Merc is the obvious choice, as you don't have OP or Light sorc. Learn to use your CD's, use Life Warden in last round, profit. Mara is much harder and gameplay involves lot of running and hiding to regen.

Great work. Maybe add some words about Influential amplifiers which also help a lot (sorry if i missed it)

I tried it. 8700K, 2080 RTX 16GB, SSD. Windows 10 2004. 451.22 Nvidia drivers. G-Sync. First thing I noticed : Windowed fullscreen stutters like HELL with those .dll. But with Exclusive Fullscreen I fixed it. Also, for some reason, Exclusive fullscreen works like windowed with those .dll. You get background pop sounds, you alt tab instant, etc. Now, performance and smoothness. Placebo effect IMO. Looked similar. I did 4 warzones with Vulkan and 4 without. Same performance. You put a single Pyro PT and fps goes down => 20 30 fps. We need some tech-savvy guy to test it. Someone who can benchmark it well, compare frametimes, use Rivatuner RTSS, etc etc. But I don't expect a miracle with those DLL. Maybe you gain like 5% more performance, tops, or maybe its placebo or even worse.

Fixing it is simple. Step 1 : only the first EB is an autocrit Step 2 : make Emergency Power set purchasable with tech fragments (set is ridiculously long to obtain if you dont do dxun and i've heard that even if you do it, its still uncommon drops). The difference between an AP PT with this set and one without is huge. Step 3 : do something against class stacking, like it has been suggested for ever

Yep they are strong. Top tier. But don't touch them. Give PT and Jugg DPS a strong DCD in a form of a tactical or set bonus. Also give merc a light DCD too (as well in a tactical or set to not overbuff them). Prevent tactical swap in pvp. Or make reveal abilities (stealth scan and co) more reliable. Atm stealth scan is so bad its laughable, it only works vs mara...

They are glass cannons. In ranked, they are bad in 4v4 all dps matches, unless the other players help them a lot with guards and taunts. They lack a "stop attack me" button, they can't reset fights, they can't really chase low hp people because they need their hold the line skill to kite. In term of damage they are very strong, especially with the meteor brawler 6pc but it will get nerfed soon, and most people know how to avoid/reflect it now. In tank+healer matches they become very strong due to insane damage and getting the support they need.

I'm curious if the Ranged Rocket Punch + Pressure Overrides stack together. Shockstrikes from the other side of the map

Recent theorycrafting goes against those rigid caps for classes with casts and energy management (mercenary having both those things) Only GCD is rounded and has a "cap". Extra alacrity helps for heat management and casts, so there is no such thing as wasting alacrity points. For 1.3 imo you should use that great spreadsheet and focus on getting enhancements / mods with as much stats as possible : if you have to sacrifice stats to get the exact "2374" number, its not worth it at all. TLDR: follow that spreadsheet, get R18 enh and R2 mods as much as possible, profit.

I don't see a lot of IO mercs in solo ranked. Maybe they are that strong but i'm not sure. You didn't talk about a big strength of arsenal, which is healing/ off-healing. Arsenal can do between one and three Tracer Missiles then throw a potent heal which helps a LOT in this meta, in 3 or 4 dps games. And in tank+heal games, you rail shot more and still do decent damage. Your talk about tacticals is also lackluster : in ranked you want to use life warden in at least the last round, so you can't use IO super tactical. And you also missed a great tactical for arsenal, which is Running Rapid Restoration : 10% more healing plus you can heal while moving, which is just great. As I said, i am not sure, I am not an IO player at all. Damage seems brutal yeah, but I will only consider trying it if you convince me healing is at least on par with Arsenal, because in this meta, we mercs lost a lot of survivability. healing is much more important than before IMO.

Another cloak which gives you another force shroud. And you can now take most defensive utilities while keeping competitive damage : Avoidance, Formless Fantom, Fade, Dark Stability, Shroud of madness, Disjunction, Phasing Phantasm.

Those biased sins... "nothing changed except tactical swap" "other classes can do 50k damages" Like this is the problem, lol. Death Knell gives Deception the damage they needed in 5.0. They can now get defensive utilities + two cloaks tactical because they don't sacrifice damage anymore and are much more resilient = they can now guard, peel, taunt much more efficiently. Everything changed and the damage alone is not the problem. The problem is that sins are hard to kill with all the tools they have, and if you don't kill them, they add too much with guard, taunt, and damage.

Imo instead of asking for nerfs, we should ask for buffs. Of course, some illogical things (like pt skank meteor brawl) should still nerfed, but it should not be the norm. For the first time the gearing system changed and they can balance by adding things instead of removing / pruning. Give PT a new set or tactical which makes them survive more (significantly, like giving them a damage reflect for their 6 part)- then you "fixed" and also removed meteor brawler. Give DPS Juggs something similar, new. And same treatment for all underdogs specs. Also don't forget to increase gear drops for pvp modes so people can get those new things fast.

oh yeah, it was on my end, profile problem. good catch sir. Thanks and sorry for the post

Hello, I play with V-SYNC ON and after the patch i noticed my fps go to 200 and is not capped. Just to know, am I alone with this problem? Nvidia control panel setting has no effect VSYNC in-game has no effect. Before, it was working OK, both options. Specs: Monitor 144hz (g-sync) NVIDIA GTX 1070 Thanks in advance

I agree with you, "making it unavoidable" has flaws. Ideally, the immunity system as a whole should be reworked and correctly balanced. I still listed it because it might be the only way to fix merc survival against melees train, to give them 3 4 more seconds to breathe. If some of the other suggestions work, I would be happy to see this one not applied.