Post 1.2 Gunnery findings (No QQ)

[Fight]

Having had some time to play 1.2 properly I thought I'd weigh in with my PVE and PVP findings, read it if you like, comment if you would like clarification or have a constructive argument.

 

Starting with PVE:

 

General - I have found an interesting new issue with gunnery DPS, we need to keep an eye on our ammo management much more carefully now. There were no fundamental changes to our ammo consumption, in fact with the reduction of our dispel I'd say our ammo is better than before. However with the changes to full auto and a generally less "clunky" feel to the tree we are finishing our rotation much quicker while producing the same sort of DPS.

 

Where I was weaving in one hammer between my "rotation" I am now putting two or three in. We are also obviously more tempted to break rotation to use our COF procs which happen something like 50% of the time, further consuming ammo. So basically we have gained PVE dps via extra hammer shots at the expense of having to actually manage ourselves better, we have also gained burst because we are able to burn ammo quickly towards the end of the fight if timed well.

 

Operation DPS - As most of you are aware, we now have damage meters readily available. We have completed the new operation on story mode and had a crack at HM. I was "comparing" myself to a Sage, Gunslinger and a Sentinel (please keep in mind that nearly all of the encounters in Denova favour ranged dps, the sentinel suffered). All players in full rakata, all players know what they are doing.

 

My damage was top in all encounters, from trash to bosses, with target switching and sustained. It ranged from 10% to 30% above the others. I was also spot healing on Hard Mode with tech override to help the healers keep our melee up with all the damage flying around - This I'm sure wont be necessary in the near future when we have the mechanics completely sussed. I need to say that I don't consider myself the pinnacle of PVE excellence, I actually value the others I was grouped with above my own skill.

 

And PVP:

 

General - With the changes to FA, MV and general clunk I feel more mobile. I also feel I can "trust" my activated abilities more, MV is actually a useful area denial now, yes the range was reduced but I would gladly sacrifice that for an instant activation (On a side note I feel sorry for the BH's who only got the nerf side of this change and don't see the activation benefits, they did however have a far superior ability to us for 3 months). FA's snare is also much more useful now for slowing a ball carrier or reducing the gap closing ability of a distant melee who is intent on reaching you.

 

My damage numbers equal what I was doing pre-patch and my burst has increased significantly against most classes if left alone to DPS in a corner somewhere. Ammo managements in longer engagements against multiple targets is something I am having to constantly watch though.

 

Survivability - Against melee DPS classes who are competent I am finding it very difficult to survive a direct, unaided attack. If I am caught off guard by a decent sentinel/marauder or shadow/assassin I am basically dead unless I can use terrain to remove them as a threat (knock them off a walkway for example). In the past I have felt comfortable walking a ball in a slow game of huttball with 2 healers and guard on me, I now however wouldn't try that at all. My role has therefore changed and I feel I am less versatile in game like that. I am now a sneaky ranged DPS'er playing more like a sniper, using LOS and hit and run to kill before I am killed. This begs the question as to why we have no interrupt, the answer has always been that our heavy armour would make us overpowered with too much utility. We need to start challenging that however, with more and more damage in PVP coming from internal and elemental sources our armour is paper thin.

 

Another issue which concerns me more however in PVP is that as soon as I am targeted by a melee, whether they kill me or not, I stop serving my purpose. My DPS stops while I try to find a way to get rid of them, if I am not in a position to do that I can "stand and deliver" but with the amount of interrupts and cc other classes have its simply a case of removing whatever health I can before the inevitable. (At this point I need to mention I am speaking about well geared, well played characters, if a poor melee player attacks me I will usually wipe the floor with them, faking a heal is usually all that is needed to coax out an interrupt and then you smash them and feel good about yourself - that wont work with a good player). All of this opens real concerns about our viability in Rated PVP in the near™ future.

 

Please let me know if my findings match yours, and if not, why.

[Umbradomina]

Well written, and thank you. Though I don't PVE, I do a significant amount of PVP, and your findings pretty much match mine. I've been parsing combat logs for the last 2 days, and the results are posted below:

 

 

4/14 Combat Log Parsed Data: 19 matches

 

4/15 Combat Log Parsed Data: 15 matches

 

Sunday's log shows more use of GR that Saturday's. All in all, I don't see that we've been hurt that much damage-wise. However, our survivability has indeed been reduced, thus forcing a change in play style.

