SWTOR 7.7 Advanced Prototype Powertech PvE Guide and Best Builds

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

Introduction to Advanced Prototype Powertech

Advanced Prototype is a burst spec that takes foes off-guard by bringing bleeding-edge technology to the battlefield including Thermal Detonators and high-tech gauntlets that can store immense amounts of energy. Those gauntlets function as weapon platforms for a railgun enhanced with a prototype particle accelerator, a retractable vibroblade, and a magnetic blast launcher. They also use a special type of high-energy gas that causes their weapons to deal more damage.

Advanced Prototype (AP) offers some of the strongest burst in the game, and while the buffs from 7.3 did help to boost its sustained damage output such that it’s at least viable in most content, AP sadly remains one of the weakest DPS specs in the game when it comes to sustained and AoE DPS.

If you balk at bringing specs like Carnage / Combat, Deception / Infiltration, and Concealment / Scrapper to a raid because of their weaker DPS and more limited capabilities compared to DoT specs, the buffs in 7.3 aren’t enough to change that. However, this is a broader issue with game balance at the moment, so AP isn’t in quite as bad of a spot next to other burst specs as burst specs are next to DoT specs.

Despite AP’s low damage, the discipline is somewhat propped up by the absurd amount of powerful and often group utility that Powertechs provide like competitively high burst, an AoE hard stun, Sonic Rebounder, Advanced Terminator Droid (formerly Stealth Scan), a short interrupt cooldown, enemy pull, useful DPS debuffs, and, of course, their Taunt.

Though Powertechs lack a cleanse, their survivability is otherwise quite strong. Charitably, Advanced Prototype is more balanced in that department than Pyrotech. Unfortunately, the only consequential reasons you’d want to bring AP over Pyro are if your group desperately needs the armor debuff or you’re horrifically bad at Pyro and your group needs PT utility.

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. Advanced Prototype permanently lost access to 2 abilities: 

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

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

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

Group Composition Tips

In order to deal maximum damage, Advanced Prototype requires 2 other DPS debuffs:

DPS Debuff	Presence of debuff increases DPS by approximately
Internal / Elemental	0.8%
Ranged	1.3%
Total DPS Gain:	2.1%

In stark contrast to Pyrotech, Advanced Prototype is extremely independent when it comes to group composition dependence. You can slot AP into just about any group without worrying about what other specs people are bringing and it will be extremely close to maximum performance.

Advanced Prototype pairs best with Virulence Snipers / Dirty Fighting Gunslingers and Innovative Ordnance Mercenaries / Assault Specialist Commandos because each discipline provides 2 debuffs that the other needs in order to deal maximum DPS.

Just so we’re clear, you don’t have to bring one of those disciplines specifically, they just offer the most synergy with Advanced Prototype. Furthermore, it’s likely that there’s another DPS in the group that will benefit more from having all of their DPS debuffs than AP, so prioritize them first.

DPS Mindset

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

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

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

Abilities Explained

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

Single-Target Rotational Abilities, Attributes, and Important Procs

Retractable Blade

(Tech/Kinetic and Internal/Periodic and Direct/Single-Target)
Retractable Blade is AP’s main DoT. It hits pretty hard, lasts a long time, and gets refreshed by Rail Shot and Shatter Slug, enabling it to remain on your primary and secondary targets indefinitely. 

These infinite refreshes enable you to extract hundreds of thousands of damage from a single GCD over the course of an entire fight, but it is important to use the ability early as there are multiple secondary effects that only trigger if the target is bleeding and Retractable Blade is your only bleed effect.

Typically, you want to use Retractable Blade before you would use Magnetic Blast as a filler and definitely before your first activation of Rail Shot (this will make more sense later on). However, it does take quite a while for the damage to go out, so there are occasionally instances where you won’t want to apply it, particularly if something will die within the next GCD or there are a lot of adds that won’t survive too long. 

A good rule of thumb is to only apply Retractable Blade to enemies that you plan to hit with Rail Shot. Keep in mind that Retractable Blade is one of the few AP abilities that has only a 4m range, so you will need to be closer than usual to apply it. Retractable Blade has 1 discipline passive associated with it that is relevant to your rotation, though there are other effects that relate to Retractable Blade that I will mention later on:

Blood Tracker
You deal 3% more damage to bleeding targets. Just like the DoT, Blood Tracker takes a while to add up, but 3% is almost a thousand DPS, which is quite consequential over the course of the whole fight.

Energy Burst

(Tech/Energy and Elemental/Direct and Periodic/Single-Target)
Energy Burst offers huge immediate damage that autocrits unconditionally, though it costs a ton of Heat and has a super long cooldown. 

The base damage dealt scales with the number of Energy Lodes you have built up such that each Energy Lode stack increases the damage dealt by your next Energy Burst by about 25%. Energy Lodes have no other effect besides scaling the base damage of Energy Burst, it’s just a built-in stacking proc that has no duration. You can have up to 4 Energy Lodes max and build an Energy Lode each time you fire Rail Shot. You also build Energy Lodes while using your out-of-combat regen ability and from taking critical damage while Power Yield is active. The latter effect is not possible to trigger in PvE at all because NPC enemies cannot deal critical damage.

The high cost coupled with the linear damage scaling means that Energy Burst should only be used when you have 4 stacks of Energy Lode (though this is not always the case in PvP). The entire rotation is structured around using Rail Shot as often as possible in order to use Energy Burst as often as possible. Thanks to the Prototype Particle Accelerator proc, you’ll be able to reset the cooldown of Rail Shot and subsequently use it every 6s. 

Since you need 4 stacks of Energy Lode and can build 1 every 6s, Energy Burst has an effective cooldown of ~24s. That said, Energy Burst does not have an actual cooldown, so despite its high damage and subsequent high priority, you only need to use it before your next Rail Shot so you don’t waste any Energy Lodes. You can also delay Rail Shot until the cooldown reset proc comes off cooldown, giving you a lot of room to prioritize other abilities with direct cooldowns, but I’ll cover that in greater detail later on.

