Ves' Trooper Guide (Work in progress)

[B-rub]

Looking for some help with the Assault specialist spec

[Chanamel]

If you're using a strict rotation for any healer, then you're doing it wrong. The reason being party members health bars aren't predictable like those of a boss and you don't want to waste mana/ammo/whatever with overhealing. MP should follow AMP (assuming you have field triage) within 15s and before the next AMP and that is the extent of our rotation.

 

Use 3 ammo MP when there is moderate/high damage to be healed. Use Hammer Shot during light damage.

 

Untalented Kolto Bomb doesn't have very good HpAmmo or HpS and is only clearly useful when you have 3 targets and your only ability alternative is Medical Probe at 3 Ammo or 2 targets and Supercharge Cells up due to SC bonus to KB. Talented (Havoc Rounds) Kolto Bomb makes mathematical sense on 3 targets regardless of the status of MP's cost or 2 targets when Medical Probe is at 3 Ammo cost. That said, the spell isn't so effective that you should use it in place of a direct heal on someone moderately low or very low in health.

 

Supercharge Cells amounts to a resource preservation tool as opposed to an abilitiy offering immediate throughput; that is, it wont save anyone who would have been saved by higher throughput (it isn't an 'oh ****' button). When you activate it you gain 2 ammo so make sure you're at 9-10 ammo at the highest when you activate it (9 is ideal since you may gain 1 Ammo point while on GCD from activating SC but 10 is pretty close to ideal and the major flaw is taking too long to use the ability). Thus, Supercharge Cells should be activated whenever a) it's off cooldown and b) you have 1-10 ammo.

 

Not sure what to make of Bacta Infusion for PvE yet. Obviously very nice for PvP being instant. For PvE, though, thus far ammo conservation is pretty easy with appropriate use of Hammer Shot and Supercharge Cells so as to not need Bacta Infusion as a near-rotational ability to conserve Ammo as I would normally use such an ability with only a moderate CD.

Edited December 31, 2011 by Chanamel

[B-rub]

Thanks for that overview, will do my best to incorperate your information into the guide. Also gave me a little more insight into my own play as CM.

 

My rotaion is not a rotaion persay, just a small doctrine I read through in another thread that I have found ueeful, becasue it takes into account the procs and effects of certain talents on healing and such.

[Daeson]

ignore this if its been said,but.

 

The primary reason you drop charged bolts, is yes, it does alittle more dps per ammo spent, but you'd never gain charged barrel rounds, meaning you'd lose out HIB hitting like a train. With only grav rounding to keep the debuff up, it'd take awhile to get hib charged.

 

 

 

 

*RUMOR* I can not conform or I deny , but last I herd our set bonus's as gunnery are 21 and 31 point talents, IE, Grav round and Demo.

[remembermorrison]

Thanks for all your work!

[B-rub]

The discussion about the Charged Bolts and Grav round is more or less settled. Charged Bolts is replaced by Grav Round.

 

The only purpose that CB provides after GR is gained is being another source for Curtain of Fire to proc, but the use of GR makes more sence as it places the debuff on the target and gives Charged Barrel, which CB does not do this, so I can't see much reason to use it after gettign GR.

[B-rub]

Combat Medic Role and Rotation sections updated, as well as the Gunnery role section to reflect popular info from the site and discussion here on this thread.

[B-rub]

Psoted Companion info

[DarkGreenGames]

However, this changes the Ammo dynamic a little and can cause some decent downtimes while leveling so those who are still interested in an ammo rotation:

 

Full Auto > Grav Round > Grav Round > Hammer Shot > Grav Round > High Impact Bolt > Full Auto

 

 

If ammo is the ONLY driving force for this I might agree however commando gunnery dps is not so much rotation based as priority. I always use full-auto when I have curtain of fire but my opener is usually GR GR GR DR HS GR HIB. but this goes away after I open. From then on I use what is required to keep my armor debuffs on the enemy and build up GR stacks for HIB. I hammershot every time I get within 1 ammo from losing my full recharge speed.

 

When it comes to leveling there isn't really any set rotation cause most mobs die to quickly to warrant building a rotation. I found if I was having problems with groups I would just CS the silver elite and let my ammo reload after getting rid of the trash before I break his cc.

[Secured]

i wanted to add some of my knowledge:

 

-i start my roation with a grav round; because it gives your full auto the bonus armor pen and the chance of Curtain of Fire to trigger and give it the bonus +25% on damage.

