What am I doing wrong, what am I missing?

[CaptianFordo]

I'm seeing commandos on torparse who are parsing 2600-2900 dps for target dummies and I can never crack over 2300-2400 no matter what. What am I missing?

 

http://www.torparse.com/a/440276

 

Gear - fully min-maxed 72's with full set bonus, one piece of khell dragon (bracers)

I use stims and adrenals.

Have all pertinent datacrons.

3303 Aim, 3008 endurance.

1567-2019 ranged damage, 1038.6 bonus damage ranged, 99.51% accuracy ranged.

1557.2 bonus damage under tech, 109.51% accuracy on tech (395).

23.75% crit chance (32), 71.08% crit multiplier (395 surge).

 

 

If anyone could assist me in what I'm doing wrong, I would greatly appreciate it.

[Kahndraga]

So you are running all power mods except for you needed accy?

 

Edit: looking at your rotations you used mortar round. Why? That is only for AOE waste of ammo on single target. Sticky grenade as well.

 

True that there are no true rotations but more cool down management.

 

Here is what i do,

 

Rapid fire

 

Grav spam x1 - unless rapid fire comes off cooldown

 

Demo round

 

Grav x2 - unless rapid fire comes off cooldown

 

High impact bolt

 

I only use my incendiary grenade when i hit 50% ammo and only use it with the free cast cool down as this allows me to rebuild my ammo. I also use elctro net at this time being as i will use a hammer shot or 2 to help with ammo re-gen.

 

wash rinse repeat. Pretty simple. Some boss fights are better than others for us hope this helps.

[goeblu]

The biggest thing that I notice in you parses is your use of mortar volley. It should not be used in your normal rotation, UNLESS, you are very high on energy cells and everything else is on CD, but even then its probably not ideal.

 

Another thing is your use of hammer shot. You used HS way too much in your parses, but i think that is because of your use of mortar volley. Make sure you use you hammer shots as a filler before you start to dip into lower tier regain rates with your energy. Which i think is close to 2/3 on your energy bar.

 

There a few pretty good guides on the forums about gunnery Commando's and arsenal Mercs. Check them out with regards to priorities and other useful info.

[LordKantner]

So you are running all power mods except for you needed accy?

 

Edit: looking at your rotations you used mortar round. Why? That is only for AOE waste of ammo on single target. Sticky grenade as well.

 

True that there are no true rotations but more cool down management.

 

Here is what i do,

 

Rapid fire

 

Grav spam x1 - unless rapid fire comes off cooldown

 

Demo round

 

Grav x2 - unless rapid fire comes off cooldown

 

High impact bolt

 

I only use my incendiary grenade when i hit 50% ammo and only use it with the free cast cool down as this allows me to rebuild my ammo. I also use elctro net at this time being as i will use a hammer shot or 2 to help with ammo re-gen.

 

wash rinse repeat. Pretty simple. Some boss fights are better than others for us hope this helps.

 

What does going power take away from accuracy? it would only take from crit, and his crit is nice and low.

 

While you may be right on sticky grenade, Mortar Volley is excellent single target DPS if used properly. I would check out odawgg's mercenary guide about this Fordo, seeing that he is the class rep, has the highest gunnery arsenal parse on the forums, and actually knows what he's talking about unlike this guy.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=624205

[CaptianFordo]

What does going power take away from accuracy? it would only take from crit, and his crit is nice and low.

 

While you may be right on sticky grenade, Mortar Volley is excellent single target DPS if used properly. I would check out odawgg's mercenary guide about this Fordo, seeing that he is the class rep, has the highest gunnery arsenal parse on the forums, and actually knows what he's talking about unlike this guy.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=624205

 

Exactly the kind of advice I'm looking for, thank you very much. Will do some reading, maybe this guy will be of help. Because I'm convinced it's not my gear or spec, but my rotation.

