SWTOR 7.7 Ruffian Scoundrel PvE Guide and Best Builds

SWTOR Ruffian Scoundrel Guide (DPS PvE) for beginner players and more experienced veterans: Skills, Choices, Rotations, Gearing, Builds, Tips!

Introduction to Ruffian Scoundrel

Ruffian Scoundrels are brutal fighters that exsanguinate their foes with a combination of well-placed blaster shots and sharp objects.

Ruffian truly excels when it comes to dealing sustained damage, they are one of the best specs in the game in terms of single-target damage output and they’re no slouch when it comes to AoE either. That said, their AoE potential is behind that of Vengeance | Vigilance and Hatred | Serenity.

In terms of survivability, Ruffian is finally in a good enough place. They can handle both sustained and spike damage, but does not have a full cheese ability. If you need a cheese, you’ll need to swap to Scrapper or rely on Friend of the Force from an Assassin | Shadow tank or Sonic Rebounder from Powertechs | Vanguards.

Ruffian’s biggest drawback is their poor group utility. While they do provide good DPS debuffs and the raid buff is nice, that’s really all they offer. They lack things like an off-taunt , any accessible form of in-combat CC, burst, or range likely because BioWare neglected to give them anything to replace the loss of battle and stealth rezzing.

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 always one of your primary CCs, either the 8s mez or 4s hard stun. Another of the abilities is the movement ability with the longest cooldown. The third option is less consistent, it seems to be there as an extra balance lever for BioWare since some abilities that got locked away are more impactful than others. The 3 abilities are almost always the same for each discipline.

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

• Countermeasures (kind of)
• Sever Tendon
• Resuscitation Probe
• Stealth Rez

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. This was done because BioWare made it so stealthing out in Operations no longer actually pulls you out of combat, making stealth rezzing impossible. You can still activate Disappearing Act to zero out your threat though.

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, Scrapper requires 3 other DPS debuffs:

DPS Debuff	Presence of debuff increases DPS by approximately
Armor	3.6%
AoE	2.3%
Ranged	1.8%
Total DPS Gain:	7.7%

Ruffian is fairly standard as far as group composition dependency goes. It also takes the crown as being the discipline that can be most dependent on the least valuable DPS debuffs in the game, AoE and Ranged, though the DPS gain from those debuffs being present is still pretty small.

Ruffian Scoundrel pairs best with Arsenal Mercenary | Gunnery Commando Marksman Sniper | Sharpshooter Gunslinger, and Engineering Sniper | Saboteur Gunslinger because all of these disciplines provide 2 DPS debuffs that the other need for maximum DPS. Each of the ranged burst specs provides the armor and ranged debuffs while Engineering | Saboteur provides AoE and ranged.

It’s absolutely not required that you pair a Ruffian Scoundrel with one of those disciplines, but because Ruffian is melee DoT while the others are ranged burst (or hybrid), these pairings offer some of the strongest possible compositional synergies in the game. (Good lord, writing that last clause made me feel like a corporate executive.)

Scoundrel DPS in general offers great synergy with its own DPS debuffs as well since it provides both the Tech and Internal/Elemental 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?  

Check out the SWTOR Damage Types and Damage Mitigation guide.

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. 

Regarding Multi-DoTing

Most DoTs don’t have cooldowns and always deal more damage than DoT spec fillers. For much of the game’s life, applying DoTs to multiple targets in lieu of fillers at the same time has been a reliable way for players to increase their DPS. Manually applying DoTs to multiple targets in lieu of using a filler is called multi-DoTing. 

Thanks to changes made to many DoT specs in 6.0 and 7.0, there is now much less of a DPS gain from multi-DoTing than there used to be. In 6.0, tactical items were introduced and the best PvE-oriented ones tend to completely focus on buffing either single-target or AoE damage. 

In 7.0, we have new discipline skill tree choices, and the options you have to pick from are structured in a similar way to tacticals where you have to choose to buff either single-target or AoE damage. 

Most of the single-target tacticals and discipline choices buff DoT spec damage in ways that do not extend the DPS increases to secondary targets, especially not to targets that received their DoTs through ways other than by DoT spread.

For Ruffian, it is still always profitable to multi-DoT by applying Vital Shot and Shrap Bomb instead of Brutal Shots, though the DPS increase is small, especially while Sanguinary Shot is active, and will only be a DPS increase if the DoT is able to tick fully. It’s not worth multi-DoTing as Ruffian if you have to waste a lot of time target swapping or there’s a lot going on and you need to focus on mechanics.

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

 Upper Hand

I want to start this section by going over the Upper Hand (UH) proc since it is an integral part of playing Scoundrel in general. You can read through the description for it listed alongside your other combat style passives, but it isn’t very helpful in explaining what exactly a UH is. Basically, Upper Hand is an additional resource alongside Energy and in order to use some abilities, you have to spend 1 UH. You can gain a UH from the following sources:

• Dealing damage with Point Blank Shot initiated from stealth
• Dealing damage with Blaster Whip or Sanguinary Shot
• Activating Pugnacity or Trick Move
• Landing the killing blow on an enemy

Since most abilities have cooldowns, this just represents an additional resource to manage, though this essentially functions as the cooldown for your Brutal Shots ability. The following abilities cost a UH: 

• Brutal Shots
• Bushwhack
• Stack the Deck (raid buff)
• Kolto Pack (without the Scurry proc)

For Ruffian, your goal is to generate UHs to the extent that you can use Bushwhack on cooldown and Brutal Shots as your only filler so you never have to use Quick Shot. When you have the opportunity to gain a UH, it’s important that you don’t already have the maximum number of UHs, or else you will effectively be wasting it, so you have to predict when you’re about to get one to avoid this.

In addition, the Tactician Legendary Implant allows you to gain 10% crit chance for 10 seconds whenever you generate a UH. Since there’s no longer a rate limit on the effect like there was in 6.0, you don’t have to worry about maximizing its uptime.

Shrap Bomb

(Tech/Internal/Periodic/AoE/Instant/Poison)
Shrap Bomb is the first of your primary DoTs that must have 100% uptime on your primary target. Even without Brutal Shots, Shrap Bomb deals enough damage to be worth using where it has 100% uptime, so you should apply it to secondary targets when possible.

Shrap Bomb is considered an AoE attack and one of the only rotational AoE abilities in the game that can benefit from another discipline providing the AoE debuff. Most other rotational AoE is dealt by specs that already provide the AoE debuff. Please note that unlike in Virulence, Shrap Bomb does not spread Vital Shot.

Shrap Bomb has 1 discipline passive and 1 debuff associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Mortal Wound
Shrap Bomb (and Vital Shot) have a 10% chance to harm their target twice whenever they deal damage. This damage is unreliable in the moment, but over the course of the whole fight, it will average out to 10% more ticks.

Assailable
Also provided by Mortal Wound, Assailable is the Internal/Elemental DPS debuff and is applied by Shrap Bomb. The Internal/Elemental debuff is considered the second best DPS debuff in the game because it significantly benefits almost all DPS specs as many of the most powerful attacks in the game deal Internal/Elemental damage.

