Derzky’s Commando Gunnery DPS PvP/PvE build (Guide)

[HOCUHA]

Derzky’s Commando Gunnery DPS PvP/PvE build (Guide)

Hello guys. Decided to share with you my own DPS build. May be you have seen something like that in the forum, but I didn’t. I am sure that some number of commandos uses this build but they don’t like to spread it out.

If you interested I play as Combat Medic in Lord Calypho RP-PVP Server. Contact me if you have some questions. Nick - Derzky. Wrote about DPS because play as dps sometimes.

 

The most important parts of this build that you shouldn’t ignore are:

1. Cell that we will use

2. Gear that we will wear

3. Talents in the talents tree we need to get

4. Abilities we are going to use/ ammo management we need to follow

5. Advantages of this build

 

1. Cell that we will use

Many commando gunnery men use armor-penetration cell. Of course it seems rather obvious that commando gunnery should use it, but… use Combat Support cell. I am sure you will understand WHY a bit later in this guide.

P.S. No need to tell you that 35% of armor-penetration affects enemies armor rating (firm number, like 5000 armor) and not theirs defense rating (counting in %). So you WON’T hit the enemy 35% harder! You will just do 5-10% more damage (depends of enemy’s armor rating according to their class).

 

2. Gear that we will wear

Here I will mostly speak about PvE, because this build is much more powerful in PvE. But it doesn’t mean weakness in PvP, because all Gunnery talents will be on your side

So, what do you need to do?

a)get 2 pieces of Columi Eliminator set (bonus is +15% to critical chance of Gravity Round and Charge Bolts)

get 2 pieces of Columi Combat Medic set (bonus is + 3 seconds to the effect of Supercharge Cell)

b) remove all enhancements (from Eliminator items) that give you bonus to Accuracy and Power

c) put in these items enhancements that give you bonuses to Critical chance and Surge rating

d) get another parts of Columi set with the following bonus preference: Crit chance/surge <- Alacrity<-Power

So in the end you need to have Columi set, that consists of: 2 pieces of Eliminator, 2 pieces of Combat medic. Other parts (Eliminator or Medic) depends on your personal choice. Only condition: follow the stat preference I wrote before.

 

Some questions you can have:

- Where can I get enhancements with stats I need?

You can remove it from either Champion or Columi items. It is not so much expensive. Approximately 20k credits.

-Why do I need alacrity? I found in the forum that it’s absolutely useless!

I will explain this VERY important moment in the part 4.

 

3. Talents in the talents tree we need to get

That is my build. On your choice you can get 2 points of Cell Charger (Gunnery) instead of 2 of First Responder (Combat Medic). It allows you to use both cells. Armor-piercing will increase your damage in PvP, but significantly lowers it in PvE. Why? I will explain in part 4

 

4. Abilities we are going to use/ ammo management we need to follow

So, that is the most important part of my build and of my guide too. Please, concentrate.

All our PvE battle will consist of 2 parts.

1.We need to use Gravity Round until we get Curtain of Fire effect. As soon as you get it use Full auto to put Curtain of Fire into effect (no need to remember it will grant you +25% damage dealing by Full Auto). Try to keep your ammo full. So, do 2-3 GRs then just Hammer Shot for a little time, then again. Please, DON’T USE Impact Bolt and Demolition Round in PvE. These abilities will just lower your ammo while their effectiveness is occasional. When your ammo will be 6/12 or less or you will be ready to use Supercharge Cells, just go to the second phase of PvE Battle.

2. Use your relics and adrenals. Turn on Supercharge Cells and start Charge Bolting the target (no need to use it on weak low-hp targets). Damage dealt will be amazing and you will end Charge Bolting with AMMO FULL. So, repeat phase 1.

 

Some questions you can have:

-Why did I tell you about 2 pieces of Columi Combat Medic?

It will increase your Super Charge Effect from 10 to 13 seconds.

-Why did I tell you about 2 pieces of Columi Eliminator?

You will have approximately 60-65% Critical chance with your Gravity Rounds and Charge Bolts.

