SWTOR 7.7 Pyrotech Powertech PvE Guide and Best Builds

SWTOR Pyrotech Powertech PvE Guide (DPS) for beginners and more experienced veterans: Skills, Choices, Rotations, Gearing, Builds, Tips!

Introduction to Pyrotech Powertech

Pyrotech is a DoT spec that attempts to kill things with fire by utilizing high-tech gauntlets as weapon platforms for a flamethrower, incendiary missile launcher, and railgun. They also use a special type of combustible gas so that their blaster shots can more easily set their foes ablaze.

Pyro PTs now have a fairly unique capacity to do powerful burst damage rivaling that of actual burst DPS specs alongside being able to deal considerable AoE damage that is competitive with what the best other DoT specs are capable of.

No other DPS discipline in the game can match Pyro’s versatility, but this versatility comes at a cost. Pyrotech is only competitive with the top burst and DoT specs during 15s windows while the Explosive Fuel ability is active, and that ability has a 2min cooldown. Outside of those windows, Pyro is considerably weaker than most DoT specs in terms of AoE, and thanks to the 2 minute cooldown, Pyro can’t offer huge burst damage nearly as frequently as all burst specs can.

Assuming Explosive Fuel is used as often as possible, Pyrotech is capable of single-target damage output that is competitive with what is offered by other mDPS. They are a bit behind in terms of DPS rankings on the dummy, but they can gain a considerable amount of DPS from taking damage thanks to abilities and buffs like Thermal Yield, Pyro Shield, and Reflective Armor. In addition, almost all of their rotational abilities have a range of at least 10m, which makes it much easier to maintain high uptime on bosses.

Pyrotech also features some of the best survivability in the game and they are especially adept at mitigating sustained damage like you often find in burn phases because all of their DCDs last an incredibly long time while having relatively short cooldowns. Their only real weakness when it comes to damage mitigation is the fact that they lack easy access to a cheese DCD unless they want to give up one of their DPS implants in favor of a tank implant that comes with useless stats.

When paired with their competitive damage output, Powertech DPS in general offers an absurd amount of group utility that typically makes them the best combat style to bring to a raid. The most significant pieces of raid utility include:

• The ability to off-tank thanks to having a taunt
• Sonic Rebounder, which can be used to cheese numerous mechanics
• Access to the only AoE hard stun in the game
• The shortest interrupt in the game
• The capacity to apply an accuracy debuff on-demand

Right now, Pyrotech is considerably stronger than Advanced Prototype in terms of damage output while having slightly better survivability. Powertech DPS has been considered the flavor of the month for several expansions now, so if you’re looking to do the hardest content in the game or help out your raid team, I highly recommend learning how to play it.

Major Changes in 7.0

Utility points are gone! Instead, there is a new system called the Ability Tree. Each discipline has 8 choices where they pick 1 of 3 options. The options have several similarities across the Combat Styles:

• 2 choices buff a discipline-specific ability (2 abilities, 1 choice each).
• 3 choices which are just old Utility effects. These choices are almost always the same for all disciplines. 
• 2 choices where you’re picking between 1 ability or 1 of 2 passives. One of the ability choices tends to be an offensive cooldown (OCD). The other seems to be related to PvP balance, but there isn’t a clear pattern beyond the choice forcing players to decide which of 3 capabilities they want to keep.
• 1 choice where you’re picking 1 of 3 abilities. One of the abilities is always one of your primary CCs, either the 8s mez or 4s hard stun. Another of the abilities is the movement ability with the longest cooldown. The third option is less consistent, it seems to be there as an extra balance lever for BioWare since some abilities that got locked away are more impactful than others. The 3 abilities are almost always the same for each discipline.

This means almost all disciplines had 5 abilities locked away behind choices with the option for players to keep up to 3 of them. In addition, many extremely situational abilities were pruned entirely. Pyrotech permanently lost access to 2 abilities: 

• Guard (now tank-only)
• Shatter Slug (the other 2 disciplines still have it, AP lost Searing Wave)
• Thermal Sensor Override (merged with Vent Heat)

Guarding is now a tank-only ability, which is the logical next step since the nerf to Guard for DPS partway through 6.0 was ineffective at stopping its ubiquity in PvP. 

Battle rezzes in general are now healer-only, but there is no longer a global 5 min lockout on those abilities, so it’s treated just like any other ability, albeit with a much longer cooldown. 

Group Composition Tips

In order to deal maximum damage, Pyrotech requires 3 other DPS debuffs:

DPS Debuff	Presence of debuff increases DPS by approximately
Internal / Elemental	5.3%
Armor	1.7%
Ranged	0.6%
Total DPS Gain:	7.6%

Pyrotech is a bit on the needy end when it comes to group composition dependence and takes the crown as being most dependent on a debuff it doesn’t provide by gaining a disgusting 5.3% from the Internal / Elemental debuff being present. For reference, all other dependencies max out in the low to mid-4% range, so Pyrotech is about 20% more dependent on the Internal / Elemental debuff being present than any other discipline is on the most valuable debuff they don’t have, including specs that need someone else to apply the armor debuff.

In real numbers, if you’re used to doing 28k DPS in single-target sustained situations with the Internal / Elemental debuff present, that’s gonna drop down by a whopping 1500 to 26.5k! The moral of the story here is to make sure someone is providing the Internal / Elemental debuff if you plan to bring a Pyro PT.

Technically, you can provide it yourself, but you have to give up about 10% of single-target sustained DPS and the capacity to DoT spread, so it’s practically never worth it unless your group consists of 4 DoT specs and you somehow still don’t have the Internal / Elemental debuff.

Thankfully, there are a lot of popular disciplines that provide the Internal / Elemental debuff and almost all disciplines can at least somewhat benefit from it. Virulence Sniper / Dirty Fighting Gunslinger and Innovative Ordnance Mercenary / Assault Specialist Commando pair best because both disciplines provide 2 debuffs that the other needs to deal maximum damage, though you’ll still need to get someone else to provide the armor debuff.

Just so we’re clear, you don’t have to bring one of those disciplines specifically, they just offer the most synergy with Pyrotech. In addition, it’s far less important for Pyro to have access to the armor or ranged debuff, so once your group has the Internal / Elemental debuff, focus on making sure the needs of your other DPS are met.

DPS Mindset

How can I do as much damage as possible in each GCD (global cooldown, 1.5s duration before you can activate another ability) given the constraints of the fight? Which ability do I use right now that will provide me the most DPS? How can I maximize my uptime? If I’m not activating an ability right now, why not? Can I finish this cast before I need to move? What happens if I don’t have time to finish a cast before moving? Can the healers deal with it without too much stress?  

Check out the SWTOR Damage Types and Damage Mitigation guide for more details on how they differ from each other and how to determine which attack does what damage!

Our in-depth analysis and breakdown of the relationship between mechanics and strategy in boss fights in SWTOR may also help you perform better in group content.

Abilities Explained

Please have the game open while reading through the next few sections. I will not be writing out ability descriptions and I will only be transcribing the components of discipline passives that directly relate to the ability and rotation. This forces you to read through what everything does so that you can understand what all of your passives and abilities do as well as locate these abilities in-game. Make sure you place all of these abilities on your bar in an order that makes sense to you. 

Single-Target Rotational Abilities, Attributes, and Important Procs

Combustible Gas Cylinder

(Tech/Elemental/Periodic/Single-Target)
I’m going to start this section by going over Combustible Gas Cylinder, which is a discipline passive that used to be an ability a long time ago alongside Ion Gas Cylinder (now exclusive to Shield Tech) and High Energy Gas Cylinder (now exclusive to Advanced Prototype).

The Combustible Gas Cylinder makes it so your ranged attacks (so exclusively Rail Shot and Rapid Shots) have a 30% chance to apply a DoT to their target. In StarParse, the name of this DoT is called Burning, and it will end up accounting for a considerable portion of your overall damage output that is comparable to the damage dealt by your other strong fire attacks. Combustible Gas Cylinder has 3 discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Volatile Igniter
Flaming Fist, Flame Burst, and Flame Sweep have a 100% chance to trigger Combustible Gas Cylinder to enemies they damage. Strangely, Searing Wave, Immolate, Incendiary Missile, and Scorch are not included in this buff and cannot trigger Combustible Gas Cylinder despite being flame attacks, but I digress. This component of Volatile Igniter is essential to the Burning DoT having practically effortless 100% uptime by enabling all of your most frequently-used abilities to apply it.

Burnout
Increases your Elemental damage dealt by 10% against targets that have less than 30% of their max HP remaining. This is your sub-30% DPS boost. It’s relevant to most of your attacks, so I’m choosing to mention it here. Burnout provides one of the strongest in the game and basically boosts all of your fire damage by 10%, resulting in a sustained DPS increase of about 7.5% against low-health targets.

When fighting regular enemies, this boost merely helps to compensate for the fact that your DoTs won’t finish ticking before the target dies, but against enemies with higher HP, like bosses, the damage boost is more substantial because you can apply your DoTs multiple times while the boss is sub-30%.

Insulated Mats
Increases the critical hit chance of elemental attacks by 3% and you automatically vent 2 Heat every 1.5s. The first part is a pretty generic DPS boost that affects all of your non-weapon damage and does get converted to supercrit while Explosive Fuel is active (assuming you have the Superheated Fuel tactical equipped).

The second part about the passive Heat venting is more important. It effectively increases your Heat dissipation rate by 1.33/s, which does make a noticeable difference, especially during periods of downtime by enabling you to push your Heat a bit harder if you know you’ll have time to get down to a safe level by the time downtime ends.

Flame Burst

(Tech/Elemental/Direct/Single-Target)
Flame Burst is your higher-cost, higher-damage filler ability; for those of you familiar with the concept, it is Pyrotech’s strong filler. Make no mistake, Flame Burst is still incredibly weak, especially compared to all of your other rotational abilities that have a cooldown or duration which tend to cost as much or less than Flame Burst while dealing 50-400% more damage.

The DPS increase that results from spending 15 Heat on Flame Burst over using Rapid Shots for free is incredibly small, so if you do overheat as a result of using Flame Burst too much, there’s a high chance you’ll lose more DPS than you would have gained, had you

The source of this limited impact mostly has to do with the fact that Flame Burst is so expensive and weak, so you don’t have too many opportunities to use Flame Burst in the first place while the profit you get off of those activations over Rapid Shots is low, at least on the dummy.

Thanks to Close and Personal, Thermal Yield, and forced downtime, it’s easier to use in actual combat compared to on the dummy, and the greater number of opportunities enables you to get more of a DPS increase. That said, you still have to be careful because it’s really easy to spiral out of control and end up not being able to do enough damage when you need to.

There are a few instances where you can and should exclusively use Flame Burst instead of Rapid Shots. While Thermal Yield is active in actual combat where you can build more than 1 stack of the buff, it will sufficiently reduce the cost of Searing Wave and Immolate such that you will not go over 40 Heat if you spam Flame Burst. Make sure you get back down below 40 Heat by spamming Rapid Shots though before using Flame Burst in this capacity if you happen to go over accidentally.

