5.0 Class Guides/ SWTOR

SWTOR 5.3 Lethality Operative PvE Guide by Pràise

Dulfy 28 Comments Aug 7, 2017

SWTOR 5.3 Lethality Operative PvE Guide by Pràise.

Intro to Lethality Operative

Lethality operative is a damage-over-time melee damage class that offers the best single target sustained dps and great versatility in most other scenarios. While lethality is not a burst class, it can be made to dish out high burst damage if setup properly but not quite to the amount of its counterpart, Concealment.

Ratings

Single Target Damage: 9.9/10

No discipline is perfect but currently Lethality dishes out the best you can get. Lethality has the highest sustained single target damage in the game as of now and since the 5.3 update, this is be a healthy margin.

AOE Damage: 8/10

Lethality has decent spreading for its DoT effects, though not nearly the best. This combined with two AOE moves that get amplified by your rotation puts Lethality in a comfortable spot for both full time and part time AOE.

Survivability: 8/10

Operative has some pretty good defensives that are available often, it has passives/utilities that give you good resistances, it can stealth out and on some fights, your evasion can work wonders. Lethality also has some very good off-heals/self-heals. However some fights don’t favor your cooldowns and when you compare Lethality defensives to something like a Sniper or Marauder, you can see its flaws.

Group Utility: 8/10

Operative may not be the best for group utility but the amount of different benefits you have for a group and how easy it is to use them makes them very versatile and earns them a 8/10 in my eyes. You have stealth revive without a cooldown on revive, the hardest hitting reflect, great off-heals, a very good raid buff (big crits = big utility), a cooldown to negate some mechanics, enough range to float out of melee range to relive pressure on other melee and finally a 5% tech damage debuff along with a 7% internal/elemental damage debuff.

Gearing

The guide most people follow for optimal stats at all endgame levels of gear is here:

• http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=847112 for Tier 1-3
• http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=918622 for Tier 4

As for the stats I personally run at full 248 (except a couple armorings), here is my setup:

I use the proficient (accuracy) stim, critical colour crystals and the standard setup of the Focused Retribution (mastery proc) and Serendipitous Assault (power proc) relics. Of course, I also use the Enforcer set-bonus which grants:

• (2) Corrosive Assault increase damage dealt by 2%  for 15 seconds. Cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds
• (4) Lethal Strike’s energy cost is reduced by 2
• (6) Activating Shiv will grant Enforcer’s Critical Bonus making your next Corrosive Assault critically hit. This effect can only occur once every minute

