Surge or Alacrity?

[Thunderray]

I have a lvl 20 Gunnery Commando and I was wondering, for this tree, would alacrity or surge help more in PvP? I level on PvP and class quests but mostly Pvp. Thoughts?

[Soshla]

Surge, Alacrity is all sorts of terrible. Doesn't lower cooldowns, doesn't make attacks more ammo efficient, doesn't do anything for HiB or Demo Round.

[nubzz]

I would have assumed alacrity would only be for getting off attacks faster so you can move on to the next attack, Maybe I'm wrong but that doesn't sound so bad to cut down cast times. Seems like you might run out of ammo faster but you got off the same amount of attacks that would have taken longer anyway? I don't get the negativity towards alacrity for a class with so many cast time skills.

Please explain in some detail why it is so bad.

[JLapp]

I would have assumed alacrity would only be for getting off attacks faster so you can move on to the next attack, Maybe I'm wrong but that doesn't sound so bad to cut down cast times. Seems like you might run out of ammo faster but you got off the same amount of attacks that would have taken longer anyway? I don't get the negativity towards alacrity for a class with so many cast time skills.

Please explain in some detail why it is so bad.

 

It doesn't have any impact on instant cast abilities so it provides no value when using demo, HIB, or hammer shot.

 

Since you are ammo limited, alacrity doesn't allow you to use any of your more damaging abilities more often, only allows you add in extra hammer-shots. Adding a low damage, free attack doesn't do a lot to increase overall DPS compared to either power, surge, or crit which all increase the damage done by all your attacks. Alacrity isn't harmful, it just isn't anywhere close to as good as any other secondary stat.

[nubzz]

It doesn't have any impact on instant cast abilities so it provides no value when using demo, HIB, or hammer shot.

 

Since you are ammo limited, alacrity doesn't allow you to use any of your more damaging abilities more often, only allows you add in extra hammer-shots. Adding a low damage, free attack doesn't do a lot to increase overall DPS compared to either power, surge, or crit which all increase the damage done by all your attacks. Alacrity isn't harmful, it just isn't anywhere close to as good as any other secondary stat.

 

I still don't get it, it sounds as if you are saying since you are speeding up the cast time you have to use hammer shots in between shots? I assumed if you could get your cast time down to 1.0 (just an example time) on grav rounds that meant you could burst out a grav round every second.

Perhaps this wouldn't be good for pve because you would run out of ammo faster but it seems viable for pvp burst dmg maybe? Even if you never got a crit this sounds like an average of 1/3 more damage output or the same damage in 2/3 of the normal time?

What am I missing here? I can see ppl prefering a crit/surge build but simply cranking out a reliable number not based off crit "chance" seems viable to me.

Edited February 29, 2012 by nubzz

[EthicsGradient]

Cell charger and curtain of fire procs are both tied to multiples of the standard GCD. Casting grav round faster than 1.5s will cause you to have these procs delayed. So you're not just using ammo faster, you're delaying procs for extra ammo regen and CD finish on your high-dps/ammo ability.

 

Remember you aren't just getting alacrity for free, you're losing other stats which do not have this disadvantage in order to get it on your gear.

Edited February 29, 2012 by EthicsGradient

[nubzz]

Cell charger and curtain of fire procs are both tied to multiples of the standard GCD. Casting grav round faster than 1.5s will cause you to have these procs delayed. So you're not just using ammo faster, you're delaying procs for extra ammo regen and CD finish on your high-dps/ammo ability.

 

Remember you aren't just getting alacrity for free, you're losing other stats which do not have this disadvantage in order to get it on your gear.

 

Ah, a good answer, thanks.

[Thunderray]

Alright Surge it is! Thanks for the info guys!

[Suwa]

Ah, a good answer, thanks.

 

 

Also, with alacrity, you'll get attacks off faster but then once you reach 8 (I think it's 8?), you'll have to sit there. Because of the non-linear regen, you don't want to drop below the "maximum ammo regen" threshold when you're doing normal dps, or else you just start to limit yourself if you spend time waiting to regen from 2 ammo instead of 8.

Edited March 2, 2012 by Suwa

[RuQu]

In PvP the only real advantage of Alacrity is that it lets you get a cast off quicker, so a shorter window for interrupts.

 

A plot of Alacrity's effect on a Gunnery Burst.

 

Since this is for PvP, the burst was 30s, with no concern for staying above 8 Ammo because you are either dead (free reload!) or you killed them (reload yourself).

 

The above data is from the Gunnery module in my calculator, which I'm still waiting on people to test and verify. I'm pretty sure the DPS numbers are a bit off, but not sure which abilities are the culprits.

 

The rotation, though, is pretty easy, and the plot shows the cast counts as Alacrity increases. You stay at 10, give or take 1, non-HS casts in that 10s window the entire time, but you gain HS casts as Alacrity increases, from 8-11 in a 30s window. So your DPS increases, but it isn't from increased use of the abilities that matter.

 

Your points are better spent elsewhere.