4.0 Sharpshooter Gunslinger PvP Utilities?

[Brummett]

can someone give me a hand with this? Came back to play the new expansion and could use some help with what utilities are good for pvp. Edited October 28, 2015 by Brummett

[OMGITSJAD]

SKILLFUL

 

Ballistic Dampers: Very good, reduces the damage of 3 attacks by 30% which is quite a bit, and can be reset but you have to leave cover to do so.

Snap Shot: Allows you to force an instant Snipe for when you need to send out some damage before someone can kite away from your line of sight, or to tack on some high damage at the end of a burst window with more of a guarantee to crit than Followthrough. Sometimes useless, other times the reason someone died instead of kiting away and healing to full.

 

Cover Screen: Horrible utility. Never take it.

 

Flash Powder: 20% accuracy reduction for 8 seconds is quite a lot, but Flash Bang has a long cooldown and should be used on healers more often than not. Basically this utility is good in theory, but in practice is hard to get a ton of use out of.

 

Vital Regulators: This is like at the bottom of the barrel of our Skillful utilities. In full pvp gear this will be barely healing you for 700 health every 3 seconds. It's pitiful and almost nonexistent, and if you have to traverse, kite, or get stunned you will lose the heal entirely.

 

Imperial Efficiency: This utility is generally great for pressure in big groups of people, though good healers or healer stacked teams can just heal through it. It's good for smaller groups, but less so, because you'd probably be better off focusing someone down instead of hitting 4 people with damage. You can't go wrong with this utility if you use Suppressive Fire to max benefit, but sometimes you don't want to use it and this utility will have been wasted.

 

Calculated Pursuit: This is more of an energy management helper for PvE specs. It's only real use is to give you something that does more damage than Rifle Shot while you're mobile or need to regen energy. In PvP it is generally easier to keep energy managed because you have more downtime and your rotation is a bit less strict.

 

Pulse Screen: 20% against only yellow damage seems small, but this skill increases your resist chance, which stacks with Diversion. Using the two in conjunction gives you a 65% chance to resist force/tech attacks, which there are a lot of in PvP. Because there are a lot of them, 20% by itself isn't half bad either. Plus if you line it up right and use Cover Pulse twice in a row with Imperial Preperation, you'll wind up with 12 seconds of Pulse Screen.

 

Recommended Skillful Utilities: Ballistic Dampers, Imperial Efficiency, Snap Shot.

Considerable Skillful Utilities: Pulse Screen

 

 

MASTERFUL

 

Seek Cover: Especially useful for Marksmanship-specced Snipers, because at the end of each Covered Escape, you gain Entrench for 3 seconds. This utility is good for either map traversal so you can quickly get to called out nodes, or so you can hightail it out of a bad situation and line of sight enemies or get to your healer(s) quicker. Not only do you move significantly faster, but you gain root and slow immunity for the duration. Can be useful for Virulence and Engineering, but less so because they can less frequently force this speed boost.

 

Augmented Shields: Straightforward, increases the damage that your Shield Probe absorbs by 30%. Don't know the exact value when based off of BiS 208's, but it should be decent. As an aside, always make sure you are upgrading your gear because it increases your Bonus Healing, which also increases the strength of your Shield Probe. One thing you can do is proc your relics and then pop your Shield Probe for an even more powerful Shield Probe, but sometimes popping Shield Probe under your relics while you may not be under fire could waste it for when you need it later.

 

Counterstrike: With Covered Escape being adjusted so that we can roll while rooted, as well as Seek Cover and the other very good utility choices on this tier, this utility is just about worthless. It's a carry over from the Operative skills that doesn't really do much for a Sniper.

 

Stroke of Genius: If you want instant Snipe/Lethal Shot, go for Snap Shot. There's no reason to take this utility except for extremely niche uses(i.e. dummy parsing, to force and instant snipe under a relic proc...that's it.)

 

Pillbox Sniper: A very good cooldown reduction on Entrench and Cover Pulse knockback booster. Very strong utility, I feel the fact that we have Imperial Preperation outshines this utility now though.