You can also afford to exclusively use Flame Burst during Explosive Fuel because you’ll be using Vent Heat soon anyway. Thanks to the Superheated Fuel tactical, the DPS increase is more substantial because Flame Burst will autocrit while Rapid Shots won’t. Flame Burst has 1 proc associated with it that is relevant to your rotation that I haven’t already mentioned:

Flame Barrage
Activating Immolate makes your next Flame Burst (or Flame Sweep) cost 0 Heat. This proc offers another instance where you should use Flame Burst and guarantees that you’ll always be able to get 2 stacks of Superheated Flamethrower proc for each Searing Wave even if you accidentally cause yourself to overheat a bit.

You’ll get your first stack of Superheated Flamethrower from Immolate, which you’ll never want to skip because it’s cheap and super powerful, while the other stack will come from a Flame Burst (or Flame Sweep) that becomes free by activating that Immolate.

Rapid Shots

(Ranged/Energy/Direct/Single-Target)
Rapid Shots deals half the damage of Flame Burst, but it’s free and has 30m, so you can basically always use it. Anytime you’re more than 10m away from the boss and can’t leap in, you should spam this while you figure out if you should apply Incendiary Missile (your other 30m ability) to the target.

Even ignoring the ability’s long range, you’ll be using Rapid Shots quite often in Pyrotech because the alternative filler that also doesn’t have a cooldown, Flame Burst, is quite expensive.

The DPS difference between Flame Burst and Rapid Shots is extremely small, so if you don’t want to worry about overheating in sustained DPS situations, it’s completely fine to just exclusively use Rapid Shots instead of Flame Burst. Remember to still use Flame Burst in the specific situations I mentioned earlier where you don’t have to worry about Heat though.

Since Rapid Shots hits 10 times, it’s practically guaranteed to apply the Combustible Gas Cylinder DoT to the target, though only 2 of the ticks can ever possibly apply it in a single GCD and only if the first tick happens on one of the first few ticks since Combustible Gas Cylinder has a 1s rate limit.

Rapid Shots does not have any procs, debuffs, or discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation that I haven’t already mentioned.

Incendiary Missile

(Tech/Elemental/Periodic/Single-Target)
This is your main DoT. Compared to other DoTs in the game, it’s quite weak, but it still deals ~50% more damage than Flame Burst while costing the same Heat and having 30m range. Your target only needs to survive for at least 9s so the third tick gets off where Incendiary Missile will result in a DPS increase over Flame Burst. It’s risky to directly apply it to an add directly instead of DoT spreading, but it’s great for multi-DoTing other bosses.

Since the ability has 30m range, it’s a great first ability to use whenever you target swap, especially if you can’t or don’t want to use Jet Charge. With Hydraulic Overrides active, you can do Incendiary Missile from 30m and be within 10m by the time the GCD is up to apply Scorch or Searing Wave. Incendiary Missile does not have any additional procs, debuffs, or discipline passives associated with it that I haven’t already mentioned.

Scorch

(Tech/Elemental/Periodic/Single-Target)
Scorch is one of the most powerful single-target attacks in the game. Some burst specs can match or surpass it in terms of damage dealt per GCD with specific builds, but all of those attacks have a cooldown whereas Scorch is only limited by its (low) Heat cost. BioWare has managed to balance such a powerful attack by making it a 30s DoT, which also makes it the longest-lasting DoT in the game.

So long as the target will live for 20% of the duration of the ability, it’s worthwhile to apply Scorch instead of using Flame Burst, even if the ability isn’t able to jump, because you’ll break even in terms of damage dealt while spending 5 less Heat per target. 20% corresponds to about 3s of Scorch. If you manage to get 2 ticks, you’ll break even; at 3 ticks, you’ll surpass Flame Burst.

Scorch can eventually surpass all of your other more-powerful attacks in terms of damage per GCD, except for DoT spreading with Searing Wave, but given its low cost and the fact that you have so many filler slots already, it’s not really a DPS gain to delay other powerful abilities just so you can apply Scorch a GCD earlier.

Unlike most other DoTs in the game, Scorch cannot be spread. This makes sense because it would really just be too powerful. Instead, if a target dies while it was affected by Scorch, the DoT will jump to the nearest target that does not have Scorch that is within 10m.

The duration of the DoT is fully reset when it jumps, though if things are already dying, it’s unlikely you’ll get the full duration on whichever target it jumps to, but this helps to give the attack a bit of AoE potential and makes it more likely that you’ll actually get your money’s worth out of the GCD you spent to apply it.

It isn’t worthwhile to apply Scorch to a target right before an existing Scorch would jump to that target anyway. While it doesn’t take long for Scorch to be a superior GCD to Flame Burst, you’ll get far more damage out of your prior GCD where you last manually applied Scorch, and you’re giving all that potential damage up by spending another GCD on manually reapplying it.

It’s ideal for Scorch to jump from an add to the boss (or a beefy add) right before the DoT would have ended anyway and you should look out for instances where this can happen. Typically anytime you have to focus an add down, like Kephess Clones during Brontes, Jealous Males during Writhing Horror, and Monsters or Tentacles during Bestia, are great instances where you may want to wait to reapply Scorch if you think it will jump somewhere juicy.

Please note that there is a limit to how often Scorch can jump and the jump has a travel time, so if the next target dies too soon, it will disappear and you’ll have to reapply it. Scorch has 1 discipline passive and 1 debuff associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Burnout
Scorch costs 5 less Heat. This component of Burnout is what enables Scorch to be slightly cheaper than Flame Burst and Flame Sweep, allowing it to be more easily applied to multiple targets in quick succession.

Susceptible (Tech Debuff)
Scorch applies Susceptible, which lasts 45s and makes the target take 5% more damage from Tech attacks. The Tech debuff is one of the more valuable debuffs in the game because half of SWTOR’s DPS specs can benefit from it, but only Powertech / Vanguard and Operative / Scoundrel DPS provide it, and Operative / Scoundrel DPS isn’t too popular in PvE.

Searing Wave

(Tech/Elemental/Direct/AoE)
As far as abilities go, Searing Wave is pretty straightforward. Without any of its powerful discipline boosts, it’s basically just a conal AoE version of Flame Burst that manages to deal the same damage per target at the cost of 5 more Heat. The discipline boosts do make the ability considerably more powerful, enough to make it what I consider to be the core ability of the entire Pyrotech discipline.

Since Searing Wave does not require you to have an active target, it is possible for you to actually miss, so make sure you’re within 10m of your target before activating it. Be careful activating it without a target in general and if it doesn’t say you can activate other 10m abilities like Immolate, Flame Burst, Scorch, or Rail Shot, then Searing Wave won’t hit either. Searing Wave has 1 proc, 2 discipline passives, and 1 debuff associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Superheated Flamethrower
Activating Flame Burst, Flame Sweep, or Immolate grants 1 stack of Superheated Flamethrower. Each stack increases the damage dealt by your next Searing Wave by 50% and causes it to slow targets it damages by 45% for 3s. Stacks up to 2 times for +100% damage, 90% slow, 3s total. Given how little effort it takes for such a significant benefit, it’s essential that you always have 2 stacks of Superheated Flamethrower for every activation of Searing Wave.

Since you gain stacks off simply activating Flame Sweep, you can ensure you’ll have 2 stacks before the fight starts and can build or maintain them during downtime so you don’t have to delay Searing Wave once you can actually attack the boss.

Rain of Fire
Searing Wave spreads Incendiary Missile to targets it damages, so long as it damages at least 1 target that is already affected by Incendiary Missile. This makes Searing Wave the exclusive DoT spread of Pyrotech Powertechs and unlike other DoT spreads, it can only spread 1 DoT rather than 2-3.

Since Incendiary Missile has a 15s duration and Searing Wave has a 15s cooldown, you can DoT spread once per DoT application, but lack any real capacity to bounce DoTs as some other disciplines can. While this does reduce Pyro’s maximum damage output in multi-target fights, you won’t have to worry about the DoT still being active on some targets after a spread so long as you activate them back-to-back.

Technically you can do this so long as you keep the number of GCDs consistent between your application of Incendiary Missile and Searing Wave, but that can be difficult, especially in fights with multiple targets.

Volatile Igniter
Reduces the cooldown of Searing Wave by 3s. This passive is less relevant now that Pyrotech is the only discipline that actually has access to Searing Wave, but I still want to point it out because it enables your rotation to be on a 15s cycle since all of your rotational abilities have a 15s cooldown or duration.

Scorch and Flaming Fist are outliers, but a 30s duration for Scorch means it can be applied once every other cycle while you have enough filler slots to still mostly use Flaming Fist on cooldown.

Overwhelmed (AoE Debuff)
Provided by the Flame Barrage discipline passive, Searing Wave applies Overwhelmed which lasts 45s and makes affected targets take 10% more damage from AoE attacks. This is the AoE debuff. It’s provided by most disciplines that have fully rotational AoE with the only exceptions being Vengeance Juggernaut / Vigilance Guardian, Lethality Operative / Ruffian Scoundrel, and Virulence Sniper / Dirty Fighting Gunslinger.

Since rotational AoE only ever comes from a single ability and difficult AoE DPS checks are exceedingly rare, the AoE debuff is one of the least valuable in the game. The fact that it offers a 10% boost instead of 5% or 7% is wholly insufficient, especially considering how likely it is that you’ll have it for any fight where AoE DPS is required since so many specs provide the debuff to begin with. In other words, if the AoE debuff were rarer, it would become more valuable.

A Note on Firestorm vs Searing Wave
This isn’t a discipline passive, but I wanted to offer an explanation to those of you that are curious about why Shield Tech Powertechs got Firestorm, the upgrade to Searing Wave, instead of Pyrotech. The answer has to do with how things were back in 3.0 where a lot more abilities were shared between disciplines.

BioWare’s primary goal with the upgrades was just to separate the abilities used by each discipline so the game would be easier to balance. They could more easily make direct changes to a specific ability without having side effects for other disciplines that also used said ability.

Some disciplines still use a lot of shared abilities like Innovative Ordnance Mercenary / Assault Specialist Commando and as a result, it’s considerably more challenging for BioWare to balance those disciplines effectively.

BioWare implemented this change by giving each discipline an upgraded version of a single shared ability. Over the years, other balance changes have occurred and some shared abilities were pruned and are now wholly unique to a given discipline. The best example of this is probably Depredating Volts / Cascading Debris, which used to be the upgraded version of Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw that all Inquisitors / Consulars once had access to.

Immolate

(Tech/Elemental/Direct/Single-Target)
Immolate is pretty low-tech as far as Star Wars is concerned, you’re just spraying your target with fuel and then igniting them, but sometimes the simplest attacks are most effective. Immolate is your most damaging direct attack and second only to Scorch when periodic damage is factored in. It’s also slightly cheaper than most of your other attacks, costing only 12 Heat compared to the usual 15. Immolate has 1 proc associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Burnout
Activating Searing Wave grants Consuming Flames, which makes your next Immolate deal 30% more damage. Since Searing Wave and Immolate both have 15s cooldowns and deal similar damage (with 2 stacks of the Superheated Flamethrower proc), there’s no reason to ever use Immolate before Searing Wave if you don’t have the proc. You always want to use Immolate after Searing Wave.

Flaming Fist

(Tech/Elemental and Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target)
Flaming Fist is the upgraded version of Rocket Punch that converts some of the kinetic damage to elemental, and that elemental portion counts as flame damage, allowing the attack to partially synergize with the rest of the discipline. While the elemental damage component is still small, only about a quarter of the total damage dealt, Flaming Fist remains your strongest filler thanks to its high damage and low cost.

