The Lethal Sniper @ Traxex

[Traxex]

The Lethal Sniper
- Written by Traxex

Table of Content.
1. Introduction.
2. The Lethal Tree, the spec.
- Each tier explained, in each tree.
3. How to: Ability rotation.
4. What are the obvious differences from Lethal to Marksman?
- Advantages
- No Accuracy needed!
- No Critical Hit Chance needed!
- Tech Power
- Disadvantages
5. Most important stats
- How to: Maximize your damage with the right enhancement for PVP and PVE gear
- What PVP set should I use?
6. This spec in a PVP environment.


1. Introduction
Hello Agents of the Empire, this is a guide for snipers only, gunslingers can relate to it too, just different ability name. Without knowing the exact number, my guess would be that 8/10 snipers are specialized into Marksman tree. This makes a lot sense. I leveled my sniper as Marksman too, but the ability from lethal; Cull, always had me thinking “hmm, hmmmmm” that lead me, in the end, to try out building a spec around Cull. That’s the Lethal spec. In this guide I’ll tell the differences from this spec and a Marksman spec, why I prefer it in PVE and PVP also I will try to elaborate to my best how to play this spec, use its advantages, make it your, marketing phrase, competitive advantage. This guide is made so even people who have never played a MMO understand everything, also in order to understand this spec fully, read from top to bottom, I’m sorry that is a long read, but I like to point out every detail. Also this guide is from the perspective of being level 50. I will use some abbreviations in this guide. Here is a small guide what they mean:

Dot(s): Damage over time, poison abilities who do damage over a course of seconds.
AoE: Area of Effect, abilities that do damage to players in an area.
DPS: Damage per Second.
LoS: Line of Sight. To LoS someone is to hide so he cannot see or damage you.
CD: Cool Down. The time it takes for an ability to be ready again.
WCD: World Cool Down / Global Cool Down. The time it takes between using abilities.

[Traxex]

2. The Lethal Tree, the spec.
Your ability points are heavily added into the Lethal tree, the tree which you also share with your sidekick friend the operative. Here is the spec I use:

31 points in Lethal
8 points into Engineering
2 points into Marksman

The Lethal spec

[31] Lethal: key abilities and key ability upgrades.

The Lethal tree will generate most of the damage for this spec, through key abilities and key upgrades to your abilities. Here is a list of them and what they do, and how you benefit from them.

Key Abilities:
Cull – This is the masterpiece ability, everything comes down to this. But before it’s efficient it needs dots. As the tooltip says, it gives X amount of extra direct damage for each dot applied, over three ticks from the channel. Having two dots applied, it will Cull three ticks, but twice since there is two dots, that is six ticks over 3 seconds. The secondary effect is considered damage over time, and it receives the bonus from many ability updates in the Lethal tree. (Used X since this is increased with gear and varies from player to player)

Corrosive Dart – This is the first of the two dots you use to increase the damage of Cull. This ability is accessible even without a point spent in the Lethal tree. It’s a low-level ability that any Imperial Agent receives.

Corrosive Grenade – This is the second dots you apply to increase the damage of Cull. This is also an AoE ability, it can affect 3 targets within a short distance of each other.

Weakening Blast – This ability speaks for itself, it makes the next ten dot ticks do +30% more damage. What it does not explain is it also works for the ticks Cull do as poison damage while it’s channeled. This means you get an extremely strong channel, probably the strongest anyone has in the game, I’ve ripped a marauder from 80% to 15% in one Cull, finishing him with Take Down.

This is how this setup looks when put together:

Key upgrades, what to choose in each tier:

Tier 1:
3/3 Lethality
2/2 Deadly Directive

Lethality is obvious, but what you chose for the next two is up to you, might want more damage from your shiv, but through many fight I decided that I actually never use it. Rather make the channel/cast-time on my Cull and other abilities lower.

Tier 2:
1/1 Lethal Injection
2/2 Corrosive Microbes
2/2 Slip Away

Lethal Injection and Corrosive Microbes are obvious since they increase duration and damage potential of one main ability, Corrosive Dart. Slip away is also a somewhat obvious choice, since lowering the CD on your stun and increasing run speed afterwards just adds so much mobility and survivability for you in PVP.

Tier 3:
1/1 Corrosive Grenade
2/2 Targeted Demolition
2/2 Cut Down

In tier 3 there are only 5 points to be spent, but these 3 ability upgrades are very important, plus now you get your second dot, Corrosive Grenade. The ability upgrades, upgrade abilities that have not been mentioned yet, but take notice of them, I will get into it later when I sum up this spec. You are increasing damage on different abilities making them much more viable in this spec too.

Tier 4:
2/2 Lethal Purpose
2/2 Adhesive Corrosives
3/3 Lethal Dose
2/2 Vanish

As you can see you will be using more points here than you need to in order to advance to tier 5, so you might consider which you want to take first if you’re not level 50 when using this spec.

Lethal Purpose is just remarkable, all your dots will now, if they critical hit give you 2 energy back, it works on the dot effect from Cull too, consider one of your dots is AoE all its critical tics adds energy, This is the strongest energy regain the sniper can get, but to be fair, lethal spec is also rather energy heavy.

Lethal Dose, along with the tier 1 ability upgrade; Lethality, adds a total of 18% chance to critical hit on all dot effect, also Culls dot effect. You’re starting to see the brilliance of this spec by now?

Adhesive Corrosives, really good ability upgrade, especially for PVP, but I have been using it in PVE too, to kite groups of mobs, 30% slow is nice. Combine this with a stun and you run 60% faster than your opponent for a short while, but long enough to get the distance you need.

Vanish is just my play style, you might want something else, this is not a significant upgrade to your abilities, I just like having escape and evasion on a shorter cool down, you can spend the two points as you see fit. Though I would argue that far too many people underestimate evasion, it’s a brilliant skill.

Tier 5:
1/1 Cull
2/2 Razor Rounds

Finally, you get Cull. Razor Rounds is increasing critical chance of Cull and its effect by 4%, putting that to the other 18%, you have 22% critical chance to your Culls secondary effect. 22% which is not shown on your character sheet, you have to add that to this number too.

Tier 6:
3/3 Devouring Microbes

Let’s just add 15% damage to all dots and the Cull effect when the target is at 30% and below. This is very nice in PVE, and so enjoyable if you die in PVP to see your opponent thought he was victorious but die off to your dots.

Tier 7:
1/1 Weakening Blast

I explained this ability earlier, it does not need more explaining, obviously a nice damage increase.

[8] Engineering. Why did you spend it here?

Tier 1:
2/2 Energy Tanks
3/3Gearhead

These two are obvious for you all, I hope. More energy makes it easier to maintain energy regain and extra cunning increase our potential to bring havoc to the battlefield.

Tier 2:
3/3 Explosive Engineering

This skill adds 15% damage to our AoE skills. That makes other ability such as Orbital Strike better. But the key note is this, it increase Corrosive Grenade by 15% too, since it’s also an AoE ability. Secondly 15% to Explosive grenades + 6% more from the lethal tree make explosive grenade a very viable AoE tool as well. It’s very good in PVP when your enemy cluster up (door in Voidstart, etc.)

[2] Marksman

Tier 1:
2/2 Steady Shot

Obvious, gives your Cull 6% more damage, both on the channel damage and the secondary effect.

If you look in the marksman tree you won’t see that much base damage added to the marksman abilities. Actually in this spec you add more base damage to the ability Series of Shots than you do going full out Marksman, you do add other upgrades such as 30% more critical damage, which initially increase its potential further and better. But let’s stick to this spec and keep in mind that it increases Series of Shots by 12% damage from two ability upgrades. That makes this ability very viable for PVE and PVP. Keep in mind that you cannot put it on rotation, since Series of Shots and Cull together have a very high energy use. You need to throw it in when your energy allows it to maximize your DPS. Also remember that channel abilities such as these two give you a window for the channel execution to regain energy, with no Alacrity, three seconds. This means if you use either at full energy, when the channel is over your still at full energy. You just need to play with it a bit, get a feel of how your energy bar works for this spec.

3. How to: Ability rotation

This is how it works:
1. Apply Corrosive Grenade (expiration time: 21 seconds)
2. Apply Corrosive Dart (expiration time: 18 seconds)
3. Weakening Blast (CD: 12 seconds)
4. Cull (CD: 9 seconds, 6 seconds after the channel is over)

With that in mind, you also have to take notice of the two dots expiration time. You do not want to spend energy or time applying them when it’s not needed. In the rotation there are other abilities, but the above order is the main one.

