SWTOR 7.7 Tactics Vanguard PvE Guide and Best Builds

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

Introduction to Tactics Vanguard

Tactics Vanguards deploy huge bursts of damage that take their foes off-guard by incorporating advanced explosives and bleeding-edge weaponry into their battle plans. Their blaster rifle has a special capacity to store and release immense amounts of energy and uses a special type of high-energy power cell further amplify the damage dealt by their weapons.

Tactics 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, Tactics 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 Tactics isn’t in quite as bad of a spot next to other burst specs as burst specs are next to DoT specs.

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

Though Vanguards lack a cleanse, their survivability is otherwise quite strong. Charitably, Tactics is more balanced in that department than Plasmatech. Unfortunately, the only consequential reasons you’d want to bring Tactics over Plasma are if your group desperately needs the armor debuff or you’re horrifically bad at Plasma and your group needs VG 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. Tactics permanently lost access to 2 abilities: 

• Guard (now tank-only)
• Ion Wave (the other 2 disciplines still have it, Plasmatech lost Flak Shell)
• Reserve Powercell (merged with Recharge Cells)

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, Tactics 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 Plasmatech, Tactics is extremely independent when it comes to group composition dependence. You can slot Tactics into just about any group without worrying about what other specs people are bringing and it will be extremely close to maximum performance.

Tactics 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 Tactics. Furthermore, it’s likely that there’s another DPS in the group that will benefit more from having all of their DPS debuffs than Tactics, 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.

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

Gut

(Tech/Kinetic and Internal/Periodic and Direct/Single-Target)
Gut is Tactics’ main DoT. It hits pretty hard, lasts a long time, and gets refreshed by High Impact Bolt and Flak Shell, 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 Gut is your only bleed effect.

Typically, you want to use Gut before you would use Tactical Surge as a filler and definitely before your first activation of High Impact Bolt (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 Gut to enemies that you plan to hit with High Impact Bolt. Keep in mind that Gut is one of the few Tactics abilities that has only a 4m range, so you will need to be closer than usual to apply it. Gut has 1 discipline passive associated with it that is relevant to your rotation, though there are other effects that relate to Gut that I will mention later on:

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

Cell Burst

(Tech/Energy and Elemental/Direct and Periodic/Single-Target)
Cell Burst offers huge immediate damage that autocrits unconditionally, though it costs a ton of Energy Cells 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 Cell Burst by about 25%. Energy Lodes have no other effect besides scaling the base damage of Cell 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 High Impact Bolt. You also build Energy Lodes while using your out-of-combat regen ability and from taking critical damage while Balmorran Advanced Weaponry 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 Cell 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 High Impact Bolt as often as possible in order to use Cell Burst as often as possible. Thanks to the Tactical Accelerator proc, you’ll be able to reset the cooldown of High Impact Bolt and subsequently use it every 6s. 

Since you need 4 stacks of Energy Lode and can build 1 every 6s, Cell Burst has an effective cooldown of ~24s. That said, Cell 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 High Impact Bolt so you don’t waste any Energy Lodes. You can also delay High Impact Bolt 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 Cell 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 Gut is on the target. Cell 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 Balmorran Advanced Weaponry ability rather than being a discipline passive.

Dealing damage with Cell Burst also applies Cell 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 Cell Burn is equal to about 25% of the damage dealt by Cell Burst. There is an opportunity to do Cell 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 Cell Burn. Cell Burst has 1 ability(!) associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Balmorran Advanced Weaponry
Cell Burst automatically critically hits, activating Balmorran Advanced Weaponry immediately grants 4 Energy Lodes, and taking critical damage while Balmorran Advanced Weaponry is active grants 1 Energy Lode, cannot occur more than once every 2s. Yes, all of this is bundled into the Balmorran Advanced Weaponry ability. The big thing I have yet to talk about is activating Balmorran Advanced Weaponry 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 Balmorran Advanced Weaponry after firing Cell Burst and make sure the Energy Lodes have been consumed before activating Balmorran Advanced Weaponry. To be clear, you always want to use Balmorran Advanced Weaponry when you have 0 Energy Lodes, which will always be immediately after firing Cell Burst. Don’t forget to wait a couple of GCDs until the Cell Burn DoT has worn off before activating the second Cell Burst so you aren’t missing out on damage.

