Blueheart's PvE Sharpshooter Guide 1.0

[Synavix]

I've also noticed quite a few times I try to shoot off a charged burst or aimed shot and the cast will go off but at the end no damage is done, no animation and aimed shot isnt put on CD telling me it never went off when everything else says that it should have fired. The only way i can get it to fire off in this situation is by moving and repopping cover.

 

This is my biggest issue with the class still. I haven't had it happen with Aimed Shot since they tweaked that skill, but it happens with charged burst all too often.

[knarral]

I have 3 points invested in Burst Volley(BV) at level 33 and I'm starting to regret it. It could possibly be useful if I stacked alacrity on my equipment. Then the percentage boost would be more noticeable. I think what kills BV the most is that once the charges max out at 3 there is no way to maintain the buff. I had the thought that I would be able to maintain the buff, even if the stacks max out at 3, if I used charged burst every 6 seconds. I was also under the impression that alacrity reduced the cooldown, not GCD, of my abilities such as flash grenade, aimed shot, dirty kick, cool head, etc.

 

In my opinion, this is what needs to happen to make BV a viable choice:

 

BV should be able to be maintained as long as you continue to use Charged Burst(CB) when the buff is active, still max of 3 charges.

 

AND one of these two changes:

 

BV should be reworked to buff accuracy. It could mechanically work the same way. It even makes more sense for it to buff accuracy based on how the skill is procced.

 

or

 

Alacrity needs to reduce the cooldown on abilities. It shouldn't affect the GCD, but it should allow us to activate our large cooldown abilities more frequently. This kind of change would affect all classes though, and not just sharp shooter gunslingers. So this may not be a real option as it affects balance across the board.

 

I agree that the skill is useless, and agree that, if we're to take it, it needs to not provide alacrity. I just don't think that making alacrity useful is needed or practical. Crit+surge+power+accuracy are already useful enough, and through purely anecdotal evidence, SS damage is a little OP already.

 

Bottom line: we're good enough to not need the changes as it is.

[CedricDur]

Yes, sometimes I use Charged Burst and nothing happens. I was assuming it was a miss but now I dunno. And has anyone noticed Sab Charge goes off on its own? I was in a FP, Scoundrel healer, myself and two jedis. I would throw Sab charge and it would explode immediately. I noticed the same with Corso but thought his rifle counted as a blaster.

 

As long as it explodes it does not make a lot of difference I suppose.

[CedricDur]

Is there a point out of worrying on making Charged Burst instant by popping in and out of Cover?

 

Either cast for 1.5 seconds or insta-cast but have a 1.5 GCD it seems to boil down to the same.

 

Anyway, I'm leveling a smuggler because my Sage is disappointing me AoE-wise (plus I get to be snarky to all the needy NPCs wailing for help which my Jedi is too nice to do) and was doing it with Sab, but once I got Shock Charge my interest waned. 18 second DoTs make me sleepy.

 

For a supposed AoE spec all I really saw (only 21 atm, so take with a grain of salt) was the ability to spam Thermal Grenade every 3 seconds, which is not really fast enough to kill a group. Better to kill one source of incoming damage than have three on low HP but still dishing out damage.

 

We still get *some* AoE with a GS spec, right? I mean, before the Freighter (nothing like being inside a spaceship and calling another spaceship to fly down the corridor and bomb your enemies!).

 

I still need to weave my Flurry of Bolts after each skill, which slows me down a fair bit, but which I assume will go away once I get energy regen talents.

[Wookiebeast]

What would really help is showing your rotation or what abilities you assigned to what hot bar position.

 

Thanks

 

[Synavix]

Is there a point out of worrying on making Charged Burst instant by popping in and out of Cover?

 

Either cast for 1.5 seconds or insta-cast but have a 1.5 GCD it seems to boil down to the same.

 

It's not really a boost for normal rotations. In fact, the last time I skimmed the IA forums a lot of people seemed to be under the impression that the talent was actually negative for it because the GCD would lower if it was time-casted as opposed to instant (if you had alacrity). I'm not sure about that.

 

What the talent *is* good for is kiting or high-movement fights. You can be moving, pop cover for just a second to shoot of the instant, then start moving again, which lets you pop off an extra trick shot while running, since normally our movement DPS is really lackluster.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Synavix

[Slackerkgs]

Thanks for the guide, will need to stack some Accuracy I see!

