SWTOR 3.0 Dirty Fighting Gunslinger DPS Guide by Cloake

SWTOR 3.0 Dirty Fighting Gunslinger DPS Guide by Cloake of Begeren Colony.

Contents

• 1 Intro to Dirty Fighting Gunslinger
  • 1.1 Passives
  • 1.2 Offensive Cooldowns
  • 1.3 Defensive Cooldowns
  • 1.4 Utility Cooldowns
  • 1.5 Utility Selections
  • 1.6 Ratings
  • 1.7 Gearing and Stats Priority
• 2 Abilities and Rotation
  • 2.1 What you need before hand
  • 2.2 Abilities (Not a priority system)
  • 2.3 Opener and Rotation
  • 2.4 AoE
• 3 Parse Analysis
• 4 Using Defensive Abilities
• 5 About the Author

Intro to Dirty Fighting Gunslinger

Passives

• Bravado : Increases maximum energy by 10
• Crack Shot : Increases the range of Quick Shot, Flash Grenade, and Distraction to 30 meters, and additionally increases the range of all blaster, grenade, and charge attacks by 5 meters. In addition,Vital Shot marks its target for 45 seconds. Marked targets take 5% more damage from ranged weapon attacks
• Hold Position : Wile in cover, ranged defense is increased by 20%, you cannot be leaped to or pulled, and you are immune to interrupts and ability activation pushback. In addition, Dodge reduces the damage you take from Force and tech attacks by 75% while in cover.
• Steady Shots : Increases the damage dealt by Charged Burst, Dirty Blast, Speed Shot, and Penetrating Rounds by 5%.

Offensive Cooldowns

• Cool Head : Keeps a cool head, recovering 50 energy over 3 seconds
• Illegal Mods : Increases ranged and tech accuracy by 30% and armor penetration by 15% for 10 seconds.
• Smuggler’s Luck : Increases the critical hit chance of your next Aimed Shot, Sabotage Charge or Wounding Shots by 100%. Lasts 20 seconds.

Defensive Cooldowns

• Defense Screen : Projects a defense screen around yourself, absorbing a moderate amount of incoming damage for 10 seconds. Does not break stealth
• Dodge : Increases your chance to dodge melee and ranged attacks by 200% for 3 seconds. Does not break stealth.
• Scrambling Field : Deploys an acquired scrambling field that spans 10 meters around you and reducing the damage taken by allies that remain inside by 20%. Lasts 20 seconds.
• Hunker Down : Hunkers you down into cover, becoming immune to all controlling effects. Only grants protection while in cover. Lasts 20 seconds
• Surrender : Puts up a front of surrender, instantly lowering your threat by a moderate amount

Utility Cooldowns

• Distraction : Interrupts the targets current action and prevents that ability from being used for 4 seconds
• Dirty Kick : Stuns the target for 4 seconds and deals kinetic damage
• Diversion : Reduces the accuracy by 45% and exposes from cover up to 8 targets within 8 meters for 8 seconds. Cannot be used on Operation bosses.
• Flash Grenade : Lobs a Flash Grenade that blinds the target for 8 seconds. Damage causes this effect to end prematurely
• Hightail It : Roll forward 18 meters, purging movement slowing effects and landing crouched behind cover. While rolling, your chance to dodge attacks is increased by 100%.
• Leg Shot : Fires a shot that deals weapon damage and immobilizes the target for 3 seconds. Direct damage dealt after 2 seconds ends the effect prematurely. Fires both blasters if dual wielding
• Pulse Detonator : Detonates an emergency charge that knocks all nearby targets back several meters and immobilizes them for 5 seconds. Damage dealt after 2 seconds ends the effect prematurely. Only usable in cover.

Utility Selections

The Utilities most useful for PVE will be bolded. Some have greater or lesser importance based on the encounter

Skillful

1. 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.
2. Cool Under Pressure: While in cover, you heal for 1% of your total health every 3 seconds.
3. Cover Screen: When exiting cover, you increase your ranged defense by 20% for 6 seconds.
4. Snap Shot: Entering cover makes the next Charged Burst or Dirty Shot activate instantly. This effect cannot occur more than once every 6 seconds
5. Flash Powder: Reduces target’s accuracy by 20% for 8 seconds after Flash Grenade ends.
6. Efficient Ammo: Increases the damage dealt by Suppressive Fire by 25%.
7. Reset Engagement: Slapping a target with Blaster Whip grants Reset Engagement, increasing your movement speed by 50% for 3 seconds. Additionally, the final shot of SpeedShot and Penetrating Rounds knocks back the target if they are within 10 meters.

