Bounty Hunter

Well well well. Look who decided to show up. So, you want to be a Bounty Hunter huh? You want to both create chaos and resolve conflict throughout the Galaxy do ya? Sit the fuck down. Class is in session.

The Expertise​

Lets talk about your expertise first. Get the easy part over with before you lose your train of thought.

Bounty Hunter​

Obvious necessity. I don't take every box I can get, that's too much bullshit on my toolbar. Quality over quantity is best. BH has several new abilities to be used throughout this class's expertise

Assassin​

Not a lot going on in here for me personally but the Advanced Strikes boxes because that ability has a great stack bonus, fast cooldown, and a great damage increase box. Additionally if you find yourself having action cost issues, that 20% reduction is killer.

Combat Medic​

My personal favorite. With the latest updates Combat Medic is the ultimate "fuck you" class to use. And personally, that is what I'm all about while hunting. The only downside to this class is you're going to have to take almost the entire thing to get the Master box, which is the bread and butter of this build.

Commando​

Similar to Assassin, I run just a tiny bit of Commando for some extra offensive bonuses. The revised Position Secured ability is absolutely stellar when you know how to use it right. While the On Target box provides some "can't live without" bonuses as well.

Doctor​

This is where some controversy comes in depending on how good you are. I only run five points in Doctor, just to get Ampule. It's a fast heal and when used with your default heal and stims, can replace quite a large percentage of your health. If you find yourself needing more health the only viable option would be to take points out of Assassin. You wouldn't want to touch Commando, it'd lessen your survivability.

Carbineer​

With the latest update, Fencer and Carbineer's passive Fire and Acid DOTs were boost by a healthy amount. This synergizes perfectly with the Combat Medic's Stance. As DOTs are passive, and you already have enough abilities in your toolbar, just run straight down the middle line to the Master box and you'll be fine. Remember, quality over quantity.

Marksman​

As a Marksman you'll be focusing on staying Ranged. Obviously you'd want to go with Ranged defense. I also suggest spending the four points into your default heal's improvement box seeing as you're short on health as is.

Wearable gear. Still with me?​

Armor​

Good armor is going to be a must. Recently, armor was nerfed to not be stacked as high passively. That being said I do recommend wearing assault armor, for the higher kinetic values. I say kinetic because you'll need to be wearing a personal shield generator (PSG) which adds 2499 Energy armor rating. Be aware, PSGs only provide RANGED energy armor, and it does diminish as you get hit. So while wearing assault armor with higher kinetic value and a PSG, they'll equal out nicely and give you an overall better rating. Also note you want as much elemental armor as you can get. As elemental damage does not impact kinetic or energy armor. For example, if you do not stack elemental armor and you're fighting
a Heavy Weapons expert, you will be absolutely shredded. Because their weapons are high in elemental damage. Same goes for all weapon types. But the less elemental damage the weapon does, the better. For being the defender anyway.

Weapons​

Circling back to what I just said about elemental damage. In order from least to most is pistols, carbines, rifles, melee, then heavy weapons. Now knowing about elemental damage and how armor effects it, do you really think you should be running pistols? Probably not since they don't do much against someone stacking elemental armors. When shopping for a weapon you prefer and looking at the DPS is important, something severely overlooked is the weapon's minimum and maximum values. This information tells you how hard the weapon is going to hit BEFORE any damage mitigation takes place from the target. This is extremely important to look at. For the record there is a correlation between the weapon min-max and DPS but I admit I don't know how it works.

Weapon Elements​

Pretty standard information but I'll go into detail on the perk of each element a weapon provides.

• Heat = short-term Fire DOT, not the best but still useful against someone who can't cleanse.
• Cold = provides a temporary debuff that makes the target take an increased damage amount. Good for spike damage, such as rifle snipe builds or grenadier builds.
• Acid = increases the target's chance to receive a critical hit. My personal favorite, as it stacks well with DOT abilities. When a x10 stack of heavy weapon DOTs is mixed with this, brutal.
• Electricity = Underrated and arguably the best when it comes to survivability. Throws a debuff on the target for an increase in trivial hits. IE, they hit you less often when this is active.

Buffs​

-Entertainer Buff: Remember what I said about elemental armor and how important it is? Good thing you can get an extra 3750 of that from this buff isn't it? Costing 5 points in total and absolute must. The "golden" number for armor rating is 12000. After 12000 you start taking a big dive into diminishing returns. So the close you can get to that the better. While you can take attribute points here I wouldn't recommend unless using as a filler for one last point and even still, I'd put that last point into kinetic or energy armor. As armors are you best way to mitigated damage received. Evasion Chance is another easy win. Costing only 2 points for 5% increase? No brainer. The remaining points is really up to you and how you want to roll.
If you're going with an offensive set up I suggest taking Critical Chance and Action Cost Reduction. If you're running defensive I'd roll block chance (if you aren't already at 100%) and Critical Hit Defense. If you are capped on block, put those extra
points into Resilience or Heal Potency. Like I said Attributes are handy but the reward you get from those points is minimal compared to the percentages from taking some of these bonuses.