I want to reiterate that the autocrit on Energy Burst is unconditional despite having obvious potential dependencies like having the crit chance (and cost) scale with the number of Energy Lodes or only autocrit if Retractable Blade is on the target. Energy Burst is unique in being the only ability in the game always that autocrits whenever it’s used. Strangely, this effect is also part of the description of the Power Yield ability rather than being a discipline passive.

Dealing damage with Energy Burst also applies Energy Burn to the target, which is a 3s DoT that also autocrits and deals damage that scales with the number of Energy Lodes consumed. The damage dealt by Energy Burn is equal to about 25% of the damage dealt by Energy Burst. There is an opportunity to do Energy Burst twice in a row, but you should delay the second activation by 2 GCDs so that you aren’t missing out on the damage from Energy Burn. Energy Burst has 1 ability(!) associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Power Yield
Energy Burst automatically critically hits, activating Power Yield immediately grants 4 Energy Lodes, and taking critical damage while Power Yield is active grants 1 Energy Lode, cannot occur more than once every 2s. Yes, all of this is bundled into the Power Yield ability. The big thing I have yet to talk about is activating Power Yield granting 4 Energy Lodes, which effectively transforms the DCD into an offensive cooldown that should be used as often as possible.

In practice, you’ll need to activate Power Yield after firing Energy Burst and make sure the Energy Lodes have been consumed before activating Power Yield. To be clear, you always want to use Power Yield when you have 0 Energy Lodes, which will always be immediately after firing Energy Burst. Don’t forget to wait a couple of GCDs until the Energy Burn DoT has worn off before activating the second Energy Burst so you aren’t missing out on damage.

You need to be pretty close to 0 Heat or have Vent Heat available whenever you’re about to use 2 Energy Bursts back-to-back (or more accurately within the same rotation cycle) because you’ll be generating a massive amount of Heat, especially considering that the 3rd non-Rail Shot GCD will also cost Heat as you’ll need to proc Prototype Particle Accelerator to reset the cooldown on Rail Shot. Typically, you’ll end up delaying 2 Rail Shots a ton to make all this happen such that you’ll fire Rail Shot, be able to immediately proc it, and then fire Rail Shot again.

Rail Shot

(Ranged/Energy/Direct/Single-Target)
Rail Shot is a high-damage attack that can only be used against incapacitated targets or those suffering from some sort of periodic damage (AKA a DoT). This ability is the only way to generate Energy Lodes in combat in PvE, so it’s essential that you use it as often as possible. That’s really all there is to say about the base ability, though Rail Shot’s proc and discipline passive play the main role in defining the AP rotation, so there’s still a lot to go over:

Prototype Particle Accelerator
Prototype Particle Accelerator (PPA) makes it so that Rocket Punch, Magnetic Blast, Flame Sweep, and Shatter Slug finish the cooldown on Rail Shot and make your next activation of Rail Shot cost no Heat. This effect cannot occur more than once every 6s. Gaining Prototype Particle Accelerator as often as possible defines the core structure of the AP rotation. 

The 6s rate limit is equal to 4 GCDs, so basically every 4 GCDs, you must use Rocket Punch or Magnetic Blast (or Flame Sweep or Shatter Slug) to proc Prototype Particle Accelerator. Many players prefer to make things easier on themselves by using Rail Shot as soon as it’s procced, but this does result in a DPS loss as the cooldown on Rail Shot is made irrelevant by this proc since you’re no longer limited by Rail Shot’s cooldown as the rate limit on Prototype Particle Accelerator is shorter.

Don’t get me wrong, there will be many instances where you can use Rail Shot as soon as you get the proc and the rotation is easier if you don’t delay it, but you will lose a substantial amount of DPS over time if you delay abilities like Thermal Detonator, Rocket Punch, Energy Burst, and Retractable Blade when you could have just delayed Rail Shot for no cost.

Keep in mind that you do need to use Rail Shot before you are able to proc Prototype Particle Accelerator again or else you will end up delaying Rail Shot and quickly start missing out on whole activations, which will negatively impact your DPS. The DPS loss from missing out on Rail Shot activations will accumulate significantly faster than the delays from other abilities, so as you’re learning, err on the side of not delaying Rail Shot instead of not delaying other high-priority abilities. 

There are instances where you may be forced to delay the activation of other abilities in order to use Rail Shot and get the Prototype Particle Accelerator proc as often as possible, particularly when you have to use Energy Burst, and this is fine.

Prototype Rail
Prototype Rail makes it so that Rail Shot ignores (an additional) 30% of the target’s armor, can be fired at targets that aren’t incapacitated or suffering from periodic damage, but also makes Rail Shot vent 6 Heat (was 5 before 7.3) and refresh the duration of Retractable Blade if it hits a target bleeding from Retractable Blade. In other words, Prototype Rail makes Rail Shot deal more damage and always usable, but if you do fulfill the removed condition, you get to refresh your bleed DoT and vent 6 Heat. 

You rely on the 6 Heat venting to sustain your rotation, so for all practical purposes, the removal of the requirement might as well not exist. Even without the venting, the DoT tick from refreshing the bleed + the initial damage from applying Retractable Blade makes it always worthwhile to apply Retractable Blade before using Rail Shot.

Puncture
Rail Shot ignores 60% of the target’s armor. Since the combat style passive offers a flat damage increase, I normally wouldn’t mention it, but I wanted to note that combined with Prototype Rail, AP’s Rail Shot ignores 90% of the target’s armor. Against bosses, this results in an effective ~24% damage increase.

Rocket Punch

(Tech/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target)
Rocket Punch deals (slightly) more damage than Magnetic Blast, though it only has a 4m range, unlike the 10m+ range of most of your other attacks. It can proc PPA to reset the cooldown on Rail Shot as well, so there’s no reason not to use Rocket Punch if it’s available and you should delay activating Rail Shot if Rocket Punch comes off cooldown. Rocket Punch has 1 legendary implant and 1 debuff associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Shock Trooper Implant
The Heat generated by Rocket Punch is reduced by 4. This implant effect further cements Rocket Punch’s priority above Magnetic Blast by making it cheaper. The only reason to use Magnetic Blast when Rocket Punch is available is if you aren’t in range.

Sunder
The Prototype Rail discipline passive makes it so that dealing damage with Rocket Punch applies the armor debuff to the target, reducing their armor by 20%. Since bosses have 35% DR from armor, this is an effective 7% damage increase to energy/kinetic attacks. The armor debuff is widely considered to be the most useful DPS debuff because it provides a significant benefit to almost all disciplines that don’t provide it themselves.

Magnetic Blast

(Tech/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target)
Magnetic Blast is your strong filler, so it’s expensive but deals significantly more damage than your weak filler, Rapid Shots. The skill expression for Powertechs in general comes from maximizing the amount of strong fillers you are able to do.

The gap between the damage dealt by Magnetic Blast and Rapid Shots is considerably wider than it is for every other discipline that still has you choose between using a strong or weak filler in sustained DPS situations. In addition, Magnetic Blast also procs PPA while Rapid Shots does not, so you have a pretty strong incentive to use it as often as possible and will lose more DPS if you play it safe. Magnetic Blast has 1 tactical item, 1 legendary implant, and 1 discipline passive associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Energized Vambrace Tactical
Gaining an Energy Lode increases the damage dealt by Magnetic Blast and Retractable Blade’s bleed effect by 5% for 10s. Stacks up to 4 times (20% max). This tactical item further widens the damage gap between Rapid Shots and Magnetic Blast while subsequently narrowing the damage gap between Rocket Punch and Magnetic Blast. The damage difference is only a couple thousand, meaning the primary benefit and DPS increase from using Rocket Punch comes from its cheaper cost.

Shock Trooper Implant
Activating Magnetic Blast increases all your damage dealt by 10% for 15s. Cannot occur more than once every 30s. If you’re used to Pyro, you may think that the damage boost procs from Rocket Punch, but that isn’t the case. 

Since Magnetic Blast must be used to proc Rail Shot, you can’t really afford delay activating Magnetic Blast to increase your burst. In addition, it is not remotely possible to exclusively use Magnetic Blast while the damage boost is active and exclusively use Rapid Shots when it’s not active. The only time you can reliably afford to exclusively spam Magnetic Blast is while Explosive Fuel is active and you have Vent Heat available.

Prototype Weapon Systems
The critical damage dealt by Magnetic Blast as well as Energy Burst, Thermal Detonator, Rocket Punch, Rail Shot, and Retractable Blade is increased by 15%. This passive increases the critical damage dealt by all single-target rotational abilities except for Rapid Shots, further widening the damage gap between Magnetic Blast and Rapid Shots and reinforcing the Magnetic Blast should be prioritized as often as Heat allows.

Rapid Shots

(Ranged/Energy/Direct/Single-Target)
Rapid Shots is your weak filler. It deals little damage and doesn’t proc PPA, but it costs no Heat and has a 30m range, so you can practically always use it. In fact, you should only ever use Rapid Shots when you can’t use Magnetic Blast either because your Heat is too high or you’re out of range. 

Unfortunately, there isn’t a clear and consistent Heat level for when you should use Magnetic Blast vs Rapid Shot since the amount of Heat you’ll be spending each rotation cycle varies. Your objective is to avoid going over 40 Heat while also never hitting 0. You’re leaving DPS on the table if you aren’t constantly passively venting the maximum amount of Heat. 

This is just a rule of thumb, but outside of Explosive Fuel, you typically can’t afford to use more than 2 abilities that cost 15 or more Heat per Rail Shot for more than a couple of rotation cycle, so you’ll typically be using at least 1 Rapid Shots per rotation cycle and sometimes more if you’re about to use Energy Bursts. 

Really, it just takes a ton of practice so you can get a feel for how much Heat you can afford to spend on Magnetic Blasts that don’t proc PPA. Rapid Shots does not have any procs, debuffs, or passives directly associated with it, but I want to mention a combat style passive that’s relevant to Heat management:

Close and Personal
Whenever you take direct (as in non-periodic) AoE damage, you vent 2 Heat and heal for 2.5% of your max health. Cannot occur more than once every 3s. Since the vast majority of damage you’ll be taking from bosses is considered AoE damage, even if it doesn’t look like it, Close and Personal can trigger quite frequently, making the rotation significantly easier in actual combat compared to practicing on the dummy, meaning you’ll be able to use Rapid Shots less and Magnetic Blast more.

Thermal Detonator

(Tech/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target)
Thermal Detonator deals huge delayed damage. It costs the same as Magnetic Blast but feels more expensive because it isn’t used every rotation cycle, so you give up one of your GCDs that could have been used on a Rapid Shots if needed. Keep in mind that Thermal Detonator cannot proc PPA, so you typically want to use it earlier in a given rotation cycle as opposed to later so you aren’t delaying the cooldown reset on Rail Shot.

In exchange for these drawbacks, Thermal Detonator has 30m range, so it’s great to use if it happens to be available when you’re out of range of your target, though since it has to be used on cooldown, it typically won’t be available. Thermal Detonator has 1 debuff associated with it that I want to mention:

Susceptible
Prototype Weapons Systems makes it so that dealing damage with Thermal Detonator applies the Tech debuff to targets it damages, making those enemies take 5% more damage from Tech attacks. This DPS debuff offers better utility than it deserves because Operatives / Scoundrels are the only other combat style that can provide it to the ranged tech DPS specs that need it and their lack of group utility makes them far less enticing to bring along, so for all intents and purposes, Powertechs / Vanguards are effectively the only discipline that applies this valuable debuff.

