SWTOR Tacticals Complete Catalog and Guide (2024)

The guide is up-to-date for Patch 7.4c

If you are familiar with what Tacticals are and just want to browse the catalog, click on a button below to visit a specific segment or scroll down to read the entire guide in the intended order.

Tempest of Rho

Force Lightning | Telekinetic Throw has a 50% chance to tick Creeping Terror | Sever Force and Lightning Strike or Overloaded Strike | Disturbance or Destructive Wave has a 100% chance to tick Creeping Terror | Sever Force. These ticks do not benefit from Parasitism | Focused Insight to heal you but do work with the rest of your passives and buffs.

Tempest of Rho is the single-target sustained tactical for Madness | Balance. No other tactical comes close to providing as much single-target DPS for this discipline.

It synergizes with Unrelenting Affliction and Downfall | Consuming Light and Shatter Connection and enables you to forego using Lightning Strike | Disturbance rotationally by making both abilities deal roughly the same damage.

Featured in:

Madness PvE Guide

Balance PvE Guide

Palpatine RP Build

killing field

Demolish | Vanquish also applies to any enemy within 5m of the primary target that is affected by your Deathmark | Force Suppression.

Killing Field is the AoE tactical for Madness | Balance. Since Demolish | Vanquish deals so much damage, it helps defeat groups of enemies much faster, though it does not increase your single-target DPS whatsoever. Please note that Killing Field does not get spread by Death Field | Force in Balance. It applies to targets that are affected by Deathmark | Force Suppression, even if the primary target is not affected by it.

Featured in:

Madness PvE Guide

Balance PvE Guide

Palpatine RP Build

Mystic’s Ruthless Blade

The initial hit of Demolish deals 20% more damage. In addition, activating Demolish | Vanquish while Polarity Shift | Mental Alacrity is active grants Mystic’s Ruthlessness | Mystic’s Serenity, which resets the cooldown on Force Leech | Force Serenity and makes your next Force Leech | Force Serenity activate instantly.

Mystic’s Ruthless Blade is the PvP-oriented tactical for Madness | Balance. Assuming you line things up correctly and don’t get disrupted at a critical moment, Mystic’s Ruthless Blade enables you to activate Force Leech | Force Serenity 4 times in the span of ~15s, where you do Force Leech ▶ Demolish ▶ Force Leech | Force Serenity ▶ Vanquish ▶ Force Serenity at the very beginning and end of Polarity Shift | Mental Alacrity.

You won’t boost your DPS by as much as you would with Tempest of Rho, but you will create a monolithic disparity between your and your opponent’s health levels.

The Rushdown

Building 4 stacks of Wrath | Presence of Mind grants Wrath Rush. Activating Volt Rush | Telekinetic Blitz consumes all stacks of Wrath | Presence of Mind and Wrath Rush and makes your next 3 activations of Volt Rush | Telekinetic Blitz deal 25% more damage.

The Rushdown is a likely unfinished and entirely worthless tactical item for Madness | Balance. It is never ever worth using and you should place it in your nearest Beskar casting press if one should ever come into your possession. Maximal use of The Rushdownl results in a DPS loss over not equipping a tactical item at all. The added mobility is theoretically nice in PvP, but the healing from Storm’s Succor provides significantly more value with Volt Rush | Telekinetic Blitz if mobility is what you’re after.

Stormwatch

Dealing damage with Lightning Flash | Telekinetic Gust applies Stormwatch for 15s. Whenever the affected target takes damage from Affliction | Weaken Mind, Crushing Darkness | Mind Crush, or Thundering Blast | Turbulence, they take an additional ~2,300 energy | kinetic damage.

Stormwatch is the sustained DPS tactical and light show Lightning | Telekinetics. Conceptually, it’s quite similar to a DoT, though it doesn’t deal damage on its own. Since it is applied by an ability that has a cooldown, it restricts target swapping by making you deal less damage against unaffected targets.

Featured in:

Lightning PvE Guide

Telekinetics PvE Guide

Elemental Convection

Volt Rush | Telekinetic Blitz triggers Lightning Storm | Tidal Force on a separate rate limit. In addition, dealing damage with Chain Lightning or Halted Offensive grants Volt Flux | Telekinetic Wave or Power of the Force grants Telekinetic Deluge, which makes Volt Rush | Telekinetic Blitz deals damage to all enemies within 8m of the primary target for the next 10s.

Elemental Convection is the AoE tactical for Lightning | Telekinetics. It offers a significant amount of flexibility and control for dealing AoE damage. Unfortunately, your survivability and Force regeneration will be more limited because you will not have time to use Lightning Bolt | Telekinetic Burst. Unlike many other AoE tacticals, this one offers a single-target sustained DPS increase, though it is not as strong as the one provided by Stormwatch.

Featured in:

Lightning PvE Guide

Telekinetics PvE Guide

Eyrin’s Haste

Activating Force Speed builds an additional stack of Convection | Clamoring Force and now also makes Thundering Blast | Turbulence activate instantly, but doing so consumes 3 stacks of Convection | Clamoring Force. In addition, Convection makes Thundering Blast | Turbulence makes Clamoring Force deal 20% more damage and makes Lightning Bolt | Telekinetic Burst deal 10% more damage.

Eyrin’s Haste is the spike damage tactical for Lightning | Telekinetics, though it has become less useful throughout 7.0 to the point where it doesn’t offer enough benefits to make it the clear choice in PvP. You have less of an incentive to take it because Force Mobility is now a baseline effect for DPS specs.

The tactical has also always been buggy and conflicts with the Gathering Storm implant because if you activate Force Speed immediately after casting Thundering Blast | Turbulence, Convection | Clamoring Force will be consumed without making anything instant. Furthermore, it’s impossible to buff the damage dealt by Thundering Blast | Turbulence with Gathering Storm without giving up all 3 stacks of Convection | Clamoring Force.

Ticking Force-Bomb

Increases the damage dealt by Crushing Darkness | Mind Crush by 10% and the chance to trigger Forked Darkness | Mental Momentum by 25%.

There is no real use case for Ticking Force-Bomb. It reduces the DPS loss from target swapping and offers its damage boost more compactly, but neither of these components is strong enough to overcome the weaker damage boost compared to Stormwatch.

One for all (Roaming Mend | Wandering Mend)

Roaming Mend | Wandering Mend heals an additional time.

The Roaming Mend | Wandering Mend tactical is optimal in group content where it is impractical to off-DPS, or you can’t take Volt Rush | Telekinetic Blitz. With One for All, you don’t have to worry about making sure the target you’re hitting is in range of the one that needs healing.

Featured in:

Corruption PvE Guide

Seer PvE Guide

All for One (Revivification | Salvation)

When Revivification | Salvation ends, it heals all allies within 8m for ~3.7k each, ~30k total per activation of Revivification | Salvation if the heal hits all 8 players.

The Revivification | Salvation tactical is easiest to use in content where there are more than 8 participants, namely 16m Operations and World Bosses. The healing from this tactical applies to all players who remain within the area of effect when the ability has applied its HoT to 8 players or the circle disappears because 10s have elapsed since it was activated.

That said, the maximum potential healing of this tactical is about 60% greater than the one that buffs Roaming Mend | Wandering Mend, so it’s worth using in 8m raids whenever the group is stacked up for most of the healing-intensive parts of the fight.

Featured in:

Corruption PvE Guide

Seer PvE Guide

Storm’s Succor

Dealing damage with Volt Rush | Telekinetic Blitz heals the ally with the lowest health within 20m of the enemy you damaged for ~25k. In addition, Energized | Empowered increases the healing dealt and reduces the Force cost of Volt Rush | Telekinetic Blitz by 30% and allows it to stack an additional time before being consumed.

Storm’s Succor allows you to off-DPS or off-heal rotationally, making it situationally valuable for all 3 disciplines. The off-DPS side is usable in almost all fights in all difficulties because the healing dealt is so strong and competitive with what is offered by the dedicated healer tacticals. However, it is harder to use as you have to constantly change your focus between targeting players and enemies and shoehorn in an additional ability.

The off-healing side can be worthwhile for DPS specs in PvP, though it will make you run out of Force faster since you’ll need to use Volt Rush | Telekinetic Blitz in lieu of your fillers that regenerate your Force.

Featured in:

Corruption PvE Guide

Seer PvE Guide

Endless barrier

Activating Unnatural Preservation | Force Mend purges Static Barrier’s Deionized | Force Armor’s Force-imbalanced debuff from you, regardless of who applied it.

Endless Barrier is a generic Sorcerer | Sage tactical that increases the overall effectiveness of your bubble by enabling you to use it significantly more often and benefit more significantly from talents and passives that improve Unnatural Preservation or Static Barrier | Force Mend or Force Armor, including:

• Backlash | Kinetic Collapse
• Unnatural Vigor | Valorous Spirit
• Lightning Barrier | Telekinetic Defense
• Corrupted Barrier (Madness) | Life Ward (Balance)
• Overcharged Barrier (Lightning) | Enhanced Force Armor (Telekinetics)
• Forbidden Knowledge (Lightning) | Mysteries of the Force (Telekinetics)

Many of the changes that Sorcerer | Sage DPS specs received with the release of and throughout 7.0 have come at the cost of reducing the overall value or effectiveness of their discipline-specific tactical items. As a result, it is significantly more worthwhile to consider using Endless Barrier as a DPS in PvP now than it was in 6.0.

A Healing hand

Activating Extrication | Rescue heals both you and your target for ~15k and grants Liberate, which makes your next Resurgence | Rejuvenate cost no Force.

A Healing Hand is a generic Sorcerer | Sage tactical that offers some group utility and survivability by way of healing. However, the heal is way too weak, given how long the cooldown is on Extrication | Rescue, and Resurgence | Rejuvenate is already cheap. It is never worth using A Healing Hand.

An Explosive Return

Teleporting with Phase Walk causes a Force explosion that deals ~25k damage to all enemies within 5m of your Phase Walk.

An Explosive Return is a flashy generic tactical for Sorcerer | Sage that brings back the original 360^o animation for Overload | Force Wave to let you deal a laughably small amount of (admittedly, off-GCD AoE) damage and doesn’t even knock enemies back! It would be a strong contender in PvP if it dealt upwards of ~100k base damage, was combined with the effects of the Shifting Silhouette | Ethereal Entity utility, and maybe had an 8m radius, but right now, it’s just a meme.

Cleanse the agony

Cleanse the Agony is technically a generic Sorcerer | Sage tactical, but no DPS should ever be using Consuming Darkness | Vindicate or Expunge | Restoration often enough to make any use of an effect that is already too weak to ever be worth using, even as a healer.

Friend of the Force

Activating your Force Shroud | Resilience ability also applies the same effects to your guarded ally.

