A true Sith Warrior should be able to take out a whole battalion of Troopers on his own!

As long as those troopers are commandos, this absolutely happens.

Bump so the topic isn't forgotten.

And with a question. What was Bioware's intent for Commandoes in PvP, assuming that you had one?

Bump so the topic isn't forgotten.

 

And with a question. What was Bioware's intent for Commandoes in PvP, assuming that you had one?

I think that their intent was to have a semi mobile ranged DPS platform that relied on its heavy armor and heals to survive.

However heavy armor doesn't mean squat, and they've admitted to that, because so much of the damage in PvP bypasses it. Secondly, the heals that a dps mando has are relatively weak and easily interrupted so using those to survive while under pressure is extremely difficult at best.

That leaves their only defenses as being range and dps but range does not really exist for the commando because they can be jumped to and their dps, while good if left alone, is easily shut down.

It will probably take a near total reworking of the AC to get it to be competitive in PvP again. Hopefully it happens in the next patch because truthfully, if it doesn't get fixed then I'm not going to wait around for it to possibly get fixed in the expansion.

And with a question. What was Bioware's intent for Commandoes in PvP, assuming that you had one?

Prior to the first nerfs everyone was crying Commandos were over powered - to much utility, could heal and do mad damage

So they nerfed our ability to heal, next they slowed down our attacks... they boosted our damage to make it on par - but 7k High Impact bolts were unbalanced so they nerfed it... (though smashers still hit me with 1390 Expertise for 7800...)

Give us back our nice damage or make us mobile, mobile is better but if you really want us to be a turret then let us put out more damage stationary then some Maruarder or Jugg when he is moving...

Speaking like a true selfish bastard, as a sniper i am very happy with current underpowered state of dps mercs. This basically makes me the uncontested king of range dps in warzones. I can focus on killing healers, melee monkeys, PTs, sorcs without having to worry that someone else will be bothering me from range. I got enemy gunsligers to worry about.

And you know what? Spraking a like true selfish bastard again, i think its right. If orher classes can se line of sight to their advantage, the by all common sense, they shouldnt stand a chance if they decide to facetank me. Therefore a god sniper shpud probably beat the crap out of any merc and sorc in a plain open sight.

The ability to channel while moving would make mercs pretty useful and unique.

If you are going for this, than most probably you will not get any leap, pull immunity CD

I just hope that when Bioware comes back all refreshed from their holiday break at the start of next year, they'll let us know what (if any) changes they're going to make to Commandoes/Mercs. Either through a dev post or PTS notes.

Nothing will probably be announced before the 7:th since they want to suck out another $10 before we unsub.

Honestly if you're going to draw a line in the sand, you'd best wait for the expansion. I don't see any incoming class balance patches being significant enough to make Commando/Merc viable in the interim.

I'm almost 100% positive we'll be seeing a 1.7 before Makeb arrives. They're really sticking with their 6-8 week content updates plan, and I'm pretty sure the next one will be class balance changes.

Makeb is supposed to be in spring, which is anywhere from March to May.

Prior to the first nerfs everyone was crying Commandos were over powered - to much utility, could heal and do mad damage

 

So they nerfed our ability to heal, next they slowed down our attacks... they boosted our damage to make it on par - but 7k High Impact bolts were unbalanced so they nerfed it... (though smashers still hit me with 1390 Expertise for 7800...)

 

Give us back our nice damage or make us mobile, mobile is better but if you really want us to be a turret then let us put out more damage stationary then some Maruarder or Jugg when he is moving...

this is wrong, almost entirely.

people cried about Tracer Missile spam, because nobody knew how to play and use an interrupt correctly yet.

Merc, too much utility? LOL. the devs have been telling us since launch the reason Merc/Mando had fewer utility skills is b/c we had way better damage, which was a flat out lie.

the healing nerf was unrelated to PvP. the hardcore PvE players whined that PvE ops were too easy, so Bioware nerfed Sorc and Merc healing to increase the difficulty. not the best way to do it, since it had a large negative effect on PvP.

Immediately after 1.2 (basically within the first 24 hours of that patch) Demo Round/Heatseeker Missiles were doing craptons of damage. Before 1.2, the damage buff from Tracer stacks was not functioning, at all. So in fixing it, BIoware accidentally made ALL Tracer stacks count towards the damage buff, even from multiple targets. And since a ton of people were still playing Mercs right at 1.2, there were usually a lot of Tracer stacks on targets, meaning you could easily get 50+% damage increases, resulting in 7k+ hits. This was a BUG, and was appropriately fixed.