You need to be pretty close to 100 Energy Cells or have Recharge Cells available whenever you’re about to use 2 Cell Bursts back-to-back (or more accurately within the same rotation cycle) because you’ll be consuming a massive amount of Energy Cells, especially considering that the 3rd non-High Impact Bolt GCD will also cost Energy Cells as you’ll need to proc Tactical Accelerator to reset the cooldown on High Impact Bolt. Typically, you’ll end up delaying 2 High Impact Bolts a ton to make all this happen such that you’ll fire High Impact Bolt, be able to immediately proc it, and then fire High Impact Bolt again.

High Impact Bolt

(Ranged/Energy/Direct/Single-Target)
High Impact Bolt 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 High Impact Bolt’s proc and discipline passive play the main role in defining the Tactics rotation, so there’s still a lot to go over:

Tactical Accelerator
Tactical Accelerator (TA) makes it so that Stockstrike, Tactical Surge, Explosive Surge, and Flak Shell finish the cooldown on High Impact Bolt and make your next activation of High Impact Bolt cost no Energy Cells. This effect cannot occur more than once every 6s. Gaining Tactical Accelerator as often as possible defines the core structure of the Tactics rotation. 

The 6s rate limit is equal to 4 GCDs, so basically every 4 GCDs, you must use Stockstrike or Tactical Surge (or Explosive Surge or Flak Shell) to proc Tactical Accelerator. Many players prefer to make things easier on themselves by using High Impact Bolt as soon as it’s procced, but this does result in a DPS loss as the cooldown on High Impact Bolt is made irrelevant by this proc since you’re no longer limited by High Impact Bolt’s cooldown as the rate limit on Tactical Accelerator is shorter.

Don’t get me wrong, there will be many instances where you can use High Impact Bolt 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 Assault Plastique, Stockstrike, Cell Burst, and Gut when you could have just delayed High Impact Bolt for no cost.

Keep in mind that you do need to use High Impact Bolt before you are able to proc Tactical Accelerator again or else you will end up delaying High Impact Bolt and quickly start missing out on whole activations, which will negatively impact your DPS. The DPS loss from missing out on High Impact Bolt activations will accumulate significantly faster than the delays from other abilities, so as you’re learning, err on the side of not delaying High Impact Bolt 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 High Impact Bolt and get the Tactical Accelerator proc as often as possible, particularly when you have to use Cell Burst, and this is fine.

High Friction Bolts
High Friction Bolts makes it so that High Impact Bolt 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 High Impact Bolt regenerate 6 Energy Cells (was 5 before 7.3) and refresh the duration of Gut if it hits a target bleeding from Gut. In other words, High Friction Bolts makes High Impact Bolt deal more damage and always usable, but if you do fulfill the removed condition, you get to refresh your bleed DoT and regenerate 6 Energy Cells. 

You rely on regenerating the 6 Energy Cells 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 Gut makes it always worthwhile to apply Gut before using High Impact Bolt.

Focused Impact
High Impact Bolt 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 High Friction Bolts, Tactics’ High Impact Bolt ignores 90% of the target’s armor. Against bosses, this results in an effective ~24% damage increase.

Stockstrike

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

Shock Trooper Implant
The Energy Cells consumed by Stockstrike is reduced by 4. This implant effect further cements Stockstrike’s priority above Tactical Surge by making it cheaper. The only reason to use Tactical Surge when Stockstrike is available is if you aren’t in range.

Sunder
The Serrated Blades discipline passive makes it so that dealing damage with Stockstrike 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.

Tactical Surge

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

The gap between the damage dealt by Tactical Surge and Hammer Shot 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, Tactical Surge also procs TA while Hammer Shot 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. Tactical Surge 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 Tactical Surge and Gut’s bleed effect by 5% for 10s. Stacks up to 4 times (20% max). This tactical item further widens the damage gap between Hammer Shot and Tactical Surge while subsequently narrowing the damage gap between Stockstrike and Tactical Surge. The damage difference is only a couple thousand, meaning the primary benefit and DPS increase from using Stockstrike comes from its cheaper cost.

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

Since Tactical Surge must be used to proc High Impact Bolt, you can’t really afford delay activating Tactical Surge to increase your burst. In addition, it is not remotely possible to exclusively use Tactical Surge while the damage boost is active and exclusively use Hammer Shot when it’s not active. The only time you can reliably afford to exclusively spam Tactical Surge is while Battle Focus is active and you have Recharge Cells available.

