I’m still here and pvping my tail off! I’m going into the last week of the quarter so my summer will start after that.
I’ve got an Engineering post coming up and I’ll be testing a Lethality/Engineering AoE hybrid some more down the line, so look out for that! I’ve been spending a lot of time on a Shadow alt but so far I can’t think of any things that I find particularly helpful to share, maybe once I’m a bit higher level some new mechanics will come up.
My ask box is always open if you wanna know/see a specific thing!
Silly question, but for your sniper action bars, are you using a cover bar or are those always your action bars, regardless of whether or not you're in cover? Trying to steal your setup so I don't have the same ability cloned like nine times over.
Those are my action bars at all times, I find the cover bar extremely restricting and confusing. I don’t see the point in it when, as a Sniper/Gunslinger, you spend most of your time in cover anyway.
You don't have responses to single posts enabled on this blog yet, but I did want to point out that your highest damage engineering BG had me-as-ophanim basically following you (and ron) around and trying to heal your butts off. So if you have trouble hitting those numbers again, pick up a pocket healer, or better yet, go for higher numbers. And maybe post some advice on scoundrel/operative healing. ;)
Can’t enable replies on this blog for some reason, weird stuff…
Yeah, a healer helps a lot. I’ve hovered around 240k today without a dedicated healer though, so most of it is situation dependent and whether you get lucky or not.
I was thinking about doing a couple of posts on Scoundrel healing, but I’m not sure what to write since I literally just ram buttons to no end when I’m playing it! If anyone is wondering about anything or wants to know a particular thing I can always write something up of course.
(That said the ask box is always open!)
More adventures with Engineering. Now that I have Plasma Probe, damage output has increased drastically. Note that I had my buddy Oliver doing a stellar job at healing so props to him for keeping my squishy ass alive through that!
I know Engineering isn’t a popular choice for Snipers, but I’ll play around with it some more and do a rotation post for this spec as well! It’s a fun playstyle, really.
Here’s a video of half a Huttball match, basically demonstrating what I’ve been talking about in this blog. Got 210k damage at the end, not as high as I would have liked but the match ended prematurely because we scored 6 points.
(Sorry for the music, I like having my hypem playlist go while I PvP haha. There’s also a bit of an in-game sound lag going on.)
Positioning as a Sniper: You Can’t See Me But I Can See You
Placing yourself in a good spot is key to Sniper PvP gameplay: it will seriously improve your damage and contributions to the team if you know where to plant your squishy butt.
Some key points to keep in mind:
Don’t run around too much, especially in Huttball. If you are positioned correctly, the ball carrier will come to you. No need to go hunting for them if they’re still at their side of the field.
That being said, don’t chase down enemies either if they run from you. It’s not worth it – if they run out of sight, you were successful at your job
Stay far away and out of sight. Don’t just plop down a cover right in front of a bunch of attackers, look to see if you can flank them in some way or even get behind them.
Don’t be the front runner of zerg rushes if you’ve got people backing you up. You really want your Juggernaut buddy to grab the other team’s attention first so you can set up shop in a corner.
Some quick thoughts on speccing Engineering while I compile this positioning post.
That’s the highest damage I’ve gotten so far after experimenting with it in ten warzones or so. It hits hard, even in the hands of someone like me who has no idea what they’re doing after being used to Marksmanship for so long.
I’m not sure if I agree with the assessment that it’s energy intensive — I’d say it’s more about managing your cooldowns properly instead of worrying about energy, since EMP Discharge removes Energy Probe’s cooldown after usage.
I haven’t figured out proper rotations yet but I’m not sure whether I like its playstyle. It’s very different from Marksmanship and definitely needs some getting used to. Cover still applies but less so, as now you’ll have to actually chase after people if they run away from you before you can detonate EMP Discharge.
I’ll have to play more, but I’m really curious to see whether it holds up to a pre-50 MM specced Sniper with its 260k damage in an average warzone.
Marksmanship in PvP: Your Sniper Rifle and You
There’s a plethora of write-ups out there that describe the best builds for a Sniper, what abilities to take and all that. But most of them are PvE focused and if they mention PvP at all, they don’t talk about situations or rotations that you have to be familiar with in every warzone. This annoyed me, because although a lot of it is common sense after practice, for a beginning Sniper in warzones it’s unknown information. In short, you have to figure out all that crap for yourself. Not fun.
Furthermore, a lot of them seem to hammer on having proper keybindings to be the best at it. For the past ten levels, I’ve topped most of the pre-50 leaderboards in DPS and I’m a notorious clicker. I really want to emphasize that it’s not difficult to be good at this class if you have the info, no matter your playstyle.
tl;dr I think a lot of “guides” aren’t that helpful beyond figuring out builds. What you need is info that can be used hands-on and a bunch of practice to get a feel for it. I’ll cover that here and in future posts.
So here you go, rotations for Marksmanship/Sharpshooter PvP and what to do in certain situations! For the record, all of this works with a Gunslinger as well. Here’s a handy conversion chart.