For some disciplines, the Internal/Elemental debuff is actually better than the Armor debuff because a greater proportion of the damage dealt is considered Internal/Elemental compared to Energy/Kinetic and both debuffs offer the same effective 7% damage increase.

Since Ruffian applies this debuff on an AoE ability, it’s even more valuable because almost all DoTs and DoT spreads in the game deal Internal/Elemental damage and DoT specs provide the most potent AoE in the game thanks to their DoT spreads.

Vital Shot

(Tech/Internal/Periodic/Single-Target/Instant/Poison)
Vital Shot is the second of your primary DoTs that must have 100% uptime on your primary target. Even without Brutal Shots, Vital Shot deals enough damage to be worth using where it has 100% uptime, so you should apply it to secondary targets when possible. Vital Shot has 1 discipline passive associated with it that are relevant to your rotation that I haven’t already mentioned.

Open Wound
Increases the duration of Vital Shot by 6 seconds. This passive is now hidden, but the effect remains. Shrap Bomb lasts 24 seconds, so this passive just makes Vital Shot have the same duration.

Brutal Shots

(Ranged/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability is used in the same manner as a filler and deals similar damage, but it costs a UH to use. If you’ve played Virulence | Dirty Fighting, this ability is basically just a single tick of Cull | Wounding Shots, though it deals more weapon damage and can only ever tick 2 DoTs instead of 3. In that way, it’s more similar to Lethal Shot | Dirty Blast.

Since Brutal Shots costs a UH, you’re fundamentally limited in how often you can use it, though you can generate enough UHs to use it as often as you need to while still being able to use your more powerful attacks on cooldown.

There is no point in using Brutal Shots if you don’t have both Vital Shot and Shrap Bomb on the target, and even without the bonus ticks from Brutal Shots, each DoT is still stronger and cheaper than a single activation of Brutal Shots.

The fact that Brutal Shots deals a majority of its damage by ticking your DoTs means that it technically benefits from effects that trigger from or apply to your periodic or bleed effects. For example, there is a 10% chance that either Vital Shot or Shrap Bomb can tick a second time thanks to the Mortal Wound discipline passive.

That said, it’s still a filler because it is weaker than your other attacks and doesn’t have a cooldown. Brutal Shots does not have any procs or discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation that I haven’t mentioned.

Blaster Whip

(Tech/Kinetic/Direct/Single Target/Instant)
This ability’s primary purpose is to generate a UH for you to use on Brutal Shots, and your goal is to always use Brutal Shots as a filler instead of Quick Shot. Since dealing damage with Blaster Whip is one of the only ways you can consistently generate UHs, you’ll be using this ability fairly often as well; it’s basically your second filler.

It’s a bit complicated to describe when to use Blaster Whip since it varies depending on what other abilities you have available and how many UHs you have. It deals significantly less damage than any of your other attacks, so it should never be used when you have max UHs.

Since UHs are in relatively short supply, you generally only want to use this ability if you do not currently have 2 UHs and have a GCD that you’d want to use Brutal Shots in because none of your other abilities are available. Blaster Whip has 1 proc, debuff, and 1 discipline passive associated with it that are extremely relevant to your rotation:

Unfair Advantage
Activating Blaster Whip grants Unfair Advantage, which makes your next Brutal Shots refund a UH and cost no Energy. This proc adds a significant amount of complexity to Ruffian’s rotation because you want to get this proc as often as possible since it’s basically a free extra UH. There’s no easy way to track when Unfair Advantage will come off cooldown in-game, but you can set up a StarParse timer for it if you want.

If you get the Unfair Advantage proc when Blaster Whip pushes you up to 2 UHs (so you have 2 UHs + Unfair Advantage), you need to be mindful that it will take 2 activations of Brutal Shots before you have room for another UH because the next activation of Brutal Shots will keep you at 2 UHs.

Consider delaying Blaster Whip by a GCD to use Brutal Shots such that Blaster Whip would bring you up to 1 UH + Unfair Advantage instead of 2 so you don’t have to delay other abilities like Sanguinary Shot or Pugnacity for more than 1 GCD.

Since Unfair Advantage only refunds a UH when Brutal Shots is activated, you technically can get around this mechanic if you mess up by using Bushwhack or Stack the Deck instead if they happen to be available (and they almost certainly won’t be) because they will consume a UH and not Unfair Advantage. Still, you should try to avoid this when possible by being thoughtful about when you generate UHs in general.

Rough and Tumble
Dealing damage with Blaster Whip applies Susceptible for 45s, which makes affected targets take 5% more damage from Tech attacks. This is the Tech debuff. It’s incredibly valuable to Mercenaries | Commandos and Snipers | Gunslingers, the tech-based rDPS, because they are the only disciplines that can benefit from it that do not provide it themselves and a considerable proportion of their damage dealt is considered tech damage.

Cut Down
Blaster Whip deals 10% more damage to targets affected by your bleed effects. This proc reinforces the fact that maintaining your DoTs typically has a higher priority than activating Blaster Whip. Keep in mind that this is a small incentive and you’d lose more DPS from applying DoTs to something that’s about to die than you would gain from using Blaster Whip against a target that is affected by one of your DoTs.

Sanguinary Shot

(Ranged/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability deals very little damage on its own but is one of your most powerful attacks in terms of damage per activation because it deals damage anytime one of your bleed effects deals damage. Your entire rotation is designed to make your bleed effects tick and deal more damage.

Sanguinary Shot will trigger off of literally any of your attacks that deal bleed damage including:

• Vital Shot
• Shrap Bomb
• DoT ticks triggered by Brutal Shots
• Bushwhack
• Part of Point Blank Shot
• Part of Lacerating Blast

If you’ve played Virulence | Dirty Fighting, Sanguinary Shot is basically the same as Weakening Blast | Hemmhoraging Blast with the added effect that it grants a UH. Sanguinary Shot has 1 tactical item and 1 discipline passive associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Synox Shots
Sanguinary Shot deals 75% more damage. Whenever Sanguinary Shot critically hits, it restores 2 Energy. This tactical item makes it so you don’t have to manage your Energy at all and creates a stronger incentive to use Sanguinary Shot on cooldown.

Cold Blooded
If a target dies while it is affected by Sanguinary Shot, the cooldown on Sanguinary Shot is reset. This discipline passive makes it so Ruffian doesn’t lose as much DPS when target swapping because Sanguinary Shot has a decently long cooldown while making up a considerable portion of your overall damage dealt and functioning similarly to a DoT in terms of how it deals damage.

Please note that it is not worth applying Sanguinary Shot to a target if it will die within the next GCD, especially if DoTs aren’t even on the target. Sanguinary Shot requires 6 DoT ticks to surpass Brutal Shots in terms of damage dealt per GCD, which can come from 2 activations of Brutal Shots + both DoTs ticking once naturally during that time. The first of those GCDs can (and should) also be Bushwhack, which will contribute up to 3 DoT ticks.

