Gunnery Commando PvE Guide

[ArchangelLBC]

My only question about this topic is how much crit we should take on our gear? I read through the other thread and wasn't able to find anything final.

 

I know a lot of people in my guild got rid of crit entirely (went down to 0 crit rating) and for now I've done the same. My power shot through the roof as a result and I'm still running ~21.8% crit due to having close to 2900 Aim.

 

I haven't been able to reach the Surge cap yet, as I've been especially unlucky with RNG rolls and didn't manage to win a single Arkanian or Underworld piece with good Surge enhancements, but I'm eager to get my Surge back to proper levels from the meager 68% I have now.

 

I have the +4% Alacrity boost talent but I think that is all the Alacrity I will have. I'm planning to get Power/Surge Implants and Earpieces and Power/Suge and Power/Accuracy enhancements. Maybe if I reach the Surge cap, I'll put in a Power/Alacrity one but that's quite far away now.

 

So my question is, should I take some crit (despite the general consensus that's it useless) or should I wait until Aim alone will grant 25%? I'm guessing sooner or later, we'll be able to reach the 25% crit cap from just Aim, right?

 

 

Honestly I have no clue if Aim will let us reach that high with current gear levels. Also, I'm not sure that even with full 72s min/maxed we'll be back to 75% Crit Multiplier with 100% accuracy, which is definitely more important now than it used to be.

 

I'm currently running about 123 crit rating, but mostly that's because the surge enhancements I've gotten are mostly crit/surge and they're at least the good enhancements, and I've also got a 77 aim 29 crit mod I used to replace the 56 aim 44 crit that was in my offhand.

 

I'm planning, atm, to go accuracy/power implants (preferably the crafted ones till I can get the underworld combat tech accuracy/power implants), then 4 accuracy/power enhancements (might need to use crit/accuracy in the interim because accuracy/power 69+ enhancements are VERY hard to come by). The rest into power/surge (Which come with arkanian/underworld body, legs, and offhand).

[nbayer]

I think there is an argument to be made for at least one power/alacrity enhancement, it provides about 1% alacrity for the first enhancement. (.94% at the crafted 28 level, so im sure the higher levels will push it over 1%)

[ArchangelLBC]

I think there is an argument to be made for at least one power/alacrity enhancement, it provides about 1% alacrity for the first enhancement. (.94% at the crafted 28 level, so im sure the higher levels will push it over 1%)

 

There's not enough of a stat budget for that in my opinion. You're already using 6 enhancements or 4 enancements and 2 of your earpiece/implants to get near to 100% accuracy, which you definitely want. The rest should be going into surge. Especially with 15% crit rate added on onto our main filler ability.

[jesseleeca]

Personally at this point I'm not worrying about min/maxing gear yet, won't start doing that till I start getting 72 mods and stuff since there's not much of a point otherwise.

[Khevar]

Personally at this point I'm not worrying about min/maxing gear yet, won't start doing that till I start getting 72 mods and stuff since there's not much of a point otherwise.

I agree.

 

It's a real shame there are so many lettered mods and endurance-heavy enhancements in the Verpine gear. I've won 3 Verpine drops that are just sitting in my bag untouched. The armorings would kill my set bonus and the mods are worse than my Arkanian unlettered ones (same with the enhancements).

 

I'm am a little worried that I'm going to make poor decisions with the few Underworld tokens I'm getting, but I don't really see any way around that until more people have had a chance to actually do some testing while swapping mods/enhancements out.

[ArchangelLBC]

I'm min/maxing in the sense that I'm trying to squeeze the most DPS out of the gear I'm getting.

 

My suggestion, if you have any say in the matter, is get arkanian or underworld chest and legs for the two piece set bonus (keeping two older armorings for a double stacking set bonus). Otherwise get two pieces of new gear with set bonuses and just eat the crappy itemization.

 

Spend your first 140 ultimate commendations on an offhand. After that spend ALL ultimate and elite commendations on belts and bracers (80 commendations each) for optimized power mods. Not a single piece of gear you can buy with commendations (unless you want power/alacrity from DPS knight legs) has a good enhancement on it.

 

From there if you're lucky enough to get a drop with a good enhancement use that.

 

Power/Accuracy enhancements are going to be the hard thing to get, no doubt about it. 72s even more so since the 69s will eventually be available from crafting.