-Why did I tell you about the great destination of Alacrity?

You will manage to do (13 secs/ 1.3 sec =) 10 Charge Bolts during the Supercharge/Relic/Adrenal effect.

-What is Supercharge Cells?

It is an effect that you can turn on when you have 30 Supercharge point. You can rise its number using Hammer Shots or by healing (we are not healers , so just use Hammer Shots). This effect gives you +10% to all your damage and makes your Charge Bolts absolutely FREE.

 

5. Advantages of this build

Just look.

1. For example we used relic for +350 power and Adrenal +650 power = + 1000 power.

1000 power = approximately +200-300 damage bonus.

So, our standard Charge Bolt will do 20%+- more damage.

2. With your Columi Eliminator and crit/surge bonuses in your armor you will do much more critical damage. For example, I have 40 % critical chance (without buff). 45 % with smugglers buff. 60% for FR and CB critical chance. Again, just for example, I have 75 % Critical damage bonus.

3. Under the effect of Supercharge Cells (activated) you will have +10% to all damage dealt for 13 seconds (with Columi CM 2 pieces).

 

That’s all guys. Hope you will estimate my effort.

If you have some remarks, suggestions or questions please ask. My English isn’t so good, so…sorry for possible mistakes.

Also hope my guide to become sticky. If you like the guide, please say it below.

Edited February 24, 2012 by HOCUHA

[johanlofdahl]

hello,

 

I enjoyed the read, it was nice. although I think you could use some formatting and space bars, get the feeling you wrote this under stress. take a min and edit it through and add some space between the "chapters" etc.

 

Seems like a one-trick pony, although a supergreat trick! But if you are into serious PvE you can always charge up the stacks of Supercharge Cell by using hammershot on allies between pulls. Most people are slackers so you will always find "empty" time in operations, at least my experience.

 

Anyways, going to give it a try!

[Raeln]

I cannot see this as something Bioware intended a Gunnery Commando to do for a rotation. I cannot see them letting a 6 point medic talent overpower a 31 pt Gunnery talent for long.

 

Does the short term 10% buff from Supercharge cells really offset the armor penetration from armor piercing cell that well? That last time I DPS'd under the support cell, my numbers were pathetic at best.

Edited February 24, 2012 by Raeln

[HOCUHA]

Yes, Armor-Pentration really ugly dmg buff. As ugly as 5% healing buff done by the Kolto bomb.

Bioware didn't give commando interrupt and battle res. As for me, it's absolutely honest that commando should compensate the lack of those abilities with hight amount of burst damage.

[Raeln]

Yes, Armor-Pentration really ugly dmg buff. As ugly as 5% healing buff done by the Kolto bomb.

Bioware didn't give commando interrupt and battle res. As for me, it's absolutely honest that commando should compensate the lack of those abilities with hight amount of burst damage.

 

Sorry man - I'm not understanding what your are saying here.

 

Armor pen cell applies to all of our abilities as a passive. The 10% supercharge is essentially an adrenal, the rest of the time it's lackluster numbers.

 

The ranged interrupt and battle rez are complete separate issues and have nothing to do with Supercharge, Combat support cell or Armor-Penetration cell.

 

As it stands, I don't see this style of DPS'ing remaining around for the long term. For a Gunnery Commando to ignore the 31 point talent ability and another core ability, both of which have several Gunnery talents baked in to provide buffs and debuffs for to be ignored, that screams failure at the balance department. I can see your supercharge/combat cell rotation getting the nerf bat eventually. It's obviously not what Bioware intended for a Gunnery Commando to do.

[wesleycrushers]

Also isn't the GCD 1.5 seconds anyway? This is the reason that I always heard that people were against Alacrity, since if the time to activate is < 1.5 seconds, you are still waiting the extra time to actually activate your next ability.

 

In your example you were saying that you could get 10 activations of charged bolts in 13 seconds, but this isn't possible if the GCD is 1.5 seconds anyway. You would get 9 though as it would activate the last ability at 12 seconds, and someone on here this week said that abilities that are activated during the window at all get the bonus.