 

Looking at your rotation, I'm wondering why you choose to use Speed Shot before Aimed Shot if you'll be using Rapid Fire afterwards anyway? Wouldn't it be more optimal to use Aimed Shot first, making it available earlier down the line, then follow that with Trickshot, Speed Shot, Rapid Fire, 2x Speed Shot?

[Fearheart]

Thanks for the guide, will need to stack some Accuracy I see!

 

Looking at your rotation, I'm wondering why you choose to use Speed Shot before Aimed Shot if you'll be using Rapid Fire afterwards anyway? Wouldn't it be more optimal to use Aimed Shot first, making it available earlier down the line, then follow that with Trickshot, Speed Shot, Rapid Fire, 2x Speed Shot?

 

Good point, I will have to give this a try for my opener. I'm in a habit now, if I have both speed shot and aimed shot off of cd, to cast speed shot first as it is higher dps than AS and almost always procs Quick Aim. However with smuggler's luck primed into an instant CB Quick aim will be auto procc'd making the speedshot b4 AS not necessary.

 

One thing to consider, although I'm not sure how much it matters, Aimed shot front loads a lot of threat - even more so if it crits, where as speed shot spreads its threat over three seconds. Example for the opener: SL+CBcrit > Aimedshot w/quick aim (if it crits) = You will probably have aggro on what you are shooting. I will test this out on a variety of mobs and let you know the results.

[Fearheart]

Stay tuned!

 

I'm working on a big update to my guide. It should be posted sometime tomorrow morning.

[Phelinaar]

Posting so that i can subscribe to this

 

thanks for the work.

[Fearheart]

Good morning everyone!!

 

Updates are complete for now. I really fleshed out the rotation section and changed a few things around for single target. Added aoe rotation and a priority list for movement phases.

 

As a placeholder I added a section for Gunslinger boss fight tips. This section will have small tips for all the bosses in operations. I am hoping this inspires some good conversation for us slingers!

 

I really fleshed out the gear section. Hopefully that will help all of the smugs that are gearing up right now.

 

Side note, we are almost done with hardmode EV (Just working on Soa atm). The Rakata weapon bugs are really discouraging to me at the moment (see gear section), but hopefully those will get fixed soon.

 

Also, the usual typo fixes etc.

 

Give it a read and tell me what you think! GL and Good hunting!

[nanamew]

Wow, this guide is awesome! Can't wait to get to lvl 50 with my gunslinger (: Thanks!

[Nemron]

Which one should I prefer? Relic of forbidden secrets or Relic of boundless ages?

 

I have capped accuracy and self buffed I reach 34% of critical chance.

[Fearheart]

I would go for the Crit/Surge relic. The power relic is more for healers.

[Ketricel]

Cleared Eternity Vault for the first time last night and wanted to share a few of my thoughts. First of all I was the only ranged DPS in our raid, this seemed odd to me but after looking at our guild roster we have a huge imbalance of melee to ranged DPS. I am not sure if this is the case in most other guilds but I was surprised to notice this. Now to more specific stuff, here are the stats I am sitting at on my Gunslinger (these are with self buffs and stims):

 

Cunning: 1664

Health: ~16600

Crit: 38.56%

Surge: 80%

Accuracy: 100.88%

Alacrity: 0

 

Rotation:

Blueheart's rotation works to perfection for most fights, the hardest part is managing your Energy which after a while will come second nature to you.

 

Build:

I use Blueheart's build, it works and it seems very solid. I don't really know any changes I would make to the build as right now it is probably your best bet for DPS'ing.

 

 

First Boss (Turrets/Robot):

Basically on the turrets I would throw down a Freighter Flyby when it was up, but the rest of the time I was helping burn down the Turrets. This strategy seemed to work very well for our group since the melee could just stand in the middle and AOE everything down. For the Robot I would just take cover near one of the turrets and blast away until he would do his rain of missiles that you have to LOS. It was very straightforward and my DPS seemed to be constant throughout the entire fight.

 

Second Boss (Lava):

For this boss I was the caller for platform switches since I could just sit back and DPS while keeping my eyes open. The one neat thing I found about this fight, is once you run to a new platform have the tank stand right where the path dumps out at. This will make it so all the DPS can target their AOE to a single spot to burn down the adds that spawn when you have to switch platforms. Outside of that the movement on this fight isn't an issue as you can just trigger instant-cast CB's each time you move.