[MGNMTTRN]

Literally everything in Kahndraga's post is wrong. Use Aim augments, as the increase to critical rating from mainstat is worth the small drop in bonus damage. Never augment for anything but Aim; so lose the acc aug too.

 

I'm going to focus on your 6 minute parse. Just glancing at your opener I see that you shoot Electronet at 0 sec and then throw a Plasma grenade at around 1.5 seconds, which is fine.

 

But if you used Tech Override and threw your Plasma Grenade at 1.5 sec, then you have at least a second where you're not doing anything between 3s and 4s. At 4s I presume your second charge of a Grav Round with Tech Override hits the target dummy. If you cast Grav Round instead of having it be instant from Tech Override then there's something wrong with your skill tree. And in general you need to up your APM, in my opinion. It looks like Torparse ate a lot of my server's old high-ranking Commando/Merc parses, but frankly 30.5 AMP is pretty low.

 

Then at 7s you begin a Full Auto, which is somewhat late, you should have gotten it on cooldown earlier... and I only see two hits from Full Auto. There should be 3, so you must have broken your channel. I didn't see any other examples of broken channels, but you should watch out for that in the future.

 

From looking at the log view I see things like

10:34:48.005 Levy's Grav Round critically hits Operations Training Target MK-5 for 4701* kinetic damage, causing 4701 threat!
10:34:48.012 Levy cancels Grav Round.
10:34:48.218 Levy activates Hammer Shot.

And each time that you cancel a channel, you're losing damage due to not immediately beginning a channel on another ability; in this case you spent 0.213 seconds doing nothing.

 

I also see you threw out 3 Sticky Grenades; that's 3 more Sticky Grenades than you should have thrown. Sticky Grenade does less single-target damage than Grav Round, doesn't contribute to your procs, and costs the same amount of energy, so it's strictly worse than Grav Round for single-target DPS.

 

This bit almost gave me a heart attack:

10:34:29.051 Levy loses Curtain of Fire.
10:34:29.053 Levy cancels Full Auto.
10:34:29.054 Levy activates Mortar Volley.

You spent ammo on Full Auto, consumed your Curtain of Fire proc, and then cancelled the cast in order to cast Mortar Volley! Full Auto with Curtain of Fire does more single-target damage than Mortar Volley, and hopefully you know that Full Auto is your most important ability. You shouldn't rescind your Full Auto cast in order to cast Mortar Volley.

 

It also looks like you pop your adrenal and then cast attacks like Electro Net and Plasma Grenade. While these abilities are damage-dense, their damage has a fair amount of delay due to both of them doing damage over time. Instead of popping your adrenal and then spending time setting up DOTs, I'd advise you to set up your DOTs (Enet, Plasma Grenade), pop your adrenal, and then use strong direct damage abilities like Full Auto and Mortar Volley.

 

Overall I'd say the cancellations and lowish APM are components of the same problem. You're losing DPS time each time you break a channel, and in general you're not starting your channels as quickly as you could be.

[CaptianFordo]

Literally everything in Kahndraga's post is wrong. Use Aim augments, as the increase to critical rating from mainstat is worth the small drop in bonus damage. Never augment for anything but Aim; so lose the acc aug too.

 

I'm going to focus on your 6 minute parse. Just glancing at your opener I see that you shoot Electronet at 0 sec and then throw a Plasma grenade at around 1.5 seconds, which is fine.

 

But if you used Tech Override and threw your Plasma Grenade at 1.5 sec, then you have at least a second where you're not doing anything between 3s and 4s. At 4s I presume your second charge of a Grav Round with Tech Override hits the target dummy. If you cast Grav Round instead of having it be instant from Tech Override then there's something wrong with your skill tree. And in general you need to up your APM, in my opinion. It looks like Torparse ate a lot of my server's old high-ranking Commando/Merc parses, but frankly 30.5 AMP is pretty low.

