5.0 Class Guides/ SWTOR

SWTOR 5.0 Virulence Sniper PvP Guide by Kitchen Sink

Kitchen Sink 19 Comments Jan 10, 2017

SWTOR 5.0 Virulence Sniper PvP Guide by Kitchen Sink.

Intro to 5.0 Virulence Sniper

Virulence is more or less the same as it was in 4.0. It continues to be the medium difficulty Sniper spec, harder than Marksmanship but easier than Engineering. It revolves heavily around keeping your dots on the target at all times, for this spec you must understand that no dots = no burst, it’s kind of weird. You will do very little damage with Cull (your hardest hitting ability) if you don’t have any dots on your target so please make sure to always watch your opponent’s debuffs.

Gearing

IGNORE THIS SECTION FOR NOW SINCE THEY CHANGED BOLSTER

Before I start talking about gearing it is important you know that everything I state here is in a with bolster scenario. This means that when I say you need X amount of Critical Rating, I am saying that you need the given amount with bolster.

Critical Rating: Patch 4.0 removed Surge Rating from the game and merged Critical Chance and Critical Multiplier into one stat called Critical Rating. This means that stacking Critical Rating both increases your chance to land a crit and how much it will hit the target for. I recommend having about 45% Critical Chance.

Alacrity Rating: Alacrity is of extreme importance for Snipers. The ability to be able to press a button before your opponent is essential. For example, Ambush has a 1.5 second activation time if you have the buff given from using two Snipes, the GCD (Global Cooldown) is 1.5 seconds as well, Alacrity decreases the Global Cooldown which means that your GCD will be lower than the time it takes for the Ambush cast causing you to have a small window to roll the Ambush, that’s 20-30k damage you can mitigate. Alacrity can be the difference between life and death, it is an absolute MUST. Alacrity also helps your energy regen and it makes your DoTs tick faster. I recommend having about 10% Alacrity.

Accuracy Rating: As a Sniper, tanks usually focus their taunts and other debuffs on you since they know how much Snipers can hit for. On top of that, tanks have a tendency to apply a debuff on you which reduces your Accuracy by 5%. To counter this, you need to have 105% Accuracy to make sure that you always hit your target no matter what the enemy tank has done to you. And most classes have a base of 5% defense chance so having 105% Accuracy is ideal, of course other classes like Sins/Shadows have more but I would not recommend getting even more Accuracy to counter that since you will start losing other stats you need. Imagine missing your autocrit Cull because of having too little Accuracy in your gear, that is a huge chunk of your burst gone, and because of this, there is no question regarding the importance of having Accuracy in your gear as a Virulence Sniper.

Relics: Relic of Focused Retribution and Relic of Serendipitous Assault (Mastery buff and Power buff).

How you can achieve these stats: To get to the numbers you need I recommend buying/crafting your augments based on what you get in command crates. Most likely either a Critical enhancement or an Alacrity enhancement will be in the gear dropped from the crates; therefore I suggest that you mainly use Power augments in your gear, but if you are getting little to no Alacrity enhancements in drops then don’t be afraid to buy/craft Alacrity augments in order to compensate for what you are losing with your enhancements. The same thing applies to Critical Rating and Accuracy Rating. Mainhand/Offhand crystals should be +41 Critical Rating (Eviscerating Crystal).

Utilities

Please note that this utility build is a standard build. You can of course adjust your utilities various ways depending on whether you’re q’ing solo ranked or group ranked and what kind of team comp you have in your premade if you’re q’ing group ranked, but I leave that to you.

Skillful

	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.This utility is a huge help for your defense, it has the same cooldown as Snap Shot which means that every time you re-enter cover to get an instant Lethal Shot you will gain increased defenses, a MUST have utility.
	Snap Shot: Entering cover makes the next Snipe or Lethal Shot activate instantly. This effect cannot occur more than once every 6 seconds.An absolute MUST for the Virulence spec, it causes you to have a huge advantage against people who are trying to LoS you, you won’t have to cancel your Lethal Shot cast because you won’t have to actually cast it. This utility is essential to achieving maximum dps, it causes you to hit way more of your Lethal Shots.
	Imperial Efficiency: Increases the damage dealt by Suppressive Fire by 25%.This utility is purely for AoE spam purposes.