[nbayer]

There's not enough of a stat budget for that in my opinion. You're already using 6 enhancements or 4 enancements and 2 of your earpiece/implants to get near to 100% accuracy, which you definitely want. The rest should be going into surge. Especially with 15% crit rate added on onto our main filler ability.

 

You may be right, surge is just a slow curve to begin with. I suppose it depends on how much surge the last surge enhancement is worth after optimizing the rest of your gear. One enhancement for 1% alacrity just seem like a bargain to me. More of a hunch at this point.

[jesseleeca]

I'm min/maxing in the sense that I'm trying to squeeze the most DPS out of the gear I'm getting.

 

My suggestion, if you have any say in the matter, is get arkanian or underworld chest and legs for the two piece set bonus (keeping two older armorings for a double stacking set bonus). Otherwise get two pieces of new gear with set bonuses and just eat the crappy itemization.

 

Spend your first 140 ultimate commendations on an offhand. After that spend ALL ultimate and elite commendations on belts and bracers (80 commendations each) for optimized power mods. Not a single piece of gear you can buy with commendations (unless you want power/alacrity from DPS knight legs) has a good enhancement on it.

 

From there if you're lucky enough to get a drop with a good enhancement use that.

 

Power/Accuracy enhancements are going to be the hard thing to get, no doubt about it. 72s even more so since the 69s will eventually be available from crafting.

 

So how much crit are we aiming for now? At the moment mine is at 31%, with 99% accuracy and 70% surge.

[Hovergame]

I don't understand the fuss about accuracy. Accuracy's curve is really bad and yellow damage doesn't need accuracy, so what ? You're spending 434 points for 6% accuracy, used by 50% of your DPS, while you could spend those 400 points in crit ( from 600 to 1034 : +5.12%), surge (if your surge rating is low) and flat power.

 

And, please, STOP TALKING ABOUT A "CAP" AT 100% ACCURACY. BOSSES HAVE DEFENSE, AROUND 8%, SO IF YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS, YOU NEED 108% AND NOT 100%.

 

Don't try to reach 100% accuracy. I need to do some theorycrafting to find the exact numbers, but at first sight accuracy is totally crap and the "cap" is probably REALLY low, and I wouldn't be surprised if the answer is a big fat 0 in this index.

[nbayer]

I don't understand the fuss about accuracy. Accuracy's curve is really bad and yellow damage doesn't need accuracy, so what ? You're spending 434 points for 6% accuracy, used by 50% of your DPS, while you could spend those 400 points in crit ( from 600 to 1034 : +5.12%), surge (if your surge rating is low) and flat power.

 

And, please, STOP TALKING ABOUT A "CAP" AT 100% ACCURACY. BOSSES HAVE DEFENSE, AROUND 8%, SO IF YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS, YOU NEED 108% AND NOT 100%.

 

Don't try to reach 100% accuracy. I need to do some theorycrafting to find the exact numbers, but at first sight accuracy is totally crap and the "cap" is probably REALLY low, and I wouldn't be surprised if the answer is a big fat 0 in this index.

 

You might start by learning about the stat blocks and how you can only trade accuracy for sure or alacrity. 100% accuracy is actually 110% for all ranged special attack (e.g. anything that's not hammer shot). Feel free to review some parses on that stuff.

[Khevar]

I don't understand the fuss about accuracy. Accuracy's curve is really bad and yellow damage doesn't need accuracy, so what ? You're spending 434 points for 6% accuracy, used by 50% of your DPS, while you could spend those 400 points in crit ( from 600 to 1034 : +5.12%), surge (if your surge rating is low) and flat power.

 

And, please, STOP TALKING ABOUT A "CAP" AT 100% ACCURACY. BOSSES HAVE DEFENSE, AROUND 8%, SO IF YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS, YOU NEED 108% AND NOT 100%.

 

Don't try to reach 100% accuracy. I need to do some theorycrafting to find the exact numbers, but at first sight accuracy is totally crap and the "cap" is probably REALLY low, and I wouldn't be surprised if the answer is a big fat 0 in this index.

This is a pretty aggressive decry of the value of accuracy.

 

Crit has a similarly heavy DR, so the question becomes, is there any balance to be had? At what point is crit or power more valuable point-for-point than accuracy?

 

It sounds like you're arguing that 0 accuracy rating is the way to go, which I find hard to believe. I'd really like to see some numbers on this.

 

Also, don't forget that Grav Round, which typically accounts for a third of one's total damage, can get a +30% crit with the 2-piece DG set + 2-piece Arkanian set. Perhaps this would allow more benefit to funneling some stat budget into accuracy so you miss less on Full Auto and High Impact Bolt.