[JLapp]

While I guess I can't say with 100% certainity since I haven't actually tried this...I am 99% certain following this guide will severely gimp your damage in PVE.

[HOCUHA]

What didn't you understand, Raeln? I just said that armor-penetration doesn't increase your damage hight. To be honoest, it's too weak.

Man, I have played a healer from 10 to 50 lvl and i could only dps when i am under the SuperCharge. I am sure that many dps players know nothing except thier talent tree.

Tell me at least one argument about why i should use AP instead of CSC? Your only point is that +5% damage with AP will do the case? Am i right?

Edited February 24, 2012 by HOCUHA

[HOCUHA]

Wesley

I understand the question. I and many healers of our server I know noticed that GCD in fact CAN be decreased. At least I can cast CB without any pause.

Ok, forget about CB. Lets speak about healing.

Do you know AMP? The cast time of AMP under the CSC is 1.2 seconds. And again...no pause.

Will be good if you can try it and wright herem that it isn't my delusion.

[JLapp]

Also isn't the GCD 1.5 seconds anyway? This is the reason that I always heard that people were against Alacrity, since if the time to activate is < 1.5 seconds, you are still waiting the extra time to actually activate your next ability.

 

In your example you were saying that you could get 10 activations of charged bolts in 13 seconds, but this isn't possible if the GCD is 1.5 seconds anyway. You would get 9 though as it would activate the last ability at 12 seconds, and someone on here this week said that abilities that are activated during the window at all get the bonus.

 

Activation time abilities do not have a cool down (despite how people still call it a "global" cool down...it only impacts instant cast abilities).

[Raeln]

What didn't you understand, Raeln? I just said that armor-penetration doesn't increase your damage hight. To be honoest, it's too weak.

Man, I have played a healer from 10 to 50 lvl and i could inly dps when i am under the SuperCharge. I am sure that many dps players know nothing except thier talent tree.

Tell me at least one argument about why i should use AP instead of CSC? Your only point is that +5% damage with AP will do the case? Am i right?

 

Your wording in that post was confusing.

 

Hey, I'm not saying your rotation doesn't work. It probably does. Your supercharge rotation makes sense to me - I'm just saying that I don't believe Bioware intends for that particular rotation to be viable. Basically ignoring two abilities that the Gunnery tree invests heavily into is not coming across as "intended" to me.

 

I've been around MMOs for a long time - I'm telling you that I'm feeling that Bioware will wreck your rotation down the road at some point.

 

As for Armor-Piercing cell's benefit - some targets have a high armor amount. With AP cell's benefit being a percent based application, the net-effect is also going to be a percent based gain. Low armor targets will not net the same effect as a high armor target will. Considering that AP cell with Special Munitions (which is in your build) reduces HiB to 1 ammo - overlooking a 5-charge Charged Barrel buffed HiB with 5 stacks of Gravity Well seems very questionable. It's almost a "free" thank you ma'am shot and you are ignoring it in your rotation.

 

Again, if it works - then I tip my hat to you; however, I can't see Bioware letting it stay that way for long.

[HOCUHA]

Raeln

Being too emotional, my fault)

As I wrote you can use Cell Charger or First Responder. If you choose first, you will be as gunnery as other gunneries are. First responder just lowers the activation time and affords to cast CB one (mb two) more times.

Edited February 24, 2012 by HOCUHA

[JLapp]

So let me try to put something behind my I think this guide is awful for PVE.

 

Point 1: CSC charge building.

On combat medic, you can build this very fast. However, without healing abilities, you are limited to using hammer shot to build charges. So in between activations you need to 10 casts of hammer shot in order to build to 30 charges. With combat medic it lasts 13 seconds. So assuming you are attempting to maximize your up-time of supercharge, you would at best be able to have it up about 46% of the time. Since your rotation has some grav rounds and full auto...say you are mixing about 10s of non-charge building attacks.