Bushwhack

(Tech/Internal/Periodic/AoE/Instant)
Bushwhack is your main AoE ability, though it deals enough damage to be worth incorporating into your single-target rotation, especially while Sanguinary Shot is active on the target.

It ticks 3 times over its 6s duration (once at the beginning, once halfway through, and once at the end) and is considered a bleed effect, so each of those ticks will also trigger Sanguinary Shot.

To be clear, it is ideal to have each of Bushwhack’s ticks trigger Sanguinary Shot and this is easy to do since they have identical cooldowns; however, it is not essential for Bushwhack to tick Sanguinary Shot 3 times in order for it to deal more damage than Brutal Shots.

That said, Bushwhack does need to hit your primary target all 3 times in order for it to be a single-target sustained DPS increase. If you only manage to land 2 ticks, Brutal Shots will deal more damage, so make sure that the target will survive or otherwise remain in the AoE for the full 6s duration. Otherwise, use Brutal Shots instead.

Bushwhack costs a UH, but it doesn’t trigger or benefit from the 2 UH refunds, Unfair Advantage and Explosive Refund, that Brutal Shots can.

This is annoying when you know those refunds are available, but it is helpful when you have an extra UH you want to spend now so you can activate something that generates a UH like Trick Move or Pugnacity without having to delay that activation by multiple GCDs.

In other words, Brutal Shots is more likely to keep you at 2 UHs for multiple GCDs, meaning you can’t use UH generators without wasting the UH. With Bushwhack, you can force yourself down to 1 UH so you don’t waste a UH.

The only other way to do this without losing DPS is with the raid buff, which is basically never available. If you have 2 UHs and are about to use Sanguinary Shot, it is beneficial to use Bushwhack first so you don’t waste the UH generated by Sanguinary Shot.

Bushwhack also stuns standard and weak enemies for the full duration, making it one of the most powerful abilities in the game in solo content. Bushwhack has 1 discipline passive associated with it that I haven’t mentioned yet that is relevant to your rotation:

Black Market Mods
Bushwhack spreads Vital Shot (but not Shrap Bomb) to targets it damages if it damages at least 1 target already affected by Vital Shot. This is Ruffian’s DoT spread for Vital Shot. Unlike Virulence | Dirty Fighting, Shrap Bomb is not involved in the DoT spread of Vital Shot at all.

This will desynchronize the applications of Shrap Bomb and Dart, forcing you to clip Shrap Bomb on your primary target or skip it on secondary targets, resulting in a single-target or AoE DPS loss.

If the adds will die on time without Shrap Bomb, there’s no reason to clip it on the primary target; otherwise, it’s worthwhile to clip Grenade so the adds die faster.

You can get this clipped GCD back by using Bushwhack to bounce Vital Shot back to the primary target if it is still on secondary targets. However, you can also turn this bounce into a single-target DPS increase if you don’t need

Point Blank Shot

(Tech/Kinetic and Internal/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Point Blank Shot is primarily a big hit that deals part of its damage as kinetic (mitigated by armor) and part of it as internal (ignores armor).

The internal component is also considered bleed damage, so it synergizes with other effects that rely on bleeds. For example, Point Blank Shot’s bleed damage will tick Sanguinary Shot.

When Point Blank Shot is used from Stealth, you’ll deal more damage with the attack and generate a UH. Point Blank Shot has 1 proc associated with it that is relevant to your rotation that I haven’t mentioned yet:

Cut to the Quick
Activating Point Blank Shot grants Cut to the Quick, which increases the critical chance and critical multiplier of your periodic damage and healing abilities by 30% for 6s. This buff is quite powerful, but it’s practically impossible to make the most of it while still using Point Blank Shot on cooldown. The attack deals too much direct damage to be worth delaying.

Other Semi-Rotational Abilities

 Thermal Grenade

(Tech/Kinetic/Direct/AoE/Instant)
Unless your DoTs can be refreshed, this is Ruffian’s only semi-rotational attack that can be used if you are more than 10m away from your target and deals a halfway decent amount of damage. Since it costs 20 Energy, be prepared to use Cool Head, which should be available because you don’t need it for anything else.

 Quick Shot

(Ranged/Energy/Direct/Single Target/Instant)
This ability should only ever be used if you are out of UHs because it is objectively worse than Brutal Shots in every way except for the fact that it does not cost a UH to use. Quick Shot deals less weapon damage than Brutal Shots, can’t tick your DoTs (nor subsequently trigger Sanguinary Shot twice), and effectively costs more Energy. It only deals a tiny bit less damage than Thermal Grenade, but it’s significantly cheaper, so I recommend using it over Thermal Grenade if you’re within 10m of the boss and just out of UHs.

If you do the rotation correctly, you shouldn’t ever have to use Quick Shot, but you will need to use it if you mess up and don’t have enough UHs. Needing to use Quick Shot frequently is one of the best indicators that you need to spend more time practicing on the dummy.

 Flurry of Bolts

(Ranged/Energy/Direct/Single Target/Instant)
Flurry of Bolts costs 0 Energy, has a 30m range, and technically deals damage, so you can make an argument for using it if you are further than 10m away from your target when Thermal Grenade is on cooldown and your DoTs have been applied, but it’s just so weak, it’s better to just spend that GCD on Scamper to get back in range sooner or one of your bigger off-heals, Slow-release Medpac or Kolto Pack (only with the Scurry proc), because your healers have stronger GCDs than Flurry of Bolts.

Kolto Pack and Slow-release Medpac

These off-heals will probably be more valuable to your group than Flurry of Bolts. That said, if you’re spending more than 1-2 GCDs beyond 10m from the boss outside of downtime, you’re probably doing something wrong, so you should almost exclusively use them during downtime.

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.

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. 

 Thermal Grenade

(Tech/Kinetic/Direct/AoE/Instant)
Scoundrels have a combat style passive called Skirmisher, which buffs Thermal Grenade like this: “The AoE damage dealt by Thermal Grenade is increased by 50% and it now deals AoE damage to any nearby enemies, even if they are stronger than Weak or Standard.”

This makes Thermal Grenade useful to Scoundrels in all AoE situations. It’s difficult to test, but I think Thermal Grenade will deal slightly more damage than Lacerating Blast, even with the Curbing Strategies ability tree buff.

Lacerating Blast

(Tech/Internal and Kinetic/Direct/AoE/Instant)
This is your spammable AoE. It doesn’t deal that much damage, but you can weave it into your general rotation if there are adds up. It matches the damage dealt by Brutal Shots at 3 targets and surpasses its damage at 4.

The bleed component of the damage will trigger Sanguinary Shot if it is present, though this doesn’t affect which ability you should use.

Bushwhack

(Tech/Internal/Periodic/AoE/Instant)
This is your strongest AoE ability by far since it deals enough damage to be worth including in your single target rotation, covers a massive area, and can spread Vital Shot (as well as Sanguinary Shot if you have Viral Elements equipped). You’re already using it on cooldown as part of the single-target rotation, so keep doing that.

