azhrione Posted June 6, 2012 Share Posted June 6, 2012 For assault spec: sticky grenade -> tech override -> reserve powercell -> plasma grenade -> Charged Bolts -> High Impact bolt (depends on situation, delaying sometimes for finishing) OR sticky grenade -> Incendiary round -> Charged bolts -> High impact bolt Same rotation, same cost, but AP does 2-3x more damage than Sticky Grenade. I'm always a target 1 for enemies on my server, so full auto is interrupted if it goes first. I use it most of the time as a DPS/ammo efficient way to reduce enemy health in the middle of the fight and save HIB or Demolition round to finish the target. You get the HiB proc when Full Auto starts, not when it finishes so if it gets interrupted you can go straight into HiB. Charged Bolts is inferior in this respect because you do not get the proc until it finishes, meaning that an interrupt of Charged Bolts is far more detrimental. I'm talking about WH geared guys. On my server we don't have much of PvPers so I play mostly with the same guys and we are in Vent all the time. Start of the match is always the same, and then it depends only on amount of crits and low geared 50s. 200 expertise is actually a big difference. So I use only pve relic. Remember, marauder will always have 41 expertise more than maxed you. So actual difference will be about 250 or more. The difference between 1350 Expertise (roughly max) and 1100 Expertise is not that much, because of diminishing returns. Literally it is less than 3% difference in damage in/out, remember diminishing returns apply first.. This makes those first 1000 points of Expertise critical, then the damage and healing bonuses flatten out while damage reduction continues to improve at its normal already smaller pace. The more expertise you have the better, but once those diminishing returns kick in you really ought to weight the value of another .2% damage or a 1-2% increase from optimized gear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
olrikus Posted June 7, 2012 Share Posted June 7, 2012 (edited) Same rotation, same cost, but AP does 2-3x more damage than Sticky Grenade. You get the HiB proc when Full Auto starts, not when it finishes so if it gets interrupted you can go straight into HiB. Charged Bolts is inferior in this respect because you do not get the proc until it finishes, meaning that an interrupt of Charged Bolts is far more detrimental. Plasma grenade produces same or more damage and ignites target (so you save time on Ignition round). For the second rotation that is true, but the difference is not so big in case of 19k+ marauders. In our situation right after interrupt I use concussive charge and / or full auto. Full auto is very valuable since it's a cheapest way to reduce target health and assault spec doesn't allow to finish cooldown momentarily. Then I can use HIB and will be able to spam changed bolts again. Concussive force on the other hand is your only friend against marauders and other jumping/speeding friends, it's really hard to survive without this perk. The difference between 1350 Expertise (roughly max) and 1100 Expertise is not that much, because of diminishing returns. Literally it is less than 3% difference in damage in/out, remember diminishing returns apply first.. This makes those first 1000 points of Expertise critical, then the damage and healing bonuses flatten out while damage reduction continues to improve at its normal already smaller pace. The more expertise you have the better, but once those diminishing returns kick in you really ought to weight the value of another .2% damage or a 1-2% increase from optimized gear. As I sad, It's a question of survivability. You will loose some armor (not much but anyway), two augment slots (additional 36 Aim and 24 end to PvP gear which greatly reduce the difference between WH and Rakata gear), and healing received and damage resistance. And difference in 200 exp is significant. For 1000 expertise you will get 19.8 / 16.5 / 10.9 (damage deal / damage reduction / healing boost). For 1200 expertise you will get (22.85 / 18.6 / 12.6). So you will have 3.5% of additional damage, 2.1% damage reduction and 1.7% of healing boost and that is actually a lot. For gunnery spec 1200+ expertise is the only setup on which I can do 5+k (~7k with power relic) crits. Edited June 7, 2012 by olrikus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