Round 1
> Corrosive Grenade > Corrosive Dart > Target Acquired > Orbital Strike > Weakening Blast > Cull > Series of Shots >
Round 2
> Auto attack > Cull > Auto attack > Corrosive Grenade > Corrosive Dart > Adrenalin Probe >
Round 3
> Weakening Blast > Cull > Series of Shots >

This is an example of how you use your Adrenalin Probe efficiently with your Series of Shots and Orbital Strike to maximize DPS at the very start of the encounter on a boss. Be sure to use Countermeasure after Round 1, and if your damage is like mine, be sure the tank guards you. I instantly take agro if I don’t have Guard and use my de-agro ability. Your energy regain depends on your Critical Hits in this spec, thereby it’s impossible for me to make a clear rotation. You need to manage your energy and put in Series of Shots after Cull, when you have the energy to spend on it. Keep in mind that both are channel-abilities which give you a window to regain energy while they are channeled. At full energy a channel-ability like these leaves you at full energy still after use. Also, do not underestimate your Auto attack, it is NOT weak, you do lots of damage with it and it is no shame to do 2 Auto attack after each other in a fight. I do it often, Auto attack is your windows to regain energy but still maintain damage.

This video shows the rotation, keep an eye on the abilities i use, while maintaining solid energy regain:

I know that the mob is low level, just needed a target that wouldnt kill me, which i could show you the rotation on, also i do not attempt to interrupt it, it probably heals for 10-20k.

[Traxex]

4. What are the obvious differences from Lethal to Marksman?

There are many, first off, you change your whole game play from being a sitting duck shooting from your cover to a mobile pestilence. There is no ability in the Lethal three that requires you to be in cover, this makes you much more mobile, gives you, in my humble opinion, a much better survivability chance. Being able to move and keep damage on your target is very efficient. You have to put the mobility versus the different cover defensive mechanisms you lose in this spec, you get other utilities as well that provide survivability. All in all, you have much better escape chance in this, but take a little more damage.

The obvious difference is Damage over time vs. direct high instant damage. This spec works with small numbers, but lots of them. Where a single ambush can do 5,000 damage or more, a single Cull over its channel time can easily do 10,000 damage or more, with dots and everything. Both depending on your gear, of cause. If you like high numbers, Marksman is your friend, while this is spec is small number all the time. Another very good thing is, once your dots are applied you keep damage on the target even if your stunned, have to move, have to LoS a boss etc. The damage keeps rolling, which makes you a very efficient DPS in a raid, and give you efficient advantage in PVP. Since you use dots, LoS can be your best friend in PVP, Dot a person up, LoS him while he suffers, run out reapply, shot a Cull, LoS him again, get the picture?

Advantages

No Accuracy needed!
This is not entirely true though, but close to. Compared to compensating on power/surge then accuracy is not worth it, you will be doing damage from 3 key abilities, Corrosive dart, Corrosive Granade, Cull’s secondary effect. About 80% of your DPS are from these three skills, they are all special attacks and require no accuracy, they cannot miss. That is a HUGE advantage for this spec, it gives you the possibility to go for enhancement on gear that only provide Surge/Power. Abilities such as Snipe, Ambush and Series of Shots require accuracy, else they have a 10% miss chance which decrease DPS quit a bit. I know that you use Series of Shots in this spec too, but it’s to a minimum where a miss is acceptable over the increase in damage you get to dots from taking power/surge instead. Also note, that if you miss the initial damage of Cull (it works much like series of shot, it also have 3 attack that are basic damage, 90% hit chance) you still gain the secondary effect, which mean if you miss you only lose a very small percentage of Cull's damage output. Only ability which sucks to miss is Weakening Blast, but I’m willing to bet my luck on this. I don’t use any Accuracy right now and I hardly see any misses, I am considering take a bit accuracy, since my surge/power is so high atm that the benefit is decreasing, Might take 1 enhancement, maybe 2 with accuracy. Or getting an rakata implant with 50+augment slot. But the point here is you really don’t need it. I would NEVER consider getting accuracy for PVP.