The biggest drawback of Flaming Fist is that it’s Pyrotech’s only ability that has a 4m range. All of Pyro’s other attacks have at least a 10m range. Since Flaming Fist is used fairly frequently, you can’t be at 10m range all the time unless you take the Flying Fists tactical (which you shouldn’t).

Flaming Fist further differentiates itself from your other abilities because it does not have a cooldown duration that can be synchronized with the rest of the rotation. All other abilities are on a 15s cycle, so when you actually do the rotation, this ability will float between several different spots. Flaming Fist does not have any passives, procs, or debuffs associated with it that I haven’t already mentioned.

Rail Shot

(Ranged/Energy/Direct/Single-Target)
This ability hits considerably harder than Flame Burst while costing the same amount of Heat (15) and having the same 10m range, so there’s no reason not to use it on cooldown and prioritize it over your fillers.

Rail Shot only has 1 minor limitation; it can only be used against targets suffering from some sort of active debuff like a DoT or CC, but this shouldn’t ever be an issue for Pyro because your main goal with the discipline is to light the enemy on fire. You only need 1 of your DoTs to be on the target, though you’ll typically have all 3 when it’s time to activate this ability. Rail Shot has 1 proc and 1 combat style passive associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Charged Gauntlets
Activating Flaming Fist grants Charged Gauntlets, which makes your next Rail Shot automatically critically hit. As far as autocrits go, don’t expect crazy damage like you can get with burst specs because there is no boost to critical damage dealt for Rail Shot as a Pyro PT, but its direct damage as an autocrit is still on part with that of other DoT spec autocrits at around 40k.

Since Flaming Fist has a shorter cooldown than Rail Shot and is your highest priority “filler” while the proc lasts a full 15s, there’s no excuse to not have this proc before Rail Shot comes off cooldown. Since Flaming Fist is also guaranteed to apply the Combustible Gas Cylinder DoT, you should be more reliably able to activate Rail Shot against any target at any time.

Puncture
Rail Shot ignores 60% of the target’s armor. This combat style passive enables Rail Shot’s damage to behave more like an elemental attack without being one for discipline passive purposes. When combined with the armor debuff, boss armor will only mitigate 7% of the overall direct damage dealt by Rail Shot or 14% without the armor debuff.

AoE Abilities

The formula for determining how much damage an AoE ability does per GCD such that it can be compared to single-target abilities is: (Damage Dealt/Number of GCDs) x Number of Enemies. An AoE ability’s place in the priority is as high as it can be until it reaches a single-target ability that deals more damage than the AoE will deal to all enemies in the GCD. This isn’t terribly relevant for Engi since Energy demands and rotational interdependencies are more important, but it’s still good to know. 

AoE damage is considered fluff if the adds do not need to die immediately or if you are otherwise shirking your main responsibilities to deal more damage than necessary to adds. It’s pretty easy to tell what is and isn’t fluff, don’t be greedy, and don’t hurt your group’s chances of beating the boss. 

Flame Sweep

(Tech/Elemental/Direct/AoE)
This is your spammable AoE. It deals a bit over half the damage of Flame Burst per target, though since it’s also the only way to apply Combustible Gas Cylinder to multiple targets at the same time, the first activation of Flame Sweep will end up being significantly more powerful against secondary targets. A single tick of the Combustible Gas Cylinder DoT will match the damage dealt by Flame Burst against that secondary target, and you’ll still get 2 more ticks out of that DoT before it falls off.

While Immolate technically can’t ever deal AoE damage, the Flame Barrage proc can make your next Flame Sweep free, so you should still use Immolate on cooldown. Flaming Fist only sometimes offers direct AoE damage with an ability tree buff, but you’ll still want to use it on cooldown anyway because the other strong alternative boosts the damage dealt by Combustible Gas Cylinder significantly.

Rail Shot is the only attack that never offers any sort of AoE DPS increase, but the priority changes depending on whether or not the Combustible Gas Cylinder DoT is applied to secondary targets since that will deal a little over 15k per target over 6s which is more than the direct damage dealt by Flame Sweep itself, though Rail Shot’s damage fluctuates considerably based on which ability tree buff you take, so we need to factor that in as well.

Honestly, it’s not worth the effort to try and think about all these different factors for just a single GCD, so just use Rail Shot on cooldown on the primary target and you’ll be fine, so Flame Sweep should only ever take the place of Flame Burst.

Searing Wave and Incendiary Missile

(Tech/Elemental/Direct and Periodic/AoE and Single Target)
Searing Wave is your DoT spread, but it’s a bit weaker than many other DoT spreads because it only spreads 1 DoT (Incendiary Missile) and has a 15s cooldown, though Searing Wave’s high damage dealt and the fact that Flame Sweep can apply the Combustible Gas Cylinder DoT help to compensate for this.

DoT spreading with Searing Wave will always have the highest priority in general because it’s your most powerful attack.

Deadly Onslaught

(Tech/Elemental/Direct/AoE)
Deadly Onslaught actually deals slightly more single-target damage per GCD than Flame Burst, but it’s unsustainable to use on cooldown because you can’t always afford to spend 30 Heat on fillers in a single rotation cycle even if you never use Flame Burst as a filler (except when it’s free, of course).

Due to Deadly Onslaught’s long cooldown, it’s unlikely you’ll get to use it twice on the same set of adds, so it should only ever replace unprocced Flame Sweeps and Rapid Shots even though it deals a fair bit of damage. If you do find yourself needing to use it on cooldown, make sure that you’re getting good use out of Thermal Yield since you will overheat eventually if you don’t.

Since Deadly Onslaught costs 30 Heat and has a 3s channel, it’s also technically your best ability to pair with Vent Heat, though this isn’t always possible.

It’s also fine to use Deadly Onslaught while Explosive Fuel is active because half of the damage dealt by the ability is considered fire damage, so it will fully benefit from the Superheated Fuel tactical while the other half will still benefit from the base ability. Only use it in this capacity if you will hit multiple targets because 2 GCDs of Flame Burst will benefit more from Superheated Fuel since it affects the entire 2 GCDs instead of just half.

Scorch

(Tech/Elemental/Periodic/Single-Target)
Scorch doesn’t deal any AoE damage outright, but thanks to its ability to jump when the current target is defeated, a single activation can end up dealing damage to multiple targets, so it’s absolutely worth using in multi-target situations.

It’s too hard to think about how many targets it’s worth applying to, so I generally just apply it to 1 of the weaker adds and all of the stronger ones and then go back to more traditional AoE so that the 1 Scorch will jump around incinerating all the little ones while each of the big ones will get their own dedicated DoT the whole time.

Offensive Cooldowns

All offensive cooldowns (OCDs) should be used as frequently as possible under the conditions stated here and should only be delayed if they need to be saved for a DPS check or burst window, but don’t start delaying them until you see that you have to. 

Pyrotech Powertechs have several different offensive cooldowns, but they should always get used at roughly the same time because they have strong synergy and share roughly the same cooldown duration.

Explosive Fuel

Thanks to the Superheated Fuel tactical, all of your attacks (except for Shoulder Cannon) will autocrit. Since all of the sustained DPS that would have been provided by your tactical has been concentrated into 15s bursts, it is essential that you make the most out of this ability by activating it as often as possible while still making sure it’s available when higher DPS is most valuable (typically burst checks and burn phases).

Be careful not to activate Explosive Fuel when you won’t be able to get the full effect either. You want to minimize downtime while this ability is active, so don’t use it if your target is about to die or some sort of downtime will occur in the next 15s.

While Explosive Fuel is active, you should not use any Rapid Shots as your filler and make sure to time its initial activation to be right after you apply Incendiary Missile and Scorch so you don’t have to waste extra precious GCDs applying DoTs.

Vent Heat

With the launch of 7.0, the effect of Thermal Sensor Override was combined with Vent Heat where activating Vent Heat makes your next attack that costs Heat free and as soon as that buff is consumed, you begin venting 50 Heat over 3s.

This ability should typically only be used shortly after Explosive Fuel as a way to enable you to exclusively use Flame Burst instead of Rapid Shots as your filler.

It’s ideal to use Vent Heat right before you activate Searing Wave when you have 60-70 Heat since that attack costs 20 Heat instead of 15, but any ability that costs 15 Heat is fine too and preferred if you’re about to go above 70 Heat.

In fights where you have close to maximum uptime on Thermal Yield, you can get away with not using Vent Heat after Explosive Fuel and just save it for when you inevitably overheat from using Deadly Onslaught too much.

Shoulder Cannon

Shoulder Cannon is quite unique as far as abilities go and its usage will be different depending on the type of content you do. In PvP, it’s useful to interrupt players trying to cap an objective rather than for burst, but this is a PvE guide so I won’t go into more detail than that.

In boss fights, it should always be used as an offensive cooldown that is paired with Explosive Fuel where you activate it before Explosive Fuel comes off cooldown so you have time for all 4 missiles to load and then fire them all while Explosive Fuel is active.

The cooldown on Shoulder Cannons plus the time it takes to use them plus loading time is roughly equal to the cooldown on Explosive Fuel. Usually, Shoulder Cannons will come off cooldown about 30s before Explosive Fuel so you’ll be fine to let them load and often have a few seconds after they’ve finished loading. Get in the habit of loading them as soon as you see them come off cooldown.

Since it takes 20s to load Shoulder Cannons, so as long as you have at least 2 missiles loaded before you activate Explosive Fuel, you will have enough time to load and fire them all before Explosive Fuel ends. Pre-load them before a fight starts as well, but buff only lasts 5 mins, so remember to right-click the buff off if you don’t think they’ll be ready in time for the pull.

Shoulder Cannons should be used at the same time as Explosive Fuel in boss fights because they have roughly the same cooldown as Explosive Fuel, but benefit from the crit chance provided by Explosive Fuel, so they’ll do more damage on average when used at the same time.

The DPS increase from Shoulder Cannons relies on the fact that they are on a separate rate limit from the GCD, so they can only be fired once every 1.5s, but firing one does not cause a GCD. They are weaker than most of your attacks though, so you will lose DPS if your APM (actions per minute) is not high enough to fire a Shoulder Cannon and activate another ability in the same GCD.

I recommend just alternating each ability with a Shoulder Cannon until they’ve all been depleted. Make sure you keybind them to a button that’s easy for you to press at the same time as your other abilities.

Outside of boss fights, you likely won’t get to use all of them on a single group of trash, especially if you use them during Explosive Fuel, so it’s better to use them if you just need a little bit of extra damage to finish off a specific enemy or as a separate source of burst.

Adrenal

The Adrenal should always be paired with Explosive Fuel since they both last 15s, boosting your big burst window even more. It’s fine to delay the Adrenal until Explosive Fuel is available, but sometimes the boss will die before Explosive Fuel comes off cooldown.

If the Adrenal is available and you think the boss will die before Explosive Fuel comes off cooldown, you should use the Adrenal without Explosive Fuel so you don’t waste it. You can also fire Shoulder Cannons as they load during this time. You’ll see this happening on the dummy right now once you get the hang of the rotation.

Defensive Cooldowns and Mobility

Defensive cooldowns (DCDs) are not used just to stop you from getting killed, they’re there to minimize overall damage taken. For any Combat Style in any fight, your most effective DCDs should be mapped to the most damaging attacks in the fight while weaker DCDs should be used against weaker attacks. 