azhrione Posted June 7, 2012 Share Posted June 7, 2012 (edited) Plasma grenade produces same or more damage and ignites target (so you save time on Ignition round). For the second rotation that is true, but the difference is not so big in case of 19k+ marauders. In our situation right after interrupt I use concussive charge and / or full auto. Full auto is very valuable since it's a cheapest way to reduce target health and assault spec doesn't allow to finish cooldown momentarily. Then I can use HIB and will be able to spam changed bolts again. Concussive force on the other hand is your only friend against marauders and other jumping/speeding friends, it's really hard to survive without this perk. Plasma Grenade is inducted, has a huge cost, and does less single target damage than Assault Plastique. Full Auto is an interesting ability in an Assault build, it uses two GCDs and there are typically better abilities use in that time frame. Not to mention it plants you and makes you vulnerable to melee/ranged, yet because it has a 75% chance to refresh HiB it is very important. I take the stance of fully channeling Full Auto is optional and that the most important things with it happen in the first 1.5-2 seconds of the channel. Best case I use Full Auto after my first HiB, if I can fully channel it awesome, but the primary goal is to refresh HiB. I do not hesitate to interrupt my own full auto after the first or second tick, if the burst from HiB will kill a healer or I need to move, it is a luxury to allow it to finish but not its primary role. Because you can kite as Assault, Concussive Force is not as important as it is in Gunnery where you have to stand still in order to kill someone attacking you. Hammer Shot kiting is incredibly effective, especially with added escape and greatly reduced cooldown on Reactive Shield. Even if the Assassin or Marauder eventually kill you, if you can tie them up for 30+ seconds, while still weaving in shots and dots on others in the area the effect is devastating to the opponent. As I sad, It's a question of survivability. You will loose some armor (not much but anyway), two augment slots (additional 36 Aim and 24 end to PvP gear which greatly reduce the difference between WH and Rakata gear), and healing received and damage resistance. And difference in 200 exp is significant. For 1000 expertise you will get 19.8 / 16.5 / 10.9 (damage deal / damage reduction / healing boost). For 1200 expertise you will get (22.85 / 18.6 / 12.6). So you will have 3.5% of additional damage, 2.1% damage reduction and 1.7% of healing boost and that is actually a lot. For gunnery spec 1200+ expertise is the only setup on which I can do 5+k (~7k with power relic) crits. You can get augment slots on PVE gear, just a FYI so you do not lose stats there. In fact you can get augment slots on PVE gear that you cannot get on PVP gear like Belts/Bracers/Implants/Offhand. If the expertise really matters THAT much just move BM mods over to a few Tionese/Columi/Rakata pieces with the set bonuses you want. The Pre-1.2 armor holds onto its set bonuses regardless of the mods installed. This gives you a net loss of about 20 Expertise and two Augment slots as I do not think those pieces can be crafted. The 15% crit bonus from the two piece set is really worth it for PVP Gunnery, in fact it is almost mandatory as it allows for some silly crit rates. From your example you can see the diminishing returns kicking in, the damage/healing bonus goes flat at about 1220, with tiny upgrades. Damage reduction continues at the same pace as far as I can tell, but may eventually flatten. As Gunnery when I start finishing up my gear and my Expertise is 1300+, it is in my best interest to sacrifice some for an outright better piece of gear. The Matrix Cube is just the easiest piece to replace, other pieces include are Orange Belt and Bracer with proper mods really smoke what is available as WH gear. You can also get Rakata with mod slots if you are Armortech, which trumps what you can do with WH gear until 1.3 comes out. I find it really hard to believe that your survivablity is as bad as you claim with a small Expertise loss when you are already into Diminishing Returns. What I can say from actual log parses that I do more damage with the Matrix Cube than I do with a second PVP relic. Edited June 7, 2012 by azhrione Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
olrikus Posted June 7, 2012 Share Posted June 7, 2012 Anyway this discussion seems to be pointless because of 1.3 patch... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oaceen Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 Anyway this discussion seems to be pointless because of 1.3 patch... how? other than changing accuracy to armour penetration on target lock, assault got absolutely nothing changed so far... and most of the changes in gunnery are well into the tree (and i only use heavy trooper as CM anyway). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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