No Critical Hit Chance needed!
As mentioned, this is from the perspective of being level 50. At level 50 in somewhat good gear you can maintain 35% Critical Hit Chance, with little to no plus in Critical Hit Chance. That 35% is with your self-buff and the 6% from lethal three. But you can add more to this, +12% to your dot abilities, bring you to 47% chance on all dots, another 4% to Cull's secondary effect, brings that to 51%, making Cull's initial damage Critical Chance 39%. Getting plus Critical Hit Chance gear in this spec is a waste, you want Surge to make all those Critical Hits, you are already doing, count! And you want power to make the damage of your abilities even higher.

Tech Power
If you open your character sheet you will see you are able to change from Range to Melee and to Tech. It set to automatically show your range, here your Critical Hit Chance, your Bonus Damage and so on, on mouse over them and you will see which stats increase what. That’s nothing new, but a lot forget that under Tech, you see your healing power, and most AI think this is for the operative healer of cause, but the first thing you see there is also Tech Damage, which is significantly higher than your range damage. Like 75% higher. In this spec you take full advantage of your +Tech Power on your weapons since this is directly added to heal but also as damage to your special attacks, such as dots, AoE etc. In a marksman spec you do not use this much it all about range damage, since your most used skill such as Ambush, Snipe and Followthrough do not benefit at all from Tech Damage. Skill such as Cull, Corrosive Dart and Corrosive Grenade benefit very much from your Tech Damage.

Disadvantages

I’m very pro this spec, so writing disadvantages certainly isn’t easy, this can easily become very bias and I try not to be. But there are a few disadvantages. You are very dependent on Cull, if someone interrupt you while channeling this, you will be left quite open for defeat until its CD is gone. It’s very important that you learn each class abilities and what interrupt you. Cover is your friend; remember you cannot be interrupted while you’re in cover. So drop a cover and Cull is not a bad idea. This spec makes you a potential easy target for healers and Assassins, because both have a cleaning ability. They can remove your two dots instantly and render your Cull useless and your damage not present. Lucky, loads of healers don’t even use their cleansing ability in PVP and then they are easy enough, but the Assassin and the Sorcerer is the nemesis of this spec. But isn’t the Sorcerer always a nemesis to anyone? Assasins are especially annoying for this spec, due to the cleaning ability, and their possibily to do rather good damage on range, with instant lightning spells, this makes them very hard to kite, and escape. While a marauder might get you to 30% life you can still win by kiting and escaping him, you wont against a assassin, he will range you down. Assassins and Sorcerers are, if played well, impossible to kill in this spec. Luckly lots of them dont so i still down quite a few of them easily.

Some will argue that a fast fight takes longer in this spec, which can be very true, lucky Critical Hits with Snipe/Ambush/Follow Through can make a fight very fast as marksman, while this might take longer, and other time it does not.

I feel the biggest disadvantage is by far that you need to setup you attack, but this is only for 1 vs. 1 – you need to setup your attack, use 3 WCD just to apply the dots you want and the Weakening Blast, before Cull can be used. That gives your opponent some time where you’re not doing much damage, yet. Also that Corrosive Grenade has a CD can be bad, if you use it on the wrong person you will need to wait for it to be ready again. But there is not such spec that one-shot anyone, nor any spec that does not have an disadvantage, you just have to put disadvantages vs. advantages and preferred play-style vs. the spec you choose. If you don’t like the play-style of this spec, then it won’t work for you.

5. Most important stats

1. Cunning
2. Power
3. Surge

The reasons for these has been mentioned above, you only need to go for these stats, in that order exactly.

How to: Maximize your damage with the right enhancement for PVE and PVP gear.

As many of you already seen, most of the gear you get from PVE and PVP is with enhancements that adds lots of Accuracy. Previously I explained that you do not need this. I’ll explain here how you maximize your gear for the best damage output.

I know this only works if you either farm PVE insanely much or just do regular PVP. I PVP fairly much, so this will be from the PVP perspective. In PVP you make a lot of champion commendations, as you advance and eventually become a Battlemaster, you won’t need these tokens for gear upgrades, wrong! You do, you buy Champion Enforcer's Headgear, as they have an Enhancement you very much would like to put in your entire tier 1.2, 1.3 and Battlemaster gear.

I know they are a tier below Battlemaster and Rakata gear, but that does not matter, the stats on them are exactly what you want for the Lethal spec.