AoE Abilities

The formula for determining how much damage an AoE ability does per GCD such that it can be compared to single-target abilities is (Damage Dealt/Number of GCDs) x Number of Enemies. An AoE ability’s place in the priority is as high as it can be until it reaches a single-target ability that deals more damage than the AoE will deal to all enemies in the GCD. 

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. 

Shatter Slug

(Tech/Kinetic/Direct/AoE)
Shatter Slug is the first of your beefier AoE attacks with a cooldown. You need to hit at least 2 targets in order to surpass the damage dealt by Magnetic Blast. The reason it only takes 2 targets despite dealing similar damage to Flame Sweep has to do with the fact that Retractable Blade also refreshes and ticks your Retractable Blade DoT on targets it damages.

Since Shatter Slug has a 10m range and 8m radius, it’s pretty easy to maintain Retractable Blade on multiple enemies at the same time, and more worthwhile to apply Retractable Blade to multiple enemies. Shatter Slug can also proc PPA, so it really is just the AoE version of Magnetic Blast. 

Deadly Onslaught

(Tech/Elemental and Kinetic/Direct/AoE)
Deadly Onslaught is one of your beefy AoE attacks with a cooldown. It roughly matches Magnetic Blast’s damage even if you can only hit a single target, but it doesn’t proc PPA to reset the cooldown on Rail Shot and costs 30 Heat, which is more than you can typically afford to use in a single cycle alongside a third Heat-spending ability to proc PPA, like Shatter Slug or Flame Sweep. 

Since Deadly Onslaught costs 30 Heat, and lasts 2 GCDs, it is technically the best candidate to make free with Vent Heat, though it can be impractical to do this, and making a non-essential ability free is arguably less valuable than making your most expensive attack (Energy Burst) free since the latter can’t be replaced by Rapid Shots.

You can also use Deadly Onslaught while moving, though if you get too far away from the center of the AoE the channel will break. Since all of your other attacks are instant, this is really only useful if you end up needing to move during the channel.

Flame Sweep

(Tech/Elemental/Direct/AoE)
Flame Sweep is your spammable AoE. Assuming you have Energized Vambrace equipped, Flame Sweep surpasses Magnetic Blast when you can hit at least 3 targets. Since it’s so weak and you have other alternatives that cost the same while covering wider areas, you won’t be using it too often during boss fights. 

If you’re required to deal AoE damage for longer than what you can get with Shatter Slug and Deadly Onslaught, you’re likely better off playing Pyrotech since it offers far better rotational AoE performance.

That said, if you’re using the Flame Detonation tactical or find yourself in a situation where it’s time to proc PPA and Shatter Slug isn’t available but you can hit at least 3 targets, feel free to use Flame Sweep.

Thermal Detonator with Flame Detonation

(Tech/Kinetic/Direct/AoE)
The Flame Detonaton tactical allows Thermal Detonator can hit 8 targets within 5m of the primary target if they get hit by Flame Sweep while it’s attached. The tactical does not make Thermal Detonator deal AoE damage baseline, you have to hit the target with Flame Sweep before the damage goes out. Since there isn’t a single-target DPS increase, this is really only useful against trash.

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. 

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

Explosive Fuel

Explosive Fuel is one of the most powerful offensive cooldowns in the game, offering an effective 20% damage boost for the duration.

While Explosive Fuel is active, you should not use any Rapid Shots as your filler and make sure to time its initial activation such that you won’t need to apply Retractable Blade and will be able to activate Energy Burst while it’s active.

Thermal Detonator has a bit more complicated interaction with Explosive Fuel thanks to its delayed detonation and 15s cooldown. Technically, you can throw it before activating Explosive Fuel to get a free extra GCD during the burst window, but the 15s cooldown prevents you from getting 2 Thermal Detonators off in a single Explosive Fuel window, and that free boosted GCD will end up being lost should you throw Detonator again while it’s active.

You can get more burst at the cost of a slight sustained DPS loss by just delaying throwing Thermal Detonator again until after Explosive Fuel has ended so long as you pre-casted your Thermal Detonator into Explosive Fuel. If you didn’t pre-cast it, just make sure that Thermal Detonator will explode before Explosive Fuel Ends.

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

Vent Heat

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

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

It’s ideal to use Vent Heat right before you activate Energy Burst since that attack costs 20 Heat instead of 15, but any ability that costs 15 Heat is fine too and preferred if you’re about to go above 75 Heat. Deadly Onslaught is definitively the best ability to pair with Vent Heat since it costs 30 Heat and allows you to passively dissipate Heat over 2 GCDs instead of 1, but it’s not used in the single-target rotation.

Technically, Vent Heat has a shorter cooldown in AP thanks to the Power Loaders discipline passive which desynchronizes it from Explosive Fuel, but it’s difficult to make use of this in practice as it will never consistently align with a Heat-intensive part of your rotation so the resulting DPS gain is limited.

Shoulder Cannon

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

In boss fights, it should always be used as an offensive cooldown that is paired with Explosive Fuel where you activate it before Explosive Fuel comes off cooldown so you have time for all 7 missiles to load and then fire them all while Explosive Fuel is active, yes AP gets 7 missiles instead of 4.

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

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

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

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

Since you have 7 missiles and can only fire 1 per independent GCD, you must make sure to begin firing them by the time you’re 2 GCDs into Explosive Fuel and be able to fire them continuously for the remainder or you won’t get them all off while Explosive Fuel is active. Pre-load them before a fight starts as well, but buff only lasts 5 mins, so remember to right-click the buff off if you don’t think they’ll be ready in time for the pull.

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

Power Yield

With 7.0, each combat style had 1 of its abilities changed to have a unique additional effect for each discipline. For Powertechs, that ability is Power Yield, and the Advanced Prototype version kept the existing name while it was changed for the other disciplines.

As soon as you activate Power Yield, you get all 5 possible stacks that each increase your armor by 40% and damage dealt by 2% (+200% armor, +10% damage total). For all intents and purposes, Power Yield can only ever last 10s, not 30s like Pyro’s Thermal Yield can.