 

Mind you, I would be happy with accuracy being irrelevant, as the Arkanian / Underworld drops I've gotten so far don't have any in it. But we more hard data before making such a sweeping statement.

 

Edit:

You might start by learning about the stat blocks and how you can only trade accuracy for sure or alacrity. 100% accuracy is actually 110% for all ranged special attack (e.g. anything that's not hammer shot). Feel free to review some parses on that stuff.

It's funny, I was about to say that only applied to enhancements and not to Implants, but then I checked AMR and it's the same there too.

 

So yeah, there is no way to exchange Accuracy for Crit.

Edited April 24, 2013 by Khevar

[ArchangelLBC]

So how much crit are we aiming for now? At the moment mine is at 31%, with 99% accuracy and 70% surge.

 

Honestly? None. I'm sitting at about 26% crit even, but I'll be replacing most of my crit stuff with power as time goes on. I think the math still says that crit just isn't worth it, but I have a hard time making myself going below 25% crit. Of course right now I think even if I dropped every piece of rating I'd have a little over 22% crit rate.

 

Unfortunately, seems every piece of non-tier gear we get has crit on it instead of power and a 72 crit/accuracy enhancement is, to my mind, better than a 66 power/accuracy enhancement.

 

I don't understand the fuss about accuracy. Accuracy's curve is really bad and yellow damage doesn't need accuracy, so what ? You're spending 434 points for 6% accuracy, used by 50% of your DPS, while you could spend those 400 points in crit ( from 600 to 1034 : +5.12%), surge (if your surge rating is low) and flat power.

 

And, please, STOP TALKING ABOUT A "CAP" AT 100% ACCURACY. BOSSES HAVE DEFENSE, AROUND 8%, SO IF YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS, YOU NEED 108% AND NOT 100%.

 

Don't try to reach 100% accuracy. I need to do some theorycrafting to find the exact numbers, but at first sight accuracy is totally crap and the "cap" is probably REALLY low, and I wouldn't be surprised if the answer is a big fat 0 in this index.

 

First off all, and I grow tired of saying this, but you can't replace accuracy with crit or power outside of augments which no one is suggesting. Surge yes, but not crit or power.

 

Second of all, along with the changes to force/tech being shieldable, bosses were granted a significant resist to it, so accuracy is now important, and 98% isn't enough. You only have to watch one Demo Round get resisted to resolve never to miss again. 99.88% is what I'm at now and I'm not missing anymore so I'll be sticking with that for now (+whatever I get when I upgrade my current accuracy enhancements). Sorry, but whatever your old assumptions were, they're very wrong (though even before we wanted enough to guarantee HiB and FA didn't miss).

 

So no, accuracy is not worthless, and you most definitely don't want 0 rating. Ironically, now that good accuracy enhancements are so hard to get we really need them.

[Flying-Brian]

Honestly? None. I'm sitting at about 26% crit even, but I'll be replacing most of my crit stuff with power as time goes on. I think the math still says that crit just isn't worth it, but I have a hard time making myself going below 25% crit. Of course right now I think even if I dropped every piece of rating I'd have a little over 22% crit rate.

 

Unfortunately, seems every piece of non-tier gear we get has crit on it instead of power and a 72 crit/accuracy enhancement is, to my mind, better than a 66 power/accuracy enhancement.

 

Right now I have gone the 0 crit route and just broke 3100 aim (stim&buff) this morning. With that I'm a little above 22% crit. Accuracy is at 99.67 and surge is at 67ish. The lower surge is because I haven't been able to get any of the new 69/72 level enhancements yet from drops (all the black market and verpine gear that has dropped for me has been crit/alacrity).

 

When I was on the PTS I think I had a 196 crit rating, which was about 25%. But due to the log in bug that was there, I never got a chance to test crit vs 0 crit builds.

[JimmyTheCannon]

Okay, to recap some accuracy misconceptions here:

 

Force and Tech attacks have the same chance to miss as Ranged and Melee now.

 

All of your Ranged attacks other than Hammer Shot count as special attacks and have the same base 100% accuracy as your Tech special attacks.

 

Bosses now have a built-in *10%* defense/resist chance, not 8%. That's the old one.

[jesseleeca]

Edited a bit, added the stupidly simple strat for HM GF, and started stats and gearing section. Edited April 30, 2013 by jesseleeca

[ArchangelLBC]

Looking good. A note on Electronet. It seems, based on the stacks, that bosses don't have to move to take increased damage from the effect. I think that's purely a PVP mechanic.