Friend of the Force is a group utility tactical for Darkness | Kinetic Combat that enables you to protect another player from massive predictable spike damage or to cleanse disciplines that cannot cleanse themselves. Sniper | Gunslinger and Powertech | Vanguard are the only disciplines that lack a cleanse. Please note that Force Shroud | Resilience only applies to the guarded target when you use the dedicated ability. It does not apply when you use Force Cloak with Shroud of Madness | Cloak of Resilience.

Shroud of a shadow

Activating Force Shroud | Resilience consumes all stacks of Dark Ward | Kinetic Ward and extends the duration of Force Shroud | Resilience by 0.25s for each stack consumed.

Shroud of a Shadow allows Darkness Assassins | Kinetic Combat Shadows to extend the 3s base duration of Force Shroud | Resilience and is now the only way for the combat style to do so after the necessary removal of the Disjunction | Mind Over Matter utility. Since you have 15 stacks of Dark Ward | Kinetic Ward, the new effective maximum duration of Force Shroud | Resilience is increased by 3.75s to 6.75s. It’s only useful whenever you rely on being immune to damage for more than 3s for survival because the heavy damage is going out for longer than 3s.

ward of the continuum

Dark Ward | Kinetic Ward now has 10 stacks, and Dark Bulwark | Kinetic Bulwark no longer restores stacks. Instead, Dark Bulwark | Kinetic Bulwark now also increases your defense chance by 1% each time you consume a stack of Dark Ward | Kinetic Ward, though the stacks are still removed once you reapply Dark Ward | Kinetic Ward, or the effect wears off.

Ward of the Continuum is all about improving reliability. It allows Dark Ward | Kinetic Ward to break more consistently, allowing you to benefit from your chosen on-break effect for your chosen ability tree buff for Dark Ward | Kinetic Ward more reliably. The 10% defense chance is valuable in fights that feature a lot of weapon damage, especially when you rely on Deflection sufficiently increasing your defense chance to make you fully immune to enemy weapon damage.

Ancient Tome of Exar Kun

Dealing damage with Wither | Slow Time grants a stack of Redirected Wrath | Redirected Retribution. Each stack increases your shield absorption and damage reduction by 2% for 5s (+16% max). In addition, Maul | Shadow Strike deals 10% more damage to targets slowed by Wither | Slow Time.

Ancient Tome of Exar Kun is Darkness’ | Kinetic Combat’s AoE tactical. It has the potential to improve your survivability considerably if you can hit multiple targets with Wither | Slow Time. The damage boost to Maul | Shadow Strike does not apply in most boss fights because almost all enemies are immune to being slowed.

The Awakened Flame

Dealing damage with Ball Lightning | Psychokinetic Blast applies Burning Bolts | Crushing Breach, which deals ~19500 damage as 3 ticks over 6s.

The Awakened Flame is the single-target sustained DPS tactical for Deception | Infiltration. It effectively doubles the damage dealt per activation of Ball Lightning | Psychokinetic Blast in a way that does not benefit from any of the other discipline-specific buffs.

The damage boost is so significant that it becomes optimal to prioritize Ball Lightning | Psychokinetic Blast over everything else, even a 3-stack Discharge | Force Breach, simply because Discharge | Force Breach does not refresh and tick Burning Bolts | Crushing Breach. Despite this, it remains suboptimal to pair with Recklessness | Force Potency.

May Cause Injury

Building a stack of Voltage | Clairvoyance grants Discharging Voltage | Breaching Force, which makes your next Discharge | Force Breach deal damage to all enemies within 8m of the primary target.

May Cause Injury is a potent AoE tactical for Deception | Infiltration. It used to require the use of Severing Slash | Cleaving Cut, and it still synergizes well with that ability, but now you get the proc from building Voltage | Clairvoyance. Thanks to Reaper’s Rush | Stalker’s Swiftness, it can offer a competitive single-target sustained DPS boost in fights where adds are frequently defeated near the boss throughout the fight.

Keep in mind that the Discharging Voltage | Clairvoyance proc that enables Discharge | Force Breach to deal damage to multiple targets gets consumed with each activation, so you must use Voltaic Slash | Clairvoyant Strike in between each activation of Discharge | Force Breach even when you can spam it.

Blade of the Elements

Each stack of Voltage | Clairvoyance now also increases the critical chance of Reaping Strike | Vaulting Slash by 50%. In addition, critically hitting with Voltaic Slash | Clairvoyant Strike reduces the cooldown of Reaping Strike | Vaulting Slash by 1.5s.

Blade of the Elements is the spike damage tactical for Deception | Infiltration, though it strong enough to be competitive with the single-target sustained damage dealt by The Awakened Flame. It also maximizes your burst potential while Shadowcraft is active, making it superior to The Awakened Flame in PvP if survival isn’t an issue.

Along with Energized Blade, Deception | Infiltration-specific abilities each have the potential to lower the cooldown of Reaping Strike | Vaulting Slash by varying amounts if they crit. Therein lies the only real drawback of Blade of the Elements. Its priority system is significantly more challenging to execute because you have to respond to RNG without affecting your APM.

Traumatizer

Dealing damage with Maul | Shadow Strike or Low Slash applies Trauma, which reduces their healing received by 20% for 15s.

Technically, Traumatizer is a generic Assassin | Shadow implant, but it only makes any sense whatsoever to use with Deception | Infiltration in PvP, though I am not suggesting you use it there either because the combat style has access to stronger tacticals for PvP.

Hatred | Serenity can’t make use of Traumatizer at all because it doesn’t have access to either ability. Meanwhile, Darkness | Kinetic Combat already applies Trauma with Thrash | Double Strike and Lacerate | Whirling Blow, so the benefit is limited.

Two Time Trouble

Dealing damage Assassinate | Spinning Strike has a 100% to tick Creeping Terror | Sever Force. Dealing damage with any other melee attack, except Saber Strike, has a 60% to tick Creeping Terror | Sever Force. These DoT ticks do not trigger Force Dread | Drain Mind to heal you, but do work with the rest of your buffs.

Two Time Trouble is optimal for Hatred | Serenity in all non-solo PvE content. It does practically nothing against regular trash in solo content, but the alternatives don’t offer much either, and it is the best against more challenging enemies like those you’ll find in Heroics.

Quick Escalation

Critically hitting with Leeching Strike | Serenity Strike resets its cooldown and grants a stack of Hungering Blade, which increases the critical chance of Leeching Strike | Serenity Strike by 25%. Stacks up to 3 times and lasts 6s. Dealing damage with Leeching Strike | Serenity strike while you have 3 stacks of Hungering Blade removes the effect.

Quick Escalation is the strongest discipline-specific tactical for Hatred | Serenity in PvP. The extra survivability from self healing helps you to win out in a war of attrition and effectively counts as DPS against other players because you’re still affecting the disparity between you and your opponent’s HP.

Severance Pay

Death Field | Force in Balance deals 30% more damage to slowed targets and finishes the cooldown on Severing Slash | Cleaving Cut.

Severance Pay seems to be designed to offer a more sustainable and immediate AoE damage boost in solo content alongside some more usable survivability by relying on Severing Slash instead of Force Shroud | Cleaving Cut instead of Resilience. Unfortunately, it’s not worth using.

Severing Slash | Cleaving Cut cannot reliably hit the entire group due to its smaller area of effect than Lacerate | Whirling Blow, so the damage does not consistently apply to all targets. In any encounter where you DoT spread, Two Time Trouble outperforms it.

Technically, Madness | Balance can utilize Severance Pay as well if you combine it with Conspiring Force | Confound, but it is never competitive with Killing Field.

Two Cloaks

Force Cloak now has 2 charges.

Two Cloaks is typically used by all specs in PvP and by tanks in PvE alongside Shroud of Madness | Cloak of Resilience. Since you can’t exit combat it PvE, Two Cloaks gives you access to an extra cheese permits you to delay its use for longer if needed without missing out on future activations.

This tactical has some unique benefits in Warzones and Arenas, though it always allows you to benefit from Shadowcraft a second time, assuming your opponent(s) couldn’t find you.

In Warzones, Two Cloaks enables you to stall while defending objectives for longer because you can stealth out instead of dying and respawning, and that time difference will allow you to continue protecting the objective In Arenas, it gives you an additional health bar because you can (and typically should) stealth out, run away to hide, and heal to full using your regen ability.

Jerra’s Persistence

The only use case for Jerra’s Persistence is in concert with Force Phase if you need an additional movement-impairing effect purge. This is typically only valuable for tanks in select boss fights.

Chant of Regeneration

Activating Recklessness | Force Potency grants Reckless Shadow, which increases your Force regeneration rate by 50% for 5s.

Chant of Regeneration is a generic tactical for Assassins | Shadows. It useful in solo content for Hatred | Serenity because their other tacticals don’t offer that much of a benefit and you can run out of Force from spamming your strongest attacks.

Technically, it is usable by Sorcerers | Sages though the benefit is literally negligible. You will regenerate an extra 20 Force (out of 600) over the course of the effect. That’s about half the Force cost of a single ability, and you only get it once every 90s.

Grit teeth

Grit Teeth is a generic survivability tactical that works for all Juggernaut and Marauder | Guardian and Sentinel disciplines. It becomes more useful the more often you are attacked, so it is typically optimal for tanks regardless of content type, but also for DPS in PvP, assuming they don’t have a superior discipline-specific option, and most don’t.

Saber Ward’s cooldown reduction maxes out at 120s, so Grit Teeth enables you to use it once per minute and resulting in 20% uptime in an ideal, and likely terrifying, situation. Grit Teeth also synergizes with the Nimble Master implant that increases your movement speed to 100% while Saber Ward is active and the Blood Ward | Zealous Ward talent.

Enrage Crush

Damaging an enemy affected by Force Crush with Raging Burst or Smash | Force Exhaustion with Focused Burst or Force Sweep finishes off Force Crush | Force Exhaustion and causes it to deal its remaining damage to up to 8 enemies within 5m of the primary target.

Enrage Crush is the AoE tactical for both Rage and Fury | Focus and Concentration. Force Crush | Force Exhaustion does not deal AoE damage just because you have this tactical equipped. In order to deal AoE damage, your target must survive the hit from Smash or Raging Burst | Force Sweep or Focused Burst because the detonation happens after the damage goes out. Prioritize applying Force Crush | Force Exhaustion to the enemy with the most health that is closest to the middle of the pack.

Cauterized Coronary

Dealing damage with Furious Strike | Concentrated Slice applies a Bleeding | Burning DoT that deals ~27k damage across 3 ticks over 9s.

Cauterized Coronary is the sustained DPS tactical for both Rage and Fury | Focus and Concentration. It’s also the ultimate snooze fest because it’s just a boring DoT that doesn’t interact with either discipline beyond being applied by one of its abilities. Unfortunately, it remains significantly stronger than the alternatives for either discipline, resulting in it being BiS for all boss fights.

