SnipeFu's Definitive Guide to Energy Blasters V3.0
By
Airhammer,
Posted on: 2004-11-09 13:44 in Player Guides
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shadowybc,
I am Level 33 now. As stated above, I have Nova 4 slotted. I did neglect to say that they are all S.O. damage 36 or 35+. Aim and Buildup are single slotted with recharge (S.O. 35 but that shouldn't make any difference). Some testing I did last night, I tried Nova with a big red and yellow pill in a mob of +1 and +2 Nemesis and about half or more of them were still standing. Thanks for the help!
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Like what kind of +1 and +2 mobs - sounds like a mixed pack of minions and LTs.
I can easily nuke +2 minions with Nova (6 slots all Damage - no aim no buildup ) and +3 minions (depends on the resistances of the mobs).
@Deadboy
Hey Reducer,
Unfortunately AFTER Aim and Buildup there is always that 5% chance that you will miss, and it can bite you in the behind.
I suggest like you said to always keep a cab on hand before a huge nova like that because you will have to clean up on many occasions. Also you must make sure that you are properly lined up for the nova, meaning all the targets are in range of its radius.
I have dropped entire packs of +4 minions on many occasions. Sometimes one or two were left. It always helps to pop an extra red pill just in case your damage enhancers aren't all +3 and to actually hit the 400% damage cap.
But this method DOES work. I know this for a fact.
The Legion of Freedom
First, I'd like to say I have used this guide ever since I made this build and it has helped me a lot.
Now on to my build...
Primary Powers - Ranged : Energy Blast
Secondary Powers - Support : Energy Manipulation
Slot[01] Level 1 (Starting Primary) : Power Bolt /Dmg,Acc,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg
Slot[02] Level 1 (Starting Secondary) : Power Thrust /Acc
Slot[03] Level 2 : Power Blast /Acc,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg
Slot[04] Level 4 : Energy Torrent /Acc,Dmg,Dmg
Slot[05] Level 6 : Build Up /Rchg,Rchg
Slot[06] Level 8 : Power Burst /Acc,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg
Slot[07] Level 10 : Sniper Blast /Acc,EndRdx,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg
Slot[08] Level 12 : Hasten /Rchg,Rchg,Rchg,Rchg,Rchg,Rchg
Slot[09] Level 14 : Super Speed /EndRdx
Slot[10] Level 16 : Bone Smasher /Acc,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg
Slot[11] Level 18 : Power Push /Acc
Slot[12] Level 20 : Stealth /DefBuf,DefBuf,EndRdx
Slot[13] Level 22 : Grant Invisibility /EndRdx
Slot[14] Level 24 : Phase Shift /EndRdx,EndRdx
Slot[15] Level 26 : Hurdle /Jump
Slot[16] Level 28 : Health /Heal,Heal
Slot[17] Level 30 : Stamina /EndRec,EndRec,EndRec,EndRec,EndRec,EndRec
Slot[18] Level 32 : Nova /Acc,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg
Slot[19] Level 35 : Power Boost /Rchg
Slot[20] Level 38 : Total Focus /Acc,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg
I'm kind of stuck as to what to get at 41 and beyond. I'm at 41 now. I've tested Aim and Char. I like both of them. Although I do like Char, it really doesn't fit the concept I'm trying to go with. I'm torn though, because having a hold would do wonders. I've heard that if I want to venture to the Shadow Shard I'm going to need a vertical power. I've been toying with the idea of respecing out Energy Torrent. Am I crazy in thinking that? So, here are the powers I'd like to take:
Aim
Hover
Conserve Power
Whatever from the Ancillary Pool. If Explosive Blast (well slotted mind you) is an ok power, I'd be willing to go with it so that I could have another ranged attack.
Any suggestions on the final four power choices? Do you see anything that I could respec out?
Note that I like Energy Torrent just because it is my only AOE power (aside from NOVA)
Raysin lvl 50 Eng/Eng Blaster
Polexis lvl 50 Peacebringer
Talawn lvl 50 Scrapper
Makani lvl 50 Ill/Storm Controller
Incinerate lvl 50 Fire/Fire Brute
Battlestarr lvl 44 Inv/EM Tanker
Quiks lvl 44 MA/SR Scrapper
Do Nemesis have any resistance to Energy? Yes there was an LT or 2 in there (took the bosses out earlier). But the rest of the mob constisted of Fuselier, Carabineir, Chasseur and Lancer. All conned white or yellow, the LT(s) were orange. There were 24 of them in their nice neat formations (counted them before hand just to see). I was positioned right in the middle of them in a deadend passageway using stealth and superspeed. I took the red and yellow just before I ran in, hit the build up and aim once positioned, and as started taking fire popped the Nova. I didn't expect to take the LTs down so was prepared for that. But the 6 others that were still standing were a bit much. I had a similar experience the last time I tired it on some CoT so I was paying pretty close attention on this one. That is also why I took the big red and yellow pills hoping to improve my odds.
