Is 1.3 Engineering Better than Lethality against Op bosses

[DrkmanJ]

I am a lethality sniper and I love it, I parse between 1650 and 1700 on the operation dummy without maximizing rotation (OS/EP not being used efficiently) but after 1.3 it looks like engineering might be able to compete. My question is are there any engineering snipers or engineer hybrid snipers that are well geared that could share their dps numbers and rotation that got them there? My Stats: 2255 cunning, 39.56% crit, 75.41% surge, 856 bonus tech damage, 1081-1181 ranged on the character sheet. Spec Standard 2/8/31

 

I understand that engineering snipers or hybrid engineers will always wreck shop on groups of enemies but I am strictly interested in PVE against Operation bosses

[DSafana]

What? no love for the MM sniper? Just kidding. I know MM can't put up boss numbers like lethality, mostly due to lethalities internal damage. That's why I think engineering also can't match Lethality numbers on Op Bosses.

Mitigation is the DPS' Nemesis.

[Somokon]

It's perfectly viable. Lethality and engineering dps are actually very close to one another. Here's a couple logs of HM Denova (back to back weeks with the same gear) if you are interested:

 

Lethality

Engineering

 

Some fights lethality is slightly ahead, other fights engineering. I prefer engineering because I find playing lethality to be very boring.

[DrkmanJ]

Thank you Somokon, would you be so kind as to share your rotation/ skill order for Engineering? I've played with it a bit and as I said some potential in terms of briefly high dps but I could either not maintain it or run my energy dry trying. Also is engineering viable as compared to lethality when CC is involved? I know the 31 point would require some skill in placement.

[chuixupu]

I played Engineering for a bit, and it is fun, but the one thing I thought was a little cumbersome was having to drop Plasma Probe as part of an single target rotation. There's also nothing to make snipe and ambush any faster (nothing you'd want to take over other talents, at least) so it feels a little slow and choppy compared to MM or Lethality.

[Poostabby]

If you are a min/maxer lethality is the way to go. If you dont like pushing numbers as high as they can go any spec will do. Neither MM or Engineering will topple lethality unless there is 2 lethality snipers in raid gimping each others WB ticks. If you really want to try numbers on a raid boss bonethrasher in KP is prob one of the best since it requires no movement at all. As of yet I havent seen any impressive parses using an engy build or a hybrid with it since they nerfed the white cull damage. That being said I will see if I can do some thorough testing on it this weekend and see what if I can pull something out of my a@@. Also Drk I would seriously consider dropping ALOT of crit in exchange for power. You are gimping your output significantly by stacking it so high. Edited July 11, 2012 by Poostabby

[DenonSix]

I love Engineer/Sab when it comes to PVP, and i'm really trying to make it work in PVE. It's encouraging to see numbers at least close to MM/lethality even though I agree that lethality is the top min/max, most likely due to its ridiculously easy rotation.

 

I also would love to see a sustained PVE rotation for engineer. I think the complexity of it holds it back....

[LilTsar]

my engineer isnt particularly geared, but among equally geared fellows i do very well. its just not a rotational spec, its a priority system, which cooldown should go first, then refresh everything. least thats how it feels to me, toughest content my snipes done is li hm and ev hm. big thing is to be making good use of the 1 minute adrenaline probe thanks to emp discharge.

[Somokon]

Thank you Somokon, would you be so kind as to share your rotation/ skill order for Engineering? I've played with it a bit and as I said some potential in terms of briefly high dps but I could either not maintain it or run my energy dry trying. Also is engineering viable as compared to lethality when CC is involved? I know the 31 point would require some skill in placement.

 

There isn't really a rotation, you basically just want to use your attacks as they come up and keep EMP discharge on cooldown.

 

Use orbital strike, interrogation probe, plasma probe, explosive probe, and series of shots every time you can. If all those are on cooldown, fill with ambush and snipe. You can think of EMP discharge as giving Adrenaline Probe a 1 min cooldown. At the start of the fight, use orbital strike and blow energy quickly, adrenaline probe to recover, then use EMP discharge -> adrenaline probe every time you can. Try to be at around 50 energy when using adrenaline probe.