Utilities

Icon	Name	Description	Recommendation
Skillful
	Nanotech Suit	Reduces all area of effect damage taken by 30%	Mandatory: AoE damage is plentiful in operations and 30% reduction is a big deal, there is almost no fight where you shouldn’t take this utility
	Chem-Resistant Inlays	Increases damage reduction by 5%	Mandatory: Like Nanotech Suit, damage reduction is always nice and 5%, while smaller than 30%, is still less worry for your healers
	Imperial Weaponry	Noxious Knives deals 25% more damage	Situational: Noxious Knives is good for both spreading dots and dealing AoE damage. If there is a fight where you use this more than a few times, this utility should probably be taken
	Hit and Run	Striking a target with Shiv or Veiled Strike grants Hit and Run, increasing your movement speed by 50% for 3 seconds	Rarely recommend: You won’t use this utility much, if at all but if you find yourself in a fight like Dread Guards in TfB, this is a decent utility to pick up to help with kited bosses
	Slip Away	Reduces the cooldown of Debilitate by 15 seconds	Mostly PvP: There rarely is a point where you need to use Debilitate more than you have a cooldown for in PvE however, if you find a use for it, 15 seconds is a good reduction
	Infiltrator	Increases movement speed by 15% and effective stealth level by 3	Rarely recommend: Used in the same situations as Hit and Run. Provides a consistent buff but a less significant one. If that suits your playstyle more, use this but I prefer Hit and Run
Masterful
	Curbing Strategies	Overload Shot and Noxious Knives reduce the movement speed of targets they damage by 40% for 6 seconds. In addition, when Flash Bang ends it leaves behind Flash Powder that reduces the target’s accuracy by 20% for 8 seconds	Mostly PvP: The slow is nearly useless in PvE and if I recall, most important bosses are no longer affected by the accuracy loss. However, if you find one that is, 20% can sometimes save your tanks (but they shouldn’t need saving from you anyway)
	Precision Instruments	Reduces the energy cost of Debilitate and Sever Tendon by 5 and makes Sever Tendon immobilize the target for 2 seconds	Unused: I shouldn’t need to explain this one.. You aren’t using these abilities anyway and Lethality does not need more energy
	Advanced Cloaking	Reduces the cooldown of Cloaking Screen by 30 seconds and activating Cloaking Screen increases movement speed by 50% for 6 seconds	Recommended: Stealthed Lethal Strike does more damage and grants a TA. Shorter cooldown = more Stealth Lethal Strike = more damage = more TAs.. Almost always taken as it is a direct damage increase
	Med Shield	Your Shield Probe heals you for 5% of your maximum health when it collapses	Recommended: Seeing as there isn’t much else in this tier, I usually end up taking this because a 5% heal every 25-30 seconds adds up especially when combined with Escape Plan later on
	Endorphin Rush	Adrenaline Probe now immediately restores 15 addition energy	Unused: You don’t need energy help on Lethality, you never struggle with a standard rotation. You never struggle with a bad rotation. Don’t take this.
	Fortified Kolto	While your Kolto Probe is active on yourself, your damage reduction is increased by 3% per stack	Situational: There are a few fights where you have both the downtime and damage taken necessary for this to be more useful than Med Shield. Tyrans is about the only thing I can think of now if you put some Probes on when you drop below for Simplification
Heroic
	Imperial Tactics	Sever Tendon will now grant a Tactical Advantage	Unused: You never desperately need the extra TA enough to throw in a sever tendon for it. I like the idea of this but I’ve tried making it work, it doesn’t.
	Evasive Screen	When activated, Cloaking Screen grants 2 seconds of Evasion	Rarely recommend: You should never really need evasion more than you have it with Evasive Imperative but if you find yourself in a fight where you need to cleanse something very frequently or dodge big melee/ranged hits this can be useful. Would be more useful If Blow for Blow worked with this but it doesn’t and use of Cloaking Screen is mostly used for more damage
	Evasive Imperative	Every time you get attacked, the active cooldown of your Evasion is reduced by 3 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 1.5 seconds	Nearly mandatory: Evasion is your best cooldown, this makes it’s normal cooldown of 60s have a possible minimum of 20s and on most fights you’ll take enough damage to proc this multiple times. Only on fights where there are no cleanses, no reflect and no melee/ranged damage, is this not worth taking. As a side note, this utility along with reflect makes Operatives broken on Core phase of Revan