The 200% armor increases your damage reduction against energy/kinetic attacks to 51.7%, which is roughly the same as what Energy Shield offers while it’s active and combining them brings you up to 76.7% DR.

The damage type of a given boss attack is somewhat arbitrary, so Power Yield is unreliable as a DCD, though basic blaster shots and lightsaber swings and other spammy attacks are typically weapon damage, which do get mitigated by armor.

That said, you’ll almost always want to treat Power Yield as an offensive cooldown if it’s available after firing Energy Burst because Power Yield also grants 4 Energy Lodes, enabling you to do an extra Energy Burst every minute (and boosts your damage dealt by 10%), which is a substantial DPS increase.

The only time you should save Power Yield for survivability is if it’s you know you’ll need the extra survivability soon and won’t have anything else available.

Adrenal

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

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

Defensive Cooldowns and Mobility

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

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

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

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

Energy Shield

This is your most reliable defensive cooldown. It will mitigate all damage that can be mitigated because it provides flat damage reduction. Along with your armor, you will have 51.3% damage reduction against Kinetic / Energy damage and 35% damage reduction against Internal / Elemental damage while Energy Shield is active. 

Thanks in part due to its long duration, Energy Shield is best when trying to mitigate damage that you’re supposed to be taking like you’d find in a burn phase, though you’re not going to be able to cheese anything with it. Energy Shield has 1 discipline passive and 1 combat style passive associated with it:

Energy Rebounder
Whenever you take damage, the cooldown of Energy Shield is reduced by 3s; this cannot occur more than once every 1.5s. Since a lot of fights deal raidwide damage somewhat passively as miscellaneous AoE pulses, Energy Shield typically has a cooldown that is substantially shorter than the base 2 minutes. In phases where you’re taking damage from a less ambiguous source, the cooldown will be even shorter, enabling significantly higher uptime.

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

Kolto Overload

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

Outside of Pyrotech, Kolto Overload is one of the worst DCDs in the game at helping you to mitigate big hits since it provides its mitigation through constant small heals, which requires you to take the damage and survive. You don’t have the 30% DR while it’s active either that you might be used to if you’ve been playing Pyro up until now.

In general with AP, you’ll need to lean more heavily on popping DCDs before you expect to take damage rather than in response to taking damage. Kolto Overload may not always be enough on its own.

Sonic Missile

As a DPS, this is your threat drop. In PvE as a DPS, that’s all it does baseline, but it has 2 ability tree buffs and 1 discipline passive associated with it that require some explanation:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prototype Armor
Activating Sonic Missile increases your defense and resist chances by 30% for 6s. To be clear, this means your chance to completely avoid the damage from melee/ranged attacks becomes 38% and your chance to completely avoid the damage from Force/tech attacks becomes 30%.

This is a discipline passive, so you get it regardless of whether or not you have Hitman for the AoE DR. If you do have Hitman, you’ll basically just have better damage mitigation for the first 6s because both the 60% AoE DR and defense/resist chance will be active.

Since Prototype Armor affects defense chance, it’s not guaranteed to work against a given attack, though statistically, it’s more likely that you’ll mitigate 30% of the damage if you’re taking a large number of ticks, so it works best against ticking damage. Don’t forget that defense chance is turned off while you’re stunned either.

I also want to note that Prototype Armor grants you DR upon taking critical damage, but this effect will never trigger in PvE because NPCs cannot deal critical damage. This was likely by design to only give AP a survivability buff in PvP.

 Medpac

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

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

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

 No Cleanse

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

Jet Charge

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

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

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

Hydraulic Overrides

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

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

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

Crowd Control and Other Abilities

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

Advanced Terminator Droid

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

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

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

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

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

Carbonize

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

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

Electro Dart

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

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

Quell

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

Determination

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

Grapple

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

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

Neural Dart

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

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

Ability Tree Choices

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

Retractable Blade Buffs – Level 23 Choice

Retracted Refresh

• Effect: When the bleed effect from Retractable Blade is refreshed, you deal additional damage to up to 4 targets within 5m.
• Recommendation: Take this for trash mobs. Retracted Refresh increases your AoE potential because it synergizes with Shatter Slug’s ability to refresh the DoT on multiple targets at the same time, allowing you to cause an entire group to hemorrhage at once. However, Retractable Blade is still a DoT, so it’s only worth applying to Strong (silver) or higher enemies.

Jugular

• Effect: When the bleed effect from Retractable Blade is refreshed, the target takes a small amount of additional kinetic damage.
• Recommendation: Take this for boss fights. Jugular is ridiculously boring but does offer the highest single-target sustained DPS.

Easy Prey

• Effect: When retractable Blade ticks, you gain a stack of Easy Prey. Each stack increases the damage dealt by your next initial hit of Retractable Blade by 25%. Stacks up to 4 times and cannot occur more than once every 3s.
• Recommendation: Never take this. The idea is cool, but Easy Prey takes too long to build up and doesn’t ever offer enough of a damage increase to be worth using in PvE because it doesn’t increase your sustained DPS, only immediate burst and potential.

Gap Closing – Level 27 Choice

Reel and Rattle

• Effect: Grapple deals a small amount of damage to pulled targets and grants Reel and Rattle, which makes your next Rocket Punch deal an additional 20% damage and stun the target for 3s. The effect lasts up to 6s.
• Recommendation: Never take this in PvE. The overall damage dealt by Grapple combined with the boost to Rocket Punch is roughly equal to that of Magnetic Blast but for free. The stun also makes Reel and Rattle more valuable than Manhunter in PvP. However, it’s really clunky to use since it requires you to be more than 10m away and you have to give up Jet Charge, and it’s only every 45s, so it’s not worth using.

Manhunter

• Effect: Grapple gets 2 charges and activating Grapple finishes the cooldown on Rocket Punch.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Jet Charge is far more useful in all PvE content while Reel and Rattle provides a stronger effect if you want to buff grapple.

