SWTOR 7.1 Innovative Ordnance Mercenary and Assault Specialist Commando Changes Analysis

BioWare has announced buffs for Innovative Ordnance Mercenary (IO) / Assault Specialist Commando (AS) coming with SWTOR 7.1 as well as a tactical item intended to replace Magnetized Shrapnel, which was removed at the end of 7.0. This article has been updated with information from the PTS.

Innovative Ordnance and Assault Specialist’s Current Standing

IO/AS is one of the worst-performing disciplines in the game. This is especially bad when you consider that it’s a DoT spec and BioWare has reiterated that “burst should win out in a short period of time but DoT damage is better over the long run”. IO/AS is a bit unique because it has a fair bit more burst than what almost all other DoT specs are capable of, but not nearly enough to contend with top burst specs like Powertech / Vanguard DPS and Lightning Sorcerer / Telekinetics Sage so it doesn’t justify their current position.

Like Arsenal / Gunnery, IO/AS also lacks a build capstone at their level 43 choice and we can see that combat styles with them tend to deal more DPS than those without. It just makes sense that you can’t deal quite as much damage if you have one less buff to work with. It isn’t impossible to overcome this, but it does appear that BioWare hasn’t factored this into balancing damage output unless they want such a wide spread for average DPS.

The biggest issues with IO/AS comes from rotational instability and extremely unforgiving Heat / Energy Cell management. Getting the Innovative Particle Accelerator / Ionic Accelerator and Speed to Burn / Blazing Celerity procs consistently at the right times are crucial, but minor variations in APM and sudden alacrity boosts can easily ruin this.

Resource management was already difficult with IO/AS unless you pretty much gave up and just always used Rapid Shots / Hammer Shot instead. With 7.0, Vent Heat and Thermal Sensor Override / Recharge Cells and Reserve Power Cell were combined, so you’re now far more restricted in how often you can activate Power Shot / Charged Bolts.

BioWare’s Announced Changes for 7.1

Increased the bleed damage of Serrated Shot / Serrated Bolt by 16%.
Changed the functionality of the Incendiary Ignition ability tree buff from giving more ticks of Combustible Gas Cylinder / Plasma Cell to increasing its damage on targets affected by Incendiary Missile / Incendiary Round by 35%.

Practical Implications and Analysis

I know what you’re probably thinking after reading that:

And you’re right. Both the Serrated Shot and Incendiary Ignition changes result in a difference of 300 DPS each, though the Incendiary Ignition change is replacing an existing buff. I’m not going to bother to calculate the DPS increase provided by the old effect of Incendiary Ignition because it doesn’t matter. Even if it was a flat 600 DPS increase, that would still be worthless just as Dipper says.

Recommendations for BioWare

Missile Blast / Explosive Round and Power Shot / Charged Bolts Need to be More Enticing

In order to boost the single-target DPS of IO/AS, the first place to start is by making Power Shot / Charged Rounds and Missile Blast / Explosive Round (with proc) more useable. Right now, there’s slightly too much of an incentive to use Rapid Shots / Hammer Shot for its increased chance to get 2 stacks of Supercharge since it ticks 10 times because the Supercharged Burn DoT just deals such a ridiculous amount of damage. High resource costs further discourage their use, especially for Power Shot / Charged Bolts.

Missile Blast / Explosive Round is an easy one to fix, all you need to do is make the ability generate 1 stack of Supercharge, either directly or as part of consuming the Volatile Warhead / Hyper Assault Rounds proc. This way, you aren’t losing out on stacks of Supercharge and it should help the associated ability tree choice keep up with the buff to Incendiary Ignition.

Power Shot / Charged Bolts is a bit trickier, but it can be done. Both its Heat / Energy Cell cost and damage output need to be adjusted to allow it to be used more frequently. I think the best way to handle this is by making it so that the Surging Shots / Boosted Bolts proc causes your next Power Shot / Charged Bolts to cost less 1 Heat / Energy Cells and provide a greater damage boost per stack (maybe 2% instead).

I think this change would work best because it fixes many existing issues with the spec all at once while making an existing proc more important and giving the player an easy indication of when they can (and should) use Power Shot / Charged Bolts instead of Rapid Shots.

Slightly Reworking a Couple of Procs

Reworking the Innovative Particle Accelerator (IPA) / Ionic Accelerator (IA) and Speed to Burn (StB) / Blazing Celerity (BC) procs needs to be a part of these changes. It’s so frustrating when a minor variation in APM can cause you to miss out on such a significant amount of DPS.

IPA/IA is super easy to fix, all that needs to be done is make it so the proc is triggered off of dealing damage with Unload / Full Auto and Thermal Detonator / Assault Plastique without a rate limit. This wouldn’t change the amount or rate at which players could obtain the proc as it would still be twice per rotation. Both abilities are still used with the Continuous Fire rotation, so it wouldn’t ruin anything there either.

Changing the IPA/IA proc also has the added benefit of making Unload / Full Auto more essential to the rotation so players don’t have to worry about giving up a ton of mobility for a tiny DPS increase as they do now.

With Power Shot / Charged Bolts no longer responsible for proccing IPA/IA, the StB/BC proc can be changed to a passive that just makes Serrated Shot / Serrated Bolt always instant instead. This will make the spec a lot more reliable in terms of how much damage it can dish out with the only distinction coming from

Improving Ability Tree Choices

Just like with Arsenal / Gunnery, I’d like for Chaff Flare / Diversion to be given back as a base ability and for Power Overrides / Overclock to be combined with Supercharged Defense, but I don’t have a great idea for a build capstone to replace it and the other changes I’ve recommended don’t fit as nicely into an individual passive as my recommendations for Gunnery / Arsenal could.

Perhaps Supercharged Defense could just be offered as an alternative choice for both specs instead. I’d also love if BioWare could swap Kolto Surge / Adrenal Surge and Trauma Regulators / Trauma Stabilizers. This shouldn’t have too much of an effect on PvE, but will help make Kolto Overload / Adrenaline Rush more useful in PvE.

From the PTS

As I mentioned in the analysis section, +35% to Incendiary Ignition is insufficient, though I acknowledge that this remains a balanced choice next to the other Incendiary Missile / Incendiary Round options. A +100% boost like Pyrotech / Plasmatech would have required other changes.

I honestly don’t really feel much of a change on the dummy. It might be a few hundred higher, but the Incendiary Ignition doesn’t seem to result in an actual buff to damage output, and 300 DPS from Serrated Shot / Serrated Bolt is well within parse-to-parse variance for any spec. BioWare, we desperately need an actual buff to IO/AS.

And then they waste time bringing back garbage like this that literally doesn’t even work with the strongest single-target ability tree buff for Thermal Detonator / Assault Plastique. I really don’t understand what BioWare is thinking unless they have larger changes under the hood or somehow think that one combat style literally doing 20% less single-target sustained DPS than another is somehow acceptable in the slightest.

I actually tried that tactical out, by the way. Magnetic Resonance hits for about 6k on average. Why bother bringing back garbage tacticals no one is going to use? Even in PvP you’ll get more burst from the one that locks you out of detonating Thermal Detonator / Assault Plastique early and you miss out on the bonkers Supercharged Burn DoT.

You can check out the overview and analysis for all other Class Changes coming with SWTOR 7.1: