d20radio.com

So I have two (and a half) questions. Yesterday I was added to EV at the last minute to help with the one on one fights as a DPSer. I'm a 50th level sentinel with straight 126 rating gear. The first people started announcing they'd killed their bad guy pretty soon into the two minute timer. There seemed to be a long pause (30 seconds or longer) between when the last of them killed their opponent and when I killed mine. It was close. Someone had a timer going and I dropped mine with 1.4 seconds to spare.

So that's when I realized that I suck at DPS.

The people in the ops told me to ask advice from the more experienced ops sentinels like Oz (or one of the Z's, I can't look up the guild roster right now and I always confuse names like Zeece and Zain.) So my first question:

I'm working on improving my gamepad setup and priority rotation. Do you like this site's priority listing? It looks good to me: (but we've established I'm bad at this )

http://www.noxxic.com/swtor/pve/jedi-kn ... -cooldowns

The half question: Now that we have the combar parser, does anyone know what GOOD damage per second actually is (numbers-wise)? I'd like to figure out where I stand.

The other question: I got my first piece of Columni gear when we killed Soa. The set bonus is 1 less focus on Dispatch and 15 second off the cooldown on Valorus Moment (or whatever it's called, the one that gives you 30 stacks of centering). How do you think this compares to pulling out the mods and putting them in a full set of oranges with augment slots. I'd think 6 augment slots would probably be as good, but what do the experts say? (Currently I look like an orange traffic cone).

Bob

_________________

Bioware said pretty early on that your DPS is going to VERY dependent on skillz with the key board and less about what gear you have. So for us DPSer practice makes perfect.. so visiting the Combat dumbies and poor Captain Targis on Hoth are key to us doing our part of the fight.

Which tree are you?

For Combat you can read through Sithwarriors theorycrafting threads...
http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/Thread-Carnage-Discussion-1-2

If Watchman
http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/Thread-Annihilation-Watchmen-Discussion

The half question: Now that we have the combar parser, does anyone know what GOOD damage per second actually is (numbers-wise)? I'd like to figure out where I stand.
You can go to the Wiki and look at the 'Records' by fight
https://sites.google.com/site/theorderof66/the-academy/strat-and-tact/oo66-record-book

I only have Parses from Adara and me so its a very small sampling.. the more we get the better we can answer those questions


[url]How do you think this compares to pulling out the mods and putting them in a full set of oranges with augment slots.[/url]

I would get an account at sithwarrior.com and ask that question.. since they do the math they better answer that question. Though right now.. focus less on gear and more on the keyboard. I believe that last % I saw from the Devs was 65% keyboard 35% gear as far as where your DPS comes from. Work on the 65% and the 35% will take care of itself.

_________________
Captain Zeece / Sgt. Perrian
Order of Sixty Six Webmaster
Guildmaster for The Exiled Lords




Co-host of Geekhead Radio
look me up on Twitter, Google + or Facebook - Clayton Havens

Thanks, that's helpful. The priority rotation on that other sight is just a little different (looks like they aren't as impressed with the Master Strike bump as noxxic and some of that might have to do with whatever opener they're using, it's not listed in the post). I have the combat dummies and logs now, so I'm going to try stuff tonight and see what my DPS looks like. Also I have the logitech gamepad so if I can get my strategy fine-tunned I can program the keys to help me out quite a bit. For instance today I programmed my "basic attack" key to force leap if it was off cooldown and stike if it wasn't as an experiment, because there's almost never an instance when I don't want to force leap when it's off cooldown.

I'm Watchman. Sorry.

The records page helped a lot. Looks like if I can get near 1000 dps I'm doing ops-level work. I suspect I was at aroun 500 dps yesterday in the one on one fights.

I'm thinking long term on the gear, but since I'll need to get schematics to make that work, I feel I should start thinking about it now.

Bob

_________________

I'm playing Zain but I'm almost fully combat spec at the moment, when I tried out watchman it didn't seem my kind of gameplay so I let it go, can't help you with its skill rotation I'm afraid.

With all respect, whoever stated that 65% of your dps depends on keyboard and 35% on your gear can go and kiss my cargo hold. I still experience animation glitches from time to time, hindering my attacks. Oh and just as I exchanged my mainhand hilt from the daily gear and put in the columi hilt, my dps increased dramatically.

My advice for you Defendi, is that prioritize your stats (but know your soft caps!), equip yourself accordingly and get your skill rotation straight. From there, it either works or doesn't (and its better to test in action than on training dummies, for example Zain gets boosts from being attacked).
For watchman, I might consider equipping myself for power rather than crit, though I have not tried it during respecs.