Masterful

	Seek Cover: When Entrench ends or you leave cover while Entrench is active, you gain Seek Cover, which increases your movement speed by 50% and grants immunity to movement impairing effects. Lasts 6 seconds.A nice utility mostly helpful for dealing with other Snipers. Using this will cause other Snipers to be unable to slow or immobilize you within his/her Diversion if you are entrenched, this means that if they take the utility which slows targets affected by diversion they will essentially have wasted a utility point since it has no effect on you (I will dedicate an entire paragraph to Diversion later in the guide).
	Reestablish Range: Countermeasures purges all movement impairing effects when activated and grants Reestablish Range, increasing your movement speed by 75% for 6 seconds. Additionally, the final shot of Series of Shots or Penetrating Blasts knocks back the target if they are within 10 meters.I switch this utility around with Evacuate depending on what kind of team comp I have in my premade. If I have a Juggernaut tank and a Powertech the cooldown decrease on my hard stun isn’t really needed since my premade is so cc heavy. A 75% speed boost and extra knockback would be more beneficial in that scenario, but you’re generally not going to be using Series of Shots extremely much when playing this spec in PvP since your target is usually dead before there is any point in using it, so that knockback isn’t going to be as used as it will be when you’re playing Engineering and Marksmanship which means that I mostly use this utility for a speed increase.
	Evacuate: Reduces the cooldown of Maim and Flashbang by 15 seconds.

Heroic

Pillbox Sniper: Reduces the cooldown of Entrench by 15 seconds and Cover Pulse knocks targets back an additional 5 meters.The reasoning behind investing a point in this utility is pretty self explanatory, you get even more time of stun immunity and your knockback gets buffed.

Legendary

Defensive Safeguards: When Ballistic Shield is activated you gain a charge of Defensive Safeguards for each enemy inside your Ballistic Shield, up to 4. This effect lasts 20 seconds (the full duration of Ballistic Shield) and each charge increases your damage reduction by 5%. In addition, while inside your Ballistic Shield, you heal for 3% of your maximum health every second and you are immune to being pulled or knocked back.This is probably the most overpowered utility a Sniper has, it makes you almost unkillable while inside your Ballistic Shield. If you are fighting a melee, that player needs to be inside your Ballistic Shield to attack you which just increases your damage reduction even more. The heal you receive from taking this utility adds up to a 75% heal over the duration of 25 seconds which is incredible. This utility is an absolute MUST.

Tactical Retreat: Covered Escape (your roll) heals you for 10% of your maximum health. Additionally, the duration of Evasion is increased by 2 seconds.Again, this is a MUST HAVE utility. Covered Escape has a 20 second cooldown which which means that you get a 10% heal every 20 seconds, and you get an extra 2 seconds of immunity to melee and ranged damage with Evasion.