Havoc Training
The critical damage dealt by Tactical Surge as well as Cell Burst, Assault Plastique, Stockstrike, High Impact Bolt, and Gut is increased by 15%. This passive increases the critical damage dealt by all single-target rotational abilities except for Hammer Shot, further widening the damage gap between Tactical Surge and Hammer Shot and reinforcing the Tactical Surge should be prioritized as often as Energy Cells allow.

Hammer Shot

(Ranged/Energy/Direct/Single-Target)
Hammer Shot is your weak filler. It deals little damage and doesn’t proc TA, but it costs no Energy Cells and has a 30m range, so you can practically always use it. In fact, you should only ever use Hammer Shot when you can’t use Tactical Surge either because your Energy Cells level is too low or you’re out of range. 

Unfortunately, there isn’t a clear and consistent Energy Cell level for when you should use Tactical Surge vs Rapid Shot since the amount of Energy Cells you’ll be spending each rotation cycle varies. Your objective is to avoid going under 60 Energy Cells while also never hitting 100. You’re leaving DPS on the table if you aren’t constantly passively regenerating the maximum amount of Energy Cells. 

This is just a rule of thumb, but outside of Battle Focus, you typically can’t afford to use more than 2 abilities that cost 15 or more Energy Cells per High Impact Bolt for more than a couple of rotation cycle, so you’ll typically be using at least 1 Hammer Shot per rotation cycle and sometimes more if you’re about to use Cell Bursts. 

Really, it just takes a ton of practice so you can get a feel for how many Energy Cells you can afford to spend on Tactical Surges that don’t proc TA. Hammer Shot 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 Energy Cell management:

Into the Fray
Whenever you take direct (as in non-periodic) AoE damage, you regenerate 2 Energy Cells 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, Into the Fray 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 Hammer Shot less and Tactical Surge more.

Assault Plastique

(Tech/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target)
Assault Plastique deals huge delayed damage. It costs the same as Tactical Surge 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 Hammer Shot if needed. Keep in mind that Assault Plastique cannot proc TA, 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 High Impact Bolt.

In exchange for these drawbacks, Assault Plastique 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. Assault Plastique has 1 debuff associated with it that I want to mention:

Susceptible
Prototype Weapons Systems makes it so that dealing damage with Assault Plastique 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. 

Flak Shell

(Tech/Kinetic/Direct/AoE)
Flak Shell 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 Tactical Surge. The reason it only takes 2 targets despite dealing similar damage to Explosive Surge has to do with the fact that Gut also refreshes and ticks your Gut DoT on targets it damages.

Since Flak Shell has a 10m range and 8m radius, it’s pretty easy to maintain Gut on multiple enemies at the same time, and more worthwhile to apply Gut to multiple enemies. Flak Shell can also proc TA, so it really is just the AoE version of Tactical Surge. 

Artillery Blitz

(Tech/Elemental and Kinetic/Direct/AoE)
Artillery Blitz is one of your beefy AoE attacks with a cooldown. It roughly matches Tactical Surge’s damage even if you can only hit a single target, but it doesn’t proc TA to reset the cooldown on High Impact Bolt and costs 30 Energy Cells, which is more than you can typically afford to use in a single cycle alongside a third Energy Cell-spending ability to proc TA, like Flak Shell or Magnetic Blast. 

Since Artillery Blitz costs 30 Energy Cells, and lasts 2 GCDs, it is technically the best candidate to make free with Recharge Cells, 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 (Cell Burst) free since the latter can’t be replaced by Hammer Shot.

You can also use Artillery Blitz 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.

Explosive Surge

(Tech/Elemental/Direct/AoE)
Explosive Surge is your spammable AoE. Assuming you have Energized Vambrace equipped, Explosive Surge surpasses Tactical Surge 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 Flak Shell and Artillery Blitz, you’re likely better off playing Plasmatech 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 TA and Flak Shell isn’t available but you can hit at least 3 targets, feel free to use Explosive Surge.

Assault Plastique with Flame Detonation

(Tech/Kinetic/Direct/AoE)
The Flame Detonaton tactical allows Assault Plastique can hit 8 targets within 5m of the primary target if they get hit by Explosive Surge while it’s attached. The tactical does not make Assault Plastique deal AoE damage baseline, you have to hit the target with Explosive Surge 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. 