 

So, I've adapted my play style such that if attacked by a melee, I'm CCing to the extent I can and getting out of Dodge to find some teammates. To my teammates credit, they also know what my new role is, and if they see I have a melee on me, they're all over him. AOEs are tremendously effective now, making it much easier for your group to finish off your opponents. What does this mean? It means BW wants us to play more as a group... and I'm willing to do that.

 

I'm no longer always at the top of the damage list, but I'm typically in the top 2-3. Where I do shine, even with the reduced overall damage, is in kills. I find I'm getting more kill credits per unit of damage than before. I no longer get pissed off when I die. Death is but an instant ammo recharge. Also, when you die, your opponents now have to ask "Where the Hell is that guy?"

 

Shoot and move, people... shoot and move.

[Glorionn]

Like you both, I am also content with my 1.2 Commando. PvP and PvE wise. We should all head on over to SWTOR mechanics and start listing our damage on fights and the breakdowns. I'm always trying new things to make myself better - most of the whiners need to adapt, thats their real problem.

[Oticus]

agree with OP I am liking the 1.2 changes as a DPS

[Freeborne]

Aside from the Mortar Volley AoE being shrunk, I am enjoying the changes.

 

 

At this point you could almost make Mortar Volley targeted ability.

 

I would rather see it do less damage, and effect a wider area.

[Umbradomina]

I have actually used MV on a single target. It gets a great Holy $h!t out of them!

[schwiz]

I have to disagree with you, I did some tests with the combat logs, operation dummy and an online parser. I was consistently getting about 50 dps less with gunnery than assault. That was fine with me since I like assault better. (Even though gunnery is supposed to be the pve tree) So anyways I am in all rakata except the mainhand and the chest, I have columi implants with augment slots. A vangaurd friend of mine also assault in full BM gear except 2 pieces of rakata was constantly getting 300-400 higher dps than me!!! I can't even imagine if he had the same gear as me what kind of damage we would be seeing. Commando dps is underwhelming at best imo. Still need to compare to other classes but vanguard has us beat by a longshot.

[Glorionn]

Schwiz, can you please give some hard numbers? Like what exactly was the gunnery number you pulled, and the assault?

[Amun-RA]

I'm curious, what does your tree look like? Are you full gunnery spec? did you notice a significant change in your rotations? Thanks for posting this by the way, it was very helpful.

[Glorionn]

Aman-Ra, i'll give you some of my own findings (they may differ from the OP), but what I have found is that in order to maximise DPS, FA needs to be used everytime its up. I start off my rotation with 3x GR, followed by a DR, followed by FA. From then on, I use:

 

GR + HiB

GR + DR

GR + HS (Hammershot)

 

The goal is to proc your FA - as FA is your best damaging attack.

 

So basically what I found was, I would be mashing my GR button, in order to not miss a beat, and all of a sudden FA would proc its off CD and I would be half way through another GR. Using the aforementioned 3 groupings of GR, I would then see easily when FA comes off CD, and be able to use that straight after.

 

I am still tweaking my rotation, and this might not be the way to do it. Time will tell though!

 

In a ~4 minute fight with the dummy, these were the figures:

 

Full Auto - 109 000 - 34%

 

Grav Round - 90k - 28%

 

Demo Round - 55 500 - 17%

 

HiB - 32 000 - 10%

 

Hammer Shot- 22 000 - 7%

 

Trinket - 7 000 - 2%

 

Mortar Volley - 5 000 - 1.5%

 

 

 

Total DPS time was 258 seconds. DPS was 1 242.

 

 

 

Full raid buffed. No adrenal, no other debuffs.

[fongers]

I thought I was just imagining things when I noticed my ammo usage climbing. Now that the OP points it out, it's definitely the increased use of FA due to the extra procs. Not that I'm complaining. I always preferred burning down a target with FA procs to repeatedly hitting GR-GR-GR-GR... GR. Having to weave in hammershot more is going to take some getting used to however.