So being 33, the 36s are +3 no question there. The 35+s were both two 35s combined together (bought them to make sure). So I should have been well up on the damage CAP. Now the only thing I can't say with 100% certainty that I had them all in radius. Fortunately, I was teamed with my SG and had a fortitude on me before I went in there. They were able to clean up no problem. But this is a risky tactic to try on your own.
So was this just bad luck?
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-At somepoint you owe it to yourself to 6-slot nova w/ KB and take it into PP. Take a friend. With waypoints you can measure the distance of minion-tossing.
-The same is also fun with Power Thrust and Power Push.
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Try to do this soon, while Everett Lake is still frozen over. Oh, and let me add a stunt I invented the night of the ice-over when I was bored - Evil Knievel nova. Superspeed run towards a group of hydra, and then leap over them (having hurdle helps). While in the air, trigger nova when you think you are directly overhead. The ice means you wont "root" when you land on the other side - you'll keep on moving. three seconds later, nova will go off where ever you are, but it will HIT where ever you WERE. Turn 180 as you slide away, and watch your nova detonate over the hydra's heads from 200 feet away.
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Do Nemesis have any resistance to Energy? Yes there was an LT or 2 in there (took the bosses out earlier). But the rest of the mob constisted of Fuselier, Carabineir, Chasseur and Lancer. All conned white or yellow, the LT(s) were orange. There were 24 of them in their nice neat formations (counted them before hand just to see). I was positioned right in the middle of them in a deadend passageway using stealth and superspeed. I took the red and yellow just before I ran in, hit the build up and aim once positioned, and as started taking fire popped the Nova. I didn't expect to take the LTs down so was prepared for that. But the 6 others that were still standing were a bit much. I had a similar experience the last time I tired it on some CoT so I was paying pretty close attention on this one. That is also why I took the big red and yellow pills hoping to improve my odds.
So being 33, the 36s are +3 no question there. The 35+s were both two 35s combined together (bought them to make sure). So I should have been well up on the damage CAP. Now the only thing I can't say with 100% certainty that I had them all in radius. Fortunately, I was teamed with my SG and had a fortitude on me before I went in there. They were able to clean up no problem. But this is a risky tactic to try on your own.
So was this just bad luck?
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I've noticed runs of bad luck with nova. I was in a mission the other night and after five nova firings, I had missed a bunch. BU+Aim+nova (4dmg+2rech slotted). These were groups of +2. Every group but one I missed 1 or 2 of 6, which is lousy acc. The very next mission, nova accuracy suddenly improved to either hitting everyone, or occasionally missing 1 (this was +2 and +3). Weird.
Something I don't get - you say you triggered nova *after* they started firing on you. With superspeed and stealth that can only happen if there were snipers in the group. And snipers are LTs; at +3 they wouldn't have been automatically killed by a nova.
The big red pill didn't help you at all; nova slotted with 4dmg and then buffed with BU+Aim is at the damage cap. The yellow probably didn't help either; you should have been near the 95% to hit ceiling.
The odds say if you fired nova on 24 targets, you should have missed 1 or 2 on average. That plus the couple of LTs might account for 4 of the ones left standing. Another thing to factor in is that I'm having trouble visualizing a pattern of 24 nemesis in a mission that would all be in the radius of nova. Maybe they were just out of range.
Chance is chance. I've fired nova on 12 targets and missed 5. I've fired nova on 60+ targets and actually hit all but 2.
I will say, I'm not the only person that thinks there is a rollover error in acc, though. I was testing accuracy the other day in a mission with +2 and +3 mobs. I had an attack chain of seven consecutive attacks miss, four after BU and 3 more after Aim, and long miss-runs happened several times during this mission. Then it went away in the following two missions. That sounds like either a roll-over computation error, or a random number generator error. Accuracy bugs are, of course, a big joke now, but even I'm beginning to get the feeling something is intermittently wrong.
