please remove

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Hey folks,

 

Round 2! Below are the changes planned for Arsenal Merc / Gunnery Commando in Game Update 5.3. Here are the notes from the Combat Team:

 

 

 

Let us know what you think of the changes coming to Arsenal and Gunnery in GU 5.3. Thanks!

Strongly disagree with the changes to DPS, you guys simply needed to adjust the healing numbers of the our survival abilities. I think the player community would agree that our DPS was fine it was just that the healing capability of some of DCDs needed to be less. I do not support these DPS changes.

They did reduce some of the DCD.

 

Decoy now has 2 charges (down from 5)

 

Some of you will not be happy until Mercs are glass cannons again.

Exactly.

How quickly people have forgotten how defensively weak they were prior to 5.0.

.... why do we see damage nerfs? Merc's damage isn't the issue. The issue is they are standing there, turreting while tanking 5 people without a way to punish it. Remove trauma regs (or nerf it) and you will significantly fix their survivability imbalance. Nerf their survivablity and you will nerf their damage because they will be forced to think about cds, kite and LoS.

watch them do that now, while keeping the dps nerf and the nightmare heat management they just created.

Maybe we should simply delete our mercs and that would solve the problem.

They did reduce some of the DCD.

 

Decoy now has 2 charges (down from 5)

 

Some of you will not be happy until Mercs are glass cannons again.

A high mobility (best kiting spec in the game) ranged burst spec... that's tanky... with a **** ton of utility and control... and a metric **** ton of passive and active self healing...

Makes

Complete

Sense...

Exactly.

How quickly people have forgotten how defensively weak they were prior to 5.0.

Removing ONE of your entire array of insane defensive cooldowns won't turn you into Glass cannons again.

But this Decoy this is not nearly enough and frankly.. not even part of the problem at hand.

If you keep the damage but nerf the Survivability, you'll end up doing less damage anyway because you're going to have to start using **** to defend yourself before you blow it to kill people.

They only thing is.. the damage didn't have to be changed.

This is going to hurt PvE, where it hardly matters, and do nothing for PvP.. which is the whole reason this class needed change.

I agree the survivability should have been dealt with before DPS output. However, as they have said more than once already, next patch is all about DPS. You can continue to complain in other threads, and I will back you up (even as a merc player). They might even manage some utility changes in 5.3 (though that would surprise me). But mentioning utilities in this thread is no use, they want people to discuss DPS changes (also they decoy nerf, which is a small help in PVP lol).

To everyone saying DPS isn't the issue, well considering the balance goals, it is. PVE-wise, arsenal was too performing on certain fights (especially considering how easy it is). While I think the nerf shouldn't be as big (because I think the gap they try to create between range burst and melee sustained is too high, they need to nerf less, and buff lightning and MM a bit), everything is coherent.

Literally nothing about this list of changes is going to make a difference in PvP. None of them address the real problems, caused by TR and KO, as others noted.

Then what is going to happen is that in a few months, when they finally get around to balancing utilities, TR and KO will be nerfed. But of course by then DPS will have already been nerfed in 5.3, so mercs will be super weak again.

If I were a main merc player I'd be pretty pissed they were nerfing DPS now when they will clearly be nerfing utilities later.

Nerfing DPS is NOT part of the problem !

You don't understand a thing about mercenary... It's shameful...

I agree the survivability should have been dealt with before DPS output. However, as they have said more than once already, next patch is all about DPS. You can continue to complain in other threads, and I will back you up (even as a merc player). They might even manage some utility changes in 5.3 (though that would surprise me). But mentioning utilities in this thread is no use, they want people to discuss DPS changes (also they decoy nerf, which is a small help in PVP lol).

 

To everyone saying DPS isn't the issue, well considering the balance goals, it is. PVE-wise, arsenal was too performing on certain fights (especially considering how easy it is). While I think the nerf shouldn't be as big (because I think the gap they try to create between range burst and melee sustained is too high, they need to nerf less, and buff lightning and MM a bit), everything is coherent.

You just can't go about changing DPS before you know what happens when you bring survivability back to earthly levels.

If this is their way of doing balance for now, then maybe they shouldn't do any balance right now and rethink the whole thing first. Push back balance adjustments for 5.4 or even 5.5. Class Balance is a delicate matter that you can't just throw around and hope for the best

I think that would be best for everyone including Mercinaries themselves.

Literally nothing about this list of changes is going to make a difference in PvP. None of them address the real problems, caused by TR and KS, as others noted.

I dunno, I look forward to more easily destroying baddie mercs since I won't have to roll-kite-LoS as often due to their reduction in deeps. Multiple & well-timed e-nets will still be a problem.

You just can't go about changing DPS before you know what happens when you bring survivability back to earthly levels.

Actually, yes you can, cause in PVE, defensives (especially trauma regulators) don't affect he DPS at all. This is a wave of PVE changes. This change won't have a big impact at all in PVP. They are nerfing the sustained part of arsenal (blazing bolts) and not the burst (heatseaker, rail shot, priming shot), which affect PVE more than PVP. Their choice of ability nerfing is good (though a bit too big, I know I'm repeating ).

Once again, even as someone who PVEs more than he PVPs (I do both), I agree PVP changes are a bigger issue rn (well except sorc DPS), but we gotta give them what they ask for, which is "What do you think of the DPS changes" and not "Do you think we should nerf trauma regulators"

Actually, yes you can, cause in PVE, defensives (especially trauma regulators) don't affect he DPS at all. This is a wave of PVE changes. This change won't have a big impact at all in PVP. They are nerfing the sustained part of arsenal (blazing bolts) and not the burst (heatseaker, rail shot, priming shot), which affect PVE more than PVP. Their choice of ability nerfing is good (though a bit too big, I know I'm repeating ).