Perseverance

Spending a stack of Furious Power | Force Clarity on Obliterate | Zealous Leap causes it to automatically critically hit and grants Obliterator, which increases your critical chance by 20% for 2s.

Perseverance functions as a sort of spike damage tactical for Rage and Fury | Focus and Concentration. While each attack hits hard, the damage goes out over 3 GCDs instead of being properly concentrated into 1, so it doesn’t offer as much instantaneous damage as other tacticals can for other combat styles.

The bigger benefit of the tactical is its flexibility. Obliterate | Zealous Strike is important, so you’ll be using it anyway, but you can spend that 20% bonus crit on a number of other abilities including Furious Strike, Raging Burst, or Smash, and even overlap Furious Strike, Raging Burst, or Smash, and even overlap Force Crush | Concentrated Slice, Focused Burst, Force Sweep, and even overlap Force Exhaustion. You can also use additional charges of Furious Power | Force Clarity on those abilities.

Still, this flexibility is not nearly enough to make it competitive with Cauterized Coronary in boss fights or Enrage Crush against trash.

Unknowing Ancient Text

Activating Force Crush | Force Exhaustion builds 1 charge of Furious Power | Force Clarity.

Unknowing Ancient Text is a figurative relic of 6.0 when Juggernauts and Marauders had Furious Power | Guardians and Sentinels had Force Clarity as a baseline ability and synergistic set bonus. Nobody used it even back then because it was too weak. Nowadays, you have to give up something powerful to take Furious Power | Force Clarity and still use a weaker tactical.

Force Barter

Dealing damage with Furious Strike | Concentrated Slice refunds 1 Rage | Focus, but refunds 5 Rage | Focus instead if you only had 5 Rage | Focus when you activated the ability.

Force Barter is useless, at least as far as I can tell. If you can come up with a genuine use case, such that this tactical is actually worth buying, I would love to hear about it.

You have strong incentives to use Furious Strike | Concentrated Slice while building Rage | Focus in both disciplines, preventing you from ever completely running out of your resource for at least some of your ability activations. During this time, you’ll also be pretty close to maxing out your Rage | Focus, preventing you from saving it for later.

Thanks to Endless Rage | Visionary build Rage | Focus when you take damage as a Juggernaut | Guardian, you build 1 Rage | Focus. In addition, the Fuming Rage | Focused Vision proc can make your next Furious Strike | Concentrated Slice completely free, completely preventing you from benefitting from the tactical.

Hemophilic Slash

Activating Ravage | Blade Barrage refreshes the duration of the Bleed | Burn DoTs applied by Shatter, Impale, and Force Scream | Plasma Brand, Overhead Slash, and Blade Burst and ticks their damage.

Hemophilic Slash is the single-target sustained DPS tactical for Vengeance | Vigilance. It enables you to have higher uptime on all of your DoTS and makes it optimal to prioritize Ravage | Blade Barrage as a filler whenever you have all 3 DoTs on your target.

However, due to the cooldown duration of Shatter | Plasma Brand and its passive effect to reset the cooldown of Ravage | Blade Rush, it is more important to avoid missing out on an activation of Ravage | Blade Barrage and use it when you only have 3 DoTs on the target instead of 2, though you should otherwise delay it until all 3 DoTs are on cooldown.

Cut to Pieces

Critically hitting with one of your Bleed | Burn DoTs reduces the active cooldown of Vengeful Slam | Vigilant Thrust by 1s.

Cut to Pieces is the AoE tactical for Vengeance | Vigilance. Unlike most AoE tacticals, Cut to Pieces offers a sizeable boost to single-target sustained DPS. Unlike any other AoE tactical in the game, it is able to surpass the damage contributed by its single-target sustained DPS tactical, Hemophilic Slash, whenever you can consistently hit a second target for the majority of the fight.

This is noteworthy because all other tactical items in the game, and even AoE talents, require you to consistently hit a far greater number of targets to be worth using, so Vengeance | Vigilance has far easier access to significantly stronger AoE on top of it being more powerful and easier to execute.

It does require you to switch to a priority system, but the priority is just to use whichever attack available deals the most damage, and that is often Vengeful Slam | Vigilant Thrust.

A Vicious Cycle

Activating Hew | Whirling Blade grants Payback, which makes your next activation of Retaliation | Riposte deal 30% more damage and enables its use for 8s.

A Vicious Cycle is restricted to Vengeance | Vigilance, unfortunately, because it only grants the proc from Hew | Whirling Blade, not Vicious Throw | Dispatch. It is likely meant for PvP because Retaliation | Riposte cannot miss or be avoided with defense chance, though its overall contribution to single-target damage output is significantly lower than that of Hemophilic Slash while being less bursty and frequent.

Ravage | Blade Barrage simply ticking Shatter | Plasma Brand with Hemophilic Slash will deal roughly the same overall damage as the difference between your procced Retaliation and Vicious Slash | Riposte and Slash.

The tactical in question seems unfinished. It would make far more sense and likely be a viable option if it also took Retaliation | Riposte off of the GCD or was otherwise triggerable by Vicious Throw | Dispatch. Perhaps the devs forgot the ability is no longer off the GCD for DPS specs.

Syn’s Second Amulet

Dealing damage Retaliation | Riposte now refunds 1 Rage | Focus and finishes the cooldown on Furious Strike | Concentrated Slice.

Syn’s Second Amulet is a now-antiquated tactical for Rage | Focus. There is a dedicated rotation for Syn’s Second Amulet, but it does not offer as much DPS as the standard one with Cauterized Coronary and Indignant Rumination | Focused Meditation. Since Furious Strike | Concentrated Slice is so expensive, you can’t really make use of it unless you use Domination or Furious Power | Critical Conditions or Force Clarity.

Joiner’s pressure

Activating Force Push on a target affected by Force Crush | Force Exhaustion grants Joiner’s Pressure, which increases your damage dealt by 20% for 10s.

Joiner’s Pressure offers a decent chunk of burst for Rage | Focus, though it’s not in the form of spike damage, making it less useful in PvP. It doesn’t work well in PvE either because it costs a significant chunk of sustained DPS compared to Cauterized Coronary. In addition, Joiner’s Pressure conflicts with the optimal placement of Force Crush | Force Exhaustion from a damage output perspective and functionally eliminates its CC component. Furthermore, this tactical prevents you from spending the Fuming Rage | Focused Vision proc on Furious Strike | Concentrated Slice unless you want to further distort an already strict rotation.

Hord’s Makashi Strike

Dealing damage with Retaliation | Riposte consumes the damage reduction proc provided by Aegis Assault | Warding Strike and grants Retaliating Defense | Riposte Form, which increases your damage reduction by 7% for 20s.

Hord’s Makashi Strike allows you to boost your DR by 7% at all times; don’t let the proc consumption fool you. There’s a tad bit of wind-up, but all you need to do to mitigate the consumption is delay Crushing Blow ▶ Retaliate | Guardian Slash ▶ Riposte until the GCD before Aegis Assault | Warding Strike comes off cooldown. This way, Hord’s Makashi Strike is consuming the procs from the previous Aegis Assault | Warding Strike instead of the current one.

Hord’s Makashi Strike does not interact with the level 23 Defensive Assault talent that buffs the DR from Aegis Assault | Warding Strike, which seems to be an invisible proc that lasts the same duration.

Leviathan’s Hide

Dealing damage with Crushing Blow | Guardian Slash builds a stack of Crushing Defense, which increases your damage reduction by 2.5% per stack for 10s. Stacks up to 8 times, max 20% DR.

Leviathan’s Hide is the AoE tactical for Immortal | Defense. It provides a helpful survivability boost that scales with the number of targets you damage with Crushing Blow | Guardian Slash and synergizes with the level 43 talent Critical Blow | Critical Slash and the Champion’s Precision implant to enable 100% uptime on 20% DR in fights featuring multiple enemies in close proximity for the majority of the fight.

That said, Grit Teeth is valuable in the same situation, offering more concentrated protection less frequently. In my untested opinion, Leviathan’s Hide would be worth using in fights where adds don’t eviscerate you but remain alive for most of the fight.

Jaw Breaker

Activating Backhand | Hilt Bash extends the current active duration of Invincible | Warding Call by 5s.

Jaw Breaker only provides a tiny amount of additional value in specific boss fights and is worthless everywhere else. Backhand | Hilt Bash is a stun, so you won’t be taking any damage from that target for 4 out of the 5 seconds added to the duration of Invincible.

The vast majority of the time, having an additional DCD available, which Grit Teeth provides, is almost always far more valuable than partially mitigating what typically amounts to a single additional spike every 3 minutes.

Grit Teeth is just so much stronger, and the overall effectiveness of Invincible | Warding Call does not warrant the ability having such a long cooldown. I doubt it would be useful even without the Backhand | Hilt Bash requirement.

Throwing arm

Dealing damage with Saber Throw applies Obfuscating Throw, which reduces the target’s accuracy with weapon damage by 70% for 6s. Does not affect Champion enemies.

Throwing Arm offers an excessive survivability boost that is primarily useful in PvP against enemies that deal a significant amount of weapon damage. The combat styles that deal little to no weapon damage include Sorcerer, Powertech, and Operative | Sage, Vanguard, and Scoundrel, so prioritize using Saber Throw against other enemy players.

Technically, Throwing Arm is also useful in solo content, though you have more than enough survivability as a Juggernaut | Guardian, especially with a healer companion, so you would be better off using a different tactical.

Rancor’s Tail

Activating Saber Ward finishes the active cooldown of Force Push.

Rancor’s Tail allows you to use your knockback 1 additional time every 3 mins. Yes, the effect is as weak as it sounds. On top of that, it requires setup because Force Push needs to be on cooldown and ideally used recently when you activate Saber Ward.

Since it’s typically optimal to space out your DCDs, you wouldn’t typically want to use Force Push again until Saber Ward ends. The effect of this tactical would make far more sense as an implant.

Shard of Mortis

Dealing damage with Massacre | Blade Rush grants a stack of Hyper, which increases your critical chance by 15% and the cost of Massacre | Blade Rush by 1. Stacks up to 3 times (+45% Critical Chance, +3 Massacre cost) and lasts 6s. Dealing damage with another attack consumes all stacks of Hyper, granting 1 Rage | Focus per stack.

Shard of Mortis can be the everything tactical for Carnage | Combat. It is your best option against bosses and trash mobs, and is a popular choice against enemy players.

It offers the greatest sustained DPS by far, making it your best option against bosses. It offers equivalent spike damage compared to The Prosecution along with other build-related benefits, making it superior in PvP, though there are some more generic contenders. It offers flexible damage and burst that allow you to normal defeat enemies at roughly the same rate while being far more effevtive at dispatching stronger enemies.