Jet Charge

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

Energy Burst Buffs – Level 39 Choice

Power Burst

• Effect: Energy Burst grants Power Burst, which increases the damage dealt by your next Thermal Detonator by 4% per Energy Lode consumed. Stacks up to 4 times (up to 16%).
• Recommendation: Always take this. Even though the damage boost doesn’t apply to secondary targets with the Flame Detonation tactical, Power Burst is still always the best option simply because the alternatives are garbage. It does add a unique, albeit nonsensical, bit of challenge to the rotation as well because you can sometimes delay the second Energy Burst to buff 2 Thermal Detonator activations back-to-back if you were able to throw the first Thermal Detonator and use the first Energy Burst before it exploded.

Heat Zone

• Effect: Energy Burst deals damage equal to the base damage of Energy Burst to up to 3 additional targets within 5m. This damage does not scale with Energy Lodes.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Technically you can use it for solo content if you want, but it’s super weak and not even usable against every group of trash.

Lingering Heat

• Effect: Energy Burst applies an additional burn that deals a small amount of elemental damage over 12s that automatically critically hits.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Lingering Heat is slightly, but still definitively, weaker than Power Burst without being any easier to use while dealing its damage in a less concentrated and more boring way.

Advanced Yield, Advanced Shielding, Advanced Terminator Droid – Level 43 Choice

Advanced Yield

• Effect: Increases the range of all abilities with a 10m range to 15m. In addition, Retractable Blade ticks decrease the cooldown of Power Yield by 1s. Cannot occur more than once every 10s.
• Recommendation: Take this whenever being able to stand more than 10m away is beneficial. The extra 5m range can potentially increase your uptime if it’s unsafe or otherwise impractical to stand near the boss. Watchdog from R-4 Anomaly with a ton of melee is the poster child for a fight where this effect is valuable. The Power Yield cooldown reduction is pretty negligible since it maxes out at 6s per activation and you’re primarily limited by Energy Lodes anyway, not Power Yield’s cooldown.

Advanced Shielding

• Effect: Activating Energy Shield grants Advanced Shielding, which makes your next Kolto Overload heal you up to 45% HP or your next Power Yield last for 15s. Advanced Shielding lasts up to 30s.
• Recommendation: Take this in fights without adds where you’re able to use Energy Shield liberally. The effects are pretty weak when Energy Rebounder’s cooldown reduction on Energy Shield doesn’t trigger that often, but it’s pretty nice when Energy Shield has a short cooldown as it enables you to greatly increase the overall effectiveness of your other DCDs and greatly extends the duration on the damage increase from Power Yield. If you can afford to time activations for Power Yield, you’re safe to activate Energy Shield as soon as you know that you’ll be able to combine Power Yield with your next Energy Burst.

Advanced Terminator Droid

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

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

Pyro Shield

• Effect: Energy Shield deals a minuscule amount of elemental damage to attackers when they deal direct damage to you. Cannot occur more than once per second.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. Pyro Shield is almost always gonna do something, but you need to be getting hit constantly while it’s active in order for it to do anything significant. That said, it is almost always the best option in this tier and manages to surpass Iron Will if you can get at least 9 ticks out of Pyro Shield within 4.5 minutes. This isn’t hard to do even if you aren’t fluffing with Pyro Shield and just using Energy Shield as your first line of defense as a DCD in part because Energy Rebounder reduces its cooldown significantly. Furthermore, the ceiling for Pyro Shield is significantly higher since it can tick every second, which can result in upwards 90k damage per activation (crits included).

Gyroscopic Alignment Jets

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

Iron Will

• Effect: Reduces the cooldown of Determination by 30 seconds and Vent Heat by 15 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this. The 15s cooldown reduction on Vent Heat doesn’t help to synchronize the cooldown of the ability with any of the high points in your Heat generation, namely Explosive Fuel and double Energy Burst, so you’re forced to use it on cooldown in order to get a DPS increase and then you don’t necessarily have it for the high Heat portions. It’s much easier to extract DPS from Pyro Shield and just keep Vent Heat paired with Explosive Fuel. At best, and that’s MUCH easier said than done, Iron Will enables you to do an extra 3.33 Magnetic Blasts (instead of Rapid Shots) every 4 and a half mins. It’s far easier to squeeze what amounts to ~50k damage out of Pyro Shield in that time even if you’re only using Energy Shield as a DCD (so no fluffing). If Iron Will (or Power Loaders) were to reduce the cooldown of Vent Heat by an additional 10s, that would be enough to synchronize it with the cooldown of Power Yield and make this option more tantalizing, but alas, that is not the case.

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

Reflective Armor

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

Hitman

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

Suppressive Tools

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

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

Shield Cannon

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

Hydraulic Overrides

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

Electro Dart

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

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

Enhanced Paralytics

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

Sonic Rebounder

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

Efficient Suit

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

Gearing and Stats Priorities

Tactical Items

Energized Vambrace

Effect: Gaining an Energy Lode increases the damage dealt by Magnetic Blast and Retractable Blade’s bleed by 5% for 10s. Stacks up to 4 times (20% max).

Recommendation: Take this for all boss fights. Energized Vambrace provides the greatest amount of damage in sustained DPS situations, though it does little to boost your multi-target damage. Sadly, it only seems to offer ever-so-slightly more DPS compared to Overwhelming Offense, as in there is substantial overlap between the good parses with Overwhelming Offense and the bad parses with Energized Vambrace. If you don’t have a whole lot of Tech Fragments or credits, and you already have Overwhelming Offense, you could probably spend those resources on something that will be more impactful.

Flame Detonation

Effect: Dealing Damage with Flame Sweep to a target affected by a pre-exploded Thermal Detonator causes it to detonate, creating a large explosion that damages all enemies within 5m.

Recommendation: Take this for trash mobs. Flame Detonation offers a significant boost to your AoE damage potential and is essential for solo content. However, it doesn’t increase your single-target sustained DPS at all, so there’s no reason to use it in a boss fight.