 

Reestablish Range: Very handy for either forcing a knockback to interrupt someone or getting an annoying melee out of your face. Once again, though, I think being able to force a double Cover Pulse outshines this in Arenas. This will probably be a personal preference choice, as well as a choice made based on the composition of players in the queue at any point in time.

 

Imperial Demarcation: The cooldown on Leg Shot is short enough...and either way, Leg Shot tends to be nullified by a lot of things out there nowadays.

 

Lumbering Impact: Haven't really tested this one out yet, something tells me that it's nothing special.

 

Recommended Masterful Utilities: Seek Cover, Augmented Shields.

Considerable Masterful Utilities: Pillbox Sniper, Reestablish Range.

 

HEROIC

 

Series of Snares: Very good for Warzones. This utility keeps your enemies on target, and keeps melee from walking up to you better than Leg Shot can because it doesn't break on damage. Plus it's really annoying for any class that you've put it on.

 

Crippling Diversion: This utility is pretty underrated. A 50% slow in an area over 8 seconds, which keeps them in your big accuracy reduction radius is pretty strong. It's especially strong when you're going up against others Snipers, as they can't roll out of Diversion, so unless they have Seek Cover procced, they're going to be stuck in your Diversion for a loooooooong time. If you ever try Group Ranked out and face another Sniper or Gunslinger, this utility is a must have.

 

Siege Bunker: This utility is very strong when going against enemies that use a lot of AoE. 3.0 buffed AoE's a lot and therefore this utility. This is another utility, though, where you might be wasting a point by picking it if your enemies were not using AoE much. Nothing wrong with being prepared for it, though. The biggest thing, I think, you get from this utility is that Death Field from the mega-popular Assassins and Sorcerors will get dropped from 10k crits to 4k crits while you have Entrench up.

 

Deployed Shields: 30 seconds off the already long Ballistic Shield cooldown isn't very spectacular, nor is the 5% reduced damage you take while in cover. You will never always be in cover, as there are many ways to get you out of it. Plus, it's only 5% reduced damage, but 5% damage reduction.

 

Debilitating Shots: This is good when you're up against a bunch of healers, but kinda worthless if you have a Tank that knows how to keep Trauma going. It directly makes Lumbering Impact better, but having to take two utilities for a 15s slow isn't that great. The Leg Shot slow is outshined by Series of Snares.

 

Hold Your Ground: This utility is strong, especially against melee attackers. 5 seconds off Shield Probe can be handy for those situations where you died as you were going to hit Shield Probe, but it had 3 seconds left on its cooldown. That's about it, though, as Shield Probe has a generally short cooldown as it is. Same goes for Cover Pulse, except its only really useful against heavy melee, and even then, you can reset it and Shield Probe with Imperial Preperation if you have it up. As the case goes with a few of these utilities, you can't really go wrong with this utility, but there may be better options.

 

Evacuate: This cooldown reducal is good for when you need to keep a healer stunlocked or frequently controlled. The problem is 15s is not particularly game changing, and Flash Bang is easy to break if you're playing by yourself(solo).

 

Over-prepared: Like Deployed Shields, 30 seconds off of an already 3 minute long cooldown is hardly noticeable. The biggest part of this utility is the 10% damage reduction it provides. It's not as strong as something like Cloak of Pain that Marauders have, or Energy Shield that Bounty Hunters have, but it's just a utility after all. I would say if you expect to be focused, you want to take this because this provides the best momentary damage reduction out of most of the utilities(except maybe Pulse Screen, but that is reliant on force/tech attacks).

 

Recommended Heroic Utilities: Series of Snares, Over-prepared, Siege Bunker.

Considerable Heroic Utilities: Crippling Diversion, Hold Your Ground.

 

(as a note, even if I did not mention a utility as considerable or recommended I do not always mean to say it's useless. I just tried to pick ones that I would say you would not be wrong picking and then going into a regular warzone with. Sometimes in Ranked or specific warzone scenarios, other utilities have their time to shine.)

