Commando using Blaster rifle?

[Luochaz]

I've seen a commando using a blaster rifle in a WZ, he was assault from what i could tell and did pretty well, it looked pretty cool tbh, so i was wondering how gimped are you as a commando using a blaster i was thinking of rolling a commando and doing what this guy done

[oaceen]

blaster rifles probably gimp assault commandos the most to be honest. are you sure it was a commando and not a vanguard?

 

you can't use charged bolts or hail of bolts (which is fairly significant for assault), and you take a hit in overall damage (nor sure how much, i just know that assault cannons intrinsically do more damage than blaster rifles)

[ZeroPlus]

Take a look at this thread:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=527041

 

It is focused on healing but the information in there should provide the answers you need.

[warultima]

Take a look at this thread:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=527041

 

It is focused on healing but the information in there should provide the answers you need.

 

I dont know what's in that Link but heres what I do know...

 

Assault cannon has much higher base damage (like sniper rifles) than blaster rifles (which has the same base damage rage as pistols). Yes this means a 140 rating barrel will result higher base damage in a AC than a BR, however you will still get the same amount of tech power according to the rating of the barrel used.

 

Using blaster rifle over cannon will directly gimp your Hammer Shot/Charged Bolt/Full Auto basically all weapon based attack. It should have no effect on healing since as far as I understand all healing in game are tied to Force/Tech bonus healing which has nothing to do with base weapon damage.

[KeeferE]

I sometimes use a blaster rifle on my commando for heals just for fun.. Looks cool but you do lose a little off your specs when you do this..

[Belly]

I sometimes use a blaster rifle on my commando for heals just for fun.. Looks cool but you do lose a little off your specs when you do this..

 

Yeah I do this sometimes as well, a medic holding a weapon nearly as tall as he is just seems wrong, lol

[Haggardbr]

I am a blaster user assault commando myself.

 

1st > Because I hate the looks of most of the cannons;

2nd > I prefer Rifles;

3rd > It's all about how you want to play the game.

 

I also leveled a vanguard just to stick to the blasters, but since the last nerf in the assault tree range, I deleted it because I'm more of a ranged player and I started dying a lot more in HMs dude to the fact I had to stay within the 10 meters range.

 

The screenshots in the topic the friend posted above is from my commando when I had him spec'ed as a combat medic, but I changed now to assault specialist.

 

When you use a rifle while being a commando, you only lose the hail of bolts and charged bolts ability. Yes they're powerful but I didn't use them a lot even while equipped with a cannon.

 

I know I lost a bunch of dps output but to be honest, even knowing that I use a blaster rifle, my hardcore guildies always ask me to join an operation or HM FP because they're lacking a good DPS and these guildies never complained about the fact that I use a blaster.

 

I even had lots of "strangers" from PuGs praising me for the good work even after they asked me the reason I was using a blaster instead of a cannon.

 

To me it's all about 2 important things:

 

1st > Keep the target burning in flames ALWAYS with the plasma grenade, incendiary rounds and spamming hammer shots right after a charge of full auto (to activate the plasma shell). You'll see the elemental damage from the fire compensate the lack of DPS a little.

 

2nd > It's how YOU and ONLY YOU want to play the game, how YOU want YOUR TOON to look like, not what other people say. Why? Oh why... it's because YOU are the person who spent hours and hours a day / week / month to level a toon to its current status.

 

Later when I get home from work, I'll post some screenshots showing my stats just so you have a baseline to try something out.

 

[oaceen]

You'll see the elemental damage from the fire compensate the lack of DPS a little.

plasma cell isn't there to compensate for not using an assault cannon; it's part of the regular damage rotation process.

 

i'm all for doing what you want to do and playing how you want to play, we need to be honest here. charged bolts is a huge part of the assault specialist rotation and using a blaster rifle instead of an assault cannon lowers your damage overall.

using a blaster rifle instead of an assault cannon probably work for assault specialist for random HM FPs and maybe some of the less difficult ops, but it's a huge decrease in damage output, and i would not at all recommend doing this in a serious progression raid group

[TrueNovaZero]

For the sake of PvE you're gimped a lot. You rotation, in order to keep competitive compared to other dps classes requires you to be very active on your attacks.