 

In PvP I think I'm dying more quickly if exposed to any kind of sustained enemy fire. If I'm left alone I can take big chunks of health out of even tougher classes like juggs and guardians but as soon as they notice me I need someone to peel ASAP or I'm going to be respawning. The heavy armour definitely doesn't seem to be making much of a difference in terms of squishiness. I felt squishy pre-1.2 but it feels like my survivability took a hit.

[schwiz]

Schwiz, can you please give some hard numbers? Like what exactly was the gunnery number you pulled, and the assault?

 

Assault:

http://www.fryingtime.com/?filename=combat_2012-04-16_10_29_11_863458.txt

 

Gunnery:

http://www.fryingtime.com/?filename=combat_2012-04-16_10_59_24_844155.txt

[Kilgo]

What is the best rotation to use now? Edited April 17, 2012 by Kilgo

[Glorionn]

Schwiz you must be have some gearing issues or something. Here's mine, parsed using the same site so you can easily compare:

 

http://www.fryingtime.com/?filename=combat_2012-04-18_08_53_01_660998.txt

 

Im in full rakata - some columi enhancemants - no augmented gear.

[ArchangelLBC]

Schwitz you did 5 more DPS with Assault. 5. Not 50. At 5 DPS it might as well not be a difference. You could chalk that up to RNG.

 

 

Glorion, when you say full Rakata I assume you mean Rakata weapon? Could you tell me what buffs you had and what your basic rotation was? I just did a 7 minute test on the ops dummy (found here) and got 1105 DPS, with just Rakata Stim, and I used a Rakata Power adrenal twice. Seems the difference is mostly that you had demo round and grav round both with crit rates in the 60s, so I'm wondering if you were building for crit or if that's just the way the RNG happened to fall (I've noticed wildly varying crit rates, especially on demo round in the parses I've done. Had it Crit 50% of the time on Annihilator Droid, 30.77% on Gharj, 20% on an Infernal Council Marauder, and as you see from that log 43% on the operations droid even though I didn't have smuggler buff, yet last time I went to the training dummy I got a 27.59% crit rate in an 8 minute parse even though I had sage and smuggler buff which led to me having 1091 DPS.

 

Anyway, I love seeing actual numbers and am really interested in being able to pump out as much damage as possible.

Edited April 18, 2012 by ArchangelLBC
wanted to respond to Glorion

[schwiz]

Schwiz you must be have some gearing issues or something. Here's mine, parsed using the same site so you can easily compare:

 

http://www.fryingtime.com/?filename=combat_2012-04-18_08_53_01_660998.txt

 

Im in full rakata - some columi enhancemants - no augmented gear.

 

Did some comparison, and it seems like what is setting you ahead is your crit rate, you have twice the crit rate on high impact bolt and demo round and another 20% ahead of me on grav round crits. When you say you have some columi enhancments do you mean you replaced the rakta ones with columi crit enchantments? I haven't made changes to my rakata gear just have all the default stuff in.

[ArchangelLBC]

That's not the only difference. Hammer shot accounts for 1.38% of his damage and he never uses Sticky Grenade, while Hammer shot accounts for 8.19% of the damage in your parse and Sticky Grenade another 4.49% whereas he doesn't use Sticky Grenade at ALL.

 

I'm guessing you need to use Hammer shot so much more often (seriously its at least 6 times more often) because you're using Sticky Grenade in your rotation which honestly is just silly. Looks like you're using it on cooldown or damn near, and it just doesn't have the damage to justify using a GCD on it when it costs ammo. Those 8 sticky grenades are GCDs you could be using on grav round which has a 500 higher damage average on your parse (for some reason it never critted) which has a chance to regen an ammo cell, doesn't take any ammo till the end of the GCD, and builds Charged Barrel stacks to up HiB.

 

 

Basically switch your Gunnery Rotation up a little and you should notice a much better DPS from it. Also yeah switch your rakata accuracy enhancements for Columni with power/surge or crit/surge. Basically I get enough accuracy rating to have 100% hit rate, then crit/power/surge ftw.

[Glorionn]

Some of my enhancements were switched for crit/surge ones.