Merc/Mando damage does NOT need to be buffed. What does need a buff is our ability to continue doing damage throughout most situations. I have proposed some ideas, which got moved into the BH forum here, that would pretty much solve all of Merc/Mando problems and put them on par with other DPS classes

Honestly if you're going to draw a line in the sand, you'd best wait for the expansion. I don't see any incoming class balance patches being significant enough to make Commando/Merc viable in the interim.

Why wait that long?

Simply put, BW has had enough time to sort out the mando/merc classes.

If they can not address our issues in a patch then I highly doubt that they are able, or willing, to address them in an expansion.

I'm almost 100% positive we'll be seeing a 1.7 before Makeb arrives. They're really sticking with their 6-8 week content updates plan, and I'm pretty sure the next one will be class balance changes.

 

Makeb is supposed to be in spring, which is anywhere from March to May.

I agree we'll be seeing 1.7 before the expansion, and that it will be focused on class balance. I do NOT think those changes will be significant enough to make the class ranked viable. We'll get a token bone thrown our way perhaps, or else a completely nonsense change like the change of the stockstrike root. It will reveal, like Macro has said, a lot about their understanding of the class, but I think the class just needs too much, and time is too short right now, and the priority for us is too low, for the kind of significant changes we need.

I'd love to be wrong but I just don't see it.

this is wrong, almost entirely.

 

people cried about Tracer Missile spam, because nobody knew how to play and use an interrupt correctly yet.

 

Merc, too much utility? LOL. the devs have been telling us since launch the reason Merc/Mando had fewer utility skills is b/c we had way better damage, which was a flat out lie.

 

the healing nerf was unrelated to PvP. the hardcore PvE players whined that PvE ops were too easy, so Bioware nerfed Sorc and Merc healing to increase the difficulty. not the best way to do it, since it had a large negative effect on PvP.

 

Immediately after 1.2 (basically within the first 24 hours of that patch) Demo Round/Heatseeker Missiles were doing craptons of damage. Before 1.2, the damage buff from Tracer stacks was not functioning, at all. So in fixing it, BIoware accidentally made ALL Tracer stacks count towards the damage buff, even from multiple targets. And since a ton of people were still playing Mercs right at 1.2, there were usually a lot of Tracer stacks on targets, meaning you could easily get 50+% damage increases, resulting in 7k+ hits. This was a BUG, and was appropriately fixed.

 

Merc/Mando damage does NOT need to be buffed. What does need a buff is our ability to continue doing damage throughout most situations. I have proposed some ideas, which got moved into the BH forum here, that would pretty much solve all of Merc/Mando problems and put them on par with other DPS classes

My understanding is that the healing nerf was as much PVP motivated as PVE motivated. Commando healers were apparently all but unkillable because of all the buffs SCC and Kolto Bomb combined could add. We were super tanky and had easy energy management (the energy management issue might have led them to believe that healing was too easy in PVE as well I suppose, this change was reflected in Sage healing nerfs as well).

The thing with Demo round and Grav Round stacks was working like that before 1.2. It always took into account all grav round stacks on the target, and was counting our own stacks twice.

Unfortunately, one of their ways of justifying the Grav Round nerf was buffing DR/HM by 10%. They called it a "damage rebalance". It was at this point that the bug became more apparent (the damage buff had pushed it over the top in damage apparently, leading to complaints, and probably weird spikes in the metrics they hadn't expected) which led them to discovering the problem and fixing it. Unfortunately they'd balanced their class change around this broken system and we got nothing in return to make up for their incompetence till 1.3 where they allowed us to spec into more Armor pen for HiB and FA, which, along with the chance to cell charge, at least brought us back up to par in PVE.

Gunnery however was always going to be broken, 7k Demo rounds or not, once people learned to reliably interrupt them, because those powerful hits depended on getting debuffs on target by casting grav round.

My understanding on our lack of utility wasn't our damage but our heals, which was crap then, and is crap now, even after they finally admitted we should have an interrupt (that was the justification I saw for us having no interrupt).

The devs have proved incompetent when it comes to balancing this class time and again. Whether it's ignorance or indifference on their part, I don't know, and I don't care.

Why wait that long?

 

Simply put, BW has had enough time to sort out the mando/merc classes.

 

If they can not address our issues in a patch then I highly doubt that they are able, or willing, to address them in an expansion.

