Backstab / Acid Blade

[Chiltonium]

I have full WH (yes with both EWH MH and OH as well) Sorc, Powertech, Marauder, and Operative.

 

I love my operative mainly for the playstyle, and the thrill of the challenging while PvPing which is what I DO NOT get when playing my PT and Marauder.

 

I dont have too bad of issues in pvp, not damage wise. Our survivability it crap compared to what they just gave assassins.

 

But thats because most pvp fights are short enough that my CDs arent an issue, PvE is where I hate being an operative. Hidden strike is damn near useless in boss fights, get the initial, even a second if I want to blow combat stealth, but the fights last so long thats just not enough. I honestly think dropping backstab to its original cooldown would fix a lot of issues for damage.

 

Survival they'll have to look at all together. Shield probe just doesnt hack it in comparison to sins sitting on heavy armor damage resistance and a 25% damage reduction on top of that for 24 secondsd if they so desire. 55%ish damage reduction....on a burst dps class....for 24 seconds.

 

cough.

Edited November 8, 2012 by Chiltonium

[warultima]

Survival they'll have to look at all together. Shield probe just doesnt hack it in comparison to sins sitting on heavy armor damage resistance and a 25% damage reduction on top of that for 24 secondsd if they so desire. 55%ish damage reduction....on a burst dps class....for 24 seconds.

 

cough.

 

You are an operative it's just life.

 

Oh when I mentioned my PT and MARA I wasnt really talking about the damage either... more like I can jump in and out of enemies at well, As in 1v multiple is MUCH MUCH MUCH easier than I could on my operative.... especially on my annihilation marauder.

Edited November 8, 2012 by warultima

[Ahebish]

Well just about all powertech pyros get 90% armor pen on every railshot

 

Gore gives carnage marauders 100% armor pen for 4.5 secs every 15 secs.

 

the 115% armor pen would be a static stat if my theory is correct. But, I'll need to test it with a parser to be sure.

[Chiltonium]

You are an operative it's just life.

 

Oh when I mentioned my PT and MARA I wasnt really talking about the damage either... more like I can jump in and out of enemies at well, As in 1v multiple is MUCH MUCH MUCH easier than I could on my operative.... especially on my annihilation marauder.

 

yea, its absolutely silly, Id like to see them mirror some of the changes from assassin. When we exit stealth give us 25% damage reduction too, change shield probe to do the same.

 

give us 2% damage resist on crits.

 

Its ridiculous because 2 pts in a tier 1 talent put assassins armor on par with medium already. Along with force speed, an aoe knockback, they just said EFF operatives, make assassins jesus.

[warultima]

yea, its absolutely silly, Id like to see them mirror some of the changes from assassin. When we exit stealth give us 25% damage reduction too, change shield probe to do the same.

 

give us 2% damage resist on crits.

 

Its ridiculous because 2 pts in a tier 1 talent put assassins armor on par with medium already. Along with force speed, an aoe knockback, they just said EFF operatives, make assassins jesus.

 

Or you can just 3 points in deception tree for Duplicity give them the infamous nearly free of cost 5k maul once every 9 seconds... across all specs. Of course Maul can go a lot higher like 6-7k if you go deep deception. But personally I prefer tank with super DPS with tons of utilities and being super mobile.

 

I respec to darkness hybrid utilizing energized shock + lolmaul w/ access to chain shock. I get all the goodies like force pull, 5 second shroud, out of stealth spike, disjunction'ed force speed and passive self heals tank survivability too. I have no idea how crazy specs like this one exist... but they do.

Edited November 9, 2012 by warultima

[randiesel]

I'm surprised nobody mentions we don't have any 30% aoe dmg reduction talent like other classes have.

 

With all these idiots going around smashing for 7-8k, or even higher I've seen, you'd think we would have it since we're paper-thin in the defense department.

 

I still tear up on my op and can 1v1 pretty much anyone when the opportunity arises, but all warzones now are tons of glowsticks flying around smashing for ridiculously high numbers. Makes me wonder why I can only crit WH players for 4k consistently with a 40% crit chace, but they a 100% guaranteed crit for 6-7k on me in WH and have better cc and utility.

 

All reasons as to why this game is now free to the masses and concealments are so rare.

[oaceen]

what classes can get 115%?

 

he's probably talking about powertech's railshot.

 

with the right spec, it gets 90% armor pen on its own, then another +20% from snipers/juggernauts/arsenal mercs.

not sure where the extra 5% is coming from though, but that's one skill (and the only skill that gets any armor pen for them). that spec lives on elemental damage though, so all of their damage just bypasses armor anyway

[Ahebish]

he's probably talking about powertech's railshot.

 

with the right spec, it gets 90% armor pen on its own, then another +20% from snipers/juggernauts/arsenal mercs.

not sure where the extra 5% is coming from though, but that's one skill (and the only skill that gets any armor pen for them). that spec lives on elemental damage though, so all of their damage just bypasses armor anyway

 

It's higher than what PT's can attain.

 

And it's not a powertech that can do it.

 

But you are on the right track.

Edited November 20, 2012 by Ahebish

[StelarVG]

Why would anyone want to get armor penetration over 100%? When it's at 100% it means armor is completely negated, what would be benefit of going any further?

[tacito]

He's talking about the talents for mercenaries. 30% ignore on railshot/unload from 1st tier talent, 30% on railshot from 3rd or 4th tier, 20% from the generic armor debuff (sniper, jugg, arsenal, whatever) and 35% from high velocity gas cylinder.

IF it stacks additively, you get 30+30+20+35=115% armor ignore on railshot, if it's multiplicative you end up with 0.7*0.7*0.65*0.8=0.2548 => 25,48% armor not ignored, so about 75% armor ignore on railshot.

 

To Ahebish: If your tests are done, could you just verify whether armor ignore is calculated additively or multiplicatively?

[Ahebish]

He's talking about the talents for mercenaries. 30% ignore on railshot/unload from 1st tier talent, 30% on railshot from 3rd or 4th tier, 20% from the generic armor debuff (sniper, jugg, arsenal, whatever) and 35% from high velocity gas cylinder.

IF it stacks additively, you get 30+30+20+35=115% armor ignore on railshot, if it's multiplicative you end up with 0.7*0.7*0.65*0.8=0.2548 => 25,48% armor not ignored, so about 75% armor ignore on railshot.

 

To Ahebish: If your tests are done, could you just verify whether armor ignore is calculated additively or multiplicatively?

 

Ya I just got the target dummy's... So I'll do some DPS parses and see what I come up with.

 

I personally think the 35% from stance is not in effect... I figure it works through proc's. Kinda like Pyro procs with rail shot.

[Ahebish]

Well, I finished my DPS parsing tests.

 

And I have to say I was a bit suprised at some of the results, but not at others.

 

To note: These parsings are done with the same exact rotations being used in the same exact order, and testing Spike damage, which is where the best data for armor penetration can be tested in my opinion.

 

To give an analogy: A strait line is harder to tell if it is perfect. Where as a broken line is far easier to see where the breaks occur.

 

I did make conclusions and/or observations in the parse file. Take it with a grain of salt if you disagree.

 

Hybrid Merc spike damage parse.

[tacito]

Well, I finished my DPS parsing tests.

 

And I have to say I was a bit suprised at some of the results, but not at others.

 

To note: These parsings are done with the same exact rotations being used in the same exact order, and testing Spike damage, which is where the best data for armor penetration can be tested in my opinion.

 

To give an analogy: A strait line is harder to tell if it is perfect. Where as a broken line is far easier to see where the breaks occur.

 

I did make conclusions and/or observations in the parse file. Take it with a grain of salt if you disagree.

 

Hybrid Merc spike damage parse.

 

I appreciate your efforts. However, since most of the armor ignore is tied to Railshot: Could you maybe just fire a bunch of Railshots in the spec with maximum armor ignore on a dummy? Then compare your hits with the tooltip damage.

 

Since tooltip damage should list the unmitigated potential damage, if average Railshot hits only deal about 75% of that damage, armor ignore is computed multiplicatively, if it ends up dealing about exactly as much damage as the tooltip, we could infer it is computed additively.

 

I'd conduct the necessary tests myself, sadly I don't have a merc/commando at my disposal to do so. Now if you don't want to do this, I completely understand; it's basically just my curiosity at this point ;-)

 

In any case, carry on setting things on fire.

[Ahebish]

I appreciate your efforts. However, since most of the armor ignore is tied to Railshot: Could you maybe just fire a bunch of Railshots in the spec with maximum armor ignore on a dummy? Then compare your hits with the tooltip damage.

 

Since tooltip damage should list the unmitigated potential damage, if average Railshot hits only deal about 75% of that damage, armor ignore is computed multiplicatively, if it ends up dealing about exactly as much damage as the tooltip, we could infer it is computed additively.

 

I'd conduct the necessary tests myself, sadly I don't have a merc/commando at my disposal to do so. Now if you don't want to do this, I completely understand; it's basically just my curiosity at this point ;-)

 

In any case, carry on setting things on fire.

 

Here's the problem it doesn't work like that.

 

In order to take advantage of all that armor pen there are a few factors that have to be included.

 

1. Burning target - Incindiary missle (triggers armor pen from pyro I have taken this to not include fusion missile as being a consideration for burning even though Fusion missile was used)

 

2. Tracer Missle stack - in this case a 4 stack (which if theory is sound you only need a 4 stack minimum or 2 tracer shots)

 

3. High Velocity Gas Cylinder (in this case on and off parsings this accounts for 35% armor pen by itself again assuming the stat description is correct when it says 35%.)

Edited November 21, 2012 by Ahebish

[Ahebish]

Some more info:

 

Average Railshot without High velocity gas cylinder = 2211.2

 

Average Railshot with High velocity gas cylinder = 2241.6

 

That's a damage difference of 1.36% in rail shots.

 

The subsequent parses that follow are inclusive of the double rail shot factor and with Combustable Gas Cylinder active.

 

Average Railshot damage including reset procs and Combustable gas cylinder: 2432.5

 

The damage difference of rail shot compared to the previous spec is: 7.85%

 

What I think this means is the armor pen is only inclusive from a burning target if one is in combustable gas cylinder when compared to the first High velocity gas cylinder spec.

 

In short: the first spec only has at most 50% armor penetration. Where as the second spec has 80% when tracer stack is used with a 5 stack. I expect the parsing will reflect the 2nd spec damage on railshot if I did use a 5 stack of tracer.

Edited November 21, 2012 by Ahebish

[Ahebish]

Basically a DPS parse of only railshot cannot be done because there are procs involved in yielding the highest best average result.

 

Unload resets CD of railshot but only if combustable gas cylinder is active.

 

Burning target is done via rifle shot through combustable gas cylinder or via Incindiary missle.

 

Lastly, High velocity gas cylinder.