Masterful

1. Heads Up: When Hunker Down ends or you leave cover while Hunker Down is active, you gain Heads Up, which increases your movement speed by 50% and grants immunity to movement impairing effects. Lasts 6 seconds.
2. Hot Pursuit: You gain 4 charges of Hot Pursuit upon exiting cover, which reduces the energy cost of Quick Shot by 100%. Each use of Quick Shot consumes 1 charge, and consumption of the first charge triggers a 20 second rate-limit on this skill. This effect lasts 15 seconds but is also removed by consuming all charges or reentering cover.
3. Pandemonium: Activating Pulse Detonator makes the next Charged Burst or Dirty Shot activate instantly.
4. Dirty Trickster: Surrender will also purge all movement-impairing effects when activated.
5. Trip Shot: Reduces the cooldown of Leg Shot by 3 seconds.
6. Hotwired Defenses: Increases the amount of damage absorbed by Defense Screen by 30%.
7. Lay Low: Reduces the cooldown of Hunker Down by 15 seconds and Pulse Detonator knocks targets back an additional 4 meters.

Heroic

1. Plan B & C: Reduces the cooldown of Dirty Kick and Flash Grenade by 15 seconds
2. Hold Your Ground: Reduces the cooldown of Escape by 30 seconds, Defense Screen by 4 seconds and Pulse Detonator by 5 seconds.
3. Holed Up: Reduces all area effect damage taken by 60% while Hunker Down is active.
4. Kneecappin’: Increases the Trauma duration of Flourish Shot by 8 seconds. In addition, when Leg Shot’s immobilize effect wears off the target’s movement is slowed by 70% for 3 seconds.
5. Compounding Impact: Each shot of Speed Shot and Penetrating Rounds snares the target by 20% for 3 seconds. This effect can stack up to 4 times.
6. Riot Screen: Reduces all damage taken while in cover by 6% and reduces the cooldown of Scrambling Field by 30 seconds.
7. Crippling Diversion: Diversion slows all targets by 50% for as long as they remain in the area.

Ratings

• Single Target Dps: 8
• AoE Damage: 7
• Group Utility: 6
• Rotation Difficulty: 6.5
• RNG Dependant: No
• Burst: 6
• Sub 30% Talent or Ability Buffs: Yes

Gearing and Stats Priority

• 100% accuracy required.  758 accuracy rating  should put you right at  100 / 110% accuracy for Ranged/Tech.
• Critical Rating: Minimum 300 crit rating. You want at least 250 crit to sustain your rotation, but you don’t want to go much over 500
• Surge: Around 350 – 450.  Diminishing Returns hit Surge around 350, so careful going beyond that point
• Alacrity: After reaching the DR on Surge, Alacrity becomes a better investment, so it’s a good idea to pick it up at this point
• Set Bonus: 6-pc new (Revanite Field Tech or Professional’s) or 4-pc old (Dread Master Field Tech/Professional’s) w/2-pc new (Revanite)
• Augments: Skill Augments

Abilities and Rotation

What you need before hand

There aren’t many procs to this spec, however there are quite a few things you want to be aware of. They are as follows:

• Extra Shrapnel: Shrap Bomb spreads your Vital Shot to the targets it damages, as long as it damages at least one target already affected by your Vital Shot.
• Mortal Wound: Vital Shot has a 15% chance to tick twice wen it inflicts damage. In addition, Shrap Bomb makes its targets assailable for 45 seconds. Assailable targets take 7% more elemental and internal damage
• Cheap Shots: In addition to increased damage to all your major channeled abilities, this passive causes a lingering version of Shrap Bomb and Vital Shot to affect the target after the original duration of the DoTs expire. They last 5 seconds and will only deal damage when Wounding Shots does. A key component of the 3-Wounding Shots rotation, as unlike pre-3.0 this version doesn’t do damage on its own, only during Wounding Shots
• Cold Blooded: Increases damage of bleeds by 15% if target is below 30% health, in addition to finishing the cooldown of Hemorrhaging Blast if the target dies while it is active on them.
• Dirty Shot : Has an 80% chance of being triggered on Wounding Shots damage. Finishes the cooldown on Quickdraw and enables it to be used targets of any health level. The only real proc you want to make sure you’re aware of