 

Once again, even as someone who PVEs more than he PVPs (I do both), I agree PVP changes are a bigger issue rn (well except sorc DPS), but we gotta give them what they ask for, which is "What do you think of the DPS changes" and not "Do you think we should nerf trauma regulators"

They didn't need nerfs for PvE at all. I raid Nightmare on a weekly basis with some of the games finest Mercinaries, and not once did I feel like they were overperforming.

So even in that regard, it doesn't make any sense.

Watch them change utilities the next round and see Mercs become completely useless again because they have neither survivability nor damage output. The vicious circle of Bioware Class Balancing. Have a good one people.

 

 

I would advise you guys to stand up to these changes if you know whats good for you.

Because this will never end this way.

All they need to adjust is 1 utility. Merc damage is fine. They used to be balanced around the fact they were a casting glass cannon. With the new DCD changes they are unkillable cannons.

The only reason I can see why they did this change is, it was an easy way to fix Arsenal Mercs without touching healing Mercs (which they believe are in the right spot). Thing is, good healing Mercs don't even need/use Trauma Regulators. Just nerf thisTrauma Regulators so DPS Mercs aren't completely stupid. On top of this, the other downside to this kind of nerf is it completely wrecks Arsenal in PvE, which from my understanding, wasn't even parsing well.

I see these changes to just be an "easy out" to try to fix the problem, which doesn't actually fix the problem. Ask any PvPer with a clue. They would say the problem with Arsenal is Trauma Regulators is too strong. We have been repeating this over and over again, still hasn't clicked for the devs .

While I agree that the dps nerf is a little too much, and I don't even play Arsenal (I used to, still know it very well). Yes utilities are an issue.

From a pve perspective

Marksman and Lightning are technically viable for endgame fights. Even without the chain lightning bug. Unfortunately, it takes skill to perform at those levels. There are videos of both lightning and marksman being used on nightmare Brontes, for example. And they weren't being carried.

My point is that this is not the end of the world. In pvp they will still be perfectly viable. We will hopefully see less games where over 50% of the players are mercs. In pve it just requires people to step up their game with Arsenal and also to learn IO. In the end it'll make them better players.

Again, I do not agree with how drastic the dps nerf is. Instead it would have made more sense for Mm and lightning to receive buffs and Arsenal to receive a slight nerf. Hopefully they'll address the utilities in 5,4. For now, we wait.

Total fail. Unreal.

These changes screws PvEers. In PvE the damage is fine. More disgruntled players from this front.

These changes do nothing in PvP, where the biggest problems with the class are. This keeps the disappointment and disatisfaction high.

Excelent job

They told us How Class Balance Happens.

Arsenal is a ranged burst spec, therefore it should be -5% from the target dps.

Looking at Bant's numbers, Arsenal was slightly above average in terms of sustained dps. Therefore, its damage is too high and needed to be toned down.

The reduction in Decoy charges will probably make a slight difference in PvP (although I'm guessing many of the FotM re-rollers probably did not know that they could use Chaff Flare for anything ). The Crit bonus damage reduction from Target Tracking will also make a slight difference in PvP.

These changes make perfect sense to me, within the context of what they told us their balance goals are. If you are upset with any of this, then perhaps you should try to argue that 5% below the target sustained dps is too much. Maybe it should be more like 2.5%? Yes, I would think that Trauma Regulators should be taken away for PvP, and coupled with these damage changes, Arsenal might be fine. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.

This change won't have a big impact at all in PVP. They are nerfing the sustained part of arsenal (blazing bolts) and not the burst (heatseaker, rail shot, priming shot), which affect PVE more than PVP. Their choice of ability nerfing is good (though a bit too big, I know I'm repeating ).

•The critical damage bonus provided by Target Tracking is now 15% (down from 30%)

That's a hit to burst damage. This should tone down nubshot and noobseeker missiles alittle, alteast in pvp.

They told us How Class Balance Happens.

 

Arsenal is a ranged burst spec, therefore it should be -5% from the target dps.

 

Looking at Bant's numbers, Arsenal was slightly above average in terms of sustained dps. Therefore, its damage is too high and needed to be toned down.

 

The reduction in Decoy charges will probably make a slight difference in PvP (although I'm guessing many of the FotM re-rollers probably did not know that they could use Chaff Flare for anything ). The Crit bonus damage reduction from Target Tracking will also make a slight difference in PvP.

 

These changes make perfect sense to me, within the context of what they told us their balance goals are. If you are upset with any of this, then perhaps you should try to argue that 5% below the target sustained dps is too much. Maybe it should be more like 2.5%? Yes, I would think that Trauma Regulators should be taken away for PvP, and coupled with these damage changes, Arsenal might be fine. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.

The thing is.. if you base yourself solely of dummy numbers, where everybody can stand still and doesn't have to worry about the dummy killing them back, then your numbers are going to be highly skewed. Read the rest of this thread, honestly. You'll come to the conclusion these changes are not what we need nor should want to see.

Even if you play a Mercinary yourself. Because you are now getting dangerously close to becoming a DPS Sorc as far as balance is concerned. Wait it out.. watch what happens when your utilities do get changed. You won't be happy.

So Merc/Mando survivability is is over tuned so naturally you nerf their damage.

I feel like this doesn't address the biggest problem for Mercommandos, that being the fact that they're too sturdy on their own as "DPS".

I am afraid those people are right.

I would really be interested in having BioWare specifically answering those comments as it seems it's where lies the real issue.

Note: my main is indeed a Merc now.