 

In PvP... Not so much. It's mainly about staying alive and making sure someone stays on fire. But here's the thing - if you want a blaster rifle and be in assault spec you may as well go vanguard. But basically staying afar, setting people on fire and LoSing and you'll be fine. Assault always gets high numbers following those rules.

Edited October 17, 2012 by TrueNovaZero

[niiall]

Ok i am guilty of this. but i have my reasons !!!

 

I started out running a healer/gunn hybrid on a lowbie pvp trooper to experiment with the spec, As alot of the other healers have found it can be benficial to runa blaster rifle instead of a cannon to no stand out as a healer, combined with not using the green beam of death you can fl under the radar.,

 

This is especailly true with the healer hybrid as you are not constantly casting heals.

 

Next reason is that i prefer the look of the rifle and when i hit 33 i think i was able to use the legacy bowcaster, with the super epic barrell, it does excellent damage.

 

The last reason is that i dont use charged bolts at all, it seems like a crappy version of grav round, The playstyle i like for this toon is fully mobile, only stopping for full auto.

 

I only use this toon for PVP, for PVE dps i have a cannon equipped gunnery trooper because im not stupid.

 

For the TLDR bunch, Yes you can do this and provide decent dps, But since i am now running full assault spec and using a Rifle, i should have just run a vanguard. !!!!!!

 

PS> heres a recent DPS voidstar screenie. just realised the uploaded quality is rubbish, but its 355k

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b218/niall327i/Screenshot_2012-10-17_18_31_32_077398.jpg

[oaceen]

Ok i am guilty of this. but i have my reasons !!!

 

I started out running a healer/gunn hybrid on a lowbie pvp trooper to experiment with the spec, As alot of the other healers have found it can be benficial to runa blaster rifle instead of a cannon to no stand out as a healer, combined with not using the green beam of death you can fl under the radar.,

 

This is especailly true with the healer hybrid as you are not constantly casting heals.

 

Next reason is that i prefer the look of the rifle and when i hit 33 i think i was able to use the legacy bowcaster, with the super epic barrell, it does excellent damage.

 

The last reason is that i dont use charged bolts at all, it seems like a crappy version of grav round, The playstyle i like for this toon is fully mobile, only stopping for full auto.

 

I only use this toon for PVP, for PVE dps i have a cannon equipped gunnery trooper because im not stupid.

 

For the TLDR bunch, Yes you can do this and provide decent dps, But since i am now running full assault spec and using a Rifle, i should have just run a vanguard. !!!!!!

 

PS> heres a recent DPS voidstar screenie. just realised the uploaded quality is rubbish, but its 355k

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b218/niall327i/Screenshot_2012-10-17_18_31_32_077398.jpg

 

you posted a lot of different specs. i don't think you're running a hybrid assault / heal spec with grav round.

 

 

yes, charged bolts is inferior to grav round... if you're gunnery/gunnery hybrid and have actually specced for grav round

for all other specs (including combat medic), it's a bread and butter component of the dps rotation (resets HIB for assault, and for combat medic, super charged cells makes it free)

i can't imagine that you use assault specialist without ever using charged bolts

[niiall]

Yeah i should clarify, i started out with teh intention of running a combat medic/gunnery hybrid which i did till about lvl 30. Then i wanted to try assault. I have never tried the assault/medic hybrid.

 

The above screenshot was from a voidstar as assault spec with a rifle and no charged bolts.

[Sarlan]

I cant stand the look of the cannons So I have a commando (healing) using a rifle. I do keep a cannon handy just in case people get all butt hurt with me using a rifle on my combat medic if and when i decide to group.

[Haggardbr]

I cant stand the look of the cannons So I have a commando (healing) using a rifle. I do keep a cannon handy just in case people get all butt hurt with me using a rifle on my combat medic if and when i decide to group.

 

Yeah I always thought the same as you but then now I only keep the rifle.

 

As I said in my previous post, it's all about how YOU want to play the game, how YOU want to spend the time with YOUR toon and not what other will think about it.

 

A few days ago a guy was all butt hurt with me because I was a commando DPS and I was using the rifle and I just said to him "Just watch this..." and he was like after we finished a HM FP.

 

Oh well... I do use a rifle and I will keep using it no matter what people say. Even my hardcore guildies don't complain and always call me up when they need a DPS.