 

Yes you have to be cautious with plasma probe to not hit things you aren't supposed to, but it's pretty easy to use the targetting icon on the ground. Lethality actually has a rougher time with this as you never know what corrosive grenade is going to hit.

 

 

If you are a min/maxer lethality is the way to go. If you dont like pushing numbers as high as they can go any spec will do. Neither MM or Engineering will topple lethality unless there is 2 lethality snipers in raid gimping each others WB ticks. If you really want to try numbers on a raid boss bonethrasher in KP is prob one of the best since it requires no movement at all. As of yet I havent seen any impressive parses using an engy build or a hybrid with it since they nerfed the white cull damage.

 

I'm sorry but this is completely untrue. See my logs above, I am full min/maxed campaign gear, and lethality only did better on Zorn/Toth (plasma probe targetting in this fight is a pain).

[Poostabby]

There isn't really a rotation, you basically just want to use your attacks as they come up and keep EMP discharge on cooldown.

 

Use orbital strike, interrogation probe, plasma probe, explosive probe, and series of shots every time you can. If all those are on cooldown, fill with ambush and snipe. You can think of EMP discharge as giving Adrenaline Probe a 1 min cooldown. At the start of the fight, use orbital strike and blow energy quickly, adrenaline probe to recover, then use EMP discharge -> adrenaline probe every time you can. Try to be at around 50 energy when using adrenaline probe.

 

This is some of the worst rotation advice I have ever heard, it is absolutely ridiculous not to mention extremely vague.

 

 

I'm sorry but this is completely untrue. See my logs above, I am full min/maxed campaign gear, and lethality only did better on Zorn/Toth (plasma probe targetting in this fight is a pain).

 

Min maxed according to whom? No offense but your parses are far from competitive with people I play with. You are almost 200,000 damage behind me on every parse. If you want to take advice fine, if not that's fine too, but please refrain from spreading misinformation. Forgive me if I will refrain from using your worthless advice. If you want a semi decent discussion on sniper dps Tibbels work on sithwarrior is ok. Take it with a grain of salt and test it yourself though. On that note I will leave these forums alone from now on, as most of the advice given here is unproven and just plain bad. GL

Edited July 12, 2012 by Poostabby
spelling

[NoTomorrow]

Full Engineering is probably the most difficult spec for PvE. I always end up feeling that i did less DPS than with other Specs. You definitely cannot ignore plasma probe and orbital strike. And since your OS can crit up tp 4500 easily, its recommended that you consider using the PvP field tech set bonus.

[Somokon]

most of the advice given here is unproven .

 

<long annoying rant with no facts, evidence, or advice>

 

[NotRonin]

In regard to Somokon's parse, For a Lethality sniper, SoS should not be over 10% of damage. Your gear is far better than mine, however your Lethality sniper is doing roughly same damage as my hybrid Leth/Eng.

 

This is the Bonethrasher I did today with a PuG

 

http://www.torparse.com/a/883 (1433 dps)

 

There was a period when I stopped all DPSing because I was being hammered and the healer wasn't healing (PuG healer..). I only have a Rakata rifle, and my mods/augments are not optimized. A friend I know who has full campaign does between 1600-1700 with Lethality. 1500 is way too low.

 

The problem is Cull not being used on cooldown. Over 228 seconds, there are 25 opportunities to use Cull, however there are only 20 cull used. If SoS is used less and Cull used more. Total damage output will increase.

[Truescopes]

There isn't really a rotation, you basically just want to use your attacks as they come up and keep EMP discharge on cooldown.

 

Use orbital strike, interrogation probe, plasma probe, explosive probe, and series of shots every time you can. If all those are on cooldown, fill with ambush and snipe. You can think of EMP discharge as giving Adrenaline Probe a 1 min cooldown. At the start of the fight, use orbital strike and blow energy quickly, adrenaline probe to recover, then use EMP discharge -> adrenaline probe every time you can. Try to be at around 50 energy when using adrenaline probe.