Don’t pop all of your DCDs at once or only use them when your health gets low. You should be attempting to mitigate as much damage as possible by using your DCDs against predictable damage.

In fights where you’ll be taking a high amount of sustained damage, it’s important to use your DCDs in the order that maximizes your overall uptime. If you can tweak the order that you use your DCDs where it allows you to get an extra use out of one of them over the course of a long burn phase, you should definitely do that instead of activating your potentially stronger DCDs first.

It’s good to have 1 emergency panic button too, but everything else should be used to prevent your health from getting low in the first place. Part of knowing a fight is understanding how much damage you take and what you can do to mitigate that damage.

Energy Shield

This is your most reliable defensive cooldown. It will mitigate all damage that can be mitigated because it provides flat damage reduction. Along with your armor and Insulated Mats passive, you will have 51.3% damage reduction against Kinetic / Energy damage and 40% damage reduction against Internal / Elemental damage while Energy Shield is active. 

Thanks in part due to its long duration, Energy Shield is best when trying to mitigate damage that you’re supposed to be taking, but you’re not going to be able to cheese anything with it. Energy Shield has 1 combat style passive associated with it:

Close and Personal
Increases the duration of Energy Shield by 3s. In addition, suffering direct AoE damage heals you for 2.5% of your max HP and vents 2 Heat. Cannot occur more than once every 3s.

An extra 3s may not seem like much, but that’s a 25% increase to the duration of the ability. It can make a considerable difference, particularly in burn phases and when you have to temporarily off-tank something. It’s a lot more common for boss attacks to be on 15s intervals instead of 12s too, so sometimes that extra 3s will enable Energy Shield to be active for the entire duration of a painful event or be active for 2 big hits (assuming you time it right).

The 2.5% heal and 2 Heat venting are pretty nice too. The heal helps to soften the blow from any AoE hit (that doesn’t kill you) while the 2 Heat venting makes resource management a fair bit easier. Keep an eye out for when your Heat is dissipating faster than usual for an extended period of time, especially if you’re taking damage so you can leverage it into additional Flame Bursts.

Kolto Overload

Kolto Overload’s greatest strength is in its ability to reliably keep you alive through constant damage, generally, the kind you’ll find in burn phases as well as damage that you know will be coming soon but don’t know exactly when. Very few other DCDs in the game can do this as well as Kolto Overload, though the ability isn’t without limitations.

Outside of Pyrotech, Kolto Overload is one of the worst DCDs in the game at helping you to mitigate big hits since it provides its mitigation through constant small heals, which requires you to take the damage and survive. Kolto Overload has 1 discipline passive associated with it:

Automated Defenses
While Kolto Overload is active, your DR is increased by 30%. In addition, the cooldown of Kolto Overload is reduced by 6s whenever you are attacked. Cannot occur more than once per second. PT defenses are set up where Pyro gets increased availability and more potent Kolto Overload while AP gets increased availability on Energy Shield along with additional survivability from activating Sonic Missile.

The boost to Kolto Overload from Automated Defenses is considerable because the DR seems to be granted preemptively if the hit would drop you below 35% HP, so you get the mitigation against the hit that triggers Kolto Overload.

While Kolto Overload + the 30% DR is active, you’re virtually unkillable except from huge hits where 30% DR is insufficient protection at ~35% HP; you’ll be able to live through just about any ticking damage in the game.

Keep in mind that while Kolto Overload will prevent you from dying, it’s not great to drop that low in the first place if something like Energy Shield or Thermal Yield is available to stop you from taking so much damage at all. Typically, Kolto Overload should be the first ability you use to protect yourself from dying (especially if you can trigger its cooldown reduction), but the last ability you use to keep DTPS low.

Thermal Yield

With 7.0, each combat style had 1 of its abilities changed to have a unique additional effect for each discipline. For Powertechs, that ability is Power Yield, and the Pyrotech version was renamed to Thermal Yield.

Thermal Yield incorporated part of the Combustion Chamber utility that allows the ability to last up to 30s and Pyrotech is now the only discipline that can have up to 30s of Power Yield, the other 2 only get the base 10s.

Thermal Yield also received a new effect in 7.0 where the Heat cost of Searing Wave and Immolate are each reduced by 5 per stack of Thermal Yield. It takes 4 stacks for Thermal Yield to make Searing Wave free and 3 stacks for Immolate.

Be sure to factor these reduced costs into your Heat management. There’s no point in using Vent Heat on Searing Wave if it’s free. Consider pairing it with Incendiary Missile or Rail Shot instead if your Heat is high.

At 5 stacks of Thermal Yield, you’ll have +200% armor and +10% damage dealt, and that 200% armor is equivalent to about 25% DR (so 5% DR per stack), but exclusively for Energy / Kinetic attacks. Remember, DoTs tend to deal Internal / Elemental damage, so while they may be great for letting you quickly build and maintain 5 stacks, Thermal Yield likely won’t mitigate any of the damage you take from most DoTs.

You don’t have to be as worried about DoT damage as Pyro either thanks to the Flame Suit discipline passive that makes you take 30% less periodic damage.

Since damage types aren’t always clear in PvE content, you’re better off relying on another DCD to mitigate damage from a specific attack unless you’re super confident that it will work. I recommend primarily using Thermal Yield to benefit from the damage boost, so use it when you think you’ll get a lot of stacks and think of the armor as more of a secondary benefit.

Sonic Missile

As a DPS, this is your threat drop. In PvE as Pyrotech, that’s all it does baseline, but it has 3 ability tree buffs and 1 discipline passive associated with it that require some explanation:

Sonic Rebounder
Sonic Missile grants Sonic Rebounder to all allies within 8m of the area of impact, excluding you. Sonic Rebounder absorbs and reflects the next single-target direct attack back at the attacker. Lasts up to 15s.

Sonic Rebounder almost exclusively gets used to cheese things, though it does require a bit of risky coordination to pull off because the juiciest things to reflect are typically attacks that you’re meant to avoid. Here is a list of the best attacks to use with Sonic Rebounder:

• Eternity Vault: n/a
• Karagga’s Palace: n/a
• Explosive Conflict:
  • Warlord Kephess: Pulsar Droids
• Terror From Beyond:
  • Dread Guards: Doom (spare cheese for other PTs / VGs, Operative / Scoundrel), Force Leech (cast only)
  • The TFB: Tentacle Slams (Phase 1 only)
• Scum and Villainy:
  • Thrasher: Snipers’ basic attacks
  • Oasis City: Terminate (bonus DCD to give to tanks)
  • Olok: Missile Blast (he typically does this right after exiting stealth)
  • Cartel Warlords: Various attacks throughout the fight, use on cooldown
  • Styrak: Suffering (large ghost during Chained Manifestation, let 1 tick go off, then interrupt), Force Lighting explosion (should activate right after Force Pull in case you get put into a Nightmare)
• Dread Fortress:
  • Nefra: Cleaves before or after Nightmare Twin Attack
  • Corruptor Zero: Missile Barrage, Anti-Gravity Field (only if someone gets stuck)
  • Brontes: Use on the final droid in Clock Phase right before the droid dies so the group has Rebounders against Fingers, though you’ll want to take Efficient Suit for that fight instead.
• Dread Palace:
  • Calphayus: Inevitability
  • Raptus: Force Execution (reflect lines, not circle)
  • Dread Council: Styrak’s Suffering channel, Burn Phase damage
• Ravagers: n/a
• Temple of Sacrifice:
  • Revanite Commanders: Lord Kurse’s Soaring Smash (purple circle)
  • Revan: Heave
• Gods of the Machine:
  • Nahut: Energized Slice (give to Tank as DCD)
• Dxun: n/a
• R-4 Anomaly:
  • IP-CPT: Refraction Array
  • Watchdog: Polarized Beam
  • Lord Kanoth: n/a
  • Lady Dominique: Devastation

If a boss isn’t listed, it means there isn’t a notable attack where the group can greatly benefit from Sonic Rebounders, though there might be some small benefit for individual players. Some of these attacks are not present in lower-difficulty modes, but that’s fine because SM groups typically aren’t coordinated enough to pull off such a thing anyway.

In order to use Sonic Rebounder to effectively cheese the attacks I listed, you need to make sure that everyone you plan to give rebounders stacks up on the target and then stands wherever they need to stand to get hit by the attack I mentioned above. Since you do not get rebounders yourself, you should not let yourself get hit by the attack in question.

Hitman
Activating Sonic Missile grants Hitman, which reduces the AoE damage you take by 60% for 15s. All danger circles are considered AoE damage, but the majority of boss attacks are considered AoE damage as well, even if they don’t look like it, so this is one of the most powerful DCDs in the game for boss fights. It’s far less useful in solo content and PvP where AoE damage is far less frequent.

If you have to stand in a circle or stand in front of the boss, preemptively pop Sonic Missile so you can mitigate the damage you might take from a cleave. Don’t forget that Sonic Missile requires a target to activate, though it doesn’t matter what you target because the buff gets applied to you.

Boiling Point
Activating Kolto Overload grants Boiling Point, which boosts and is consumed by your next activation of Thermal Yield or Sonic Missile. Boiling Point makes your next Thermal Yield able to gain an additional stack and return damage to attackers. Alternatively, Boiling Point makes your next Sonic Missile will heal all allies within 8m of the area of impact for ~5k and grant you 10% DR for 10s.

Thermal Yield is typically the superior option for Boiling Point, but the proc only lasts 30s and the boost to Sonic Missile is pretty decent as well, so don’t let the Boiling Point proc go to waste just because you won’t be able to use it with Thermal Yield.

Insulated Mats
The cooldown of Sonic Missile is reduced by 10s. This cooldown reduction was introduced a long time ago back before Pyro had all these busted effects linked to Sonic Missile.

 Medpac

Don’t save it for a rainy day because today is that rainy day! Unless you get hit by a one-shot mechanic (which you shouldn’t), you should never let yourself die while your Medpac is still available. 

If everyone’s health is getting low or there’s a heal check in the current phase, do not hesitate to use your Medpac if you can take full benefit of the health provided or need to be above a certain health level to survive an imminent mechanic.

If you think Medpacs are too expensive, it’s time to get Biochem on one of your alts or even better, your raiding toon so that you can make your own or get reusables. Choosing not to use a Medpac for financial reasons and subsequently dying is not a valid excuse.

 No Cleanse

I just wanted to point out that Powertechs are one of the two combat styles that do not have any sort of cleanse ability, the other is Sniper.

Jet Charge

This is your primary gap-closer ability. When you activate it, you immediately reach your target and deal slightly more damage than Rapid Shots, but less than Flame Burst. It also immobilizes and interrupts the target for 2s, just like Force Charge.

Likely in an effort to make Jet Charge more unique from Force Charge, it also comes with the old Battering Ram utility effect built-in that makes it so Jet Charge grants a proc called Battering Ram that lasts 6 seconds and increases your movement speed by 30% and enables Jet Charge to be activated again where it will deal 50% more damage but not trigger a root, interrupt, or Battering Ram again.

It’s unclear why BioWare couldn’t just give Jet Charge a second charge, boost its base damage dealt by 25%, and make each activation increase your movement speed by 30% for 6s instead of incorporating an antiquated, overcomplicated, confusing proc. Maybe it was easier to just copy the effect over that does roughly the same thing.