Edited October 29, 2015 by OMGITSJAD

[Brummett]

SKILLFUL

 

Ballistic Dampers: Very good, reduces the damage of 3 attacks by 30% which is quite a bit, and can be reset but you have to leave cover to do so.

Snap Shot: Allows you to force an instant Snipe for when you need to send out some damage before someone can kite away from your line of sight, or to tack on some high damage at the end of a burst window with more of a guarantee to crit than Followthrough. Sometimes useless, other times the reason someone died instead of kiting away and healing to full.

 

Cover Screen: Horrible utility. Never take it.

 

Flash Powder: 20% accuracy reduction for 8 seconds is quite a lot, but Flash Bang has a long cooldown and should be used on healers more often than not. Basically this utility is good in theory, but in practice is hard to get a ton of use out of.

 

Vital Regulators: This is like at the top of the bottom of the barrel of our Skillful utilities. In full pvp gear this will be barely healing you for 700 health every 3 seconds. It's pitiful and almost nonexistent, and if you have to traverse, kite, or get stunned you will lose the heal entirely.

 

Imperial Efficiency: This utility is generally great for pressure in big groups of people, though good healers or healer stacked teams can just heal through it. It's good for smaller groups, but less so, because you'd probably be better off focusing someone down instead of hitting 4 people with damage. You can't go wrong with this utility if you use Suppressive Fire to max benefit, but sometimes you don't want to use it and this utility will have been wasted.

 

Calculated Pursuit: This is more of an energy management helper for PvE specs. It's only real use is to give you something that does more damage than Rifle Shot while you're mobile or need to regen energy. In PvP it is generally easier to keep energy managed because you have more downtime and your rotation is a bit less strict.

 

Pulse Screen: 20% against only yellow damage seems small, but this skill increases your resist chance, which stacks with Diversion. Using the two in conjunction gives you a 65% chance to resist force/tech attacks, which there are a lot of in PvP. Because there are a lot of them, 20% by itself isn't half bad either. Plus if you line it up right and use Cover Pulse twice in a row with Imperial Preperation, you'll wind up with 12 seconds of Pulse Screen.

 

Recommended Skillful Utilities: Ballistic Dampers, Imperial Efficiency, Snap Shot.

Considerable Skillful Utilities: Pulse Screen

 

 

MASTERFUL

 

Seek Cover: Especially useful for Marksmanship-specced Snipers, because at the end of each Covered Escape, you gain Entrench for 3 seconds. This utility is good for either map traversal so you can quickly get to called out nodes, or so you can hightail it out of a bad situation and line of sight enemies or get to your healer(s) quicker. Not only do you move significantly faster, but you gain root and slow immunity for the duration. Can be useful for Virulence and Engineering, but less so because they can less frequently force this speed boost.

 

Augmented Shields: Straightforward, increases the damage that your Shield Probe absorbs by 30%. Don't know the exact value when based off of BiS 208's, but it should be decent. As an aside, always make sure you are upgrading your gear because it increases your Bonus Healing, which also increases the strength of your Shield Probe. One thing you can do is proc your relics and then pop your Shield Probe for an even more powerful Shield Probe, but sometimes popping Shield Probe under your relics while you may not be under fire could waste it for when you need it later.

 

Counterstrike: With Covered Escape being adjusted so that we can roll while rooted, as well as Seek Cover and the other very good utility choices on this tier, this utility is just about worthless. It's a carry over from the Operative skills that doesn't really do much for a Sniper.

 

Stroke of Genius: If you want instant Snipe/Lethal Shot, go for Snap Shot. There's no reason to take this utility except for extremely niche uses(i.e. dummy parsing, to force and instant snipe under a relic proc...that's it.)

 

Pillbox Sniper: A very good cooldown reduction on Entrench and Cover Pulse knockback booster. Very strong utility, I feel the fact that we have Imperial Preperation outshines this utility now though.

