Alright, I have a level 31 Sith Assassin that just completed the planet Taris (I know, I am way behind on leveling). So my question is should I catch up on leveling my Sith Assassin or go BH Mercenary. If you think I should catch up with SA, please tell the best way to catch up for leveling.

What purpose are you playing for? If you're playing for PvP, stick with the assassin, as it's one of the best PvP classes. For PvE, go with either.

The merc is generally regarded as the worst dps class in the game for pvp...one of the best for pve if ur arsenal.

 

personally im heals, but i did level as arsenal then pyro, do not ever go arsenal in pvp lol, u can do some amazing dps, my best was 243k at level 24...but i died an unholy amount of times, pyro is fun in pvp, but bioware managed to mess it up by making it different to vanguards pyro with the nice proc. overall if u want to play a class for pvp, roll the assassin, u will only be disappointed by the merc unless u roll heals...

 

don't let ppl tell u the whiners ect are wrong mercs are fine,... their not, if ur maybe the 1% that are rly amazing players, then ull be fine...but honestly their the 1% for a reason.

i was curious about arsenal's usefullness against tanks and high armored tragets in pvp. so i did a comparison on one off my friend's full tank juggernout.

 

i went to tatoine in the pvp area and dpsed him (with him beeing healed ) for about 10 min

 

with once my full elitewarhero Pyro pt , once my full elitewarhero rage marauder and once with my arsenal merc (pve 4set +elitewarhero).

 

the results where kinda surprising with 1130 for the pyro 1150for the mara and 1250 for the merc.

 

the reason was that internal damage (which is often thought to be the tankkiller )is actually not 'that' great against tanks since with all their feats+sorcbuff they get around 20% dr from it (unlike the warzone dummy that has 0% ).

 

 

armor penetration on the other hand gets better, the higher enemies armor is.

of course railshot has 90% ap, but it makes only around 23%(if you get every procc) of the pts damage. the rest of the pts damage consists of flamburst/dots and rocketpunch/td/rapidshots(no armor penetration at all)

 

arsenal mercs have 50% of his damge with 65% ap(unload+railshot) and the other 50% with 35%ap (tm+hsm+rapidshots).

Edited November 23, 2012 by Quantemoq

First off, RailShot does not have 90% armor penetration. Unless you are a Vanguard.

 

Second, why are you attempting to evaluate a Smash Monkey in a single target environment? That is the worst case scneario for the Smash Monkey. In any real like wz, his damage numbers will be significantly higher.

 

Third, why are you using a free casting environment to evaluate the Mercs? Any Sorc dps would have even better dps numbers in that situation.

 

You've used a very artificial setup. WHat you did show was that under the best possible conditions for a Merc Pyro, he does less damage than a Smash Monkey does under the worst possible conditions. Congrats. Clearly this is justification for the nerfs to Merc Pyro and buffs to Smash Monkeys in 1.4. Doh.

"of course railshot has 90% ap, but it makes only around 23%(if you get every procc) of the pts damage. the rest of the pts damage consists of flamburst/dots and rocketpunch/td/rapidshots(no armor penetration at all)"

 

1: Of course in this case I am refering to the power tech and not the merc. since flameburst is a powertech ability. I apologize for using pt instead of Powertech as it seems to cause confusion.

 

2: A smasher having a single target is the "worst" senario in terms of warzone chart damage, but not necessarily in terms of usefulness. As most often you want to burst down targets fast and not spam aoes just to get high numbers at the end of the WZ. Or wouldnt you attack a healer on half health instead of jumping in the middle of the fight and smash those full healed up targets?

 

3: are you really thinking a free casting sorc will have higher single target dumbers? 65% damage of a madness sorc is energy damage will not receive any armor penetration whatsoever (only 35% internal). The sorc I tested in the same scenario was around 25% lower in dmg than all other three classes so I did not list it due to the fact that it was out of competition from the scratch in this certain situation (aka Tank killing).

 

and to the last comment - the buff to rage is ridiculous, I dont think anyone playing a lot of PvP and interested in balance will honestly deny it. And I am not at all trying to say that Arsenal Mercs are overpowered not even saying that they are 'balanced' but merely looking for specific uses for them as I do like the playstyle and think that playing the overpowered Smash classes is boring.

Edited November 27, 2012 by Quantemoq