 

Third Boss (Puzzle):

This boss is more a loot piñata than a true boss fight if you do it correctly. Have a DPS at each tower just spam click one of the buttons and you should be able to end the event within a few minutes. Not really much to do here that is special.

 

Fourth Boss (Solo Mobs):

So in most of the guides I read before we did this it said to have the DPS on the Marauders. The problem for a Gunslinger is that the Marauders do a knock back that is on a 2 second timer, so you have almost 0 time to sit in cover and shoot. I was having a rough time being able to burn down my mob because of this. We had the fight reset on us, so I asked one of the tanks (who are on the Lords) to switch with me and it made life so much easier. If Gunslingers weren't so cover dependent it wouldn't matter, but since we need cover to DPS it is probably in your best interest to ask to handle one of the mobs that will not do a knock back.

 

Fifth Boss (Infernal One):

So this is a 4 phase fight. Phase 1 is fighting the boss on his starting platform, pyramid statues around him spawn poison clouds that you need to get out of. At about ~70% he will shift to Phase 2 where he knocks out everything but the outer ring of his current platform so it is in your best interests to be as close to this ring as possible, which is easy with the range of Gunslinger abilities. Jumping down the broken platforms is pretty easy and you want to be the first one to the bottom so that everyone can jump into your Scrambling Field and take less fall damage and avoid the boss attacks when he first comes up. In Phase 3 he adds a "Mind Trap" ability where he will take a player and put them in a prison. The group needs to burn this prison down ASAP to break that player out. The prisons have really low health and die pretty quickly. This is the easiest phase of the entire fight. You then shift back to Phase 2 where he breaks the floor and you have to jump down to the bottom floor. During this phase you have to deal with the "Mind Traps" and the boss is immune to damage. The tank has to kite the boss under pillars that fall from the sky to break his shield so he can be DPS'ed. As ranged this works for you because you will have the most up time on the boss as when the pillar hits, it will deal AOE damage to the boss AND players. Rinse and repeat this last part until the boss is dead.

 

 

Rants:

So after the raid I got my 4 piece bonus and I am VERY disappointed by how subpar the Gunslinger set bonus seems. Refunding 10 energy on a 2min CD and reducing our execute ability by 7 energy is ridiculously stupid. These should be on the same set bonus for your 2 piece and we should have a better 4 piece set bonus. Compared to some of the other setup bonus' it feels like ours was just slapped on there with no consideration to how our class works. Sigh... and the boots are ugly

[Nemron]

I would go for the Crit/Surge relic. The power relic is more for healers.

 

I got that. But then why do you prefer power adrenal over surge or critical adrenal? In combination with the relic I think that the surge adrenal will be really good.

[Fearheart]

I got that. But then why do you prefer power adrenal over surge or critical adrenal? In combination with the relic I think that the surge adrenal will be really good.

 

Thank's for catching that - its a typo. I will fix it to say the Crit/surge adrenal.

[Nemron]

Thank's for catching that - its a typo. I will fix it to say the Crit/surge adrenal.

 

Wait. There are many different adrenals. 3 of our interest.

 

1 gives power boost

 

1 gives critical boost

 

1 gives surge boost

 

Which one of all do you suggest?

[Askysoblue]

I made a previous post about this but Im thinking this would be a better thread than any for a bit min/max discussion.

 

With Gunslinger gearing, balance is wayyyy in favor of accuracy and power to the point that Im at 104 percent accuracy and only 31 percent crit and 60 percent surge. Any ideas?

[DClarkNV]

This is a great guide and I have gone back to read over it many times as I level up my Gunslinger.

 

However, I haven't seen much of a discussion about accuracy.

 

The definition of accuracy in the game is: Chance that ranged attacks will successfully hit the target. Accuracy over 100% reduces the target's defense.

 

So, at 100% accuracy, we should be hitting the enemy NPC with a ranged weapon 100% of the time, correct???

 

I don't think so...........

 

The tooltip says anything over 100% lowers the enemy NPC's defense (score, %, etc.). So, wouldn't higher accuracy reduce the defense chance of the enemy NPC:

 

defense = Chance to avoid incoming attacks, broken down by attack type.

 

If I am correct, then the following equation would illustrate our chance to hit and how it is affected by our accuracy:

 

Enemy NPC Defense chance = 100% + enemy NPC defense chance (%) - our accuracy (%)

 

Given this example, if the enemy NPC's defense is 8%, and we have our accuracy at 100%, there still is an 8% chance that the enemy NPC will not be hit by our ranged attack.