 

So now you have 25s of non-supercharge state, 13s of supercharge state (about 35% uptime).

 

So you have 35% of +10% damage, 65% of say +1.5% damage (from the average charge building) overall damage is +4.475% (which is less than your assumed armor penetration cell damage increase).

 

Point 2: Ammo Regen

In point 1 we showed that we are activating super-charge every 38s (+2 ammo every 38s) and casting 13 charged bolts while supercharged saves (for arguments sake we'll assume we save 1 ammo for every cast). So in total we have +12 ammo every 38s. Would sounds great but we have to consider what we lose. Mainly: 4 piece columi set reduces HIB by 1 so it makes that free and can be used on cooldown (+1 ammo every 15s). Cell charger gives 1 ammo everytime grav or full auto crit (limited to every 3s) and they crit a lot...so we'll say 1 ammo every 4 seconds. The build in the OP gains about 12/38 or 0.316 ammo every second. A standard gunnery build gains (1/4 + 1/15) or 0.3167 ammo per second. So as far as ammo is concerned, they are about the same. However the supercharge method builds 12 ammo over a 13 second time frame where the standard gunnery build is going to be far more consistent and IMO lead to a more consistent DPS. Also with cell charger and reserve powercell you can still maintain a burst while using adrenals without having to wait for a while to recharge.

 

Point 3: Damage skills/tree.

First I'll say if you are going to tell someone not to use demo round or HIB you should have have a tree that has points in demo round or charged barrel.

 

Second, Demo round is the most damaging skill a commando has when they have 5 stacks of grav round on an enemy. Not using it diminishes overall DPS.

 

 

Point 4: Have you done any testing on the AP damage increase? I remember doing a quick check when I was level 30 on a random mob and it was probably about 10%-15% increase.

 

 

So anyway, I don't think this build has any real value as far as PVE goes.

[EthicsGradient]

I think you're overestimating CSC up-time. To have it every 38s you would need to use a LOT of hammer shots and your dps will suffer a *lot*.

 

I don't see this working anywhere near as well as AP gunnery, mainly due to ammo concerns over long fights.

 

 

Even assault builds using CSC over plasma aren't entirely convincing, and they only require a burn on the target for extra ammo regen rather than plasma cell proc specifically.

[Rainsfords]

LOTS of misinformation here.

 

1) 35% armor pen is huge, especially against targets wearing heavy armor. You're going to get facestomped by vanguards/BH's if you run combat support. The passive boost from CSC is still less than the increase off armor-pen. I'm an Operative main, so I know the damage difference when acid blade is/isn't up. It matters.

 

2) I agree with going 2x medic, 2x eliminator for pve/pvp. It's really because the other set bonuses are pretty lack-luster, and there are times you'll want to use a proper hybrid spec (like 30/11), so having the medic pieces are good.

 

As for getting rid of ALL of your accuracy? Uh... Full auto, hammer shot, charged bolt and high impact bolt are all "ranged" attacks, which means they start at 90% accuracy. You need 100% accuracy to even think about PvE, and anything under 105% means you're going to get misses. Devoting the build to spamming white damage while neglecting accuracy is stupid. Also, power improves linearly, so you will always get the same benefit. Crit and surge, on the other hand, have pretty harsh diminishing return effects (especially after the recent Surge nerf). You need a balance. Pulling out all your power means you're going to be doing less damage overall. I do suggest you take the Alacrity out of your medic pieces and replace it with a proper dps stat.

 

3) Weapon Calibration and First Responder? Uh... For the record, pve mobs have armor, especially bosses....

 

4) High Impact Bolt and Demo Round will do more damage than Grav Round, even in PvE. Why wouldn't you use them? ....

 

Charge bolt does less damage than Grav Round. It is also not tech damage, so it's subjected to more mitigation.