In total you need 10 Champion Enforcer's Headgear to use on your PVE and PVP gear. You can remove the Enhancement from your tier 1.2 (Columi) gear and put them in the tier 1.3 (Rakata) as you slowly upgrade from a tier to another.

I know this Require some effort, but it’s well worth it. Lets sum up how much Power and Surge these 5 Enhancement gives you:

5 times 34 Power = 170
5 times 48 Surge = 240

This at the lost of a lot Accuracy. But you gain so much extra damage. If you doubt me, try change them all at once and you will be wide eyes open.

What PVP set should I use?
Oh this is hard, this is about play-style. But my opinion is that for PVP you perform and win more of those intensive 1 vs. 1 fight with the use of Enforcer’s 1st set bonus, giving your evasion +25% duration, in other words adds another second. That is a life saver in PVP. So I use two pieces Enforcer’s and two Field Tech’s pieces. The Field Tech’s bonus is one more wave on your Orbital Strike, which is very efficient in PVP too.

My PVP-armor setup:
Helm: Enforcer’s Headgear
Chest: Enforcer’s Jacket
Legs: Field Tech’s Leggings
Boots: Field Tech’s Boots
Gloves: Enforcer’s Gloves
Belt: Enforcer’s Belt
Bracer: Field Medic’s Bracer

6. This spec in a PVP environment.

I made a short video so you can see how your damage scales with you mobility in PVP. How much you get to move and still put out lots of damage. The best damage I’ve put out in a single WarZone was 668k damage, in this video you will see the OldRepublic.NET staff premade, Vexx, Alexe, Lizzy and I. Easy win of cause! I didn’t assist much in this video, tried to get some shots at how well damage this spec is, show its advantages etc. /applause to the three for a 5 min win.

[Traxex]

Reserved if needed

[Lifetaker]

Awesome guide! thanks Traxex!!

[Tylothegwailo]

Thanks for the guide. I have a lvl 50 sniper that I leveled using engineering then switched to marksmenship, but the lack of mobility is real downer sometimes. I will respec to lethality later today when I get home and try it out for a bit. You made some pretty convincing arguments for it

[Wrel]

Awesome, I came to this section to look just for this, and here it is. Now I have this to read at work before I go home and pick an AC on my fresh level 13 Agent. Ill make sure to leave my feedback as I go. Thanks, Trax.

[Traxex]

Great that it helps some people

Kertz and I are working on a guide to EV/KP then you will see more movies of this spec. Also Kertz spec, which is so brilliant it made me roll a Sith Marauder alt.

[Traxex]

Here is another video of how awesome the DPS is in this spec.



0:20 first fight start
0:37 first fight end

17 second to kill 30,000hp

30,000 / 17 = 1765 DPS...

That some serious burst this spec can produce, it will fall over time of cause, but not too much really, since the only factor is orbital strikes.

[rojalee775]

Is lethality the shared tree? If so, could an Op do it?

[Traxex]

Is lethality the shared tree? If so, could an Op do it?

Yes it's the shared tree, though its a bit different for an OP. lethality is the only option a OP has to do somewhat good DPS in PVE. You wont have the range as the sniper do, OP is limited to 10 meters. and the cull is not a channel. Its quite different.

[canuck]

Very nice. I've been trying to find a good DPS build. I like you went all the up the marksmanship tree with 5 in engineering (grearhead and engery tanks) and 2 in lethality (razor edge).

tried this build last night since I had to respec anyway. Going to take some getting used to, but I already see a big change in my dmg output. Now all I need is better gear.

Thanks

[Tisera]

I played MM before, but switch to Lethality. This guide helps me a lot since there are very few Lethality guides

[Sacred]

I switched to Lethality several weeks ago and appreciate your guide Traxex. I was just wondering what kind of numbers you and other lethal snipers are pulling on the training dummy? I am interested to see the difference in dps with someone who has swapped out all of their mods/enhancements away from accuracy and crit.

I am close to full rakata, have only swithced out half of my mods so Cirt and Accuracy are still up there a little, 104 Skill stim, IA & Sorc Buff, no adrenals I can pull around 1400 dps for a 3-5 min fight. I have found it kind of tough to get a good reading due to our dots reapplying and lasting forever so I have tried to use other abilities until they completely wear off.

[nitrof]

Hi, any new update on this guide for 1.3?, i still using the same specs from the start and i'm doing great, just want to know if there is any new tweak.