Scoundrel Tips

Superhawkins

Whilst roaming the tinterweb in-between Warzone queue's in Star Wars: The Old Republic I came across a blogger by the name of  blackrabbit2999, who posted some good pointers in regard to PvP play on Scoundrels, notably:

Stealth

1. Stealth doesn't work in this game like it does in others. If you engage a target and kill it without attacking or being attacked by another enemy, you are instantly considered "out of combat" on the kill blow. This means that, as long as the cooldown is up, you can restealth immediately after the killing blow. A large portion of our damage comes from Shoot First, so having a strategy that involves restealthing a lot is advantageous
2. Stealth detection is also different than you may be used to. With the +3 stealth talent, an enemy can see you in their frontal cone at around ~10-15m, behind or beside them it's more like ~5m (just outside melee range). This is where Sneak comes in. Use it when you need to pass by a group of players or pass in front of one before attacking them from behind as they will have nearly 0 chance of seeing you with this talent active
3. Use sneak pre-emptively when you know or think there may be other stealth characters nearby. It can give you the edge that is needed to open with a shoot first on them.

Combat

1. Know when to burst your energy and when to conserve it. If you find yourself at ~10 energy without cool head up, you will be quite useless for a long time. For this reason, use cool head strategically to slam out a lot of DPS, but when it's not up be cautious. Use some flurry of bolts if you are getting close to 60 energy
2. Use the fact that you can run through your opponents to your advantage and try to stay behind them so they miss skills. This also makes it easy to land back blast. In the same respect, if you know they are going to knock you back try to put your back to an object or at least aim yourself in a safe direction while attacking so that the knockback doesn't ruin your day
3. Don't be afraid to kite lightsaber melee classes a little. Snare them when they charge, then kite them at ~10m as needed
4. When a player is being guarded, any CC which also does damage that you use on that player will affect the guard as well. Double knock back from a shoot first can be pretty funny when you knock the tank over on a fire pit because you attacked the guy he was guarding
5. Interrupts! Getting spammed by tracer missiles? Use your kick and they have to wait 4 seconds. Remember your flashbang can be used for an interrupt in clutch situations when your stun and kick are down
6. When you Flashbang someone, go into cover and throw a sabotage charge on them. It can hit as hard as a Backstab.

Some great tips I'm sure you'll agree, and as I've recently started playing my 36 Scoundrel again I will certainly be looking to follow a few of these. I particularly like Combat #4 as I didn't know that and I think it will come in very handy and annoy lots of people :P.

For more of his posts, guides, tips etc head over to his blog @ blackrabbit2999

Ish