 

-its useful to put 1 point into Cover Fire, because it has the Chance to trigger on each hit of full auto, so it will defenitely trigger once or twice if your not really, really unlucky. 2 points is useless unless you need both the first and last shot to slow for max slow (which isnt that good, because you cant move anyway during full auto, so its not really a kiting tool).

 

-Concussive Force is quite nice. not for the stockstrike knockback (which is very low distance), but for the improved distance on Concussive Charges knockback. Highly Recommended for PvP!

[Gannacus]

Pardon my ignorance but no-one seems to mention mortar volley ? Or is there something Im missing ? Lvl 18 at mo and always use that in an opening attack. Cheers

[Secured]

Pardon my ignorance but no-one seems to mention mortar volley ? Or is there something Im missing ? Lvl 18 at mo and always use that in an opening attack. Cheers

 

signed XD

[Gannacus]

signed XD

 

In English please ?

[Mutious]

I leveled as a Gunnery commando to 50 and just wanted to throw my chip into this charged bolts vs gravity shot thing because it is being oversimplified into falseness.

 

What people aren't mentioning here is that these two skills have entirely different scaling mechanisms. Which, depending on your gear layout, can lead to large differences in damage between the two, and not always in Gravity Shot's favor.

 

Gravity Shot scales off of power/tech power while Charged Bolts scales with weapon damage. For instance, if your weapon is much higher level than the rest of your gear, your CB may do upwards of 100-200 more damage, both min and max, than gravity shot. Likewise, with the reverse relationship, your GS will have a big leg up.

 

So don't just remove Charged Bolts from your skillbar when you get GS like a lazy slob, because after you've stacked your 5x vortices, it may be better damage. It is something you should check regularly as you level and improve gear, as the two jockey for position.

[Secured]

In English please ?

 

it means that i agree with you and XD is a smilieyface

[B-rub]

In the rotation section, there is a subpoint under gunnery which talks about AoE. I generally open up with a mortar voley whe noff CD then, and if it is on CD i throw my Sticky Grenade and use Hail of Bolts to start

[Tajz]

Good stuff that someone started this up for us all. Please encourage the OP and discuss more so that we have a complete useable guide

[silvrstein]

Just adding in my 2 cents here, but I found that putting the 2 points into first responder over the 2 in weapon calibrations, and with the gunnery commando wanting to put crit as a higher priority you would yield the extra 1% alacrity. Granted its just off of crits but with the amount of critting that we do its safe to say it stays up nearly 99% of the time so throwing the two points into first responder is a small but better gain.

[TooClueless]

Another combo to consider for AoE'ing tightly knit trash packs is:

 

Plasma Grenade > Sticky Grenade > Hammer Shot cleanup.

 

Casting both these abilities in quick succession drops you to around 6 ammo, but since the panic effect from Plasma mezzes non-heroic trash, followed by the knockdown of the Sticky Grenade, you have 5 - 6 seconds of free DPS time without reprisal, with the enemies mostly dead.

 

Alternatively, you can Hail of Bolts instead of Hammer Shot, you'll just have to reload after the smoke clears.

[Jameak]

Good information here, well done.

[AnaknSkywalk]

Try this build, it's what I use for PvE healing for the most part, works great in pvp as well usually. easily get over 75k heal done, and usually about 100k damage done. Better for PvE as I built it FOR that, but it works well for me in both. Try it out.

 

So here is a link to the Torhead Commando Healing tree I use.

 

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#800rdRoRdfdzqZrcoZz.1

[Chaos_FTW]

Just adding in my 2 cents here, but I found that putting the 2 points into first responder over the 2 in weapon calibrations, and with the gunnery commando wanting to put crit as a higher priority you would yield the extra 1% alacrity. Granted its just off of crits but with the amount of critting that we do its safe to say it stays up nearly 99% of the time so throwing the two points into first responder is a small but better gain.

 

No, just no. Alacrity is one of our weakest stats. The way haste interacts with our ammo causes us to spend ammo faster. There are numerous threads discussing how alacrity is one of our weakest stats. There are plenty of other talents that could be taken that are more beneficial than alacrity based talents.

[B-rub]

Could you link to more info on that or elaborate?

[Chaos_FTW]

Could you link to more info on that or elaborate?

 

Daeson has a great thread ongoing here http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=117042 that discusses in more depth on the issues with alacrity. I would suggest going here to review the information, rather than flooding this thread with redundancies.

[B-rub]

Been busy for the last few days and will be until Sunday night or so. I am little behind on the guide, however, I will be spend a decent amount fo time on the forums on Sunday updating the guide, hang in there and thanks for the support!