1.2 Mercenary DPS patch changes -

 

 

CONS -

 

 

3% global crit nerf

 

Death from Above - LOL take it off your bar. 5m radius AoE? Really?

 

Tracer Missle - LOL take it off your bar, oh wait you can't you still need it since the ENTIRE tree is connected to spamming TM. 50% per hit damage nerf. Great mechanic btw. Tracer missle hits for 1k in 1.2 and used to hit for 2k non-crit. 1.5 second cast, effortless to interrupt or disrupt except by only the worst players in the game.

 

+5 Sec to Jetboost - Great now there are no "clutch" KBs that occur. You just die. It doesn't even matter if the Marauder is terrible and wastes their leap. Oh did I use the Marauder as an example? That must have slipped.....

 

-5% Damage reduction - Just in case the Marauder is REALLY REALLY REALLY bad the 5% is the little "extra" that make sure he doesn't lose.

 

 

Pros:

 

Unload procs more often - Gee thanks. 3 second channel. I'll remember to use this when I'm not interrupted, stunned, rooted from behind, interrupted via sleep, knockback, knockdown, etc. etc.

 

Heatseeker Missile - 15%-20% extra damage with the fix. 15 second cooldown.

 

 

Roll back 1.2 ?

Edited April 15, 2012 by TheNinjaboy

What he said.

wow.........

Played my Merc a bit last night and this morning. And what was said above is all true.

 

TM definately doesnt hurt too much on the enemy (especially the first 2-3 i usually stop after 3)

 

Unload procs well. no complaints there.

 

HEat Missle hits hard - hit for 5400 yesterday.

 

DFA - dont really care...i use it maybe once per WZ to move some reps around.

 

 

I do feel i get melted faster now too. Maybe as other classes got dmg buffs?

For a heavy armor class, we are pretty squish-e

+ the 3% crit nerf sucked

and lost about 40-50 Aim after they tweaked gear.

Edited April 13, 2012 by witchdoctaah

Mercs dude seriously? Mercs are fine.

 

Powertechs.

 

If you dont know what I mean you will.

Edited April 13, 2012 by RenegadeSLX

Mercs are not fine. If you think they are you probably also enjoy ***** served on crackers. Our throughput dps was nerfed at least 25% while melee dps is now through the roof. Arsenal and Pyrotech mercs are the bottom of the pile for dps right now, we are the two worst dps in the game and definitely nearly the squishiest, but at the least the squishier dps classes have methods to escape if need be, we never really had much even with jet boost, it got nerfed too! LOL! We got ***** ten ways til Sunday. They reduced the damage on nearly every single attack we have.

I think he was talking about PT Pyrotechs which really didn't change much.

 

 

DPS Mercenaries stopped playing their Mercs and are -

 

 

#1. Playing a Sith Warrior

 

#2. Playing their PT Pyrotech exclusively.

 

#3. Quit the game

 

 

There is just no logical reason to play a Mercenary DPS class right now.

Edited April 13, 2012 by TheNinjaboy

I'm seeing the exact same thing for my commando (the 1.2 notes were almost identical for commandos and mercs). My damage is in the toilet and my only contributions in huttball just got nerfed (concussion charge).

 

I guess by "rebalanced in order to encourage more active gameplay rotations" they meant "rebalanced to get people to switch classes."

What's the -3% crit ? I don't see that anywhere.

What's the -3% crit ? I don't see that anywhere.

 

Hired Gun in the Bodyguard tree.

There is -3% crit.. Previously we had 6% crit bonus on the skill tree (3 point). Now all that three points give you 3% crit.

 

And yes, I did get wasted on all the matches yesterday with my arsenal.

 

I am just leveling my rage juggernaut now, I heard they still kick *** big time.

I didn't think the nerfs were that bad to the bounty Hunter and Commando until I started seeing the total DPS totals at the end of the warzones.

 

It is quite a percentage nerf to total DPS.

 

Marauders/Sentinels, Warriors/Knights are now routinely at the top of the list, with the Bounty Hunters / Commandos squarely in the middle of the pack.

 

I agree with the above, Bioware nerfed the base of the damage tree.

 

It would have been better to distribute the damage to other parts of the tree, instead of hitting the base. They did that a little with Heatseeker missile, but it didn't go far enough.

 

If you fire off 3 tracers, you have a full heat stack on a target.

You can then move to the heatseeker missile attack.

Then unload.

2 more tracers and you have the full 5 to get the most damage out of rail shot.

 

Did the tracers refresh the cooldown on unload? If so, fire. If not, power shot.

 

Out of those 9 attacks, 5 are tracer missile. What was needed was to take the damage away from tracer and put a little extra damage into rail shot, heatseeker missile, unload, and power shot.

 

Force the bounty hunter / commando to utilize ALL 5 attacks for full effect instead of just spamming one.

 

The animation for grav round / tracer missile is very vivid. You KNOW you're being focused by that. You KNOW you have to get out of Dodge when the first one hits, because you KNOW at least 2 more are coming.

 

If you don't get into cover in 6 seconds and get hit by the heatseeker THAT IS YOUR OWN FAULT.

 

If you don't get into cover in 9 seconds and get hit by Heatseeker, Rail shot, Unload, the kitchen sink, the space station MIR, and Super Grover then that is really, REALLY YOUR OWN FAULT.

 

This didn't have to be resolved with a huge damage nerf, but a re-distribution of damage that only succeeds if the target stay in one place for a really long time.

 

This would of effectively balanced the PvP issue, while at the same time allowed the Bounty Hunter / Commando to maintain the same damage level during Operation boss fights.