Hydraulic Overrides

This ability offers a movement speed boost as well as substantial CC immunity. It has both the Overdrive and Torque Boosters utilities built-in so it lasts 10s and increases your movement speed by 75% instead of 30% like it does for Mercenaries. It also has the 10s cooldown reduction that was previously part of the Iron Will utility.

The only types of CC you’ll be vulnerable to while the ability is active are hard stuns and mezzes, so you can use Hydraulic Overrides to ignore knockback mechanics, slows, and roots. If one of those has the potential to make you lose DPS, make sure to pop Hydraulic Overrides.

The movement speed boost is also quite powerful, one of the best in the game, but Jet Charge usually gets the job done while Hydraulic Overrides can be used for CC immunity, so try to only use it for mobility if Jet Charge is unavailable or otherwise unsuitable and save Hydraulics as a back-up.

Crowd Control and Other Abilities

There are only a handful of instances in operations where CC is required, so I will briefly go over what this combat style has at its disposal in addition to any other abilities I haven’t yet mentioned. 

Advanced Terminator Droid

Advanced Terminator Droid replaced Stealth Scan with the release of 7.3, it is a redesign that keeps the core functionality of revealing stealthed enemies intact while increasing the overall usability of the GCD. The old PT pred effect has been removed from the game and has been replaced with an effect that reduces an enemy’s accuracy by 20% and their movement speed by 30% for as long as they remain in the area of effect. The droid remains active for 15s and has a 20s cooldown.

While it is intended for use in PvP, it does still work on non-Champion adds in Operations. Against ticking damage, particularly from the basic attacks that adds tend to spam most of the time, the 20% accuracy reduction is effectively a 20% reduction in damage dealt to the entire group.

Advanced Terminator Droid’s high uptime (75%) enables it to migitate significantly more damage than abilities with similar effects like Diversion or Oil Slick / Riot Gas, which have 13.3% and 16.6% uptime respectively.

The fact that it costs a GCD to use Advanced Terminator Droid is irrelevant. In add-heavy fights, DPS checks tend to not matter nearly as much and there are typically more periods of downtime in between wave spawns than your average fight, so you can throw it out when there isn’t anything to hit.

As a Powertech, you can also just use Advanced Terminator Droid instead of Rapid Shots, since they both cost no Heat and the latter deals basically no damage anyway. Furthermore, your healers can easily make up the lost GCDs with their own off-DPS, which they will be able to do since any semblance of a heal check is eliminated.

Carbonize

Carbonize is the only AoE hard stun in the game. Since it stuns multiple targets, it only lasts 2.5s instead of 4, but it’s still frequently useful against adds that tend to be immune to mezzes, interrupts, and/or knockbacks, but not stuns. The most common examples are when adds have either the Alertness (mez immunity) or Steadfast (physics immunity) buffs instead of Boss Immunity (full CC immunity).

Don’t forget that Carbonize does cost a GCD, so only use it if you will mitigate a lot of damage, interrupt an important cast, want to stop the adds from moving for a moment to line something up, or can’t DPS anyway.

Electro Dart

This is your hard stun, meaning it does not break on damage. In PvE, this will generally only be used for specific mechanics since most things you’d care about stunning are immune. Be sure to pay attention when something is stunnable though because that often means you’re intended to stun it.

Since you have to give up one of the best movement abilities in the game to take it but still have access to Carbonize, you won’t be using Electro Dart much at all.

Quell

This is your interrupt. Normally, it has a 12s cooldown, which matches the Warrior / Knight interrupt as the shortest cooldown in the game, and the Hitman ability tree buff that you’ll usually take will bring it down even further to 10s! With such a short cooldown, you are capable of handling some interrupt mechanics completely on your own or are capable of sharing it with only a single other player instead of multiple.

Determination

This is your CC break, use it when you are prevented from DPSing because you are CC’d.  

Grapple

This is your pull. Pulls in general are pretty uncommon and Assassin / Shadow tanks are the only other discipline in the game that has access to one that can pull enemies. It’s typically only useful for positioning specific adds since most enemies in Operations are immune to CC in general.

The most notable place where you should know how to use it is during Dread Master Brontes’ burn phase where you can pull Energy Spheres into the shield so they detonate while everyone is immune to their damage.

Neural Dart

This is your Taunt. It forces your target to attack you for 6 seconds and puts you at the top of the threat table. Only use this if a tank or raid lead specifically tells you to use it or if the boss is running rampant because one or both of the tanks are dead. Make sure that you have a DCD ready or there isn’t too much of a point to Taunting as you’ll probably get killed pretty quickly. If you’re going to use Sonic Missile, make sure you activate it right before you Taunt so you don’t accidentally lose aggro after 6 seconds. 

If one tank dies in a fight with a tank swap mechanic, a common strategy is to have a DPS Taunt and hold aggro only for enough time to get the stacks or get hit by the attack that forces the tanks to actually swap and then have the actual tank take the boss back immediately after. This isn’t always possible, but it’s important to be aware of. 

Ability Tree Choices

Make a habit of reading through all of your ability tree choices each time you log in. They are intended to be changed on the fly and having a clearer idea of what all of them do will help you to recognize situations where individual choices will be useful in-game.

Flaming Fist Buffs – Level 23 Choice

Primed Ignition

• Effect: Flaming Fist leaves traces of Ignition Fuel on the target, causing your next Immolate or Flame Burst to deal 30% more damage. This effect can only occur once every 30 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this in PvE. The DPS increase is definitely more immediate and bursty, which is helpful in PvP, but the other options will always perform better in PvE content.

Open Flame

• Effect: Flaming Fist deals damage to up to 4 enemies within 5m of the primary target.
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content and in fights that lack a primary target. Most trash mobs tend to be 3-4 targets, so Flaming Fist should hit the entire group if they’re relatively close to each other. This option doesn’t offer any sort of single-target DPS increase though, so it’s not as well-suited to boss fights where you almost always have a boss to focus your DPS on.

Heatstroke

• Effect: Dealing damage with Flaming Fist builds a stack of Heatstroke, increasing the damage dealt by your Combustible Gas Cylinder by 25%. Stacks up to 4 times and lasts up to 30s.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this for Operations. The DPS increase is considerable and applies in both single-target and AoE situations since Flame Sweep can apply Combustible Gas Cylinder to multiple targets, though it’s less powerful in pure AoE situations than Open Flame and takes much longer to ramp up. Due to both of these factors, Flaming Fist typically has the highest priority as a filler and should be the first ability you use each time you arrive at a new target or come back from downtime.

Gap Closing – Level 27 Choice

Heat Chain

• Effect: Grapple applies Heat Chain to the target, which slows the target and a minuscule amount of Elemental damage over 6s.
• Recommendation: Never take this. The DoT is really small and you’re already rooting them for half the duration of the slow, so an extra 3s of slow isn’t worth it, especially next to the other options.

Manhunter

• Effect: Grapple gets 2 charges and activating Grapple finishes the cooldown on Flaming Fist.
• Recommendation: Never take this in PvE. This is technically the more useful Grapple buff out of the options here, but Jet Charge is far more useful in all PvE content.

Jet Charge

• Effect: Grants the Jet Charge ability, which deals a small amount of kinetic damage, interrupts the target and immobilizes them for 2 seconds. Cannot be used against targets in cover. Using Jet Charge grants Battering Ram, which enables Jet Charge to be used again and increases your movement speed by 30% for 6 seconds. Battering Ram causes Jet Charge to deal 50% more damage but does not cause an additional interrupt or immobilization. This effect cannot occur more than once every 15 seconds.
• Recommendation: Always take this in PvE. Even without all the bells and whistles, Jet Charge offers the greatest mobility increase because Grapple’s cooldown is just too long. In Operations, most enemies are immune to Grapple anyway, so this is the only viable option.

Incendiary Missile Buffs – Level 39 Choice

Mandalorian Warhead

• Effect: Replaces Incendiary Missile with an ability that deals the same amount of damage as Incendiary Missile, but all of the damage is dealt up front as direct damage. In addition, Mandalorian Warhead provides the Internal/Elemental debuff. 15s cooldown, costs 15 Heat.
• Recommendation: Never take this in PvE. You’re forced to give up far too much DPS and your capability to DoT spread just for the Internal/Elemental debuff and a little bit of extra burst. To be clear, the DPS increase from the Internal/Elemental debuff is significantly less than the DPS you’d lose from not taking Primed Rail Shot. If Mandalorian Warhead just weakened the Incendiary Missile DoT by 75%, instead of eliminating it completely, it would be a far more enticing choice, though even then Primed Rail Shot would offer a bit more single-target DPS.

Primed Rail Shot

• Effect: When you deal damage with Incendiary Missile, your next Rail Shot applies Burning Shot, which is a 12s DoT that deals roughly the same damage as Rail Shot’s initial autocrit hit. Can only occur once every 10s.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this in group content. The DoT from Primed Rail Shot is extremely beefy; it’s stronger than the DoT from Incendiary Missile while dealing that damage over a shorter duration.

Whistling Birds

• Effect: Incendiary Missile deals a puny amount of damage to up to 4 targets and applies a detonator to each target it hits. When targets are hit by your Searing Wave, each detonator explodes, dealing a small amount of damage to its target.
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content only. It takes 5 targets for the damage from Whistling Birds to surpass the damage dealt by the Primed Rail Shot DoT, but Whistling Birds can only make Incendiary Missile apply the effect 4 times. It’s still fine if you want to spread that damage to multiple targets, especially if the targets will die before the DoT from Primed Rail Shot would finish ticking, but you’ll never turn a profit in group content.

Boiling Point, Chilled Retribution, and Stealth Scan – Level 43 Choice

Boiling Point

• Effect: When activating Kolto Overload, you gain Boiling Point for 30s, which makes your next Thermal Yield able to gain an additional stack and return damage to attackers or your next Sonic Missile to heal allies and grant you 10% damage reduction for 10s.
• Recommendation: Take this in fights without dangerous adds. Both effects are consistently useful, though you can only choose 1 per activation of Kolto Overload. The way I see it, the proc is best used with Thermal Yield and you should only use it on Sonic Missile if Thermal Yield won’t be available in the next 30s. The additional damage boosts provided by buffing Thermal Yield are fairly small, but that extra 40% armor is often the difference between needing to pop an additional DCD or not. There’s nothing wrong with using Boiling Point in solo content either, but I think Chilled Retribution will be more useful outside of group content.

Chilled Retribution

• Effect: When Energy Shield is activated, you gain Chilled Retribution, which increases your movement speed by 25% and provides immunity to incapacitating effects for 6 seconds. In addition, when taking direct damage, the cooldown on Carbonize is reduced by 2 seconds. This can only occur once every 3 seconds. 
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content and in specific fights where you want to use Carbonize more often than its cooldown allows. In solo content, the CC immunity is especially useful for dailies when you know you’re about to fight an enemy that will stun you. The Carbonize cooldown reduction is more valuable in group content, but don’t take it unless you can identify a consistent spot where you’d like to Carbonize but can’t because it’s still on cooldown.

Advanced Terminator Droid

• Effect: Grants the ability Advanced Terminator Droid, which fires off a series of Terminator Droids to scan the area for 15s, revealing stealthed opponents and immobilizing them for 3s. In addition, all enemies inside the field have their accuracy reduced by 20% and are slowed by 30%. 20s cooldown.
• Recommendation: Take this in fights with dangerous adds. It doesn’t work on Operation bosses, but it does work against non-Champion adds, which can make fights a bit easier, especially those with frequent ticks of damage or heal checks. Its short cooldown and long duration result in a ridiculously high potential uptime (75%) that effectively eliminates any heal check that is present. Even though it costs a GCD, it is by far the strongest ability in this tier, if it will be useful.