Thanks for the advice (both here and this morning on the fleet). And thanks to Grey today for pointing out I can make a better relic than I'm carrying.

I'll post some of my numbers in a bit. I'm a little less worried now, but I think a good list of examples and numbers as I work through this will help other players as they go into Ops and are worried about pulling their weight.

Can I just say how nice it is that all the pressure I'm feeling about this is personal and none is coming from the guild. You guys have been nothing but supportive. (Even when you're stunned by how close I cut it on a fight. )

_________________

So I did a lot of testing last night and set up a key on my gamepad that activates whatever highest priority attack isn't on cooldown. I don't know how useful that will be if I'm not just tooling around. I'll have to do some more practice and see how the more automated attack selection compare. However, the results below are kind of promising.

All of the following until the end are on the HM dummies.

First I tried a very casual attack style. My gamepad is set up with all my high-priority stuff in a little cluster. I can play without paying a lot of attention. I almost certainly hit zen more than usual in this test than normal, though, since I knew I was tracking my DPS. Here are my numbers:

Casual play:

Total Damage: 155,503
Average DPS: 971.9

Total Healing: 21,844
Average HPS: 136.5

Total Threat: 155,548
Average TPS: 972.2

Total Time (sec): 160
Count of Deflect: 0
Count of Parry: 0

Then I did it again, while trying really hard to play as well as I could:

Trying

Total Damage: 205,786
Average DPS: 1,008.8

Total Healing: 32,375
Average HPS: 158.7

Total Threat: 205,827
Average TPS: 1,009.0

Total Time (sec): 204
Count of Deflect: 0
Count of Parry: 0

Both DPS and HPS went up on that. Here's when I programmed my gamepad to select the highest priority ability from the noxxic.com rotation.

Noxxic Rotation

Total Damage: 195,935
Average DPS: 994.6

Total Healing: 33,068
Average HPS: 167.9

Total Threat: 195,974
Average TPS: 994.8

Total Time (sec): 197
Count of Deflect: 0
Count of Parry: 0

A little below trying really hard on DPS, but still a gain on HPS. So then I programmed the priorities from MMO-Mechanics.

MMO-Mechnics Rotation

Total Damage: 235,727
Average DPS: 1,086.3

Total Healing: 39,366
Average HPS: 181.4

Total Threat: 235,761
Average TPS: 1,086.5

Total Time (sec): 217
Count of Deflect: 0
Count of Parry: 0

Good bump on both. That's something of a winner. Noxxic again, now that I had a little more experience, to see how my personal skill was affecting it:

Noxxic Rotation (With a little more experience.)

Total Damage: 212,839
Average DPS: 971.9

Total Healing: 35,428
Average HPS: 161.8

Total Threat: 212,886
Average TPS: 972.1

Total Time (sec): 219
Count of Deflect: 0
Count of Parry: 0

So that was worse than the first one. I was trying to get small, fast attacks in while my saber was overcharged. It looks like that causes a net loss in DPS.

Then I went back to the MMO Mechanics priorities but I tried to follow advice on managing focus (so I didn't ever bottom out or waste any).

MMO Mechanics (trying to manage focus):

Total Damage: 139,360
Average DPS: 922.9

Total Healing: 20,959
Average HPS: 138.8

Total Threat: 139,375
Average TPS: 923.0

Total Time (sec): 151
Count of Deflect: 0
Count of Parry: 0

So that was a REALLY bad idea. Looks like it's best to just keep focus as high as your cooldowns will allow. Aborting the rotation to try to keep it in the sweet spot was hurting more than helping. At least in this test.

So I finished by putting Valorous . . . whatever it's called in the mix for burst dps, but then going beyond the burst to see its overall effect over the two minutes of its cooldown:

Total Damage: 348,207
Average DPS: 1,088.1

Total Healing: 61,210
Average HPS: 191.3

Total Threat: 348,251
Average TPS: 1,088.3

Total Time (sec): 320
Count of Deflect: 0
Count of Parry: 0

Only a slight gain in DPS, but a good one on HPS. So that's probably the rotation I'll go with. I have one button set up for full burst dps and one without, so that I can save burst dps if the ops commander requests it. Although using this in an op is only contingent on it staying more efficient than I can do without, as I practice (it is now, but as I practice I might well surpass it).

Finally I did the same rotation on the OPS dummy, to see the difference:

Total Damage: 448,943
Average DPS: 961.3

Total Healing: 86,672
Average HPS: 185.6

Total Threat: 449,008
Average TPS: 961.5

Total Time (sec): 467
Count of Deflect: 0
Count of Parry: 0

So that was some interesting data. I know not many people are going to read this whole post, but it's there for the people who'd like to reference it.

Bob

_________________