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I will say, I'm not the only person that thinks there is a rollover error in acc, though. I was testing accuracy the other day in a mission with +2 and +3 mobs. I had an attack chain of seven consecutive attacks miss, four after BU and 3 more after Aim, and long miss-runs happened several times during this mission. Then it went away in the following two missions. That sounds like either a roll-over computation error, or a random number generator error. Accuracy bugs are, of course, a big joke now, but even I'm beginning to get the feeling something is intermittently wrong.
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You know, I noticed this last night. I had runs of 3 or 4 misses in a row shooting at even to yellow con enemies (won't count the runs on the oranges, those I consider just bad luck). And I also missed far too many times with BU+Aim+Snipe on orange and red con alpha strikes. It was so bad that I kept checking to make sure I had switched from flight to hover. Yet earlier in the day I was hitting right about where I thought I should. Most of those times I noticed it was when I used a yellow to improve my accuracy. So I wonder if there indeed isn't an overflow problem.
States said ne thought something was wrong w/ acc and that they're going to look into it...I notice missing more frequently on power burst ...anyone else notice this (on PB)?
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Do Nemesis have any resistance to Energy? Yes there was an LT or 2 in there (took the bosses out earlier). But the rest of the mob constisted of Fuselier, Carabineir, Chasseur and Lancer. All conned white or yellow, the LT(s) were orange. There were 24 of them in their nice neat formations (counted them before hand just to see). I was positioned right in the middle of them in a deadend passageway using stealth and superspeed. I took the red and yellow just before I ran in, hit the build up and aim once positioned, and as started taking fire popped the Nova. I didn't expect to take the LTs down so was prepared for that. But the 6 others that were still standing were a bit much. I had a similar experience the last time I tired it on some CoT so I was paying pretty close attention on this one. That is also why I took the big red and yellow pills hoping to improve my odds.
So being 33, the 36s are +3 no question there. The 35+s were both two 35s combined together (bought them to make sure). So I should have been well up on the damage CAP. Now the only thing I can't say with 100% certainty that I had them all in radius. Fortunately, I was teamed with my SG and had a fortitude on me before I went in there. They were able to clean up no problem. But this is a risky tactic to try on your own.
So was this just bad luck?
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What probably happened was that the Nemesis Lts, upon defeat, cast vengance on the others (and it stacks) so it made them much harder to defeat.
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What probably happened was that the Nemesis Lts, upon defeat, cast vengance on the others (and it stacks) so it made them much harder to defeat.
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Technically, vengeance is cast a couple seconds after defeat, so it can't protect anyone in a group from any of the waves of a nova-blast. My scrapper can actually defeat one nemesis LT, and turn and attack another one and (one-shot) defeat him before the vengeance buff strikes him.
However, nova 6 LTs and only 5 go down? Well, now you have a problem.
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What probably happened was that the Nemesis Lts, upon defeat, cast vengance on the others (and it stacks) so it made them much harder to defeat.
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Technically, vengeance is cast a couple seconds after defeat, so it can't protect anyone in a group from any of the waves of a nova-blast. My scrapper can actually defeat one nemesis LT, and turn and attack another one and (one-shot) defeat him before the vengeance buff strikes him.
However, nova 6 LTs and only 5 go down? Well, now you have a problem.
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Ya but I mis-read his post and thought he was referring to a difficult clean-up...which vengance can make fun.
Well I dont have PB anymore but I have noticed it on my other ranged attacks, its getting annoying to miss that much. Hopefully they'll figure it out and fix it.
In other news, just wanted to let everyone know that I dinged level 50 the other night. Finally Woooo hooooo.
Now off to play my peacebringer...
May the squid be with you...
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I will say, I'm not the only person that thinks there is a rollover error in acc, though. I was testing accuracy the other day in a mission with +2 and +3 mobs. I had an attack chain of seven consecutive attacks miss, four after BU and 3 more after Aim, and long miss-runs happened several times during this mission. Then it went away in the following two missions. That sounds like either a roll-over computation error, or a random number generator error. Accuracy bugs are, of course, a big joke now, but even I'm beginning to get the feeling something is intermittently wrong.
