SWTOR 7.7 Saboteur Gunslinger PvE Guide and Best Builds

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

Introduction to Saboteur Gunslinger

Saboteur is in a relatively better spot this expansion compared to 6.0. I want to be clear upfront that Saboteur simply isn’t viable in some fights. If you are only willing or able to learn a single spec, you need to pick a different one.

This viability issue primarily stems from the fact that one of Sabo’s strongest abilities, Incendiary Grenade, is a 9s AoE DoT that gets placed on the ground. In order for the ability to deal the necessary amount of damage, the boss must remain within 8m of the Incendiary Grenade for the full duration. 

Despite this occasional limitation, Saboteur does offer fairly strong sustained damage output for a ranged spec and is capable of incredibly potent burst because they can literally pre-cast 5 abilities, so they’re a good choice for most fights.

Saboteur remains the strongest Gunslinger discipline for AoE by far, but compared to other DoT specs, their AoE is on the low end. They don’t have any unique ways to boost their AoE damage output in their ability tree and lack a traditional DoT spread. They should still be able to pull their own weight in AoE situations, but it’s sad to see how far the spec has fallen as it was once the emperor of AoE.

Compared to other combat styles, Gunslingers lost more survivability than most with the release of 7.0, but they remain viable and are the only range combat style that still has access to AoE RDT. Thanks to how the ability tree choices were set up, each Gunslinger discipline is now a bit more unique in terms of damage mitigation. Out of the 3 disciplines, Saboteur is definitely the best at mitigating big hits, but Dirty Fighting remains a lot better at mitigating sustained damage like you’d find in burn phases.

BioWare will likely be making balance changes throughout the first few patches, so be sure to check back to this guide after each update. You can check at the top of the guide to see if the guide has been updated for the most recent patch. 

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 almost always one of your primary CCs, either the 8s mez or 4s hard stun, though Gunslinger has their hard stun locked away in a different choice instead. 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. Saboteur permanently lost access to 3 abilities: 

• Dodge
• Flourish Shot
• Flash Grenade

Some abilities and effects have been renamed since different Origin Stories now have access to the Combat Style. The most notable change is that XS Freighter Flyby has been renamed to Bombing Run, though it affects the names of a few passives as well.

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. 

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. 

Group Composition Tips

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

DPS Debuff	Presence of debuff increases DPS by approximately
Tech	4.1%
Internal / Elemental	2.6%
Armor	4.3%
Total DPS Gain:	11%

Saboteur is extremely dependent on other Combat Styles when it comes to DPS debuffs, particularly the Tech and Armor debuffs. Honestly, it’s so dependent on group composition, I would call it a balance issue. It’s ridiculous that 11% of your damage output is completely out of your control. Playing Saboteur with a composition that doesn’t support it is akin to another Combat Style playing without a tactical equipped. This is particularly bad when many Combat Styles gain less DPS from having a perfect composition than Saboteur gets from a single one of the debuffs it needs. 

It’s just icing on the cake that Saboteur provides the two most useless DPS debuffs in the game – AoE and Ranged. You can probably get away with not having the Internal / Elemental damage debuff, but you definitely need to have someone providing both the Tech and Armor debuffs. The Armor debuff is provided by a myriad of disciplines while the Tech debuff is provided by only Operative / Scoundrel and Powertech / Vanguard DPS. With the exception of Pyrotech unless they take a specific ability tree choice, all disciplines of those Combat Styles provide 2 of the 3 DPS debuffs that Sabo needs. Tactics Vanguard is the best pairing because it provides both the Tech and Armor debuffs.

DPS Mindset

How can I do as much damage as possible in each GCD (global cooldown, 1.5 second 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?  

Damage over Time Abilities (DoTs) vs Direct Damage

DoTs are not special abilities that let you deal damage when you can’t target the boss with new attacks. Contrary to popular belief, throwing your DoTs on right before you become unable to attack the boss does not result in a DPS increase over an ability that deals the same amount of damage immediately because you’re still spending a GCD to cast the DoT. 

I think it’s most helpful to conceptualize DoTs compared to direct damage abilities (regular non-DoT / non-Periodic abilities) by imagining them as dealing all of their damage hitting at the end of their duration instead of being spread evenly throughout, or at least that’s when you’ll get the amount of damage listed on the packaging. 

Prior to that point, you’ll be getting less damage out of each GCD equal to the damage dealt per tick times the number of ticks that were left. This is why clipping your DoTs (reapplying them before they’ve expired) is generally considered a bad thing. When you clip your DoTs, you make the last GCD where you applied your DoTs retroactively deal less damage. 

In general, DoTs are worse than abilities that deal the same amount of damage immediately because the enemy could become immune, enraged, or dead by the time all of that damage will hit. In order to combat these disadvantages, DoTs tend to deal a bit more damage than direct damage abilities and almost always deal Internal/Elemental damage so they ignore armor. 

DoT specs have often been capable of dealing more sustained DPS than burst specs and usually have some sort of sub-30% HP execute window where DoT damage is increased. This helps to compensate for those targets dying before the DoT has finished ticking, though on targets that die quickly, this damage bonus isn’t enough to make it worth reapplying DoTs and makes it no different from clipping your DoTs. 

The sub-30% damage increase becomes more than just an equalizing effect on bosses since they usually last multiple DoT applications (and often several minutes) below 30% health, allowing enough time for DPS to actually increase. If DoTs have just fallen off of your target and you know it will die before the DoT completes all of its ticks, you should not reapply them to that target and either use one of your direct damage abilities (usually filler) or apply your DoTs to another target. 

Unless an enemy needs to die ASAP, it’s usually okay to switch targets preemptively since the vast majority of your damage contribution will be over in this situation. If you do decide to switch targets before the enemy dies, make sure you verify that the enemy actually died soon after you switched, sometimes the rest of your group might have the same idea and you’re left with an add wandering around with 1% HP left. 

Check out the SWTOR Damage Types and Damage Mitigation guide.

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

Shock Charge

(Tech/Energy/Periodic/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability is the first of your DoTs. It’s weaker than it might seem based on the massive amount of damage seen on the tooltip because it deals Energy damage and is therefore partially mitigated by armor. It’s still one of your most damaging abilities, it just isn’t quite as strong as you might think.

Shock Charge can only be on one target at a time, so whenever you apply it to a new target, it is immediately removed from its previous target, so whenever you switch targets, the first thing you should do is reapply it. The Ruthless Interrogation tactical causes Speed Shot to refresh its duration and tick its damage with each tick of the channel, so in many fights, you’ll only need to apply it once, though your single-target DPS will suffer if you have to apply this DoT frequently during the fight since the GCD that would be used to reapply it is used on another damaging ability instead. 

Shock Charge should always be the first ability you use when switching to a new target and if it should ever fall off, it should be the first ability that you activate. It isn’t always necessary to activate it immediately, but I think there are almost always more important things to focus on in the middle of a fight than trying to optimize when you reapply it, though technically it only absolutely needs to be reapplied before you activate Speed Shot or Sabotage since those are the only abilities it interacts with. Shock Charge does not have any procs or discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation.

Speed Shot

(Ranged/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Channeled)
Speed Shot doesn’t do a whole lot of damage directly, but it triggers damage from other sources and is used frequently, so it winds up accounting for a huge chunk of your overall damage output. The ability itself is pretty straightforward, it’s just a 2 GCD channeled ability. Since it accounts for such a high proportion of your damage output and its cooldown is the same as Incendiary Grenade’s duration, it needs to be used on cooldown. Speed Shot has 1 discipline passive and 1 proc associated with it that are relevant to your rotation.

