Something that's been coming up recently is the Dirty Fighting/Saboteur Hybrid spec for Gunslinger, most of the talk I've heard about it is being a better tank buster for PvP. After seeing Wales' 2.2kDPS parse on an Ops dummy, with the addition of my idea to make some Tactic/Assault hybrid (not gonna happen soon), I decided to try my own hand at hybrid for PvE.

I studied Wales' parse for almost two hours, during that time I mocked up a spec (which was later changed due to a bug in the Saboteur tree), and a rotation to go along with it. I started playing around with hybrid, double-checking some cross tree effects, finding bugs, and maximizing the damage I could get from the trees. Once I did that it was time to try out a rotation. First thing I noticed, energy consumption is horrid, which was expected, and I had to alter my playstyle as a whole to accommodate this spec (like saving Illegal Mods for extra energy). However, I also noticed myself doing an interesting amount of DPS compared to what I remember from earlier Dirty Fighting parses.

Once I had the idea of how hybrid would work, I went back to Dirty Fighting to parse. After thirteen minutes, I came up with this parse:

Dirty Fighting with 1680DPS

At most, I averaged around 1680 DPS during the entire fight. This is about a 30 DPS improvement over my parse two weeks ago when I was in worse gear. Disappointed with the results, I moved on to the hybrid. Here is just the first five minutes of my parse:

DF/Sab Hybrid with 1895DPS

Initially, I thought I broke something, then I started saying to myself "What the fuck?" in pure confusion, and now I'm really excited. I've been playing Dirty Fighting for weeks and worked it up to its optimal level. In two nights over the course of a few hours, I was able to enter an entirely new spec and increase my DPS by 200 DPS. That's utterly ridiculous.

Currently, I plan to do more testing, run some Ops and Flashpoints, and see how hard I can push this single-target bashing monster of a spec. Don't get me wrong, it has it's downsides, and it's by far the most difficult spec I've played in this game, but is it oh-so rewarding. If there is interest in the future, I would be willing to write a guide on this spec as there is currently no DF/Sab hybrid guide that I could find, or maybe I should just keep this to myself.

TL;DR DF/Sab hybrid is the new Assault Vanguard/Watchmen of PvE, but requires a lot more work.

P.S. Deep Wriggler is very satisfied.

Field Respec + No cost is what makes it intereting since it's terrible in a lot of fights.

I can see it shining on Kephess (assuming you are not on white orb duty) but failing badly on Dread Guards for example.
Same with Vorgath and possibly the tanks, but failing on Kephess + Zorn (since he cleanses debuffs)

But yes it does ridiculous DPS if in optimal conditions.

crazyBE wrote:

Field Respec + No cost is what makes it intereting since it's terrible in a lot of fights.

I can see it shining on Kephess (assuming you are not on white orb duty) but failing badly on Dread Guards for example.
Same with Vorgath and possibly the tanks, but failing on Kephess + Zorn (since he cleanses debuffs)

But yes it does ridiculous DPS if in optimal conditions.

Yeah, I have the same feelings on it. While it does hit really hard, I do have to slow down at times to keep energy up and it's a big juggling act. Dread Guards it wouldn't be that bad, it's the same set-up as DF just with Shock Charge instead of HB, so I know how to handle it on all the fights. The only ones that I can see posing problems is, as you said, Zorn and Kephess in EC. Vorgath and tanks won't be a problem as the swaps have enough time inbetween to regen energy and set-up. Also, I don't plan to use it on EC Kephess anyway because they need my AOE in Saboteur.

A spec would be nice.

DF/Sab Hybrid: 2/16/23

The two points in Utility Belt is optional, I just put them there because the reduced CD on thermal grenade makes it a better AOE than Sweeping Gunfire in terms of energy cost and DPS. In boss fights with minimal to no adds, like Annihilator in EV, I'd put the two points into Pandemonium as my rotation incorporates Smuggler's Luck + Charged Burst combo.

Fluttershy wrote:

DF/Sab Hybrid: 2/16/23

The two points in Utility Belt is optional, I just put them there because the reduced CD on thermal grenade makes it a better AOE than Sweeping Gunfire in terms of energy cost and DPS. In boss fights with minimal to no adds, like Annihilator in EV, I'd put the two points into Pandemonium as my rotation incorporates Smuggler's Luck + Charged Burst combo.

Yeah, seems to be the best choice to take UB considering the others are a lot less useful for PvE purposes.
And to add some extra info that I found helpful:

I've read over on mmo-mechanics (at least I think that's the name of the site) that Sweeping Gunfire is only worth it on exactly 3 enemies.
More and Thermal Grenade is already better (and you won't have the energy for TG -> SG)
And on 2 enemies it is better to use Charged Burst or some other single target attack.

Just a note, don't spec into Pandemonium for hybrid, just stick with Utility Belt. I tried my best but the instant charged bursts were too taxing on my energy and I lost a lot of DPS attempting to scavenge energy.