Post by trilok on Jul 19, 2010 7:09:59 GMT
I'll present some Expertise setups that I have tested and provide some critique to them. I started writing this on Sunday 18th July 2010 so this thread will probably change in future. I'll start with Carbine setups followed by Rifle setups.
Choosing an Expertise Setup
I choose an Expertise setup in two ways, the first is looking at the statistics in the Skill Mods screen selectable from the Character menu option an the second is looking at the skills themselves in the Expertise screen. Equip all your equipment and allow all your buffs to expire, then look at which statistics are highest. I have tested Carbine and Rifle weapons and noticed that Carbines are good for consistent damage over time and Rifles are good for spike damage. I found you couldn't directly compare Rifles and Carbines due to spike damage variances on Rifles, however with the recent changes to the BH expertise the damage for both over time is now equal. Note: if you look at the default attack over 1.0 second, Carbines complete 1 attack every 0.6 of a second and Rifles complete 1 attack every 0.8 second despite this the weapon damage is now balanced over time.
The New Expertise July 2010
There a few changes to the BH Expertise, changes include obtaining from the official SWG forum pages:
* All Bounty Hunters have received a free expertise respec.
* Tangle Bomb 1-3 will now cause up to 15% increased action cost to targets.
* The snare duration increase from Cruelty is now correctly applied to Tangle Bomb and Razor Net.
* Advanced Armor Break now results in Ambush Tier 3-8 applying Armor Break twice to a target.
* Advanced Armor Break no longer applies a 2% damage bonus to Ambush. It still applies a 10% critical hit chance to Ambush.
* Improved Endurance, Marksmanship, Evasion and Pain Tolerance boxes. All of the boxes now offer 25 points per point invested.
* Unlinked Relentless Onslaught and Take Cover.
* Relentless Onslaught and Take Cover can now be used with all weapons.
* Added the Survival Instinct box. It reduces the cooldown timer for the heal line by 2 seconds per point.
* Unlinked Return Fire from Intense Assault.
* Intense Assault now improves Assault damage by 5/10/15%
* Ambush Intensity now improves Ambush damage by 10/20/30%
* Melee Defense has been renamed to Honed Reflexes. It now offers 2 points of dodge per point.
* Ranged Defense has been renamed to Reactive Armor. It now offers 2 points of Critical Hit Defense per point.
* Improved Kinetic Armor to offer 500 points of kinetic armor per point invested.
* Assault Efficiency and Ambush Efficiency now cost max 3 points for 5/10/20% action cost reduction.
* Lethality now offers up to 20% action cost reduction to cripple.
* Trap Extension now offers 10/20% trap action cost reduction. The box now also affects the range of dire traps.
* Cruelty now offers up to 6 seconds cooldown reduction to cripple.
* Innate Assault renamed to Enduring Assault. Enduring Assault gives a 40% chance of applying a 10% action cost reduction to assault. It can be stacked up to 5 times.
* The link between Antagonize and Fumble has been removed.
* The Absorption and Deflection boxes now offer innate armor instead of kinetic or energy protection.
* Man hunter is now a 3 point box. Man Hunter now offer 2% strikethrough chance and 10% Improved Detects Camouflage per point.
* The Arakyd Probe Droid will now warn the Bounty Hunter if the target has been inactive for 15 minutes or more.
* The Arakyd Probe Droid will also warn the Bounty Hunter if the target is inside a structure that the Bounty Hunter is unable to enter, for example a house set to private or if the Bounty Hunter has been banned from entry.
* When a player bounty is collected, mail will be sent to those who placed a bounty on the mark. This change is not retroactive - only bounties placed after this change will receive the mail notification.
* Flawless Jewelry Set:
o All three levels of flawless bead now have a 100% defense bypassing effect.
o Flawless bead will now only be consumed by Ambush, Antagonize, Assault, Cripple, Dread Strike, Fumble, Intimidate and Sniper Shot.
o Flawless bead attacks should no longer have a chance to be incorrectly dodged.
o Decreased the Flawless Strike cooldown by 5 seconds.
o The Flawless Strike jewelry set now adds an innate 2% flawless bonus.
o Flawless Strike no longer uses a proc based system. When the Flawless Strike ability is used, the Flawless Bead buff is applied to the BH.