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You know, I noticed this last night. I had runs of 3 or 4 misses in a row shooting at even to yellow con enemies (won't count the runs on the oranges, those I consider just bad luck). And I also missed far too many times with BU+Aim+Snipe on orange and red con alpha strikes. It was so bad that I kept checking to make sure I had switched from flight to hover. Yet earlier in the day I was hitting right about where I thought I should. Most of those times I noticed it was when I used a yellow to improve my accuracy. So I wonder if there indeed isn't an overflow problem.
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I've always had Accuracy issues -- the inspirations frequently make my hit ratio go down, and Aim was so relentlessly deleterious that I respecced out of it as soon as I could. It's almost like the percentages are reversed when I use Aim. Energy Torrent almost never hits anything despite Build Up, Acc inspirations and Acc enhancements, so it's going in the next respec.
My Blaster is squishy and his targeting is out of whack -- it's sometimes amazing that he's survived as well as he has. On other occasions, though, everything seems to work great... even Acc inspirations. Weird.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
Ok, I'm gonna post my current build. I have not yet respeced into the epic pools. I will probably run a few tests for myself before pvp comes out and then iron out all the final details of my pvp pwnz0r. But for now here is the current build off memory, these are not in order by level taken:
Power Bolt - 1 acc, 5 dmg
Electric Fence - 1 acc
Power Blast - 1 acc, 5 dmg
Energy Torrent - 1 acc, 1 cone, 4 dmg
Hasten - 6 recharge
Sniper Blast - 1 acc, 1 interrupt, 4 dmg
Power Burst - 1 acc, 5 dmg
Super Speed - 1 speed
Hurdle - 1 jump
Health - 1 health
Stamina - 6 end recharge
Hover - 6 flight speed
Stealth - 1 defense
Buildup - 3 recharge
Aim - 3 recharge
Explosive Blast - 1 acc, 4 dmg
Power Push - 1 acc
Nova - 4 dmg/2 recharge also 3 dmg/3 recharge (I switch)
Power Sink - 3 end drain, 3 end recharge
Shocking Grasp - 2 acc, 4 hold
Thunder Strike - 4 dmg
Grant Invisibility - 1 defense
Phase Shift - 1 reduce end cost
Lightning Field - 1 acc, 1 end drain
For the epic pool, I will end up dropping lightning field, thunder strike, and I'm not sure yet as to the third one. When I have my final build I will post that too.
So who wants to critique my build 
?
The Legion of Freedom
Snipe...for PvP I recommend you go with...um...brawl 6 slotted for endurance reduction... 
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Snipe...for PvP I recommend you go with...um...brawl 6 slotted for endurance reduction...
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Don't forget our SG will be teaming with others, so you should also six slot brawl so we can own everyone.
The Legion of Freedom
Seriously no build critiques? I would love to hear what you guys think of the build, how I could improve it and what epic pools would work best with my powerset.
The Legion of Freedom
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Seriously no build critiques? I would love to hear what you guys think of the build, how I could improve it and what epic pools would work best with my powerset.
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Well since you obviously didn't consider my "6 slotting brawl" to be serious build critique, I'll suggest something else (I have no idea abt the /el powers tho'):
Mainly on slots b/c you might need them for the EPPs...
I know you use ET and ExBlast mid-fight but if you, like me, use(d) them 99% of the time w/ either BU or Aim you can save on the slots used for acc and reposition them for your EPPs. MsK currently has TI and FoN 6 slotted and PFF 3 slotted...for 12 extra slots used/placed.
Similar w/ sniper blast (gasp!)'s slots.
Also, if you don't use them for EPPs you can add them to BU and aim...4 SOs = 30 sec recharge time on each...you can keep up w/ MsK then next time we simultaneously snipe an AV.
Consider this also...when/if you come back for more jello shots...the dual HOs can dramatically affect one's build. I saved a slot in TF by using a dual acc/dmg enh...and saved one in Bonesmasher in anticipation of a (hopefully) future HO. As I'm learning about the different kinds of HOs and successful (open) hammi raids become more common, I'd be able to use an upcoming respec to further maximize slotting.
In them meantime...6-SLOTTED BRAWL 4 THE WIN!
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Seriously no build critiques? I would love to hear what you guys think of the build, how I could improve it and what epic pools would work best with my powerset.
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Well, since my build is based for a large part on your suggestions, our builds are about the same. 
What is your thinking behind putting an interrupt red in Snipe instead of another damage? What are the numbers on that?
Otherwise, you'll see we're about the same. Click on the link below for my build...
