
Making Speed Shot refresh Shock Charge and tick damage makes that it a “fire and forget” DoT similar to Weaken Mind for Telekinetic Sage except even more powerful in that it can be ticked additional times. Assuming Hunker Down is used on cooldown that should provide an average damage buff of around 7% net of the downtime while the ability is on cooldown.Īnalysis: This tactical provides a really nice buff to the discipline on several levels.

You gain one stack of Entrenched Offense per second up to a maximum of five stacks and +15% additional damage.

Lastly, the most obvious benefit is the 6-piece set bonus. That buff is so huge that energy management is trivial for all disciplines as long as Hunker Down is used on cooldown or close to it. At “fast” regeneration you normally recover 5 energy per second, so the 4-piece set bonus increases energy regeneration 40% while Hunker Down is active. Beyond the benefit to DPS via the 6-piece set bonus, the very high uptime of Hunker Down provides amazing damage mitigation against AoE damage via the Holed Up utility.Īn easily overlooked feature of the 4-piece set bonus is the energy regeneration. Thus, the 4-piece set bonus reduces the cooldown to 35s and makes it possible to have Hunker Down active for more than half the time and have a very high uptime. While overall it is unlikely that Saboteur will outperform Dirty Fighting on most encounters, the discipline is very viable and one of the more interesting disciplines to play given its unique mix of DoTs, rotational AoE and best-in-class mobility among the class disciplines.Īnalysis: Hunker Down has a 20s duration and a 45s cooldown prior to any set bonus, assuming one takes Lay Low (reduces CD from 60s to 45s). Overall the discipline is well poised to maintain a strong position on the DPS charts for the 6.x cycle. The discipline also got an option to further increase its already very powerful rotational AoE damage via MG-2 Polygrade Dispersal Caps, and another burst DPS option in T0-R0 Ionic Discharge. Saboteur got a very nice sustained DPS tactical in Ruthless Interrogation that boosts sustained DPS via buffing Blazing Speed DoT damage and making Shock Charge a “fire and forget” DoT that is refreshed and ticked by the rotation to deal extra damage while freeing up an additional filler slot in the rotation. With respect to tactical items, the class and all its disciplines received some great options, so great in fact that several of them have been nerfed several times and the class still sits very high in DPS rankings. The class got two good options for set bonuses, with Precise Targeter offering mobility and situational burst while Established Foothold offers superior energy management and overall DPS at the cost of becoming an immovable turret as often as possible. Gunslinger moved into 6.0 very smoothly and maintained their position as a very strong ranged DPS and the premier “turret” DPS class.

Combined with limited self heal capabilities, Gunslingers should need much less healing than most other DPS classes.

Furthermore, skilled players can utilize Ballistic Dampers to get nearly continuous 30% damage absorption on all incoming attacks. Defense Screen (should be buffed via utilities) provides moderate and frequent damage absorption, Dodge can entirely avoid melee/ranged attacks over a short duration and with a relatively short cooldown, Hightail It can be used to cheese a wide range of mechanics, Hunker Down provides incredible AoE damage reduction (with proper utilities), Scrambling Field provides the entire raid with a 20% damage reduction for 20 seconds, and Bag of Tricks can be used to immediately reset the cooldown on all these defensives save for Scrambling Field. Gunslingers have incredible survivability due to having arguably the best collection of defensive cooldowns in the game, along with their positioning as a ranged DPS allowing them to avoid many damage mechanics that endanger melee DPS.
