Commando - Gunnery; My Take

[ZucriyLyhdnamm]

I am just now getting to level 50 on my trooper, and absolutely love everything about it!

 

As you might have guessed from the title, my prefered spec is Gunnery, though I must admit that playing Combat Medic in PvP is incredibly fun also, and I highly recommend it! Nevertheless I will attempt to remain on-topic.

 

I have come accross a pretty decent number of guides for Commando rotations and specs, and while the rotation should be pretty self explanatory, I will go over my take on it (which is pretty much the same as most) but on a note of a skill tree build, I find my particular build to be unique to me, and thought I would post it here for others to review.

 

Now for the good stuff

 

-----Rotation---------------------

 

Now the Gunnery Rotation is not really a rotation, its more of a start-up rotation, then a maintain priorities from there (for the sake of ammo conservation!)

 

First off, Full-Auto is your bread and butter, if its up, use it! Its cost is fairly low, it does a great amount of damage as Gunnery, and because of the channel your ammo is likely to be restored during the cast (especially if it crits, which is likely)

 

Secondly, Grav Round is hugely important to get going early, but after the initial build-up of the 5 stacks of Gravity Vortex (3 casts of Grav Round, when talented) it becomes less important overall, but still very important to cast regularly to keep the stacks of Gravity Vortex up.

 

Your other abilities to work with are fairly simple. Demolition Round is your instant cast, hard hitting nuke, with a 15 second cooldown. You want to make sure you cast it on-cooldown, AFTER you get Gravity Vortex to 5 stacks. Note, Gravity Vortex is not consumed by Demo Round, so you do not need to necessarily cast it 3 more times in between Demo Rounds.

 

Next, High Impact Bolt. This ability is one of the least ammo-consuming abilities you have, and it does pretty decent damage, but does not benefit from much of your class talents except for Charged Barrel. Charged Barrel comes from casting Grav Round, but unlike Gravity Vortex's, Charged Barrel stacks on yourself, and the effect IS consumed on High Impact Bolt cast. An important note, the buff timer on Charged Barrel is the same timer as Gravity Vortex, so if you keep on keeping one buff up, the other will fall in line. You ONLY want to cast High Impact Bolt when you have 5 stacks of Charged Barrel.

 

Hammer Shot is the last ability you will use regularly in your rotation. Hammer shot is the Trooper class's basic attack, and costs no ammo. You want to use Hammer shot whenever your ammo has fallen below 7, as your ammo will recharge slower the farther below 7 you are. If you can keep critting and proc'ing Curtain of Fire, you can stay above 7 fairly easily, but for the moments when you do dip down to 6, take a break in the rotation an fire off a couple Hammer Shots to recharge.

 

The Short Version of the Rotation:

 

Full-Auto! (As much as possible! Especially when Curtain of Fire procs)

Grav Round (x3 start, keep stacks up)

Demo Round (On CD after Gravity Vortex stacks are up, if ammo is above 7)

High Impact Bolt (with 5 stacks Charged Barrel only)

Hammer Shot (ammo at or below 7)

 

My spec choices after the break...

Edited January 26, 2012 by ZucriyLyhdnamm

[davetrump]

I've been level 50 for a month, so here's a few tips.

 

1) Get 2 pcs of the PVE set ASAP for the set bonus. Use this in PVP as well.

2) After you have done #1 take full auto off our bar and never use it again. Yes, its that bad.

3) Avoid alacrity and accuracy gear like the plague.

 

Hope this helps.

[ZucriyLyhdnamm]

The following is my prefered Spec Choice, It is optimized for both PVP and PVE.

 

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#800Mc0MZMIkbRrdRkfzZz.1

 

7/33/1

 

My Gunnery spec is unique to me so far as I have seen, and it has worked out quite well for me so far.