PS The best recent advice you gave was to take PowerPush. Geez, I don't know how I ever lived w/o that. :P
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PS The best recent advice you gave was to take PowerPush. Geez, I don't know how I ever lived w/o that. :P
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For gaming or for fun? Gawd it still brings a smile to my face recalling how far you can PP a L1 Hellion.
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Seriously no build critiques? I would love to hear what you guys think of the build, how I could improve it and what epic pools would work best with my powerset.
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Hmm... ok.
I am not a fan of slotting cone into torrent. I use superspeed to position it during combat, and the lower range actually helps with scatter a bit. I'm also not a big fan of interrupt in snipe, but since I apparently have the fastest snipe in all of Paragon, that's probably why [I've actually reported it].
Since I use SS in actual combat, I slot it with endrdx, not speed. I very rarely need the extra speed the speed would give me, relative to the END I get from having endrdx slotted (in my original build its actually 3 slotted with endrdx, which I know is a bit extreme).
A lot of people say slotting health isn't worth it for blasters, but I notice. I would probably more aggressively slot health, and less aggressively slot hover. But I have hover/fly, and I have power boost, so I suppose it depends on how much 6-slot hover actually helps you in combat.
I'd probably also shift the BU and Aim slotting from balanced to 4 in BU and 2 in Aim. Both BU and Aim's acc buff do a really good job of allowing me to hit all but the most troublesome targets (i.e. the dreaded bubbled drone). Given that, I'd want BU more often than Aim. Switching slotting still means that over the long haul you will get to use BU and Aim just as often in total, just BU more often than Aim.
I'm not an elec expert, but since you aren't fully slotting EB anyway, I'm wondering if it wouldn't make sense to steal an additional slot or two and add it to TS. Or double slot power push with acc. Push is really a bumper-boss power, and it tends to be really important that it not miss. Slotting higher might make you more viable against higher level bosses, if you care. Especially if you are getting rid of TS anyway. Or save the slots for the Epics, you might need them.
I've played around with the EPPs. Everyone seems to like TI+FoN, and its a good combo in general. I've found that TI makes me take less damage in areas where I would have gotten beaten up a bit, but I haven't found it to be a life saver in the one area I can most use it - mezzing bosses. When FoN was unstoppable, no question that would have been the way to go. Now, its a bit more situational. Munitions might be a better choice for me, because flak can't be turned off, but its so low, it only delays the inevitable for me. And I burn a lot of END constantly, so the toggle drain of TI can actually start to become noticable, even under conserve power (admittedly, I tested it 6-slotted for maximum resistance).
The EPP I haven't played around with yet, but I'm planning to, is ice. Ice is unique for me, relative to the others, because ice has s/l defense not resistance. Why that matters is because I'm currently playing around with perma-power boost.
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In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
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Here's the short version, for those that aren't interested in reading the rest: energy snipe is four seconds.
Ok, here's the long version.
Although I've seen the six second number, I've always just assumed that it was a typo, or an old number from Prima, or whatever. I assumed everyone knew that energy snipe actually fires much faster than that. My own experiences with snipe include actually clocking snipe in TV back when I was 24, in order to perform a particularly interesting form of long-range hover sniping of skyraiders.
So anyway, one day I make a post regarding dps for energy blasters, and someone tells me my calculations are wrong because snipe is 6 seconds and not 4. Hmm, first thing, I go test it, and sure enough, its 4 seconds. Can't imagine what's going on here.
Long story short, eventually I decided to start asking around, and oddly, everyone was quoting me the 6 second number, which was really driving me nuts, because I couldn't find someone timing snipe at 4 seconds. I finally got someone in my SG to time snipe, and she got 4 seconds. So at least I knew it wasn't just me.
I sent a PM to a red name (I'm not sure if I should share PM messages, so I won't quote it or reveal the name, but it wasn't geko, just so you know) and asked them to test for me. They got 5.3 seconds.
That turned out to be the rosetta stone of sorts, because it got me to thinking that maybe everyone is timing snipe using different methodologies. So I began looking at how someone might go about timing snipe.
All I care about is how long does snipe take in an attack chain - how much time does it "cost" you to fire a snipe. I don't care how long it takes snipe to fly through the air and hit its target, and I don't care about internal intricacies of snipe timing - just how many seconds will I lose if I fire a snipe.