Tactics Vanguards 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.

Battle Focus

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

While Battle Focus is active, you should not use any Hammer Shots as your filler and make sure to time its initial activation such that you won’t need to apply Gut and will be able to activate Cell Burst while it’s active.

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

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

Be careful not to activate Battle Focus 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.

Recharge Cells

With the launch of 7.0, the effect of Reserve Powercell was combined with Recharge Cells where activating Recharge Cells makes your next attack that costs Energy Cells free and as soon as that buff is consumed, you begin recharging 50 Energy Cells over 3s.

This ability should typically only be used shortly after Battle Focus as a way to enable you to exclusively use Tactical Surge instead of Hammer Shot as your filler.

It’s ideal to use Recharge Cells right before you activate Cell Burst since that attack costs 20 Energy Cells instead of 15, but any ability that costs 15 Energy Cells is fine too and preferred if you’re about to go below 25 Energy Cells. Artillery Blitz is definitively the best ability to pair with Recharge Cells since it costs 30 Energy Cells and allows you to passively regenerate Energy Cells over 2 GCDs instead of 1, but it’s not used in the single-target rotation.

Technically, Recharge Cells has a shorter cooldown in Tactics thanks to the Power Loaders discipline passive which desynchronizes it from Battle Focus, but it’s difficult to make use of this in practice as it will never consistently align with a Energy Cell-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 Battle Focus where you activate it before Battle Focus comes off cooldown so you have time for all 7 missiles to load and then fire them all while Battle Focus is active, yes Tactics 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 Battle Focus. Usually, Shoulder Cannons will come off cooldown about 30s before Battle Focus 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 Battle Focus in boss fights because they have roughly the same cooldown as Battle Focus, but benefit from the crit chance provided by Battle Focus, 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 Battle Focus and be able to fire them continuously for the remainder or you won’t get them all off while Battle Focus 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 Battle Focus, 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.

Balmorran Advanced Weaponry

With 7.0, each combat style had 1 of its abilities changed to have a unique additional effect for each discipline. For Vanguards, that ability is Power Yield, which was only kept for Advanced Prototype Powertechs, every other spec got a new name. For Tactics Vanguards, that new name is Balmorran Advanced Weaponry.

As soon as you activate Balmorran Advanced Weaponry, 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, Balmorran Advanced Weaponry can only ever last 10s, not 30s like Plasma’s Durasteel Armor can.

The 200% armor increases your damage reduction against energy/kinetic attacks to 51.7%, which is roughly the same as what Reactive 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 Balmorran Advanced Weaponry 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 Balmorran Advanced Weaponry as an offensive cooldown if it’s available after firing Cell Burst because Balmorran Advanced Weaponry also grants 4 Energy Lodes, enabling you to do an extra Cell Burst every minute (and boosts your damage dealt by 10%), which is a substantial DPS increase.

The only time you should save Balmorran Advanced Weaponry 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 Battle Focus since they both last 15s, boosting your big burst window even more. It’s fine to delay the Adrenal until Battle Focus is available, but sometimes the boss will die before Battle Focus comes off cooldown.

If the Adrenal is available and you think the boss will die before Battle Focus comes off cooldown, you should use the Adrenal without Battle Focus 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.

Reactive 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 Reactive Shield is active. 

Thanks in part due to its long duration, Reactive 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. Reactive Shield has 1 discipline passive and 1 combat style passive associated with it:

Reflexive Shield
Whenever you take damage, the cooldown of Reactive 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, Reactive 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.

Into the Fray
Increases the duration of Reactive 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 Reactive Shield to be active for the entire duration of a painful event or be active for 2 big hits (assuming you time it right).

Adrenaline Rush

Adrenaline Rush’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 Adrenaline Rush, though the ability isn’t without limitations.

Outside of Plasmatech, Adrenaline Rush 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 Plasma up until now.

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

Sonic Round

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 Round 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 Tools 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.

Frontline Defense
Activating Sonic Round grants Frontline Defense, 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 Round so you can mitigate the damage you might take from a cleave. Don’t forget that Sonic Round requires a target to activate, though it doesn’t matter what you target because the buff gets applied to you.