 

Some things to note about my spec:

 

The 5 points I have on the bottom rung of Combat Medic are quite common for Gunnery specs, and don't need much explaining. The two points that give me 5% alacrity on a crit effect (First Responder) are not entirely unique to me, and depending on a good stat breakdown (like from some heavy research or numbers from a DPS meter, pending) I would move these two points into Assault for 2% more accuracy.

 

My PVP choices in this spec are optimized for escaping damage, not having to fight through damage. I did not take the endurance / healing received buffs(Heavy Trooper/Soldier's Endurance), which a lot of people like to take for PVP, instead I took cooldown reduction for Concussive Charge/Tenacity(Tenacious Defense) and also put two points in the Stockstrike Knockback(Concussive Force). These talents I feel will help to keep players off of your face, at least fairly well, and have found them to work for me.

 

Granted, Gunnery is not a premier PVP spec by any means, but for those of us who enjoy it anyways, I have found this to be my favorite spec.

 

Next post I will cover my thoughts on Stat priorities (Granted, they need more research, and a damage meter would DEFINITELY help me out with this...)

[davetrump]

Try this spec instead.

 

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#800dfMZrIkrRrd0kbz.1

 

You'll do the same damage, be more survivable and heal for significantly more.

[ZucriyLyhdnamm]

My thoughts on Stat priorities (not hugely tested, so take them with a grain of salt )

 

AIM is obviously our primary stat; if your gear has Cunning, Wisdom, or Strength... your doing it wrong.

 

For secondary Stats, my priority is like this:

 

Crit > Surge > Power > Accuracy > Alacrity

 

My reasoning:

 

Crit is simply the best stat for Gunnery, we have two talents that go hand-in-hand with Critical Hitting, Deadly Cannon and Cell Charger. Deadly Cannon makes Full Auto and Demo round do 30% more bonus Critical Damage, and Cell Charger makes your Grav Round and Full Auto regenerate ammo on a critical hit. My hypothetical cap: Approximately 50%. Your cell charger has a 1.5 sec internal cooldown, and so the usefulness of Crit will take a hit above 50%, but certainly is still good.

 

Surge, in my opinion, goes right alongside Crit, and even surpasses it after Crit reaches 50%, simply because: If you Crit so often... why not have each Critical Hit deal more damage? This is fairly simple, and I do not think it needs much elaboration. Hypothetical Cap: Don't know if there is one, if the effect has a big drop-off point, I have no idea where it would be.

 

Power is a raw damage buff, and is quite good also. I would guess that Surge / Crit are worth a good bit more, but I can't be certain without some in-depth tests. Power would be another stat with no hypothetical cap, as it just increases your damage, similar to how AIM increases your damage (AIM also increases Crit chance).

 

Accuracy and Alacrity are the stats you will want the least of, with Accuracy edging out Alacrity in my mind because all you can really get from Alacrity at this point to me is ammo problems. Now, if you have seen my spec, I did without 2% accuracy in favor of 5% alacrity, and I think that is definitely a better use of 2 talent points, but I could certainly be wrong. Spec how YOU like, thats just me.

 

-----------------------------------------

 

If anyone has any thoughts about my mini-guide / thought dump, feel free to share. Contradict my points if you have data / experience to back it up, I'm certainly willing to hear it, and other would love to as well, I'm sure.

 

Thanks! Enjoy your Commando.

[ZucriyLyhdnamm]

Try this spec instead.

 

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#800dfMZrIkrRrd0kbz.1

 

You'll do the same damage, be more survivable and heal for significantly more.

 

I like the spec for PvP's sake, its definitely better if your going to cast the occasional heal. But for me, I prefer my hybrid PvE / PvP spec.

 

Agreed Full-Auto is too glitchy to use in PvP right now, but in PvE I find its damage is good despite the delay problems, and its benefit to your Ammo regeneration is undeniable.

 

Also, BioWare expects to fix Full-Auto soon (tm...) and that HOPEFULLY will make it more reliable.