Point Blank Shot with Viral Elements

With the Viral Elements tactical, Point Blank Shot deals damage to up to what is likely 8 enemies within a 5m radius of the target if the nearby enemy is affected by Bushwhack. In other words, the Point Blank Shot target doesn’t technically have to be in the Bushwhack, but it will only hit people who are in it and within 5m of the primary target of Point Blank Shot.

Point Blank Shot is your most damaging attack with the Viral Elements tactical, so it’s worth pairing with every single Bushwhack, though you should use it on cooldown even without Viral Elements because its Cut to the Quick proc boosts all of your DoTs anyway.

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. 

Pugnacity

Pugnacity now grants an additional effect that is unique to each discipline. For Ruffian, the additional effects include granting 10 Energy and the Revitalizers utility, which reduces your damage taken by 20% and heals you for 5% of your max HP every 3s for the duration of Pugnacity.

The DPS increase from the alacrity is relatively small, though it can make a bigger difference during a burst DPS check. Over those 15 seconds, you’ll be able to do a single extra ability (12 abilities vs 11) thanks to the shorter GCD. 

Since the survivability from Revitalizers is significantly stronger than the DPS increase, I recommend saving it for predictable sources of sustained damage. If there isn’t a predictable source of damage in the current phase, use Pugnacity when it becomes available, provided it will be up for the next DPS check or burst window.

Hot Streak

This cooldown is incredibly potent. It resets the cooldown on several powerful abilities and gives you an additional 20% Mastery for 15 seconds. You want to make sure that all of the abilities whose cooldowns are reset by Hot Streak are already on cooldown to make the most of it, even if you won’t get the maximum benefit.

Since this ability has such a long cooldown, it doesn’t matter too much if you delay it for a little while since it’s unlikely to change the number of uses throughout the fight, though do be mindful of whether or not you are able to squeeze in an extra use before the end of the fight. 

For example, you want to use it 4 times in a 10-minute fight. If you delay it for more than a minute combined, you might only get to use it 3 times. Sometimes it can’t be helped though and having it up for a major DPS check or burn phase definitely takes priority over getting as many uses as possible.

Typically, you can use Hot Streak once per phase, just like the Adrenal, so use them at the same time and prioritize maximizing their benefit over using them on cooldown. Make absolutely sure you have this available for burn phases since you can get 30-40s of Pugnacity + Revitalizers.

Cool Head

I hesitate to even refer to this as an offensive cooldown for Ruffian because Energy management isn’t really a thing for this discipline anymore. The only time you’ll need to pop it is after you get breezed since you’ll have almost no Energy then.

Adrenal

The best time to activate the Adrenal right as you activate Pugnacity (and Hot Streak, if applicable) so that both effects are active over the same 15s period. It’s really convenient to pair Hot Streak with the Adrenal since they both share the same active time and cooldown. 

You shouldn’t have to worry too much about timing your Adrenal with a specific point in your rotation since your high-damage abilities have such different cooldowns from each other. Try to apply your DoTs right before activating your Adrenal though since the rest of their ticks will be boosted.

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.

Defense Screen

This ability has a very short cooldown and is relatively weak, so it won’t really protect you from a whole lot on its own. Unless you know a big hit is coming, Defense Screen is best used to just keep your health high by mitigating minor spikes so that your health will be higher when the actual damage comes.

Ruffian offers the added perk that once the shield breaks or wears off, you gain 15% DR for 6s. It’s not a lot, but it does help with survivability against sustained damage.

Dodge

As part of the ability pruning process, BioWare chose to make Countermeasures unique to Snipers and Dodge unique to Scoundrels. The capabilities handled by the pruned ability for each discipline are now granted by the base ability or a specific ability tree option as part of the level 35 choice. As a result, Dodge now does a ton of different things:

• It purges your debuffs and it isn’t on the GCD, so you don’t lose DPS and your healers don’t have to waste their own GCD to cleanse you. Purges are stronger than cleanses because they remove all removable debuffs rather than just two and can remove things that cleanses can’t always remove. The only other purges in the game are Force Shroud and Force Barrier. This purge comes from the Street Tough combat style passive.
• It increases your defense chance by 200%. This effect isn’t incredibly helpful for defensive purposes in raids since DPS don’t have to deal with Melee/Ranged damage too much. The only time you’ll really experience it is if you’re kiting a boss or have to deal with adds that the tanks aren’t able to keep aggro on, and neither situation is likely as an Scoundrel. Furthermore, Melee/Ranged damage tends to last for a lot longer than 3 seconds. The best use of the defense chance is to protect you for a couple of seconds in case you get aggro of something and hopefully, the tanks can taunt it off of you before Dodge wears off. 
• Sly Surrender now also makes it so Dodge reduces your AoE damage taken by 60% for its duration and last longer. This effect greatly improves Ruffian’s survivability in Operations where the vast majority of damage taken is considered AoE damage.
• Dodge functions as your threat drop. Always use Dodge as a threat drop at the beginning of the fight, right after you finish the opener.
• With the Back at Ya ability tree option, Dodge reflects (but doesn’t absorb) 150% of direct single-target damage. Unfortunately, since Dodge has the purge effect, you can’t use it to reflect everything that you can with other classes’ reactive damage. Remember that you will take any damage that gets reflected, so it’s very dangerous to stand in circles to take unnecessary damage and your healers will hate it.
• The Sly Surrender utility effect as it was known from prior expansions has been removed completely. The name was reused, but the effect is entirely different.

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 and you certainly should never try to use one of your heals before using your Medpac.

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.

Triage

This is the cleanse for the Scoundrel combat style. Generally, healers are responsible for dealing with most of the cleanses, though there are a few instances where the DPS should help, like on Dread Council with Tyrans’ Death Mark. Never use this on yourself if Dodge is available since that ability is off the GCD. 

Your job as a DPS is to spend your GCDs on dealing damage. Your healer’s job is to spend their GCDs on mitigating damage, which includes most cleansing.

Scamper

Scamper is SWTOR’s implementation of a dodge roll. It doesn’t take you as far as most other movement abilities in the game, but its cooldown is shorter than most abilities. Since it’s on the GCD, you shouldn’t use it if you’re within 30m of your target. Reapply your DoTs (if appropriate) or use Thermal Grenade instead; it shouldn’t take more than 2 GCDs to get to 10m range.

Trick Move

This is your gap closer ability. It now has the effects from the Circumvention utility built in. Trick Move is pretty straightforward; if you’re within 30m of the boss, Trick Move instantly teleports you to melee range, gives you a 75% movement speed boost for 3 seconds, and grants a UH.

Using Trick Move as a gap closer takes priority over using it just to generate a UH since you’ll lose more DPS by not being in range than you’ll gain from a single extra UH since you can’t use your most damaging abilities while out of range. 

In fights where you know you won’t end up out of range of the boss, feel free to use it as needed for UH generation.

Raid Utility

Stack the Deck

This is your raid buff. It should be used on cooldown just like any other offensive cooldown unless it needs to be used for a burst phase or DPS check, normally the raid lead will make the call on when these should be used. 

Remember, this is not a personal buff for you, it’s something that buffs the whole team. It also only has a 40m range, so be mindful on larger maps that it might not catch everyone and position yourself accordingly so that it catches as many people as possible. Use this on trash mobs if you want to troll your team.