 

Yes you have to be cautious with plasma probe to not hit things you aren't supposed to, but it's pretty easy to use the targetting icon on the ground. Lethality actually has a rougher time with this as you never know what corrosive grenade is going to hit.

 

 

 

 

I'm sorry but this is completely untrue. See my logs above, I am full min/maxed campaign gear, and lethality only did better on Zorn/Toth (plasma probe targetting in this fight is a pain).

 

Those are you personal parses though. I am pulling higher damage with lethality than you are with engineering on every single fight. Everyone is different but I've yet to see proof of engineering being on par with lethality.

[DrkmanJ]

If you are a min/maxer lethality is the way to go. If you dont like pushing numbers as high as they can go any spec will do. Neither MM or Engineering will topple lethality unless there is 2 lethality snipers in raid gimping each others WB ticks. If you really want to try numbers on a raid boss bonethrasher in KP is prob one of the best since it requires no movement at all. As of yet I havent seen any impressive parses using an engy build or a hybrid with it since they nerfed the white cull damage. That being said I will see if I can do some thorough testing on it this weekend and see what if I can pull something out of my a@@. Also Drk I would seriously consider dropping ALOT of crit in exchange for power. You are gimping your output significantly by stacking it so high.

 

In regards to my crit I just realized I posted with the buff up, that being the case would you consider my crit too low? (35.56) or still too high?

[Poostabby]

In regards to my crit I just realized I posted with the buff up, that being the case would you consider my crit too low? (35.56) or still too high?

My crit percentage is @33.5 fully buffed and stimmed in raid. Still too high If you are running full lethality, but not by too much. I have only power/surge,power/cunning mods and enhancements. My implants and earpiece are also power surge. ALL of my crit comes from raid buffs, cunning, crew buff from completing their storyline, aim datacrons, and that's all. Your surge will be extremely high, but my cull internal ticks with WB debuff hit for @1600 with all that power and surge and your dots crit alot due to talents so even though you are hard into DRs you still benefit some. If I could squeeze more crit from anywhere else without gimping my cunning and power I would.

Edited July 12, 2012 by Poostabby

[Truescopes]

In regard to Somokon's parse, For a Lethality sniper, SoS should not be over 10% of damage. Your gear is far better than mine, however your Lethality sniper is doing roughly same damage as my hybrid Leth/Eng.

 

This is the Bonethrasher I did today with a PuG

 

http://www.torparse.com/a/883 (1433 dps)

 

There was a period when I stopped all DPSing because I was being hammered and the healer wasn't healing (PuG healer..). I only have a Rakata rifle, and my mods/augments are not optimized. A friend I know who has full campaign does between 1600-1700 with Lethality. 1500 is way too low.

 

The problem is Cull not being used on cooldown. Over 228 seconds, there are 25 opportunities to use Cull, however there are only 20 cull used. If SoS is used less and Cull used more. Total damage output will increase.

 

SoS should be over 10%. http://i.imgur.com/7ceQu.jpg. I can get higher than this, usually just over 1,800~ but that was just my first attempt.

[NotRonin]

Basic energy cost for a Lethality sniper over 1 minutes is 6 x Cull (150), 3 x Corrosive Dart (60), 3 x Corrosive Grenade (60), and 1 x Orbital Strike (30), coming to 300 energy. Which means you're energy neutral.

 

Number of poison ticks is 40 from DoT, and 24 from Cull. Depending on your crit rate, it should return around 60 energy which will be enough for 3 x SoS. While it is possible to include SoS in your rotation, it is not 'optimal' due to the random energy regen. If energy is low, Ambush is better. When energy is high, explosive probe is better. Looking at Somonoke's parse, he only did 20 Cull when there are opportunities to do 25. Cull beats SoS by over 1k damage each time in his parse, so he'll do more damage if those SoS were converted to Cull instead.

[Truescopes]

Basic energy cost for a Lethality sniper over 1 minutes is 6 x Cull (150), 3 x Corrosive Dart (60), 3 x Corrosive Grenade (60), and 1 x Orbital Strike (30), coming to 300 energy. Which means you're energy neutral.