 

Reestablish Range: Very handy for either forcing a knockback to interrupt someone or getting an annoying melee out of your face. Once again, though, I think being able to force a double Cover Pulse outshines this in Arenas. This will probably be a personal preference choice, as well as a choice made based on the composition of players in the queue at any point in time.

 

Imperial Demarcation: The cooldown on Leg Shot is short enough...and either way, Leg Shot tends to be nullified by a lot of things out there nowadays.

 

Lumbering Impact: Haven't really tested this one out yet, something tells me that it's nothing special.

 

Recommended Masterful Utilities: Seek Cover, Augmented Shields.

Considerable Masterful Utilities: Pillbox Sniper, Reestablish Range.

 

HEROIC

 

Series of Snares: Very good for Warzones. This utility keeps your enemies on target, and keeps melee from walking up to you better than Leg Shot can because it doesn't break on damage. Plus it's really annoying for any class that you've put it on.

 

Crippling Diversion: This utility is pretty underrated. A 50% slow in an area over 8 seconds, which keeps them in your big accuracy reduction radius is pretty strong. It's especially strong when you're going up against others Snipers, as they can't roll out of Diversion, so unless they have Seek Cover procced, they're going to be stuck in your Diversion for a loooooooong time. If you ever try Group Ranked out and face another Sniper or Gunslinger, this utility is a must have.

 

Siege Bunker: This utility is very strong when going against enemies that use a lot of AoE. 3.0 buffed AoE's a lot and therefore this utility. This is another utility, though, where you might be wasting a point by picking it if your enemies were not using AoE much. Nothing wrong with being prepared for it, though. The biggest thing, I think, you get from this utility is that Death Field from the mega-popular Assassins and Sorcerors will get dropped from 10k crits to 4k crits while you have Entrench up.

 

Deployed Shields: 30 seconds off the already long Ballistic Shield cooldown isn't very spectacular, nor is the 5% reduced damage you take while in cover. You will never always be in cover, as there are many ways to get you out of it. Plus, it's only 5% reduced damage, but 5% damage reduction.

 

Debilitating Shots: This is good when you're up against a bunch of healers, but kinda worthless if you have a Tank that knows how to keep Trauma going. It directly makes Lumbering Impact better, but having to take two utilities for a 15s slow isn't that great. The Leg Shot slow is outshined by Series of Snares.

 

Hold Your Ground: This utility is strong, especially against melee attackers. 5 seconds off Shield Probe can be handy for those situations where you died as you were going to hit Shield Probe, but it had 3 seconds left on its cooldown. That's about it, though, as Shield Probe has a generally short cooldown as it is. Same goes for Cover Pulse, except its only really useful against heavy melee, and even then, you can reset it and Shield Probe with Imperial Preperation if you have it up. As the case goes with a few of these utilities, you can't really go wrong with this utility, but there may be better options.

 

Evacuate: This cooldown reducal is good for when you need to keep a healer stunlocked or frequently controlled. The problem is 15s is not particularly game changing, and Flash Bang is easy to break if you're playing by yourself(solo).

 

Over-prepared: Like Deployed Shields, 30 seconds off of an already 3 minute long cooldown is hardly noticeable. The biggest part of this utility is the 10% damage reduction it provides. It's not as strong as something like Cloak of Pain that Marauders have, or Energy Shield that Bounty Hunters have, but it's just a utility after all. I would say if you expect to be focused, you want to take this because this provides the best momentary damage reduction out of most of the utilities(except maybe Pulse Screen, but that is reliant on force/tech attacks).

 

Recommended Heroic Utilities: Series of Snares, Over-prepared, Siege Bunker.

Considerable Heroic Utilities: Crippling Diversion, Hold Your Ground.

 

(as a note, even if I did not mention a utility as considerable or recommended I do not always mean to say it's useless. I just tried to pick ones that I would say you would not be wrong picking and then going into a regular warzone with. Sometimes in Ranked or specific warzone scenarios, other utilities have their time to shine.)

 

thank you very much.

[OMGITSJAD]

thank you very much.

 

Oh, sorry for using Imperial terms, just realized you said Sharpshooter. Hopefully you got the jist of it.

