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

[Keren]

I absolutly know what you mean I get every job there is todo in a bossfight...

[odawgg]

Hahahahah...what bitch duty really hurts our dps that much though? TFB anomalies sure, maybe if you're forced to go up and kill snipers in Thrasher, but our raid has melee leap and/or snipers snipe instead. Is there anything else?

i find it most rewarding to be on bitch duty WHILE keeping up dps-wise. The single TM has helped this out a lot though, before 2.0 target switches murdered us.

All that being said though, there's few fights we can top good mara's and snipers, can just look at torparse charts to see that. I just try to get close to them and ahead of as many mercs as I can

[Keren]

remember I'm doing 8man ops, most jobs just does only one person. And hey, being on pure boss duty will always give enough time to plan your heat and rotation. Other dutys are just amkes you split your awareness. It may does not hurt badly dps wise - but after severely weeks, when your 1 evening not there and here your raids struggle to do the job on the first try like they should...

tfb:
1) strong add duty... it just sucks
2) caster add duty
3) add duty again, nothing that will hurt about that here though
4) add duty again, running around like a freak :/
5) again there are adds in both phases

s&v:
1) hello again: adds
2) just hate the double spawn, the mass spawn is simple bombing, but the double spawn is kind of pure annoyance. keep both on you and please be fast enough that they dont reach and hit you. healers will mourn - they are just lazy asses :P
3) no one jumps up, 2 dds doing the job. And we dont even have 1 sniper in the whole guild *haha*
4) nothing to do here..
5) olok - time to sleep
6) finally no adds, despise the one spawn
7) meh, fight is really lame. A big gibbish and clunky fight with so many abilities that just dont seem to fit together. One of the worst fights they did produced till now

toborro:
nothign todo but being add-bitch again... though: DFA and FM do a wonderful job for topping meters.

[Requiem4aDr3am]

heh yeah Im always on bitch duty and yes Im always forced to go up on thrasher have yet to get a decent parse on that fight think my best was only 2.3k
I can still pull off some good parses but would be better if I could tunnel vision mara away on the boss. Course the maras in my guild tend to get themselves killed so Im the goto guy. Damn me for being so damned good while being so damned crippled IRL.

[odawgg]

Well, I definitely agree we are underappreciated. And, I have to admit I'm probably a little spoiled with the guild I'm in. We really don't have any weak links...AKA I'm not relied on so heavily to save the day like I was in my old guild. Our healers can handle some adds on them for a bit and our mara's our not tunnelers and are more than willing to peel off the boss when necessary to get the job done. We usually have at least one or two epic-pro stealth rez'ers so any need for me to battle rez is usually negated there. Here's my breakdown of the fights:

TFB:
1. I welcome adds, pads my dps...in fact we only get one set of spawns which is sad face to me. The other 2 sets are vanished by assassin tank.
2. Again love the adds, pads my dps as well. Channeler melts fast and I usually have time for a quick DFA where the ramaining adds and Kel are chillin
3. Gimme all the adds!!!! More adds the better.
4. Definitely takes some skill to keep DPS up here when ur taking down the orbs, but strategic positioning and movement with all instants is the key. In first phase, need to keep on boss for entire 10s debuff duration WHILE you move yourself into orb pickup location.
5. If you're on anomalies forget it, but we recieved a major buff on this fight with the single TM armor debuff, so first phase adds are not a problem. Throw your DFA in 1st and 3rd set of tentacles, you can hit both of them.

SV:
1. I just hate this fight in general, put me on adds or not and I'm not going to do anything special haha.
2. Have no issues with any of the adds, maybe our dps will drop ever so slightly with the dual spawn, but that's made up for in between phases with a nice DFA followed by Flame Thrower to pad the stats on the big group. Gotta take the good with the bad here.
3. This has been discussed, if you're a merc on add duty ur dps is gonna be lower. I don't think it's very good raid efficiency to put us on them personally but sometimes it's necessary depending on who u run with.
4. Easy
5. Easy
6. Easy
7. Heavily reliant on your ability to target switch while maintaining rotation.

Golden Fury: This is such a joke it doesn't really matter, our ranged put up the same numbers whether their on the adds or not. When you're finished with the adds it's a quick switch to the boss for more damage. I'm usually on Boss but I throw my DFA and TSO+FM on the adds when they're up.

As a ranged deeps you pretty much need to master target switching while maintaining close to perfection in your rotation/priority stystem. TM is often enough in our rotation where you can wait till you're going to use a TM anyway before switching (few exceptions). This will set the average merc parse apart from the top ones. But all this being said, raid composition and roles are going to heavily determine your dps potential in any given fight. I choose to accept that and figure out how I can overcome any situation with competitive dps

[Forsedar]

Haha, yeah you're nipping at my heals on a couple fights you closed the gap since last time I checked, nice! But i still hold'em

Like others are saying, I find myself unable to just sit there and DPS- and if I'm lucky I may get a Marauder in my group if I beg!

My favorite parts of raiding:

Being CC bitch on some fights.
Having to move away from others who run and stand on me during spread out phases

Wait, no, my absolute favorite is the first boss. Whenever I have an awesome parse going- I get ported and watch my DPS plummet about 600.

Either way, given our strats that aren't really promoting maximizing DPS- we get things done and as long as I am ontop within my guild I am pleased. There are plenty of changes I would want to make in SV that would maximize my DPS, but thats greedy! We're doing fine and in the end, bosses are still dying. Also only having about 45-55% of BiS doesn't help I'm close to 2300 Aim!

[odawgg]

Haha, love it. I think we can all sympothize with those situations and I know we could probably have an entire thread dedicated to the nuiances of unfortunate events leading to our dipping parses.