Off-Healing

If you ever have to do this when you could be DPSing, something has clearly gone wrong with the attempt, or someone is not pulling their weight and you should complain to the raid lead and make a big scene about having to off-heal. This game is designed around each role being able to fully perform all of its duties without the need for another off-role’s help. 

Besides it not being your job, a lot of bosses have fairly tight enrage timers, so if you’re having to waste your precious GCDs helping out another role because they can’t deal with what they are fully capable of dealing with, you’re gonna end up wiping to an enraged boss later anyway.

If there is downtime though where you can’t do anything else at all, use Kolto Pack if you have the Scurry proc, and then apply Slow-release Medpac to yourself, don’t waste time applying probes once the downtime ends though.

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 the Scoundrel has at their disposal along with any other abilities I have not yet covered in this guide.

Dirty Kick

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.

Distraction

This is your interrupt. For a melee DPS, the cooldown on your interrupt is a little on the long side, at 18 seconds its duration is equivalent to Sorcerer and Sniper interrupts. 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. 

Flash Grenade

This is your mez, a CC ability that breaks on damage. Usually, if you’re using this in combat, you will want to use it very soon after the enemy spawns or activates an OCD. Thanks to the Street Tough combat style passive, this ability can blind up to 7 additional nearby targets, making it quite potent. Since it breaks on damage, it’s best used against adds that you do not intend to kill immediately. 

It also reduces accuracy by 20% for 8s, which is effectively another DCD for you.

Escape

This is your CC break. Use it when you get CC’dx and are prevented from dealing damage. 

Tranquilizer

This ability allows you to CC an enemy from stealth without entering combat. This can help you to skip some sets of trash in between bosses, though it isn’t worth using if you’re progging on that boss since someone is eventually gonna pull them all accidentally.

Stealth

This is a toggle ability that allows you to enter and exit stealth, which allows you to sneak past some enemies. You have to be in stealth in order to use Tranquilizer and Smuggle. In actual combat, you won’t be using this ability at all and you’ll use Disappearing Act to stealth out instead, though it’s important to be in stealth when the fight starts so you can deal extra damage with and generate a UH from Point Blank Shot. 

Smuggle

This ability allows you to put your entire group in stealth. I have never seen it used successfully in PvE. You might be able to use it to sneak past some groups of trash enemies, but that requires the whole group to be more coordinated than it usually is during trash.

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 – Brutal Shots Buffs

Brutal Return

• Effect: If Brutal Shots would reduce your Upper Hand to 0, it is refunded instead. This effect cannot occur more than once every 10s.
• Recommendation: Take this in mostly single-target situations. You’ll be taking this in most fights as it enables you to never have to use Quick Shot as a filler. You should try to trigger Brutal Return as often as possible, including using it before Blaster Whip if you think it will be available. If the fight has a lot of adds such that you’re reliably getting more UHs than you can use, Brutal Return isn’t needed to achieve this goal.

Penetrating Strategies

• Effect: Increases the armor penetration, critical hit chance, and critical hit damage of Brutal Shots by 10%.
• Recommendation: Take this if you consistently find yourself with excess UHs. Brutal Return is really only useful if you aren’t able to generate UHs from defeating enemies, so in fights with a lot of adds throughout the entire fight or for solo content, Penetrating Strategies is the better option. Please note that these buffs only affect the weapon damage of Brutal Shots, not the DoT ticks it triggers, so it’s not as big of a buff as it might seem at first glance.

Brutal Impair

• Effect: Brutal Shots deals 10% more damage and slows the target.
• Recommendation: Only take this in PvP. Both alternatives are considerably stronger than Brutal Impair. In PvE, most enemies are immune to slows or don’t survive long enough for them to matter anyway.

Level 27 Choice – Curbing Strategies, Dirty Kick, or Quick Countermeasures

Curbing Strategies

• Effect: Quick Shot and Lacerating Blast reduces the movement speed of targets they damage by 40% for 6s. In addition, Lacerating Blast deals 25% more damage.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Both alternatives are considerably stronger than Curbing Strategies. It’s not even close.

Dirty Kick

• Effect: Grants the Dirty Kick ability, which stuns the target for 4 seconds and deals a small amount of damage. Costs 5 Energy, 4m range, and has a 30s cooldown.
• Recommendation: Only take this in PvP and in solo content. The alternatives offer limited benefit in solo content while Dirty Kick is helpful for survivability. In group content, Quick Countermeasures is essential, so you can’t afford to take Dirty Kick at all.

Sly Surrender

• Effect: Increases the duration of Dodge by 2s. In addition, Dodge reduces your AoE damage taken by 60%.
• Recommendation: Always take this in PVE group content. Sly Surrender enables Dodge to last a whopping 6s in Ruffian and the 60% AoE RDT component makes the discipline significantly more viable in group content.

Level 39 Choice – Shrap Bomb Buffs

Critical Bomb

• Effect: Shrap Bomb increases the critical hit chance of your periodic bleed effects by 20% on affected targets.
• Recommendation: Always take this. Critical Bomb offers the greatest benefit in this tier by far to the extent that I wouldn’t really call this a choice at all.

Explosive Refund

• Effect: Shrap Bomb refunds 2 Energy for each target it hits.
• Recommendation: Never take this. You regenerate Energy from DoT ticks already, so there’s literally never a need to take this.

Shrap Defense

• Effect: Shrap Bomb deals 10% more initial damage and grants 2% DR per target for 10s.
• Recommendation: Never take this. The 10% damage boost amounts to an extra few hundred damage per target. The DR is nice, but not necessary and too inconsistent.

Level 43 Choice – Artful Cunning, Leveraged Offense, or Hot Streak

Artful Cunning

• Effect: The cooldown of Pugnacity is reduced by 15s. In addition, activating Pugnacity purges movement-impairing effects and maxes out your Upper Hand.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Neither effect provides much value.

Leveraged Offense

• Effect: Having a stack of Upper Hand increases your critical chance, damage dealt, and healing dealt by 5%.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this in PvE. Leverages Offense offers the greatest sustained DPS increase at this level by a significant margin. Try to avoid dropping down to 0 UHs if you can help it, though the DPS loss from unnecessarily using Blaster Whip or *shudders* Quick Shot is far more significant than 5%.

Hot Streak

• Effect: Grants the Hot Streak ability, which resets the cooldown of Pugnacity, Point Blank Shot, Bushwhack, and Defense Screen. In addition, your Mastery is increased by 20%. Lasts for 15 seconds. 3 min cooldown.
• Recommendation: Take this in specific fights and PvP only. Hot Streak offers superior DPS compared to Leveraged Offense only while it is active and superior survivability thanks to the extra activation of Pugnacity, but you’ll be giving up about 1k sustained DPS over the course of the fight. Hot Streak is really only useful for fights with short, painful burn phases that lack significant overall DPS checks.