[davetrump]

Agreed Full-Auto is too glitchy to use in PvP right now, but in PvE I find its damage is good despite the delay problems, and its benefit to your Ammo regeneration is undeniable.

 

Full auto may appear to be a small DPS increase over grav round spam for lesser ammo. Dont be tricked.

 

There are several reasons full auto is bad.

 

1) Gravity vortex. I'm sure you'll agree that all things being equal putting a vortex on the target so that all following hits (even from other players) do more damage is a good thing.

 

2) PVE set bonus. The 2 pc set bonus for PVE gear is +15% crit chance on grav round and charged bolts. This means spamming grav round will have a much higher overall DPS than weaving full auto into the mix, even with curtain of fire. Furthermore because your cell charger procs on CRITS this negates the lesser ammo use of full auto by giving you more free ammo.

 

3) Weapon damge. Grav round is Tech damage. Full auto is weapon damage. Tech damage ignores defense rating and shields. See that sith jugg? Your full auto is bouncing off him doing no damage. My grav round is hitting every time. Accuracy will reduce your target's defense chance, but not the shield chance, so even at 200% accuracy you full auto will still do less damage to a tank than grav round.

 

4) Pushback. Full auto does 3 ticks of damage over a 3 second channel. Grav round does one big hit at the end of a 1.5 second cast. What happens if you get hit while shooting delaying your "cast" by 0.1 seconds? For grav round it will do full damage after 1.6 seconds. For full auto it will do the first tick at 1.1, the 2nd at 2.1 and the 3rd never. You lose the 3rd tick of damage completely.

 

5) Ammo wastage. Full auto uses 2 ammo when you start casting it. If move, are stunned or otherwise cancel it, you lose that ammo, even if you've done no damage. Grav rounds uses ammo when it does damage. This is more of an issue in PVP/raiding than questing.

Edited January 27, 2012 by davetrump

[ZucriyLyhdnamm]

I'll take that into account when testing and see what I come up with, I definitely agree that its ticks are a pain and need to be reworked...

 

But I have faith that they will be worked out

[Daeson]

This post is new and contains information never stated before.

[Sordo]

My thoughts on Stat priorities (not hugely tested, so take them with a grain of salt )

 

Crit > Surge > Power > Accuracy > Alacrity

 

 

On stats it seems after some testing crit starts "capping" at 35% ie you get less crit change from +critical and surge was 82% or so. well minimum 35% crit is absolute must atleast on pve, this up with +5% from smuggler buff and few others and you have crit around 41-42%. (not to mention the godly 2set pve set bonus)

 

also the full auto might not be that useful in pvp but in pve it really shines as in most fights there's only few moments you take dmg or are interrupted(some bosses like to knockback the whole raid).

 

Dunno what else i could say expect that yeah the alacrity is pretty useless, i had the +4% passive talent and then respekked without it, my ammo generation is slightly better and it seems full auto animation bugged most of the time because it was "too short" atleast for me, now i have to very rarely annoy myself watching the channeled bar and animation without it going to gcd and doing no dmg.

[davetrump]

AIM is obviously our primary stat; if your gear has Cunning, Wisdom, or Strength... your doing it wrong.

 

For secondary Stats, my priority is like this:

 

Crit > Surge > Power > Accuracy > Alacrity

 

Actually

 

Aim > power > cunning > crit (to cap) > surge (to cap) > accuracy> dont waste points on anything else.

 

Cunning gives tech power at the same ratio as Aim, so it's actually pretty good to have (grab all those cunning datacrons!) Luckily you'll never really see gear with cunning on it, so its moslty a non-issue.

 

 

Power and aim (and cunning) have no cap because they increase your damage linearly. Crit and surge have a very low cap which fights with your crit/surge adrenals and relics.

 

I have 2 issues with alacrity:

 

1) Ammo is a limitation on your dps, even in short fights. Alacrity really just makes you burn ammo faster.

