SWTOR 4.0 Marksmanship Sniper PvP Guide by DeluxeTryHard

SWTOR 4.0 Marksmanship Sniper PvP Guide by DeluxeTryHard.[toc]

Intro to 4.0 Marksmanship Sniper

My name is KueDaddySausage/DeluxeTryHard. I play on The Harbinger or where ever there are Team/Solo ranked pops. I play a multitude of classes such as, Assassin, Sniper, EasyTech… I mean PowerTech, Sorc, and Operative. As for right now in the RANKED PvP scene, the best classes to choose would be Sniper and Powertech. For Regs, you can get away with just about anything. I have played since the launch of Swtor taking some major breaks in between, I love to PvP and will probably get into raiding (Don’t hold me to that) and stream. (You can catch me here at Twitch.tv/deluxetryhard)

Overall Rating – 8/10

I am going to cover 5 different areas for the Marksman Specced Sniper: Survivability, Rotation Difficulty, Utilities, Ranked Teams/Reg Viability, and lastly DPS.

Survivability: 7.5/10

As a sniper with high damage comes some squishy draw backs. A sniper should always be in cover, no matter what. When you’re in cover you are uninterruptable and when you have entrench activated you cannot be stunned. The thing with sniper DCDs are that you need to know the best time to use them. As a sniper one thing you will need to master is positioning which I will go over in a detailed explanation later in the guide.

• Covered Escape: Your roll will resist any damage while in the animation of it and .5 seconds after you land, therefor you must time it perfect to mitigate as much damage as possible. A good example of such mitigation would be when a Powertech throws his Thermal Detonator on you (during a powertech’s rotation, they would usually Thermal Det, then gut, magnetic blast/rocket punch, then railshot, followed by an autocrit energy burst.) at the very last second of the Thermal Det before it explodes you want to roll, in hope to not only mitigate their Thermal det, but their Energy burst or railshot as well.
• Shield Probe: Your shield probe is honestly one of the most useless defensive cooldowns known to Swtor. It will absorb around 4.5k-6k damage which is nothing. Use your shield probe off cooldown just to mitigate some damage.
• Evasion: Evasion is a 3 second 100% chance to dodge all ranged and melee attacks. Not only does it give you 100% chance, but it also gives you 75% chance in resist tech and force attacks as well (In the Marksman Tree).
• Diversion: Diversion is probably the most frustrating ability to deal with. It is a 75% accuracy debuff and ever since 3.0 they changed accuracy to directly effect force/tech damage. Diversion when used can cause enemies to miss Taunts, Stuns, and Heavy Damage dealing abilities. IF specced into it, Diversion can also slow for 50%. If a sniper uses diversion on another sniper, it rips them out of cover as well.
• Ballistic Shield: Ballistic Shield is an aoe shield of about 10m. When inside you get a damage reduction buff of 20% for 15 seconds, it’s a great help to your team especially in team ranked.
• Cover Pulse: I know you’re thinking oh man, cover pulse is a knockback, not a DCD. You’re wrong and right. If you spec into it, after activating cover pulse, you have a 20% chance to resist force and tech damage for 5 seconds.
• Entrench: When activated, you are immune to stuns and knockbacks for 20 seconds, and if specced into it, take 60% less aoe damage.
• Imperial Preparation: Imperial Preparation resets your Entrench, Shield Probe, Evasion, Covered Escape, and Cover Pulse. This ability is what made sniper much more survivable. If specced into it, you get a 20% damage reduction boost from it for 10 seconds after activated.

Rotation Difficulty: 4/10

The rotation for a marksman sniper is not difficult as long as you pay attention. The rotation is set in stone regardless of what situation you run into, unless you run into 5 people clumped therefore the rotation is – Suppressive Fire spam until you cry because you’re out of energy.