The equipment used in this case is below, the armour rating based on the current SWG version based on this will give ~9k Kinetic, ~9k Energy and 6.9k Elemental Protection:
Carbine Expertise Setups:
1. Balanced for pvp and pve using BH armour with full debuffs.
Critique:
This is very similar to my favorite rifles expertise and is superb if you like Carbines.
Bounty Specialisation;
Marksmanship 2/4
Evasion 2/4
Small Arms Efficiency 4/4 > Small Arms Accuracy 2/2 > Deadly Strikes 1/1 > Relentless Onslaught 1/1
Energy Armour 3/4
Survival Instinct 2/2
Power Sprint 1/1
Bounty Hunting;
Absorption 4/4 > Deflection 4/4 > Shields 1/1
Intense Assault 3/3 > Return Fire 1/1
Rapid Assault 2/2 >
Fumble 1/1 > Prescience 1/1
Enduring Assault 1/1
Swift Ambush 2/2 > Advanced Ambush 1/1 > Advanced Armour Break
Cruelty 3/3 > Intimidating Strike 1/1 > Dread Strike 1/1
2. Hybrid with Rifles for Sniper Shot.
Critique:
I used this template for a long time with my Guardian Lightning Rifle and it's great if you can switch between the weapons and Sniper Shot fast enough. I would suggest setting up a macro to equip a Rifle, perform Ambush (for a higher chance critical hit) then use Sniper Shot and switch back to a Carbine.
Bounty Specialisation;
Marksmanship 4/4
Small Arms Efficiency 4/4 > Small Arms Accuracy 2/2 > Deadly Strikes 1/1 > Relentless Onslaught 1/1
Rifle Marksmanship 2/2 > Sniper Shot 1/1
Energy Armour 2/4
Power Sprint 1/1
Bounty Hunting;
Absorption 4/4 > Deflection 4/4 > Shields 1/1
Intense Assault 3/3 > Return Fire 1/1
Rapid Assault 2/2
Enduring Assault 1/1
Fumble 1/1 > Prescience 1/1
Swift Ambush 2/2 > Advanced Ambush 1/1
Cruelty 3/3 > Intimidating Strike 1/1 > Dread Strike 1/1
3. My personal favorite Carbine setup, focus on offense for long fights.
Critique:
I was skeptical at first because I like Dread Strike so giving it up was hard. I checked my Skill Mods and noticed I had ~10% Strikethrough and considering the Skill is constant during a fight I thought it would be good to try out at least. It's good but I found Dread Strike and Cruelty are very good, not to mention Intimidating Strike in pvp. Also, Take Cover is very under rated, the 10% damage bonus and radar invisibility are good skills to have and when you combine it with Fumble it's very effective.
Bounty Specialisation;
Marksmanship 4/4
Small Arms Efficiency 4/4 > Small Arms Accuracy 2/2 > Deadly Strikes 1/1 > Relentless Onslaught 1/1
Energy Armour 3/4
Survival Instinct 2/2
Take Cover 1/1
Power Sprint 1/1
Bounty Hunting;
Absorption 4/4 > Deflection 4/4 > Shields 1/1
Intense Assault 3/3 > Return Fire 1/1
Rapid Assault 2/2
Enduring Assault 1/1
Fumble 1/1 > Prescience 1/1
Enduring Assault 1/1
Swift Ambush 2/2 > Advanced Ambush 1/1
Cruelty 3/3 > Intimidating Strike 1/1 > Dread Strike 1/1
Rifle Expertise Setups:
1. The main Rifles setup.
Critique:
This template is certainly worth testing now with a full compliment of Rifle attachments for Shirt and Chestplate and equipment that add bonuses to using a Rifle i.e. Rifle Action Cost 2 on a ring etc... If you have invested in equipment for Carbines stick with that but contact Traders to create attachments for Rifle mods so that you can test this template properly:
Bounty Specialisation;
Marksmanship 4/4
Rifle Action Cost 4/4 > Rifle Damage 2/2 > Sniper Shot 1/1 > Take Cover 1/1
Relentless Onslaught 1/1
Energy Armour 3/4
Survival Instinct 2/2
Power Sprint 1/1
Bounty Hunting;
Absorption 4/4 > Deflection 4/4 > Shields 1/1
Intense Assault 3/3 > Return Fire 1/1
Rapid Assault 2/2
Enduring Assault 1/1
Fumble 1/1 > Prescience 1/1
Swift Ambush 2/2 > Advanced Ambush 1/1
Cruelty 3/3 > Intimidating Strike 1/1 > Dread Strike 1/1
2. My personal favorite Rifles setup.
Critique:
I created a Rifles template that focused on Ambush and Assault and Enduring Assault for saving some Action and came up with a nice surprise, I tested this template with a Nullifier X heat rifle (I will post the stats of this weapon soon) against a gold elite mark and the end result was staggering. I use Ambush (mark5) as it provides the same effect as Ambush (mark 8) but uses half the Action, I keep the mark 8 version available for when I use Relentless Onslaught. The best results I have had is with this template, it gives the best results in pvp and pve with any rifle:
Bounty Specialisation;
Marksmanship 4/4
Rifle Action Cost 4/4 > Rifle Damage 2/2 > Sniper Shot 1/1 > Take Cover 1/1
Relentless Onslaught 1/1
Energy Armour 3/4
Survival Instinct 2/2
Power Sprint 1/1
Bounty Hunting;
Absorption 4/4 > Deflection 4/4 > Shields 1/1
Intense Assault 3/3 > Return Fire 1/1
Rapid Assault 2/2
Fumble 1/1 > Prescience 1/1
Swift Ambush 2/2 > Advanced Ambush 1/1 > Advanced Armour Break 1/1 (the expertise update makes AAB a must now)
Cruelty 3/3 > Intimidating Strike 1/1 > Dread Strike 1/1
1. Melee setup.
Critique:
My preference is a ranged BH template but melee is certainly possible:
Bounty Specialisation;
Pain Tolerance 4/4
Aigility 4/4
Relentless Onslaught 1/1
Energy Armour 3/4
Kinetic Armour 2/4
Dodge 3/3
Survival Instinct 2/2
Bounty Hunting;
Absorption 4/4 > Deflection 4/4 > Shields 1/1
Intense Assault 3/3 > Return Fire 1/1
Rapid Assault 2/2
Fumble 1/1 > Prescience 1/1
Swift Ambush 2/2 > Advanced Ambush 1/1 > Advanced Armour Break 1/1 (the expertise update makes AAB a must now)
Cruelty 3/3 > Intimidating Strike 1/1 > Dread Strike 1/1
================================================
In summary, there are 6 distinct expertise setups that are good in both pve and pvp. Try these templates (the last Rifle setup in particular) and experiment with the timing of activating specials in specific orders i.e. one combination is Take Cover then Fumble another is AAB, Assault, AAB, Sniper Shot and Burn. This generally works in pve. The difference in pvp is that you must pay attention to the specials your opponent is activating and activate your specials accordingly.
Choosing an Expertise Setup
I choose an Expertise setup in two ways, the first is looking at the statistics in the Skill Mods screen selectable from the Character menu option an the second is looking at the skills themselves in the Expertise screen. Equip all your equipment and allow all your buffs to expire, then look at which statistics are highest. I have tested Carbine and Rifle weapons and noticed that Carbines are good for consistent damage over time and Rifles are good for spike damage. I found you couldn't directly compare Rifles and Carbines due to spike damage variances on Rifles, however with the recent changes to the BH expertise the damage for both over time is now equal. Note: if you look at the default attack over 1.0 second, Carbines complete 1 attack every 0.6 of a second and Rifles complete 1 attack every 0.8 second despite this the weapon damage is now balanced over time.