 

 

5) The fact that you're using a relic and an adrenal has nothing to do with the build. I pop them right after my second grav round so they are both up for FA, Demo and HiB. You also need to weave way too many hammer-shots in to get your combat-support back. As soon as you blow it for the +10% damage bonus and CB spam, you've lost the bonus until you use hammer-shot another 10 times (40 seconds if you put in 2 grav rounds between hammer shots). That's all time where the armor-pierce commando is doing more damage WHILE regening ammo faster. Besides, the normal grav>FA>grav>demo>HiB>hammer>grav>FA rotation is going to do way more damage than spamming charge bolt, especially at <100% accuracy.

 

Oh and you seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of alacrity and the GCD. You can NEVER cast two abilities within 1.5 seconds. So during Supercharge Cells you'll get off 8 "free" charged bolts and the 9th will cost ammo (since it will fire after SC wears off).

 

Stick to the vanilla rotation/build. It's vanilla for a reason.

[HOCUHA]

Who said you need to use Supercharge ASAP?) Please, quote!

You reduce it to an absurdity in your answer.

When gunnery commando will go out of ammo, i will be still dpsing. Not because I Hammershoted all the time when another commando put GRs. No.

I use 1-2-3 GRs, ASAP Full Auto. When my ammo is 6/12 I start hammershoting and regen ammo quiet fast. Then again GR and Full Auto. When i reach 30 charges I can loose all my ammo for GR (even Demo if you like it so much) and then i use Supercharge.

Does it takes 38 seconds?) Of cource not.

Supercharge damage is just pleasant bonus to common gunnery damage.

 

Please, don't lie yourself telling that Cell Charger helps you so great. I played a lot as full gunnery commando. Try to convince somebody also. Ammo problem for gunnery is as common as for other DPS.

 

I know some healers that can neither keep theirs mana full, nor keep paty alive. I can assure you, I can heal opses, keeping my full ammo with me and my party members alive. DPS is the same. If you cant handle this - just try to handle. Like if you cant heal well with all points in your healing tree - just learn.

 

P.S. By the way Mr. Operative. Operatives still fine, why did you rerol? Like to play imba so much?

Edited February 24, 2012 by HOCUHA

[Anttonen]

So, what do you need to do?

a)get 2 pieces of Columi Eliminator set (bonus is +15% to critical chance of Gravity Round and Charge Bolts)

get 2 pieces of Columi Combat Medic set (bonus is + 3 seconds to the effect of Supercharge Cell)

 

Or you can just collect 4 pieces of eliminator set with armor piercing cell and get:

1 Free high impact bolt = excellent filler for ammo regen.

2 Cell charger = absolutely necessary talent for quick ammo regen in pve, but useless without armor-piercing cell.

3 Well, armor piercing. It's not so good by itself, thats true, but pretty usefull with armor debuff from grav round on target.

 

Please, DON’T USE Impact Bolt and Demolition Round in PvE. These abilities will just lower your ammo while their effectiveness is occasional.

 

Demolition round crits for 5k in full rakata gear and costs same amount of ammo as grav round. Its our best nuke atm, why shouldn't we use it?

 

Dps in pve is all about ammo management and proc timing, and thats also a reason, why alacrity is so terrible stat for us.

Edited February 24, 2012 by Anttonen

[JLapp]

Who said you need to use Supercharge ASAP?) Please, quote!

You reduce it to an absurdity in your answer.

When gunnery commando will go out of ammo, i will be still dpsing. Not because I Hammershoted all the time when another commando put GRs. No.

I use 1-2-3 GRs, ASAP Full Auto. When my ammo is 6/12 I start hammershoting and regen ammo quiet fast. Then again GR and Full Auto. When i reach 30 charges I can loose all my ammo for GR (even Demo if you like it so much) and then i use Supercharge.

Does it takes 38 seconds?) Of cource not.

Supercharge damage is just pleasant bonus to common gunnery damage.

 

Please, don't lie yourself telling that Cell Charger helps you so great. I played a lot as full gunnery commando. Try to convince somebody also. Ammo problem for gunnery is as common as for other DPS.