PvP Viability

• Regs 10/10: Anything is viable in Regular Warzones as long as you are good at it. Globalling people is always fun.
• Team Ranked 9/10: Sniper is one of the first to picked in Gym class right beside Powertechs. Snipers have consistent single target pressure damage, followed by an insane auto crit ambush. Snipers have the potential to lone global an unguarded target. Snipers can be used in both Hardswap comps and Pressure Comps.
• Solo Ranked 7.5/10: Sniper is hit or miss in Solo Ranked and it usually comes down to the individual player skill. If there are healers in Queue for Solo Ranked, Snipers are pretty unstoppable. If the teams are 4 Dps vs 4 Dps, it’s a different story. In a 4 Dps vs 4 Dps match, snipers tend to be focused down first, and in which case, you need to be able to master the use of your DCDs. In that kind of match up you want to get off at least 1 autocrit ambush before dying. If you are left to free cast in any solo ranked match, you will wreak havoc onto the enemy team.

DPS: 8.5/10

The only reason that I did not rank it 10/10 is because snipers damage is all channeled aside from execute and followthrough. Therefore you have the chance to being Line of Sighted by an enemy player. So positioning is everything for this spec. But other than that, the DPS output of this class is second only to the Powertech and sometimes not even then. Your damage is very intense: Ambush (21-25k), Snipe (9-10k), Penetrating Blasts (4k a tick), Execute (10-13k), and Followthrough (9-11k).

Gearing & Utilities

Utilities

Skillful

• Ballistic Dampers: Entering cover grants 3 charges of Ballistic Dampers. Each charge absorbs 30% of the damage dealt by an incoming attack. This effect cannot occur more than once every 1.5 seconds. Ballistic Dampers can only be gained once every 6 seconds. It’s pretty self explanatory, make sure to remember to reset cover to reset these dampers (They’re on the same timer as you’re Snap shot so it’s pretty nice.)
• Snap Shot: Entering cover makes the next Snipe or Lethal Shot activate instantly. This effect cannot occur more than once every 6 seconds. Again the internal cooldown is 6 seconds same as your ballistic dampers so reset cover. This utility is a must.
• Imperial Efficiency: Increases the damage dealt by Suppressive Fire by 25%. This utility is useful for Regular Warzones and Team Ranked IF there are teams with two melee dps on their team.
• Pulse Screen: Cover Pulse/Pulse Detonator increases your chance to resist Force and tech attacks by 20% for 6 seconds. This is taken because of its chance to be amazing. You can live or die because of this ability, before using it make sure you make sacrifices to the RNG gods.

Masterful

• Seek Cover: When Entrench ends or you leave cover while Entrench in active, you gain Seek Cover, which increases your movement speed by 50% and grants immunity to movement impairing effects. Lasts 6 seconds. This utility is must, especially for repositioning in PvP which you constantly need to do.
• Pillbox Sniper: Reduces the cooldown of Entrench by 15 seconds and Cover Pulse knocks targets back an additional 4 meters. Having Entrench on a shorter cooldown is extremely useful, and being able to knock someone 4m farther is just as useful. (Knocking out of guard range is a must, so this helps.)

Heroic

• Deployed Shields: Reduces all damage taken while in cover by 5% and reduces the cooldown of Ballistic Shield by 30 seconds. Having this makes your healers job slightly less stressful.
• Evacuate: Reduces the cooldown of Debilitate and Flashbang by 15 seconds. This utility is a MUST especially for ranked PvP. Having your flashbang on 41.3s (In full alacrity build) cooldown allows you shut down the enemy healer even more. Along with a 27.5s cooldown on your hardstun, it’s an amazing utility.
• Series of Snares: Each shot of Series of Shots and Penetrating Blasts slows the target by 20% for 3 seconds. This can stack up to 4 times. This utility is useful if you are trying to shut someone down in ranked and they are kiting a lot.
• Crippling Diversion: Diversion slows all targets by 50% for as long as they remain in the area. This is great when the enemy team is running a comp such as double PT and they have to sit in the slow if their hydraulics are down.

Examples

A) This is my standard Team Ranked Utility Set

B) This build is for regs or if a ranked team is running two melee dps and CLUMPING together

C) This utility set is if you are trying to tunnel one target only, and they are kiting a lot.