Blazing Speed
Each tick of Speed Shot applies a stack of Blazing Speed, which deals a small amount of elemental damage over 6 seconds and stacks up to 3 times. This DoT is responsible for about 10% of your total damage output, though there is another passive that allows some of your other abilities to also apply a stack that I will talk about later on.

Jury-Rigged Mods
Reduces the cooldown of Speed Shot and reduces the Energy cost of Speed Shot by 1 per second (3 total). This passive allows Speed Shot to be used more often and be almost neutral in terms of Energy consumption. 

Incendiary Grenade

(Tech/Elemental/Periodic/AoE/Instant)
As I mentioned in the intro, this ability is the primary reason for why Saboteur is just not viable in some fights. Incendiary Grenade deals about as much damage over 9 seconds as Speed Shot deals direct damage over its channel, but Incendiary Grenade only costs 1 GCD instead of 2 and is overall one of your harder-hitting GCDs.

This is good because it is AoE damage, but it’s bad because it’s basically a 9 second DoT that’s stuck on the ground, so if the boss moves a lot, you basically lose out on this damage or have to reapply it a whole lot more often than you should. It is important to note that just because the boss moves during the fight, it doesn’t mean that the spec is guaranteed to be bad. For example, if movement only takes place in short, infrequent bursts, you probably won’t lose too much damage or at the very least other ranged specs will be losing a similar amount of damage related to movement as well. This viability issue would be completely solved if Incendiary Grenade applied its damage as a DoT like Revivification does for its HoT for Sorc healers. 

Incendiary Grenade has the same active duration as the cooldown on Speed Shot, so it’s best to just always use this ability immediately after Speed Shot. This is really the only practical way to ensure 100% uptime since there isn’t a debuff or cooldown on Incendiary Grenade itself that you can use to keep track of it. In addition, there can only be one Incendiary Grenade active at a time, just like Shock Charge. Incendiary Grenade has 1 proc associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Spacer
Incendiary Grenade overwhelms its targets when it deals damage. Overwhelmed targets take 10% more AoE damage. This is your AoE debuff. It’s arguably one of the most useless DPS debuffs in the game since there are very few AoE DPS checks in the game. That said, several specs in the game do have rotational AoE damage, so this does benefit them. Also, Saboteur is most effective in AoE situations, so it’s good that this spec provides the debuff.

Charged Burst

(Ranged/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Casted)
This is the weakest of your rotational abilities, though it only gets used when Bombing Run is unavailable and you have enough Energy. If for whatever reason you aren’t taking the Ruthless Interrogation tactical (which you always should be), this ability should never be used because the GCD will always be used to reapply Shock Charge instead. Charged Burst has 1 discipline passive associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Jury-Rigged Mods
Reduces the Energy cost of Charged Burst by 5. In addition, Charged Burst deals extra elemental damage to the target affected by your Shock Charge. The Energy cost reduction enables Charged Burst to be used at all. Without this passive, we’d be forced to use Flurry of Bolts instead.

The damage boost is sufficient to make Charged Burst hit harder than Thermal Grenade, but due to its higher Energy cost and the higher priority of Bombing Run, it doesn’t change how Charged Burst is used besides making it less of a single-target DPS loss if Bombing Run needs to be delayed so it can hit multiple targets.

Vital Shot

(Tech/Internal/Periodic/Single-Target/Instant)
Despite not being mentioned at all in your discipline, Vital Shot should still have 100% uptime because there is a spot for it in the rotation and it deals more damage than anything else you’d use there instead. 

Both Explosive Charge and Sabotage have the exact same cooldown as the duration of Vital Shot, so you don’t have to worry about keeping track of the DoT’s duration at all by just always activating Vital Shot immediately next to one of those abilities. Vital Shot has 1 combat style passive associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Crack Shot
Increases the range of Flash Grenade, Quick Shot (abilities you don’t even have anymore), and Distraction to 35m and increases the range of all blaster, grenade, and charge attacks by 5m and Vital Shot marks its target for 45 seconds. Marked targets take 5% more damage from Ranged weapon attacks. This combat style passive is responsible for giving Gunslingers their 35m range on damaging abilities and 30m range on CC, as well as giving them one of their DPS debuffs (the individual specs only provide 1 debuff as opposed to 2).

I don’t know why they decided it would make sense from a lore perspective for a Tech attack to apply a Ranged debuff. The only reason I can see is that it’s a debuff that gets used by all 3 specs. Unfortunately, the Ranged debuff is arguably the worst DPS debuff in the game because all the specs that already deal a significant amount of their damage as Ranged damage already provide it themselves. Only a tiny portion of the other specs’ total damage output is considered Ranged damage. It’s still a noticeable DPS increase for the specs that provide it, but as a DPS debuff and piece of raid utility, it doesn’t matter.

Explosive Charge

(Tech/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This is your strongest and one of your cheapest rotational abilities. Shock Charge will technically deal more damage per activation, but you don’t really activate that ability rotationally because it gets refreshed automatically thanks to the Ruthless Interrogation tactical.

Explosive Charge has a couple of quirks. It’s almost like a DoT when you activate it because it doesn’t actually deal damage until you deal damage with some other ability or the 20 second debuff expires. It also deals a very small amount of additional damage to Standard and Weak enemies, though this isn’t relevant for endgame PvE. Explosive Charge has 1 debuff associated with it that is relevant to your rotation that I haven’t already mentioned:

Contingency Charges
When Explosive Charge detonates, it leaves 3 Contingency Charges on the target that detonate when the target takes damage. Contingency Charges can only detonate once every 0.5 seconds. In addition, when a Cluster Bomb detonates, you recover 6 Energy. These serve to increase the damage dealt by Explosive Charge in a flashy and exciting way.

Overall, Contingency Charges account for about 30% of the total damage dealt by the Explosive Charge GCD. The 6 Energy per bomb means you recover 18 Energy total; since Explosive Charge only costs 15 Energy, you actually gain 3 Energy with each activation. This just further emphasizes how important Explosive Charge is in your rotation.

Thermal Grenade

(Tech/Kinetic/Direct/AoE/Instant)
Thanks to several procs and discipline passives, this ability can be used rotationally in Sabo. You won’t be using it quite on cooldown, but you will be activating it once per use of Speed Shot and Incendiary Grenade as the superior filler for this spec. It doesn’t deal very much damage, almost the same as Charged Burst. Thermal Grenade has 1 proc and 3 discipline passives that are associated with it that are relevant to your rotation.

Seize the Moment
After activating Sabotage, your next Thermal Grenade costs no Energy. You’ll only be able to make use of this proc on every other use of Thermal Grenade, though it’s important to note that the proc lasts for 15 seconds, so if you aren’t able to use Thermal Grenade immediately after Sabotage, the proc will last long enough for your next use after Speed Shot and Incendiary Grenade.

Blazing Speed
Thermal Grenade (and Charged Burst and Quickdraw) apply 1 stack of Blazing Speed to the target. This proc allows Blazing Speed to have 100% uptime.

Scatter Bombs
Reduces the Energy Cost of Thermal Grenade by 5. This effect reduces the up-front cost of the ability down to 15.

Saboteur’s Utility Belt
Increases the crit chance of your AoE attacks by 10%. In addition, when Thermal Grenade deals damage, it restores 5 Energy. This passive makes it so that Thermal Grenade’s effective Energy Cost is 10, rather than 15, making it cheaper than Charged Burst. In addition, this refund is always active, regardless of whether or not you have the Seize the Moment proc. The crit chance is also part of what makes this ability deal more damage than Charged Burst, even if it doesn’t look like it from the tooltips.

Sabotage

(Tech/Energy/Direct/Single-Target and AoE/Instant)
This is one of the most unique abilities in the game. It requires another ability to be active on the target in order to be usable at all; in exchange, it does not require line of sight! The fact that line of sight is not required is more of a PvP thing, but it’s worth knowing about in case it happens to be useful.