Pyro Shield, Gyroscopic Alignment Jets, and Iron Will – Level 51 Choice

Pyro Shield

• Effect: Energy Shield deals a minuscule amount of elemental damage to attackers when they deal direct damage to you. Cannot occur more than once per second.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. Pyro Shield is almost always gonna do something, but you need to be getting hit constantly while it’s active in order for it to do anything significant, and even then, an extra 80-90k damage max every 2 mins is pretty negligible. It’s more valuable in solo content because you will be getting hit consistently by trash and that damage is concentrated into 15s.

Gyroscopic Alignment Jets

• Effect: You vent 20 Heat when stunned, immobilized, knocked down, or otherwise incapacitated. Additionally, your next Tech ability deals 10% additional damage.
• Recommendation: Take this whenever you can benefit from it. The effect is strong, but only some fights have mechanics that can trigger it. You also need to leverage this extra Heat into additional Flame Bursts in order to actually get much of a DPS increase, so if you aren’t gonna bother with that, there’s no point in taking it.

Iron Will

• Effect: Reduces the cooldown of Determination by 30 seconds and Vent Heat by 15 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this in PvE. In Pyro, the cooldown of Vent Heat already matches the cooldown of Explosive Fuel, so it’s already available as often as you need it to be. As for the cooldown reduction on your CC break, it’s extremely rare for a fight to require you to use your CC break on cooldown. The only 2 fights I can think of where you might be able to benefit from this are HM Torque and HM Monolith, but you’d probably want to take Gyroscopic Alignment Jets instead.

Reflective Armor, Hitman, and Suppressive Tools – Level 64 Choice

Reflective Armor

• Effect: When Close and Personal is triggered, it will also deal a minuscule amount of Elemental damage to the attacker if the attacker is within 10m.
• Recommendation: Take this for solo content and in specific fights only. The DPS definitely adds up quickly, but the extra survivability provided by Hitman is typically more valuable. Only take this if you already have DCDs to spare for the fight and there’s lots of AoE damage going out.

Hitman

• Effect: Reduces the cooldown of Quell by 2 seconds. In addition, activating Sonic Missile grants Hitman, which reduces your AoE damage taken by 60% for 15s.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this in PvE group content. The vast majority of damage dealt by bosses is considered AoE damage, even if it doesn’t look like it, so in group content, this is roughly equivalent to 60% RDT (reduced damage taken). Make sure Hitman is active whenever you anticipate that you’ll be hit directly by the boss, typically whenever the boss is facing you (or if you’re standing in front of the boss). 

Suppressive Tools

• Effect: Flame Burst and Flame Sweep reduce the movement speed of affected targets by 25% for 3s. In addition, Neural Dart slows the target by 50% for 6 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this in PvE. Slows just aren’t necessary for PvE content and in group content, most enemies are immune to them anyway.

Shield Cannon, Hydraulic Overrides, and Electro Dart – Level 68 Choice  

Shield Cannon

• Effect: Damaging a target with your Shoulder Cannon missiles heals you for 3% of your total health.
• Recommendation: Never take this in PvE. Shield Cannon isn’t terrible, thanks to the Mandalorian Armaments legendary implant, you’ll heal for 30% of your HP with each use of Shoulder Cannon + Autocannon, but it’s not good enough next to Hydraulic Overrides and Electro Dart.

Hydraulic Overrides

• Effect: Grants the Hydraulic Overrides ability, which increases your movement speed by 75% and provides immunity from immunity movement-impairing effects, knockdowns, and physics for 10 seconds. 35s cooldown.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. Since all of the PT utility effects were combined into the base ability, Hydraulic Overrides has become one of the best movement abilities in the game. It lasts a long time, has a relatively short cooldown, offers a strong movement speed boost, and provides partial CC immunity.

Electro Dart

• Effect: Grants the Electro Dart ability, which stuns the target for 4 seconds and deals a small amount of damage. 60s cooldown, 10m range, and costs 5 Heat.
• Recommendation: Only take this if it’s absolutely necessary. Hydraulic Overrides is usually not essential thanks to Jet Charge, but it’s still one of the best movement abilities in the game, so you should only give it up and take Electro Dart if Carbonize (with Chilled Retribution and Enhanced Paralytics) is insufficient.

Enhanced Paralytics, Sonic Rebounder, and Efficient Suit – Level 73 Choice

Enhanced Paralytics

• Effect: Increases the stun durations of Carbonize by 0.5 seconds and Electro Dart by 1 second.
• Recommendation: Consider taking this anytime you find yourself using Carbonize. Usually, whenever you want to stun something, it’s better for it to be stunned longer, so if you find yourself needing to use Carbonize (or Electro Dart), there’s a good chance Enhanced Paralytics will help. Typically, Sonic Rebounder is not as useful in fights with a lot of adds while Carbonize is basically only useful when adds are present, so there aren’t many fights where you’ll have to give up a lot to take Enhanced Paralytics.

Sonic Rebounder

• Effect: Sonic Missile grants Sonic Rebounder to all friendly targets within 8m of the primary target, excluding you, which reflects the next direct, single-target attack back at the attacker. Lasts up to 15 seconds.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this in group content. Since it doesn’t affect you, Sonic Rebounder is pretty useless in solo content, but in group content, it’s an arguably overpowered piece of raid utility that can enable you to cheese a bunch of different mechanics and help mitigate and deal a fair bit of damage. Refer to the section on Sonic Missile for more information on how to make the most of Sonic Rebounder.

Efficient Suit

• Effect: Allows Kolto Overload to be activated while stunned and causes Kolto Overload to purge stun effects when activated. In addition, the range of Grapple and Shoulder Cannon are increased by 10m, and Carbonize and Electro Dart no longer generate Heat.
• Recommendation: Take this for solo content and specific fights only. The 10m range increase on Grapple and extra CC break are super nice in solo content, but rarely useful in boss fights since most enemies are immune to pulls and it’s typically not worth activating Kolto Overload just to break out of a stun. The extra range on Grapple is required to pull Energy Spheres into the Hands’ shields on Brontes though, and the extra CC break is nice to have for Torque.

Gearing and Stats Priorities

Tactical Items

Superheated Fuel

Effect: Explosive Fuel increases the critical chance and critical multiplier of all elemental damage by 25%.

Recommendation: Take this whenever burst is required. The burst DPS increase is so substantial that even though Explosive Fuel is only available every 2 mins, it’s still enough to be unusually competitive in terms of sustained DPS, assuming you’re actually using Explosive Fuel on cooldown. As of 7.4, it has been dethroned as Pyro’s sustained DPS king, and it’s now only the superior option if burst is required or sustained DPS only matters in specific phases. Since all of your AoE abilities are flame attacks, Superheated Fuel can be optimal in AoE situations if the adds are only present for specific phases. The alternative AoE tactical, Explosive Weaponry, is inferior because it’s also dependent on Explosive Fuel being active.

Flame Dissipation

Effect: Reaching or refreshing 2 stacks of Superheated Flamethrower grants Flame Dissipation, which lowers the cost of Searing Wave by 3. Stacks up to 5 times (-15 total). Activating Searing Wave while you have 5 stacks of Flame Dissipation consumes all 5 stacks and grants another effect, also called Flame Dissipation, that increases your elemental damage dealt by 10% for 20s. Note: This description has been heavily reworded for the sake of clarity.

Recommendation: Take this whenever there are no burst checks. Flame Dissipation is confusingly worded, has an arbitrarily complex effect, AND is buggy. Isn’t that a great combo for the tactical that now offers the highest potential sustained DPS? The good folks at Broadsword thought so too! In all seriousness, Flame Dissipation can offer ~600 more sustained DPS than Superheated Fuel, but it’s harder to use, and its burst potential is more limited. Make sure that you’re actually pulling higher numbers with this on a dummy before you bring it into a raid.

In our Catalog of all Tacticals in SWTOR you will find information about all other Tacticals that we didn’t list in this guide. You may find something adequate that is also cheaper and easier to obtain for your needs while you work on getting the recommended one for your combat style and build.

Legendary Implants

BioWare has removed set bonuses from the game and replaced them with Legendary Implants, which are just implants with old 4 or 6-piece set bonus effects on them, so rather than needing to collect 4 pieces of a gear set to get the 4-piece set bonus, or 6 pieces for the 6-piece, you’ll get either a 4 or 6-piece set bonus effect on an implant. 

This was done to improve customization (now you can mix and match set bonus effects), make them easier to obtain, and consume less inventory space. Here are the Legendary Implants you should use as a Pyrotech Powertech:

• Shock Trooper – The Heat cost of Flaming Fist is reduced by 4. In addition, activating Flaming Fist increases your damage dealt by 10% for 15s. Cannot occur more than once every 30s.
• Mandalorian Armaments – When Shoulder Cannon is put on cooldown, it applies Autocannon to you for 60s, automatically firing a Shoulder Cannon missile at your current target whenever you deal direct damage. This additional missile can fire once every 10s.

Shock Trooper is easily one of the strongest Legendary Implants in the game, and it’s pretty essential to the rotation because of the Heat cost reduction to Flaming Fist. Definitely buy that one first.

In contrast, Mandalorian Armaments should be your second implant because it is one of the weakest implants in the game. It is better than Veteran Ranger because you’ll get 6 Shoulder Cannon missiles instead of 2 (on average). Amazingly, Mandalorian Armaments also manages to be barely superior to the Stimulated and Entertainer generic Legendary Implants.

You can learn more from the dedicated Guide to Legendary Items in SWTOR 7.0. It also offers a full list of all currently available Legendary Implants in the game.

Stat Priority

As a DPS, you’ll need to care about 3 different stats: Accuracy, Alacrity, and Critical Rating. There are thresholds associated with Accuracy and Alacrity, so you need to prioritize reaching those thresholds to get the full benefit from each stat point.

1. Accuracy to 110.00% – Before investing in any other stats, make sure you hit 110% Accuracy because attacks that miss deal 0 damage, and no other stats matter if the attack doesn’t land. Furthermore, many procs require you to actually deal damage, not just activate the ability, so you can mess up your rotation if an attack misses. You need 110% Accuracy in PvE and not just 100% because bosses have a 10% chance to dodge/resist player attacks, and any percentage over 100% reduces this chance. Anything over 110% is not helpful in PvE, so you do want to go over 110%, but with as little excess as possible.
2. Alacrity to ~7.5% – Once your Accuracy is above 110.00%, it’s time to think about Alacrity. It has the second-highest priority because you do not get the full benefit of the stat unless you surpass one of the GCD thresholds. It’s less important than Accuracy because your attacks still need to hit. You need 7.15% Alacrity to get from the 1.5s GCD to the 1.4s GCDs. However, as you approach 7.15%, you actually start getting a mix of 1.4s and 1.5s GCD, resulting in an experience that feels clunky and inconsistent. You need roughly 0.4-0.5% more Alacrity past the exact threshold to effectively eliminate those 1.5s GCDs.
3. Critical gets the rest – After you’ve got your thresholded stats sorted out, you can start investing in crit. To be clear, Critical Rating is still valuable; it just has the lowest priority because it does not have a threshold associated with it that you need to meet to get the most out of each point of stat as the other tertiary stats you care about do. Critical Rating increases both your Critical Chance and Critical Damage. If you have a single effect that increases your Critical Chance by 100% all on its own (it can’t be from multiple effects combined), all of the Critical Chance percentage for that attack gets added to your Critical Damage percentage, causing the attack to deal supercritical damage.