Well, it turns out the red name in question timed snipe this way: Click snipe to activate it, and time the amount of time it takes for the snipe button to show that its actually fired (depressed). When I time that, it takes a little more than 5 seconds, consistent with the 5.3 seconds of time.
But this is how I timed snipe: I target something (that will live long enough to conduct the test - at lvl 50 a behemoth LT works great). Then I display a clock (I run CoH windowed) where I can see it, and at :00 seconds I activate snipe. Before it fires, I queue power blast. Then I watch the sequence fire. Based on chat messages as well as the visual appearance of the firing animation, the snipe strikes the target at about :04 - 4 seconds. However, its possible that the snipe is actually tying you up longer than that. The telling thing is that the power blast lands at :06 - 6 seconds. Now, there is absolutely no way for snipe to take 6 seconds if power blast is actually landing at the 6 second mark. If you believe that power blast takes two seconds, then snipe is taking 4. If you believe snipe takes 6, then you have to believe that power blast takes zero.
I tried this with different combos - snipe+blast, snipe+bolt, snipe+torrent. I consistently get the combo taking 6 seconds, implying that blast, bolt, and torrent all take about the same amount of time, and if that time is about 2 seconds, snipe is 4.
Here's another way to test snipe - fire snipe on a target, and then time how long it takes before it becomes available again (and you can fire it again). Without hasten, snipe becomes available 16 seconds after firing. With hasten, snipe becomes available 11 seconds after firing. This is what you would expect if snipe took 4 seconds, and the recharge was base 12 seconds. If snipe was 6 seconds, then the base recharge would be 10 seconds, and hasten would be speeding that up to 5 seconds, which is too much, it should be 6 seconds (10/1.7 = 5.9). That extra second is not a lot, but should be measurable.
Of course, this is informal timing, me eyeballing a clock. I could use a stopwatch, but there are issues there as well (including me using a stopwatch and firing at the same time).
I got the bright idea to make a demorecord of snipe in action, so I could play it over and over again to get an average time for snipe, that would average out my own reflexes on timing, but it occured to me that was silly. The demorecord file itself has the timing information in it.
If you've ever looked at a demorecord file, the very first number in every line in the file is a relative timing number. It says how long to wait (in milliseconds) before performing the action specified on the line. In other words, demofiles look something like this:
0 do A
5 do B
0 do C
0 do D
15 do E
3 do F
This file says to do A now, wait 5 milliseconds and then do B, then do C immediately, and do D immediately also, and then wait 15 milliseconds and do E, then wait 3 milliseconds and do F. The entire sequence takes 23 milliseconds, except that whatever F is, it will take however long it takes to do F.
So if I demorecord a snipe+blast+bolt combo, I can find out exactly how long it takes in actual milliseconds, not including lag. Important to note, that if lag alters the timing at all, it will be to make things take longer than they should, not shorter.
This is an actual sequence from a demofile I made - although I've deleted about 12000 lines out of it, and I calculated the actual offset time for each line and added it to the left:
0 3190 0 1624 MOV A_SNIPERBLAST
0 3190 0 1624 FX OneShot 1716 POWERS/ENERGYBLAST/SNIPERBLAST.FX 0
0 3190 0 1624 FXSCALE 10 10
0 3190 0 1624 ORIGIN ENT 0 0
0 3190 0 1624 TARGET ENT 1700 0
1478 4668 50 1624 MOV A_2HANDCAST
1478 4668 0 1624 FX OneShot 1719 POWERS/ENERGYBLAST/ENERGYBLAST.FX 0
1478 4668 0 1624 FXSCALE 10 10
1478 4668 0 1624 ORIGIN ENT 0 0
1478 4668 0 1624 TARGET ENT 1700 0
3057 6247 16 1624 floatdmg 1700 101
3057 6247 0 1624 floatdmg 1700 157
3760 6950 7 1624 MOV A_RAPID
3760 6950 0 1624 FX OneShot 1725 POWERS/ENERGYBLAST/RAPID.FX 0
3760 6950 0 1624 FXSCALE 10 10
3760 6950 0 1624 ORIGIN ENT 0 0
3760 6950 0 1624 TARGET ENT 1700 0
5543 8733 0 1624 floatdmg 1700 31
5543 8733 0 1624 floatdmg 1700 126
5880 9070 34 1624 MOV A_2HANDCAST
5880 9070 0 1624 FX OneShot 1732 POWERS/ENERGYBLAST/ENERGYBLASTSINGLESHOT.FX 0
5880 9070 0 1624 FXSCALE 10 10
5880 9070 0 1624 ORIGIN ENT 0 0
5880 9070 0 1624 TARGET ENT 1700 0
7551 10741 66 0 Chat 3 0 You have defeated Behemoth Overlord
7551 10741 0 0 Chat 3 0 You have defeated Behemoth Overlord
7551 10741 0 8 POS -1480.609375 0.046875 -3371.09375
7551 10741 0 1624 floatdmg 1700 79
7551 10741 0 1624 floatdmg 1700 63
The first column is the relative timing numbers from the start of the sequence (the second column are the absolute timing numbers from the start of the demofile, its how I calculated in the first place - everything else is actual demofile content). Here's my interpretation of what is going on.