Andeddu’s Malevolence

Dealing damage with Gore | Lance applies Bloody Focus, which deals ~25k internal damage across 4 ticks over 12s.

Andeddu’s Malevolence is the more functional AoE tactical for Carnage | Combat thanks to its synergy with Piercing Gore | Piercing Lance. Unfortunately, the DoT takes quite a while to dish out its damage, and it’s practically impossible to apply to the entire group, so isn’t worthwhile to use.

The Prosecution

Devastating Blast | Clashing Blast now benefits from and consumes a stack of Furious Power | Force Clarity.

The Prosecution is the spike damage tactical for Carnage | Combat. Unfortunately, Shard of Mortis combined with Swiftness will offer the same damage boost to Devastating Blast | Clashing Blast alongside other benefits.

It would be more viable if Furious Power | Force Clarity was available baseline, even with a longer cooldown. Right now, I think it’s better to use a defensive tactical with Carnage | Combat in PvP.

Tome of Unyielding Blades

Dealing damage with Smash | Force Sweep grants Smashacre | Sweeping Rush, which makes your next Massacre | Blade Rush deal damage to up to 8 enemies in a frontal cone.

Tome of Unyielding Blades is the AoE tactical for Carnage | Combat. Unfortunately, it is an AoE DPS loss to use Smash | Force Sweep with this discipline unless it enables you to hit additional targets that you couldn’t hit with Sweeping Slash | Cyclone Slash.

If Furious Power | Force Clarity was available baseline with a longer cooldown, it would be more reasonable. However, Sweeping Slash | Cyclone Slash already has guaranteed Ataru Form strikes, so the only benefit is dealing a tad more base damage for a single AoE attack, at the cost of dealing slightly less damage with another AoE attack.

Realistically, Tome of the Unyielding Blades also needs to be combined with Andeddu’s Malevolence and Smash | Force Sweep or the AoE Massacre | Blade Rush needs to finish off the DoT applied by Gore | Lance.

Spiteful Saber

Increases the damage dealt by Rupture | Cauterize and Force Fracture by 10%. In addition, dealing damage with Vicious Slash or Dual Saber Throw | Slash or Twin Saber Throw refreshes and ticks Rupture’s Bleed | Cauterize’s Burn DoT.

Spiteful Saber is the sustained DPS tactical for Annihilation | Watchman. It allows you to maintain Rupture | Cauterize indefinitely and forego using Assault | Strike completely.

This tactical is also optimal for Force Fracture, though you cannot benefit from the DoT refresh because Force Fracture does not apply one.

Malmourral Mask

Dealing damage with Annihilate | Merciless Strike to a target affected by your Force Rend | Force Melt creates a shockwave of Force energy that causes your Annihilate | Merciless Strike to also damage up to 8 enemies within 5m of the primary target.

Malmourral Mask is the AoE tactical for Annihilation | Watchman. It’s worth using over Spiteful Saber anytime multiple targets are present (consistently) because you can use Smash | Force Sweep to bounce your DoTs back to the primary target after they’ve fallen off. Furthermore, you will be manually reapplying Rupture | Cauterize anyway to trigger Blood Wave | Flaming Wave, so the refresh component of Spiteful Saber will be useless.

The name of the effect, Render, is a play on words, as rend refers to the name of the Marauder version of the ability and means to tear something, while render refers to melting for the purpose of extraction, usually in cooking, as in Force Melt.

Thirsty Blade

Ravage | Blade Barrage deals 5% more damage for each of your Bleed | Burn effects currently applied to the target (up to +25%).

Thirsty Blade is meant to be the spike damage tactical. However, it is too weak to be worth using because Ravage | Blade Barrage doesn’t deal enough base damage, even with Furious Power | Force Clarity.

If Furious Power | Force Clarity was available baseline and this tactical also allowed Ravage | Blade Barrage to finish off your DoTs, it could be worth considering.

No time for fools

Annihilate | Merciless Strike automatically defeats standard and weak enemies that have less than 30% HP and resets its cooldown.

No Time for Fools is exclusively useful in solo content because that’s the only place you’ll reliably find standard and weak enemies. However, it feels very clunky to use because Annihilate | Merciless Strike is one of your more expensive abilities, and you have to cut it close, or the damage from the attack can end up defeating the enemy anyway. Furthermore, such enemies will get defeated by DoT spread, and Malmourral Mask (if applicable) anyway, resulting in the tactical not actually doing much for you.

Undying Cloak

Undying Cloak is one of the more impactful PvP tacticals and functions as a viable and balanced alternative to Grit Teeth for Marauders | Sentinels.

A single full duration of Cloak of Pain | Rebuke can reduce the cooldown of Undying Rage | Guarded by the Force by up to 75s. In effect, each Cloak of Pain | Rebuke can halve the cooldown of Undying Rage | Guarded by the Force.

Despite Marauders | Sentinels already having arguably overpowered survivability, the reason that Undying Cloak is worth considering for PvP is that the other tacticals simply don’t do as much.

PvP is about survival, outliving your opponent. DPS does play a major role in that, but because your opponent has effectively identical HP, survivability boosts become 1:1 negative DPS for your opponent. You can still win if your DPS is lower so long as your survivability can compensate.

Undying Cloak can contribute more survivability than you’ll get from many of the discipline-specific tacticals for Marauders | Sentinels. Mathematically, it’s about as strong as Grit Teeth, even with Blood Ward | Zealous Ward, because:

• 12s of 50% defense chance = 6s of avoided weapon damage
• 12s of 25% Force/Tech absorption = 3s of fully absorbed Force/Tech damage
• ~120k healing from Blood Ward | Zealous Ward fully counteracts 1 instance of most spike damage, but Undying Rage | Guarded by the Force nullifies that damage anyway

Undying Cloak does not offer an additional instance of CC immunity or synergize with Nimble Master, but has the added benefit of concentrating the full effect of that cooldown reduction into a period where you actually expect to be taking damage.

Hidden Power

Force Camouflage generates 2 Rage | Focus per second while active.

Hidden Power allows you to recoup some lost DPS from periods where you can’t attack because you’re camouflaged by the Force. The resource generation roughly corresponds to the resource consumption per GCD by your abilities.

However, if you have high Rage | Focus when you use it, Hidden Power does not help. This unreliability combined with all of the other conditions associated with using Force Camouflage prevent you from considering your resource level when deciding to activate it.

As a result, it isn’t worth using Hidden Power in combat. The only time people equip it is before combat starts so they start with maximum Rage | Focus, then swap it back to their real tactical, allowing them to squeeze a teensy bit more DPS out of their opener.

As a raid lead, I can tell you that the DPS gain from the Hidden Power opener is nothing compared to the DPS loss when the Marauder | Sentinel inevitably forgets to swap back to the one they actually plan to use, and ends up causing a wipe because they effectively don’t have a tactical item equipped.

Thankfully, most players recognize this and only use it for dummy parses, but that’s still not worth the credits and Tech Frags in my book.

Defel Spliced Genes

The cooldown of Force Camouflage is reduced by 5s. While Force Camouflage is active, you gain a stack of Hidden Savagery | Hidden Advance every 0.5s. Each stack of Hidden Savagery | Hidden Advance increases the damage dealt by your next melee attack by 4%. Stacks up to 12 times (+48% max) and lasts up to 6s.

Defel Spliced Genes could only make sense in PvP for Carnage | Combat because that’s the discipline that can spike a melee attack the highest with its other buffs. Unfortunately, the tactical requires intensive setup on top of timing against an enemy player and doesn’t offer enough damage often enough to justify using it.

At a minimum, it needs to be merged with Hidden Power and, in lieu of the 5s cooldown reduction, reset the cooldown Force Camouflage if you defeat your target with the buffed hit. Ol’ Deffie needs something else too, but that would need more testing than the tactical deserves in its current form.

Exploited Weakness

Weakening Weakening Blast | Hemorrhaging Blast deals 50% more damage. In addition, Lethal Shot | Dirty Blast applies a Poison | Bleed DoT that deals ~2.5k damage per tick and lasts 18s.

Exploited Weakness is the sustained DPS tactical for Virulence | Dirty Fighting. The DoT applied by Lethal Shot | Dirty Blast fully synergizes with all related abilities, passives, and procs, including Energy regeneration, triggering ticks from Cull and Weakening Blast | Wounding Shots and Hemorrhaging Blast, and damage boosts.

Corrosive Grenade | Shrap Bomb does not spread the DoT applied by Lethal Shot | Dirty Blast, and it does not have a lingering version. However, the Energy regeneration yielded by this additional DoT barely enables you to completely omit Series of Shots and Takedown | Speed Shot and Quickdraw from your rotation.

Still, you will need to use the latter for mobility and will run into minor Energy issues while practicing on the dummy. You can completely mitigate this by activating Covered Escape instead of a Lethal Shot | Hightail It instead of a Dirty Blast on top of the dummy to apply Corrosive Mine | Incendiary Mine as neeeded immediately before using Weakening Blast | Hemorrhaging Blast.

Ultraviolet Blast

Applying Weakening Blast | Hemorrhaging Blast finishes off your Corrosive Grenade and Corrosive Dart | Shrap Bomb and Vital Shot, dealing their remaining damage immediately, but the cooldown of Weakening Blast | Hemorrhaging Blast is increased by 6s. Dealing damage with Cull | Wounding Shots to the target affected by Weakening Blast | Hemorrhaging Blast and your lingering Poisons | Bleeds reapplies the main effects.

Ultraviolet Blast is the spike damage tactical for Virulence | Dirty Fighting. It functions the same as Catalyzed Toxins and Plague Master | Teachings of Rajivari, with the addition of a nifty DoT refresh. The spike damage potential is further increased by Viral Targeting | Blood Sights, enabling you to autocrit with all that damage and the subsequent Cull | Wounding Shots.

Still, Exploited Weakness is far stronger in sustained DPS, and even multi-target situations. You really need to bide your time and whittle down your target, using an autocrit Ultraviolet Blast to finish your target.

Airborne Agents

Corrosive Grenade | Shrap Bomb now also spreads Weakening Blast and Lethal Shot | Hemorrhaging Blast and Dirty Blast damages up to 8 enemies within 5m of the primary target if your primary target is affected by Corrosive Grenade | Shrap Bomb.

Airborne Agents is the AoE tactical for Virulence | Dirty Fighting. It requires a bit of setup, but deals a fair bit of damage, so it is best suited for heroics. It is similar to the Lethality | Ruffian tactical, Viral Elements.