I'm with you on that, I don't condone raid groups catering to boosting a particular person's dps just for charts. Our job is to get ish done, 2nd priority is to go for the bragging rights on the charts.

[Forsedar]

Haha, love it. I think we can all sympothize with those situations and I know we could probably have an entire thread dedicated to the nuiances of unfortunate events leading to our dipping parses.

I'm with you on that, I don't condone raid groups catering to boosting a particular person's dps just for charts. Our job is to get ish done, 2nd priority is to go for the bragging rights on the charts.

I think we should all be focused on getting Bioware to give us more fixes ;D There are some changes that I would love to see, including some number changes. Mercs aren't THAT great when compared to other classes of equal gear and skill. We're competitive, just not on the same level!

I miss Stephen Reid. He actually listened to me :/ Our Unload bug was processed by him when he actually spent an evening exchanging PMs with me for proof and a fix of it. Granted, it took about 10 days to see a fix but it came!


Edit: Fix our 4pc. That is all.

[odawgg]

See thing is though, is fixing the 4pc wouldn't give us a dps gain. The 2pc 2pc would still rank better. Although it would make merc life easier. There would have to be straight damage buffs (in addition to 4pc -8 heat rail shot) to all abilities to let us compete with snipers and maras. And BW has been pretty strict about keeping those two classes on top. I'd love to believe they would give us a buff, but I don't see it happening. And it infurates me.

I know "why" they do it...these two ACs have only dps specs, so they should ideally in their minds, be better dps.

[Forsedar]

Tracer Missile now leaves a DoT on the target. Please for 4pc.

[odawgg]

Tracer Missile now leaves a DoT on the target. Please for 4pc.

/signed...but not at the expense of taking away from the initial hit like they did with Thermal Detonator

[Forsedar]

/signed...but not at the expense of taking away from the initial hit like they did with Thermal Detonator

Yeah I can see them doing that... so nevermind.

[Keren]

Tracer Missile now leaves a DoT on the target. Please for 4pc.

hm, we would hear the pyro fans crying out loud
however, pyro need a complete remaking. It can't compete in everything than number of dots.

[Forsedar]

hm, we would hear the pyro fans crying out loud
however, pyro need a complete remaking. It can't compete in everything than number of dots.

Well to be fair, not every spec is designed to be equal. There will ALWAYS be an optimal spec. WoW tried to go away from that by redesigning talent trees so there is no 'cookie cutter' build- well there was still an optimal build. It is absolutely impossible to make everything equal, so regardless, there will always be an inferior spec.

[Keren]

not talking about making them equal, but they lack behind several hundred dps

[odawgg]

not talking about making them equal, but they lack behind several hundred dps

I hate that if I spend more than a few minutes writing a post, this site logs me out and I have to type i all over again. I'm just gonna sum up....You should try hitting the dummy more with pyro, I'm pulling within 100 dps on average without the spikeness of arsenal. I'm not good in raid yet, I've only tried once or twice, but with someone else putting on the armor debuff and with the extra damage in the final 30% to DoTs, there's some fights I feel pyro would out dps arsenal, by a small margin. However, there's some fights it would be God awful and I would never use it, such as Styrak.

The chance for Power Shot to proc Rail Shot every 6s is waaaaaay higher than the skill tree tooltip suggests, I can pretty much count on it proc'ing every time. I'll try to put a parse together when i can.

[Forsedar]

You can generally stay logged in infinitely. I haven't had to sign on for the past 2 years.

[odawgg]

I guess the site doesn't like me....FINE!

[Keren]

I don't even know my password - I'm here since Nov 2010.. omfg


Edit 1: http://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/commen...th_pve_direct/
I will try to check it out myself!

Edit 2:
odawgg 18 min parse was all I needed, the claim from reddit is disproved:
22:29:28.281 Pizza'dah'hutt's Energy Surge hits Operations Training Dummy for 275 energy damage.
22:29:30.704 Pizza'dah'hutt gains Power Surge.
22:29:33.377 Pizza'dah'hutt's Energy Surge hits Operations Training Dummy for 275 energy damage.
22:29:36.802 Pizza'dah'hutt loses Power Surge.

22:31:22.089 Pizza'dah'hutt's Energy Surge critically hits Operations Training Dummy for 469* energy damage!
22:31:26.448 Pizza'dah'hutt activates Power Surge.
22:31:26.448 Pizza'dah'hutt gains Power Surge.
22:31:27.237 Pizza'dah'hutt's Energy Surge hits Operations Training Dummy for 275 energy damage.
22:31:30.956 Pizza'dah'hutt loses Power Surge.
22:31:32.355 Pizza'dah'hutt's Energy Surge hits Operations Training Dummy for 275 energy damage.


But, there are even stranger results:

22:35:25.193 Pizza'dah'hutt activates Power Surge.
22:35:25.193 Pizza'dah'hutt gains Power Surge.
22:35:26.903 Pizza'dah'hutt loses Power Surge.

22:37:29.913 Pizza'dah'hutt activates Power Surge.
22:37:29.913 Pizza'dah'hutt gains Power Surge.
22:37:31.707 Pizza'dah'hutt loses Power Surge.


the uptime of the power procc buff is a little short, or?

[Requiem4aDr3am]

sigh guys Im afraid Ill never be able to post another viable parse again. My guilds new favorite thing for sorcs to do is chain pull me during raids but only after starting an UL in an attempt to overheat me. It started last night in a casual 16m sm lol carry group. 4 sorcs made me their bitch and it carried over into the main 8m raid earlier tonight...oh the shame of having to rapid shots because as I start an UL I get pulled!
Also please tell me BW didnt screw up our relics because Im really lazy and was looking forward to using lazy man proc relics, but not if they arent going to work correctly.