	Cunning Competencies	Countermeasures purges all movement-impairing effects when activated. Additionally, when Sleep Dart wears off, the target is struck by Sedatives, reducing all damage dealt by 50% for the next 10 seconds	Rarely recommend: You will almost never need the sedative part of this unless you’re on trash but the purge is nice for certain situations, something like Underlurker, Brontes reaches and kiting Sunder.. However, you already have a lot of mobility and most of the time Evasion will purge the movement impair anyway so this is not very useful over other things in here
	Escape Plan	Reduces the cooldown of Escape by 30 seconds, Shield Probe by 5 seconds, and Infiltrate by 60 seconds	Recommended: 5 seconds off of Shield Probe is great. That’s it. This in conjunction with Med Shield spikes your mitigation quite a bit and living is always good.. Also, there’s nothing much better in this tier except for Evasive Imperative
	Jarring Strike	When used from stealth, Backstab and Lethal Strike interrupt and knock down the target for 3 seconds. Player targets are immobilized for 3 seconds, rather than being knocked down	Unused: This will never replace Hidden Strike in all the pre 3.0 Operative hearts… Don’t use this. You don’t need it
Legendary
	Circumvention	Reduces the cooldown of Holotraverse by 10 seconds and allows it to be used while immobilized. When activated it purges movement-impairing effects and grants a Tactical Advantage	Recommended: Holotraverse generates a TA now.. more TAs which mean more damage. There are few fights where this doesn’t work, Terror from Beyond for example but for the most part I take this if there’s nothing to reflect in a fight, otherwise I’ll substitute this for Blow for Blow
	Mobile Strategies	Exfiltrate grants a charge of Mobile Strategies, reducing the energy cost of your next Overload Shot by 100%, increasing its maximum range by 20 meters, and making it knock the target back. Each use of Overload Shot consumes a charge of Mobile Strategies and grants 10 energy	Unused… kinda: Like Imperial Tactics, a cool idea and this one’s even fun in PvP but you don’t need this. I’ve made use of this utility once.. On a Revan kill where we didn’t have many knockbacks in the group.. And even then I used it once in the entire fight.
	Revitalizers	Stim Boost now additionally grants Revitalizers restoring 5% of total health every 3 seconds and reducing damage taken by 20% for the duration	Nearly Mandatory: This makes Stim Boost your greatest over-time defensive. 20% flat reduction while healing is amazing. Only substitute this out if you won’t be taking much damage and can make use of both Holotraverse and Blow for Blow
	Curative Agent	Countermeasures grants Curative Agent, causing your next Kolto Probe on a new target to immediately grant two stacks. Additionally, Countermeasures heals you for 1% of your maximum health every second for 10 seconds and Kolto Infusion now initially restores more health, but no longer restores health over time	Rarely recommend: This is an interesting alternative to Revitalizers because the heal on Countermeasures is up more frequently and your probes heal for quite a bit but there is no mitigation on this. Fights where you may need to recover more during downtime can make use of this. I take this on Tyrans for when I drop down below as I will be free to do non-damage abilities anyway
	Augmented Shields	Increases the amount of damage absorbed by Shield Probe by 30%	Rarely recommend: Since you’re mostly going to take Med Shield and Escape Plan anyway, this final boost for Shield Probe can really do wonders for mitigation. If I didn’t prefer the mitigation of Revitalizers over this, I’d take it for sure but in most fights, you don’t take serious damage for this to be worth it as frequently. I do recommend it for some fights though. Things like Tyth where damage you take is mostly predictable and more frequent than Stim Boost would be up for
	Blow for Blow	Activating Evasion grants Blow for Blow, returning 150% of direct single target tech and Force damage taken back to the attacker while Evasion is active Note: This does not trigger with Evasive Screen	Recommended: Shortest but most powerful reflect in the game. 150% is huge even with capped reflect numbers. If there is a fight where you can reflect, take this. You still take the damage yourself but as long as you pop your Shield Probe and hit a medpac after jumping in for that reflect, your healers…. Will probably still hate you to be honest.. But your damage will be reaaaaallly nice. I sub between this and Circumvention most fights as mentioned in the Circumvention utility