With this tactical equipped, the only reason you’d use Suppressive Fire | Sweeping Gunfire is only stronger if it hits more targets as a result of covering a larger area. Lethal Shot | Dirty Blast deals more DPS as an ability that’s balanced to hit a single target. Don’t forget to use Weakening Blast and Viral Targeting | Hemorrhaging Blast and Blood Sights before tossing Corrosive Grenade | Shrap Bomb.

Ruthless Interrogation

Dealing damage with Series of Shots | Speed Shot refreshes and ticks your Interrogation Probe | Shock Charge. In addition, Electrified Railgun | Blazing Speed deals 75% more damage.

Ruthless Interrogation is the sustained DPS tactical for Engineering | Saboteur. Its additional damage is really centered on Series of Shots | Speed Shot when you attack the target affected by Interrogation Probe | Shock Charge.

Its refresh capability also offers a boost to DPS by enabling you to replace the GCD that would be used to reapply it with Orbital Strike or Snipe | Bombing Run or Charged Burst. Unfortunately, this also hampers target swapping.

TO-RO Ionic Discharge

Explosive Probe | Explosive Charge deals 50% more damage but can only be detonated early by EMP Discharge | Sabotage.

TO-RO Ionic Discharge is the spike damage tactical for Engineering | Saboteur. Even without the damage boost, Explosive Probe | Explosive Charge already hits hard and, for some reason, isn’t cleansable by anything. Since EMP Discharge | Sabotage does not require LoS, you have unparalleled flexibility.

However, it requires significantly more setup compared to Marksmanship | Sharpshooter, and clearer telegraphing than Virulence | Saboteur, so you need to make sure that you pop them at the right time.

Don’t forget that targets standing in your Plasma Probe | Incendiary Grenade get stunned by EMP Discharge | Sabotage for 2s.

MG-2 Polygrade Dispersal Caps

Cluster Bombs | Contingency Charges deal damage to all enemies within 5m.

MG-2 Polygrade Dispersal Caps is the AoE tactical for Engineering | Saboteur. It’s so incredibly weak that it isn’t worth using. The vast majority of the damage dealt by Explosive Probe | Explosive Charge comes from the initial hit, not the Cluster Bombs | Contingency Charges.

You’re better off using Ruthless Interrogation to improve your effectiveness against stronger enemies. If a group of enemies has too much health for you to be able to pick them off one by one with Explosive Probe | Explosive Charge, sprinkle in an Orbital Strike | Bombing Run on top of Plasma Probe | Incendiary Grenade.

Marksmanship | Sharpshooter

Agitating Energies

Penetrating Blasts and Followthrough | Penetrating Rounds and Trickshot refresh and tick your Corrosive Dart | Vital Shot. In addition, Corrosive Dart | Vital Shot deals 20% more damage.

Agitating Energies is the sustained DPS tactical for Marksmanship | Sharpshooter. It offers some burst for DPS checks by synergizing with back-to-back activations of Penetrating Blasts | Penetrating Rounds by using Sniper Volley | Burst Volley. However, it is not enough to be competitive with burst combat styles and is hampered by the spec’s low base damage output.

Unlike other disciplines, applying Corrosive Dart | Vital Shot while your alacrity is boosted by Sniper Volley | Burst Volley does not seem to result in a sustained DPS increase by increasing tick frequency. This likely results from the DoT refresh happening too often for the smaller alacrity boost to offer a noticeable effect.

The gap GCD in your rotation where you would apply Corrosive Dart | Vital Shot can be eliminated by the Relentless Ambush | Relentless Shots talent, or replaced by alternating Orbital Strike or Snipe with Rifle Shot | Bombing Run or Charged Burst with Flurry of Bolts.

Refraction Point

Penetrating Blasts | Penetrating Rounds deals damage to all enemies within 5m of your target and grants Scattershot for 6s, which makes your next Followthrough | Trickshot do the same.

Refraction Point is the AoE tactical for Marksmanship | Sharpshooter. Combined with Energy Barrels and Ballistic Redistribution, many players are surprised by how much AoE potential this discipline possesses, though it gives up sustained DPS and burst, and still doesn’t hold a candle to DoT specs.

Some of you may read the flavor text mentioning that you fire a so-called energy dispersion prism into the target to cause the splash damage and wonder which ability applies it, and why you can’t use the prism for your other attacks, especially Ambush | Aimed Shot.

It would make sense for this prism to be applied by a dedicated ability, like Ambush or Corrosive Dart | Aimed Shot or Vital Shot, but that is not the case. Nonsensically, the AoE goes out automatically with Penetrating Blasts | Penetrating Rounds, meaning the prism is implanted alongside the first shot.

B-0 Differential Targeting System

Activating Covered Escape or Hololocate | Hightail It or Hideout grants Sniper’s Ambush | Gunslinger’s Ambush for 10s, which makes your next Ambush | Aimed Shot activate instantly and deal 30% more damage.

B-0 Differential Targeting System is the spike damage tactical for Marksmanship | Sharpshooter. Rather than needing to set up some combo, it works effortlessly in PvP and incentivizes you to create and maintain distance between you and your opponent.

This tactical synergizes with anything else that boosts the damage output of Ambush | Aimed Shot and slightly incentivizes you to take Hololocate | Hideout over the alternatives, though other passives that specialize in improving mobility, mean it will likely make more sense to go with Hololocate | Hideout anyway.

Thanks to the 3s of Entrench | Hunker Down at the end of Covered Escape | Hightail It, you can gain Seek Cover | Heads Up more frequently, strongly incentivizing you to derive your survivability from mobility, rather than tankiness.

The DPS from the tactical is somewhat weak, but it is easy to use and harder to defend against. Both traits are valuable in PvP because you can land your massive hit more reliably, and devote more mental resources to kiting.

CS-3 Velocity Holo-Dampener

Teleporting with Hololocate | Hideout grants Holodefense, which increases your damage reduction by 15% for 10s.

CS-3 Velocity Holo-Dampener is a generic tactical that gives you a small amount of additional protection for a short time precisely when you shouldn’t need it on an ability that has a long cooldown. Never use this tactical.

Note: The Holodefense proc description refers to increasing melee and ranged defense, not damage reduction, but this proc text is incorrect.

Sniper Siege

Non-champion enemies take 10% more damage from all sources while they remain within the area of effect of your Suppressive Fire | Sweeping Gunfire.

Sniper Siege is a generic Sniper | Gunslinger tactical that effectively boosts the damage dealt by your DoTs and Suppressive Fire | Sweeping Gunfire along with any other damage going out to those enemies from your allies while you’re channeling your spammable AoE attack.

It only makes sense to use Sniper Siege as Engineering | Saboteur for trash mobs in group content between bosses because the other disciplines have strong AoE tacticals. However, it remains weak and deserves to be redesigned with Engineering | Sabouteur in mind, and you have to swap it out for boss fights.

Kolto Bombardment

Orbital Strike | Bombing Run also heals up to 8 allies for ~7k per tick.

Kolto Bombardment is a generic Sniper | Gunslinger tactical that offers a 21k heal every 30-45s. That is equivalent to ~84-126k healing per player per activation of Ballistic Shield | Scrambling Field if used on cooldown. There is no situation where it’s optimal to use Kolto Bombardment. You should deconstruct or vendor it if you ever find it in your inventory.

Acid Lash

Dealing damage with Laceration | Sucker Punch refreshes and ticks your Poisoned (Acid Blade) | Bleeding (Flechette Round) DoT from Backstab | Backblast.

Acid Lash is the sustained DPS tactical for Concealment | Scrapper. It is challenging, but necessary to maintain 100% uptime on the Poison | Bleed DoT when using this tactical. Beyond causing more DoT ticks, your Lacerations | Sucker Punches deal less damage without this DoT and Volatile Substance | Blood Boiler won’t detonate in a timely manner, preventing it from becoming an autocrit with Crippling Wounds | Setup Shot.

Volatile Strike

Activating Veiled Strike | Bludgeon against a target affected by Volatile Substance | Blood Boiler causes it to detonate immediately, make Veiled Strike | Bludgeon automatically critically hit, and grant Prepared Strike for 6s, which makes your next Backstab | Back Blast automatically critically hit.

Volatile Strike is the PvP tactical for Concealment | Scrapper. The detonation and damage dealt by Volatile Substance | Blood Boiler triggers before the damage from Veiled Strike | Bludgeon, so you can turn the former into an autocrit with Crippling Wounds | Setup Shot if you wish, though the same effect will also offer +100% supercritical damage to Veiled Strike or Backstab | Bludgeon or Back Blast, depending on when you use it.

In order to benefit from all 3 effects from this tactical, you need to line up all 4 abilities, and in doing so, will be unable to offer sustained DPS that is competitive with Acid Lash in PvE.

The setup period for each discipline has a unique tell, so counterplay against DPS in PvP is largely about recognizing these telegraphs in a timely manner and popping an appropriate DCD to mitigate as much of the spike as possible.

Explosive Cells

Volatile Substance | Blood Boiler also damages all enemies within 5m of the affected target and applies its effects to targets it damages.

Explosive Cells is the AoE tactical for Concealment | Scrapper. Unlike some poorly-designed talents that cause powerful single-target attacks to deal AoE damage, Explosive Cells does not diminish the damage or effectiveness of Volatile Substance | Blood Boiler against secondary targets. The tactical truly just expands the blast radius of the attack

It synergizes with Crippling Wounds | Setup Shot to deal critical damage to all enemies and applies both the Revealing Weakness | Hot and Ready and internal/elemental debuff to all targets. The former is more important, as it allows you to ignore positioning requirements for Backstab | Back Blast against all enemies and provide all the benefits associated with attacking from stealth.

These benefits include dealing increased damage, generating a Tactical Advantage | Upper Hand, and synergizing with Jarring Strike | K.O. against every enemy.

Synox Shots

Toxic Blast | Sanguinary Shot deals 75% more damage and restores 2 Energy whenever it critically hits.

Synox Shots is the sustained DPS tactical for Lethality | Ruffian. It eliminates the need to manage Energy and makes it necessary to use Toxic Haze | Bushwack rotationally, giving you access to a rotational DoT spread. However, you must make sure to overlap it with Toxic Blast | Sanguinary Shot fully, or you won’t get all 3 ticks of Toxic Haze | Sanguinary Shot inside the window. Thankfully, it’s easy to keep track of as both abilities have the same cooldown duration.

Catalyzed Toxins

Applying Toxic Blast | Sanguinary Shot finishes off your Corrosive Dart and Corrosive Grenade | Vital Shot and Shrap Bomb, dealing their remaining damage immediately, but the cooldown of Toxic Blast | Sanguinary Shot is increased by 9s.

Catalyzed Toxins is the spike damage tactical for Lethality | Ruffian. It functions the same as Ultraviolet Blast (minus the DoT refresh) and Plague Master | Teachings of Rajivari. It is ideal to exclusively use Toxic Blast | Sanguinary Shot immediately after applying both DoTs and using Lethal Strike | Point Blank Shot for its damage boost proc.