 

If that theory is true, wouldn't we want to raise our accuracy as high as we can until we negate our enemy NPC's defense chance???

 

Of course, without a combat log, this becomes difficult to prove, but it gives us something to chew on.

 

Thanks for any input on this............

[Fearheart]

I don't have much time, but I will throw out some quick input in regard to accuracy.

 

 

5 factors to consider with accuracy:

 

1) Mainhand hits

2) Offhand hits

3) Mainhand Special hits

4) Offhand Special hits

5) What does accuracy over cap do?

 

 

1 and 2 : from what I can tell only apply to your flurry of bolts (manual free attack)

3 and 4 : from what I can tell apply to our abilities (ex: Charged burst, Aim shot, Speed shot etc)

 

5) It is impossible to currently cap 2 and 4 so that being said anything above 100% accuracy on 1 and 3 will still benefit 2 and 4. 2 and 4 don't accomplish amazing amounts of dps so you will notice a dps increase by reaching say 102% accuracy but not by a large ammount. Raising 1 and 3 above 100% (from what I can tell) will only apply to PvP where you are fighting other players that have defense (a chance to deflect or dodge your attacks). Say you are fighting a player with 6% defense then you theoretically would need 106% accuracy to always hit them with 1 and 3.

 

 

They made accuracy such a dang confusing system - its even more confusing for classes that dual-wield. I still don't understand it fully but hopefully this helps.

 

Side note: I need confirmation on this; Some of our attacks generate white damage (the numbers showing damage done above your target are white in color) and other attacks generate yellow damage (xs freighter flyby). Maybe 1 and 2 are all white damage attacks and 3 and 4 are all our yellow damage attacks. If so, can someone help me with which attacks of ours are yellow damage?

 

- Chris

Edited February 1, 2012 by Fearheart

[DClarkNV]

Thanks for the quick reply on this.

 

First, to answer your question on damage colors:

 

Standard (low-res) white is your companion's damage.

 

Bold white is your ranged damage.

 

Yellow is your tech damage.

 

 

Edit: It is easy to confirm these damage types / colors by checking on/off your flytext preferences in the UI. I haven't done it, but I am confident I am correct with the above.

 

 

Now it seems that you are saying that (3 & 4) above are special attacks but they are really tech attacks. So, if you have 100% ranged accuracy, you have 110% tech accuracy since tech attacks already start out at 100% accuracy. Does that make understanding ranged attacks any clearer?? Heck no!!

 

Now, I understand what you are saying about accuracy above 100% for the PvP check, but I have to believe that each enemy NPC (and not just boss mobs) have inherent stats. And if that logic holds, they have a "defense" score.

 

This brings me back to my question, does it benefit you to have accuracy greater than 100% knowing that the enemy you are fighting has a set defense %???

 

I am not even factoring the off-hand, because that is not our main damage dealer, although it does contribute to overall DPS.

 

This might be a question only the developers can answer............

Edited February 1, 2012 by DClarkNV

[Synavix]

The consensus on accuracy that I've seen is that an NPC of equal or lower level will have 0% defense rating against you, and anything above you gains 5% defense per high level. I'm not sure if there are any particular NPC buffs applied on any individual encounter that would affect their defense rating, but I would assume they are gimmicks rather than the norm.

 

The only thing I'm not sure on is that I've read that boss level mobs are both 2 levels higher than you and level 50. Some clarification on which is actually true would be helpful, and would mean you either need 100% or 110% accuracy for standard PvE, and nothing more.

 

Regarding white and yellow damage, I believe any ability that shows white damage works off of standard hit and yellow is elemental tech hit/damage. I could try to test it out later to get an exact list of which is which, but I'm under the assumption that the majority of our abilities do white damage because they're blaster shots, while grenades and other AoEs doing elemental.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Synavix

[Nireves]

what do you base all this on, i call BS until i see any proof at all.

[DClarkNV]

what do you base all this on, i call BS until i see any proof at all.

 

What are you calling BS on???

 

Anything else to "contribute" to this discussion or just going to disagree with what anyone says they believe??

 

While I don't believe the previous poster answered my questions, they have a right to post their opinion.

 

And yes, facts would go a long way towards advancing an opinion, not what the "consensus" thinks.

 

By the way, who is the "consensus"???