 

2) Cell charger has an internal cooldown of 3 seconds. With 0 alacrity this means every other grav round can proc it. With 100% crit chance on grav round, you could spam it indefinitely and never run out of ammo. With 1 point of alacrity every 3rd grav round can proc cell charger meaning you'll quickly run out of ammo.

[Secured]

I like the Idea of making an effort to help people, but the way you play your gunnery will differ very much at valor rank 60 or 70 to the way you played it at "just gotten lvl 50". So it's a bit overaeger to just throw a guide out there.

 

I dont like that you just discribe the most core skills that everybody uses and everybody knows how to use and to be straight up, you give some advice that isnt really the best. At least give the people some tricks, for example:

 

Tech Override->Reserve Powercell->Plasma Nade if a grup of people try to cap in pvp. it gives an instat aoe interrupt and keeps them from tapping for the dot duration.

 

Or you could point out that you can do the most burst damage by timing Grav Rounds, Sticky Bomb and HiB/Demo so that they all hit at the same time (10k damage).

 

i think that even those are quite basic.

[OldMike]

Full auto may appear to be a small DPS increase over grav round spam for lesser ammo. Dont be tricked.

 

There are several reasons full auto is bad.

 

1) Gravity vortex. I'm sure you'll agree that all things being equal putting a vortex on the target so that all following hits (even from other players) do more damage is a good thing.

 

2) PVE set bonus. The 2 pc set bonus for PVE gear is +15% crit chance on grav round and charged bolts. This means spamming grav round will have a much higher overall DPS than weaving full auto into the mix, even with curtain of fire. Furthermore because your cell charger procs on CRITS this negates the lesser ammo use of full auto by giving you more free ammo.

 

3) Weapon damge. Grav round is Tech damage. Full auto is weapon damage. Tech damage ignores defense rating and shields. See that sith jugg? Your full auto is bouncing off him doing no damage. My grav round is hitting every time. Accuracy will reduce your target's defense chance, but not the shield chance, so even at 200% accuracy you full auto will still do less damage to a tank than grav round.

 

4) Pushback. Full auto does 3 ticks of damage over a 3 second channel. Grav round does one big hit at the end of a 1.5 second cast. What happens if you get hit while shooting delaying your "cast" by 0.1 seconds? For grav round it will do full damage after 1.6 seconds. For full auto it will do the first tick at 1.1, the 2nd at 2.1 and the 3rd never. You lose the 3rd tick of damage completely.

 

5) Ammo wastage. Full auto uses 2 ammo when you start casting it. If move, are stunned or otherwise cancel it, you lose that ammo, even if you've done no damage. Grav rounds uses ammo when it does damage. This is more of an issue in PVP/raiding than questing.

 

I've been learning and learning as I read all of your very detailed posts. However, I am confused about what the above highlighted text refers to... can someone please explain what the PVE 2 PC Set is. If it's something I can buy, then the location would be appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance.

And please, please, keep up all the good posts. I have learned and benefited so much from all of you.

Thanks again.

[ZucriyLyhdnamm]

Thank you all for the comments, even the negative ones; this is a forum and there will always be disagreements right? No tears here!

 

To answer back to a few:

 

Yes I can see cunning giving you some gains, but you would Never pick it over Aim, and that is the point I was trying to make, because some people honestly don't know that.

 

As for the advanced pvp tactics, like I said I'm pretty fresh right now, good a my class but I don't know all the tricks; thank you for posting them. Some I knew, some I had not thought of, so thanks!

 

And for you OldMike: the 2 piece PvE set is referring to the pve eliminator set purchased on the fleet from the Tionese / Colummi / Rakata vendors, and it is a 15% crit chance buff to Grav round, which is awesome for two great reasons: ammo refunded by Grav round crits, and because crits hurt if you have a nice amount of surge ( obvious, yes, but valid )

[ZucriyLyhdnamm]

Also a side note, my full auto has been responding a lot better lately, I'm actually getting my full 3 ticks... I did not have points in first responder at the time, an the comment someone made about alacrity possibly killing the final tick is interesting and worth investigating for sure.