Rotation

Rotational Abilities

Icon	Name and Info	Description	Usage
	Corrosive Dart Energy: 15 Range: 30m	Fires a dart at the target that deals internal poison damage over 24 seconds	One of your two main DoT effects. Costs slightly more energy than its counterpart. Usable at 30m which helps if you’re out-ranged by an enemy. Always try to keep this up on any target you’re damaging as DoTs are crucial to Lethality
	Corrosive Grenade Energy: 10 Range: 30m	Hurls a grenade that spews poisonous acid in a 5-meter radius on impact, dealing internal poison damage over 24 seconds to up to 8 targets	Your other main DoT effect. Splashes all targets in the immediate area which makes it a bit better than Dart as both have about the same damage. Also 30m, making it another great ranged attack. As with Dart, keep this up on any enemy you are damaging
	Lethal Strike Energy: 15 Cooldown: 12s Range: 4m	Ambushes an enemy for kinetic and internal damage. If used while stealthed, deals greater kinetic and internal damage, and grants a Tactical Advantage Replaces Backstab	Deals great upfront damage but most importantly, grants the Augmented Toxins buff which increases critical chance and multiplier of all periodic effects by 30% for 6 seconds. This is an amazing buff and must be maintained as much as possible. In your rotation this is about as high priority as having DoTs on an enemy
	Toxic Blast Energy: 0 Cooldown: 15s Range: 10m	Deals minimal weapon damage and for the next 10 seconds causes the target to take additional weapon damage whenever it takes damage from your Corrosive Assault or a poison effect. Grants a Tactical Advantage	The damage this does up front is pretty weak but for the next 10 seconds it’ll deal a lot of damage between passive ticks with your DoTs or amplifying your next few Corrosive Assaults. The TA generation is icing on the cake. Ideally this move is kept up as much as possible but can be delayed sometimes for a DoT or Lethal Strike
	Shiv Energy: 15 Cooldown: 6s Range: 4m	Stabs a target for kinetic damage (Grants a Tactical Advantage)	The damage is nice but the damage is just one instance of damage and no buff/debuff so nothing crazy good. What Shiv does do for you is provide you with the majority of your TAs. The Fatality passive essentially doubles the TA generation of this move. Shiv and Fatality will be gone over more in depth later as its use is complex
	Corrosive Assault Energy: 15 Range: 10m (Costs TA)	Executes your Tactical Advantage to fire a volley of corrosive shots, dealing weapon damage. For each of your poison effects present on the target, the target is culled for additional internal damage. Requires and consumes a Tactical Advantage	You’re main damage, by far. Maximizing the uses of this move and how hard each one hits is the key to great damage in Lethality. While damaging one target, this is the ONLY ability that takes a TA so you can equate the number of TAs you generate to the number of Corrosive Assaults you use (As long as you don’t waste any by over-stacking). Past that, effectively choosing when to use your Corrosive Assaults so that they are affected by more benefits maximizes the potential of each used TA
	Overload Shot Energy: 15 Range: 10m	Blasts the target for weapon damage	Purely filler, does decent damage and can be used at 10m. Since there is not much worry for energy in Lethality, you can use this whenever you can’t use anything else without any repercussions.
	Rifle Shot Energy: 0 Range: 30m	Shoots your rifle at the target, dealing weapon damage	Do NOT ever use this when you could have used Overload Shot. This move is here purely because you can use it at 30m and that makes it usable when stranded at range from an enemy
	Fragmentation Grenade Energy: 20 Cooldown: 6s Range 30m	Deals kinetic damage to the primary target and less kinetic damage to up to 7 enemies within 5 meters of the primary target. If the primary target is a standard or weak enemy, it is knocked to the ground	Same as Rifle Shot, do NOT use over Overload Shot. Although Fragmentation Grenade does much greater damage than Rifle Shot and should be used over that, it does NOT do more than Overload Shot
	Noxious Knives Energy: 15	Hurls envenomed knives in a 10-meter cone in front of you, damaging up to 8 targets for kinetic and internal poison damage	Your spammable AoE damage. Spreads your Corrosive Dart to other targets (inconsistently) which makes it important if you want to apply DoTs to multiple targets. With all the benefits that poison damage gets from Lethality, using this many times on a large group of enemies yields good damage
	Toxic Haze Energy: 15 Cooldown: 15s (Costs TA)	Executes your Tactical Advantage to drop a canister that fills the vicinity with poisonous gas, dealing internal damage to up to 8 targets within 8 meters over 6 seconds. The haze stuns standard and weak enemies for 6 seconds. Requires and consumes a Tactical Advantage	I’ve started to consider this an attempt at replacing Orbital Strike from way back when Operatives had it. It doesn’t match Orbital Strike but this is decent AoE damage if you have the TA to spare and can be a good “precast” dropping it just before something spawns or just before something is able to be damaged. Generally, you will get the TAs back in an opener anyway and this is extra damage
	Stim Boost Cooldown: 1m 30s	Inject yourself with a specially-engineered Imperial stim, immediately gaining Tactical Advantage and boosting alacrity by 10% for 15 seconds. Does not break stealth	The Tactical Advantage is great, it allows you to hit more Corrosive underneath that Augmented Toxin window or that Toxic Blast window or extend another GCD for Fatality but the 10% alacrity can help or ruin you. On one hand, if you want to fit more abilities in, 10% is a big boost and will allow you to do so but on the other hand, this will ruin the timings of you DoTs. More on this in the later on in the cooldown section of the rotation
	Holotraverse Cooldown: 45s Range: 30m	Supercharge your stealth generator, quickly moving you to a friendly or enemy target and increasing your movement speed by 75% for 3 seconds. Does not break stealth. Cannot be used against enemy targets in cover	Only an offensive cooldown if you take the Circumvention Utility, acts just like Stim boost but a shorter cooldown and no love-hate relationship with 10% alacrity
	Cloaking Screen Cooldown: 2m	Overload your stealth generator, immediately exiting combat and entering stealth mode. For 10 seconds, you become virtually undetectable	Use right before using a Lethal Strike to get an extra TA and some more damage. Be careful with Cloaking Screen’s use as you can easily over-stack TAs if you don’t look ahead in the rotation. Sometimes it’s better to delay for a couple Lethal Strikes than to over-stack
	Tactical Superiority Cooldown: 5m	Executes your Tactical Advantage to grant Tactical Superiority to you and your Operation group members within 40 meters, increasing critical chance by 10% for 10 seconds. Does not break stealth	Use as you would use other raid-buffs. It can help both heals and dps and for best effect, line up with other raid-buffs. Be careful not to lose your last TA on its use as you won’t do any damage yourself. I usually make sure I have Stim Boost or Holotraverse to instantly replace the TA it costs

