Darth Hater

Unlike their sneakier cousins the Operatives, Imperial Snipers eschew up close and personal combat for the flexibility and advantages that a good rifle and long range can offer. Among the ranks of these Snipers are those who work to master their weapon skills, putting aside the gadgetry and poisons they naturally have access to, becoming Marksmen. Ideally situated from a steady perch and without interruption, a specialized Marksman can rain death on his foes with relative impunity.

Attributes

Primary Attribute: Cunning
Secondary Attribute: Endurance
Combat Ratings: Alacrity (Cast/Channeled Time Reduction), Power (Damage/Healing), Critical Rating, Surge Rating (Critical Damage/Healing), Accuracy Rating (+Hit Chance)

As with all Agents, a Marksman will prefer Cunning as his primary stat, increasing both his ranged damage and his chance of landing a critical hit with ranged attacks. While Cunning also increases Tech Power and Tech Critical chance, a Marksman has very few abilities that benefit from those advantages.

There are two main schools of thought when it comes to Combat Ratings: pure Power or Critical Rating and Surge Rating. Power based Marksmen will hit reliably harder than those who prefer Crit and Surge, but they generally lack the burst potential of a Marksman heavily invested in Crit and Surge. Until we have access to damage parsers it is something of a toss-up between the two styles, but in good hands, they can both be equally devastating. On a personal note, this author prefers a Crit and Surge heavy stat build. There really is nothing quite like dropping three targets with four bullets.

Most Marksmen disregard Alacrity, as the Marksman's energy regen relies on keeping his energy pool above 60%. While Alacrity will allow the Marksman to output damage faster, it will also rapidly deplete his energy faster than it can refill, forcing players to utilize Rifle Shot as filler while they wait. The consensus is that this approach, in the long run, is nowhere near as efficient as a Power or Crit and Surge based stat build.

The Skill Tree 

* Note, this is a sample PvE oriented skill setup.  Player preferences may dictate some minor changes for other content types.

The Marksman skill tree is based, for the most part, around buffing existing Sniper abilities; of the three active abilities in the entire tree only one, Followthrough, is a must have. Included in the passive bonuses a Marksman can acquire are significant bonuses to their Cover ability, most notably those that increase the Sniper's energy regeneration rate via Sniper's Nest. A single energy per second may not sound significant, but it is one of four game changing skills available to the Marksman.

Snap Shot: This skill allows the Sniper to fire off their Snipe ability without an activation time after taking cover. Attainable at level 20, this gives Marksmen their first taste of this tree’s burst damage potential. Once lower level Snipers receive Snap Shot, one of the more popular openers begins with an Ambush followed immediately by an instant Snipe.

Reactive Shot: While perhaps not impressive at first glance, this skill will drastically reduce in-combat downtime for Marksmen against enemies who survive their initial burst. Reactive Shot’s synergy with Series of Shots also allows for diminished wait times during long fights. Some players prefer to open with a Snipe for the explicit purpose of firing off the hasted Ambush in situations where they cannot engage at their leisure, such as during PvP.

Sniper's Nest: I cannot emphasize how important this skill is for a Marksman. Following this skill tree means a player is going to spend a great deal of time in cover, and having a dramatically increased energy regeneration rate means everything, especially with the amount of energy Snipe consumes in the long term.

Followthrough: While Sniper's Nest is important, Followthrough is absolutely critical to a Marksman's success. This ability, once upgraded by Recoil Control--decreasing cooldown and energy cost--and Imperial Assassin--increasing critical damage--will become the single greatest contributor to a Marksman's damage output.  

Beyond these four abilities, Marksmen should make judicious use of Shatter Shot, the Marksman's armor debuff. Not only will it increase player damage, but is also a great skill to use in a group setting, and carries a significant duration. Additionally, Fragmentation Grenade and Orbital Strike allow for some serious AoE output when necessary.

The primary drawback to the Marksman skill tree, and to the Sniper AC as a whole, is its reliance on weapon-based damage. Because of the way the combat system in The Old Republic works, melee and ranged defense, Shield rating, Absorption rating, and armor mitigate melee and ranged damage. Players can stack these stats quite easily, obtaining very noticeable levels of those defensive stats and becoming very tough nuts to crack. Players cannot shield against Tech and Force abilities, and as far as this author is aware, there is no possible way to increase passive Force or Tech defense. Marksmen will have to deal with the fact that, for now, this skill tree is not great against defensively minded targets.

Companions

Kaliyo Djannis
Combat Style: Ranged Tank


Kaliyo is both the first companion Marksmen get, and the one they will be fighting beside for the majority of their leveling curve. She is a ranged tank, and does a very good job of corralling foes while players blast away from relative safety. Like all tanking companions, however, she suffers from a lack of durability, and relies on the Marksman to take down targets before they overrun her meager defensive capabilities. Keeping her in medium to high quality gear is an absolute must, as her two most important stats are her armor rating--allowing her to survive longer--and her weapon damage--so she can hold agro.