Find out which mods to purchase from Hyde and Zeek in SWTOR on the Fleet to minimize spending and optimize your build. The dedicated guide contains tips for all roles in both PvE and PvP.

Augments

Augments allow you to put additional stats on every piece of gear except tactical items. Since Augments allow you to put additional stats on every piece of gear except tactical items. Since the stats come in much smaller amounts, augments allow you to fine-tune your gear to provide almost as much of each total stat as you want.

To equip an augment, you must first use an Augmentation Kit that matches the crafting grade of the augment (ex. Grade 11 augments require MK-11 Kits).

The 296, 302, 310, and 318 iRating augments released with 7.6 and 7.7 are BiS. The higher the iRating, the more stats they offer and the more expensive they are to make or buy, though most of the benefit is provided by having augments at all, and the base-rarity blue 296 augments are the cheapest.

Almost everyone should buy the blue 296 augments because they provide the greatest bang for the buck, but you do have multiple options:

• Gold 318 augments (Superior [Type] Augment 86). These are overall best-in-slot (BiS) and offer ~25% more stat than gold 300 augments, which is roughly equivalent to 4 additional gold augments. They’re extremely expensive and completely unnecessary for all content in the game, so I only recommend them to the wealthiest individuals. 
• Purple 310 augments (Advanced [Type] Augment 86). They offer ~13% more stat than gold 300 augments, which is roughly equivalent to 2 additional gold 300 augments worth of stat. They are cheaper than the gold 318s, but they’re in the same price bracket in terms of affordability, so there’s no reason for anyone to use them at this point.
• Blue 302 augments ([Type] Augment 76) are the mid-tier augments. For all intents and purposes, these are equivalent to the gold 300 augments from 6.0. I only recommend them if you’re close to a stat threshold or don’t already have gold 300 augments and want something a bit better than the blue 296s.
• Blue 296 augments ([Type] Augment 83) are the most basic tier of augments for level 80 players. They are pretty cheap as only the schematic comes from the associated lair boss, Propagator Core XR-53. You don’t need any Corrupted Bioprocessors to craft these augments.

Check out our 7.7 Augments Guide for everything you need to know about augmenting gear!

Earpiece

Which Earpiece you use will depend on what specific tertiary stats the rest of your gear and augments provide. Typically, you’ll need to use either an Accuracy (Initiative, yellow icon) or Alacrity (Quick Savant / Nimble, green icon) Earpiece.

Crystals

Advanced Eviscerating Crystals are the best. They are the only type of crystal that increases one of your tertiary stats. Since the stat pool for tertiary stats is much smaller than that of primary or secondary stats, adding 41 is a more significant upgrade than it would be if you were to add 41 to one of the primary or secondary stats (mastery, power, or endurance).

Relics

I recommend the Relic of Focused Retribution (FR) and Relic of Serendipitous Assault (SA) for all PvE content. Each relic offers a proc; FR’s proc boosts your Mastery, whereas SA’s proc increases your Power stats. If you have the choice, purchase the Relic of Focused Retribution first because in equal amounts, and only in equal amounts, Mastery offers more of a DPS gain than Power.

Biochem Items

I recommend the Advanced Kyrprax Proficient Stim, Advanced Kyrprax Medpac, and Advanced Kyrprax Attack Adrenal for all PvE content. Grade 11 Biochem items from the crafting tier released with 6.0 remain BiS. Since they haven’t been updated to level 80, their effects are weaker than they should be, though they can still have an impact.

You should use the Proficient Stim as a DPS because it provides 2 tertiary stats that you need, Accuracy and Critical Rating, and tertiary stats are harder to come by and what you build your gear around. You should use the Attack Adrenal because it provides Power, which typically provides the greatest DPS increase, though it’s also more consistent, which is what you need for DPS checks.

Regarding the Zeal Guild Perk Alacrity Boost

If your guild uses the Zeal (cyan) guild perk set bonus, which gives a passive +5% Alacrity boost, you won’t need nearly as much Alacrity stat to reach your desired Alacrity threshold. My recommendations do not factor in these boosts, so if you have one, you’ll need to pay attention to percentage thresholds rather than the stat amounts. Just keep adding one augment at a time until you reach the desired percentage.

Guild leaders, I recommend using the Fortune (yellow) guild perk set bonus instead. It grants +5% Critical Chance and also boosts the Critical Rate and Time Efficiency of all Crew Skills by 2%. The reason for this is that you don’t have to change the way you gear in order to benefit from the effect.

Neither effect works in MM raids or PvP, so if you or your guild members do either of those activities, you’ll need to tweak your gear to reach the desired threshold depending on the activity, which I find super tedious. Even if your guild doesn’t do those activities, leaders still need to actively maintain the set bonus because your gear will become suboptimal on top of losing the bonus, whereas it’s not a big deal if your crit is a little lower for a bit.

The Alacrity boost is much stronger than the Critical Chance boost. Still, PvE content isn’t balanced around these guild perk set bonuses anyway, so I find it better to have a smaller boost I don’t have to worry about than a larger boost I have to manage.

Best Pyrotech Powertech Builds in 7.0

These are the builds that I recommend for different types of content and situations. The Build Essentials are what I consider to be the core components that make the build viable. Without them, the build no longer accomplishes its primary function. Build Essentials can include important ability tree buffs, a tactical item, and even legendary items occasionally.

The ability tree buffs that aren’t listed as Build Essentials can be changed as needed without compromising the integrity of the build, though I have included a full set of default choices that will be most consistently helpful in accomplishing what the build sets out to do.

Group Content

Many of the ability tree buffs in this build are almost exclusively valuable in situations where you’ll be in combat for an extended period of time, namely bosses, because the damage output that these options yield takes time to build up. They don’t offer a valuable amount of damage in the short term.

You’ll almost always want to take Boiling Point, Sonic Rebounder, Hitman, Pyro Shield, and Hydraulic Overrides, but those options aren’t optimal or essential in all boss fights. I opted to distinguish Hitman as a Build Essential because it offers a massive boost to your survivability. However, if DTPS is low and your other DCDs are wholly sufficient, feel free to swap it out for Reflective Armor for a small DPS increase.

Solo Content

The Solo Content build uses ability tree buffs that don’t offer viable sustained DPS over the long term in favor of concentrating that damage into valuable immediate bursts to multiple targets. Since most enemies you’ll be encountering are vulnerable to CC, it’s also worthwhile to take the options that enhance such capabilities.

Make sure to focus on the enemy with the most HP in the group and let your built-in AoE and CC take care of the fodder below your pay grade. Save Explosive Fuel and Shoulder Cannons for particularly challenging foes like Elites and Champions.

Openers, Rotations, Priorities

Opener

The opener is the rotation you use at the very beginning of the fight and for burst DPS checks. It’s important to get as much damage as possible while all of your damage boosts are available to maximize their impact.

1. Shoulder Cannon (pre-cast to load missiles)
2. Flame Sweep (spam while out of combat for procs)
3. Jet Charge (optional)
4. Scorch
5. Flaming Fist
6. Incendiary Missile
7. Flame Burst
8. Thermal Yield (if possible)
9. Explosive Fuel + Adrenal
10. (begin firing Shoulder Cannons)
11. Searing Wave
12. Flame Burst
13. Immolate
14. Flaming Fist
15. Rail Shot
16. Flame Burst (free with Flame Barrage)
17. Flame Burst
18. Flame Burst
19. Incendiary Missile
20. Flame Burst
21. (finish firing Shoulder Cannons)
22. Searing Wave
23. Flaming Fist
24. Immolate
25. Flame Burst (free with Flame Barrage)
26. Rail Shot
27. Rapid Shots
28. Scorch
29. Rotation

I know you’re probably thinking, “Wow, that’s super long!” but don’t panic. The region demarcated by firing Shoulder Cannons is the actual portion where the burst is, and it’s just 10-11 GCDs, the length of Explosive Fuel.

The opener does have a significantly higher APM requirement, but you don’t have to worry about managing Heat at all while Explosive Fuel is active, so there’s not as much thinking required. Instead of incorporating Rapid Shots to manage Heat, you’ll just use Flame Burst (or Deadly Onslaught and Flame Burst if AoE is required).

You’ll rely on Vent Heat to compensate for the additional Heat you spent using Flame Burst instead of Rapid Shots during Explosive Fuel by activating it right before an ability that costs 15+ Heat once you reach approximately 70+ Heat.

With Superheated Fuel, you’ll typically want to use Vent Heat right before your next Searing Wave. With Flame Dissipation, you can wait a bit longer, often until your next Rail Shot or Heat-generating Flame Burst. You will not need to use Vent Heat if Thermal Yield is active with multiple stacks.

Advanced Modifications to the Opener

Many players prefer to make 2 modifications to this opener in order to optimize for single-target DPS. The relative order of your important abilities for the entire rotation then becomes Incendiary Missile ▶ Rail Shot ▶ Searing Wave ▶ [ Explosive Fuel, etc.] ▶ Immolate. I don’t think it’s worth the effort and will explain why.

Explosive Fuel Before Immolate

Activate Explosive Fuel + Adrenal and subsequently begin firing Shoulder Cannons immediately before using Immolate instead of Searing Wave.

Since your strongest direct attacks have 15s cooldowns pre-Alacrtity and Explosive Fuel lasts 15s post-Alacrity, you can barely fit an additional activation of 1 of those attacks inside your Explosive Fuel window as the very first and very last ability in the window. Immolate is the most damaging single-target attack of the bunch.

With Superheated Fuel, Immolate is guaranteed to critically hit (not supercrit) during Explosive Fuel because your critical chance with all elemental attacks is 90%. Still, Immolate gets a +10% chance to critically hit as part of the Burnout discipline passive, so it will always benefit from the +10% critical damage provided by Charged Gauntlet, unlike Searing Wave and others, which have a chance not to.

Both of these points are moot whenever you can hit a second target with Searing Wave because the overall gains are small and not even guaranteed. In order to get that 11th ability off during Explosive Fuel, your APM needs to be Mary Poppins-level, that is, practically perfect in every way.

Given that it’s already spiking significantly with Shoulder Cannons, and there’s a decent chance you need to use other off-GCD abilities like taunting or DCDs, I don’t think it’s realistic to rely on getting a second Immolate inside of Fuel. Furthermore, if such a small amount of DPS matters, even during a burst check, either your group or the fight has far bigger problems on their hands that you’re attempting to compensate for.

I think it makes more sense to just always use Explosive Fuel before Searing Wave where it will have a more consequential impact and focus your attention on matters that will have a greater impact on success.

Rail Shot Before Explosive Fuel

Shift Rail Shot ▶ Flame Burst to immediately follow Incendiary Missile ▶ Flame Burst.

This enables the Primed Rail Shot DoT to be already active on the target when Explosive Fuel is active, thereby allowing you to get several extra ticks during the very first Explosive Fuel window and application of Rail Shot against that target.

I expect you can already see the cracks starting to form. The Rail Shot DoT itself lasts 12s, so this only makes a difference in the very first rotation cycle against that target, but they require you to separate Incendiary Missile’s duration from the activation of Searing Wave, making DoT spreading less reliable, especially if there’s downtime.