Rotation

As a quick note, there are different ways to run this rotation. On the parsely leaderboards, you’ll see all sorts of different placements for DoTs and different buffs/debuffs prioritized. The way I’m going to talk about, I firmly believe is the best way to run the rotation as far as consistently high numbers and in the coming update, if energy is made more important, this rotation will become a very energy-stable rotation as long as Fatality remains.

Lethality does not have a set-in-stone rotation and it doesn’t have a typical priority system. Instead, Lethality uses hybrid of some abilities being kept set-in-stone and some being arranged into an unorthodox priority which relies more on paying attention to what was previously used rather than what will be used. The set-in-stone “backbone” of the rotation is your DoT refresh and use of Lethal Strike. The cooldown of Lethal Strike is half of the duration of your DoT effects so once every rotation (one DoT cycle) you will replace your DoTs and use your Lethal Strike twice as soon as it’s off cooldown. The other places in between these are filled with Toxic Blast, Shiv, Corrosive Assault or sometimes Overload Shot.

Opener

While the “Opener” itself is really just the first few GCDs, the point of the whole setup here is to show the DoT spacing before you fall into the normal rotation. As you’ll notice, you start with Lethal Strike from stealth for its added damage and TA and then you have your DoTs separated by one GCD. By the time you get through the opener, you should have your DoTs separated by 3 GCDs. To do this the first time you refresh your DoTs, as shown above, you will move Corrosive Grenade back by one GCD for a total spacing of two GCDs. Once you are done with your opener, your Corrosive Grenade will be used one GCD before that for a total of three GCDs. More on this in the next section. Note: if starting without stealth, you essentially start at the first refresh with some slight differences. Open with Corrosive Grenade into Lethal Strike, Toxic Blast then Corrosive Dart and Shiv, from there the rest follows a standard rotation.

