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

[swtorplayerasdf]

Edit: Here is my parse

<link>

Not my best attempt but its 10:40 PM and I have another long day ahead of me tomorrow so I am off to bed!

I thought I broke 4 minutes but I guess not. Granted most fights do not last that long (at least for my guild anyways).

I had about a steady 1750 DPS until the end when TSO for some odd reason refuses to be read if used instantaneously with HSM. I'm not sure if the problem happens to others but it does go on CD and it used, however, HSM still is building heat which screwed me up a bit.

Cool thanks Aerro. Got something to compare myself with now

[Phaser]

For everyone following this thread:

I don't claim to be awesome- but pushing 1650+ on a target dummy over a 5-6min duration without buffs must show for something.

Unfortunately, I'm not surprised at another lie from you. You twist everything to mke yourself look good. You have a 42% critical rate on your parse so please make the mistake of claiming you did this unbuffed.

Still waiting for 1650+ unbuffed for over 5 minutes Clearly this didn't happen. Maybe in full campaign...but certainly not like you said it did.

Why am I not surprised? You really shouldn't claim to be awesome because you are not. Ironically, that's exactly what you were claiming with your statement.

Please post constructively.

[Forsedar]

Unfortunately, I'm not surprised at another lie from you. You twist everything to mke yourself look good. You have a 42% critical rate on your parse so please make the mistake of claiming you did this unbuffed.

Still waiting for 1650+ unbuffed for over 5 minutes Clearly this didn't happen. Maybe in full campaign...but certainly not like you said it did.

Why am I not surprised? You really shouldn't claim to be awesome because you are not. Ironically, that's exactly what you were claiming with your statement.

Please post constructively.

The only piece that isn't "campaign" are my gloves currently. They are still 146 and I only plan on taking the campaign gloves when no one needs them.

Also, please look further into the other critical stats:

Rail Shot: crit 30.77% of the time

Heatseeker Missile: crit 21.43% of the time

Unload: crit 37.04% of the time


What boosted my number up so high was the Tracer Missile crit chance. However that was strictly RNG PLUS the 2pc set bonus which gives an additional 15% crit chance.

So let me get this straight- You claim I'm a liar and can't do the numbers and demand proof, basically denying all information in this thread at an attempt to discredit me. I give you my parse which gives straight evidence. You then call me a liar (again) for posting proof/evidence. Clearly you are just out to get me at this point.

Again, I do not claim to be awesome. Just because I standout among certain people doesn't make me superior or inferior. The only difference is that I sought out knowledge and relayed the information to everyone else. You either choose to listen or you choose not to. There is no option for "attack the Author for attempting to help."

Please, if you can teach me a lesson- do so without direct insults. I'm sure many people who view this thread would love to see what you have to say on the matter other than calling me a liar without further information.

Again, thanks for the time spent at least reading my thread- but please stop wasting my time (as well as others) with your impotent remarks. If you have something positive to add to the discussion, I will not stop you despite your past history. The more information the merrier. Just please stop insulting me (and others).

[Cortic]

So what is your opinion on the 200 commendation relics? I don't have access to a crit crafted relic for the augment slot (my server kinda behind the 8 ball) and im now looking at one of the three relics:

405 power on use

185 internal dmg on proc

185 elemental dmg on proc.

I've googled and cannot find any hard evidence for troopers and these relics. Granted the 405 on use relic is better for specific burst phases but there is only two bosses I can think of that would benefit majorly from that.

[Forsedar]

So what is your opinion on the 200 commendation relics? I don't have access to a crit crafted relic for the augment slot (my server kinda behind the 8 ball) and im now looking at one of the three relics:

405 power on use

185 internal dmg on proc

185 elemental dmg on proc.

I've googled and cannot find any hard evidence for troopers and these relics. Granted the 405 on use relic is better for specific burst phases but there is only two bosses I can think of that would benefit majorly from that.

It honestly comes down to personal preference. I love to have the power on use because of the fact that I use my Adrenal with it, and the short cooldown of the relic allows me to use it multiple times a fight.