D) This utility set is good if again they are running two melee dps and clump a lot, the diversion slow is incredibly annoying.

Gearing

There are multiple ways you can go with gearing for MM Sniper in PvP

• Power Augments with two accuracy enhancements, two alacrity enhancements, and rest critical enhancements.
• 8 Alacrity Augments and 6 Critical Augments with two accuracy enhancements, two alacrity enhancements, and rest critical enhancements. (This is my personal favorite as I like the feel of the tempo.
• Mastery Augments with two accuracy enhancements, two alacrity enhancements, and rest critical enhancements.

Alacrity Build

• Alacrity Rating (858) – 8x Alacrity Augs/2x Alacrity Enchancements
• Critical Rating (1260) – 6x Critical Augs/3x Critical Enhancements/ 3x Critical Implants and Earpiece
• Accuracy Rating (274) – 2x Accuracy Enhancements
• Power (2369)
• Mastery (4494)
• Relics: Serendipitous Assault and Focused Retribution

Mastery Build

Power Build

No Screenshot at this time, will update. But here are the gearing that you’d need

• x14 Power Augments
• x2 Accuracy Enhancements
• x2 Alacrity Enhancements
• x3 Critical Enhancements

Rotation & Strategies

Rotation

The tricky part about PvP is that it’s hard to have a SET rotation, because everything is so situational. What I will usually do in the beginning of the match is –

Corrosive dart (As you’re running at the target) > Cover > Penetrating Blasts > Sniper Volley > Penetrating Blasts > Followthrough > Snipe > Re-enter cover (to reset snapshot and ballistic damper procs) > Snipe > Ambush (Spam your Laze Target as your ambush finishes casting for it to autocrit) > Followthrough (with the two stacks of increased damage)

Things to note:

• Always keep your corrosive dart on at least one person. (Do not spam it, you will deplete your energy.)
• Remember to constantly reset your Snap shot and Ballistic Dampers
• If ever between GCDs where you don’t have anything besides snipe, you can fill it in with a snipe/corrosive dart (If you’re energy is good) or fill it in with a Rifle Shot if you’re low on energy.

Ranked Strategies

Positioning:

Positioning in Team Ranked PvP and Solo Ranked PvP is what makes the difference between a bad sniper and a good sniper. Unless you have to, you always want to be behind your frontline. In solo ranked you want to make the enemy dps go through your dps to get to you, all while getting hit in the process. In Team Ranked positioning is important because Guard only has a 15m range, and all your abilities are 35m range, so you need to be close enough where you can either roll into guard range, or the tank and quickly get to you. You don’t want to be close enough to the point where you can get cleaved with your whole team. (Cleave means when an enemy AoEs and hits multiple people with it.)

Knowing cooldowns:

Knowing your enemy cooldowns is one of the greatest things to know. You obviously don’t want to autocrit ambush a jugg who has reflect up. or try to stun a sniper who is entrenched. Pay attention to what defensives your enemy has up, to do so learn what the animation looks like and what the buff icon looks like on their tray.

Playing Smart:

As a sniper you hit like a truck, so usually the enemy tank will guard off your target, making it hard for you to burst them down. A common trick that I love to do is wedge yourself between the enemy and your target and knock them back, separating them by at least 30m, giving you the chance to hit the unguarded dps/healer and possibly the chance to kill them. (I do this in one of the videos I will link further in the guide).

The Snipers worst enemy – Diversion:

Diversion is every snipers best and worst friend. It rips you out of cover and debuffs your accuracy by 45%. But fear not, you can roll resist diversion. In order to roll resist diversion you once again need to learn what the animation of diversion looks like. The animation looks like the character is throwing a grenade and then a green grenade comes out flying towards you. Your reflexes need to be strong. You have probably a one second window to dodge it, and it won’t always work. But it is possible. You want to roll as soon as you see the snipers arm throw something.

Helpful Videos

http://www.twitch.tv/deluxetryhard/v/28917384 (Video of a single round of Team Ranked)

http://www.twitch.tv/deluxetryhard/v/25475570 (Hardswap capabilities with a MM sniper.)