 

Then at 7s you begin a Full Auto, which is somewhat late, you should have gotten it on cooldown earlier... and I only see two hits from Full Auto. There should be 3, so you must have broken your channel. I didn't see any other examples of broken channels, but you should watch out for that in the future.

 

From looking at the log view I see things like

10:34:48.005 Levy's Grav Round critically hits Operations Training Target MK-5 for 4701* kinetic damage, causing 4701 threat!
10:34:48.012 Levy cancels Grav Round.
10:34:48.218 Levy activates Hammer Shot.

And each time that you cancel a channel, you're losing damage due to not immediately beginning a channel on another ability; in this case you spent 0.213 seconds doing nothing.

 

I also see you threw out 3 Sticky Grenades; that's 3 more Sticky Grenades than you should have thrown. Sticky Grenade does less single-target damage than Grav Round, doesn't contribute to your procs, and costs the same amount of energy, so it's strictly worse than Grav Round for single-target DPS.

 

This bit almost gave me a heart attack:

10:34:29.051 Levy loses Curtain of Fire.
10:34:29.053 Levy cancels Full Auto.
10:34:29.054 Levy activates Mortar Volley.

You spent ammo on Full Auto, consumed your Curtain of Fire proc, and then cancelled the cast in order to cast Mortar Volley! Full Auto with Curtain of Fire does more single-target damage than Mortar Volley, and hopefully you know that Full Auto is your most important ability. You shouldn't rescind your Full Auto cast in order to cast Mortar Volley.

 

It also looks like you pop your adrenal and then cast attacks like Electro Net and Plasma Grenade. While these abilities are damage-dense, their damage has a fair amount of delay due to both of them doing damage over time. Instead of popping your adrenal and then spending time setting up DOTs, I'd advise you to set up your DOTs (Enet, Plasma Grenade), pop your adrenal, and then use strong direct damage abilities like Full Auto and Mortar Volley.

 

Overall I'd say the cancellations and lowish APM are components of the same problem. You're losing DPS time each time you break a channel, and in general you're not starting your channels as quickly as you could be.

 

Thanks for the feedback. My main problem and for why I canceled those abilities is because sometimes it takes anywhere between 6-10 grav rounds before I proc for full auto. I'm not sure why... I'm using the 6/36/4 build.

 

Should also note, a lot of my abilities are hitting for crap damage, which shouldn't be the case for my gear level.

 

4k demo rounds and 2k grav rounds seem kinda low, imo.

[Helmholtzz]

I am not an expert and definitely dont have the highest ever commando parses out there. But here is my parse for 2905 (I did it with 72 gear with one verpine implant, 1 dread guard relic and 1 arkanian relic)

 

From your parse I have the following comments:

1. Your APM is too low. APM denotes action per minutes. My parse has 35 and you are around 30. You need to address how you can increase the action per minute.

2. Over a 5 minute duration you should have 20 high impact bolt and 20 demo round. 19 might be ok. But you only have 11 of each. They are your highest damage dealing hits. They need to be used as soon as they come off cool down.

3. Dont wait to see if your grav round activated curtain of fire. Go to your next attack. If curtain of fire is up use full auto after that attack is done.

4. Always use demo round and high impact bolt before full auto if all three are available.

5. Over the period of 5 minutes I used 65 grav round while you only used 55. That means you are not using your resources as much as you could have.

6. Use aim augments. Dont use power augments. With the boost to aim from skill tree the aim augment adds enough to the crit chance and is preferable to power augments.

7. Using mortar volley and plasma grenade is fine. I use them too. But you are using too many plasma grenades. Plasma grenades are expensive and the channel is long. Your grav round is a better alternative with similar damage and shorter channel. Only use plasma grenade with tech over-ride and reserve power cell.

 

And lastly, curtain of fire proc and crit on the demo round plays a massive role in commando dps parses. So dont loose heart. I have parses that range from 2600 to 2900. So you need a little bit of luck to get that one high parse.