Sabotage deals decent damage, so you still want to use it on cooldown, though it is the weakest of your strong abilities. This ability also stuns the target if it is affected by Incendiary Grenade, which can be useful in fights where you have to stun something or bad when you’re not supposed to interrupt things, like the Vindictive droids in GotM. Sabotage has 1 proc associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Sow Chaos
If the target is affected by Blazing Speed, Sabotage damages up to 7 additional enemies within 5m of the target. Sabotage deals additional energy damage to the primary target for each stack of Blazing Speed on the target. This whole proc description is a bit confusing. Basically, you want Blazing Speed to be on the target when you activate Sabotage and if you do, it deals AoE damage to nearby targets and then also deals extra damage only to the primary target.

The extra damage shows up in StarParse as Sow Chaos and ends up accounting for about 30% of Sabotage’s effective damage dealt. You should be able to maintain 100% uptime on Blazing Speed, so you shouldn’t have to worry about this too much unless you’re using Sweeping Gunfire. Remember, you only need 1 stack of Blazing Speed for the AoE damage but you need all 3 stacks for maximum single-target damage.

Bombing Run

(Tech/Elemental/Periodic/AoE/Casted)
Thanks to multiple discipline passives, this ability is strong enough to be used rotationally in Saboteur. In fact, Bombing Run is one of your most damaging abilities, dealing nearly as much as Explosive Charge!

In an ideal world, it should be used on cooldown, though the actual cooldown duration doesn’t line up very nicely with the rest of the rotation and it’s also quite expensive, costing 20 Energy per use. As a result, I prefer to just use it every other rotation cycle instead of Charged Burst, which does mean it gets delayed a little bit. You should also definitely delay using it if the boss is moving or if you know that adds will spawn soon. Make sure you get the maximum benefit from your 20 Energy investment! Bombing Run has 1 discipline passive associated with it:

Spacer
Reduces the activation time of Bombing Run by 1 second and its cooldown by 15 seconds. Yes, I did already mention this passive, though it pertained to a different ability. As far as I can tell, the ability still appears to be on the GCD, so the shorter cast time doesn’t really do anything beyond making it ever so slightly harder to interrupt. In addition, you can’t really use Bombing Run as often as its cooldown allows without running into Energy issues. It would be much nicer if this passive were tweaked to reduce the activation time of Bombing Run by 0.5 seconds, cooldown by 10 seconds, and its Energy cost by 5.

Crouch and Take Cover

When you create a new Gunslinger or Sniper, the ability that gets placed on your bar is called Take Cover. If there’s a cover position in range (denoted by a little green silhouette), you quickly roll to that location and if you aren’t in range, you deploy your portable cover shield where you stand. 

This inconsistent behavior can cause problems in raiding, which is why you should just remove the Take Cover ability from your bar entirely. Thankfully, there is another ability called Crouch, which just always deploys your portable cover shield wherever you are currently standing. This is the only ability you should ever use when entering cover. 

While it used to be the case that you couldn’t use most of your abilities unless you were in cover, nowadays the only abilities you have to be in cover for are Sweeping Gunfire, Pulse Detonator, and Hunker Down. This means that the cover bar isn’t really useful anymore, so feel free to turn it off in the settings (User Interface > General > uncheck Enable Cover Bar). That said, there is still 1 combat style proc and 1 combat style passive that provide significant benefits to you while in cover:

Hold Position
While in cover, Ranged defense is increased by 20%, you cannot be leapt to or pulled, and you are immune to interrupts and ability activation pushback. The most important component of this passive is the pushback protection and in general, this is the most important reason to be in cover at all. You will lose a massive amount of DPS if you can’t be in cover since your APM will be much lower because all of your casts will take much longer to complete. In case you aren’t familiar, pushback is when the progress of your cast is pushed back as a result of taking damage. In-universe, this is supposed to represent that casting things requires more focus; for a Gunslinger, you’re going to have trouble lining up your shot if you’re taking a bunch of damage, so it will take longer. If you want to see it in action, just try to do your rotation on enemies out of cover. This used to be more prevalent back before 3.0 when you had to actually spec into pushback protection, but now every combat style gets a reduction on it as part of some passive.

Ready for Anything
Upon entering cover, your stealth detection level begins to increase gradually, reaching up to 30 additional levels of stealth detection over the following 30 seconds. This effect ends when you leave cover. The only reason I mention this proc is because it will show up on your bar. Stealth detection capabilities generally don’t work correctly in PvE, so don’t rely on the fact that your stealth detection is higher to conclude that there aren’t any enemies in stealth. It would be kind of neat if they put more effort into having this work though since Gunslingers aren’t the only combat style that have something like this.

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 Sabo 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.

Long ago, Saboteur was considered the premier AoE damage spec in the game, but since all DoT specs got the ability to DoT spread in 3.0 and Sabo received literal garbage for its AoE tactical in 6.0, their AoE advantage has completely evaporated and is now in decline thanks to a complete lack of ability tree buffs that affect AoE damage.

That said, when it comes to AoE, Sabo is still considerably stronger than Dirty Fighting and Sharpshooter and remains on par with most other DoT specs as well when AoE tacticals are not used. All of your AoE abilities benefit from 2 discipline passives:

• Independent Anarchy – Increases all AoE critical damage dealt by 10%.
• Saboteur’s Utility Belt – Increases the critical chance of AoE damage by 10%.

Both of these discipline passives serve to make the AoE abilities shared by all 3 Gunslinger specs stronger in Sabo.

Sweeping Gunfire

(Ranged/Energy/Direct/AoE/Channeled)
This is your spammable AoE. It’s easily one of the strongest spammable AoE abilities in the entire game. It’s unsustainable to use rotationally for very long since it costs 5 more Energy than your standard 3-ability chunk. Make sure Cool Head is available whenever you need to activate this ability and use the Efficient Ammo ability tree buff if you ever use Sweeping Gunfire during a boss fight.

Bombing Run

(Tech/Elemental/Periodic/AoE/Casted)
This is another of the strongest AoEs in the game, though you are a bit more restricted around its usage. Bombing Run ticks 3 times over 9 seconds and has a delay before the first tick goes out after casting. If you don’t manage to get all 3 ticks out, like if the adds die after 1 tick, it’s less effective as an AoE. Given its higher Energy cost and place in your single-target rotation, be careful about using it if it happens to be up, though don’t hesitate if you think you can get the full duration on multiple targets. Try your best to clip the boss with the AoE too if possible.

Incendiary Grenade

(Tech/Elemental/Periodic/AoE/Instant)
Incendiary Grenade deals a fair bit of AoE damage and is cheap to use. You already want to have 100% uptime even in single-target situations, but make sure to reposition it if the adds aren’t grouped up directly under the boss. Just like Bombing Run, try to make sure you’re still clipping the boss with this ability when possible so you aren’t losing DPS on the primary target.

Sabotage

(Tech/Energy/Direct/Single-Target and AoE/Instant)
Thanks to the Sow Chaos discipline passive, Sabotage will deal AoE damage if the target is affected by your Blazing Speed DoT. Since you can only use Sabotage against the target that’s affected by Shock Charge, this will really only come up when you have a primary target for rotational AoE.

Thermal Grenade and Explosive Charge

These are not AoE abilities for endgame PvE. They only deal a small amount of AoE damage to Standard and Weak enemies, which you rarely encounter in group content. 