Tactical Armor
Activating Sonic Round 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 Frontline Defense for the AoE DR. If you do have Frontline Defense, 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 Tactical 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 Tactical 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 Tactics 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 Vanguards are one of the two combat styles that do not have any sort of cleanse ability, the other is Gunslinger.

Storm

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

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

It’s unclear why BioWare couldn’t just give Storm 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.

Hold the Line

This ability offers a movement speed boost as well as substantial CC immunity. It has both the Charge the Line and Advance the Line 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 Hold the Line to ignore knockback mechanics, slows, and roots. If one of those has the potential to make you lose DPS, make sure to pop Hold the Line.

The movement speed boost is also quite powerful, one of the best in the game, but Storm usually gets the job done while Hold the Line can be used for CC immunity, so try to only use it for mobility if Storm 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. 

Suppression Droid

Suppression 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 VG 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.

Suppression 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 Suppression 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 Vanguard, you can also just use Suppression Droid instead of Hammer Shot, since they both cost no Energy Cells 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.

Neural Surge

Neural Surge 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 Neural Surge 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.

Cryo Grenade

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 Neural Surge, you won’t be using Cryo Grenade much at all.

Riot Strike

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 Frontline Defense 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.

Tenacity

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

Harpoon

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 Jolt

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 Round, 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.

Gut Buffs – Level 23 Choice

Richochet Rounds

• Effect: When the bleed effect from Gut is refreshed, you deal additional damage to up to 4 targets within 5m.
• Recommendation: Take this for trash mobs. Ricochet Rounds increases your AoE potential because it synergizes with Flak Shell’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, Gut is still a DoT, so it’s only worth applying to Strong (silver) or higher enemies.

Serrated Blade

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

Tactical Knife

• Effect: When Gut ticks, you gain a stack of Tactical Knife. Each stack increases the damage dealt by your next initial hit of Gut by 25%. Stacks up to 4 times and cannot occur more than once every 3s.
• Recommendation: Never take this. The idea is cool, but Tactical Knife 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

Pull and Pummel

• Effect: Harpoon deals a small amount of damage to pulled targets and grants Pull and Pummel, which makes your next Stockstrike 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 Harpoon combined with the boost to Stockstrike is roughly equal to that of Tactical Surge but for free. The stun also makes Pull and Pummel more valuable than Reserved Cables 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 Storm, and it’s only every 45s, so it’s not worth using.

Reserved Cables

• Effect: Harpoon gets 2 charges and activating Harpoon finishes the cooldown on Stockstrike.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Storm is far more useful in all PvE content while Pull and Pummel provides a stronger effect if you want to buff Harpoon.

Storm

• Effect: Grants the Storm 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 Storm grants Battering Blitz, which enables Storm to be used again and increases your movement speed by 30% for 6 seconds. Battering Blitz causes Storm 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, Storm offers the greatest mobility increase because Harpoon’s cooldown is just too long. In Operations, most enemies are immune to Harpoon anyway, so this is the only viable option.

Cell Burst Buffs – Level 39 Choice

High Yield Explosives

• Effect: Cell Burst grants High Yield Explosives, which increases the damage dealt by your next Assault Plastique 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, High Yield Explosives 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 Cell Burst to buff 2 Assault Plastique activations back-to-back if you were able to throw the first Assault Plastique and use the first Cell Burst before it exploded.

Kill Zone

• Effect: Cell Burst deals damage equal to the base damage of Cell 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.

Superheated Cells

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

Advanced Infantry Tactics, War Machine, Suppression Droid – Level 43 Choice

Advanced Infantry Tactics

• Effect: Increases the range of all abilities with a 10m range to 15m. In addition, Gut ticks decrease the cooldown of Balmorran Advanced Weaponry 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 Balmorran Advanced Weaponry cooldown reduction is pretty negligible since it maxes out at 6s per activation and you’re primarily limited by Energy Lodes anyway, not Balmorran Advanced Weaponry’s cooldown.