 

I think the new boss fights are actually pretty friendly for us. Lots of stand and pew pew =X

[jesseleeca]

Looking good. A note on Electronet. It seems, based on the stacks, that bosses don't have to move to take increased damage from the effect. I think that's purely a PVP mechanic.

 

I think the new boss fights are actually pretty friendly for us. Lots of stand and pew pew =X

 

Yeah, it seems that EN gets full stacks automatically when used on boss, not sure about other targets. On a side note, it's an awesome tool in PvP, can't get enough of Marauders trying to leap to me and ending up killing themselves while trying to get in range.

 

Anyone have ideas about the relics? I'm guessing the math would support a proc damage+proc power, I'm using a proc power+clicky power now. Wondering whether I should change that when I get the drops since as a general rule more burst is always good, but given that the boss fights seem to have less need of burst using the proc might not be bad.

[ArchangelLBC]

Actually I'd say burst is more important in the current tier. Of course TFB was already a ton of burst phases, but even in Scum and Villainy what little difficulty there is (from a DPS standpoint) is just a matter of how quick you can burn.

 

Apparently the underworld relic of serendipitous assault stacks with partisan relic of serendipitous assault, so I've been running double power proc relics this past week. No in depth testing though, and I still keep my DG relic of Boundless Ages for the fights with particularly pronounced burst phases.

 

My personal feeling is that with high coefficients and low APM (compared to DoT classes) we're better off with proc power over proc damage (where the additional damage is static, and high APM in the form of dots leads to more chances to proc it on cooldown).

[SithKoriandr]

I'll just ask here, since it seems like a good place to ask, instead of making a new thread

 

I have a Bounty Hunter Arsenal Spec, which is Trooper equivalent of Commando Gunnery. However, am I right on this...with Troopers offhand being a Power Generator, BH does more damage (off hand is another blaster) and Trooper is tougher (armor mods in the power generator).

[jesseleeca]

I'll just ask here, since it seems like a good place to ask, instead of making a new thread

 

I have a Bounty Hunter Arsenal Spec, which is Trooper equivalent of Commando Gunnery. However, am I right on this...with Troopers offhand being a Power Generator, BH does more damage (off hand is another blaster) and Trooper is tougher (armor mods in the power generator).

 

Nope, there's no such thing.

[SithKoriandr]

Nope, there's no such thing.

 

Able to explain for me?

 

I have the EsselesCommando's Power Generator in my offhand, it has an armoring mod instead of a barrel (like I thought it would have, due to my BH having two barrels of course).

 

Or is the offhand armoring and barrel do the same thing, just different item mods?

[Khevar]

Able to explain for me?

 

I have the EsselesCommando's Power Generator in my offhand, it has an armoring mod instead of a barrel (like I thought it would have, due to my BH having two barrels of course).

 

Or is the offhand armoring and barrel do the same thing, just different item mods?

In an offhand, the armoring does not actually affect your armor rating.

 

You can test this by taking your armoring in and out while watching your armor rating.

 

What it does instead is add +tech power. If you switch to "Tech" stats in your stat sheet, and hover over the bonus damage, you can see the +tech power totals from your mainhand and offhand.

[SithKoriandr]

In an offhand, the armoring does not actually affect your armor rating.

 

You can test this by taking your armoring in and out while watching your armor rating.

 

What it does instead is add +tech power. If you switch to "Tech" stats in your stat sheet, and hover over the bonus damage, you can see the +tech power totals from your mainhand and offhand.

 

Thanks

[JimmyTheCannon]

I'll just ask here, since it seems like a good place to ask, instead of making a new thread

 

I have a Bounty Hunter Arsenal Spec, which is Trooper equivalent of Commando Gunnery. However, am I right on this...with Troopers offhand being a Power Generator, BH does more damage (off hand is another blaster) and Trooper is tougher (armor mods in the power generator).

 

No on both counts, as an Assault Cannon gets more damage to balance not having an offhand. Same with Sniper Rifles for snipers vs. gunslingers.

 

However, the Mercenary has more chances to proc things like Critical Reactions in the healing tree and DPS relics, as more attacks via offhand leads to more crit rolls and such.

[jesseleeca]

Updated view on new relic.

tl;dr: New clicky power relic is a crappy upgrade form Dread Guard due to the flat loss of 15 power.