Viral Elements

Toxic Haze | Bushwhack also spreads your Toxic Blast and Lethal Strike | Sanguinary Shot and Point Blank Shot deals damage to all enemies within 5m of the primary target that are inside your Toxic Haze | Bushwhack.

Viral Elements is the AoE tactical for Lethality | Ruffian. It requires a bit of setup, but deals a fair bit of damage, so it is best suited for heroics. It is similar to the Virulence | Dirty Fighting tactical, Airborne Agents.

Keep in mind that Lethal Strike | Point Blank Shot will only deal damage to secondary targets that are within 5m of the primary target AND inside the Toxic Haze | Bushwack AoE. However, the primary target does not need to be inside the Toxic Haze | Bushwack AoE.

Regenerative Waves

Kolto Waves now costs a Tactical Advantage | Upper Hand, but heals for 20% more.

Regenerative Waves is numerically optimal in 16m+ groups where you will reliably and effectively heal the maximum 8 targets. The Tactical Advantage | Upper Hand cost is obnoxious, but your approach to maintaining Kolto Probe | Slow-release Medpac will be different in such large groups anyway.

A 20% healing boost on 8 players is equivalent to healing 1.6 extra players with a full channel of Kolto Waves. That’s quite a lot more healing than you’d get from using a Surgical Probe | Emergency Medpac on a single player instead of using Kolto Probe | Slow-release Medpac to refresh its second stack.

You’ll have access to more Tactical Advantages | Upper Hands too because you’ll be taking AoE Kolto Injection | Underworld Medicine in large groups for sure and using it more frequently.

Critical Surgery

Surgical Probe | Emergency Medpac autocrits when used to heal allies who have less than 50% HP.

If someone is below 50%, a single Surgical Probe | Emergency Medpac ain’t gonna cut it, even if it autocrits. You could spam it, but that’s a tad wasteful since it’s meant to offer a maintenance-style boost when refreshing Kolto Probe | Slow-release Medpac.

It makes more sense to use Diagnostics Probe with an instant Kolto Injection | Underworld Medicine as an emergency heal to give yourself more breathing room and then follow it up with Kolto Infusion | Kolto Pack.

Diagnostics Probe

Activating Surgical Probe | Emergency Medpac grants a stack of Tactical Probe, which reduces the activation time of your next Kolto Injection | Underworld Medicine by 0.25s. Stacks up to 3 times and lasts 15s. At 3 stacks, your next Kolto Injection | Underworld Medicine activates instantly.

Diagnostics Probe offers an HPS increase by reducing the activation time of Kolto Injection | Underworld Medicine and allowing it to be used while moving at 3 stacks of Tactical Probe. Since Kolto Injection | Underworld Medicine otherwise has a 2s cast, this tactical also gives you access to a powerful heal that you can use responsively.

Combat Medic Training

Combat Medic Training improves your mobility and responsiveness as an Operative | Scoundrel healer, but does not offer a direct HPS increase. Both Diagnostics Probe and Critical Surgery offer additional healing in a form that is usable while moving, and being able to rez 1.5s sooner is nifty, but not worth giving anything up for.

Augmented Holocomm

Holotraverse | Trick Move gains an additional charge.

Augmented Holocomm is a generic Operative | Scoundrel tactical that improves your mobility. The effect is super nice, but it’s just not strong enough to compete with any of the discipline-specific alternatives in any type of content.

Surgical Shiv

Dealing damage with Shiv or Veiled Strike | Blaster Whip or Bludgeon heals you for 50% of the damage dealt.

Surgical Shiv is a generic Operative | Scoundrel tactical that improves your survivability by allowing you to steal life with one of your core attacks. Technically, healers can use it, but if you’re able to DPS so much that this healing makes a difference, you probably shouldn’t be healing in the first place.

As a DPS, if you don’t wreck your rotation by using it on cooldown and instead continue adhere to what yields optimal DPS, you’re looking at ~1.2-1.8k HPS from Surgical Shiv. Operative | Scoundrel DPS has tacticals that have a far greater impact than that.

It’s only worth consideration in PvP where HPS = -DPS for your opponent, but the fact that it’s easier to use and usable by both specs doesn’t change the calculus here. If you can’t manage to play often enough to buy discipline specific tacticals or handle the additional complexity, you’re gonna get steamrolled in PvP anyway.

Superheated Fuel

Increases the critical chance and critical damage dealt by your elemental attacks by an additional 25% while Explosive Fuel | Battle Focus is active.

Superheated Fuel offers burst for Pyrotech | Plasmatech, and while it doesn’t concentrate multiple GCDs into a spike of damage, it is powerful enough that it is competitive with both other discipline-specific alternatives against their specific enemy type and remains viable against other players and bosses. Shield Tech | Shield Specialist can make significant use of it as well.

The only drawback is that all of the damage from your tactical item is concentrated into 15s every 2 mins, so you throw away a ton of damage if you mess it up or can’t DPS while it’s active. In general, Superheated Fuel is only suboptimal if DPS is equally important throughout the fight.

As Pyrotech | Plasmatech, the effective critical chance of all elemental damage is ~92%, except for Immolate | Plasma Flare which has ~102%, and the critical multiplier ranges from ~90-100%.

Flame Dissipation

Reaching or refreshing 2 stacks of Superheated Flamethrower | Pulse Generator grants Flame Dissipation, which lowers the cost of Searing Wave | Ion Wave by 3. Stacks up to 5 times (-15 total). Activating Searing Wave | Ion Wave while you have 5 stacks of Flame Dissipation consumes all 5 stacks and grants another effect, also called Flame Dissipation, that increases your elemental damage dealt by 10% for 20s.

Flame Dissipation is intended to be the sustained DPS tactical for Pyrotech | Plasmatech. Unfortunately, Flame Dissipation is confusingly worded, has an arbitrarily complex effect, AND is buggy. While it does have the potential to offer greater sustained DPS than Superheated Fuel, the difference is small, it’s harder to use, and its burst potential is far more limited. I don’t think it’s worth using Flame Dissipation at all unless you plan to main the spec in raids.

Explosive Weaponry

While Explosive Fuel | Battle Focus is active, some of your attacks deal more AoE damage:
– Searing Wave | Ion Wave deals damage twice
– Immolate | Plasma Flare and Flame Burst | Ion Pulse deal full damage to all enemies within 5m of the primary target
– Flaming Fist | Shockstrike deals half damage to all enemies within 5m

Explosive Weaponry is Pyrotech’s | Plasmatech’s AoE tactical and is considerably stronger in multi-target situations than Superheated Fuel. It also offers a minor single-target DPS boost from the second hit of Searing Wave | Ion Wave acting as an effective additional GCD of one of your strongest abilities. It is possible to get 4 hits of Searing Wave | Ion Wave inside this window if you use it as your first and last abilities.

I didn’t test whether the Flaming Fist | Shockstrike component damage radius is centered on you or your target, and there isn’t a visual effect to clarify, though the difference is not significant. This tactical still synergizes with Open Flame | Tactic Strike because the latter only applies to 4 targets and the damage stacks, but does not affect whether you should use either the tactical or talent.

Unfortunately, AoE burst is not required anywhere, and Superheated Fuel allows you to do both, albeit far less effectively than Explosive Weaponry. Furthermore, you can only activate Explosive Fuel | Battle Focus once every 2 minutes, so it’s really just a cool trick in Heroics that you can use to conflagrate a pack of trash every so often.

Energized Vambrace

Refreshing your bleed DoT from Retractable Blade | Gut or channeling your out of combat regen ability builds a stack of Energized Vambrace, which increases the damage dealt by Magnetic Blast | Tactical Surge and Retractable Blade’s | Gut’s bleed DoT by 5%. Stacks up to 4 times and lasts 10s.

Energized Vambrace is the sustained DPS tactical for Advanced Prototype | Tactics. It offers ever so slightly more DPS than Overwhelming Offense if you don’t let it fall off, but that only speaks to how weak it is. This abysmal excuse for a discipline-specific tactical item is responsible for the absurdly low sustained DPS we see from the spec and Pyrotech’s | Plasmatech’s current dominance in PvE.

Flame Detonation

Dealing damage to the affected target with Flame Sweep | Explosive Surge before your thrown Thermal Detonator | Assault Plastique explodes will cause it to detonate immediately and damage all enemies within 5m.

Flame Detonation is the Advanced Prototype | Tactics AoE tactical. It allows you to turn one of your most powerful single-target attacks into an AoE and causes its damage to come out sooner, making it super nice in solo content.

However, it does not increase your single-target sustained DPS whatsoever and its single-target burst is weaker than what you can achieve with Powered Detonator. Unfortunately, only the primary target benefits from Power Burst | High Yield Explosives, though it otherwise deals full damage to secondary targets.

Powered Detonator

Thermal Detonator | Assault Plastique now has a 12s delay before it explodes, but dealing damage with a specific attack causes it to detonate immediately and grant an additional effect based on which attack was used to detonate it
– Magnetic Blast | Tactical Surge: The affected target is slowed by 50% for 10s.
– Energy Burst | Cell Burst: The cooldown on Rocket Punch | Stockstrike is reset and its next activation is free.
– Rail Shot | High Impact Bolt: Your next Shoulder Cannon missile deals 20% more damage.

Powered Detonator is the spike damage tactical for Advanced Prototype | Tactics, though the main benefit is not the unique effect granted by each ability. Instead, the main value of this tactical comes from being able to concentrate a massive amount of damage into a single moment, especially with Energy Burst | Cell Burst. You can also wait out most DCDs for maximum effect, though you can’t deal much damage in the meantime.

Strangely, Powered Detonator is completely separate from Flame Detonation, even though they could have easily been merged when the former was added to the game.

Hotswap

Translocating | Transposing your guarded ally increases their damage reduction by 50% for 6s instead of bestowing Benign Presence. After those 6s have elapsed, you swap back.

Hotswap situationally expands Shield Tech’s | Shield Specialist’s group utility. However, it does not work as described on the tin. Hotswap does not taunt enemies at all or apply Benign Presence to anyone.

The short duration of the effect combined with the 1.5s cast time, range limitations, long cooldown make it difficult to use as anything more than a gimmick outside of hyperspecific use cases.

Oil Fire

Firestorm | Ion Storm deals 20% more damage to targets affected by your Oil Slick | Riot Gas. For each enemy that takes this increased damage from Firestorm | Ion Storm, the cooldown of Oil Slick | Riot Gas is reduced by 1.5s and you gain a stack of Oil Fire, which increases your damage reduction by 3% per stack. Lasts up to 10s and stacks up to 8 times. Max +24% DR and -12s Oil Slick | Riot Gas cooldown reduction.