If you want to use the 'on proc' relic, go with the Elemental damage seeing as (unfortunately) it is mitigated by armor, but we naturally have a decent amount of Armor Penetration which allows it to do more damage than normal. (Also I may be wrong about the Elemental damage being mitigated by armor, but there is at least ONE relic that has its damage mitigated so I only assumed it was Elemental) Sorry I am a bit tired and managed to reply right before heading off to bed.

[Deleted]

If you want to use the 'on proc' relic, go with the Elemental damage seeing as (unfortunately) it is mitigated by armor, but we naturally have a decent amount of Armor Penetration which allows it to do more damage than normal. (Also I may be wrong about the Elemental damage being mitigated by armor, but there is at least ONE relic that has its damage mitigated so I only assumed it was Elemental) Sorry I am a bit tired and managed to reply right before heading off to bed.

Elemental and Internal = bypass armour totally BUT they are capped at 184 dmg

Kinetic and Energy = mitigated by armour BUT go up to 246 dmg vs 0 armour

When you are using armour pen vs say 35% damage mitigation you do about 10 more damage with a Kinetic/Energy relic.

If you don't have any armour pen at all then don't touch the Kinetic/Energy ones because you'll do less damage than with Elemental/Internal.

[Forsedar]

Elemental and Internal = bypass armour totally BUT they are capped at 184 dmg

Kinetic and Energy = mitigated by armour BUT go up to 246 dmg vs 0 armour

When you are using armour pen vs say 35% damage mitigation you do about 10 more damage with a Kinetic/Energy relic.

If you don't have any armour pen at all then don't touch the Kinetic/Energy ones because you'll do less damage than with Elemental/Internal.

Thanks for clarifying!

[Forsedar]

UPDATE:

With 1.3 just around the corner, we are seeing some various changes to our Mercenaries. With these changes will come changes to this guide. I will be re-writing a vast portion of it for YOUR benefit alone. Everything is subject to change on the PTS, but here are the current changes to our class and spec:

Originally Posted by SWTOR

Mercenary

Arsenal
Barrage now properly affects Unload while wielding a single blaster pistol.
Terminal Velocity has been redesigned. While High-Velocity Gas Cylinder is active, there is a 50% chance per point to vent 8 Heat every 6 seconds.
Tracer Lock and Light 'Em Up have swapped positions in the Skill Tree. Tracer Lock now requires Tracer Missile and Light 'Em Up now requires Tracer Lock.
Light 'Em Up now additionally grants an extra stack of Tracer Lock and Power Barrier, if applicable, with each Tracer Missile fired.
Custom Enviro Suit now increases healing received by 1% per point (down from 3%).

Pyrotech (Mercenary)
Advanced Targeting has been redesigned and now gives Unload and Rail Shot 10% of armor penetration per point.

Things such as Custom Enviro Suit getting a "nerf" does not affect our DPS (unless our healers now feel incapable of healing us ). As for the now 30% Armor Penetration with Rail Shot and Unload (giving up 3% accuracy IF you are not the Alacrity build) seems to be a nice little DPS increase.

With the Advanced Targeting changes (Armor Penetration) and now the redesigned Tracer Lock, we will be firing off Rail Shots quite often, thus giving our heat even more GCDs to vent.

Also, while High Velocity Gas Cylinder is active we will be venting 8 heat every 6sec GUARANTEED. This doesn't seem to be much of a difference compared to the 8 heat vent per crit (per 3 seconds). It is indeed a nerf for those of us who crit at least once every 3 sec... but a very, very slight one at that.

Overall we should be experiencing a DPS increase with these changes. Especially now that we are not that crit dependent (other than for DPS sake), it may give us more room to focus on Power.

Of course, all of this will be done through testing on the PTS and when it goes live.

Right now: I think it will be safe to say that our crit cut-off point will be 35%. With it at that, our Tracer Missile is already sitting at a 50% crit chance. Cutting off our crit means even more power. Especially now with the Unload changes (no more streaks without it proccing), it will be hitting harder with the passive 30% extra Armor Penetration... so more Power means even more base damage not mitigated.

Just bare in mind that everything is still up for changes, though I doubt it at this point in time.

