Could Merc/Mandos get some survivability before 5.0 please?

I'm aware of that, though as said ive never actually seen that toon in game or on any stream ive watched save for maybe a handful of matches that were mixed results, not enough to pass any judgement.

Thats not meant to put him down im just saying i base my opinion on observation of the player, and ive never been able to observe them play enough to know one way or another.

I dont put any stock in ratings anyway, they've been manipulated and washed so badly they have no meaning anymore. I know far too many players that dont deserve the ratings they have to take it seriously as another other than luck.

This is why I no longer pvp. The constant crying, it never ends. And then the developers try to appease the little babies, and ruin the game for everyone. You can’t balance pvp, when pve share the same skill tree.

Well i for one am not basing my views here on dueling or 1v1 in any way shape or form. In fact im pretty sure ive said many times in this thread that that is not the concern. I've beaten a lot of players 1v1 I probably shouldn't have and it means nothing other than RNGesus loved me more for that 15 seconds.

^ actually i am kinda surprised how weak mercs are against 2 good operatives that are tunneling. Against 2 of everything else i can usually escape or survive long enough for allies to come, even kill 1 or both if they are bad to average, but 2 (good) operatives demolish me. Especially if i don't have insta 8sec cc.

No ****? 2 good DPS should pretty much lock down anyone (save for a sage healer lol).

Well, actually, something may be wrong here. Concealment has some of the lowest single target damage in the game, and you have some of the highest if you're playing arsenal. Your DCDs are actually pretty good against an operative if you time them right, especially Chaff Flare since that prevents literally every major ability they have, including volatile 'sploding and stuns (I think?).

If you have cover to kite around and enough open spaces to where they can't kite you when you net one of them, you should be able to survive for plenty long. The main issue with fighting operatives is knowing when to CC break and knowing when to pop a DCD, also knowing when to use your burst, cause if you use it when revitalizers is up or they have roll available, you just wasted it.

Of course, this is against 2, and like you said if you don't have your mezz it can be tricky, but still doable. Personally, if you're someone that ends up guarding objectives often, I'd invest in some Seismic grenades. Cheesy as hell for 1v1s, but they're super useful for using them intelligently to defend an objective.

A lot of different comments here. I'm gonna end this just by saying keep using those stacks for slight dps increase. Meanwhile I'm gonna use those stacks to heal and die a lot less than the people saying Arsenal merc are in great need of a very strong dcd.

Sometimes people don't realize that "top deeps11!!!!1!" isn't the most important thing.

Arsenal mercs are not in need of a very strong DCD, a lot of people have already stated that in this thread (including myself). What ALL merc specs need is a slight tweak of existing skills in some form so they don't get auto focused in arenas.

Personally, as someone else has pointed out, making smoke screen baseline on rocket out would be an immense improvement on that skill, considering the class sacrificed our other mobility DCD (HO gained a large increase in cooldown) that keeps us alive. Making smoke screen baseline (along with increasing the distance to 25-30m) would resolve quite a few problems all merc specs face in arenas.

That's just my own opinion, that is literally the only change I would make to Arsenal mercs in the current meta, and one that would help the other two specs as well. Not a massive change, and certainly not something as extreme as a godlike bubble and automatic immunity to damage (it also means we can't dps while using it, as it is now).

Huge change? Don't think it is. Useful change? Very much so.

Can agree to that. ^

ofc not, too few play merc heals to care