At T+0, snipe is activated (A_SNIPERBLAST and POWERS/ENERGYBLAST/SNIPERBLAST.FX).
About T+1.5 seconds later (1458 milliseconds) snipe actually starts the firing animation (A_2HANDCAST and POWERS/ENERGYBLAST/ENERGYBLAST.FX). This is probably just the way the snipe animation is broken down.
At T+3 seconds (3057 milliseconds) the damage numbers appear. Its important to note that I queued the next attack immediately upon clicking on snipe - way before it fired. At this moment, there is an actual queued attack that will activate just as soon as I am free to act.
T+3.8 secs (3760 ms) is when the demofile records the start of the next attack (power blast). This implies that snipe is done - I can act 3.8 seconds after snipe activates (but more on this later).
T+5.5sec (5543ms) is when power blasts damage numbers appear. This is 1.7 seconds after initial activation.
T+5.9sec (5880ms) is when power bolt activates. This is 2.1 seconds after initial activation of power blast, so this implies that power blast has a time cost of 2.1 seconds. Very close to the expected 2 seconds.
T+7.6s (7551ms) is when the damage numbers from bolt appear, and the behemoth is defeated. This is 1.7 seconds after activation. If power bolt has the same "cool off" period that blast has (notice above that there was a lag between when the game recognized that a power "hit" and when the next queued attack was allowed to fire) power bolt is also about 2 seconds.
Now, if these numbers were affected by lag, they should be higher than actual "inherent" timing. But there is simply no way to fit a six second snipe into these timing numbers, the margins of error are simply not that high. And given how close the timings match our expectations of bolt and blast, there is no reason not to trust them for snipe.
Thus, snipe's timing is about 3.8-4 seconds.
Now, for those still reading, maybe this seems like a heck of a lot of work just to demonstrate what you might already know. But there seems to be more than a few people out there who think snipe timing is 6, even though I have no idea why. If there are people out there who have tested snipe to be anything other than 4 seconds, I'd like to hear from you, what your testing methodology is, and how you arrived at your measured number.
I also throw this out there as a means for other people to discover more accurate ways to determine the timing of certain events, especially attack speeds which have short intervals (and are therefore much more difficult to arrive at a decent time for, as opposed to, say, finding out how long conserve power lasts). Its actually sufficiently accurate that it is possible the time I'm getting for power blast - 2.1 seconds, might be fairly precise, it might be more than 2 seconds, and snipe might really be 3.8 seconds instead of just 4.
Its also possible that these numbers are a little fuzzier than that. It's just possible that the game sends an animation notice slightly ahead of time to give the game a chance to properly start and run the animation. But that seems unlikely to be a factor of more than a tenth of a second or so.
To get tenth of a second timing, I'd want to do dozens of tests to try to eliminate lag as a factor (either average out or contraint test the numbers to get the minimum time/best speed of the effects).
At some point, if no one else does it, I might try to figure out what the exact timings are for all the other energy blast attacks, but right now that sounds too much like work on a friday.
SnipeFu suggested that I post this, so I'm posting it here first. It seems to be a small technical issue for primarily energy blasters (although I'm guessing everyone's snipe timing is probably similar). I didn't want to start a brand new thread, because it might seem like I was going out of my way to challenge something in Snipe's guide, when in fact I'd rather just contribute some updated information to it.
And as to why did I go through all that trouble just to prove energy snipe takes four seconds. Ummm, blaster-lock? 
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Eh, I decided to just do the other powers, just to see what turned up. This is highly preliminary, and I explain why below.
Here's the timing information I get for the other energy primary blasts, after several demorecord runs of each power, each power in different positions in an attack sequence (to factor out a lot of things, too complicated to go over here).
