PTS Closing? What happened to Merc/Mando changes Eric Musco??????

I am still curious if they plan to address the heat management issues mercs have been complaining about on PTS? These improvements to arsenal/gunnery only really affect the pvp aspect of the game. The devs still have not said anything about helping the heat management issues or improving the pve aspect of the spec. Will we be seeing a reworking of heat regeneration with alacrity? Will we see the return of the 4 piece set bonus that gave us free rail shots? Will they not only restore the 4 pc set bonus, but just give a flat 8% boost in dmg to RS? Will we be able to do our rotations without having to include rapid shots/hammer shot after every 2 casts?

PvE merc heals needs a buff, PvE merc arsenal, judging from the top parses, is fine.

No its not fine. Due to the new ammo management its far more difficult to play a Commando/Merc effectively. The average player will fall further behind with 2.0 since most players have no idea what a perfect rotation should look like. The class is (too) hard to play now.

Uh, I have to disagree here. Arsenal has plenty of skill pts available to be able to stick one pt into Improved Vents. And Rapid Shots doesn't need to be used after every 2 casts - that's Merc Pyro. Doh.

The whole point is to have a class where the average player can not hit the performance ceiling of the class. If your average player is hitting the performance ceiling of the class, the reaction of the devs is going to be to nerf that ceiling. Which is exactly what has transpired with Merc dps, both Arsenal and Pyro.

Uh, you do realize that you always had to skill Improved Vent and it was nerfed with 2.0?

I never said that the average player should hit the ceiling. My point is that the class is much tougher to play now which will on average result in us falling further behind. While it is possible to do really great damage in PVE is much tougher to do so than before. So only the top players will be able really achieve 2600+ single target DPS. On avergae we will fall further behind Maradeurs, Powertechs, Snipers, Sorcs even.

Sadly, you are 100% right with this observation. The fact that it takes MONTHS to get minimal changes made is just ludicrous. The lack of effort is blatantly obvious...

Hey Austin, thanks for the communication! My opinion of you has ticked significantly upward over the past few days, though I still think you can do a much better job and I think you should take cash's advice and engage members of the community who've proven they aren't idiots to help you out.

For my part, while I understand that this deadline, and your small staff, has forced you to put off much needed class balance for the last 6 months, that dog won't hunt, not anymore. More frequent class balance updates are crucial going forward. Some say, with good reason, that after a year we've perhaps waited enough. You can't change how long we've waited, but going forward I would hope and expect that you throw yourself into correcting some of the more glaring issues the community has.

I have to agree with this. I think Austin probably lost most of his staff before the Cartel market hit though, and either they haven't gotten around to hiring more staff, or they aren't going to because EA is just gonna leverage the cash shop for all it's worth. I hope it's the former because using some of the influx of money to get class balance back on track will really help the longevity of this game and ultimately lead to more money for EA.

If they're only looking for the short term gain though, then I fear death throes may be right.

I never selected Improved Vent in 1.7 and never had a heat problem. Indeed rarely ever used Vent Heat in the first place. If you already needed to use Vent Heat/Improved Vent in 1.7, then yeah you are going to have problems with heat in 2.0.

Well, I interpreted your statement to be a complaint that average Arsenal players will fall further behind top Arsenal players. And as I implied before, I think that is a good thing. Right now there just isn't a lot of separation there. Now if your complaint instead is that average Arsenal players will fall further behind average melee dps players, then I agree that should not occur.

I thought the exact same thing. I wonder if they are really just trying to delay what they view as an inevitable sinking ship. What may be happening:

Bioware lost a ton of money on this MMO. Everyone responsible resigned or was fired. They went F2P in a last ditch effort and now they have poured most of their limited resources into the cash shop trying to salvage a profit. They put a skeleton crew on everything else to keep the game afloat. The goal is to make as much money possible while putting out limited filler content until the game loses its appeal - giving the company the most reward at the lowest cost. Makeb was probably mostly done before this whole debacle occurred. Time will tell the real truth.

If SWTOR woudn't be profitabel, than they would close the servers today. The time after the resign of the CEO was never better. Shut it down, write off the costs at once and give the new boss a good start without the burden.
So my assumption, SWTOR is profitable, but as long as EA hast problems gaining profit the will keep the cost low.