 

Number of poison ticks is 40 from DoT, and 24 from Cull. Depending on your crit rate, it should return around 60 energy which will be enough for 3 x SoS. While it is possible to include SoS in your rotation, it is not 'optimal' due to the random energy regen. If energy is low, Ambush is better. When energy is high, explosive probe is better. Looking at Somonoke's parse, he only did 20 Cull when there are opportunities to do 25. Cull beats SoS by over 1k damage each time in his parse, so he'll do more damage if those SoS were converted to Cull instead.

 

I just keep a rotation of: CD > CG > Weakening > Cull > SoS > Orbital/ambush > Cull repeat. I get 1,800~ dps doing that exact rotation.

[NotRonin]

I just keep a rotation of: CD > CG > Weakening > Cull > SoS > Orbital/ambush > Cull repeat. I get 1,800~ dps doing that exact rotation.

 

And you will do even more if you watch your energy regen instead of sticking to a set rotation.

[Rischardo]

My crit percentage is @33.5 fully buffed and stimmed in raid. Still too high If you are running full lethality, but not by too much. I have only power/surge,power/cunning mods and enhancements. My implants and earpiece are also power surge. ALL of my crit comes from raid buffs, cunning, crew buff from completing their storyline, aim datacrons, and that's all. Your surge will be extremely high, but my cull internal ticks with WB debuff hit for @1600 with all that power and surge and your dots crit alot due to talents so even though you are hard into DRs you still benefit some. If I could squeeze more crit from anywhere else without gimping my cunning and power I would.

 

I'm curious to know how you manage your energy with a crit rate that low. What kind of DPS are you pulling on the operations test dummy? Even with almost 40% tech crit fully buffed and stimmed, I once in a great while find myself a little energy starved. However, I can still do a 5 minute parse no problem though and sustain around 1800 DPS.

 

And you have no accuracy either? When my guildmate and I were trying to figure out why his DPS was lower despite an identical spec/rotation and similar gear levels, we found that his issue was his low accuracy. Low accuracy (less than 98%) means you're missing culls/SoS/Ambush. Missing cull means you also miss out on the accompanying internal damage that procs off cull.

 

And you will do even more if you watch your energy regen instead of sticking to a set rotation.

 

I'd like to know what you mean by this; what numbers should a fully geared lethality sniper be getting? I use a similar rotation, except I always put a rifle shot in before cull after my opener rotation (if you are doing a "perfect" rotation, you have 1.5 seconds between weakening blast and when cull comes off CD). As I stated above, I do have energy issues once in a great while, but this is only on the test dummy where I can constantly do a "perfect" rotation. In actual Ops, movement and down time make it so that I never have energy issues.

[Poostabby]

I'm curious to know how you manage your energy with a crit rate that low. What kind of DPS are you pulling on the operations test dummy? Even with almost 40% tech crit fully buffed and stimmed, I once in a great while find myself a little energy starved. However, I can still do a 5 minute parse no problem though and sustain around 1800 DPS.

 

And you have no accuracy either? When my guildmate and I were trying to figure out why his DPS was lower despite an identical spec/rotation and similar gear levels, we found that his issue was his low accuracy. Low accuracy (less than 98%) means you're missing culls/SoS/Ambush. Missing cull means you also miss out on the accompanying internal damage that procs off cull.

 

I pull over 1800 on dummy with crit buff and skill stim only. The Talent adds 12 percent flat increase to crits on dots. 33.5 (ranged)+12 percent from talents=over 45% crit rating for dots. That's not even tech crit rating which will be a tad higher pushing my crit from dots @ 50% on the average log. Energy regen is not an issue with the rotation if you use probe and 2piece set bonus correctly while also making decisions on the fly on whether to use ambush or sos depending on energy levels just like Truescopes stated earlier (I think he gets it!). The rotation he is using is what I have been telling people for days. It really is that simple. After that its all about time on target and lining up relic, and adrenal with bloodthirst. As for the internal damage portion of cull not proccing if the first tick of white damage misses, you are correct, but statistically the odds of the first tick missing are waaaaaay out there, so I have found it a non issue. I have seen it happen 3 times since I have ran lethality in raids. Im also pretty sure that its a bug, and the internal portion is not intended to miss at all. I have only been beaten in a parse once by a skilled mara and only by 17k damage on karagga. Everyone has an off night.