Diversion

This ability technically does not do any AoE damage, but it will only ever be used in AoE situations so I am going to talk about it here. Diversion works wonders against adds and that’s the only thing you can use it against since it doesn’t affect bosses. It’s about as strong as Saber Ward, Deflection, and Explosive Fuel + Oil Slick, which are the strongest DCDs tanks have against adds, though it doesn’t last quite as long. Usually, the raid lead will tell you when they want it or a tank will ask for it, but if you see someone getting hit by a bunch of enemies, chuck this at them.

Diversion does cost a GCD, so you’ll either have to use it instead of something that doesn’t have a cooldown, or delay something that does. Thankfully, it doesn’t matter too much which approach you take since Diversion has a fairly long cooldown so you won’t lose a tangible amount of DPS from using it. If you are going to use it in place of one of your abilities, try to minimize the amount of damage you lose by replacing one of your weakest GCDs, similar to what you’d do when you need to reapply Shock Charge.

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. 

Target Hack

Smuggler’s Luck now has a unique effect and name in each discipline. For Saboteur, the ability is called Target Hack and has the following effects: Increases the critical chance of your next Explosive Charge by 100%. Target Hack grants Sequence Break, which increases the damage dealt by your charges and Incendiary Grenade by 10%. Lasts 20 seconds.

The damage increase from Sequence Break is fairly small, but the main ability tree builds for PvE are closely tied to the proc, but I’ll cover that in greater detail later on. Target Hack should be used on cooldown, but it should not be activated way before the fight starts like you used to be able to do. The reason for this is because Sequence Break is applied at the time that Target Hack is activated and the buffs from your ability tree are dependent on Sequence Break being active, so you don’t want it to fall off early. 

For the Sustained DPS build, you can’t ever afford to delay activating this ability, even for burst DPS checks because you will run out of Energy if you let Sequence Break fall off for more than a few seconds.

Cool Head

This ability will get different amounts of usage depending on which build you’re using, though in general, you want to use it when you find yourself around 45-50% Energy. The goal is for the initial 25 Energy to get you back up to the maximum Energy regeneration rate and supply you with enough Energy for your next GCD so you don’t fall back into the lower regeneration rate bracket. It’s still necessary to activate Cool Head ASAP if you find yourself below 45 Energy, but it’s less optimal to wait that long if you can help it. 

There should be no need to save Cool Head for emergencies in case you mess up your rotation. You should practice on the dummy if you’re not able to consistently execute the rotation correctly. 

Adrenal

The best time to activate the Adrenal is immediately after casting Bombing Run. This way, it guarantees all of your most damaging abilities are buffed by the adrenal including Explosive Charge + Contingency Charges, 2 full channels of Speed Shot, Sabotage, and, of course, the full duration of Bombing Run. 

You can’t delay any other OCDs to pair with the Adrenal, but you can wait to activate your Adrenal when Target Hack comes off cooldown so Explosive Charge will be an autocrit. It is highly unlikely that a fight will last long enough where this delay will be enough to where it will result in missing out on a use of the Adrenal.

Illegal Mods

The only real effect of this cooldown is the 15% increased armor penetration for 10 seconds. This is equivalent to a 5.25% damage increase for your weapon attacks (so everything but Vital Shot and Bombing Run). I’m just not going to get into how to use this ability for Saboteur because the ability is locked behind a choice and you should never ever pick it in this discipline. The right way to use Illegal Mods in Saboteur is to pick something else.

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.

Hunker Down

Hunker Down now directly provides the 60% AoE RDT (reduced damage taken); there is no utility point required. Without the Lay Low ability tree buff, Hunker Down has 30% uptime if it’s activated on cooldown. This means your average AoE RDT is only 20% compared to most other disciplines which have 100% uptime on 30% AoE RDT.

Even with the inconsistent uptime, you can easily wind up taking less damage than other combat styles since you can control when your mitigation is active to take less damage against big hits. You can also utilize this higher DR so you don’t have to move out of certain circles when other combat styles would. It doesn’t always work, but it’s worth trying to figure out which circles will kill you and which you can survive completely, or at least survive long enough that you can get to a point in your rotation where you will lose minimal DPS from moving.

The vast majority of damage that bosses deal in raids is considered AoE damage. Even if the attack looks like a single-target attack, there’s a good chance that it’s still considered AoE damage. This is why there’s always so much emphasis on the AoE RDT buffs and part of why Gunslingers should generally have very low DTPS. 

Hunker Down also provides CC immunity. This benefit comes up occasionally in PvE, usually during DPS checks, though it isn’t nearly as useful as it is in PvP.

Defense Screen

Unless you know that a big hit is coming up and you don’t have anything else available, this ability is best used if you can time it for when Hunker Down is not active, or on cooldown, if there’s just a bunch of damage going out.

Since Defense Screen has such a short cooldown and is relatively weak, this ability won’t really protect you from a whole lot on its own and it’s much better served just keeping your health high and mitigating minor spikes so that your health will be higher when the actual damage comes.

Surrender and Dodge Stance

As of 7.3, the effect that makes activating Surrender increase your movement speed by 75% movement speed for 6s is now baked into the ability and it has been finally decoupled from Speed Shot knockback. The movement speed boost is the primary benefit, but Surrender also functions as your threat drop.

The movement speed boost is best whenever you don’t need to travel as far as Hightail It will take you (18m), are able to keep dealing damage while moving, or if your movement otherwise must be fast and precise. 

Please note that speed boosts do not get added together, only the fastest speed boost is applied, so Reset Engagement it will take effect over Heads Up. Avoid activating both effects at the same time.

With the Dodge Stance ability tree buff, Gunslingers get effectively Dodge back. Operatives are in a similar situation where they lost Surrender, but have access to a passive that gives effects they lost to Dodge. You do need to be mindful of what type of damage you’re mitigating with Surrender because it changes what other defensives you’re allowed to use at the same time. If it’s Melee/Ranged damage, this will be the only DCD you’ll need because this will always mitigate all of the damage you take (provided you aren’t stunned). 

Discerning the damage type relevant to what Surrender mitigates is fairly easy; if the attack is coming directly from a lightsaber swing or blaster, it’s a Melee/Ranged attack and if it’s anything else, it’s probably Force/Tech. Melee/Ranged attacks also tend to be more frequent and individually weaker attacks, though you can look at your damage taken in StarParse if you want to be sure. If the damage is force/tech, you’re okay to activate your other DCDs and since it’s RDT, not DR that’s being provided, the 75% feels like it isn’t doing as much.

Bag of Tricks and Perfect Scheme

This ability resets the cooldowns of all the abilities I have mentioned in this section thus far plus Pulse Detonator. Bag of Tricks works great as your emergency panic button, but if you’re out of DCDs and about to take a hit that you’d rather have a DCD for, do not hesitate to activate this ability. Make sure that all DCDs are on cooldown before activating Bag of Tricks.

If you’re able to take Perfect Scheme, you get a nice bit of extra DR for 15 seconds that should help when you find yourself needing to activate Bag of Tricks. 

Scrambling Field

This is not a personal defensive cooldown. It is a raid buff. Use it when the entire raid is taking a lot of damage or may wipe because one of the tanks just died and now the boss is running around whacking random people. 

Since damage intake management is primarily a tank and healer job, this ability is primarily to make their lives easier. If a tank is out of defensive cooldowns and needs another it’s okay to use. Tell them you have it available for them to ask for. Healers are also a lot more focused on the raid frame than you will be as a DPS, so they are far better equipped to know when it will be useful for the raid than you will. Tell them to call out if and when they want it and be ready to activate it. Here are some times when it’s generally a good idea to use Scrambling Field:

• During a burn phase.
• When one of the tanks or healers just died, pop it instantly, especially if a tank just died, because there’s a good chance that the boss is about to hit someone else or the group really hard.
• If healers call out for players to use their medpacs or if you find yourself having to use yours and see that the rest of the group could also probably benefit from their medpac.
• If everyone’s health is below 40-50%. Get in the habit of taking a quick glance at the raid frame to see people’s health levels.