 

I know some healers that can neither keep theirs mana full, nor keep paty alive. I can assure you, I can heal opses, keeping my full ammo with me and my party members alive. DPS is the same. If you cant handle this - just try to handle. Like if you cant heal well with all points in your healing tree - just learn.

 

P.S. By the way Mr. Operative. Operatives still fine, why did you rerol? Like to play imba so much?

 

You don't need to use supercharge ASAP but that means you are losing overall percentage damage (by sitting at the 3% boost from 30 charges instead of 10% from supercharge) and you are realizing less of the ammo benefits by using it less often.

 

Cell charger is huge. Anyone who has done a fight without it would know (I accidentally clicked off AP cell for first boss in EV once...the difference is VERY noticeable).

 

Ammo problems for gunnery commandos are not huge. Between free HIB and cell charger you only have to occasionally mix in hammer shots, less so than you would have to in order to realize any supercharge impact from your build.

 

I just don't see it coming anywhere close to the DPS of the standard gunnery build.

[Rainsfords]

 

P.S. By the way Mr. Operative. Operatives still fine, why did you rerol? Like to play imba so much?

 

My Operative is war hero+full rakata. No reason to play besides dailies.

 

And I was having reddit articles posted about my Op. Most Operatives were terrible because they used bad builds/rotations. I didn't. This is why I'm warning people: this build/rotation is just bad. Don't waste your time. Any build that depends on skills that are going to miss at least 10% of the time is bad.

 

And please, don't ask for a sticky when your post says things like "alacrity allows you to cast a skill every 1.3s". It's just incorrect and has been proven so multiple times.

Edited February 24, 2012 by Rainsfords

[HOCUHA]

Without damage counting i can prove you nothing. I know only that my damage increased significantly. Tired of answering this flood.)

You gave no proof that my build do less damage then full gunnery. I can just wait for someone also to try it.

[Calavero]

I hate to be a downer (and add to the "flood"), but I got about 1/3 of the way through your original post and thought you might have posted the most well written guide for a useless spec and rotation I'd ever read.

 

Then I read the whole thing, and this was confirmed. No offense intended to you, but you're just trying way too hard to make something that sounds cool in concept work in reality. It just... doesn't.

 

Even in an ideal case scenario (essentially, standing still for an unlimited amount of time and going through the rotations perfectly with no latency), this still comes up short for total damage done over time compared to a standard AP Cell Gunnery spec.

 

When you add in the realities of a PVE boss encounter (having to move, having to execute mechanics, having to stop DPS for one reason or another, having to chase or switch targets) this falls totally flat. You're either going to have to severely gimp your DPS trying to keep your CS Cell stacks up, or you're going to lose them entirely when you have to stop DPS to hide behind a pillar or something or other as part of the mechanics of the fight you're doing. And, the minute that happens, well, you'd have been better off putting out higher throughput at a more efficient rate of ammo consumption in the first place.

 

Also, "I tried this and my damage went up" is a useless statement. What did you try it on? For how long? How do you know your damage went up? All we can do at this point is flow out how the mechanics of our specs will work with assumed numbers (which is surprisingly accurate, given the simplicity of combat in this game), and a few people have already done that to your spec and it comes up short.

 

Good effort, though - I like your approach to trying to find a way to break the mold (and the limitations of said mold). Sometimes, you just gotta be prepared to admit that your idea wasn't as good as you thought it was at first, though.

[HOCUHA]

Calavero.

Thanks, you at least shown some respect to my work.

But I still disagree main points of your critics. The main argument that build is not usable in opses and other hard battles isn't a point. I can heal (when i am healer) and dps (when i play gunnery) successfuly using Supercharge. Of courcse it can be interrupted by stun, cc or traps but I think 13 second isn't so much. If you qualified player you can plan using this "supercharge bonus" in the moment it won't be interrupted.

[Anttonen]

No one says its not usable, its just less effective. In my standart gunnery rotation i barely use hammer shot at all (maybe 3-4 per minute) and my ammo regen is fine.

 

And about demo round. "Effectiveness is occasional"- oh, really?

http://i.imgur.com/3bxb4.jpg