The New Expertise July 2010
There a few changes to the BH Expertise, changes include obtaining from the official SWG forum pages:
* All Bounty Hunters have received a free expertise respec.
* Tangle Bomb 1-3 will now cause up to 15% increased action cost to targets.
* The snare duration increase from Cruelty is now correctly applied to Tangle Bomb and Razor Net.
* Advanced Armor Break now results in Ambush Tier 3-8 applying Armor Break twice to a target.
* Advanced Armor Break no longer applies a 2% damage bonus to Ambush. It still applies a 10% critical hit chance to Ambush.
* Improved Endurance, Marksmanship, Evasion and Pain Tolerance boxes. All of the boxes now offer 25 points per point invested.
* Unlinked Relentless Onslaught and Take Cover.
* Relentless Onslaught and Take Cover can now be used with all weapons.
* Added the Survival Instinct box. It reduces the cooldown timer for the heal line by 2 seconds per point.
* Unlinked Return Fire from Intense Assault.
* Intense Assault now improves Assault damage by 5/10/15%
* Ambush Intensity now improves Ambush damage by 10/20/30%
* Melee Defense has been renamed to Honed Reflexes. It now offers 2 points of dodge per point.
* Ranged Defense has been renamed to Reactive Armor. It now offers 2 points of Critical Hit Defense per point.
* Improved Kinetic Armor to offer 500 points of kinetic armor per point invested.
* Assault Efficiency and Ambush Efficiency now cost max 3 points for 5/10/20% action cost reduction.
* Lethality now offers up to 20% action cost reduction to cripple.
* Trap Extension now offers 10/20% trap action cost reduction. The box now also affects the range of dire traps.
* Cruelty now offers up to 6 seconds cooldown reduction to cripple.
* Innate Assault renamed to Enduring Assault. Enduring Assault gives a 40% chance of applying a 10% action cost reduction to assault. It can be stacked up to 5 times.
* The link between Antagonize and Fumble has been removed.
* The Absorption and Deflection boxes now offer innate armor instead of kinetic or energy protection.
* Man hunter is now a 3 point box. Man Hunter now offer 2% strikethrough chance and 10% Improved Detects Camouflage per point.
* The Arakyd Probe Droid will now warn the Bounty Hunter if the target has been inactive for 15 minutes or more.
* The Arakyd Probe Droid will also warn the Bounty Hunter if the target is inside a structure that the Bounty Hunter is unable to enter, for example a house set to private or if the Bounty Hunter has been banned from entry.
* When a player bounty is collected, mail will be sent to those who placed a bounty on the mark. This change is not retroactive - only bounties placed after this change will receive the mail notification.
* Flawless Jewelry Set:
o All three levels of flawless bead now have a 100% defense bypassing effect.
o Flawless bead will now only be consumed by Ambush, Antagonize, Assault, Cripple, Dread Strike, Fumble, Intimidate and Sniper Shot.
o Flawless bead attacks should no longer have a chance to be incorrectly dodged.
o Decreased the Flawless Strike cooldown by 5 seconds.
o The Flawless Strike jewelry set now adds an innate 2% flawless bonus.
o Flawless Strike no longer uses a proc based system. When the Flawless Strike ability is used, the Flawless Bead buff is applied to the BH.