Level 51 Choice – Sneaky, Flee the Scene, or Scar Tissue

Sneaky

• Effect: Increases your movement speed by 15% and your effective stealth level by 3.
• Recommendation: Take this in fights where the boss moves around a lot. If you’re constantly having to chase the boss, Sneaky makes it easier to keep up with them and maintain high uptime. It’s not super useful in solo content because base stealth is almost always good enough and Sprint offers a greater movement speed boost, so it’s only active during combat, which isn’t super helpful for trash mobs.

Flee the Scene

• Effect: Reduces the cooldown of Disappearing Act by 30s and activating Disappearing Act increases movement speed by 50% for 6 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this if you find yourself using Disappearing Act on cooldown. Flee the Scene’s movement speed boost is also nice since Scoundrels are a bit lacking in the mobility department and it lets you purge debuffs even more often. In solo content, Flee the Scene is nice because it lets you stealth out more often.

Scar Tissue

• Effect: Increases damage reduction by 5%.
• Recommendation: Take this whenever you’re taking a lot of sustained damage. 5% DR isn’t that much, but it’s consistently useful.

Level 64 Choice – Med Screen, Keep Cool, or Skedaddle

Med Screen

• Effect: Your Defense Screen heals you for 5% of your maximum health when it collapses.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. Med Screen nearly doubles the overall mitigation provided by Defense Screen. Since Defense Screen has such a short cooldown and is (sadly) a significant part of Scoundrel survivability, this effect is pretty valuable and universally useful. The only time you’d want to give it up is if you can use Skedaddle against a specific huge hit.

Keep Cool

• Effect: Cool Head immediately restores 15 additional Energy.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Use Relentless Blades instead if you need more Energy. You shouldn’t ever need Keep Cool and Relentless Blades, so it’s better to take one of the other options in this tier instead.

Skedaddle

• Effect: Disappearing Act grants 2 seconds of Dodge.
• Recommendation: Only take this if you need Dodge more often. Since Disappearing Act now has its purge (beefy cleanse) as a baseline effect, the benefits of Skedaddle are everything else that Dodge provides, though since Scoundrel survivability is still limited, you should only take Skedaddle if it will provide more mitigation than 4 uses of Med Screen, equivalent to about 80k damage, which can easily happen if you need to mitigate a specific big hit with the 60% AoE RDT component. The best example of a fight where you’d want to take Skedaddle over Med Screen is against the Terror from Beyond to mitigate additional slams up top.

Level 68 Choice – Smuggle, Flash Grenade, or Trick Move

Smuggle

• Effect: Grants the Smuggle ability, which cloaks all group members within 10m of you in a temporary stealth field that lasts 15 seconds. Cannot be used while in combat. Only usable while in stealth mode.
• Recommendation: Never take this. You might be able to use it to skip some trash, but I have never seen it actually work. There’s always someone who ends up outside of the stealth field, and that’s assuming that the adds actually respect the stealth field in the first place.

Flash Grenade

• Effect: Grants the Flash Grenade ability, which mezzes the target for 8 seconds. When Flash Grenade ends, it leaves behind Flash Powder, which reduces the target’s accuracy by 20% for 8 seconds. 10m range, 1 min cooldown, (still AoE from Street Tough passive).
• Recommendation: Only take this in PvP. The effect is nice, and it’s fine for solo content if you prefer, but I think Trick Move is more useful. In group content, Flash Grenade is almost always useless. If you need more CC, take Dirty Kick instead.

Trick Move

• Effect: Grants the Trick Move ability, which generates a UH and instantly moves you to your target (friend or foe) and increases your movement speed by 75% for 3 seconds. Can be used while immobilized and purges all movement-impairing effects. Does not break stealth and cannot be used against enemy targets in Cover.
• Recommendation: Always take this in PvE. You’ll need the UH generation and mobility to deal maximum DPS. It’s really nice for traveling between groups of trash when doing solo content too.

Level 73 Choice – Scramble, K.O., or Back at Ya

Scramble

• Effect: Each time you get attacked, the active cooldown of your Dodge is reduced by 3 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 1.5 seconds.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this for group content. The cooldown reduction enables you to use Dodge a lot more often, which can greatly improve your survivability if you’re getting hit a lot.

K.O.

• Effect: When used from stealth, Point Blank Shot interrupts and knocks down the target for 3 seconds. Player targets are immobilized for 3 seconds rather than being knocked down.
• Recommendation: Never take this. It’s useless in group content because most things are immune and in solo content, you can’t use Point Blank Shot out of stealth anyway because it will be on cooldown and not deal AoE damage because Bushwhack isn’t out (assuming you’re using Viral Elements).

Back at Ya

• Effect: Activating Dodge grants Back at Ya, which Reflects 150% of direct single-target Force and Tech damage back to the attacker while Dodge is active.
• Recommendation: Take this if you can make use of it. Please note that unlike other reflects, you do not absorb the damage that gets reflected. With Back at Ya and Dodge, you either completely avoid the damage (if it’s white damage) or take it and deal it back (if it’s yellow damage). It is impossible to avoid and reflect the same attack with this ability tree buff. In addition, Back at Ya only triggers off of single-target damage, so the AoE RDT from Quick Countermeasures is never relevant and the only thing Back at Ya does is add another completely separate use case for Dodge. Use cases in PvE are pretty limited for this ability tree buff. In solo content, Standard enemies typically don’t hit too hard, so it’s less useful outside of challenging solo content like MM Chapters, the Eternal Championship, and Heroics. In group content, the most tantalizing attacks to reflect will probably kill you in the process, so I only recommend taking this when you can reflect damage you can’t avoid taking.

Gearing and Stats Priorities

Tactical Items

Synox Shots
Effect Sanguinary Shot deals 75% more damage and restores 2 Energy whenever it critically hits.
Recommendation This is your default tactical item. It provides the greatest single-target sustained DPS increase compared to the other Ruffian tacticals. Your rotation will be a bit different and more challenging compared to what was done prior to 6.0, or if you are using one of the other tacticals since this one eliminates Energy management. The majority of the guide is written assuming you have this tactical item.

Viral Elements
Effect Bushwhack spreads Sanguinary Shot’s effect and Point Blank Shot deals damage to all nearby targets affected by Bushwhack.
Recommendation This is your AoE tactical. It doesn’t increase your single-target damage output but enables you to deal a lot more AoE damage. The extra ticks from your DoTs being on multiple targets will compensate for reduced Energy restoration that would have been provided by Synox Shots, but you will need to use Cool Head in single-target situations. That said, you shouldn’t really be using this tactical in fights where there’s a significant portion of the fight where you’ll only be doing damage to a single target. Overall, Viral Elements is great for solo content, but I don’t think there are too many boss fights where you’d want to give up so much single-target DPS.

Catalyzed Toxins
Effect Applying Sanguinary Shot finishes off your Vital Shot and Shrap Bomb, dealing their remaining damage immediately, but the cooldown of Sanguinary Shot is increased by 9s.
Recommendation This is your spike damage tactical for PvP. It functions the same as Ultraviolet Blast and Plague Master | Teachings of Rajivari. It is ideal to use Sanguinary Shot immediately after applying both DoTs and using Point Blank Shot for its damage boost proc.