War Machine

• Effect: Activating Reactive Shield grants War Machine, which makes your next Adrenaline Rush heal you up to 45% HP or your next Balmorran Advanced Weaponry last for 15s. War Machine lasts up to 30s.
• Recommendation: Take this in fights without adds where you’re able to use Reactive Shield liberally. The effects are pretty weak when Reflexive Shield’s cooldown reduction on Reactive Shield doesn’t trigger that often, but it’s pretty nice when Reactive 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 Balmorran Advanced Weaponry. If you can afford to time activations for Balmorran Advanced Weaponry, you’re safe to activate Reactive Shield as soon as you know that you’ll be able to combine Balmorran Advanced Weaponry with your next Cell Burst.

Suppression Droid

• Effect: Grants the ability Suppression Droid, which fires off a series of Suppression 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.

Electro Shield, Parallactic Combat Stims, and Iron Will – Level 51 Choice

Electro Shield

• Effect: Reactive 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. Electro 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 Electro Shield within 4.5 minutes. This isn’t hard to do even if you aren’t fluffing with Electro Shield and just using Reactive Shield as your first line of defense as a DCD in part because Reflexive Shield reduces its cooldown significantly. Furthermore, the ceiling for Electro Shield is significantly higher since it can tick every second, which can result in upwards 90k damage per activation (crits included).

Parallactic Combat Stims

• Effect: You recharge 20 Energy Cells 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 these extra Energy Cells into additional Tactical Surges 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 Tenacity by 30 seconds and Recharge Cells by 15 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this. The 15s cooldown reduction on Recharge Cells doesn’t help to synchronize the cooldown of the ability with any of the high points in your Energy Cells consumption, namely Battle Focus and double Cell 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 those Energy Cell-intensive portions. It’s much easier to extract DPS from Electro Shield and just keep Recharge Cells paired with Battle Focus. At best, and that’s MUCH easier said than done, Iron Will enables you to do an extra 3.33 Tactical Surges (instead of Hammer Shots) every 4 and a half mins. It’s far easier to squeeze what amounts to ~50k damage out of Electro Shield in that time even if you’re only using Reactive Shield as a DCD (so no fluffing). If Iron Will (or Power Loaders) were to reduce the cooldown of Recharge Cells by an additional 10s, that would be enough to synchronize it with the cooldown of Balmorran Advanced Weaponry and make this option more tantalizing, but alas, that is not the case.

Reflective Armor, Frontline Defense, and Entangling Tools – Level 64 Choice

Reflective Armor

• Effect: When Into the Fray 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 Frontline Defense 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.

Frontline Defense

• Effect: Reduces the cooldown of Riot Strike by 2 seconds. In addition, activating Sonic Round grants Frontline Defense, 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 Frontline Defense 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). 

Entangling Tools

• Effect: Tactical Surge and Explosive Surge reduce the movement speed of affected targets by 25% for 3s. In addition, Neural Jolt 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.

Guard Cannon, Hold the Line, and Cryo Grenade – Level 68 Choice  

Guard Cannon

• Effect: Damaging a target with your Shoulder Cannon missiles heals you for 3% of your total health.
• Recommendation: Never take this in PvE. Guard 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 Hold the Line and Cryo Grenade.

Hold the Line

• Effect: Grants the Hold the Line 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 VG utility effects were combined into the base ability, Hold the Line 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.

Cryo Grenade

• Effect: Grants the Cryo Grenade ability, which stuns the target for 4 seconds and deals a small amount of damage. 60s cooldown, 10m range, and costs 5 Energy Cells.
• Recommendation: Only take this if it’s absolutely necessary. Hold the Line is usually not essential thanks to Storm, but it’s still one of the best movement abilities in the game, so you should only give it up and take Cryo Grenade if Neural Surge is insufficient.

Paralytic Augs, Sonic Rebounder, and Efficient Tools – Level 73 Choice

Paralytic Augs

• Effect: Increases the stun durations of Neural Surge by 0.5 seconds and Cryo Grenade by 1 second.
• Recommendation: Consider taking this anytime you find yourself using Neural Surge. Usually, whenever you want to stun something, it’s better for it to be stunned longer, so if you find yourself needing to use Neural Surge (or Cryo Grenade), there’s a good chance Paralytic Augs will help. Typically, Sonic Rebounder is not as useful in fights with a lot of adds while Neural Surge 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 Paralytic Augs.

Sonic Rebounder

• Effect: Sonic Round 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 Round for more information on how to make the most of Sonic Rebounder.