You can fix this by also moving Searing Wave and its Flame Burst to be before Rail Shot, but that is ridiculously suboptimal for DoT spreading since Incendiary Missile also needs to tick before Rail Shot is activated, or it doesn’t apply the DoT at all.

The Shock Trooper proc from Flaming Fist can also become desynchronized from Explosive Fuel at the beginning of the fight because you have an incentive to use it as your first filler ability. Otherwise, you’d need to delay it for almost a full cooldown’s worth.

Finally, these extra DoT ticks account for a tiny amount of damage dealt while Explosive Fuel is active and a completely negligible amount of sustained DPS over the course of the whole fight. Just like with Immolate, these extra ticks don’t consistently offer a relevant DPS increase and come at the cost of more significant downsides.

Hybrid Rotation and Priority

Pyrotech can make use of a hybrid structure that is somewhere in between a rotation and a priority system. You’ll be alternating between using a powerful ability that has a long cooldown and a filler ability from a priority list. It’s effectively just a more complicated version of the single-target Vengeance Juggernaut / Vigilance Guardian rotation.

Rotation Component

The rotation component provides the overall structure of each cycle. Each of the non-filler abilities deals a considerable amount of damage and, with the exception of Scorch, has an effective 15s cooldown. This structure makes it as easy as possible to manage your Heat and not lose your place in the rotation. It also allows you to use all of your abilities on cooldown, assuming you have 100% uptime.

1. Scorch (primary target only) OR Filler
2. Filler
3. Incendiary Missile
4. Filler
5. Searing Wave (should have Superheated Flamethrower x2)
6. Filler
7. Immolate (should have Consuming Flames)
8. Filler
9. Rail Shot (should have Charged Gauntlets + Primed Rail Shot)
10. Filler
11. Repeat

The core proc dependencies make it most forgiving and reliable to do Incendiary Missile (gets spread by) ▶ Searing Wave (procs Immolate) ▶ Immolate in that order in relation to each other. Technically, Rail Shot and Scorch are a bit more flexible, but inserting them elsewhere requires you to pay more attention to your rotation so you can make on-the-fly fixes as needed.

Putting Rail Shot at the end will maximize the chance that you’ll have used Flaming Fist beforehand and guarantee that Incendiary Missile will have ticked recently so that you don’t have to check if you’ve done either.

Putting Scorch at the beginning/end gives a clearer gap as something that’s outside of that core quartet of heavy hitters. You’ll feel it whenever it’s skipped and be prompted to check if it’s active on the current target. You also have some wiggle room to treat it as a filler for a cycle without delaying another strong ability.

Filler Slot Priority Component

This is the priority system you’ll use when deciding which ability to use in the Filler slots, as outlined above.

1. Flaming Fist
2. Flame Burst OR Flame Sweep (only with Flame Barrage)
3. Rapid Shots (only if the following attack would put you over 40 Heat)
4. Scorch (only to secondary targets)
5. Deadly Onslaught (only if you’ll hit at least 2 targets)
6. Incendiary Missile (only to secondary targets)
7. Flame Sweep (only if you’ll hit at least 3 targets)
8. Flame Burst

The vast majority of the time, you’ll be using either Flaming Fist, Flame Burst, or Rapid Shots. If Flaming Fist is available, you should always use that. Otherwise, you’ll typically be deciding between Rapid Shots and Flame Burst.

The answer comes down to whether you can afford to use Flame Burst (or Flame Sweep) without exceeding 40 Heat when you activate your next heavy-hitter in the following GCD. You don’t want to exceed 40 Heat unless Explosive Fuel is active. The rotation is only sustainable over the long term if you remain below 40 Heat.

Even if you omit all Flame Bursts in favor of Rapid Shots, you are only delaying the inevitable. If you remain above 40 Heat and continue using your heavy hitters, you will spiral out of control and burn out. You’ll be trapped in a prison of your own making for an extended period of time, where you end up dealing a non-viable amount of DPS.

Anytime you spike above 40 Heat, even for a single GCD, you should compensate for the period of reduced-efficiency passive Heat dissipation by using an additional Rapid Shots activation in a future cycle in lieu of a Flame Burst, even if you could have remained below 40 Heat for the next GCD.

The remaining abilities on the Filler Priority List can be treated the same as Flame Burst in terms of Heat cost and typically only come up when there are secondary targets. Deadly Onslaught and Scorch have additional considerations.

Realistically, Deadly Onslaught should only be used every other cycle and one of its GCDs should encompass the filler slot that does not need to be used for Scorch in the current cycle. A complete channel doesn’t fit anywhere else, and you will overheat if you use it more often than that anyway.

I recommend just using Scorch on secondary targets instead of another filler instead of having a higher priority. This way, you still get the vast majority of the benefit without losing DPS on your primary target, where your damage output tends to matter a whole lot more.

Immolate and the free Flame Burst / Flame Sweep are what give you your guaranteed 2 stacks of Superheated Flamethrower. I view the latter as rotational, just as everyone views the former. I value getting that second stack out of the way and recommend you do the same before Scorching the Shielded Data Cores, Operator IX hologram, and the other players’ color orbs.

Integrating the Flame Dissipation Tactical

By this point in the guide, I hope most of you can derive how to adapt the rotation to the Flame Dissipation tactical. That said, the tactical itself is worded poorly, has an unnecessarily complex effect, and has a bug, so I want to make sure we’re all on the same page.

Almost every time you activate Flame Burst, Flame Sweep, or Immolate, you’ll gain a stack of Flame Dissipation, which reduces the cost of Searing Wave by 3. That cost reduction stacks all the way up to 15 (out of 20), and then once you activate Searing Wave at 5 stacks, you’ll consume all stacks, get a new buff that increases your damage dealt, and then have to rebuild those stacks again.

Take note that you only gain a stack of Flame Dissipation when activating one of those abilities if you already have 2 stacks of the main Searing Wave proc, Superheated Flamethrower, or gain the second stack with the activation.

However, the tactical is bugged such that sometimes you’ll get the 10% damage boost proc if you activate Searing Wave while you have only 4 stacks of the cost reduction proc. In combat, it only seems to do this until you let the damage boost fall off, so it may have something to do with both procs sharing the same name.

In practice, you can’t build 5 stacks in a single rotation cycle because you just don’t have that many filler slots available, and it’s too expensive to use that many Flame Bursts unless you have Thermal Yield active or can use Vent Heat. You would have to delay Searing Wave and destabilize your rotation if you wanted to get 100% uptime on the damage boost proc.

Flame Dissipation makes it harder to squeeze the most damage out of your rotation since you can afford to use more Flame Bursts, and some of the DPS gain is derived from using your strong filler more often. At the same time, resource management is more forgiving because your most expensive ability is consistently one of your cheapest, so you can overheat more frequently, but it is cheaper to cool off.

Thermal Yield is also less valuable with Flame Dissipation since you can’t lower the cost of Searing Wave below 0. It may be the case that Superheated Fuel provides more sustained DPS in fights where you have high or maximum uptime on Thermal Yield, though this requires an impractical amount of testing to confirm.

Regardless, your resource costs will be significantly more variable and less clear-cut than they are with Superheated Fuel, so it’s more important to stick to the fully alternating version of the rotation where you follow every single heavy hitter ability with a filler.

Priority System

Due to the length and alternating nature of the rotation, it can be impractical to execute in many fights and phases. You can easily and quickly end up losing far more DPS than you’d gain by inserting fillers between every single one of your heavy hitters.

When multiple strong abilities are off cooldown at the same time, you’ve already lost some DPS to delays, but the only DPS you ever lose as a result of condensing the static rotation into a priority system is a minor delay from Flaming Fist and slightly less efficient Heat management.

Due to the variable Heat costs and the need to leverage that spare Heat into additional Flame Bursts, I do not recommend using Flame Dissipation in fights where you rely heavily on this Priority System.

1. Flaming Fist
2. Scorch (primary target only)
3. Incendiary Missile
4. Searing Wave (only with Superheated Flamethrower x2)
5. Immolate (only with Consuming Flames)
6. Rail Shot (only with Charged Gauntlets + Primed Rail Shot)
7. Flame Burst OR Flame Sweep (only with Flame Barrage)
8. Rapid Shots (only if the following attack would put you over 40 Heat)
9. Deadly Onslaught (only if you’ll hit at least 2 targets)
10. Scorch (secondary targets)
11. Flame Sweep (only if you’ll hit at least 3 targets)
12. Incendiary Missile (secondary targets as 30m ability)
13. Flame Burst

If you have 100% uptime, Scorch will typically always be used right before every other activation of Incendiary Missile, though it can also take the place of other fillers when you can multi-DoT.

I do not recommend prioritizing Scorch on secondary targets over rotational abilities on your primary target. There are rarely more adds in the room than you have filler slots, and the ability jumps to another target anyway, so there’s little value in applying it to everything.

In some situations, the DPS gain over Flame Sweep or Flame Burst is tiny because the target isn’t gonna live for much longer anyway and does not have another thing to jump to, or you might spend a GCD dealing little damage as you travel to your next Scorch target.

You will sometimes need to delay Flaming Fist to apply Scorch to your primary target. This is fine and mostly unavoidable in single-target situations, but be careful not to let procs fall off when multi-DoTing.

Due to the nature of the priority, Scorch will get applied every other cycle right before Incendiary Missile, and the top half of the list will get used in sequence while the bottom half will be the actual priority while you wait for the top half to come off cooldown.

I prefer to tweak this priority into the following quasi-rotation that’s far easier to digest:

1. Scorch (every other cycle)
2. Incendiary Missile
3. Searing Wave
4. Immolate
5. Flaming Fist OR Flame Burst (with Flame Barrage)
6. Rail Shot
7. Flaming Fist OR Flame Burst (with Flame Barrage)
8. Rapid Shots
9. Flame Burst
10. Rapid Shots
11. Flaming Fist (sometimes) or Filler (Heat-dependent)
12. Repeat

Those Flame Bursts and Rapid Shots can absolutely be used for other abilities as needed. I like this approach because you can front-load your beef and then have this large block of fillers where you can do whatever you want or the group needs.

I still recommend using Rapid Shots if your next attack would put you over 40 Heat, but it’s a little harder to see how that works out, and you have a concentrated period where you must spend a bunch of Heat.

In practice, so long as you’re below 20 Heat going into Searing Wave, or 25 Heat going into Incendiary Missile, you’ll make it to fillers without spiking over 40 Heat. During the filler section, alternate Rapid Shots with every other ability that normally costs Heat. The cycles with Scorch become more expensive, so you often have to throw in an extra activation of Rapid Shots.

Sometimes, Flame Burst will come off cooldown at the same time that you need to Scorch or in the middle of the pack of heavy hitters. That’s why I recommend inserting that filler slot in between Immolate and Rail Shot. It minimizes the delay to Flaming Fist and guarantees that your Rail Shot will autocrit.

If Flaming Fist wasn’t used immediately before Rail Shot, it would be useable immediately after, so whichever of that and the free Flame Burst or Flame Sweep that you didn’t use in the slot before Rail Shot will get used in the slot afterward.

You can also use this quasi-rotation that emerges from the pure Priority System as an opener, just replace Rapid Shots with Flame Bursts and pop Explosive Fuel immediately after Incendiary Missile.