Edited July 13, 2012 by Poostabby

[Rischardo]

I pull over 1800 on dummy with crit buff and skill stim only. The Talent adds 12 percent flat increase to crits on dots. 33.5 (ranged)+12 percent from talents=over 45% crit rating for dots. That's not even tech crit rating which will be a tad higher pushing my crit from dots @ 50% on the average log.

 

Out of curiosity, how long was the parse? And if you are getting 50% crit rate, I think my crit is broken. I'm getting a 52-53% crit rate, despite having 5-6% more crit.

 

As for the internal damage portion of cull not proccing if the first tick of white damage misses, you are correct, but statistically the odds of the first tick missing are waaaaaay out there, so I have found it a non issue. I have seen it happen 3 times since I have ran lethality in raids. Im also pretty sure that its a bug, and the internal portion is not intended to miss at all. I have only been beaten in a parse once by a skilled mara and only by 17k damage on karagga. Everyone has an off night.

 

Are you basing your misses off of what you've observed or combat logs? Personally, with all the numbers flying around, I've never actually observed a miss on cull/SoS, but my logs from our last Denova shows that I missed .3% of my Culls and .2% of my SoS and I'm at 99.89% ranged accuracy. My rifle shots had a miss rate of about 10%. I honestly think that the mobs have some sort of innate defense that increases their chance to dodge our attacks.

 

Anyways, I guess we're pulling hairs here. If we're doing about the same DPS, I suppose it doesn't really matter in the end haha.

[Poostabby]

Out of curiosity, how long was the parse? And if you are getting 50% crit rate, I think my crit is broken. I'm getting a 52-53% crit rate, despite having 5-6% more crit.

 

Typically I parse for 3-4 minutes when ironing out a rotation. That is about the uptime you get on bosses during ops encounters before a mechanic requires time off target or movement. The crit is strictly from dot damage. My sos and other attacks that are not labeled poisons have a much lower crit percentage.

 

Are you basing your misses off of what you've observed or combat logs? Personally, with all the numbers flying around, I've never actually observed a miss on cull/SoS, but my logs from our last Denova shows that I missed .3% of my Culls and .2% of my SoS and I'm at 99.89% ranged accuracy. My rifle shots had a miss rate of about 10%. I honestly think that the mobs have some sort of innate defense that increases their chance to dodge our attacks.

 

Strictly off observation. I cannot tell from ACT or SWMoniTOR if the parser registers the cast as missing or one tick of the cast as missing. So I have actually witnessed no internal damage pop off target while casting cull other than CG and CD damage but like I said I have only witnessed it maybe a handful of times in many months. I just felt that since @80 percent of our damage comes from attacks that cannot miss or be mitigated it makes no sense to worry about stacking accuracy to make sure a percentage of the remaining @20% actually never misses. Thats my stance on accuracy with this spec and it has payed off quite well for me. I can pull quite consistently over 1900 dps on 16m bonethrasher which I consider an OPS training dummy.

 

Also I would like to add I am currently trying lethality/eng hybrid which has AMAZING damage potential if only the energy refunds from imp methodology weren't reliant on white attacks to proc it. If the cluster bombs went off on a set timed interval instead of on white damage this spec would blow full lethality out of the water. If anyone can experiment with this and find a somewhat baseline rotation that doesn't energy starve I would like to work with them and maybe spitball. I am currently pulling well over 2k dps on target dummy with 1.5min parse but find myself energy starved unless I throttle hard enough to decrease damage below lethality. So its def a work in progress but showing potential.

Edited July 13, 2012 by Poostabby

[Truescopes]

And you will do even more if you watch your energy regen instead of sticking to a set rotation.

 

Well when you can pull over 1,800 your way let me know.