Oil Fire is the AoE tactical for Shield Tech | Shield Specialist. It becomes more effective the more enemies you hit, and in situations where you can damage 8 enemies, you are getting 10s of DR matching that of Energy Shield | Reactive Shield.

Unfortunately, Oil Fire does not work with Heavy Flamethrower | Pulse Cannon, though the damage boost from this tactical combined with the Target-Rich Environment | Pointman should close the DPS gap.

It’s harder to set up, but it’s best to delay Firestorm | Ion Storm for as long as you can before using Oil Slick | Riot Gas, then use it at the same time as Oil Slick, and then use it again once it’s procced right before your Oil Slick | Riot Gas is about to expire. This will extend the duration, give, increase your total stacks, and reduce the cooldown further.

Thermal Screen

Heat Screen | Power Screen now stacks up to 6 times, but Heat Blast and Payday | Energy Blast and Disruptor Rifle still only consumes 3 stacks per activation. In addition, activating Energy Yield | Infused Kolto Packs immediately builds 6 stacks of Heat Screen | Power Screen and finishes the active cooldown on Heat Blast and Payday | Energy Blast and Disruptor Rifle.

Thermal Screen gives you an extra 3% absorb along with higher uptime on Heat Screen | Power Screen. It also gives you the ability to chain 2 activations of Heat Blast | Energy Blast back to back for a continuous 12s of its shield absorption buff alongside Energy Yield | Infused Kolto Packs.

Unfortunately, there is little reason to do this because you’d be wasting half of the second activation of Heat Blast | Energy Blast while the shield from the Supercommando Implant is active, and you still have Energy Yield | Infused Kolto Packs after, which mitigates the same damage types. By the time the Supercommando shield has ended, Heat Blast | Energy Blast should be available once again.

Neural Trigger

Damaging an enemy taunted by your Neural Dart | Neural Jolt immobilizes them for 2s and ends the taunt.

Crafted by Cybertech

Neural Trigger is a versatile, skill-dependent, generic PvP tactical that can enhance the Powertech’s | Vanguard’s single-target taunt to min-max the health deficit between you and your opponent.

Taunting and damaging an mDPS allows you to leverage the 10m+ range on practically all of your abilities to kite them. You create additional GCDs where you can hit them, but they can’t hit you. It’s even better when paired with the Advanced Prototype | Tactics talent at level 43 that buffs the range of your 10m abilities to 15m!

Taunting and damaging an rDPS makes it harder for them to kite you and makes it easier for you to stay in melee range. You reduce the number of GCDs where they can hit you, but you can’t hit them.

Taunting and damaging a tank or healer makes it harder for them to keep up with whoever they’re trying to protect, hopefully enough to where they get outranged and are unable to heal or guard their desired target.

The tool also combos with other positional effects like Stealth Scan abilities, Diversion, and Plasma Probes | Incendiary Grenades.

Flying Fists

Rocket Punch and Flaming Fist | Stockstrike and Shockstrike now have 10m range.

Flying Fists is a generic Powertech | Vanguard tactical that allows you to execute your entire rotation from 10m. Sadly, it’s trash. You don’t need to use Rocket Punch | Stockstrike on cooldown, and the alternatives for Pyrotech | Plasmatech make it too much of a DPS loss to be able to use Flaming Fist | Shockstrike from a few more meters away.

If Flying Fists and Neural Trigger were merged, I think we’d have a more popular alternative on our hands for PvP.

Energized Charges

Supercharged Gas | Supercharged Cell now lasts for 16s, increases periodic damage dealt by 20%, and Supercharged Burn now deals ~100k damage over 8s and ticks.

This is the single-target sustained DPS tactical for Innovative Ordnance | Assault Specialist. Due to the high rate of Supercharge stack generation and long duration of its effects, Supercharged Gas | Supercharged Cell will have nearly 100% uptime.

It also improves your damage dealt to secondary targets and is significantly stronger than your spike damage tactical, making it optimal in most situations, regardless of enemy type.

Continuous Fire

Dealing damage with Sweeping Blasters | Hail of Bolts refreshes and ticks the periodic effects applied by your Serrated Shot | Serrated Bolt and Incendiary Missile | Incendiary Round. Cannot occur more than once every 2.5s.

Continuous Fire is the AoE tactical for Innovative Ordnance | Assault Specialist and allows you to get an extra 2 ticks out of each of your main DoTs with each activation of your channeled AoE abilities.

The ticks and refreshes happen at the beginning and end of the 3s channels and enable you to never have to reapply your DoTs, resulting in a single-target sustained DPS increase on top of the more significant boost to AoE damage because these DoTs are spreadable. To be clear, the single-target increase is not as strong as the one given by Energized Charges.

Magnetized Shrapnel

Sticky Dart | Sticky Grenade now remains on the target for up to 12s, but it can be detonated early and by Mag Shot | Mag Bolt and deal 100% more damage if detonated this way.

Magnetized Shrapnel is the “spike damage” tactical for Innovative Ordnance | Assault Specialist. Since you can also detonate Thermal Detonator with Mag Shot | Assault Plastique with Mag Bolt, this tactical allows you to stack another GCD worth of damage into your spike.

Unfortunately, Sticky Dart | Sticky Grenade is an AoE attack, so its damage is balanced assuming you will hit multiple targets. As a result, the double damage is less tantalizing, especially considering that Energized Charges’s Supercharged Burn is so powerful, even in a PvP setting. On top of that, you also have to give up your Stealth Scan ability.

If every Mag Shot | Mag Bolt was also able to tick that damage and refresh the slow on the target, it would be worth more serious consideration.

Primed Ignition

Dealing damage with Priming Shot | Vortex Bolt applies an elemental DoT to the target. The DoT lasts 15s and ticks for 5,000 damage every 3s on its own, but also ticks whenever you deal damage with Blazing Bolts | Boltstorm, Tracer Missile | Grav Round, or Heatseeker Missiles | Demolition Round.

Primed Ignition is the sustained DPS tactical for Arsenal | Gunnery and is one of the most impactful tacticals in the game in terms of damage contribution. The damage dealt per tick incentivizes you to use Blazing Bolts twice per Priming Shot | Boltstorm twice per Vortex Bolt and subsequently makes it easier to track when you will reset the ability’s cooldown with the Barrage | Curtain of Fire.

Unfortunately, because Priming Shot | Vortex Bolt has such a long cooldown, Primed Ignition kneecaps Arsenal’s | Gunnery’s otherwise fantastic target-swapping capabilities without any recourse. You have massive incentives to use Priming Shot | Vortex Bolt on cooldown, but you must delay it if your current target won’t survive for very long or you know you’ll need to swap soon.

Burning Bright

Dealing damage with Blazing Bolts | Boltstorm builds a stack of Priming Bolts | Vortex Bolts, which makes your next Priming Shot | Vortex Bolt deal 25% more damage. Stacks up to 4 times (max +100% damage) and lasts up to 20s.

Burning Bright is the spike damage tactical for Arsenal | Gunnery. It enables Priming Shot to hit insanely hard, more than what many other attacks can hit for when they crit. It also synergizes with Signature Shot’s | Gravitating Bolt’s 50% damage boost.

Despite the potential to generate such a big number, Burning Bright does not offer remotely competitive sustained DPS because it features such a long cooldown and is not guaranteed to deal critical damage.

Gyroscopic Stabilizers

Death from Above | Mortar Volley deals 25% more damage to targets affected by your Heat Signature | Gravity Vortex and its cooldown is reduced by 20s.

Gyroscopic Stabilizers is the AoE tactical for Arsenal | Gunnery. It does make Death From Above hit significantly harder, enough to enable it to be part of a supremely inferior single-target rotation, but this is an AoE tactical. Gyroscopic Stabilizers is at odds with the combat economics of solo content as your only options to spread Heat Signature | Gravity Vortex efficiently are with Triple Trace and Thermonuclear Fusion | Grav Trio and Thermonuclear Plasma.

Fusion Missile | Plasma Grenade is not available for use with both Heatseeker Missiles and Death from Above | Demolition Round and Mortar Volley. It is also overkill and unsustainable to use both against the same group of normal trash and less effective than playing Innovative Ordnance | Assault Specialist against harder trash.

You are meant to pair Fusion Missile with Heatseeker Missiles | Plasma Grenade with Demolition Round since they share the same cooldown and then use Tracer Missiles with Death from Above | Grav Round with Mortar Volley in an alternating fashion.

SC-4 Treatment Scanner

Progressive Scan’s | Successive Treatment’s healing dealt is increased by 5% and it builds 4 Supercharge over the course of the channel, each time healing goes out.

SC-4 Treatment Scanner offers the greatest potential boost to sustained HPS for Mercenary | Commando healers by giving you an extra 1.2 Supercharged Gas | Supercharged Cell windows every 45s.

However, that HPS boost does not always translate to an EHPS boost because you need to use Supercharged Gas | Supercharged Cell as often as possible to benefit from it, and your burst potential is significantly diluted with this tactical.

Running Restoration

Healing Scan | Advanced Medical Probe can be activated while moving and heals for 15% more.

Running Restoration is ideal in boss fights where you need to move often or don’t need to use Supercharged Gas | Supercharged Cell on cooldown.

You won’t get as much sustained HPS compared to SC-4 Treatment Scanner, but you have a greater capacity to concentrate that healing when others need it and perform it more reliably because you can move during your Supercharge windows.

Kolto Vapors

The Kolto Pods (left on the ground by Kolto Missile | Kolto Bomb) lasts 1s longer and heal for an additional 5%.

Kolto Vapors is the AoE tactical for Mercenary | Commando healers. It extends the duration that the green goo remains on the ground, allowing it to tick an additional time, and slightly increases the overall healing dealt by all ticks.

It is most effective in 16m Operations and massive group open world activities. You’re only getting an extra ~23k healing from Kolto Vapors per activation if you heal all 8 players fully, but Kolto Missile | Kolto Bomb has a short cooldown, so this tactical being fully effective contributes to an HPS increase of ~3,800.

Both Progressive Scan and Kolto Missile | Successive Treatment and Kolto Bomb are always worth prioritizing over Kolto Shell with Splashing Shells | Trauma Probe with Neighborly Probes. Since only those 3 abilities are worth using in such large groups, Supercharged Gas | Supercharged Cell becomes less useful alongside your other tacticals, Kolto Vapors is the only tactical it makes sense to use in large groups.

Jettison

Activating Jet Boost | Concussion Charge increases your movement speed by 50% for 3s and, for each target hit, reduces the active cooldown of Rocket Out | Propulsion Round by 2s.

Jettison helps to facilitate a Mercenary | Commando PvP build that emphasizes mobility and kiting over tankiness. If you manage to hit all 8 targets, you effectively get a free charge of Rocket Out | Propulsion Round, though that isn’t likely to happen. You should also wait until the speed boost ends before flying away.

