Is Assault the new PvE hawtness in 1.3??

[jedip_enguin]

Because it seems with its burns and even more ammo pen being heaped upon it Gunnery's peg is looking very shaky to me.

 

Rebuttals?

[Gyronamics]

Assault is going from 30% armour pen on HiB to 60% armour pen and from 0 to 30% armour pen on Full Auto.

 

The same buff is available to Gunnery, they get 30% more pen on HiB and Full Auto too.

 

Which means Gunnery will go from 55% to 85% armour pen on their HiB and Full Auto.

 

 

To get this buff everyone loses the chance to spec for 3% talented accuracy so we need more gear stats in accuracy to compensate.

 

 

Looks pretty obvious what the result is to me.

 

 

Not a lot.

[BobaFaceroll]

Grav Round still debuffs armor, and that helps everyone do more damage. That's still a big deal.

[DarkSideTOR]

Grav Round still debuffs armor, and that helps everyone do more damage. That's still a big deal.

 

Only until 1.3, when only the highest amount of armor reduction debuffs will apply. Basically Grav Vortices will not stack with Sunder Armor from Guardians. It'll still be usefull if your tank is Vanguard or Shadow but it won't stack.

[Boxer]

Only until 1.3, when only the highest amount of armor reduction debuffs will apply. Basically Grav Vortices will not stack with Sunder Armor from Guardians. It'll still be usefull if your tank is Vanguard or Shadow but it won't stack.

 

Well, that's for fights with one boss, which seems to be half the fights, unless both your tanks are Guardians..

So, while it might not be a huge deal, 20% armor applied by a ranged DPS is still a pretty big deal.

 

The armor penetration change is equal to both sides, if not more to Gunnery since my understanding is that HiB and Full Auto damage is more important to gunnery.

 

Gunnery is also getting what I expect to be a buff to ammo regen.

 

All in all, I think standard DPS will still be better from Gunnery, but in some cases Assaults mobility will win out, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to have both in a raid if you can.

[ArchangelLBC]

Nope, gunnery will still reign supreme in 1.3 PVE.

 

As mentioned, we also get the armor pen buff to HiB and FA, and with curtain of fire those FA's hit harder than assaults ever will and happen more often. The burns are nice, and would be a big factor if Gunnery was all burst and no sustained, but once you nail down the rotation, gunnery has a pretty solid sustained DPS, dependent mostly on CoF procs and crits.

 

Also remember that HiB's are now going to always have 5 stacks of charged barrel (+30% damage) on cooldown.

 

All in all, I'm quite looking forward to the 1.3 changes for gunnery.

[Nytak]

I'm really looking forward to Gunnery in 1.3. The damage increase from Full Auto and HiB will be noticable, and the change to ammo regen will be nice as well.

[Nytak]

Assault is going from 30% armour pen on HiB to 60% armour pen and from 0 to 30% armour pen on Full Auto.

 

The same buff is available to Gunnery, they get 30% more pen on HiB and Full Auto too.

 

Which means Gunnery will go from 55% to 85% armour pen on their HiB and Full Auto.

 

 

To get this buff everyone loses the chance to spec for 3% talented accuracy so we need more gear stats in accuracy to compensate.

 

 

Looks pretty obvious what the result is to me.

 

 

Not a lot.

 

In my current gear (rakata/black hole) I will lose ~2.5% reduction to my targets defense on all attacks to gain 30% armor penetration on two of my hardest hitting abilities. It's a buff. My ranged accuracy will drop to something like 99.5% in my current gear, tech accuracy will slip to 109.5%

 

Consider that quite a few commandos have already swapped out their accuracy in favor of getting to crit/surge cap then stacking power, and most of those never took the 3% accuracy talent in the first place (as it's arguably wasted on anything that isn't a tank), it's definitely a buff.

Edited June 20, 2012 by Nytak

[ArchangelLBC]

Meh I took the 3% accuracy talent and gladly, and will be stacking the accuracy back in to get myself back to 100% accuracy after the change, but there's plenty of BH pieces with a good mix, so I' not that worried.

[Rigsta]

Because it seems with its burns and even more ammo pen being heaped upon it Gunnery's peg is looking very shaky to me.

 

Rebuttals?

 

It always has been for me, I never did get along with Gunnery - yes, those burn DoTs do add up. Vs. other commandos in my guild I found that I can out-damage the gunners if I play properly, but they always out-damage me if I switch to gunnery.

 

Gunnery can easily pick up the same skill and still benefit a great deal from it, in addition to the other buff they're getting (more charged barrel stacks). However their ammo-regen-on-crit proc is now limited to once per 6 seconds, just like assault's. IMO the playing field will remain more or less even.

The armor penetration change is equal to both sides, if not more to Gunnery since my understanding is that HiB and Full Auto damage is more important to gunnery.

 

HiB is (currently) much more significant for assault spec because its cooldown can be reset by charged bolts and full auto. Full Auto is still worth using for its full duration in assault spec to allow ammo to regenerate while it channels.

 

Ultimately I'll be staying with assault - these changes are excellent, but gunnery still revolves around grav round.

[Freeborne]

I think this will really depend on group make up with the debuff changes. If you're group has a guardian tank, or another commando who is also Gunnery--then Gunnery might look a little less appealing.

 

 

I would also add that only 1 set of grav round debuffs counting for armor loss....but our individual grav round debuffs factoring for our Demo Round is freaking retarded.