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

Set bonuses are no longer in the game at level 80 and have been replaced them with legendary implants, which are just implants with old 4 or 6-piece set bonus effects on them.

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 Items you should use as a Operative DPS:

Tactician and Aggressive Treatment are BiS in all situations. Tactician improves sustained DPS considerably, while Aggressive Treatment offers a substantial amount of survivability to you and your allies.

The improvement to survivability is valuable enough that it is worth the small DPS loss from giving up Locked and Loaded.

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

Stat Priority

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

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

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

Augments

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

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

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

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

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

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

Earpiece

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

Crystals

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

Relics

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

Biochem Items

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

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

Regarding the Zeal Guild Perk Alacrity Boost

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

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

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

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

Best Ruffian Scoundrel 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 (for Boss Fights)

In boss fights, your top, coequal priorities are executing mechanics and dealing maximum, typically single-target, sustained DPS. The talents in this build enable maximum sustained DPS, though sometimes you will need to adjust to account for specific mechanics or provide utility to your group.

You’ll also be taking talents that increase your survivability and active mobility because you can’t deal damage or do mechanics if you aren’t alive or in range.

The boss build is inferior against regular enemies because your AoE is weaker and less immediate in exchange for being more efficient and sustainable. You’re relying on your target to be alive for an extended period of time to deal damage, and enemy health typically doesn’t line up with a full-fledged boss rotation.

This build is not as performant in PvP because your CC is primarily limited to whatever you get for free, and your instantaneous burst will be weaker or outright non-existent.

You can improve your effectiveness in some fights by making adjustments to several choices.

Brutal Return should be your default choice, but you can and should swap to Penetrating Strategies if you are getting enough UHs from add kills throughout the fight.

I also recommend taking Scar Tissue and Med Screen for maximum survivability, but if you’re encountering more spikes than Dodge can deal with on its own, I recommend switching them to Flee the Scene and Skedaddle respectively so you can use Disappearing Act for AoE RDT.

Technically, you can give up Scramble for Back at Ya, but only do that if there’s a clear instance of reflectable damage and you don’t need Scramble to have Dodge up in time to mitigate everything you need it to.

Likewise, Hot Streak may be better than Leveraged Offense in a few specific fights, but you’re almost always giving up way too much DPS.

Solo Content Build

In story content, on planets, and in flashpoints, you’ll almost exclusively encounter regular enemies AKA trash mobs. While you can technically use DPS to measure performance against trash, it is far more appropriate to think in terms of how many GCDs it takes to defeat each enemy and a whole group, and which talents get you over the threshold and actually reduce the number of hits to kill.

As of 7.0, SWTOR now offers dedicated talents and tactical items that are designed and balanced for use specifically against trash mobs.

These talents almost always have effects that trigger when you specifically defeat an enemy or when you enter or exit combat. They expand single-target attacks into powerful AoEs or reset cooldowns on specific abilities, often with a massive yet short-lived, damage boost attached to it.

These factors come together to create a truncated rotation that incentivizes a high APM and deals enough damage to defeat an entire group of trash in a flashy way in a matter of seconds.

Yes, trash mobs pose no threat to someone more invested in the game like you, dear reader. The advantage of making such a build is that they genuinely deal more DPS. My testing with Assassin showed a ~25% reduction in TTK, and the combat experience was a lot more fun.

These effects aren’t suitable in boss fights because their effects last such a short time and can only trigger reliably when you are in a small group and are fighting enemies that have a small amount of HP.

These same deliberate limitations also prevent them from being effective in PvP because it’s so difficult to predict exactly when your opponent will die, and such buffs aren’t useful after the fact anyway. Furthermore, you often have to give up effects that are more useful in PvP to take these talents.

Your objective is to spread Vital Shot and Sanguinary Shot with Bushwhack, and then follow it up with a Point Blank Shot. In order to spread Sanguinary Shot and deal damage to multiple targets with Point Blank Shot, you need the Viral Elements tactical.

That combo should be able to take out all standard and weak enemies, so once that’s done, you can focus down the strongs and elites (silvers and golds) with Brutal Shots and Blaster Whip. Don’t forget to reapply Sanguinary Shot to those enemies, it will likely fall off shortly after the regular enemies bleed out with the Sanguinary Shot debuff still active, enabling the cooldown to be reset and for you to have 100% uptime on your primary target.

In heroics on higher-level planets, you may need to use Bushwhack into Point Blank Shot a second time if there are multiple strong or elite enemies, though you should be able to finish off each group of trash before the DoTs have fallen off.

Spike Damage and Control (for PvP)

This build is best suited for fighting against enemy players, where survival and control are the name of the game and fight duration is completely variable. You will be trading a huge chunk of sustained damage output in order to stack as much damage into a single instant as possible, making it harder for your opponent to mitigate at all.

Survivability is king because you secure objectives or win outright when you outlast your opponents, though it also means there is more time for help to arrive. Controlling effects help immensely with securing objective and improving the reliability of your spike damage landing, but they also improve your own survivability.

Time where the enemy can’t hit you is time where you aren’t taking damage, and CC is especially helpful to use against enemies that have some sort of OCD or DCD active because you don’t want to be taking more damage than your opponent or not hitting as hard against them.

The PvP build is far less effective in boss fights because most bosses are immune to CC and the ability order you use to set up your massive damage spikes requires you to break what would be a sustained rotation by delaying important abilities.

This often results in higher resource costs, but the downtime from CC helps to mitigate the inefficiency. Fillers often play a role in survivability as well, so it is as much of a waste to use them either.

The CC will be useful in solo content, but your burst is focused onto a single enemy and is often super duper overkill. It is better to spread that damage out a bit.

You may want to consider taking Scar Tissue or Scramble instead of Flee the Scene or Back at Ya. These are perfectly fine alternatives.

Openers, Rotations, Priorities

PvE Opener

This is the rotation you use at the very beginning of the fight and for burst DPS checks. It can be a little different than the standard rotation because everything is off cooldown, including your OCDs and relic procs. It’s important to get as much damage as possible while all of your damage boosts are available to maximize their impact.

1. Enter Stealth
2. Trick Move (from Stealth, only if necessary)
3. Pugnacity ▶ Point Blank Shot (from Stealth)
4. Vital Shot
5. Shrap Bomb
6. Stack the Deck (if applicable)
7. Sanguinary Shot
8. Bushwhack (if appropriate)
9. Defense Screen ▶ Hot Streak ▶ Point Blank Shot (if applicable)
10. Adrenal
11. Brutal Shots (only with Brutal Return)
12. Blaster Whip (procs Unfair Advantage)
13. Priority System

Start by entering Stealth and getting in melee range of the boss. If you can’t get in range without starting the fight, use Trick Move (from Stealth) as soon as the fight starts. Trick Move grants an extra UH that’s hard not to waste though, so try to walk up if you can.

Technically, you can delay Pugnacity until after Point Blank Shot if you’re using Hot Streak, but it really doesn’t matter since you want to use it before DoT application anyway. After that, you’re just doing your high-priority abilities and moving into fillers.

