2.2 UPDATED~ Arsenal Bounty Hunter: Are YOU Doing It Right?

[Requiem4aDr3am]

I downloaded it but Im too retarded to figure out how to use it...help me keren-wan kenobi you're my only hope!

[Keren]

hm, you can import skill tree from askmrrobot and torhead or you can us one of the two I already provide and are load-able. You will have to enter your personal stat sums or use the profiles. third thing to handle is the simulation-sheet. Here you can define the combat enviroment: fightlenghts, buffs, armordebuff (if your arsenal specced you will cast the arp buff yourself anyway.), stim, adrenal, tso usage and so on.

The simulation knows 2 different priority list and uses the heatlimit to switch steadily between those. You can again define anything yourself. The lists in the mid indicates which attacks are useable (depending on choosen talents). The simulation dont can emulate healing and dont supposed to do it....

If you have specific questions, I'm eager to aswer them

[Requiem4aDr3am]

Keren I must be completely retarded...I downloaded it and when I open it notepad pops up with just random jibberish and I am unable to do anything or make sense of anything. It looks like a bunch of random hubbub that I am unable to plug any info into.

[Keren]

its excel based, did you have MS Excel? It works for sure with 2007 and 2010 MS Excel

---------- Post added 2013-02-11 at 02:03 PM ----------

The % alacrity you need depended on your personal lag / internet delay. With 60ms your need the 4% alacrity to come to a 1.5 gcd. If you have a higher average delay ypour should use the 7% alacrity spec. The reason behind is your personal decision making. The smoothest rotation does flow with the normal 1.5 second gcd. Because every cooldown can be broken down into it.

e.g.: If your ride the 7% alac, have around 30ms custom lag, then every Tracer cast needs 1.395 cast + 0.03 = ~1.4. You gain specificly 0.1 seconds time. With 15s between each rail shot you use about 6 Tracer. This way you will still have half a second cooldown on your next rail.

This way you may wait anyway or will use someething like rapid shots, because waiting means zero dps.


TL:DR: Adjust your specific specc to the average lag you have ingame to get to a 1.5 s gcd. Your overall rotation will feels smoother with less situaitions of waiting fraction of second for specific abilities.

[Requiem4aDr3am]

nope I dont use excel. I use freeware openoffice instead.

[gerbo78]

I really must thank you for this guide. I found this several months ago, and have followed it, getting several compliments, not only from my guild, but also from pug groups I have joined. However, I am wondering how 2.0 will affect our build. It appears Alacrity may become more useful overall, as it will reduce the GD, and help heat management for instant casts, which I know are only limited in our current rotation to Rail Shot and Heatseeker Missiles. Will other instant casts start appearing in the rotation? Or, will our current Alacrity build only become better with the change?

[Forsedar]

My time in SWTOR has nearly come to an end. However, my friends still play and raid avidly while running one of the top world guilds. I have already seen the new abilities and a few of the changes, so our rotation will be changing but very mildly at that. I will do my best to maintain this thread as long as this game is still alive because I do not know if I may return in the future. I don't want to fall behind just in case I do make an appearance once again :P

That being said, we still have many great posters in this thread that will most likely help me maintain this guide in order to benefit the community.

[Keren]

There will be mainly one direct flaw in our rotation from 2.0 on - the 4pc on the ptr no longer reduce heat cost from rail shot by 8 heat, instead will increase damage done by rail shot by 8%. This will not really benefit us, because rail shot will no longer be heat free and this way a free heat control ability. Little test I done between free given t7 with new set boni brought me 2050 dps (without remodding). Next test I placed my dread guard armoring into my armor and parsed 2170 dps. We have to hope that the ptr 4pc is just a try-out and will be changed before release, other wise i got better parses with t7 armorings and pyro merc specc (2120 dps).

[Requiem4aDr3am]

yeah keren I'm not liking the 4 pc change. It's making me think of trying out diff specs of arsenal. The whole missile blast/salvo seems like an extreme waste unless you are on the move or overheating. The dmg from 3 missile blasts doesnt seem worth using it over a tracer or something else. Electro net is nice but the CD on it sucks. It seems more like they focused on boosting our survivability for pvp rather than giving us anything nice for dps. Not sure if I'm just playing horribly on PTS but I am having major overheating issues since they changed the 4 pc. I don't think Ive ever had to use rapid shots this much to control my heat ever.

[krysskallins]

there's a lot more changes than you realize. the biggest change for us is that we need to stack alacrity as it now does different things. it helps with our heat dissipation, can actually push down the global cooldown on instant attacks, and we have talents that add huge %'s of it. look into that, I've only been theory-crafting with what i've read in the notes but that's a huge change for all classes. let me know if that helps.