Abilities and Rotation

Core Abilities

	Cull: Fires a volley of bolts at the target over the duration of 3 seconds, dealing X weapon damage and spending 6 energy each second. When you deal damage with Cull, each of your poison effects on the target also deal damage. Cull is your hardest hitting ability, this is basically all your burst. Should ONLY be used on targets that are affected by both Corrosive Dart and Corrosive Grenade.
	Lethal Shot: Shoots a target for X weapon damage and X internal poison damage. Replaces Snipe. Only use this ability on targets affected by Weakening Blast, if they don’t have the Weakening Blast on them you’re better off with using Series of Shots.
	Weakening Blast: Deals X weapon damage and for the next 10 seconds causes the target to take X additional weapon damage whenever it takes damage from your Cull or a poison effect. This should only be applied to your target right before you start channeling Cull, DO NOT apply it to a target if Cull is on cooldown (unless Cull has 1.5 seconds or less of cooldown time left because then the GCD will cancel it out anyway).
	Corrosive Grenade: Hurls a grenade that spews poisonous acid in a 5-meter radius on impact, dealing X poison damage over 24 seconds to up to 8 targets. Additionally, Corrosive Grenade makes its target assailable for 45 seconds. Assailable targets take 7% more elemental and internal damage. Should be used before Cull and after Corrosive Dart (You will understand why later)
	Corrosive Dart: Fires a dart at the target that deals X internal poison damage over 24 seconds. Additionally, Corrosive Dart marks its target for 45 seconds. Marked targets take 5% increased damage from ranged weapon attacks. Should be used before Cull and Corrosive Grenade (again, I will explain later in the guide why it’s important to use this before Corrosive Grenade).
	Takedown: Attempts to take the target down with a single powerful shot that deals X weapon damage. Only usable on targets at or below 30% max health. Because of a really powerful passive in the Virulence spec you can more or less ignore that “only usable” bit. I will provide further explanation later in the guide.
	Series of Shots: Unleashes a series of shots over the duration of 3 seconds that deals X weapon damage and uses 20 energy over the duration. Only use this on targets that do not have the Weakening Blast debuff on them, if they do have the Weakening Blast debuff on them you’re better off with using Lethal Shot as a filler between your Culls.
	Suppressive Fire: Sprays a wave of bolts over the target area, dealing X damage to up to 8 enemies over the duration of 4.5 seconds. This ability is your AoE spam ability, use this if you see a group containing 3 or more enemies.

Key Passives

	Corrosive Dispersion: Corrosive Grenade spreads your Corrosive Dart to the targets it damages, as long as it damages at least one target already affected by your Corrosive Dart. This is why you should use Corrosive Dart before Corrosive Grenade, it gives you an opportunity to DoT spread.
	Adhesive Corrosives: Corrosive Grenade reduces the movement speed of all affected targets 30% for its full duration.
	Lethal Injectors: Increases the duration of Corrosive Dart by 6 seconds. Corrosive Dart normally has an 18 second duration, but now it has a 24 second duration which is the same as Corrosive Grenade. This means you can get an extra Cull in before you have to reapply your DoTs.
	Decay: Increases the damage dealt by Snipe, Lethal Shot, and Cull by 5%. Additionally, when Corrosive Grenade and Corrosive Dart end they are replaced by a lingering version for 5 seconds that will only deal damage when Cull deals damage. When your two DoTs end, the debuffs shown on your target will turn gray. It is important that you remember this because it means that you can actually get in three Culls on your target before you have to reapply your dots, you DON’T have to reapply them until after the gray debuffs run out.
	Devouring Microbes: Increases the damage dealt by poison effects by 15% on targets below 30% of max health. In addition, if a target dies with Weakening Blast, it finishes the cooldown of Weakening Blast.
	Lethal Takedown: Damage dealt by Cull has a 80% chance to trigger Lethal Takedown, which finishes the cooldown of Takedown and makes your next Takedown usable on a target with any health level. This is why I stated before that you can pretty much ignore the “only usable” bit of the Takedown ability description. You get to use Takedown on any target regardless of their health level after you have used Cull.
	Toxic Regulators: Your periodic damaging effects don’t tick on targets affected by any of your sleep effects. You take 30% reduced damage from periodic effects.
	Corrosive Mine: Increases the duration of your Ballistic Shield by 5 seconds. In addition, when you activate Covered Escape, you detonate a Corrosive Mine that deals X internal damage to all nearby enemies over the duration. Targets that remain within are additionally slowed by 70% for the duration. Lasts 8 seconds. Does not affect sleeping or incapacitated targets.
	Hold Position: While in cover, ranged defense is increased by 20%, you cannot be leapt to or pulled, and you are immune to interrupts and ability activation pushback. In addition, Evasion reduces the damage you take from force and tech attacks by 75% while it is active. This is probably the most important passive a Sniper has, it explains why being in cover is extremely beneficial and it provides a buff for Evasion. While I strongly think that it is always better to roll force and tech heavy burst attacks you don’t always have it available, Evasion is the next best thing to use, of course considering you haven’t already put it on cooldown to stop melee or ranged burst. Remember that you only get the buffed Evasion if you are in cover.

