Commando/Mercs are free kills for Vanguards/Powertechs. Then again, you're a free kill for anyone with half a brain after certain nerfs and heat signature stacks not buffing tracer/grav at the moment. Anything with a fairly short cooldown interrupt will ravage you. That's how your class is right now! Left my R72 merc collecting dust long before 1.2

I started as merc and at R72, I got enough and changed to PT... Best choice I made since early access.

Started early access with my arsenal merc and did all the pve content with on nightmare mode while getting it to rank 72. Slowly I got fed up of getting interrupted and faceraped by melees all the time. Started a PT Pyro just for fun back in march and totally fell in love with it and just caught up with my merc the other day and is rank 72 too now. I'm on a low population server.. and never knew how versatile PT Pyros were before I unleashed beast mode in the lowbie bracket ^^ Pyro Merc is just a morbid attempt of mobility. You will still have to cast Power Shots as Pyro Merc, which make the whole idea about PYRO a big fail. Pyro Merc is NOTHING compared PT Pyro. Right now, Pyro Merc is the only viable merc dps spec for pvp. Because right now, arsenal mercs are free kills for most people playing with their eyes open and two hands. IF you bunch 2-3 up at the same spot and they focus target, they can be lethal.. but you don't see that very often.

Nice numbers, did you locate them in a known hole? If we're going to talk crits.. atleast know what is technically possible before spouting numbers... The DoT component of Combustible Gas (empire) ticks over 6 seconds, and can crit for 600-800. (Almost 6k tho! 3 ticks of 800 ^^). It can be applied by using the default auto attacks OR talented to apply when you use Flame Burst (empire). Flame Burst itself is not a DoT ability and it can crit for 2-3k when using all cooldowns and you have around 1800 Aim with 75%+ effective surge, a.k.a pretty good gear. Rail Shots? They will re-apply the Combustible Gas DoT if the target already has it on. 15 second cooldown, but talented it has a chance to reset the cooldown once every 6 seconds. Crits range from 3-5k (On 1200 expertise targets) and potentially 6k crits if the target has crap gear with no expertise. Rocket Punch... 6k? I need the stuff you're smoking Highest i've seen with all cooldowns on light armor was 3.2k and that's on a bad geared target. Yet again... almost your target number!!!1 The "grenade" or Thermal Detonator (empire) as we like to call it. Won't see many of those going over 5k with cooldowns. Then again, it seems to be a preference to go 8 points in the tank tree to get 9% aim boost instead these days. This is with all augmented WH gear, augmented blaster etc... If a player enters a warzone without pvp gear... that person will have to run back and forth from the spawnzone. Smash can crit higher than Rail Shot. Heatseeker Missile can also crit higher than Rail Shot (post "fix"). The fire damage can't even crit higher than 3k, clearly OP! Latest news on the block, pyros aren't arsenal mercs which you can just look at and they blow up. Try that with a pyro and you will be swizz cheesed by Rail Shots and heated to a proper consumer temperature by Flame Bursts in the process. You almost nailed the numbers tho!

So.. the only "upgrade" for me on my merc is... rated WH gear which is only a different color, does that equal I should be mopped around on the ground in my own blood? No. Spite the 10% damage reduction on Tracer/Grav, 3% lower crit from talents and 5% less mitigation, the playstyle is still the same apart from a little more frequent usage of Unload. (Which in itself was mentally challenged "buff", increased our white damage, which already gets mitigated by offhand shields and hell... even sorcs/sages will often deflect with their emo glowsticks while having close to 105% ranged accuracy). We're still immobile, reliant on standing still to get heat sigs up and highly prone to interrupts Revert TM changes, (OR fix the heat sig problems not stacking for TM). Make TM instant casts, but ofc limited to GCD and give the 15sec "finishers" a 1.5-3sec cast time. A little more mobility will help us alot with the current state of pvp where let's say a rauder will be able to annihilate a merc in 7-8 secs if played well. If you have an opinion about the current state of mercs/commandos... try playing one first.

It has nothing to do with "L2P", there's simply too many ways to counter mercs as standing still while casting is the only way you'll have a chance of killing something. In the end we still have to utilize TM as fillers for consistent pressure and increased Unload procs also makes us even more immobile than ever. Rotate interrupt + stuns (as long as the resolve bar allows it) and that's all she said, you're back respawning already ^^ When playing a class makes you angry, bitter and you want to boil kittens in oil... time shelf your merc. And that's not far from the truth at the moment.