[Metthew]

I have a few objections Jad.

 

Flash Powder: 20% accuracy reduction for 8 seconds is quite a lot, but Flash Bang has a long cooldown and should be used on healers more often than not. Basically this utility is good in theory, but in practice is hard to get a ton of use out of.

In solo ranked or in unranked, I find myself using Flashbang more as a kiting tool or a method to shut down excess DPS when I go 1+v1'ing. Especially given that there are people who WILL break your Flashbang in solo ranked to get to kill you faster, I think Flash Powder is a very nice boost in mitigating damage.

 

Vital Regulators: This is like at the bottom of the barrel of our Skillful utilities. In full pvp gear this will be barely healing you for 700 health every 3 seconds. It's pitiful and almost nonexistent, and if you have to traverse, kite, or get stunned you will lose the heal entirely.

This utility needs to be buffed to 2%-3%, BUT, I find it to be the more useful out of the other Skillful utilities for solo ranked / 1v1'ing. In fact, I also recently discovered that Vital Regulators actually causes the healing proc to fire. I'll test it out with one of my 65 Snipers (found it out on a new lowbie character due to one of the Warzone Introduction rewards being the healing relic), but it might become a really nice tool for a endurance stacked Sniper.

 

Pulse Screen: 20% against only yellow damage seems small, but this skill increases your resist chance, which stacks with Diversion. Using the two in conjunction gives you a 65% chance to resist force/tech attacks, which there are a lot of in PvP. Because there are a lot of them, 20% by itself isn't half bad either. Plus if you line it up right and use Cover Pulse twice in a row with Imperial Preperation, you'll wind up with 12 seconds of Pulse Screen.

As another person pointed out, when you use Cover Pulse the enemy is already away, and hopefully far down in a ledge (or easily LOS'able). Why bother with this then?

 

Seek Cover: Especially useful for Marksmanship-specced Snipers, because at the end of each Covered Escape, you gain Entrench for 3 seconds. This utility is good for either map traversal so you can quickly get to called out nodes, or so you can hightail it out of a bad situation and line of sight enemies or get to your healer(s) quicker. Not only do you move significantly faster, but you gain root and slow immunity for the duration. Can be useful for Virulence and Engineering, but less so because they can less frequently force this speed boost.

I'll obviously not argue that this utility is bad, it's near-mandatory IMHO. But I'll just say that it is maybe even more crucial for Virulence / Engineering, who need to flaunt their kiting advantage much more than MM's no- / low-buildup burst.

 

Reestablish Range: Very handy for either forcing a knockback to interrupt someone or getting an annoying melee out of your face. Once again, though, I think being able to force a double Cover Pulse outshines this in Arenas. This will probably be a personal preference choice, as well as a choice made based on the composition of players in the queue at any point in time.

An important thing of note is that the KB on re-establish range WILL take effect on Assassins with Shroud up, or against Operative who have Evasion up. With the Sniper Volley CD reset on PB, which is a faster channel than SoS, I think this utility is pretty crucial for facing melee - and Juggernaut / Marauder seems to be gaining popularity these days.

 

Deployed Shields: 30 seconds off the already long Ballistic Shield cooldown isn't very spectacular, nor is the 5% reduced damage you take while in cover. You will never always be in cover, as there are many ways to get you out of it. Plus, it's only 5% reduced damage, but 5% damage reduction.

Actually, especially with the cooldown reset on roll AND entrench, and with extra knockbacks from Re-establish Range and resetted Cover Pulse, you will probably be mostly in cover as a MM sniper in solo ranked before you die. This utility is then like a longer, more permanent Over-prepared damage reduction. Given that all of sniper's defensives are active, it is nice to have this passive damage reduction.

 

I personally go with this:

 

Skillful - Ballistic Dampeners, Vital Regulators, Flash Powder

Masterful - Seek Cover, Pillbox Sniper, Re-establish Range

Heroic - Over-prepared OR Deployed Shields

 

Might consider dropping a Masterful to get another Heroic (probably Pillbox Sniper) if Vital Regulators healing becomes significant, to make the best MM tank-sniper.