 

Had a hilarious game of pvp where I did not die and topped dps by about 60k over the next guy, even had a chance to cast full auto, and got a lucky triple crit with it, needless to say, instant death to that poor squishy sniper

[Seamhainn]

Don't be so negative, Surged! These posts contain highly appreciated information for us newcomers. and as I am not interested in PvP your informations are absolutely useless for me. For others they may be highly valued.

 

Back to topic though. As a newbie I would like to hear your thoughts about Cells and how you value which in which citcumstances.

 

Thanks and take care.

[Seamhainn]

Don't be so negative, Surged! These posts contain highly appreciated information for us newcomers. and as I am not interested in PvP your informations are absolutely useless for me. For others they may be highly valued.

 

Back to topic though. As a newbie I would like to hear your thoughts about Cells and how you value which in which citcumstances.

 

Thanks and take care.

[Choobacca]

For everyone reading this hoping to learn something do NOT listen to whoever says Full Auto is useless. It by far does the most damage than any other of our abilities(even without curtain of fire proc). The skill priority should be as follows:

1. Full Auto every possible second you can

2. Grav Round...a lot

3. Demo Round (only with 5 stacks of gravity vortex)

4. HiB (only with 5 charged bolts stacks)

[Secured]

Don't be so negative, Surged! These posts contain highly appreciated information for us newcomers. and as I am not interested in PvP your informations are absolutely useless for me. For others they may be highly valued.

 

Back to topic though. As a newbie I would like to hear your thoughts about Cells and how you value which in which citcumstances.

 

Thanks and take care.

 

i assume you mean me. sry if i come off as overly negative, but it can be misleading for new players to get false tipps and the real good ones may be looked over. i appreciate the effort though.

 

to your question: cell management is the most important thing for any gunnery besides positioning and focusing the right target. you have to be able to predict how long a fight will last. If you can kill their healer and they'll all wipe, you should burst out all your damage and GCDC-Chain your skills. If you need to hold a position, you will increase the pressure if you watch your cells and use hammershot or FA to keep your ammo up.

[OldMike]

 

And for you OldMike: the 2 piece PvE set is referring to the pve eliminator set purchased on the fleet from the Tionese / Colummi / Rakata vendors, and it is a 15% crit chance buff to Grav round, which is awesome for two great reasons: ammo refunded by Grav round crits, and because crits hurt if you have a nice amount of surge ( obvious, yes, but valid )

 

Thanks for the reply. I think I've seen those on Fleet and noticed they are only available to those with PvP commendations? Right? Do you know if there are any that can be purchased with credits also?

 

Thanks

[Meuwdy]

Thanks for the reply. I think I've seen those on Fleet and noticed they are only available to those with PvP commendations? Right? Do you know if there are any that can be purchased with credits also?

 

Thanks

 

The ones you're looking at/referring to are the PvP sets. The PvE ones are at different vendors and require commendations/crystals from PvE instances (either from Operations or Hard Mode Flashpoints).

[ZucriyLyhdnamm]

The ones you're looking at/referring to are the PvP sets. The PvE ones are at different vendors and require commendations/crystals from PvE instances (either from Operations or Hard Mode Flashpoints).

 

Exactly. Yeah the ones you may have seen for PvP like battle master, centurion, champion are pvp ( found in the combat training section )

 

The PvE ones are found in the Supplies section closer to the middle ( opposite side of where the commendations vendors are )

 

Hope that helps!

 

And for the one who asked about cells, I assume we're talking about ammo management, if so then the poster a few before me is right on, burst and burn your cells if you can drop a healer or an incredibly strong dps ( like a sniper or sorc ) especially if you have recharge cells up.