Cool your Jets

Activating Rocket Out vents 20 Heat | Propulsion Round recharges 20 Energy Cells and immobilizes all enemies within 5m of your launch point for 2s.

Cool Your Jets is a generic PvP-oriented tactical for Mercenary | Commando that focused on kiting. However, it is significantly worse than Jettison in my opinion. The effect is already only consistently useful against mDPS, but Rocket Out | Propulsion Round grants Smoke Screen, so you will be immune to leaps and pulls after flying away, somewhat diminishing the value of the root.

The 20 spare Heat | Energy Cells are a pittance, especially after flying away because you’re less likely to be expending much of your resource unless you’re a healer since you will be kiting. Even then, we’re talking about 1.25 abilities worth of Heat | Energy Cells every 20s. Discipline-specific tacticals offer significantly more value.

Power Cycle

When you use an ability with an activation time with Power Surge | Tech Override, that ability is not put on cooldown.

Power Cycle is a generic tactical for Mercenaries | Commandos, though it only provides meaningful value to healers because the DPS specs don’t have any important casted abilities with cooldowns. The only shared, non-healer ability that meets the requirements is Fusion Missile | Plasma Grenade. It’s nice to have an extra charge, but not even close to being as nice as the discipline-specific tacticals.

The key synergy is with the Power Overrides | Overclock talent, which gives you a second charge of Power Surge | Tech Override. It is essential that you exclusively spend charges of Power Surge on Healing Scan | Tech Override on Advanced Medical Probe, and only while Supercharged Gas | Supercharged Cell is not active, ideally right before using it so that you have the Unshakable buff for most of Supercharged Gas | Supercharged Cell.

In terms of sustained potential, Power Cycle is weaker than SC-4 Treatment Scanner and Running Restoration. That said, it offers far greater reliability, flexibility, and on-demand burst.

As a result of these traits, Power Cycle is a strong candidate for healers in PvP and in boss fights with massive or unpredictable spike damage alongside low sustained HPS requirements. Please note that I have not done any testing to confirm this.

Overwhelming Offense

Dealing damage grants a stack of Greased Lightning, which increases your damage dealt by 1% for 2s. Stacks up to 5 times (+5% max).

Overwhelming Offense provides limited universal value for DPS and tanks to a lesser degree. Almost all discipline-specific DPS tacticals are significantly stronger than Overwhelming Offense. The only one that remains competitive is Energized Vambrace for Advanced Prototype Powertech | Tactics Vanguard.

I recommend purchasing Overwhelming Offense as a DPS right after you have procured all required tacticals for your main spec. This way, you will continue to have something useful while playing your alts as you work towards procuring their discipline-specific tacticals.

Tanks can also make use of Overwhelming Offense in boss fights where survivability is not a concern or none of the other tacticals are otherwise useful. Conventionally, it is usually taken when you can afford to equip DPS gear.

That being said, from a semi-controversial philosophical standpoint, The Life Warden has the potential to have a far greater impact on your group’s success in boss fights than Overwhelming Offense. A tiny bit of extra damage from tanks is nice when you’re just barely not meeting DPS checks, but outside of those situations, it does not matter.

The Life Warden, on the other hand, can cover for an unforseen mistake by acting as a significant backup emergency DCD. Mistakes like fat-fingering or forgetting to use a DCD, or a healer dying, can buy you some time to recover in what would otherwise result in a wipe.

Just to reiterate, Overwhelming Offense (and The Life Warden) should only ever be used when you have nothing better, and you almost always do.

The Life Warden

Taking damage when you have less than 20% HP remaining grants The Life Warden, which heals you for 5% of your max HP every 0.5s for 8s (+80% HP total). In addition, applies a debuff with the same name that prevents The Life Warden effect from applying to you again for 10 mins. Persists through defeat and unequpping this tactical.

The Life Warden is a universal tactical that improves your survivability by healing you significantly when your health drops below 20%. At level 80, it effectively allows you to survive an additional ~40k of sustained DTPS. Combined with other base survivability, this should completely nullify another players’ opener, assuming you aren’t deleted by spike damage.

The tactical is useful in select situations in group content:

• Warzones: Can be leveraged to delay enemy capping at the beginning of the match. Typically usable once per match.
• Arenas: Effectively provides you with an additional health bar for a single round. Should only be equipped for the second or third round if you’re getting focused and your discipline does not have access to strong(er) tacticals
• Boss Fights (Tanks Only): Can offer an additional DCD once or sometimes twice per fight. Does not work against spike damage, doesn’t not offer a consistent, reliable benefit in prog, and will be worse than other tacticals if you’re taking sustained damage. Works best against unmitigable damage and helps to recover from mistakes. Discipline-specific tacticals are always better for DPS and healers.

Reliquary of Time

Reduces the cooldown of clicky relics by 5% (equivalent to 6s off a 120s cooldown).

Rolling Boil

Triggering the effect of a non-clicky relic grants Rolling Boil, which increases your Mastery by 5% for 5s.

Krall’s Accord

Durasteel Wall

Successfully defending an attack while below 80% HP grants a stack of Durasteel Wall, which increases your damage reduction by 1% for 5s. Stacks up to 3 times (+3% DR max).

Biorhythm

A Breath of Fresh Air

Luck Always Changes

Enhanced Seasonings for New Cooks

Improved Axel Grease

Screamer’s Introductory Flair

Screamer’s Finishing Pose

Bek’s Pre-Boom Precautions

Bek’s Dismount Flourish

Razor’s Kickstart

Razor’s Forward Momentum

Table of contents

• What are Tactical Items
• How to get Tactical Items
• Sorcerer | Sage
  • Madness | Balance
    • Tempest of Rho
    • killing field
    • Mystic’s Ruthless Blade
    • The Rushdown
  • Lightning | Telekinetics
    • Stormwatch
    • Elemental Convection
    • Eyrin’s Haste
    • Ticking Force-Bomb
  • Corruption | Seer
    • One for all (Roaming Mend | Wandering Mend)
    • All for One (Revivification | Salvation)
  • Generic Sorcerer | Sage
    • Storm’s Succor
    • Endless barrier
    • A Healing hand
    • An Explosive Return
    • Cleanse the agony
• Assassin | Shadow
  • Darkness | Kinetic Combat
    • Friend of the Force
    • Shroud of a shadow
    • ward of the continuum
    • Ancient Tome of Exar Kun
  • Deception | Infiltration
    • The Awakened Flame
    • May Cause Injury
    • Blade of the Elements
    • Traumatizer
  • Hatred | Serenity
    • Two Time Trouble
    • Quick Escalation
    • Severance Pay
  • Generic Assassin | Shadow
    • Two Cloaks
    • Jerra’s Persistence
    • Chant of Regeneration
• Shared Juggernaut | Guardian and Marauder | Sentinel
  • Why only these Tacticals are Shared
    • Grit teeth
    • Enrage Crush
    • Cauterized Coronary
    • Perseverance
    • Unknowing Ancient Text
    • Force Barter
• Juggernaut | Guardian
  • Vengeance | Vigilance
    • Hemophilic Slash
    • Cut to Pieces
    • A Vicious Cycle
  • Rage | Focus
    • Syn’s Second Amulet
    • Joiner’s pressure
  • Immortal | Defense
    • Hord’s Makashi Strike
    • Leviathan’s Hide
    • Jaw Breaker
  • Generic Juggernaut | Guardian Tacticals
    • Throwing arm
    • Rancor’s Tail
• Marauder | Sentinel
  • Carnage | Combat
    • Shard of Mortis
    • Andeddu’s Malevolence
    • The Prosecution
    • Tome of Unyielding Blades
  • Annihilation | Watchman
    • Spiteful Saber
    • Malmourral Mask
    • Thirsty Blade
    • No time for fools
  • Fury | Concentration
  • Generic Marauder | Sentinel
    • Undying Cloak
    • Hidden Power
    • Defel Spliced Genes
• Sniper | Gunslinger
  • Virulence | Dirty Fighting
    • Exploited Weakness
    • Ultraviolet Blast
    • Airborne Agents
  • Engineering | Saboteur
    • Ruthless Interrogation
    • TO-RO Ionic Discharge
    • MG-2 Polygrade Dispersal Caps
  • Marksmanship | Sharpshooter
    • Agitating Energies
    • Refraction Point
    • B-0 Differential Targeting System
  • Generic Sniper | Gunslinger
    • CS-3 Velocity Holo-Dampener
    • Sniper Siege
    • Kolto Bombardment
• Operative | Scoundrel
  • Concealment | Scrapper
    • Acid Lash
    • Volatile Strike
    • Explosive Cells
  • Lethality | Ruffian
    • Synox Shots
    • Catalyzed Toxins
    • Viral Elements
  • Medicine | Sawbones
    • Regenerative Waves
    • Critical Surgery
    • Diagnostics Probe
    • Combat Medic Training
  • Generic Operative | Scoundrel
    • Augmented Holocomm
    • Surgical Shiv
• Powertech | Vanguard
  • Pyrotech | Plasmatech
    • Superheated Fuel
    • Flame Dissipation
    • Explosive Weaponry
  • Advanced Prototype | Tactics
    • Energized Vambrace
    • Flame Detonation
    • Powered Detonator
  • Shield Tech | Shield Specialist
    • Hotswap
    • Oil Fire
    • Thermal Screen
  • Generic Powertech | Vanguard Tacticals
    • Neural Trigger
    • Flying Fists
• Mercenary | Commando
  • Innovative Ordnance | Assault Specialist
    • Energized Charges
    • Continuous Fire
    • Magnetized Shrapnel
  • Arsenal | Gunnery
    • Primed Ignition
    • Burning Bright
    • Gyroscopic Stabilizers
  • Bodyguard | Combat Medic
    • SC-4 Treatment Scanner
    • Running Restoration
    • Kolto Vapors
  • Generic Mercenary | Commando Tacticals
    • Jettison
    • Cool your Jets
    • Power Cycle
• Universal Tacticals
  • Combat Tacticals with Situational Value
    • Overwhelming Offense
    • The Life Warden
  • Worthless Combat Tacticals
    • Reliquary of Time
    • Rolling Boil
    • Krall’s Accord
    • Durasteel Wall
    • Biorhythm
    • A Breath of Fresh Air
    • Luck Always Changes
  • Feast of Prosperity
    • Enhanced Seasonings for New Cooks
    • Improved Axel Grease
  • Swoop Rally
    • Screamer’s Introductory Flair
    • Screamer’s Finishing Pose
    • Bek’s Pre-Boom Precautions
    • Bek’s Dismount Flourish
    • Razor’s Kickstart
    • Razor’s Forward Momentum