The equipment used in this case is below, the armour rating based on the current SWG version based on this will give ~9k Kinetic, ~9k Energy and 6.9k Elemental Protection:
- 8 pieces - 35 Agility, 35 Luck and 35 Precision, Kin 7600, En 5600, Special Protection 5400 to all (important)
- Armour Chestplate, 3 Carbine/Rifle Action Cost, 3 Carbine/Rifle Critical Chance, 2 Carbine/Rifle Damage, Kin 7600, En 5600, Special Protection 5400 to all (important)
- Shirt, 3 Carbine/Rifle Action Cost, 3 Carbine/Rifle Critical Chance, 2 Carbine/Rifle Damage (important)
- PSG - 35 Agility, 35 Luck and 35 Precision, En 2499, Recharge Rate 77.2 (important)
- Rucksack of the Tusken King, 25 Agility, 30 Constitution, 25 Luck, 35 Precision, 30 Stamina and 35 Strength
- Blastech Wristek - Wrist Assault Booster Zulu (Right), 4 Assault Action cost, 4 Assault Critical Chance, 4 Assault Damage and 4 Assault Freeshot Chance
- Champion's Golden Symbol (Left), 25 Agility, 25 Strength and 2 Carbine/Rifle Action Cost
- Fine Combatant's Ring, 25 Stamina, 25 Strength and 2 Carbine/Rifle Action Cost
- Colonel Signet Ring of the Empire, 40 Agility, 60 Constitution, 24 Precision and 24 Strength
- Nova Star Medal of the Empire, 30 Constitution, 30 Luck, 24 Precision, 24 Strength
Carbine Expertise Setups:
1. Balanced for pvp and pve using BH armour with full debuffs.
Critique:
This is very similar to my favorite rifles expertise and is superb if you like Carbines.
Bounty Specialisation;
Marksmanship 2/4
Evasion 2/4
Small Arms Efficiency 4/4 > Small Arms Accuracy 2/2 > Deadly Strikes 1/1 > Relentless Onslaught 1/1
Energy Armour 3/4
Survival Instinct 2/2
Power Sprint 1/1
Bounty Hunting;
Absorption 4/4 > Deflection 4/4 > Shields 1/1
Intense Assault 3/3 > Return Fire 1/1
Rapid Assault 2/2 >
Fumble 1/1 > Prescience 1/1
Enduring Assault 1/1
Swift Ambush 2/2 > Advanced Ambush 1/1 > Advanced Armour Break
Cruelty 3/3 > Intimidating Strike 1/1 > Dread Strike 1/1
2. Hybrid with Rifles for Sniper Shot.
Critique:
I used this template for a long time with my Guardian Lightning Rifle and it's great if you can switch between the weapons and Sniper Shot fast enough. I would suggest setting up a macro to equip a Rifle, perform Ambush (for a higher chance critical hit) then use Sniper Shot and switch back to a Carbine.
Bounty Specialisation;
Marksmanship 4/4
Small Arms Efficiency 4/4 > Small Arms Accuracy 2/2 > Deadly Strikes 1/1 > Relentless Onslaught 1/1
Rifle Marksmanship 2/2 > Sniper Shot 1/1
Energy Armour 2/4
Power Sprint 1/1
Bounty Hunting;
Absorption 4/4 > Deflection 4/4 > Shields 1/1
Intense Assault 3/3 > Return Fire 1/1
Rapid Assault 2/2
Enduring Assault 1/1
Fumble 1/1 > Prescience 1/1
Swift Ambush 2/2 > Advanced Ambush 1/1
Cruelty 3/3 > Intimidating Strike 1/1 > Dread Strike 1/1
3. My personal favorite Carbine setup, focus on offense for long fights.
Critique:
I was skeptical at first because I like Dread Strike so giving it up was hard. I checked my Skill Mods and noticed I had ~10% Strikethrough and considering the Skill is constant during a fight I thought it would be good to try out at least. It's good but I found Dread Strike and Cruelty are very good, not to mention Intimidating Strike in pvp. Also, Take Cover is very under rated, the 10% damage bonus and radar invisibility are good skills to have and when you combine it with Fumble it's very effective.