 

If you meant cell buffs however aka plasma cell, combat support cell, armor piercing cell; the answer to that is pretty simple, armor piercing cell is for gunnery spec, plasma cell for assault spec, and combat support cell is for healers.

[Sorotas]

Actually

 

Aim > power > cunning > crit (to cap) > surge (to cap) > accuracy> dont waste points on anything else.

 

 

 

what are those caps?

[ArchangelLBC]

I've been level 50 for a month, so here's a few tips.

 

1) Get 2 pcs of the PVE set ASAP for the set bonus. Use this in PVP as well.

2) After you have done #1 take full auto off our bar and never use it again. Yes, its that bad.

3) Avoid alacrity and accuracy gear like the plague.

 

Hope this helps.

 

 

 

Whatever issues people may have with this thread this is the biggest piece of bad advice in the thread. Specifically 2 and half of 3. Absolutely you should get 2 pieces of columni (or tionese or rakata but columni is by far the easiest to get because you can get the token drops instead of trying to farm crystals commendations. After this though I have to disagree, except with the bit about alacrity. Accuracy gear is very helpful I've found for Hardmodes and Operations. Remember accuracy, like power, applies to the tech side, and since you start off with 100% tech accuracy, every bit of accuracy is pure gravy cutting directly in the enemy's resistance

 

Full auto may appear to be a small DPS increase over grav round spam for lesser ammo. Dont be tricked.

 

There are several reasons full auto is bad.

 

1) Gravity vortex. I'm sure you'll agree that all things being equal putting a vortex on the target so that all following hits (even from other players) do more damage is a good thing.

 

2) PVE set bonus. The 2 pc set bonus for PVE gear is +15% crit chance on grav round and charged bolts. This means spamming grav round will have a much higher overall DPS than weaving full auto into the mix, even with curtain of fire. Furthermore because your cell charger procs on CRITS this negates the lesser ammo use of full auto by giving you more free ammo.

 

3) Weapon damge. Grav round is Tech damage. Full auto is weapon damage. Tech damage ignores defense rating and shields. See that sith jugg? Your full auto is bouncing off him doing no damage. My grav round is hitting every time. Accuracy will reduce your target's defense chance, but not the shield chance, so even at 200% accuracy you full auto will still do less damage to a tank than grav round.

 

4) Pushback. Full auto does 3 ticks of damage over a 3 second channel. Grav round does one big hit at the end of a 1.5 second cast. What happens if you get hit while shooting delaying your "cast" by 0.1 seconds? For grav round it will do full damage after 1.6 seconds. For full auto it will do the first tick at 1.1, the 2nd at 2.1 and the 3rd never. You lose the 3rd tick of damage completely.

 

5) Ammo wastage. Full auto uses 2 ammo when you start casting it. If move, are stunned or otherwise cancel it, you lose that ammo, even if you've done no damage. Grav rounds uses ammo when it does damage. This is more of an issue in PVP/raiding than questing.

 

1) Once you have that 5th gravity vortex on the target, the only reason to be spamming grav round is for charged barrel, otherwise keep up the 5 vortexes and use other skills, notably Full Auto. There's some thought that suggests that realistically the armor reduction doesn't help all that much on its own, but the extra 25% to demo round and the extra 30% to HIB from Charged Barrel definitely helps a lot.

 

2) Without at least some math to back this up, this is highly anecdotal at BEST and at worst is you straight up talking out of your butt. Moreover, this along with 5 shows you're overlooking the biggest benefit of Full Auto, which is long term sustainability from Cell Charger. Maybe you're just talking only PVP, but your posts seemed to be about PVE as well and on anything that matters Full Auto is a Godsend. Let me explain what I mean.