[Cortic]

UPDATE:

Things such as Custom Enviro Suit getting a "nerf" does not affect our DPS (unless our healers now feel incapable of healing us ). As for the now 30% Armor Penetration with Rail Shot and Unload (giving up 3% accuracy IF you are not the Alacrity build) seems to be a nice little DPS increase.

With the Advanced Targeting changes (Armor Penetration) and now the redesigned Tracer Lock, we will be firing off Rail Shots quite often, thus giving our heat even more GCDs to vent.

Also, while High Velocity Gas Cylinder is active we will be venting 8 heat every 6sec GUARANTEED. This doesn't seem to be much of a difference compared to the 8 heat vent per crit (per 3 seconds). It is indeed a nerf for those of us who crit at least once every 3 sec... but a very, very slight one at that.

Overall we should be experiencing a DPS increase with these changes. Especially now that we are not that crit dependent (other than for DPS sake), it may give us more room to focus on Power.

Of course, all of this will be done through testing on the PTS and when it goes live.

Right now: I think it will be safe to say that our crit cut-off point will be 35%. With it at that, our Tracer Missile is already sitting at a 50% crit chance. Cutting off our crit means even more power. Especially now with the Unload changes (no more streaks without it proccing), it will be hitting harder with the passive 30% extra Armor Penetration... so more Power means even more base damage not mitigated.

Agree with everything you've said here. Crit will definitely be valued lower and as such so will surge both in favour of power. Not liking the nerf to ammo regen via crits however the more liberal use of rail shot will make up for it especially for 4pce rakata users. This also justifies not dropping 4pce Rakata for the higher ilvl Black hole non-tier pieces.

[Requiem4aDr3am]

UPDATE:

With 1.3 just around the corner, we are seeing some various changes to our Mercenaries. With these changes will come changes to this guide. I will be re-writing a vast portion of it for YOUR benefit alone. Everything is subject to change on the PTS, but here are the current changes to our class and spec:

Originally Posted by SWTOR

Mercenary

Arsenal
Barrage now properly affects Unload while wielding a single blaster pistol.
Terminal Velocity has been redesigned. While High-Velocity Gas Cylinder is active, there is a 50% chance per point to vent 8 Heat every 6 seconds.
Tracer Lock and Light 'Em Up have swapped positions in the Skill Tree. Tracer Lock now requires Tracer Missile and Light 'Em Up now requires Tracer Lock.
Light 'Em Up now additionally grants an extra stack of Tracer Lock and Power Barrier, if applicable, with each Tracer Missile fired.
Custom Enviro Suit now increases healing received by 1% per point (down from 3%).

Pyrotech (Mercenary)
Advanced Targeting has been redesigned and now gives Unload and Rail Shot 10% of armor penetration per point.

Things such as Custom Enviro Suit getting a "nerf" does not affect our DPS (unless our healers now feel incapable of healing us ). As for the now 30% Armor Penetration with Rail Shot and Unload (giving up 3% accuracy IF you are not the Alacrity build) seems to be a nice little DPS increase.

With the Advanced Targeting changes (Armor Penetration) and now the redesigned Tracer Lock, we will be firing off Rail Shots quite often, thus giving our heat even more GCDs to vent.

Also, while High Velocity Gas Cylinder is active we will be venting 8 heat every 6sec GUARANTEED. This doesn't seem to be much of a difference compared to the 8 heat vent per crit (per 3 seconds). It is indeed a nerf for those of us who crit at least once every 3 sec... but a very, very slight one at that.

Overall we should be experiencing a DPS increase with these changes. Especially now that we are not that crit dependent (other than for DPS sake), it may give us more room to focus on Power.

Of course, all of this will be done through testing on the PTS and when it goes live.

Right now: I think it will be safe to say that our crit cut-off point will be 35%. With it at that, our Tracer Missile is already sitting at a 50% crit chance. Cutting off our crit means even more power. Especially now with the Unload changes (no more streaks without it proccing), it will be hitting harder with the passive 30% extra Armor Penetration... so more Power means even more base damage not mitigated.

Just bare in mind that everything is still up for changes, though I doubt it at this point in time.