Bounty Specialisation;
Marksmanship 4/4
Small Arms Efficiency 4/4 > Small Arms Accuracy 2/2 > Deadly Strikes 1/1 > Relentless Onslaught 1/1
Energy Armour 3/4
Survival Instinct 2/2
Take Cover 1/1
Power Sprint 1/1
Bounty Hunting;
Absorption 4/4 > Deflection 4/4 > Shields 1/1
Intense Assault 3/3 > Return Fire 1/1
Rapid Assault 2/2
Enduring Assault 1/1
Fumble 1/1 > Prescience 1/1
Enduring Assault 1/1
Swift Ambush 2/2 > Advanced Ambush 1/1
Cruelty 3/3 > Intimidating Strike 1/1 > Dread Strike 1/1
Rifle Expertise Setups:
1. The main Rifles setup.
Critique:
This template is certainly worth testing now with a full compliment of Rifle attachments for Shirt and Chestplate and equipment that add bonuses to using a Rifle i.e. Rifle Action Cost 2 on a ring etc... If you have invested in equipment for Carbines stick with that but contact Traders to create attachments for Rifle mods so that you can test this template properly:
Bounty Specialisation;
Marksmanship 4/4
Rifle Action Cost 4/4 > Rifle Damage 2/2 > Sniper Shot 1/1 > Take Cover 1/1
Relentless Onslaught 1/1
Energy Armour 3/4
Survival Instinct 2/2
Power Sprint 1/1
Bounty Hunting;
Absorption 4/4 > Deflection 4/4 > Shields 1/1
Intense Assault 3/3 > Return Fire 1/1
Rapid Assault 2/2
Enduring Assault 1/1
Fumble 1/1 > Prescience 1/1
Swift Ambush 2/2 > Advanced Ambush 1/1
Cruelty 3/3 > Intimidating Strike 1/1 > Dread Strike 1/1
2. My personal favorite Rifles setup.
Critique:
I created a Rifles template that focused on Ambush and Assault and Enduring Assault for saving some Action and came up with a nice surprise, I tested this template with a Nullifier X heat rifle (I will post the stats of this weapon soon) against a gold elite mark and the end result was staggering. I use Ambush (mark5) as it provides the same effect as Ambush (mark 8) but uses half the Action, I keep the mark 8 version available for when I use Relentless Onslaught. The best results I have had is with this template, it gives the best results in pvp and pve with any rifle:
Bounty Specialisation;
Marksmanship 4/4
Rifle Action Cost 4/4 > Rifle Damage 2/2 > Sniper Shot 1/1 > Take Cover 1/1
Relentless Onslaught 1/1
Energy Armour 3/4
Survival Instinct 2/2
Power Sprint 1/1
Bounty Hunting;
Absorption 4/4 > Deflection 4/4 > Shields 1/1
Intense Assault 3/3 > Return Fire 1/1
Rapid Assault 2/2
Fumble 1/1 > Prescience 1/1
Swift Ambush 2/2 > Advanced Ambush 1/1 > Advanced Armour Break 1/1 (the expertise update makes AAB a must now)
Cruelty 3/3 > Intimidating Strike 1/1 > Dread Strike 1/1
1. Melee setup.
Critique:
My preference is a ranged BH template but melee is certainly possible:
Bounty Specialisation;
Pain Tolerance 4/4
Aigility 4/4
Relentless Onslaught 1/1
Energy Armour 3/4
Kinetic Armour 2/4
Dodge 3/3
Survival Instinct 2/2
Bounty Hunting;
Absorption 4/4 > Deflection 4/4 > Shields 1/1
Intense Assault 3/3 > Return Fire 1/1
Rapid Assault 2/2
Fumble 1/1 > Prescience 1/1
Swift Ambush 2/2 > Advanced Ambush 1/1 > Advanced Armour Break 1/1 (the expertise update makes AAB a must now)
Cruelty 3/3 > Intimidating Strike 1/1 > Dread Strike 1/1
================================================
In summary, there are 6 distinct expertise setups that are good in both pve and pvp. Try these templates (the last Rifle setup in particular) and experiment with the timing of activating specials in specific orders i.e. one combination is Take Cover then Fumble another is AAB, Assault, AAB, Sniper Shot and Burn. This generally works in pve. The difference in pvp is that you must pay attention to the specials your opponent is activating and activate your specials accordingly.