Power bolt: average time 2.141s, min time 2.107s
Power blast: average time 2.008s, min time 1.874s
Power burst: average time 2.121s, min time 2.103s
Energy Torrent: average time 1.484s, min time 1.209s
Sniper Blast: average time 3.988s, min time 3.879s
Explosive Blast: average time 2.052s, min time 1.840s
The timing numbers are very consistent with a couple of odd numbers attributable to lag. Power bolt and power burst very consistently show 2.1second timing. Power blast and explosive blast show a range of times in the 1.8 - 2.0 second range. Snipe seems to hover in the 3.9-4.0 timing range.
Torrent is the oddity. Its timing fluctuated wildly, from 1.209 seconds, to 2.003 seconds. Even throwing out the 2 second timing as being very far from the other times (and probably due to momentary lag), there is still a range of about 1.2 to 1.5 seconds for torrent, which is doubly odd because I've always thought torrent was about as fast as everything else. But the numbers were very consistently lower than 2 seconds (except once).
Anyway, take these times with a grain of salt, I think there are large uncertainties in the timing numbers based on a number of factors, including lag. The only numbers I'm sure of are the snipe numbers, because I beat them into the ground under highly controlled circumstances and with a lot of repetition. The other numbers are based on a small number (about 4-8) of firing sequences.
I quote both the average time and the minimum time for a specific reason - there is a case to be made for the minimum time representing the "true" time of the attack, since lag can only increase the timing of an attack. The problem is that because these times are differential times within an attack sequence, its possible that lag could increase the apparent timing of one attack and shorten the apparent timing of the next attack in sequence. It might take serious work to factor that out.
BTW, to anyone wanting to attempt this, a couple words of caution:
The game actually takes time of flight of blasts into account when calculating when damage lands. If you record torrent, torrent's damage lands on different targets at different times. This is why ultimately timing an attack based on the time from activation to when the attack lands is faulty.
Queued attacks always fired faster than attacks that I timed by attempting to click-fire the attacks as they came ready. Its clear that the actual amount of time that an attack "costs" is best calculated from the moment of activation to the moment when the next attack can be activated. Thus, timing the start of one attack to the start of the next attack makes the most sense and using queued attacks guarantees that the time you measure is at least theoretically the minimum it can be. BTW, this also means timing attacks by timing the power button is also faulty.
Demorecord files contain no information on what the user did to activate powers. So if you don't get your queued attacks to go just right, throw the demorecord away and do it over. The timing in that file will otherwise be suspect, and there is no way to know if an attack's timing was thrown off by user timing issues.
Last thing, my numbers are consistently lower than warcry's quoted activation times, which are:
Power Bolt: 2.0
Power Blast 1.7
Power Burst 2.0
Sniper Blast 1.3
Torrent: 1.1
Explosive Blast: 1.7
I do find it interesting, though, that I get the same firing time for bolt and bolt and burst, and power blast and explosive blast, which agrees with warcry in that respect, and torrent much lower than all of them. I suspec that the activation times quoted by warcry are not the entire time the power takes - note the very low time for snipe. I believe that those times are low, because separate from the activation time there is also a cool-down time after a power fires but before you can activate the next power, and in the case of snipe, there is a "windup" time (look in the demofiles, there is an actual "windup" action). That would explain why my numbers are consistently higher than warcry. Lag can't fully explain that, because my numbers are consistently 0.1 seconds higher for bolt and burst, and consistently 0.3 seconds higher for blast and EB, which makes no sense if you think the difference is caused by lag.
At some point I will take a look at Aim, Push, and Nova.
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Arcanville, you are trully amazing. I want you guys to know that Arcanville and I have been talking about the duration of sniper blast now for like two months. He has done an insane amount of testing on this and has always come to 4 seconds for energy's snipe. We are not sure what the other ATs have as an activation time for snipe but this is definately good news for us.
Thank you Arcanville.
The Legion of Freedom
shadowybc,
I am Level 33 now. As stated above, I have Nova 4 slotted. I did neglect to say that they are all S.O. damage 36 or 35+. Aim and Buildup are single slotted with recharge (S.O. 35 but that shouldn't make any difference). Some testing I did last night, I tried Nova with a big red and yellow pill in a mob of +1 and +2 Nemesis and about half or more of them were still standing. Thanks for the help!