Just curious if you have had the chance to test out specs on the PTS since 1.3 went up on it. Was wondering if it is still wise to use the 9% alacrity build or if you can get more damage using the advanced targetting build or a combo of the 2? Like can you put 3 points into it and get the 30% armor pen for unload and rail shot as well as say 4% alacrity or would that just not be worth doing?

[Forsedar]

Just curious if you have had the chance to test out specs on the PTS since 1.3 went up on it. Was wondering if it is still wise to use the 9% alacrity build or if you can get more damage using the advanced targetting build or a combo of the 2? Like can you put 3 points into it and get the 30% armor pen for unload and rail shot as well as say 4% alacrity or would that just not be worth doing?

At this point it is "all or nothing". Unfortunately we can't pick or choose and take a little of both. At this time the Alacrity build still trumps it due to its high APM (attacks per minute), but who knows how that will change in the future!

[Requiem4aDr3am]

At this point it is "all or nothing". Unfortunately we can't pick or choose and take a little of both. At this time the Alacrity build still trumps it due to its high APM (attacks per minute), but who knows how that will change in the future!

do you have any math that breaks down how much better alacrity spec is than the full advanced targetting spec? I'm currently on pts using the advanced targetting spec and I have definitely noticed increased damage. I was previous using the 5/31/5 spec as I only have 1 campaign piece and use rakata pieces with black hole mods mostly. I'm not sure if the increase I'm seeing is just because of the extra augment slots or what. I'm lacking the time to switch back and forth between specs gathering multiple logs of testing on dumbies, flash points, operations, etc, but if you or someone else in the forum has had time to do substantial testing I would really like to get a breakdown.

[Forsedar]

I'll give you some numbers once I get back from work. I am leaving this second.

Just for you to think about:

Keep in mind this thread is about maxing yourself out for 8man and 16man raiding. That being said, in a raid environment, many other classes are present with Armor Penetration debuffs. Not only do we have a base of 35%, we also have our own debuff to add to the mix. Do you think having an additional 30% armor penetration is necessary when we most likely won't even utilize it on a boss encounter?

With that, I'm off to be a corporate bitch.

[Forsedar]

Okay so, here we are. The Alacrity spec will trump going 3/3 into the Armor Penetration for one reason: Attacks Per Minute (APM)

The cast times of your Tracer Missile with the Alacrity Build is: 1.37s
The channel times of your Unload with the Alacrity Build is: 2.88


Knowing those cast times, we can predict the 'average' attack per minute per ability.

Tracer Missile: 15.05 apm
Unload (Barrage): 5.51 apm

...and just for fun, both Rail Shot and HSM are at 3.95.

So, how did I get the apm for both Tracer and Unload(Barrage)?

Here is the equation that I use on my spread sheet for Unload:

60*((19.75*0.593277913826638+32.1451822916667)/(1+0.593277913826638))/300

Here is the equation I use for Tracer Missile:

60*((21.4301215277778*0.593277913826638+107.150607638889)/(1+0.593277913826638))/300

Okay I'm sure all those numbers are making you think "WTF". Time to give you a break down. As you can see, some parts of both equations are the same and I would assume that those long decimals are making it look worse than it really is.



60*((19.75*0.593277913826638+32.1451822916667)/(1+0.593277913826638))/300

The 60 represents the time limit you want to to base it off of. You can throw in 120 if you wanted to see what would happen over a 2min duration.

19.75 is the average Unloads per fight. That is found out by basically taking the average fight time (300sec) and diving it by its active cooldown (15sec) but taking into account some other variable for TSO activity. So really for a 300sec fight, the average calculated fight time is 296.25sec.

0.593277913826638 represents the Heat Build up during your average rotation divided by the heat build up inbetween procs. That is found out by doing:

1.6875/2.84...




32.1451822916667 is the amount of Barrage uses in the remaining fight time. I trust you know my math is correct and I do not particularly feel like diving into this on in this thread. However, if its requested I can elaborate further. Right now I don't feel it is relevant to continue on any further so I can answer the actual questions at hand.


Continuing on:

That leaves your average Unload (Barrage Proc'd) per minute to be at 5.51. Of course RNG plays a heavy hand at this, so you can see more or fewer.