[Keren]

Nope, alacrity will not the only way to go. We already get access to 3% with cylinder, 2% permanent trough talent, 3% crit proc talent or both (4%) if you spent one point into each talent and get enough crits. They basic behind our rotation are hits like rail shot to control heat and heatseaker, our strongest hitting ability.

Alacrity will be have sweetspots. The first sweetspot just counters each personal internet connection delay (server ping). The next sweetspot will be the alacrity rating where you save up that many casttime through cast and gcds that those big hitting abilities will come right off cd when your cast finishes. This both sweetspots (rail shot and heatseeker) are difficult to math out and they will require a huge amount of alacrity rating. Thats why I think that alacrity will not the way to go.

Moreover, because of the changed PVE 4pc (no longer reduces rail shot cost, instead 8% more railshot dmg) the total heat management from arsenal has gotten worse. I got better results with restructured pyro specc as an mercenary bounty hunter. Main reason for this is the new talent "Power Barrels": Reduces the heat generated by Power Shot by 3 and the cooldown of Unload by 3 seconds. Additionally increases the damage dealt by Rail Shot, Power Shot and Unload by 6%. This is a huge simplifier for the rotation, damage buff and lighten up the heat management significantly!

http://pts.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-...mercenary/229/

[gerbo78]

What about adding more instant cast to the rotation, assuming high alacrity. Adding things like explosive dart or missile blast, well hell, even rapid shot is instant cast. Shouldn't these help with heat management if Alacrity is very high?

[Keren]

What about adding more instant cast to the rotation, assuming high alacrity. Adding things like explosive dart or missile blast, well hell, even rapid shot is instant cast. Shouldn't these help with heat management if Alacrity is very high?

first, I already mentioned sweetspots?! secondly is - pyro yield more dps with RotHC as arsenal specc does :/

[Deathztalker]

The Mercenary Talent Calculator for patch 2.0 has been update but the board wont let me post the link lol

pts dot swtor-spy dot com / skill-tree-calculator/

[Forsedar]

Remember, this is the PTS and everything is up for changes. Just make sure to be vocal on the PTS forums about certain aspects of the class as well as attempting to contact them through twitter, etc. That is how I had a few changes made.

Unlike 'certain' development teams, Bioware will ​listen.

[Requiem4aDr3am]

After chatting with mercs on the PTR it seems the changes to alacrity and our spec are hurting those using the current setup. I hate to say this but the best results seem to be coming from not specing alacrity at all or only using the 2 pt talent 5/36/5 setup and then stacking pow/surge after you hit acc cap. I personally do not have the resources on PTR to test this out as it messed up my main characters transfer and I had to lvl one up. I have zero money, zero relics, zero mats, and am still trying to learn the resuable stims,medpacs,and adrenals. The name of the merc I chatted with slips my mind right now, but he did the acc>pow>surge stacking with the 5/36/5 spec and was able to pull about 2300 dps with that. Much better than the numbers I have been throwing up with the 6/36/4 or 7/36/3 specs with my crit/pow/surge/alacrity setup. If anyone out there has the resources on the PTR to test this method out please do it. I am very interested in finding the optimal setup before this hits live

[vinnie81190]

You did a great job on this bro, kudos too you =D My buddy made his own guide too, he put like 2 months into making it, its got maps, credit guides, class tips and strategies and quest walkthroughs its nuts lol. But I gotta give ya credit in regards to your BH post once again, very nice ^^

Vin

[J-Rod]

My time in SWTOR has nearly come to an end.......................

In the words of the great Darth Vader.... "NOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

You can't quit. We won't allow it

I copied my char over to PTS. Going to start messing around with new possible rotations tonight. I'm not liking this heat management problem, that's for sure.

[Forsedar]

In the words of the great Darth Vader.... "NOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

You can't quit. We won't allow it

I copied my char over to PTS. Going to start messing around with new possible rotations tonight. I'm not liking this heat management problem, that's for sure.

Haha, real life has stopped me from being able to put a lot of time into multiple games so I had to choose. That doesn't mean I'm gone for good- just consider it an extended break ;D Again, I'll be doing my best to maintain this guide.

[Requiem4aDr3am]

Haha, real life has stopped me from being able to put a lot of time into multiple games so I had to choose. That doesn't mean I'm gone for good- just consider it an extended break ;D Again, I'll be doing my best to maintain this guide.

come on buttercup put WOW down and come back to the men:P I missed some time recently with my whole surgery fiasco, but I'm getting back into the swtor grind:P