Abilities (Not a priority system)

Shrap Bomb: One of your core DoTs, deals Internal damage for 24s. It has a splash range of 5m for up to 8 targets, so it’s useful for AOE as well, especially when taking advantage of Extra Shrapnel. Affected by a variety of other talents, as listed above. While this DoT is to be maintained on the target, to conserve energy you don’t want to constantly refresh it before it finishes its duration, though it’s not a DPS loss if you do. In the standard 2-Wounding shots rotation, you can refresh it immediately after your 2nd Wounding Shots/Filler combination. Vital Shot: Like Shrap bomb, this DoT should be active at all times on the target, it deals internal damage over 24 seconds. Vital Shot no longer has a 3s delay between it’s use and it’s first tick of damage, so refreshing it isn’t necessarily a DPS loss though as with Shrap Bomb, try not to do so unnecessarily. Hemorrhaging Blast: Deals a small amount of weapon damage on its own, the main usage of this ability is that it buffs the damage done by your bleed effects/Wounding Shots for the 10s that it’s active. You want use this prior to Wounding Shots as much as possible Dirty Blast: The new ability added in 3.0. Deals both weapon damage and internal damage, which ultimately results in it being a better usage of a filler than charged burst, while being more energy efficient. Additionally, it does good damage if used on a target with Hemorrhaging Blast active. Speaking of Charged Burst… Charged Burst: With the introduction of Dirty Blast, and the fact Smuggler’s Luck no luck guarantees a critical hit, Charged Burst loses a ton of viability to the point there’s really no reason to use it for this spec Wounding Shots: The core of any Dirty Fighting rotation, as well as your most damaging ability. Causes your bleed effects to deal damage when Wounding Shots deals damage, and is buffed by a variety of talents in your Discipline path. Make sure you have your DoTs rolling everytime you use this ability, as it is not very powerful on it’s own. Speed Shot: A very hard hitting channeled ability dealing high weapon damage across its duration. Hightail It: Hightail It is a very powerful ability for more than it’s damage, which is gained with the Incendiary Mine talent. You deal a fair amount of Internal damage over 7 seconds by leaving behind a mine in the wake of using this ability, if timed and used correctly this can be a powerful addition to your DPS as a filler however be careful when using it in a raid setting, as you wouldn’t want it to be on cooldown if you need to use it to beat certain mechanics Quickdraw: Your execute ability, due to Dirty Shot it can be used anytime on any target if your Wounding Shots procs it. Though you can find yourself low on energy using it whenever it procs, so consider using a different filler in its place Flurry of Bolts: Free filler XS Freighter Flyby: A once powerful AOE, if anything it’s nostalgic. Just close your eyes and imagine it did as much damage. In all seriousness, this ability is best used if it can be pre-cast, as its channel time and the delay between that and when it first actually deals damage is pretty long. So if you can’t pre-cast it, there are much better choices Sweeping Gunfire: One of those better choices. If you take the Efficient Ammo utility, which you should, you get a pretty nice buff to the damage of this ability, making it great to use for AOE (While it doesn’t have a cooldown, careful not to spam it, it can eat your energy pretty quicky) Quick Shot: Deals moderate weapon damage. Prior to 3.0 this filler was rarely used in a Dirty Fighting rotation, and that should still be the case here, however with the Hot Pursuit talent you get up four free uses of this when leaving cover, giving you a free filler in the event you find your energy trending downward

Opener and Rotation

As it stands there are a few known effective rotations for Dirty Fighting. I’ll cover them here and update accordingly

2 Wounding Shots rotation:

Classic Rotation (Option A)

The rotation most familiar to most Dirty Fighting Slingers  from Pre-3.0. This one is a bit rougher on resources unless you have the old (186) set bonus

Opener:

Smugglers Luck -> [Pre-Cast] XS Freighter Flyby -> Vital Shot -> Shrap Bomb -> Hemorrhaging Blast -> [Relic/Adrenal + Illegal Mods] Wounding Shots -> Dirty Blast -> Speed Shot -> Quickdraw -> Wounding Shots -> Quickdraw

Rotation

Vital Shot -> Shrap Bomb -> Hemorrhaging Blast -> Wounding Shots –> Dirty Blast –> Speed Shot -> [Filler] -> Wounding Shots -> [Filler]