Edited October 29, 2015 by Metthew

[OMGITSJAD]

I have a few objections Jad.

 

In solo ranked or in unranked, I find myself using Flashbang more as a kiting tool or a method to shut down excess DPS when I go 1+v1'ing. Especially given that there are people who WILL break your Flashbang in solo ranked to get to kill you faster, I think Flash Powder is a very nice boost in mitigating damage.

Very good point, and I agree. That's why I said it was quite good in theory but hard to get benefit from in practice. I was going to speak a little more advanced and about ranked, specifically 4v4 DPS where Flash Powder is at its best, but didn't want to mention much more about anything but regs since the OP didn't seem to mention wanting Arena geared utility selections, and I think assuming there will always be heals to flashbang in 8v8 isn't wrong.

 

This utility needs to be buffed to 2%-3%, BUT, I find it to be the more useful out of the other Skillful utilities for solo ranked / 1v1'ing. In fact, I also recently discovered that Vital Regulators actually causes the healing proc to fire. I'll test it out with one of my 65 Snipers (found it out on a new lowbie character due to one of the Warzone Introduction rewards being the healing relic), but it might become a really nice tool for a endurance stacked Sniper.

I forgot about the fact we have 40s of Entrench now, which makes this better. I am certain there will still be periods where we will need to traverse, though, and especially against opening burst, 700 heals every 3rd second is kind of tough to justify. Also, if you successfully kite, you could save yourself a lot more health compared to sitting there and eating it. I would never gear for heavy endurance, but that's just me. It did technically get buffed with the increase in Endurance returns at 65 though, if you wanted to try an Endurance heavy gearing strategy.

 

As another person pointed out, when you use Cover Pulse the enemy is already away, and hopefully far down in a ledge (or easily LOS'able). Why bother with this then?

I'm imagining having more people focusing me than the person I knocked away. Plus, with Imperial Prep, if there are no melee against you(rare), you can waste Cover Pulse to proc Pulse Screen and still have it when you need it. Imagine a 4v4 scenario where the focus is you, well, you're going to pop Imperial Prep anyway. You're also going to pop Cover Pulse if a melee is on you, and if you aren't, you're going to pop Imperial Prep. You will always be proccing Pulse Screen because you will always be using Imperial Prep to stay alive during opening burst. If you're already using Cover Pulse to knock melee back, you've got Pulse Screen. If you're using Imperial Prep but don't have anyone to knock off of you and just need Evasion/Roll/Shield Probe to survive, you can still proc Pulse Screen because Imperial Preperation resets Cover Pulse. So essentially you will always get to use Pulse Screen in 4v4's. Especially DPS-only ones. Plus, it lowers your resistance to all force/tech attacks, so the sorc in the background firing away at you will potentially be nullified a little better, especially if you can stack on him and pop Diversion.

 

I'll obviously not argue that this utility is bad, it's near-mandatory IMHO. But I'll just say that it is maybe even more crucial for Virulence / Engineering, who need to flaunt their kiting advantage much more than MM's no- / low-buildup burst.

It's not a bad choice for either, it's just slightly harder to maintain like whereas Marksman has a lot more of a chance to proc it without possibly wasting Entrench.

 

An important thing of note is that the KB on re-establish range WILL take effect on Assassins with Shroud up, or against Operative who have Evasion up. With the Sniper Volley CD reset on PB, which is a faster channel than SoS, I think this utility is pretty crucial for facing melee - and Juggernaut / Marauder seems to be gaining popularity these days.

Definitely. I especially love knocking back Sins with Deflection up, even if the attack itself is deflected. It's a harder choice to pick now with it being put in Masterful though. I would take it in a heartbeat the second I saw 2+ Sins in queue though.

 

Actually, especially with the cooldown reset on roll AND entrench, and with extra knockbacks from Re-establish Range and resetted Cover Pulse, you will probably be mostly in cover as a MM sniper in solo ranked before you die. This utility is then like a longer, more permanent Over-prepared damage reduction. Given that all of sniper's defensives are active, it is nice to have this passive damage reduction.