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 Advanced Prototype Powertech:

Shock Trooper
The Heat cost of Rocket Punch is reduced by 4. In addition, activating Magnetic Blast increases your damage dealt by 10% for 15s. Cannot occur more than once every 30s.

Mandalorian Armaments
When Shoulder Cannon is put on cooldown, it applies Autocannon to you for 60s, automatically firing a Shoulder Cannon missile at your current target whenever you deal direct damage. This additional missile can fire once every 10s.

Shock Trooper is easily one of the strongest Legendary Implants in the game and it’s pretty essential to do sustained DPS because of the Heat cost reduction to Rocket Punch. Definitely buy that one first. Mandalorian Armaments should be your second implant. It is better than Veteran Ranger because you’ll get 6 Shoulder Cannon missiles instead of 3.5 on average.

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

Stat Priority

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

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

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

Augments

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

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

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

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

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

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

Earpiece

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

Crystals

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

Relics

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

Biochem Items

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

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

Regarding the Zeal Guild Perk Alacrity Boost

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

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

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

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

Best Advanced Prototype Powertech Builds in 7.0

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

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

Sustained Single-Target

This build is designed to deal maximum single-target sustained DPS with survivability and mobility that’s optimized for the type of damage you’ll be taking in group content.

I recommend taking Advanced Yield by default but don’t hesitate to switch to Advanced Shielding or Advanced Terminator Droid if they’ll be more useful for a given fight. Likewise, you can switch to Reflective Armor or Electro Dart if the circumstances allow or require it, but for the most part, you’ll be sticking with Hitman and Hydraulic Overrides.

Solo Content

The Advanced Prototype solo build doesn’t get a whole lot specifically from the ability tree. Retractable Blade is only worth applying to anything stronger than Strong (silver) enemies and Energy Burst isn’t available consistently for every trash pull. The biggest component of your solo capabilities as AP comes from the Flame Detonation tactical because it turns Thermal Detonator into an AoE.

The Energy Burst buff at level 39 doesn’t matter all that much. Power Burst only applies the damage boost to the primary target while Heat Zone doesn’t enable Energy Burst to deal full damage to secondary targets, as if the Energy Lode stacks aren’t scaling. Lingering Heat is a DoT that is weaker than the boost to Thermal Detonator.

As a result, you’ll mostly just be chucking Thermal Detonator, jumping in, and doing Flame Sweep and the group is mostly dead.

Openers, Rotations, Priorities

I’m opting to cover the Priority System and Heat management before the Opener because the Opener is basically just an implementation of the Priority System.

Priority System

In AP, you use a priority system because it is impossible 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. Rail Shot (only if you will be able to proc it now or in the next GCD)
2. Proc Rail Shot (if possible)
3. Thermal Detonator
4. Retractable Blade (only if the target isn’t bleeding from it already)
5. Rocket Punch
6. Energy Burst (only with max Energy Lodes)
7. Rail Shot
8. Shatter Slug (only if you can hit at least 2 targets)
9. Flame Sweep (only if you can hit at least 3 targets that need to die ASAP)
10. Magnetic Blast (only if you can afford it)
11. Rapid Shots

Your primary objective with AP is maximizing the number of times you use Rail Shot so that you can use 4-stack Energy Bursts as often as possible and vent as much Heat as possible. Meanwhile, you want to use Thermal Detonator and Rocket Punch as often as possible.

Since the effective cooldown of Rail Shot is the internal cooldown (AKA rate limit) on Prototype Particle Accelerator (PPA), which resets Rail Shot’s cooldown, you only need to make sure that you use Rail Shot before it’s time to proc PPA and you want to proc PPA as often as possible, which is every 6s or 4 GCDs.

Remember, the following abilities can proc PPA, resetting the cooldown on Rail Shot and making it free:

1. Shatter Slug (only use if you can hit at least 2 targets)
2. Rocket Punch
3. Flame Sweep (only if you can hit at least 3 targets that need to die ASAP)
4. Magnetic Blast

In other words, you must use one of those abilities every 4 GCDs. This is where the idea of AP’s rotation being about counting to 4 comes from.

Keep in mind that while you can use Rail Shot as soon as it’s procced and this does make the basic part of the rotation easier, your maximum single-target damage potential will be reduced by upwards of ~1000 DPS. In addition, managing Heat during the Heat-intensive parts of the rotation is significantly more challenging. The rotation will feel significantly more predictable, but clunkier at the same time

If you want to do well with AP, you really need to separate the proccing of Prototype Particle Accelerator from the activation of Rail Shot.

Like Rail Shot, Energy Burst does not need to be used as soon as you “proc it” by getting the 4th Energy Lode, despite it being your most damaging ability. You can actually delay Energy Burst for quite a long time because its cooldown is effectively 4x the cooldown of Rail Shot, which is limited by PPA.

In other words, you can delay Energy Burst (and your next Rail Shot) until you would have to delay the building of your next Energy Lode, which is 2 GCDs before you’ll need to proc PPA again. This is beneficial both for Heat management and for getting the most out of Power Burst.

You can delay Energy Burst while you get your Heat as close to below 20 by Rapid Shots instead of Magnetic Blast or buy a little time for Thermal Detonator to come off cooldown so you don’t waste a Power Burst proc. Remember, you can’t delay it indefinitely, you can only delay Energy Burst up until doing so would cause you to delay your next Rail Shot proc.

Finally, I want to note that while Rapid Shots and Magnetic Blast are at the bottom of the priority, they’ll be among your most-used abilities as fillers. The reason that the other abilities have the higher priorities that they do is because they deal more damage.

It’s important to practice executing the priority 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 things and often place your DoTs on shortly before the boss can actually take damage. 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!

Heat Management

It is ideal to never hit 0 Heat or go over 40 Heat (outside of Explosive Fuel) because it means you are leaving passive Heat dissipation on the table and aren’t using the correct number of Magnetic Blasts at the correct time.