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 Gunslingers are one of the two combat styles that do not have any sort of cleanse ability, the other is Vanguard. A long time ago, they could cleanse with Dodge, just like Operatives can.

Hightail It

This ability is both a defensive cooldown and movement ability. As a defensive cooldown, it’s your cheese ability. It gives you 100% defense/resist chance for the duration of the roll, meaning you’re completely immune to taking damage during your roll, provided that it’s damage that is mitigable, so it won’t work against things like 0 damage kills and typeless damage. Since the mitigation is so short, it can be fairly difficult to time, so you may need to practice it a little bit, and don’t be afraid to completely stop DPSing for a moment if there’s something that will kill you if you don’t do the cheese correctly.

As a movement ability, Hightail It does help you cover a fair bit of distance, but it does cost a GCD to use, so it is best used when you’re out of range of the boss so you couldn’t deal damage anyway or after your other movement abilities have been used. It’s not the end of the world to use this ability for movement though since there isn’t a lot of damage you can do when out of cover anyway, so sometimes you just have to give up the GCD. 

Remember, you can reset the cooldown on this ability by activating Surrender thanks to the Dodge Stance ability tree buff. 

Hideout

In 6.0, they gave Gunslingers Phase Walk. While it seems pretty identical to Sorcerer / Sage Phase Walk on the surface, there are several key differences:

• Hideout’s cooldown is twice as long as Phase Walk’s.
• The teleporting animation is significantly longer for Hideout because there’s an actual teleportation animation you have to do prior to teleporting but after pressing the button rather than Phase Walk where you just wave your hand and pop up somewhere else instantaneously. This makes it more difficult to escape at the very last second.
• The act of teleporting with Hideout breaks your channel after teleporting, even if you’re still in range while Phase Walk does not break your channels (provided you’re still in range). 
• In general, Hideout’s animations are much smoother and happen more sequentially while Phase Walk’s animations just kind of happen on top of everything else. 

Luckily, the ability is still off the GCD, even though it has a castbar, so you can still use it while the GCD is active for another ability. In addition, you can still teleport while stunned, so even if the button is grayed out, it will still work.

Hideout isn’t always useful as a movement ability, but it’s incredible when you can use it. The best time to use Hideout is when you know of a specific location that you are certain you will want to return to at some point later in the fight that will be generally safe to return to. 

Crowd Control and Other Notable 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.

Below the Belt

(Tech/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
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. Gunslingers have a slightly shorter cooldown duration on their hard stun than most other combat styles.

For Saboteur, Below the Belt also slows the target by 75% for 3 seconds after the stun effect wears off. This will rarely be of any use in PvE unless you really need to stop something from approaching you.

Distraction

This is your interrupt. Ranged DPS in general tend to have longer cooldowns on their interrupts, than Melee, so if there’s something specific that needs repeated interrupting, a Melee DPS or tank will be assigned to it, though this doesn’t mean you can’t interrupt things as well. If you really want to be a clicker, I highly recommend you at least keybind this ability or you will have trouble with some of the shorter casts that need to be interrupted. 

Pulse Detonator

This is your knockback. Outside of specific mechanics, it’s not usually something at your disposal in group content. A lot of the time things are immune to being knocked back and when they aren’t immune, it’s better that they’re all grouped up to be killed as fast as possible. 

Adds are less likely to have CC immunity and you should be careful not to ruin nicely grouped-up adds, but Pulse Detonator is free and off the GCD. This means you can use it to reposition adds slightly without losing DPS when you can’t quite get all of the adds and the boss in the AoE by standing at max knockback range to knock that final add into the AoE, assuming they are vulnerable to knockbacks. 

Technically it’s okay to use this if you genuinely think you will die if you don’t knock the enemies back right now, but honestly, I think the better play is to just let yourself die and then throw a tantrum about why the tanks didn’t keep the adds off of you and why you didn’t get enough heals, though make sure you’ve used your threat drop and all your DCDs already.

Escape

This is your CC break. Use it when you get CC’d. 

Leg Shot

(Ranged/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability applies a root, which is an ability that stops you from moving but does not stop you from activating abilities directly, it also breaks on damage after 2 seconds. It deals nearly identical damage to Flurry of Bolts, has a 35m range, and the actual root lasts for a fair bit of time, so I could see it getting some use in the same sort of situation that you might use a slow or stun on a Melee add. It would also work as an alternative to stunning one of the Chained Manifestations on Styrak NiM.

Quickdraw

(Ranged/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Quickdraw is now locked away behind a choice in Saboteur so that the spec could have Bombing Run as a baseline ability. It doesn’t offer enough of a sustained DPS increase to be worth taking anymore, so you won’t have access to it.

Flurry of Bolts

(Ranged/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Flurry of Bolts can be used instead of Charged Burst if you see yourself dip below 60 Energy and don’t have Cool Head available, but this shouldn’t ever be an issue in the regular rotation.

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.

Level 23 Choice – Explosive Charge Buffs

Sequential Targeting

• Effect: Increases the critical damage dealt by Explosive Charge by 20%.
• Recommendation: Take this when you can’t utilize one of the other options. This option is the most consistently useful and offers slightly higher sustained DPS than Trick Skip, but not by much. If you can benefit from something specific offered by one of the other options, take that instead.

Trick Skip

• Effect: Dealing damage with Explosive Charge, extends the duration of your Sequence Break by 5 seconds, if active, and applies Trick Skip to the target, which reduces Ranged and Tech accuracy by 20% for 8 seconds. Operation bosses do not have their accuracy reduced.
• Recommendation: Take this when you can utilize the accuracy debuff in group content or don’t have the Energy Regulators Legendary Implant. Trick Skip offers a fairly strong debuff, but it doesn’t work consistently in raids where you’ll typically only be able to use it against adds and won’t work at all against Force wielders. It’s really great for non-Force-wielding Flashpoint bosses. It does offer slightly less sustained DPS than Sequential Targeting, but the debuff will more than compensate for the slight DPS loss. You do need to be a bit more careful about when you activate Target Hack in relation to Explosive Charge because you need to be able to extend the duration of Sequence Break by 10 seconds by having 2 Explosive Charges detonate while Sequence Break is active. You can activate Target Hack anytime after Speed Shot as you go into the Explosive Charge segment. I’ll talk more about why Trick Skip is important when you don’t have Energy Regulators later on.

Hard Reset

• Effect: Defeating an enemy resets the cooldown of Explosive Charge.
• Recommendation: Always take this for solo content and whenever you can make frequent use of it in boss fights. Hard Reset is absolutely fantastic in solo content because it enables you to use Explosive Charge against every single enemy. In group content, it has the potential to be a far greater DPS increase than either other option, though it’s a bit inconsistent because you have to be the one to kill the target. Unfortunately, there isn’t a simple threshold for when you should take it because there are a lot of other factors that greatly affect how much of a damage increase you’ll get, most notably how much time is left on the cooldown when the reset happens, so take it in add-heavy fights and see if you get higher DPS compared to the alternatives.

Level 27 Choice – Dodge Stance, Below the Belt, or Flourish Burst

Flourish Burst

• Effect: The critical hit damage of Charged Burst is increased by 20%. In addition, dealing damage with Charged Burst inflicts Trauma, which reduces all healing the target receives by 20%. Lasts 10 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Charged Burst is used very rarely in Saboteur, only about once every other full rotation cycle. This option does not provide enough of a DPS increase to warrant being used.

