanks!

[Rimbaldo]

Accuracy over 100% reduces the target's defense according to the in-game tooltip. It's easily possible then that Accuracy could be the DPS bounty hunter's best stat, as is reflected by all of the Eliminator gear having oodles of Accuracy attached to it.

 

That said, I don't think anybody really knows how they should gear to optimize DPS at this point and probably won't until more people reach endgame and start fiddling with it. Crit and Surge are both obvious choices especially since Arsenal vents heat with crits from their main damaging abilities, but there's always a degree of give and take and there's always a point where diminishing returns kick in once you've stacked any one stat too high.

 

The game is sort of a mess when it comes to theorycrafting this sort of thing since I haven't found a way to figure out which attacks would benefit from Tech Power, Dual Weapon Damage, etc. My assumption is that the best stats will be power/surge for healers (alacrity's up in the air at the moment due to how our Heat mechanic works) and accuracy/crit/surge for DPSers. The set stats are all over the place like you said, though, so it's hard to figure out what BioWare intended. They seem to have made it hard to stack crit and surge by making them exclusive from each other on most mods, from what I've seen. You find a lot of crit + accuracy and power + surge ones, but relatively few crit + surge.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Rimbaldo

[Drysdale]

Yeah, I'm seeing the same thing on the Champions gear. The medic set does actually have a few pieces with crit/surge pieces and the Eliminator set has accuracy/power.

 

BW has really thought out the game mechanics, I have to think if they want DPS Mercs to wear the Eliminator set, then they coded the class to benefit the most from Accuracy/Power.

 

The thing with heat management and crits is, with this style pvp, I rarely find myself in a situation where I'm alive long enough and in constant battle that I'm capping heat twice(using vent heat once). I either die and heat resets or I'm able to get out of combat and rest up.

 

I just want to maximize my DPS and I thought that was crit/surge.