DoT Refreshes/Backbone

Once you are done with your opening, you will have the backbone of your rotation laid out as follows:

This spacing is used to accommodate the awkward cooldowns of Toxic Blast and Shiv. Spacing allows you to never delay something more than one GCD. Also, spacing is used to help you create TAs more effectively and use up TAs more effectively. Note, as previously mentioned, Lethal Strike has a base cooldown of 12s while your dots last 24s, meaning you will use Lethal Strike once more between each of these refreshes (See opener rotation where Lethal Strike is used as much as possible making it twice per refresh.. Under normal circumstances, the second Lethal Strike is used 5 GCDs after the Corrosive Dart). To help you with timing your Corrosive Grenade so that Lethal Strike comes off of cooldown at the right point, use Corrosive Grenade when Lethal Strike has 2-3s left on its cooldown.

To simplify the changing DoT refreshes from the opener to the normal rotation, see this:

First Application

First Refresh

Second/Normal Refresh

The Filler spaces for the first two are pretty set in stone as seen in the opener but for an overall view, using them just as spacing helps understand how to space the DoTs

Fillers/Everything in Between

Now that you know how to maintain your DoTs properly, every other slot for an ability will be taken up by Toxic Blast, Shiv, Corrosive Assault or Overload Shot. Using a priority system is viable enough but to make the most out of the damage you have, you have to consider each buff/debuff that is currently applied or will be. If you are fine with a priority system, I will put one below that will serve you well enough for 90% of fights. Otherwise, the next couple sections will explain how to look at each move and decide which is best to use in each situation.

Priority (Outside of DoT Refresh and Lethal Strike):

• Toxic Blast
• Corrosive Assault (With two TA stacks)
• Shiv
• Corrosive Assault (With one TA stack)
• Overload Shot

Toxic Blast and Overload Shot Use

Toxic Blast and Overload Shot are grouped together because they are the simplest to know when to use (Especially Toxic Blast). Toxic blast grants a TA and essentially amplifies your periodic effects along with Corrosive Assault, making it just about as important as DoTs and Lethal Strike. So use Toxic Blast whenever you can, on cooldown. It’s even ok to sometimes over-stack TAs with them because of how good it is to be kept on cooldown. Remember this move is reset if an enemy dies with it on so don’t be afraid to apply to something that may die quick. One situation where Toxic Blast may be delayed is if Augmented Toxins is about to run out and you have two TAs. In that case, you should probably Corrosive Assault. Overload Shot is used for one of two things. You either have nothing else to use and need to hit something or you only have Shiv available but Fatality has one GCD left before it can trigger (or any situation where a Fatality trigger is bridged with only one Overload Shot). Fatality Triggers/Windows will be gone over more in depth in its own section.

Corrosive Assault Use

Corrosive Assault is the bulk of your damage and the ability has no cooldown so using it while Augmented Toxins is up and while Toxic Blast is applied will yield best results. As such, always try and squeeze most of them in while those are applied, ideally both but also one. You will also have to use this without those up as it still does better damage than anything else but making sure you always try and use Corrosive Assault in those windows helps the damage significantly (Especially if your auto-crit set bonus is up). Corrosive Assault use will be perfected with practice as long as you pay attention to the buffs so the best thing to do is to practice it.

Shiv Use/Fatality Triggers

Fatality can trigger once every 10s (affected by alacrity) on the use of Shiv and makes the next Corrosive Assault cost no energy and regrant a TA, effectively doubling the TA generation on Shiv and in a sense, doubling how useful Shiv is. To think about its cooldown more easily, remember that once you Shiv and Fatality triggers, you have to use 6 GCDs before the next Fatality can trigger. Maximizing uptime on Fatality maximizes your TA generation and ultimately maximizes your dps. So using Shiv is most effective when used 6 GCDs after your last Shiv that triggered Fatality or second most effective is to keep in on cooldown which results in 7 GCDs after your last. See this video for a fully voiced explanation with examples on how to do this.

As mentioned in the video, this is a Star Parse timer you can make for Fatality. This does not take into account Alacrity as other’s may be different so keep in mind Fatality will likely be available at 1.5 seconds left on timer. For Ruffian Scoundrels, replace the effect number with 3406699339710464 (And you may want to call it Unfair Advantage instead of Fatality).