Edited October 19, 2012 by Haggardbr

[TrueNovaZero]

Doesn't matter when you're healing. The techpower stays the same, and as someone said it actually helps to fly under the radar.

[Haggardbr]

Doesn't matter when you're healing. The techpower stays the same, and as someone said it actually helps to fly under the radar.

 

It doesn't that much... people think you're a vanguard and leave you alone.

 

I tried this before and it does work.

[LaniAkavir]

Combat Medics using Blaster Rifles are only at a disadvantage of unable to use Hail of Bolts and Charged Bolts (essentially the Combat part of the Combat Medic)

 

Our heals remain the same since it is based on Tech Power.

 

For Gunnery or Assault, however, we lose roughly more than 10% weapon damage, in which full auto and hammershot damage are decreased. (Whether this affects the tech based skills such as Charged Bolts, Grav Rounds, or Assault Plastique, I do not know, if anyone can clear this up, that'd be nice)

 

For Gunnery, we can still use Grav Rounds, for Assault, the inability to use Charged Bolts may hinder the the refresh on High Impact Bolt.

[oaceen]

For Gunnery or Assault, however, we lose roughly more than 10% weapon damage, in which full auto and hammershot damage are decreased. (Whether this affects the tech based skills such as Charged Bolts, Grav Rounds, or Assault Plastique, I do not know, if anyone can clear this up, that'd be nice)

 

to clear up a couple things:

charged bolts is not a tech attack

 

an equipped weapon affects every attack that says weapon damage (as opposed to kinetic, elemental, etc. in the attack tooltip), and just so happens that all ranged attacks do weapon damage (this could be a direct correlation intended by the devs or merely a coincidence for commandos; i'm not sure).

 

anyway, these attacks include:

hammershot

charged bolts / hail of bolts (can't use it with a rifle anyway, so it's kind of moot)

full auto

high impact bolt

 

 

for combat medic, like the above poster stated, it only affects the combat part of combat medic

 

for gunnery, i typically do the most damage with full auto (between 30-40%), so that's a direct decrease of 3-4% of my total damage right there

HIB makes up about 10-15%

hammershot makes up about half a percent

 

so for gunnery, that's a drop of ~4.5-6% in total damage just because i have a rifle and not an assault cannon

 

 

for assault:

HIB and full auto make up about 15-20% (each), so that's a direct 3-4% decrease, but my highest damage contribution is charged bolts which makes up 25-30%, and that's removed completely.

 

if everything else being the same, that's a huge decrease, but when you factor in using other suboptimal attacks in place of charged bolts, and the spotty resets of charged bolts, i can't imagine anyone can say using a blaster rifle doesn't hamper assault.

 

it's a fairly significant (and noticeable over a period of time) decrease to gunnery, but it's a HUGE dealbreaker for assault.

quite frankly, i don't know what other attacks people are using instead if not charged bolts. full auto is only being used every 15s, HIB is only getting reset 3/4 of those times, and it doesn't matter anyway because it's on its own 15s cooldown, so really the only benefit anyway is the free cost of HIB, assault plastique is also on a 15s cd

 

 

A few days ago a guy was all butt hurt with me because I was a commando DPS and I was using the rifle and I just said to him "Just watch this..." and he was like after we finished a HM FP.

and i just have to comment on this: finishing a HM FP as an assault commando with a blaster rifle is not really a litmus test for blaster rifles not gimping commandos as they can easily be done in recruit gear (even the old mk-1) with little problem.

 

i know that assault can easily push out around 700-800 dps with hammershot alone, which is more than enough for HM FPs

[TalonVII]

Well TBH i always felt the got the weapons backwards for the commando and the vanguard. I mean in reality[being a former US Marine], you don't give the combat medic a Big Frakkin Gun and the door kicker just a rifle. I mean if you wanted to keep the same abilities for the commando and just give him the rifle cool.

 

But I still stand with the vanguard should of gotten the AC and the commando should of gotten the BR.

[Jetreaperz]

As gunnery the only abilties you can't use are Charged Bolts and Wave of Bolts(AoE) Charged bolts is replaced by grav round and the aoe is weak anyway. Blaster Rifles cause your enemy to enter a deep mind game in which they are deeply confused.