Alternative Rotation (Option B)

Opener:

Flyby -> Smugglers Luck -> Vital Shot -> Shrap Bomb -> Illegal Mods + Dirty Blast -> Hem Blast -> Wounding Shots -> Quickdraw -> Dirty Blast -> Speed Shot

Rotation

Vital Shot -> Shrap Bomb -> Quickdraw -> Haemorrhaging Blast -> Wounding Shots -> FILLER -> FILLER -> Speed Shots -> Wounding Shots

The filler boxes can either be Dirty Blast, Quickdraw or an alternative free filler (Hightail It, Flurry of Bolts, Free Quickshot), and you can alternate them as needed. The benefit of running the old (186) 4-pc is that you don’t need to use free filler as often, instead being able to use more quickshot/dirty blast. If you don’t have this set bonus you’ll hurt your energy unless you swap in free abilities in the filler spaces. Sub-30%, Dirty Blast is a better choice than Quickdraw with Hemorrhaging Blast on the target  Remember to buff your Wounding Shots with Smuggler’s Luck if it’s off cooldown as much as possible, and with no big energy sink you can use Illegal Mods offensively, prior to the first Wounding Shots.

Note: If you’re going to make use of Hightail It as part of your rotation it’s important that you know how to place it. Due to it’s CD it’s going to move up a spot in your rotation every tme it’s used, as the CD for it is longer than the 2-Wounding Shots rotation. So if you’re using it after the first Wounding Shots it won’t be available again until after the first GCD that comes after the first Wounding Shots the next time around, and so on.

3 Wounding Shots rotation:

This rotation is more complicated than the prior one, but it does seem to have higher damage potential

Option A

Opener:

Flyby -> Vital Shot -> Shrap Bomb -> Dirty Blast -> Hemorrhaging Blast -> Wounding Shots -> Dirty Blast -> Dirty Blast -> Dirty Blast -> Quickdraw -> Wounding Shots -> Quickdraw

Option B

Flyby -> Vital Shot -> Shrap Bomb -> Dirty Blast -> Hemorrhaging Blast -> Wounding Shots -> Dirty Blast -> Speed Shot -> Quickdraw -> Wounding Shots -> Quickdraw

 

Rotation A

DoT x2 -> Quickdraw -> Hem Blast -> Wounding Shots
Dirty Blast -> Speed Shot -> Quickdraw -> Wounding Shots
Quickdraw -> Filler x2 -> Hem Blast -> Wounding Shots
DoT x2 -> Dirty Blast -> Quickdraw -> Wounding Shots
Quickdraw -> Speed Shot -> Hem Blast -> Wounding Shots
FILLER x3 -> Quickdraw -> Wounding Shots

Rotation B

DoT x2 -> Quickdraw -> Hem Blast -> Wounding Shots
Dirty Blast -> Quickdraw -> Speed Shot -> Wounding Shots
Quickdraw -> Filler x2 -> Hem Blast -> Wounding Shots
DoT x2 -> Speed Shot -> Wounding Shots
Quickdraw -> Filler x2 -> Hem Blast -> Wounding Shots
Dirty Blast -> Quickdraw -> Speed Shot -> Wounding Shots

The filler spaces depends on energy management. If your energy is fine and can handle it, use Dirty Blast in the filler spaces. If this isn’t the case, substitute in free filler (Quickshot, Hightaill It, etc).  Rotation A is the more mobile of the two given it requires less channeled abilities, however Rotation B could have slightly higher damage potential with easier resource management

AoE

Extra Shrapnel: As mentioned before this talent makes multi-dotting a cinch. For a group of adds, apply Vital shot to one of them first and follow it up with Shrap Bomb to spread both DoTs to all the targets within range (5m radius on Shrap Bombs splash)

Sweeping Gunfire: You definitely want to take the Efficient Ammo utility to buff this ability. With no cooldown and an 8m range, you simply don’t have a harder hitting AoE in your arsenal.