Efficient Tools

• Effect: Allows Adrenaline Rush to be activated while stunned and causes Adrenaline Rush to purge stun effects when activated. In addition, the range of Harpoon and Shoulder Cannon are increased by 10m, and Neural Surge and Cryo Grenade no longer cost Energy Cells.
• Recommendation: Take this for solo content and specific fights only. The 10m range increase on Harpoon 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 Adrenaline Rush just to break out of a stun. The extra range on Harpoon 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 Tactical Surge and Gut’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 Explosive Surge to a target affected by a pre-exploded Assault Plastique 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 Tactics Vanguard:

Shock Trooper
The Energy Cell cost of Stockstrike is reduced by 4. In addition, activating Tactical Surge 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 Energy Cell cost reduction to Stockstrike. 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 Tactics Vanguard 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 Infantry Tactics by default but don’t hesitate to switch to War Machine or Suppression Droid if they’ll be more useful for a given fight. Likewise, you can switch to Reflective Armor or Cryo Grenade if the circumstances allow or require it, but for the most part, you’ll be sticking with Frontline Defense and Hold the Line.

Solo Content

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

The Cell Burst buff at level 39 doesn’t matter all that much. High Yield Explosives only applies the damage boost to the primary target while Kill Zone doesn’t enable Cell Burst to deal full damage to secondary targets, as if the Energy Lode stacks aren’t scaling. Superheated Cells is a DoT that is weaker than the boost to Assault Plastique.

As a result, you’ll mostly just be chucking Assault Plastique, jumping in, and doing Explosive Surge and the group is mostly dead.

Openers, Rotations, Priorities

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

Priority System

In Tactics, 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. High Impact Bolt (only if you will be able to proc it now or in the next GCD)
2. Proc High Impact Bolt (if possible)
3. Assault Plastique
4. Gut (only if the target isn’t bleeding from it already)
5. Stockstrike
6. Cell Burst (only with max Energy Lodes)
7. High Impact Bolt
8. Flak Shell (only if you can hit at least 2 targets)
9. Explosive Surge (only if you can hit at least 3 targets that need to die ASAP)
10. Tactical Surge (only if you can afford it)
11. Hammer Shot

Your primary objective with Tactics is maximizing the number of times you use High Impact Bolt so that you can use 4-stack Cell Bursts as often as possible and regenerate as many Energy Cells as possible. Meanwhile, you want to use Assault Plastique and Stockstrike as often as possible.

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

Remember, the following abilities can proc TA, resetting the cooldown on High Impact Bolt and making it free:

1. Flak Shell (only use if you can hit at least 2 targets)
2. Stockstrike
3. Explosive Surge (only if you can hit at least 3 targets that need to die ASAP)
4. Tactical Surge

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

Keep in mind that while you can use High Impact Bolt 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 Energy Cells during the Energy Cell-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 Tactics, you really need to separate the proccing of Tactical Accelerator from the activation of High Impact Bolt.

Like High Impact Bolt, Cell 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 Cell Burst for quite a long time because its cooldown is effectively 4x the cooldown of High Impact Bolt, which is limited by TA.

In other words, you can delay Cell Burst (and your next High Impact Bolt) until you would have to delay the building of your next Energy Lode, which is 2 GCDs before you’ll need to proc TA again. This is beneficial both for Energy Cell management and for getting the most out of High Yield Explosives.

You can delay Cell Burst while you get your Energy Cells as close to above 80 by Hammer Shot instead of Tactical Surge or buy a little time for Assault Plastique to come off cooldown so you don’t waste a High Yield Explosives proc. Remember, you can’t delay it indefinitely, you can only delay Cell Burst up until doing so would cause you to delay your next High Impact Bolt proc.

Finally, I want to note that while Hammer Shot and Tactical Surge 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!

Energy Cell Management

It is ideal to never hit 100 Energy Cells or go under 60 Energy Cells (outside of Battle Focus) because it means you are leaving passive Energy Cell regeneration on the table and aren’t using the correct number of Tactical Surges at the correct time.

However, it’s inevitable that you will occasionally spike up below 60 Energy Cells in order to proc TA, apply Gut, or activate Assault Plastique or Stockstrike. It is unfortunate and does leave some Energy Cells on the table, but you’ll run into more problems and lower DPS if you try to delay those abilities in favor of Hammer Shot or an early High Impact Bolt.