Vital Shot and Shrap Bomb should be used before Sanguinary Shot and Bushwhack because you want to keep Sanguinary Shot and Bushwhack’s cooldowns synchronized and have the DoTs running for the full duration of Sanguinary Shot

It would be ideal for you to wait to use Stack the Deck (raid buff) a bit later, but a lot of other DPS specs have begun using their beefier attacks by the third GCD and we need to spend a UH anyway. If you’re not using Stack the Deck, you can spend that UH on a Brutal Shots or swap the order of Sanguinary Shot and Bushwhack this time.

You can afford to use Hot Streak later because the buff only applies to us and will boost all of the ticks of damage that go out while Hot Streak is active.

It’s technically optional to use Defense Screen before Hot Streak, but its cooldown is about to be reset by Hot Streak anyway, so there’s really no reason not to use it. The more important part is to use Hot Streak once all of your DoTs are on the target and to reset the cooldown on Point Blank Shot.

If you’re using Brutal Return (and you probably are), you’ll want to throw in a Brutal Shots before Blaster Whipping to get the cooldown ticking on the UH refund from Brutal Return. Otherwise, you’ll need to spend 3 GCDs before that cooldown starts ticking down. If you’re not using Brutal Return, you should skip this activation.

Blaster Whip should be used next because it will grant Unfair Advantage and apply the Tech debuff. I can’t include any more abilities because what is optimal diverges depending on your specific build. However, I want to note that Hot Streak resets the cooldown on Pugnacity, and you want to activate Pugnacity right before it falls off so the next activation benefits from the alacrity of the previous activation while minimizing the overlap.

PvE Priority System

In Ruffian, you use a priority system because it is impractical to use all of your rotational abilities on cooldown, so when multiple high-damage abilities are available at the same time, a priority list is used to determine which one should be used first in order to provide the highest DPS and ensures that your most damaging abilities are being used as frequently as possible.

1. Shrap Bomb ▶ Vital Shot
2. Sanguinary Shot ▶ Bushwhack (if appropriate)
3. Point Blank Shot
4. Blaster Whip (if you can proc Unfair Advantage and have less than 2 UHs)
5. Brutal Shots (if you have 2 UHs or can trigger Brutal Return)
6. Blaster Whip (if you don’t have enough UHs to last)
7. Brutal Shots
8. Quick Shot (you’ve messed up if you need to use this)

Following Ruffian’s priority system to the letter is not super essential, so long as you do the following:

• Maintain 100% uptime on Vital Shot and Shrap Bomb without clipping
• Use Point Blank Shot, Sanguinary Shot, and (usually) Bushwhack on cooldown and prioritize those over Brutal Shots or Blaster Whip
• Gain the Unfair Advantage proc as often as possible
• Generate enough UHs to always be able to use Brutal Shots instead of Quick Shot

Doing Shrap Bomb ▶ Vital Shot and Sanguinary Shot ▶ Bushwhack is generally ideal, but there are instances where you’ll only want to do one or swap the order. You can skip Vital Shot if you can bounce it back to the primary target from an add you spread to previously.

It’s better to apply Shrap Bomb before Vital Shot because of the 20% critical chance boost from the Critical Bomb talent, and unlike with Dirty Fighting, Shrap Bomb does not spread Vital Shot.

You may also want to apply Bushwhack before Sanguinary Shot if you have 2 UHs, though this is not always available. Remember, only use Bushwhack to DoT spread or if the primary target will remain in the Haze for the full duration.

You can also separate those ability pairings or offset their applications by a few GCDs in order to minimize or eliminate delays, but this makes the rotation more challenging, offers little additional DPS, and requires high uptime or you end up with pileups of high-priority abilities available anyway as you try to maintain the structure.

Sanguinary Shot ▶ Bushwhack has a higher priority than Point Blank Shot simply because it deals more damage and you compensate for the delay of Point Blank Shot by making it tick from Sanguinary Shot.

Sometimes, it can feel like Point Blank Shot gets “stuck” behind Sanguinary Shot and Bushwhack, but it will get unstuck as soon as you next reapply DoTs.

Point Blank Shot otherwise has a high priority thanks to the Cut to the Quick proc that increases DoT crits. You can’t cater to this too much though because Point Blank Shot also just hits super hard and the stars need to align to maximize the benefit of Cut to the Quick.

If all of those abilities are unavailable, you’re in filler territory where you’ll primarily be deciding between Blaster Whip and Brutal Shots. Blaster Whip deals less damage but grants a UH while Brutal Shots does the opposite.

Typically, you only want to use Blaster Whip when you know it will proc Unfair Advantage and have less than 2 UHs or if you know you won’t have enough UHs to spam Brutal Shots until your next higher-priority attack becomes available.

If you run out of UHs and have no way to generate them, you must take the L and use Quick Shot, which is a pretty major DPS loss. Your objective is to never have to use Quick Shot, but don’t hesitate to use it if there is no alternative.

Don’t forget about the other sources of UH generation either, like defeating enemies, Brutal Return (if applicable), Trick Move, and Pugnacity. If you know that you’ll get a UH from one of those sources, you can delay the non-Unfair Advantage Blaster Whips.

In summary, it’s ideal to use Blaster Whip as little as possible and make sure you’re getting the most out of each activation since it deals less DPS, but it’s better to overuse Blaster Whip and have excess UHs than to run out of them and be forced to use Quick Shot instead of Brutal Shots.

Further Optimization

I personally recommend applying your DoTs back to back. However, this approach does force you to occasionally delay some of your other high-priority abilities by a GCD, resulting in lost DPS.

You’ll see the top parses on Parsely split up the application of Shrap Bomb and Vital Shot by 4-5 GCDs, typically depending on when Pugnacity was most recently used.

Splitting the DoT applications means you won’t ever have to delay high-priority abilities, but in actual fights, you can find yourself out of range of the boss for more than a GCD, and it’s better to apply your DoTs rather than use Thermal Grenade or Flurry of Bolts.

It’s also another thing you’ll have to keep track of, so it’s easier to forget that one has fallen off, and you already have your hands full keeping track of the freebie Brutal Shots.

You’re more likely to lose DPS when the boss becomes immune if one DoT hasn’t finished ticking as well, and this can negate the DPS gain from not delaying your other abilities.

You’ll also see dummy parses where players activate Stack the Deck at the very beginning or use Disappearing Act before Point Blank Shots. The former is technically a DPS boost, albeit a minor one, and the latter does not work in boss fights.

PvP Spike Combo

In PvP, sustained DPS is far less important than concentrating as much damage as possible into a single instant so that you can finish your opponent off or land it all when a DCD isn’t active.

1. Shrap Bomb
2. Vital Shot
3. Point Blank Shot
4. Sanguinary Shot
5. Priority System

This order applies your DoTs and grants the damage boost right before you pop them with Sanguinary Shot. It’s important for the DoTs to be fresh. Consider stunning/mezzing your target after using Point Blank Shot for improved reliability, and remember, your DoTs deal additional damage against targets with less than 30% remaining HP.