Quickdraw

• Effect: Grants the ability Quickdraw, which deals a high amount of damage. Only usable on targets at or below 30% max health. Costs 15 Energy, 12s cooldown.
• Recommendation: Never take this in PvE. It’s technically a tiny sustained DPS increase, just like Flourish Burst, but it isn’t worth taking in group content. It’s fine for solo content as a slightly stronger instant alternative to Charged Burst, but I prefer Dodge Stance. You’ll see top parses using it because it is technically a DPS increase.

Dodge Stance

• Effect: Surrender grants Dodge Stance, which increases your chance to dodge melee and ranged attacks by 200% and reduces the damage you take from Force and Tech attacks by 75% for 3 seconds. In addition, Surrender resets the cooldown of Hightail It.
• Recommendation: Always take this. I think this option provides a greater benefit to you than the other two minuscule DPS increases. As Saboteur, Dodge Stance is more helpful than it is for the other two disciplines because you’re more likely to get aggro on adds, so you’re more likely to benefit from the defense chance. The ability to take this option without losing DPS greatly contributes to Saboteur’s superior capability to mitigate burst damage.

Level 39 Choice – Shock Charge Buffs

Aim Assist

• Effect: Your critical chance is increased by 10% against the target affected by your Shock Charge.
• Recommendation: Take this in group content. This option synergizes better with Kill Streak, but the actual damage increase will be inconsistent from mob to mob, especially because you won’t be using Shock Charge except against stronger enemies. In group content, this option results in the greatest single-target DPS increase, but it can’t improve your Energy regeneration, so you can only afford to take it if you have Energy Regulators.

Calculated Measures

• Effect: Dealing weapon damage to the target affected by your Shock Charge extends the duration of your Sequence Break by 1 second.
• Recommendation: Only take this if you don’t have Energy Regulators. Just like Trick Skip, this option synergizes with other options to create the only build that is viable for a sustained rotation when you don’t have Energy Regulators Legendary Implant. Without this option alongside specific others, you will run out of Energy. After you have Energy Regulators, you don’t need to use Hothead, and Aim Assist offers a far greater DPS increase.

Shocking Blast

• Effect: Thermal Grenade and Sabotage deals 20% more damage to the target affected by your Shock Charge.
• Recommendation: Take this for solo content or when you have the T0-R0 Ionic Discharge tactical equipped. It doesn’t synergize as well with Kill Streak, but will lead to a more consistent and enjoyable solo experience by strengthening Sabotage, which normally feels a bit weaker than it should.

Level 43 Choice – Hothead, Kill Streak, or Illegal Mods

Hothead

• Effect: Your charges and Incendiary Grenade deal 10% additional damage and generate 1 Energy if they deal damage while Sequence Break is active. This effect cannot occur more than once per second.
• Recommendation: Only take this if you don’t have Energy Regulators in group content. Now it all makes sense! Combining Calculated Measures and System Kick enables you to have 100% uptime on Sequence Break, which will result in your Energy regeneration rate being increased by 1 basically all the time (it will be slightly less than 1 in practice). Without this option alongside both other Sequence Break-oriented options, you will run out of Energy too frequently. This Energy is super excessive with Energy Regulators and the damage boost is inferior next to Kill Streak.

Kill Streak

• Effect: Critical hit damage is increased by 20%. Killing an enemy while Sequence Break is active resets the cooldown of Target Hack.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. In solo content, this option enables you to kill every enemy with an autocrit Explosive Charge plus a little bit of damage from Incendiary Grenade. The cooldown reset component is less consistently useful in group content but does come up. Even without that component, the +20% critical damage dealt is a far more significant DPS increase than the +10% to charge and Incendary Grenade damage from Hothead.

Illegal Mods

• Effect: Grants the ability Illegal Mods, which immediately restores 15 Energy and finishes the cooldown on Target Hack. In addition, Ranged and Tech accuracy are increased by 30% and armor penetration is increased by 15%. Lasts 10 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Both other options are capstone effects to the ability tree builds, you can’t ever afford to give them up. Illegal Mods never fit very well with Saboteur anyway.

Level 51 Choice – Snap Shot, Ballistic Dampers, or Lay Low

Snap Shot

• Effect: Entering cover makes your next Charged Burst activate instantly. Cannot occur more than once every 6 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Since Charged Burst already costs a GCD to use and you can’t move while in cover, making Charged Burst instant does not provide a DPS increase on its own. All you’re doing is moving the damage from the end of the GCD to the beginning. The only possible way to increase your DPS with this option is if you manage to get an extra ability into some sort of damage boost window like one of your relic procs or if your Adrenal is about to fall off. The DPS increase from something like that is quite small and very unreliable since you still have a priority to follow. Furthermore, the other two options are far more valuable.

Ballistic Dampers

• Effect: Entering cover grants 3 stacks of Ballistic Dampers, which absorb 30% of the damage dealt by an incoming attack. This effect cannot occur more than once every 1.5s and Ballistic can only be gained once every 6 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in fights where you’re moving a lot or aren’t able to use Hunker Down on cooldown. Ballistic Dampers needs to be refreshed by exiting and reentering cover. Some experienced Gunslingers will cover hop, where they jump to exit cover and immediately reenter cover to reapply Ballistic Dampers, but that is annoying to do and can be quite distracting if it isn’t muscle memory for you. If you don’t cover hop and aren’t moving a whole lot, the uptime on Ballistic Dampers is gonna be pretty low and not end up mitigating very much damage.

Lay Low

• Effect: Reduces the cooldown of Hunker Down by 15 seconds and Pulse Detonator knocks targets back an additional 5m.
• Recommendation: Take this in fights where you aren’t moving very much and are able to use Hunker Down on cooldown. The benefit of Lay Low in PvE is 25% increased uptime on your 60% AoE RDT from Hunker Down, resulting in average AoE RDT being increased by 15% when Hunker Down is used on cooldown. This makes it seem like Ballistic Dampers is the obvious winner because it provides twice as much damage absorption, but since Ballistic Dampers can have much lower uptime and Hunker Down can’t always be used on cooldown, it isn’t so clear-cut. Honestly, you kind of need to make this decision on a fight-by-fight basis. Take a look at your DTPS in StarParse with both Lay Low and Ballistic Dampers and use whichever option results in lower DTPS in that fight.

Level 64 Choice – Cool Under Pressure, Efficient Ammo, or Perfect Scheme

Cool Under Pressure

• Effect: While in cover, you heal for 3% for your max health every 2s.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. The boost to your survivability is equivalent to ~6500 HPS depending on your max HP, which is typically way better than the alternative options in this tier in PvE.

Efficient Ammo

• Effect: Increases the damage dealt by Sweeping Gunfire by 25%.
• Recommendation: Take this in fights where you’re using Sweeping Gunfire. You should only be using Sweeping Gunfire against adds that need to die ASAP; otherwise, leave it to your rotational AoE.

Perfect Scheme

• Effect: Reduces the cooldown of Bag of Tricks by 45 seconds and activating Bag of Tricks grants Perfect Scheme, which increases your damage reduction by 15%. Lasts 15 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in fights where you desperately need more damage mitigation or can’t use one of the other options. Perfect Scheme is weak. The cooldown reduction will only ever sometimes result in a single additional use of the ability. The 15% DR is pretty small, but useful in situations where you actually need to use Bag of Tricks, though you won’t get to utilize it too often in actual fights. The other two options are typically much better, though they aren’t useful in every fight while you’ll be able to get something out of Perfect Scheme in every fight.

Level 68 Choice – Hideout, Bombing Run, or Scrambling Field

Below the Belt

• Effect: Grants the Below the Belt ability, which stuns the target for 4 seconds, deals a small amount of damage. When the effect wears off the target’s movement speed is slowed by 75% for 3 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this only as a last resort. It’s rare for stuns to be required in PvE content. It’s better to have stun mechanics handled by some other Combat Style who doesn’t have their hard stun locked away behind a choice. It’s particularly bad for Saboteur since you have to give up Scrambling Field to take this. Since Saboteur doesn’t get Quickdraw by default, they can’t necessarily benefit from the Guile and Guns proc like Sharpshooter and Dirty Fighting do, so BioWare opted to give Below the Belt a different secondary effect instead.