Had an awesome Void wz last night! The awesome queue logic hit us hard and we started 4 -vs- 8. We got tossed around abit but fought well, then half the team just leaves.. yeah only 2 left now and the warzone shuts down. 2 -vs- 8 and random draw... WE WIN. The quitters triggered a shut down and the remnants won. \o/

For the young and aspiring Exphies out there that want to remod their gear, there is a half way solution on the surge enhancements. I think it's the "war leader" boots, warrior heavy armor tank set (BM) that has surge enhancements, only ones I've found after the removal of cent/champ gear. They do on the other hand have high END and DEF instead of the wanted power/crit but like 51 surge. Rolled armortech @ 1.2 and I so dearly miss biochem stims/health packs :/ Can't get those 5k Rail crits without biochem adrenal / pvp adrenal, then again.. I've been 50 for less than 3 weeks now

Went 4-5 games against good geared R80+ people just now and I do indeed see much lower numbers on TM than before. So I can agree that something might just be ever so slightly out of order right now.

Okay.. So my "main" is a R72 arsenal merc and i've pretty much left it in the dust lately. Not played on it alot post 1.2 and even less after the debuff "fix". I still have the 150 kills/crates weekly, and it's a harsh world out there now... IF my Heatseeker crits and the target isn't shielded/guarded it can crit for 4-6k somewhere but TM damage is pathetic right now. It's just horrible to play now, most classes can chew up a merc with ease even poorly geared people. From being somewhat decent and being able to dish out some damage before getting chain interrupted + sliced and diced everything just went down the road. They wanted to diversify the arsenal playstyle.. ok they gave us NO new options from what we already did. TMx3, Heatseeker, Rail Shot, Unload + DFA (which also is a joke now), that's the normal... which surprise surprise.. it still is just with lower damage and a 15sec cooldown wildcard that might hit like a wet noodle or crit for 4-6k depending on gear on you/target. I agree with the "fix" to the stacking debuffs from multiple arsenal mercs, but everything else is a turnoff as we speak. No mobility, easily countered by interrupts and really no place on a rated wz team when that time comes in it's current state. I'm just happy that I started an alt a few weeks before 1.2, even wish I rolled it at early access instead of the mess mercs are now. But it is sad to just park my precious merc after the time since early access Would be logical that at close to 19k hp, 11xx expertise and fully augmented armor + 2x augmented blasters and close to 77% surge, a character wouldn't just feel useless like my merc does now. Atleast i'm not rolling the poster child of EA/BW Sorc or the new FoTM maurauder.

Just go the server list and sort by population, being on Chuundar myself almost at the bottom of LIGHT POP bracket makes it a nightmare to get 4man FP group going and we have like 2-3 guilds on empire that even do 8-16man OPS atm... And that's on empire side.. Rep side is pretty dead. It's highly needed and i'm sure they're sitting on numbers on how many people are logged on during peakhours to also see this. In the end it's their money move away to other games one by one because there's alot of servers in horrible states now and not to mention... it's cheaper to maintain less servers yes?

Amen. Suffered thru 71 ranks in pvp getting anything I cast rofl stomped back in my face along with 1-2 melees glued to it. With all the gap closers and interrupts it's fairly hard to actually get off enough damage to be a threat unless you're being babysitted by a tank and healer.

You know the thing you've most likely not read about in your talents.. that stacks from getting 3x tracers up on your target.. yeah it's important for various reasons. So interrupting tracers/gravs is highly vital. Unload is white damage, which is prone to accuracy and even a healer sorc will deflect some of it with their emo glow stick.

I dunno... but it ONLY crits for about 2k more than Explosive Dart Heard it's nice to focus stuff in pvp and burst them down, tho it's perfectly viable to play with a 8/6/27 spec (PT Pyro that is) without Thermal Detonator. If you're a Pyro Merc, then I must sadly say it's a must since you'll lack instants to spam. ^^

The new "correct" range is very bad and coupled with the outwards knockback it's something that is mostly ignored after the patch. The change to the effective damage range is pretty horrible at the moment, and if they won't revert the changes... atleast change the knockback to a knockDOWN so there atleast is a chance we can kill 2 / 5 mobs in a solo pull.