The above will be your biggest hitting of the AOE’s. If you apply your DoTs first, you can use Sweeping Gunfire following that while your DOTs continue to tick. XS Freighter Flyby should be used situationally, if you cannot pre-cast it, it’s not really worth using . Hightail It is a great way to get more damage into a group as well if used correctly. Thermal Grenade isn’t really worth using, you’ll be better served using Sweeping Gunfire in it’s place, however if you need immediate damage then using Thermal Grenade becomes a better option

As a quick tip, multi-dotting is a great way to manage energy. More chances of critting on your DoTs means more opportunity to get energy back, so when possibly, look to take advantage of this

Parse Analysis

This parse is for the 2-Wounding Shots rotation. As you can see, your DoTs and Wounding Shots should take up the majority of the DPS. The DoTs should have 100% uptime using this rotation, and Wounding Shots should be used on Cooldown. The small variance here will will be a reflection on crit

Quickdraw and Speed Shot take up the next portion. Quickdraw should be used at least once per cycle after every Wounding Shots, and Speed Shot every other one.

After this there are your multiple filler and Hemorrhaging Blast, which doesn’t deal much damage on its own but is used frequently. Dirty Blast, Flyby and if you used it, Incendiary Mine (Hightail It), make up the rest of the parse

I’ll update this with a parse using the 3-Wounding Shots rotation as soon as I have time

Using Defensive Abilities

Although your primary role as a DPS is to well, deal damage, mitigating as much damage as possible to yourself and your group simply makes everyone’s job easier and thus makes it easier to succeed. A good way of doing this is knowing how and when to use your defensive abilities. I’ll go over them here

• Ballistic Dampers is a utility, however it can be used as a very powerful defensive measure. By going into cover, it provides 30% damage reduction up to 3 times once every 1.5 seconds.  These dampers are lost when you exit cover however, and they can only be regained every 6 seconds. Therefore, you should seek to make frequent use of this utility to minimize your damage taken and if you’re able to anticipate high incoming burst damage, the buffer it provides will help mitigate some of it
• Defense Screen has a short cooldown (30 seconds) and absords a pretty moderate amount of damage. Due to it’s short CD it can be used frequently, and should be used frequently if there’s a lot of damage going out. If you have better options available (Hunker Down if it’s AoE dmg or Hightail It or Dodge for other dmg as covered), it would be better to use those instead unless you need them soon
• Dodge while it unfortunately no longer cleanses you is still quite a powerful defensive cooldown. Due to it’s very short duration (3 seconds) it’s usually best to use it for heavy burst damage as it significantly reduces damage from Force/Tech attacks (75%) and increases chance to defend M/R attacks (200%)
• Hightail It can be used offensively in this spec, but that doesn’t at all retract from it’s powerful defensive ability. Obviously, if a mechanic or forthcoming attack can be resisted using Hightail It, you shouldn’t use it offensively so that it’s available to be used defensively, as it has a 20s cooldown. The duration of its defensive ability is 1.5s and it IS part of the GCD, so you need to have proper timing to make the best use of it. With proper timing you will be immune to damage while rolling (Defense/Resist increased by 200%), so it’s a very powerful tool to use for expected burst damage and even some mechanics. Though it won’t do you any good against attacks that kill you for 0 damage
• Hunker Down provides 60% AoE Damage Reduction in cover and lasts 20 seconds. A utility lowers its cooldown from 60 seconds to 45. As per the tooltip, you want to use this to significantly lessen damage taken from AoE attacks
• Scrambling Field is a large field of 20% damage reduction that lasts 20s. It’s your job to make absolutely sure you place this field in an ideal place for the raid, at an ideal time, as it has quite a long cooldown. It applies it’s DR to all allies under the shield. Given there’s multiple cases of slingers using this ability when AoE damage is going out but only covering themselves since they’re so far away from everyone else,  I can’t stress enough how important it is to get the most out of this ability
• Although not very reliable, Diversion also has some use as a defensive ability in that it lowers the accuracy of targets in it’s AOE by 45% for 8 seconds. This does not work on Operations Bosses however it can work on the Melee/Range attacks of adds/mobs.

About the Author

My name is Cloake, GM of Intrepidation on Begeren Colony, a fairly new PvE Progression Guild (Formed around 2.6) of players looking to grow and learn together. I’ve been a Gunslinger fanatic since I first rolled one over a year ago and spend a lot of time learning as much as I can about the class.

There’s not much else I feel to add about myself, except maybe that I hate doing dailies. Random fact. I also think Chinsa’s a noob

That said, I’d like to give thanks to Kwerty for all the assistance as well as credit to both he and KeyboardNinja for developing the 3-Wounding Shots rotation.