Buff merc/mando

If they give mercs an anti-focus button and take nothing away, there will be nothing but dead sorcs/sins/juggs/pts/ops/maras/snipers/sages/shadows/guardians/vgs/scoundrels/sents/slingers strewn about. People won't even rez back to the spawnpoint for fear of what will become of them once the gate drops.

It will be armageddon.

It will be glorious.

The funny part will be that most of the lemmings in the game will have to re-learn to play if "target the merc" wouldn't be so obvious, lol

God...this would be funny if it weren't so damn true.

hehe,

But in any case yes, the 5 Absorb from Chaff Flare thing for arsenal do help ofc but not enough in overall, saves u in 1 bust second, against full focus fire from at list 3 dps for few sec and are stronger then Shield Probe.

Mercenary need something Anti Focus fire that should help the situation, something that will force the players to focus attention some where or wait for so much sec, and plz god no, Don't make any rip off from Sorc Force Barrier.

I got one maybe stupid idea here. Maybe ability that makes everyone attack the Merc have like 90% Accuracy or Defense chance equal to IO - Chaff Flare (Range and Melee - Tech and Force) for 6 sec Immune to all crowd control in that period of time Like Assassin Deflection (So u can at list use Push back to and stuff on them).

2 min 30 sec CD or 3 min. ?

I learned something about it that I wasn't aware of when questioning zachariah about his game play: the absorbs only absorb specials. so unlike barrier or ED, it's not the next 5 things, it's the next 5 things of a certain type. in that sense, it's like shroud except shroud has a timer whereas flares has absorb probes. also, shroud does more stuff like purge, but that's not really relevant to the discussion. the upshot of it was that he had to pop shield (25% DR) while chaff flares were active, because you can't even depend on the new ability to absorb the next 5 hits. basically, it's still an educated guess the way the IO version is (35% chance to work).

TheButtHat was implying that if you suddenly were given sorc barrier and found your burst nerfed to lighting levels you (as in mercs/mandos) would QQ.

I assure that if mercs are given an anti-focus ability akin to barrier sorcs are going to be clamoring for merc level burst in lighting alongside some sort of "**** you" ability akin to enet.

The arms race will be interesting to watch.

heh. madness has barrier too. and they're not useless. IO says hi. can I haz w/o nerf?

We will let sorcs/sages keep their 8 meter AOE while mercs/mandos will keep their 5 meter AOE. There, dps evens out without nerfing the burst.

Buff merc/mando is a bit vague. Healing is pretty decent in pvp for the merc, imo. The biggest issue is not the heals, it's their total lack of survivability when focused, and this applies to the dps merc too.

Give the class some sort of anti-focus ability and the class would be in a perfect spot.

there are, in my mind, two kinds of "anti-focus" abilities: those modeled after sorc barrier and those modeled after jugg enraged defense.

I fully understand and generally agree with those who express concerns about giving mercs an ED-type of dcd (i.e., something that allows them to output heals/dps while the ability is active). HOWEVER, ED is rare, and appears in weaker iterations on shroud, deflection, reflection and undying rage (all, incidentally, melee).

Barrier (along with phasewalk and combat stealth), on the other hand, force focus swaps without allowing the player to continually heal/dps. I am puzzled by people who argue that merc dps/heal would be OP with this kind of ability or who argue that they need some sort of dps/heal nerf if they were to have this sort of ability. It takes them out of the fight. this isn't a ticket to free cast.