Offensive Cooldowns

	Laze Target: Increases the critical hit chance of your next Ambush, Explosive Probe, or Cull by 100%. Lasts 20 seconds. Should be used ON COOLDOWNNOTE: With the 6 piece set bonus Laze Target receives 2 stacks and its duration is doubled.
	Target Acquired: Increases ranged and tech accuracy by 30% and armor penetration by 15% for 10 seconds. Use this ability with autocrit Cull WITH Weakening Blast.NOTE: With the 4 piece set bonus Target Acquired gets a 15 second cooldown reduction and recovers 15 energy
	Adrenaline Probe: Summons a droid that helps you recover 50 energy over 3 seconds. This is pretty self explanatory.

Rotation

Now, we all know that having a set rotation in PvP isn’t really possible because of how situational it is. So I will tell you what I do at the start of a match and hopefully you can work from there.

Laze Target + Cover + Lethal Shot with insta-cast (to proc set bonus, if you do not have the two piece set bonus you can skip this part. Just use Laze Target and enter cover) > Corrosive Dart > Corrosive Grenade > Weakening Blast > Target Acquired + Cull > Re-enter cover + 3x Lethal Shot > Takedown > Cull (now they are usually dead, but if not then continue) > Series of Shots > Takedown > Weakening Blast > Cull.

Things to take note of:

• I pre-cast Laze Target, I recommend doing this to get it back off cooldown as fast as possible, and you needn’t worry about your stacks actually running out before you get to use them since Laze Target has such a long duration.
• I use 3 Lethal Shots as fillers instead of channeling Series of Shots because the Weakening Blast debuff is on my target.
• Cover is able to be used at the same time as you start casting Lethal Shot because cover does NOT have a GCD.
• I re-enter cover in order to reset my stacks of Ballistic Dampers and to gain Snap Shot again. You need to re-entering cover constantly to regain the offensive and defensive buffs provided by it.
• Cull is used on cooldown. If you do not use Cull on cooldown it will result in you being unable to fit three Culls within the duration of your DoTs.

Defensive Cooldowns

	Ballistic Shield: Deploys a ballistic shield that spans 10 meters around you, reducing the damage taken by all allies that remain inside by 20%. Lasts 25 seconds. With Defensive Safeguards, which made it’s way to SWTOR with the release of 5.0, Ballistic Shield has now become an oh sh*t moment ability. It provides greater defense than Enraged Defense on Juggernauts which honestly is completely stupid. If you feel like your health is dropping fast then use Ballistic Shield to keep it under control.
	Imperial Preparation: Immediately finishes the active cooldowns on Evasion, Countermeasures, Shield Probe, Cover Pulse, Entrench, and Covered Escape. Use this ability ONLY if you are certain that you are going to die and you have no DCDs available.
	Evasion: Increases chance to dodge melee and ranged attacks by 200% for 3 seconds (5 seconds with correct utilities). This ability needs to be timed correctly if you want as much out of it as possible. This means that if you see a burst window coming up from your opponent which involves either melee or ranged attacks then use Evasion to stop the damage from hitting you. A good example of this is when you see a Sniper casting either Cull or Ambush, if you time Evasion correctly you will dodge ALL damage coming from those abilities which means that a good chunk of their burst is gone.
	Entrench: Entrenches you into cover, becoming immune to all controlling effects. Only grants protection while in cover. Lasts 20 seconds. This ability should be used ON COOLDOWN UNLESS you are white barred.
	Countermeasures: Instantly lowers threat by a moderate amount. Additionally, because of the utility, Countermeasures purges movement impairing effects and increases movement speed by 75% for 6 seconds. Of course in PvP we don’t really care about lowering our threat, so this ability is good if you need to kite, LoS a ranged class attacking you, or get out of an annoying AoE ability like Diversion.
	Shield Probe: Summons a probe droid that projects a shield around the Agent, absorbing a moderate amount of incoming damage for 10 seconds. Use this on cooldown whenever someone is attacking you.
	Covered Escape: Roll forward 18 meters, purging movement impairing effects and landing crouched behind cover. While rolling, your chance to dodge attacks is increased by 100%. Notice that this ability causes you to dodge ALL damage, it is perfect for stopping incoming tech or force burst, or even melee and ranged if Evasion is on cooldown. The idea of how to use Evasion correctly applies here too, try to anticipate incoming burst and roll to mitigate all the damage. Covered Escape is also helpful for countering melee, roll and root can be devastating for them.
	Ballistic Dampers: 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. Re-enter cover as much as possible to keep Ballistic Dampers on you.NOTE: While I am fully aware that this is a utility, I do consider it a DCD because of how important it is to staying alive as a Sniper.