Stim Boost, Holotraverse and Cloaking Screen

These three offensive cooldowns have two things in common, they all generate an extra TA and don’t respect the Global Cooldown (Holotraverse only generates if you have the Circmvention Utility). As such, these are excellent cooldowns for squeezing in extra Corrosive Assaults. For Cloaking Screen, you usually want to use it as soon as possible for the extra damage as long as you don’t over-stack TAs with it but for Stim Boost and Holotraverse, waiting for the opportune moment is best. This moment will either be if you need to kill something quickly and using one of these allows you to use another Corrosive Assault underneath both Augmented Toxins and Toxic Blast or, as explained in the Fatality video, they are used to bridge another Corrosive Assault between Fatality. Stim Boost also grants 10% alacrity which allows you to squeeze more moves in but for the most part should mainly be looked at for the TA it generates as the 10% alacrity is also a detriment to you because it speeds up your DoT effects, making them fall off sooner, which in turn can make you use a Corrosive Assault without the DoT up because it fell off just a little too soon. Stim Boost also becomes a powerful defensive with the Revitalizers utility, meaning if you will need it defensively, use it for that. Cloaking Screen is also useful for Stealth Revives or dropping a lot of threat quickly so if you feel you will need it defensively, again, use it defensively. Holotraverse is great mobility, if you will need it to get somewhere faster, use it for mobility (See fights like Writhing Horror where this allows you to keep 100% uptime if used perfectly).

AoE Damage

I generally think about AoE damage in three different forms. The first form is when just an extra enemy or three is circling the boss and you can spread to them to fluff your numbers or help someone else who is killing them. This form is best shown in the Grob’thok fight of Dread Fortress if you have someone else focusing on AoE damage. You can try and keep your Corrosive Grenade on them by refreshing it while they are in the area and you can spread your Corrosive Dart by substituting a move for Noxious Knives (Using Toxic Haze is acceptable but only if you wouldn’t have a more useful Corrosive Assault to do in that situation). Meanwhile, you still focus the bulk of your damage on the boss. Try and only do this if it useful. For example, spreading to other bosses on the Cartel Warlords in SnV is generally useless as you don’t need extra energy regeneration and they will likely heal back up anyway. The second form of AoE damage is what you would see during most Trash in between bosses. Everything will group up and you don’t really care what dies first you just want to get the most total damage out. For this, make sure both DoTs are maintained on as many enemies as possible, use Toxic Haze when you can and keep using Lethal Strike for its added critical benefits to your AoE. Past that you can spam Noxious Knives all you want, if you’re bored you can throw a Fragmentation Grenade. The final form of AoE is a hybrid. One Target is most important but you are responsible for killing what’s around it as well. This isn’t seen too much but on something like Gate Commander Draxus of Dread Fortress or Dread Master Bestia of Dread Palace, you can have a main target (Corruptor for Draxus, Monster or Tentacle for Bestia) and you have others around that need to die. In this case, keep a normal rotation but really make sure you have DoTs on everything and use TA on Toxic Haze whenever you don’t have Augmented Toxins or Toxic Blast up, you can also Noxioius Knives more than just to spread as you will be doing more overall damage. Keep Toxic Blast and Lethal Strike on the main target for sure.

Example Parse and Damage Spread

About the Author

My operative’s name is Pràise and many people know me by that. I reside on the Jedi Covenant server and you may also know me as Kreal, Wegrike, Very Meta or just that guy with the Kephess Legacy name. I love Lethality dps and Operative dps in general and use it as much as possible in my raiding. I’ve been playing since Dread Fortress and Dread Palace were released and started doing NiM content after that in the later stages of 2.X. I’d like to thank Stratt for spending numerous hours with me discussing and trying rotation possibilities for Lethality in 4.X until we settled for what we have now and for originally convincing me to pick up my Operative again after leaving it in 2.X. I also would like to thank all the wonderful people in my guild <Kephess the Immortal> who I have known for years and put up with me on a daily basis. If you have questions, feel free to whisper me in game on the characters I listed above, I will answer them as soon as I am not parsing or in a boss pull.