Hideout

• Effect: Grants the Hideout ability, which allows you to place a mark on the ground that lasts up to 10 minutes. At any point, you can teleport back to that mark if you are within 60m, at which point the ability goes on cooldown for 2 min.
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content and specific fights only. It’s never worth it to give up the massive damage mitigation from Scrambling Field for the DPS increase that comes from mobility but it can be pretty valuable in fights like Mutant Trandoshans to call the train immediately, so only take it in fights where it presents a specific utility for your group. In solo content, I find Hideout to be quite useful if you need to come back the way you came after completing some sort of objective. It also helps to train you to identify situations in group content where Hideout would be useful.

Scrambling Field

• Effect: rants the Scrambling Field ability, which places a shield at your present location that spans 10m and reduces the damage taken by all allies that remain inside by 20%. Lasts 20 seconds, 3 min cooldown.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this for group content. Scrambling Field is fantastic. It helps significantly with recovery when a tank or healer dies unexpectedly and makes heal checks a lot easier. Remember, the goal is to beat the fight, and Scrambling Field helps with that a whole lot more often than Bombing Run.

Level 73 Choice – Hotwired Defenses, Hot Pursuit, or Heads Up

Hotwired Defenses

• Effect: Increases the amount of damage absorbed by Defense Screen by 30%. In addition, when taking damage while Hunker Down is active, the cooldown on Bag of Tricks is reduced by 2s. This effect cannot occur more than once every 3s.
• Recommendation: Take this by default. The effect is pretty weak, but always useful.

Hot Pursuit

• Effect: Upon exiting Cover, you gain 4 stacks of Hot Pursuit, which allow Charged Burst to be activated and cast while moving. Can only occur once every 20 seconds once a stack has been consumed. Lasts up to 15 seconds. Reentering Cover removes the effect.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Charged Burst is rarely used in Saboteur, and you can move during almost all of your other GCDs. In the rare instance that you need to move when it’s time to use Charged Burst, just roll or use Flurry of Bolts instead.

Heads Up

• Effect: When Hunker Down ends or you leave Cover while Hunker Down is active, you gain Heads Up, which increases your movement speed by 50% and grants immunity to movement-impairing effects. Lasts 6 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in fights with a lot of movement. Heads Up allows you to reposition faster, which decreases the time that you’re more vulnerable to AoE damage. It also allows Hunker Down to be used as a movement speed boost in phases where you’re constantly moving by quickly entering and exiting cover to keep the buff active.

Gearing and Stats Priorities

Tactical Items

Ruthless Interrogation
Effect: Each tick of Speed Shot refreshes the duration of your Shock Charge and ticks its damage. Blazing Speed deals 75% more damage.
Recommendation: This is your default tactical item. It provides the greatest single-target DPS increase compared to the other Sabo tacticals and is also superior in burst situations. Since Shock Charge only costs 10 Energy, you can technically afford to give this tactical up in sustained DPS situations without running out of Energy, but I don’t see why you would.

TO-RO Ionic Discharge
Effect: Explosive Charge now only triggers from Sabotage and deals 50% more damage.
Recommendation: This is your burst DPS tactical item. You should never use it in PvE. Ruthless Interrogation will provide about the same amount of DPS in even the shortest of burst checks and do a whole lot more over longer checks while being vastly superior in terms of sustained DPS over the course of the whole fight. The damage triggered by a single channel of Speed Shot with Ruthless Interrogation is enough to match the additional damage from Explosive Charge from this tactical item, and you get to use two channels of Speed Shot per Explosive Charge. Unfortunately, you can’t really benefit from Hard Reset with this tactical because you become bound by Sabotage’s cooldown, which is the same as Explosive Charge’s.

MG-2 Polygrade Dispersal Caps
Effect: When Explosive Charge’s Contingency Charges detonate, they deal damage to all enemies around their target.
Recommendation: This is your AoE tactical item. It’s pretty weak because Contingency Charges don’t deal very much damage, especially considering that Explosive Charge has such a long cooldown. Even with Hard Reset, I find this tactical to be mostly useless because Incendiary Grenade + autocrit Explosive Charges on each enemy is more than enough while Ruthless Interrogation and T0-R0 let you deal more damage to higher-health targets.

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 an Saboteur Gunslinger.

• Locked and Loaded – Ranged and Tech damage (and healing) increased by 5%.
• Energy Regulator – You gain 1 Energy per second while in cover.
• Improved Targeting – Reduces the cooldown of Target Hack by 15 seconds.

Energy Regulator and Locked and Loaded are the BiS combo. Energy Regulator is particularly essential so that you can use a build that actually does viable DPS. Locked and Loaded seems to be superior to Improved Targeting, but if you don’t have that, Improved Targeting is fine in the meantime.

Learn more about Legendary Items in SWTOR 7.0 from the dedicated guide, which also includes a full list for all combat styles.

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 GCD. However, as you approach 7.15%, you actually start getting a mix of 1.4s and 1.5s GCDs, 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 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 Devastating Vengeance (DV) for all PvE content. Each relic offers a proc; FR’s proc boosts your Mastery, whereas DV’s proc increases your Critical Rating. Compared to the third option, Serendipitous Assault (SA), Devastating Vengeance is superior because Critical Rating offers a greater DPS increase per point specifically for this discipline.

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 Saboteur Gunslinger 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.

Sustained DPS Build

This build is only possible with the Energy Regulator Legendary Implant. Without it, you will not have enough Energy to do the rotation. You won’t have any Energy issues with this build and should only need to use Cool Head if you spam Sweeping Gunfire a lot or once in a great while if you have 100% uptime.

The core components of this build rely on dealing massive amounts of critical damage with Kill Streak (and usually Sequential Targeting) while increasing your critical chance with Aim Assist and the Relic of Devastating Vengeance.

Typically, you’ll be using Sequential Targeting as your Explosive Charge buff since it offers the most sustained DPS, but there are instances where System Kick or Hard Reset will be better.

No Energy Regulator Sustained Build

This build does not offer enough DPS to be competitive with the Sustained DPS build, but is the only way to do sustained DPS before you get the Energy Regulators Legendary Implant because you do not generate enough Energy to do the normal rotation without this build or that Implant.

Hothead lets you generate about 1 Energy per second while Sequence Break is active and Calculated Measures and System Kick ensure that Sequence Break has mostly 100% uptime. The Improved Targeting Implant is not required to have 100% uptime on Target Hack, but it is nice to have in case it falls off early.

Using Energy Regulators with Hothead is excessive in the single-target rotation, but can allow you to spam Sweeping Gunfire as much as you want, though you have to give up a significant amount of single-target and AoE damage to take these points, so it will likely only be worthwhile when you’re using Sweeping Gunfire for the entire fight.

Solo Content Build

Hard Reset and Kill Streak work together to ensure that you get to reuse an autocrit Explosive Charge against each enemy with Incendiary Grenade triggering the detonations.

Against Standard and Weak Enemies, you’ll want to apply Incendiary Grenade first and then Target Hack + Explosive Charge to each enemy. Incendiary Grenade will detonate Explosive Charge and killing the enemy will reset the cooldowns. Against stronger enemies, you’ll want to apply Shock Charge first and follow up Explosive Charge with Speed Shot, and then, if necessary, Sabotage and Thermal Grenade.