Crowd Control

	Diversion: Reduces the accuracy by 45% and exposes from cover up to 8 enemies within 8 meters for 8 seconds. I will not be talking about this ability here since I am dedicating a whole paragraph to it later in the guide.
	Flash Bang: Detonates a flash bang that blinds the target 8 seconds. Damage causes this effect to end prematurely. This is your mez (a stun that breaks on damage).
	Maim: Deals X amount of damage and stuns the target for 4 seconds. This is your hard stun ability (a stun that does NOT break on damage).
	Cover Pulse: Detonates an emergency charge that knocks all nearby targets back several meters and immobilizes them for 5 seconds. Damage dealt after two seconds ends the effect prematurely. This should be used if you need to get 1 or more melee away from you, or if you need to interrupt someone who’s casting. I mostly use it to interrupt healers and knock them away from the people they are healing or out of guard range.
	Leg Shot: Fires a shot that deals X weapon damage and immobilizes the target for 5 seconds. Direct damage dealt after two seconds ends the effect prematurely. Use this after you roll away from a melee class attacking you, or use it as you are running away from a melee class, ONLY if you have a speed boost (Usually Countermeasures or Seek Cover).

Diversion

Diversion can be both helpful and a nuisance to Snipers. I will cover both aspects of it here. Using Diversion properly is key when it comes to fighting other Snipers, it will most likely be the most annoying thing you experience when playing the Sniper class, but because of the utilities I have told you to use, hopefully Diversion won’t be as annoying as it has the potential to be. The best and worst thing about Diversion (depending on whether you’re on the giving or receiving end of it) is that it instantly puts you out of cover, and cover makes you IMMUNE to interrupts. This means that if Diversion is thrown at you, you CAN be interrupted and on top of that, your accuracy is reduced by 45% which is why you need to get away from it ASAP. I recommend that if there is a Sniper on the enemy team, always save one of your speed boosts for Diversion. If you have Entrench up (which you most likely will) and are using the correct utilities, you CANNOT be immobilized or slowed (because of Seek Cover) which means that you can get out of Diversion considerably faster than most. Another way to counter Diversion is rolling at the right time, if you know what the animation looks like you can usually roll before it lands on you. The animation looks like the character is using his/her LEFT arm to throw a grenade with green smoke coming out of it. Since Diversion has a short travel time you do have a small window of opportunity to roll resist it.

Acknowledgements

Credits

Huge thanks to my awesome guildies who helped me out with all the testing and research required to make this guide. Awesome support. Especially Den and Duck who put up with having to duel all the time so I could test things.

I would like to thank Hottie for giving me good ideas on how to simplify my guide.

Also enormous thanks to Dulfy for devoting a lot of time and effort into this awesome website designed to help as many people as possible with basically everything SWTOR related.

About the Author

Most people call me Sink, I play on The Red Eclipse where I am a member of Take a Seat (a pvp guild) and I play on The Harbinger where I am a member of The Scare Bears and Omega Knights. I’ve mained the Sniper class since 2.0 and have loved it ever since. All of my character names contain the word “Sink” within them so if you ever need to get in touch with me in-game you can just type Sink in the Who tab. I have played the game since launch and have had a few long breaks, most consisting of 6-12 months. With the release of the last chapter of KOTFE I started playing again and am having so much fun with the thrill of the hunt (command crates). Thank you for taking the time to read this guide, I do hope it was helpful!