No point in playing merc after 1.2? As a pyro/bodyguard merc I disagree strongly(bodygaurd sucks, but maybe it's l2p issues for me after 1.2 ). I didn't test out arsenal yet. Yesterday I pulled off top 3 around in 5 warzones.

 

We're boned when mara jumps on us and our knockback is on CD? Yep. Were we boned when mara jumped on us pre-1.2? YEP.

This is obviously a L2P issue...but honestly i really dont see how thats possible as an arsenal merc.

Agreed been playing arsenal since launch and i feel terribly underpowered now in pve and pvp, call us crybabies all you want but i just lost the main reason i played, because i loved played my merc. I always got smashed by melee but now its just terrible. I have an assassin guess i find a new game or just switch to him now.

 

Seeing tracer hit someone for 500the is hilarious, now all my follow ups like RS and dfa also hit for less, maybe i am just a whiney baby but this merc has had enough when the game stops being fun i guess you play a melee or move on.

I didn;'t test out arsenal as I mentioned in previous post, but still I saw couple of merc pwning me from afar like they used to do, when they are unchecked. I don't think it's that bad.

I'm seeing Commandos / Mercs doing more damage then they used too, I think your doin' it wrong. I have heard 0 complaints from the mercs in my guild who arn't bad.

I think he was talking about PT Pyrotechs which really didn't change much.

 

 

DPS Mercenaries stopped playing their Mercs and are -

 

 

#1. Playing a Sith Warrior

 

#2. Playing their PT Pyrotech exclusively.

 

#3. Quit the game

 

 

There is just no logical reason to play a Mercenary DPS class right now.

 

I have 5 50's, and in spite of my Merc having a full set of healing and eliminator BM gear, I'll probably switch to my lvl 49 Marauder when I ding 50 tonight.

 

Here is the problem...when the game first came out, most folks (understandably) didn't know how to play their classes, so the arsenal mercs shined as the rotation is pretty easy to master. As a result, folks were CONSTANTLY crying about TM spam on the forums and in general chat most wzs. People would whine that all you did was spam TM, but the fact is, with that spec you have to get 3 TMs out before your HS missile can reach its full potential, and another 2 before your rail shot does....complaining about us using TM is like complaining about a sorc using force lightning.

 

Once the other classes learned how to play (in particular Marauders and stabby Operatives), mercs were FAR from OP. Classes learned to interrupt TM which really kills our rotation. One on one, most classes should be able to solo a ars merc. That being said, I still enjoyed the class and found us to be a viable part of any comp because of the solid damage we can put out (if left alone) and the knock backs make us quite useful in huttball. Unfortunately the process of making changes like this take time, and by the time they committed to the 1.2 changes, the dynamic had changed dramatically, Bioware came up with the changes that nerf a non-OP class, while leaving EXTREMELY OP classes like Marauders alone (they might have to make some spec changes, but they are no less powerful).

 

I still enjoy the game quite a bit and I'm holding out hope that some of the devs actually play this game, but as I said above, I will probably switch to my Marauder as my PVP main ...I looked at the Pyro spec for my merc, but it has zero appeal to me.

BioWare truly did ruin Merc's even worse than before.

 

Can you say fodder boy's and girl's?

 

PVP for merc scenario.

 

I'm a gonna kill you Jedi.

 

Jedi: Oh really well no you ain't cause I,m going to jump 10 feet over your head and make my escape.

 

BH: DOH! That really sucks cause I'm the stupidest BH ever with a Jet Pack I can't jump with.

 

Here is another scenario.

 

I'm going to kill you Jedi!

 

Jedi: Oh! Really?

 

Good luck with that as I leap into your face and hit you 3 times and watch you fall dead.

 

BH: ARGGHHH You got me I'm dead and I didn't even hardly hurt you at all with my Incendiary missile, Rail-shot, unload, Rail-shot, rocket punch, flame thrower.

 

I did all those attacks and your life bearly moved even though I am Battle Masted all out.

 

WOW I'm dead because MERC's SUCK!

Yes i'm doing it "wrong" give me a break. I've been playing Arsenal Merc the entire time since December. It's hard to "do wrong" if you have 1/2 a brain.

 

Between the changes to expertise and the damage reduction critical chance and TM being reduced by at least 25%, damage reduction to Powershot, that does not account for a Damage increase because Unload Procs more.

 

But i'll regress and take your friends opinion on the matter and just conclude i'm doing it wrong, L2P i guess, you are right and i will leave this thread.

Oh did I use the Marauder as an example? That must have slipped.....

 

It never fails to amuse me in MMOs when someone picks the stationary nuke spec and complains about being destroyed by melee dps.

It never fails to amuse me in MMOs when someone picks the stationary nuke spec and complains about being destroyed by melee dps.

 

Pretty sure it's not just stationary nuke specs complaining about melee dps being overpowered at the moment.

My post concerns PVE.

 

 

Death From Above needed a better change than the one implemented.

 

For starters, it's on a 30sec cooldown, so it's only used one time for most fights.

 

It has a knockback. The "smart" people made it knock mobs outside its (now 5 meter) radius.

 

The more sensible thing to do is to change the knockback into a simple stun, or do a rollback.

 

Groups of mobs are often spaced apart enough to make a 5 meter radius inadequate.

 

Heat gets wasted in the process, because all the mobs it didn't hit must be dealt with afterwards.

 

 

A change that I would truly desire is a resampling of the Tracer Missile sound effect.

 

Please remove that annoying, high-pitched click noise.

It never fails to amuse me in MMOs when someone picks the stationary nuke spec and complains about being destroyed by melee dps.

 

Yeah I guess I should just ignore all those sabers flying thru the air, screams, leaps, and oh yeah stunlock dead.

 

It always amazes me how mobile melee dps doing 100% full damage while in a pally bubble think that it is balanced.