That makes a lot of sense, didn't think about that for some reason. May have to re-consider how low I personally rate this one. I really, really, really wish pre-season solo ranked was popping on Shadowlands so I could just test out a bunch of these different utility loadouts without fear of rating loss.

Edited October 29, 2015 by OMGITSJAD

[Metthew]

I forgot about the fact we have 40s of Entrench now, which makes this better. I am certain there will still be periods where we will need to traverse, though, and especially against opening burst, 700 heals every 3rd second is kind of tough to justify. Also, if you successfully kite, you could save yourself a lot more health compared to sitting there and eating it. I would never gear for heavy endurance, but that's just me. It did technically get buffed with the increase in Endurance returns at 65 though, if you wanted to try an Endurance heavy gearing strategy.

In 3.0, you lost barely any surge and 100 bonus damage if you went and gotten Endurance heaviest mods / enhancements. It brought your HP to 47k, which you could further pull up to 50k if you also used Endurance augments, or maybe even an Endurance stim. Much more survivable, though I used power augments to make sure I didn't lose too much on Shield Probe absorbtion and my burst.

 

I do really want to try out the healing relic though. Getting a relic procced Ambush is great, but a double proc is only really guaranteed at the opening where everyone has DCD's up, so I don't think I would miss too much by giving up one of the DPS procs. Gotta actually test it out though, and building an Endurance set costs about 35k comms I do not currently have.

 

I'm imagining having more people focusing me than the person I knocked away. Plus, with Imperial Prep, if there are no melee against you(rare), you can waste Cover Pulse to proc Pulse Screen and still have it when you need it. Imagine a 4v4 scenario where the focus is you, well, you're going to pop Imperial Prep anyway. You're also going to pop Cover Pulse if a melee is on you, and if you aren't, you're going to pop Imperial Prep. You will always be proccing Pulse Screen because you will always be using Imperial Prep to stay alive during opening burst. If you're already using Cover Pulse to knock melee back, you've got Pulse Screen. If you're using Imperial Prep but don't have anyone to knock off of you and just need Evasion/Roll/Shield Probe to survive, you can still proc Pulse Screen because Imperial Preperation resets Cover Pulse. So essentially you will always get to use Pulse Screen in 4v4's. Especially DPS-only ones. Plus, it lowers your resistance to all force/tech attacks, so the sorc in the background firing away at you will potentially be nullified a little better, especially if you can stack on him and pop Diversion.

That's something I hadn't considered so much. Operative / PT damage is also very tech heavy, so that makes Pulse Screen be a nice damage resist boost in the open. I'm considering replacing Flash Powder with that now.

 

It's not a bad choice for either, it's just slightly harder to maintain like whereas Marksman has a lot more of a chance to proc it without possibly wasting Entrench.

With Imperial Preparation, the roll procs won't really matter until 40s into the fight though. But I see your point.

 

That makes a lot of sense, didn't think about that for some reason. May have to re-consider how low I personally rate this one. I really, really, really wish pre-season solo ranked was popping on Shadowlands so I could just test out a bunch of these different utility loadouts without fear of rating loss.

To be fair, if it stacks multiplicatively with the Imperial Preparation buff instead of additively (it definitely is multiplicatively added to your armor reduction), taking them both will not be worth that much. I should test that at some point.

 

And ranked is still strong in TOFN, that I am very happy about. I think starting ranked in a sniper (only class I play) made me end up in a lot of ignore lists though :')

[CaptQuazar]

I was intrigued by the idea of using Vital Regulators with the Healing Relic, so I decided to do a little testing just to see how well it could counter incidental damage and DoTs. And I think both are bugged. Outside of a Warzone, VR was healing for the correct percentage, but the Healing relic was healing for 100hp less per tick than what it should have been.

 

Inside WZs, VR was healing for 100hp less per tick than it should, and the Healing Relic was healing for around 150hp less per tick than it should.