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 Energy Cell regen a little bit when you activate them, but you’ll always have time to do Hammer Shot in the next cycle to bring your Energy Cells down to a safe level again.

That said, since Stockstrike can proc TA while Assault Plastique can’t, sometimes they will swap positions in the priority where you’ll want to do Stockstrike before Assault Plastique so you can proc High Impact Bolt as soon as possible. Cell Burst can and should be delayed as well, but you have more flexibility to do that.

Sadly, your Energy Cell consumption can vary so much from cycle to cycle, so there isn’t a definitive and universal Energy Cell level I can give you that governs whether you use Tactical Surge or Hammer Shot. The Into the Fray 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 Tactical Surges.

You can manage to do 3 abilities in the same cycle that cost 15 Energy Cells each (so something like 2 Tactical Surges and an Assault Plastique) without going under 60 Energy Cells, but you need to have pretty high Energy Cells going into such a cycle and can’t sustain it for too many cycles. You’ll be spending more Energy Cells than you can regenerate if you’re spending 45+ Energy Cells in a single cycle.

Using only 2 abilities that cost 15 Energy Cells or less (so something like 2 Tactical Surges and a Hammer Shot) is sustainable longer-term, as in fairly Energy Cell-neutral, though you might run into a little trouble when you do 2 Cell Bursts back-to-back or have to use an Cell Burst and Assault Plastique and Tactical Surge in the same cycle.

Thankfully, you will regenerate more Energy Cells than you consume if you use 2 Hammer Shots per cycle, especially when you can use Stockstrike to get the High Impact Bolt proc, though you should switch one of those Hammer Shot to Tactical Surge if your Energy Cells are 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 Hammer Shots and then otherwise try to use no more than 1 Hammer Shot 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. Storm (if necessary)
4. Gut (only if the target isn’t bleeding from it already)
5. High Impact Bolt (unprocced)
6. Assault Plastique
7. Stockstrike (procs Tactical Accelerator)
8. Battle Focus + Adrenal
9. (begin firing Shoulder Cannons)
10. Cell Burst
11. Tactical Surge (grants Shock Trooper implant damage boost)
12. Reactive Shield (only if you’re using War Machine)
13. Balmorran Advanced Weaponry
14. Cell Burst
15. High Impact Bolt
16. Sonic Round (only for threat drop)
17. Tactical Surge (procs Tactical Accelerator)
18. Stockstrike
19. High Impact Bolt
20. Tactical Surge
21. Tactical Surge (procs Tactical Accelerator)
22. Assault Plastique
23. (should be finished firing Shoulder Cannons)
24. High Impact Bolt
25. Stockstrike
26. Tactical Surge (procs Tactical Accelerator)
27. High Impact Bolt
28. Recharge Cells
29. Cell Burst

The opener for Tactics 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 Tactics 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 Assault Plastique ▶ Gut (if not already present) ▶ Battle Focus + 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 Cell Burst with 4 stacks of Energy Lode and launch all Shoulder Cannons while Battle Focus is active.
• Executing the priority system to maximize the number of High Impact Bolt activations and using Tactical Surge over Hammer Shot, ignoring Energy Cells.
• Use Recharge Cells with your next Cell Burst when you have over 60 Energy Cells if possible.

I want to note that it’s important to use Assault Plastique no more than 1 GCD before Cell Burst during your opener because you want Cell Burst to deal damage and proc High Yield Explosives before Assault Plastique explodes. This is the only practical way to ever utilize the High Yield Explosives procs from back-to-back Cell Bursts with Balmorran Advanced Weaponry.

At the start of combat, if you’re gonna use Storm, you must use it BEFORE using Assault Plastique. Since this opener places Assault Plastique after the application of Gut, this isn’t too big of an issue, but not all openers do that.

You can skip the unprocced High Impact Bolt, use Assault Plastique before Gut, and put Stockstrike in between the Cell 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 Cell Bursts, but it’s not too huge.

After you’ve fired off both Cell Bursts, you’re basically just doing the priority system to maximize the number of High Impact Bolts you can fire. You want to make sure that you’ve fired all Shoulder Cannons while Battle Focus is active and use Recharge Cells on the next Cell Burst.

Remember, the burst part of the damage is during Battle Focus, especially when firing Cell Burst. The opener effectively ends when Battle Focus does, but I opted to extend the list so you could see where to put Recharge Cells.

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.