SEAs (35s and exotics)​

Alright. The fun part. A good rule of thumb for BHing is balance. What is in your expertise, and what is your goal? If you want to be defense, you'd want to run agility, strength, block value, luck. Offense would be strength, luck, precision.
What are you stacking in your build as far as modifiers? These are questions you need to ask yourself. My build is defensive, because I have so much offense in my expertise. I run agility, strength, and block value in 35s. Block chance, dodge chance, and evasion chance as exotics.
I do this because my expertise is set for maximum DPS and I need all the survivability I can get.

Powerups are key​

And can make or break a build. Generally speaking you want to pair these with something you're using in your exotics. But you need to have different sets for different targets. But general speaking, I use Block Value powerups. Because I stack block chance. Another set I use is dodge chance, carbine damage, and evasion value. Depending on the target I will switch and/or combine some of these. Use powerups to amplify what you're stacking in your build.

Mustafar buffs and GCW buffs: If I have to explain how powerful these are, you aren't ready for this. Go get them.

Food and drinks: Once again, I suggest using these to work together with your exotics and existing set up. Because I use agility in my 35s, I prefer to use Accaragan drink for the increased agility AND most importantly, movement speed. I will swear this is the best drink in the game and if you argue with me on that you've probably died to me using it. Fizz Pudding is an excellent choice for a food because of the luck increase. Luck is an amazing attribute to run. But once again, pick a food and drink that gives you bonuses to what you're already stacking.

Squad Leader, Medic, Smuggler buffs: Highly suggested that you have your own buff bot. You can create an Entertainer, officer, doctor, Smuggler to give you all the buffs you need. If you don't do this, you're missing out on the best buffs in game. Also allows you to give yourself
stims/tac buffs.

Now for the meat and potatoes, if you still have an appetite.

Bounty Hunter Droids​

Kinda obvious you can't hunt without these. Arakyd Probe Droids and Seeker Droids. Probe droids are used to detect what planet your target is on, only one can be active a time. Tip: if you call in a probe droid while standing on a building's surface, the probe droid will land directly at your feet (ex. steps to a house, bank terminal plaza, etc.) Seeker droids are used to generate the name and exact location if your target, once you are on the right planet. Not sure if it is a bug or not but you can use two of these at a time. After you arrive on the target's planet, use a Seeker to identify the target. Then immediately use another one to track your target. The identify droid will come back a lot faster and gives you the name and location of target. The tracking droid takes a bit longer but when it comes back gives you a new location ping for the target every ~15 seconds until it runs out of juice. At this time you can send another one for continuous location updates.

Knowing the server​

It is extremely beneficial to take the time to learn what guild has what players, what builds those players are running, and where those guild cities are.


-ITVs play a huge roll in getting around the galaxy as fast as possible to nail your target before they lock themselves in a house like a shitter. The Slave 1 ITV holds 3 locations, the Snowspeeder holds 2, and the G-9 holds 2 (I think). You want to set these to popular locations. Such as Restuss, Mos Eisley, player cities, etc. Preferably all on different planets so you can save more planets to travel to.

-Know when to strike. This goes in hand with learning who players are and what builds they are using. It would be unwise to run in the middle of a group to get one target when they're running OGs fully buffed. This can not be learned over text, you need to get off your ass and practice.

-Vehicles. Be sure to have plenty of vehicles in your inventory. They do get destroyed quite often. Currently the fasted vehicle in the game is the Command BARC. But BARCs, Sith Speeders, AV-21s and jetpacks all have the same speed. On SWG Evolve, you can auto-fire ranged weapons while mounted.
This is extremely useful when you're chasing after someone. Cut your corners and shoot their vehicle.

In closing, I'm sure there is a ton of things I missed. But it's near impossible to provide all the information via text. Bounty Hunting takes time to learn, time to perfect, and a lot of failure. You will not win 100% of your fights. But if you take those failures and actually assess why you failed, instead of just calling the game and/or mechanics trash, look in the mirror. Its probably you who is trash and doesn't take constructive criticism well. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Take the time to learn this stuff and you will get better every day. There is no shame in running a few trials and dying.
At least you're committed to learning.

If there are any questions not answered in this guide, please feel free to message me. I do not know everything but I know more than most when it comes to this system.