If you aren't willing to wait till then I suggest you quit now. They aren't going to address these issues in the next patch. Their isn't enough time to make the right changes and test them to make sure they're balanced, and BW just doesn't care enough. I guarantee they're focusing on the expansion, just as they were focusing on F2P till now. They know they're going to do class tree changes and what not, they may see fixing us as a secondary priority, based on their plans for Makeb.

Should we wait that long? That's up to you. Are we going to have to wait that long for such changes? Assuming they come at all, I think we'll have to wait at least that long yes.

Get out now, or draw a line in the sand for the expansion. That's my recommendation.

..but 7k High Impact bolts were unbalanced so they nerfed it... (though smashers still hit me with 1390 Expertise for 7800...)

I run with a buddy who plays a rage specced jugg. He's been optimizing his gear these last few weeks and we've been laughing about how high he can get with his biggest hits. The other day he broke 8k, and currently averages in the 7200 range per match. Incidently he's nowhere near fully BIS. By the way, thats not 8k hit with only 6k showing because the guy he faced died.. thats 8k showing.

I run with a buddy who plays a rage specced jugg. He's been optimizing his gear these last few weeks and we've been laughing about how high he can get with his biggest hits. The other day he broke 8k, and currently averages in the 7200 range per match. Incidently he's nowhere near fully BIS. By the way, thats not 8k hit with only 6k showing because the guy he faced died.. thats 8k showing.

If you're saying that BW has been inconsistent with the way they've treated class balance, then yeah. No doubt. Makes you scratch your head why 7k single target hits that needed 3 GCDs of uninterrupted casted setup was broken but 7k AoE smashes aren't.

GG BW.

I agree we'll be seeing 1.7 before the expansion, and that it will be focused on class balance. I do NOT think those changes will be significant enough to make the class ranked viable. We'll get a token bone thrown our way perhaps, or else a completely nonsense change like the change of the stockstrike root. It will reveal, like Macro has said, a lot about their understanding of the class, but I think the class just needs too much, and time is too short right now, and the priority for us is too low, for the kind of significant changes we need.

 

I'd love to be wrong but I just don't see it.

 

 

Well they've buffed classes before to make them OP in one patch (scoundrel healer), so I believe they are capable of fixing commandos too. It's unlikely, but possible.

Well they've buffed classes before to make them OP in one patch (scoundrel healer), so I believe they are capable of fixing commandos too. It's unlikely, but possible.

I'd say it's more likely they'll break us in another direction, only to renerf us soon after (can't have Mercs being OP for months on end. That would just be unacceptable).

I agree though. It's possible, if unlikely. I'd love to be wrong though. Just don't think I'll be holding my breath for it.

Why wait that long?

 

Simply put, BW has had enough time to sort out the mando/merc classes.

 

If they can not address our issues in a patch then I highly doubt that they are able, or willing, to address them in an expansion.

My guess is that the balance pass won't come until the expansion, because they're going to make a major adjustment to abilities and trees with the level cap increase. In fact, I'm willing to bet this is the focus of the combat, class design and pvp teams from now until RotHC releases.

Sadly, I have a feeling many of our issues will be "fixed" by tacking on a few passives in our trees, and we'll get some sort of escape as our new ability.

Prior to the first nerfs everyone was crying Commandos were over powered - to much utility, could heal and do mad damage

 

So they nerfed our ability to heal, next they slowed down our attacks... they boosted our damage to make it on par - but 7k High Impact bolts were unbalanced so they nerfed it... (though smashers still hit me with 1390 Expertise for 7800...)

 

Give us back our nice damage or make us mobile, mobile is better but if you really want us to be a turret then let us put out more damage stationary then some Maruarder or Jugg when he is moving...

My god, please get your facts straight.

#1) Mercenaries never had a lot of utility...

#2) No mercenary has ever crit for 7k on High Impact bolt/Rail Shot in PVP

My guess is that the balance pass won't come until the expansion, because they're going to make a major adjustment to abilities and trees with the level cap increase. In fact, I'm willing to bet this is the focus of the combat, class design and pvp teams from now until RotHC releases.

 

Sadly, I have a feeling many of our issues will be "fixed" by tacking on a few passives in our trees, and we'll get some sort of escape as our new ability.

which doesnt solve the root of the problem, so there will be no real change. Merc will still be useless in competitive PvP; we'll just be able to run away faster

which doesnt solve the root of the problem, so there will be no real change. Merc will still be useless in competitive PvP; we'll just be able to run away faster

Yeah. Would be nice to get the Run and Gun Rocket Punch proc and snare/root immunity added to the Degauss specced Energy Shield as passives though.