The average Tracer Missile per minute will be 15.05. That will not change unless, of course, you get more Barrage proc's.

Now, without that Alacrity increase, your abilities change to:

Unload: 3.37 apm
Tracer Missile: 12.33 apm

Take what you will from that, but I believe that to be a substantial loss in potential DPS. It all depends on what you hit for with those abilities to determine the DPS loss. For me, it is showing a -67 DPS loss. However, my spreadsheet does NOT take into account the 15% crit increase to Tracer Missile because I just do not know how to do that right now without screwing everything else up. So, from what I can deduct is that I would probably be at loss of about -120 DPS because of the changes.


You want to know if the Armor Penetration is worth it. I do not see it being viable at this point in time (for PvE that is). Reason being is that we already get an absurd amount of Armor Penetration from our HVGC and other classes debuffs. To add 30% would be overkill, since anything over 100% is pointless. With the Alacrity build, we can still get an additional 10% Armor Penetration, which coupled with our cylinder and other classes puts us ~100% anyways.

Warrior: 20%
Bounty Hunter: 20%
Sniper: 20%
HVGC: 35%
Talent: 10%

As of now, all of those Armor Penetrations do stack. I do not know if it is intentional or not (seeing as it was stated to be fixed) but I will keep an eye out for any ninja changes.

[Cortic]

I know personally that in our 8m HM EC raid group I am the only person bringing an armor debuff so for me this is a no brainer - Armor debuff over alacrity.

[Forsedar]

I know personally that in our 8m HM EC raid group I am the only person bringing an armor debuff so for me this is a no brainer - Armor debuff over alacrity.

I just did a few runs on the Dummy with Alacrity and then with the ArP. My DPS was about +80, up to ~100 compared to just sticking with straight ArP talents. Remember, you can still put 1 point into it for +10% armor pen for those 2 abilities. You also have to keep in mind that it is only affecting those 2 abilities, and nothing else- where as Alacrity affects the abilities that make up the majority of your damage.

[Cortic]

I just did a few runs on the Dummy with Alacrity and then with the ArP. My DPS was about +80, up to ~100 compared to just sticking with straight ArP talents. Remember, you can still put 1 point into it for +10% armor pen for those 2 abilities. You also have to keep in mind that it is only affecting those 2 abilities, and nothing else- where as Alacrity affects the abilities that make up the majority of your damage.

Wish they would hurry up and xfer my commando onto the pts so I can test it myself >.<

[Forsedar]

Wish they would hurry up and xfer my commando onto the pts so I can test it myself >.<

I really liked what they did with the heat management though. Its a bit weird to get used to because I'm used to basing certain abilities off of when things crit... but now we get heat back no matter what we're doing. Its like some weight is off your shoulder and now you can rely on more power.

[Requiem4aDr3am]

I really liked what they did with the heat management though. Its a bit weird to get used to because I'm used to basing certain abilities off of when things crit... but now we get heat back no matter what we're doing. Its like some weight is off your shoulder and now you can rely on more power.

I did some testing of my own with a 6/31/4 build that allows for 20% armor pen but with 50% chance to proc the 5% alacrity for 6s. I had some amazing results. Ill jump on test tomorrow and get more testing in to make sure it wasn't just lucky procs etc, but in the HMs I ran I was pulling 1800-1850 dps running this spec. Its a really great mix since I seemed to be procing the 5% alacrity without downtime even with only 50%.

[Forsedar]

I did some testing of my own with a 6/31/4 build that allows for 20% armor pen but with 50% chance to proc the 5% alacrity for 6s. I had some amazing results. Ill jump on test tomorrow and get more testing in to make sure it wasn't just lucky procs etc, but in the HMs I ran I was pulling 1800-1850 dps running this spec. Its a really great mix since I seemed to be procing the 5% alacrity without downtime even with only 50%.

I thought of that, but then again I dropped my crit from 40% to 33% just so I could get above 900 power. Since we don't need crits to lose heat, I decided to drop most of my crit for more base damage. I would hate to not have the alacrity proc but its a possibility. I will test it out as well.