However, it’s inevitable that you will occasionally spike up above 40 Heat in order to proc PPA, apply Retractable Blade, or activate Thermal Detonator or Rocket Punch. It is unfortunate and does leave some Heat on the table, but you’ll run into more problems and lower DPS if you try to delay those abilities in favor of Rapid Shots or an early Rail Shot.

If you adhere strictly to the priority, the natural cooldowns of abilities will act as a sort of scaffolding and backstop where yes, you might overshoot your Heat a little bit when you activate them, but you’ll always have time to do Rapid Shots in the next cycle to bring your Heat down to a safe level again.

That said, since Rocket Punch can proc PPA while Thermal Detonator can’t, sometimes they will swap positions in the priority where you’ll want to do Rocket Punch before Thermal Detonator so you can proc Rail Shot as soon as possible. Energy Burst can and should be delayed as well, but you have more flexibility to do that.

Sadly, your Heat consumption can vary so much from cycle to cycle, so there isn’t a definitive and universal Heat level I can give you that governs whether you use Magnetic Blast or Rapid Shots. The Close and Personal combat style passive also complicates things since AoE damage doesn’t go out consistently though it does make it easier to be aggressive by using more Magnetic Blasts.

You can manage to do 3 abilities in the same cycle that cost 15 Heat each (so something like 2 Magnetic Blasts and a Thermal Detonator) without going over 40 Heat, but you need to have pretty low Heat going into such a cycle and can’t sustain it for too many cycles. You’ll be building more Heat than you can dissipate if you’re spending 45+ Heat in a single cycle.

Using only 2 abilities that cost 15 Heat or less (so something like 2 Magnetic Blasts and a Rapid Shots) is sustainable longer-term, as in fairly Heat-neutral, though you might run into a little trouble when you do 2 Energy Bursts back-to-back or have to use an Energy Burst and Thermal Detonator and Magnetic Blast in the same cycle.

Thankfully, you will dissipate more Heat than you generate if you use 2 Rapid Shots per cycle, especially when you can use Rocket Punch to get the Rail Shot proc, though you should switch one of those Rapid Shots to Magnetic Blast if your Heat is already in a good spot, usually sub-20 or especially sub-10 unless you have a very expensive cycle coming up.

Typically, you want to bookend an expensive cycle with ones that use the maximum number of Rapid Shots and then otherwise try to use no more than 1 Rapid Shots per normal cycle.

Opener

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

1. Shoulder Cannon (pre-cast to load missiles)
2. Recharge and Reload (to build Energy Lodes)
3. Jet Charge (if necessary)
4. Retractable Blade (only if the target isn’t bleeding from it already)
5. Rail Shot (unprocced)
6. Thermal Detonator
7. Rocket Punch (procs Prototype Particle Accelerator)
8. Explosive Fuel + Adrenal
9. (begin firing Shoulder Cannons)
10. Energy Burst
11. Magnetic Blast (grants Shock Trooper implant damage boost)
12. Energy Shield (only if you’re using Advanced Shielding)
13. Power Yield
14. Energy Burst
15. Rail Shot
16. Sonic Missile (only for threat drop)
17. Magnetic Blast (procs Prototype Particle Accelerator)
18. Rocket Punch
19. Rail Shot
20. Magnetic Blast
21. Magnetic Blast (procs Prototype Particle Accelerator)
22. Thermal Detonator
23. (should be finished firing Shoulder Cannons)
24. Rail Shot
25. Rocket Punch
26. Magnetic Blast (procs Prototype Particle Accelerator)
27. Rail Shot
28. Vent Heat
29. Energy Burst

The opener for AP is simply an execution of the priority system with a few augmentations to account for the fact that you have a slightly different cooldown state, like having OCDs available that you want to maximize and multiple abilities available at the same time that normally aren’t.

There are several different variations of the AP opener. I recommend and use this one because it seems to offer maximum DPS, though there is a tiny bit of waste and it’s a little less condensed and more complicated than it otherwise could be.

Despite their differences, all of the opener variations involve the following:

• Lead with Thermal Detonator ▶ Retractable Blade (if not already present) ▶ Explosive Fuel + Adrenal because those GCDs deal most of their damage in a delayed fashion, so you want to apply them before activating your offensives.
• Fire at least 1 Energy Burst with 4 stacks of Energy Lode and launch all Shoulder Cannons while Explosive Fuel is active.
• Executing the priority system to maximize the number of Rail Shot activations and using Magnetic Blast over Rapid Shots, ignoring Heat.
• Use Vent Heat with your next Energy Burst when you have over 60 Heat if possible.

I want to note that it’s important to use Thermal Detonator no more than 1 GCD before Energy Burst during your opener because you want Energy Burst to deal damage and proc Power Burst before Thermal Detonator explodes. This is the only practical way to ever utilize the Power Burst procs from back-to-back Energy Bursts with Power Yield.

At the start of combat, if you’re gonna use Jet Charge, you must use it BEFORE using Thermal Detonator. Since this opener places Thermal Detonator after the application of Retractable Blade, this isn’t too big of an issue, but not all openers do that.

You can skip the unprocced Rail Shot, use Thermal Detonator before Retractable Blade, and put Rocket Punch in between the Energy Bursts, which is simpler and more condensed, but the actual burst in your opener is slightly lower since you don’t activate as many damage boosts before your Energy Bursts, but it’s not too huge.

After you’ve fired off both Energy Bursts, you’re basically just doing the priority system to maximize the number of Rail Shots you can fire. You want to make sure that you’ve fired all Shoulder Cannons while Explosive Fuel is active and use Vent Heat on the next Energy Burst.

Remember, the burst part of the damage is during Explosive Fuel, especially when firing Energy Burst. The opener effectively ends when Explosive Fuel does, but I opted to extend the list so you could see where to put Vent Heat.

If you are looking for more SWTOR content, use the Guides Master List. Below you will find links to the Class Guides and Best Solo Build Guides.