I prefer using Ruthless Interrogation because you don’t need the small amount of extra AoE from MG-2 Polygrade Dispersal Caps on weaker enemies and you’ll have to use Shock Charge and Speed Shot on stronger enemies anyway and Shock Charge will help you take those beefier enemies down.

Openers, Rotations, Priorities

Opener

This is the rotation you use at the very beginning of the fight and for burst DPS checks, though I don’t recommend using Saboteur for burst DPS checks. It is nearly identical to your regular rotation except for applying Shock Charge and activating your OCDs. It’s important to get as much damage as possible while all of your damage boosts are available to maximize their impact.

1. Bombing Run (pre-cast)
2. Charged Burst (pre-cast)
3. Shock Charge
4. Adrenal + Target Hack
5. Explosive Charge
6. Speed Shot
7. Incendiary Grenade
8. Sabotage
9. Thermal Grenade
10. Vital Shot
11. Speed Shot
12. Incendiary Grenade
13. Charged Burst
14. Thermal Grenade
15. Explosive Charge
16. Speed Shot
17. Incendiary Grenade
18. Rotation (starting with Chunk 2)

Saboteur’s opener is basically just the rotation with a couple of pre-casts. You should skip casting Charged Burst if you can’t pre-cast it. Make sure to activate your Adrenal and Target Hack after applying Shock Charge so you aren’t wasting a GCD of those buffs being active.

Single-Target Rotation

In Saboteur, you use a rotation because it is possible to use all of your core abilities on cooldown without multiple high-damage abilities being available at the same time. Rotations are usually pretty consistent, though there can be some decision-making for a few GCDs.

I like to think of the rotation as having 2 chunks with each chunk composed of 3 GCDs. In between/after each chunk, you use Speed Shot followed by Incendiary Grenade. Then you do the other chunk and repeat. The only thing that will have a major effect on your DPS is making sure that each chunk contains at least 1 GCD that generates a stack of Blazing Speed (Charged Burst, Quickdraw, Thermal Grenade, and Speed Shot) so that you can maintain 100% uptime on 3 stacks of Blazing Speed. Here are the two chunks that I use:

Chunk 1:

1. Charged Burst / Bombing Run
2. Thermal Grenade
3. Explosive Charge

Chunk 2:

1. Sabotage
2. Thermal Grenade
3. Vital Shot

There are definitely some micro-optimizations you can make that might have a small impact on burst capability, but an extra crit or sneeze is gonna completely negate those gains. If Explosive Charge’s cooldown is reset or Bombing Run is available before it’s time to use it and there are adds to hit, you should omit Thermal Grenade from that chunk to use one of your more damaging abilities instead.

It’s risky to use Charged Burst instead of an unprocced Thermal Grenade since you don’t have a whole lot of spare Energy. I think it’s also somewhat important to have Thermal Grenade be the second ability in each chunk since this minimizes the chance that Blazing Speed will fall off if your rotation is disrupted.

Don’t forget to reapply Shock Charge if it falls off! If it does, omit Thermal Grenade or ideally Charged Burst from that chunk and just keep going.

The full rotation will look like the opener minus the OCDs. It’s important to practice this on a dummy at least until you can execute it without having to constantly look at your bar.

If there is downtime during a fight, remember that you can precast many things as an Saboteur Gunslinger. You won’t get the full damage of your DoTs but you also won’t have to spend a GCD to apply them when the boss is vulnerable, so you will end up dealing more damage.

The key to being a great DPS is to always be DPSing. Using any damaging ability is better than just standing there not doing anything. Some DPS is better than zero DPS. Even if you mess up, keep doing the rotation! Unless there’s a mechanic that prevents you from dealing damage or forces you to stop DPSing, you should not stop DPSing. 

If a tank is telling you to stop DPS or hold off for a few seconds because they can’t keep aggro, don’t listen to them, they’re the one that doesn’t know the proper way to keep aggro. Tell them to git gud and read a tank guide!

AoE Rotation

Since Sweeping Gunfire is so expensive and the rest of your AoE abilities are used rotationally while also being interdependent on each other, you end up having to use a rotation that is similar to what you use for single-target DPS, though there are a few changes to account for the fact that we’re focused on dealing AoE damage. The rotation is still divided up into two chunks separated by Speed Shot + Incendiary Grenade. Since each chunk is 3 GCDs, a full channel of Sweeping Gunfire will count as 1 chunk. 

The other chunk will involve Sabotage for its AoE, Thermal Grenade (procced) to help with managing Energy and provide an alternative to Bombing Run, and Explosive Charge since it deals such a high amount of damage and is net positive in terms of Energy consumption. We are completely omitting Charged Burst and Vital Shot because they are too expensive and not needed for maximum AoE damage. Now, as I mentioned, Sabo’s abilities are interdependent on each other. Sabotage has a couple of requirements in order to be used:

1. It requires that Shock Charge be on the target in order to even be usable at all.
2. It requires 1 stack of Blazing Speed on that target in order for Sabotage to deal AoE damage. 

This basically means that you need to have a higher-health primary target, like a Champion in a pack of Elites in order to use Sabotage and get the subsequent proc for a free Thermal Grenade. 

When the primary target already has Shock Charge and Blazing Speed

1. Bombing Run
2. Sabotage
3. Thermal Grenade / Shock Charge / Sweeping Gunfire (partial channel)
4. Speed Shot
5. Incendiary Grenade
6. Sweeping Gunfire (full channel)
7. Speed Shot
8. Incendiary Grenade
9. Sabotage
10. Explosive Charge / Thermal Grenade
11. Sweeping Gunfire (single GCD partial channel)
12. Speed Shot
13. Incendiary Grenade
14. Repeat

This rotation is used when you already have Shock Charge and Blazing Speed on a target. This usually happens when adds spawn alongside the boss that you need to kill in a somewhat timely manner, like in Corruptor Zero.

If there’s a primary add but the boss is still active, I do not recommend switching the Shock Charge to that add, just put Explosive Charge / Thermal Grenade on that target and then switch back to whatever has Shock Charge for Speed Shot. Karagga’s Mouse Droids and the Probes that spawn in between waves in Titan 6 are other great examples where you’d want to use a rotation like this. 

You can also switch the order of the chunks if you want, like if Sabotage is currently on cooldown, do the Sweeping Gunfire chunk first and then do the Sabotage chunk. 

If the fight has very frequent AoE, you can also tweak which abilities go in each chunk in the single-target rotation as well so that you can more easily transition between the two. For example, you might want Chunk 1 to be Sabotage > Thermal Grenade > Explosive Charge and Chunk 2 to be Vital Shot > Thermal Grenade > Charged Burst / Bombing Run / Quickdraw. This is slightly less optimal for the single-target opener though, which is why I don’t recommend always doing it.

When the primary target does not have Shock Charge and Blazing Speed 

1. Bombing Run
2. Shock Charge 
3. Speed Shot
4. Incendiary Grenade
5. Sabotage
6. Thermal Grenade
7. Explosive Charge
8. Speed Shot
9. Incendiary Grenade
10. Sweeping Gunfire (full channel)
11. Speed Shot
12. Incendiary Grenade

Sabotage does deal a fair bit more damage than a single GCD of Sweeping Gunfire, but you do have to use a bunch of single-target abilities before you actually start to use Sweeping Gunfire and usually, the adds will be already dead by that point, however, this rotation is also much more Energy-efficient, so you should use this when you need to AoE for longer than you can sustain the Sweeping Gunfire Burst rotation.

There aren’t a whole lot of fights like this, the only ones I could think of are EC Kephess during the Warrior Shield phase, Tyth if you’re on AoE duty, Draxus, and the adds at the end of Cartel Warlords. This will mainly get used on trash mobs in between fights where the enemies have high health, like the more recent raids tend to have.