Kaliyo takes care of herself in combat; she handles taunts and threat fairly well. The only problems she faces in that regard is that for some reason Ambush, Snipe, Followthrough and Series of Shots will not cause her, or any companion, to auto-engage. Rifle Shot, Shatter Shot and Fragmentation Grenade on the other hand will cause her to attack the enemy, so keep in mind players may need to manually command her to engage depending on their preferred ability rotation.

Vector Hyllus
Combat Style: Melee DPS


Vector is not a great companion choice for a soloing Marksman. He does not hold threat, is incredibly squishy and must get up close and personal with his victims, which is not always easy to do, even with a charge ability. However, properly geared he is an absolute beast in a duo or trio. Despite not being a Jedi or Sith, Vector relies on the Willpower attribute as his primary Stat. Behind upgrading his primary weapon, keeping Willpower as high as possible should be a priority.

Tactics with Vector are quite simple: give him a target and let him slice and dice away. As noted above, many of the Marksman's primary attack abilities will not cause companions to auto-engage, so be mindful of this when utilizing Vector. This author prefers Vector's Armor Piercing stance, as many opponents die too quickly for his internal damage stance to have an impact. However, in longer group fights there is an absolute potential for this stance to shine.

Doctor Lokin
Combat Style: Healer / Melee DPS

Doctor Lokin is the healer for the Agent class, and a popular choice in the mid to later game when NPC difficulty begins to ramp up. While he cannot heal through everything, the good Doctor is quite capable of keeping a Marksman up through just about any solo encounter, or provide adequate healing for a two-person group. Gearing up Lokin is quite simple since he uses Cunning as his primary stat, allowing the Marksman to give him hand-me down gear and fill in any empty slots as necessary.

The Doctor is the simplest of the Agent's companions to manage: simply get shot, and he will respond with heals. To make things even easier, his damage abilities are available only in his DPS stance, and as such, his AI will not inadvertently activate them while Lokin is in his healing stance, giving the good Doctor even more time to heal. The only point of concern is his channeled CC ability Carbonize Stream, which he likes activate at every opportunity. Because it is a channeled ability, the Marksman will not receive any healing in the interim, which, when facing multiple enemies, may be an issue.

Ensign Raina Temple
Combat Style: Ranged DPS

As the Agent's Ranged DPS companion, Ensign Temple is, for lack of a better description, the Mini-Me to the Marksman. She outputs an incredible amount of damage at range, but while she has only slightly less durability than Kaliyo, Temple is by no means a tank, as she lacks any kind of threat generation capability. Just like Doctor Lokin, Temple utilizes Cunning as her primary stat, and can very effectively use hand-me down gear from the Marksman, the only difference being that she prefers pistols to sniper rifles.

Utilizing Temple is mostly about forethought, as she has two types of abilities: single target and AoE. Activating and deactivating certain abilities is the key to maximizing the Ensign's output, as AoE abilities will drastically diminish her effectiveness against powerful targets, while single target skills are not always the best choice when facing down hordes of weaker enemies. Beyond ability choice, the Ensign suffers from the same clunky AI as all companions when it comes to engaging the enemy, requiring manual direction at some points.

SCORPIO
Combat Style: Melee Tank

While players obtain SCORPIO last, she is perhaps the best choice when it comes to tanking for the Marksman. Because of the way BioWare implemented droid equipment; she will have, at least for the moment, higher stats and slightly higher armor values than Kaliyo ever will. The only concern in regards to gearing SCORPIO up come with the fact that her primary stat is Aim, not Strength, as one might expect from a melee tank. This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that all of her initial gear is moddable, so one can simply obtain a few Commando Armorings and be in business. In addition, SCORPIO's primary weapons, the techblade and techstave, are often quite difficult to find.


In combat SCORPIO functions almost identically to Kaliyo, the only difference being that she has to close distance to her targets. Because of all of her abilities having no cast time, SCORPIO's damage output is considerably higher than that of Kaliyo's, meaning fights end faster and she is better able to hold threat.

Crew Skills

Since the Sniper shares the exact same companion bonuses with the Operative, the crafting recommendations are nearly identical between the two advanced classes.  As a result, it would be quite redundant of me to rehash what my colleague put together in this guide for the Operative's healing tree.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, Marksmen focus on one thing: putting energized plasma through the heads of the good guys, bad guys and anyone else that gets in their way. It is not the most mobile class, it is not the flashiest class, but it gets the job done, and it is very fun to play in the process.