05 Sniper Companions and Crew Skills

I’ve tried my best to keep this section free of spoilers. Tackling some companion basics first, then proceeding to Crew Skills. I have removed the original beta disclaimer and now consider Biochem a required craft to maximize Sniper DPS potential. See this post for the explanation.

04 IA Energy Usage

IMPORTANT: Your energy regenerates faster at higher levels of energy. The lower you go in your energy bar, the slower it regenerates.

A lot of people overlook this and wonder why they are out of energy all the time. Then they play a class with a deep resource pool like Sith Sorcerer and quit Sniper or Operative simply because they didn’t know what they were getting into and didn’t have good information about resource management.

03 Cover: Don’t Hate the Shield

IMPORTANT: Changes to this system have been frequent! It is my intention to outline the basics that have now been consistent through multiple builds.

The cover system continues to receive improvements to make it more intuitive to use and friendly for new players. Because many people have never used a mechanic like this in an MMO, learning to use cover can also be the single biggest “barrier to entry” for someone who wants to play Sniper.

Rest assured that the cover system is both functional and intuitive after you’ve spent some time with it. I don’t even think about planting it anymore, and looking for “natural” cover (green gumby points) is second nature to me while I’m approaching PvE opponents. It’s hard to talk about what cover can do for you and how it works without also describing the different types of cover and the ways to use them, so please forgive me if this next section is a little confusing.

02 Stats and Ratings and Mods, oh my!

I want to pause here to tell you something very important: most of this information is available on the in-game character sheet! If you ever need to quickly determine which rating does what, you won't even have to come back here to look it up at launch. Currently, TOR's character sheet is quite open about what each stat and rating does and how it works. Although the calculations are not totally transparent, you can get a general idea of which rating impacts which stat and produces which potential output.

You just have to know where to look (i.e. mouseover). If you're in weekend beta, take a moment to hit 'C' to open the character sheet and play around with different tabs (ranged, tech, defense) and mouse over the different stats and ratings that are listed there. It's a good character sheet and if you've never played the game there's a lot to learn. Knowing how to both use your character sheet and read armor ratings (and/or enable comparative tooltips) will help you make good decisions about your gear as you level. It's pretty common to be wondering "what's better?" now and again.

I'll cover more of that as we continue.

01 Core Class Mechanics

Sniper is, in my opinion, one of the most difficult classes to master in SW:TOR. A lot can go wrong. You can dive into the wrong cover point, or get focused, or (because you don't get a healing companion until Imperial Taris) struggle to complete some solo content. This post is going to focus on a broad summary of my experiences playing Sniper in beta. I plan to update this section when I have more perspective on the launch build. Until then, I hope this is useful.

Guide Preview: Introduction and Table of Contents

This first part is a preview for the people who've already been watching my stream (thanks!). The rest will be released as a "thank you" for following my channel on twitch.tv/fentanyl213. No part of this guide has been written for or previously posted in the SW:TOR beta forums.