 

Ok here were my stats prior to the fight:

 

Stats

Tech:

 

Bonus Damage 820

Accuracy 110.27

Critical Chance 37.74%

Surge 71.31%

Activation speed 4.00%

 

Ranged

 

Bonus Damage 501.0

Accuracy 100.27%

Critical Chance 36.82%

Surge 71.31%

 

I am fully raid buffed - all class buffs, stim etc. Standard rotation is pretty much prioritising FA when CoF procs. I roll my Demo Round and HiB straight after a Grav round. It feels more comfortable that way. So i'll never do:

GR -> HiB -> Demo Round.

It will always be:

Grav Round -> HiB

OR

Grav Round -> DR

 

Personally ive found Reserve Powercell + Mortar Volley to be the best combo to recharge cells.

 

Ill get around to doing a 5minute Parse.

[ArchangelLBC]

Must have just been RNG on the Demo and Grav round crits (Demo round more than Grav round). Kinda funny considering you've built for power (501 bonus damage makes me a tad envious tbh, I think I'm at like 488 Raid Buffed).

 

Interesting thought on Mortar Volley, I'll consider that. If you feel super bored try and get like an 8+ minute parse and see if it bears out. The longer the parse the less RNG from stuff like crits, though admittedly the more chance you'll lose focus, or get screwed on crit/CoF procs and suddenly you're sitting on no ammo and 30 seconds to recharge cells which hurts your DPS obviously.

[Glorionn]

Yeah Ill def try an 8 minute pass. So many times I have ****ed my ammo up though. Or started it in PvP gear. Will do it in the next hour.

[Glorionn]

Lost track of time:

 

http://www.fryingtime.com/?filename=combat_2012-04-18_15_33_45_359219.txt#17_40_14_819000

[Fight]

Aman-Ra, i'll give you some of my own findings (they may differ from the OP), but what I have found is that in order to maximise DPS, FA needs to be used everytime its up. I start off my rotation with 3x GR, followed by a DR, followed by FA. From then on, I use:

 

GR + HiB

GR + DR

GR + HS (Hammershot)

 

The goal is to proc your FA - as FA is your best damaging attack.

 

This is pretty much what I am doing myself, the proposed "variety" changes to our rotation are basically just putting more hammer shots in between our current selection of abilities. Grav is still used in an identical manner to before, the reduced damage does slow our immediate burst down but a "full" rotation on a target while not being interrupted will devastate most classes health pool (And your ammo unless you are careful).

[Fight]

That's not the only difference. Hammer shot accounts for 1.38% of his damage and he never uses Sticky Grenade, while Hammer shot accounts for 8.19% of the damage in your parse and Sticky Grenade another 4.49% whereas he doesn't use Sticky Grenade at ALL.

 

I'm guessing you need to use Hammer shot so much more often (seriously its at least 6 times more often) because you're using Sticky Grenade in your rotation which honestly is just silly. Looks like you're using it on cooldown or damn near, and it just doesn't have the damage to justify using a GCD on it when it costs ammo. Those 8 sticky grenades are GCDs you could be using on grav round which has a 500 higher damage average on your parse (for some reason it never critted) which has a chance to regen an ammo cell, doesn't take any ammo till the end of the GCD, and builds Charged Barrel stacks to up HiB.

 

 

Basically switch your Gunnery Rotation up a little and you should notice a much better DPS from it. Also yeah switch your rakata accuracy enhancements for Columni with power/surge or crit/surge. Basically I get enough accuracy rating to have 100% hit rate, then crit/power/surge ftw.

 

I literally can't think of any situation where I would have sticky even in my bars. I use reserve powercell and tech override to throw out random plasma's in PVP at times.

[Umbradomina]

I literally can't think of any situation where I would have sticky even in my bars. I use reserve powercell and tech override to throw out random plasma's in PVP at times.

 

I use it, albeit sparingly... usually if I have a target down to low health, he's running away and I've been slowed down. It's a nice little "gotcha" when he thinks he's gotten away clean.

[namesaretough]

I literally can't think of any situation where I would have sticky even in my bars. I use reserve powercell and tech override to throw out random plasma's in PVP at times.

Sticky-Grav round(or charged bolts)-Demo all end up blowing at about the same time for some nice burst.