 

Grav round has a 1.5 cast time, at the end of which it takes 2 ammo. With full ammo this means that at best you will be charged 1 ammo for that first grav round (since you can't regen an ammo when you're already full). After that, because of the cooldown from cell charger this means that, again at best, you are spending one ammo for every two grav rounds. A grav round that crits when cell charger can proc and when you didn't have full ammo can be considered free, but remember that that next grav round will have a cost of 1 ammo whether it crits or not since cell charger can't activate again. If you're constantly spamming grav round and are managing to crit EVERYTIME Cell Charger is up you will be dry in about 36 seconds, though in reality its much quicker than that since once you're out of top tier regen Grav Round becomes much more expensive.

 

Conversely, Full Auto takes 2 ammo, and follows this with a 3 second channel time (and after the patch its actually been 3 seconds not 1 second of sitting there scratching my head and THEN 3 seconds of animation). At top tier regen you will get all of the ammo you spent during the channel and since its taken up front this includes when you open with it. This is why you open with it, because its absolutely free damage from an ammo perspective. Here's the kicker though! Cell Charger also procs when you crit with full auto, and full auto offers three chances to crit so when you crit with full auto when in top tier regen it actually REGENS ammo, and once you have over 33.34% crit rate you're going to do that more often than you aren't (basically 19/27 full autos will refund ammo at that point, that's a probability though).

 

Long story short: Grav round with cell charger is nice and cheap. Full Auto is free, and with cell charger gives back ammo. You aren't gonna burn through a boss with over 1 million HP in the space of 30 seconds and recharge cells has a 2 minute cooldown. If you want to keep damage up, full auto everytime Curtain of Fire procs.

 

3) I will plead pure ignorance in PVP, but again this thread is about both and from what I've seen from Hard modes and operations, I'm not getting defense chance checked on anything. Now granted I have 103% ranged accuracy so I'm not missing with that either.

 

Judging from pure eyeballing anecdotes, my Full Auto shots do 1000-1200 a tick with Curtain of Fire up and crit for 2k to 2400ish or so. This gives a max damage of 6000-7200 damage in three seconds and I HAVE seen triple crits happen, and if you're getting one of those to crit every time, statistically you'll be doing about 4k to 4800 damage.

 

My Grav rounds crit for about 2500 to 2700 with uncrits for 1400 to high 1500ish and lets just call it 1600 for the sake of convenience. With 35% crit rate your grav round chance is 50% so at max I would do about 5400 dmg in 3 seconds from grav round and statistically should get 3900 to 4300 from two grav rounds.

 

Again all of this is so anecdotal it isn't funny but it serves as a base line, and my baseline says I will do more damage with Full Auto in the same amount of time. A sidenote: you WILL get back to back crits from grav round more often than you will get three crits in a row from Full Auto, but over the long course the above estimates should work out.

 

 

4) Pushback IS an issue, you're absolutely right, so again I can see your point somewhat in PVP and even soloing but in PVE this is again a nonissue on anything that matters. For long sustained fights if you're getting hit that much you're probably dead anyway.

 

5) See (2) for why Full Auto is better if you can stand and fight from an ammo perspective. From a moving perspective you have something of a point, but in raiding if you're moving THAT much you aren't doing much damage anyway. Even in fights where you're moving all over the place, like final boss in Directive 7 or second boss in Kaon Under Seige if your group kites it the whole time, you shouldn't have trouble finding three seconds together to stand and full auto when curtain of fire is up.

 

 

To sum up: While Full Auto does have some issues, most notably with pushback and with its requirement that you be able to stand and fight, it is by no means so bad you should take it off your rotation and on the contrary rightly deserves to be one of the backbones of our damage rotation.

 

tl;dr: Full Auto doesn't suck, don't listen to anyone who says it does.

[ZucriyLyhdnamm]

Full auto has been MUCH more responsive lately, but that is not to say it doesn't still have issues.

 

A huge change that it needs is pushback not making you lose a tick... Also, the random time where you do the full channel but nothing actually happens and you have to cast it again... Don't try an tell me that's fixed, because it happened to me yesterday again...

 

Nonetheless, when full auto works as intended, it works very well in my experience. Definitely improved lately, but still needs a little work.