why are you even arguing about how PvE metrics affect PvP performance?

 

bottom line is that they have no affect on PvP performace. PvP is 100% dynamic, PvE is 100% static. PvE is great for representing a DPS class's ability to do damage completely unimpeded. but in PvP, that is almost never the case.

if you cannot make the connection to how the class plays in similar situations, in both PvE and PvP environments, and how the ability to instant cast, be interrupted, etc. effects DPS, (everything i have stated) then you're being ignorant.

the connection can easily be made. or you can choose to remain closed-minded.

i'm trying to make a solid comparison of the 2 classes, in all enviornments, and how PT/VG outperforms them and why.

or, i can make up my Marc wishlist and hope all of these great ideas will get the time and effort spent to be put in the game and finally fix the class.

but, i understand i don't live in fantasy land.

Nonsense. Spoken like a truly ignorant PVPer who only takes part in one aspect of the game. My opinion on the other hand comes from a decade of MMO experience in both PVP and PVE (SWTOR since beta, rank 14 and gladiator in WoW, WAR, AoC, etc.). If you actually READ my entire post you'd see that I acknowledge the fact that Mercs need a buff in their ABILITY to DPS in PVP, not the DPS itself.

Now you are simply word smithing in an attempt to defend ignorant statements you made which are untenable. If you had read my post, you'd have understood that even in low pressure situations, merc dps is far behind that of other dps subclasses. Your position that "raw' damage output across classes must be the same basically equates to claiming that the devs must anchor class balance first and foremost to damage output vs. training dummies - a prerequisite that DOOMS any functional attempt to achieve class balance. For if that is what damage equivalency is based upon, you would need to make all classes equally affected by interrupts, pushbacks, stuns and cc's in order to maintain that level of equivalence in wz and ops. And uniform equivalence is BORING. Why even have different classes at that stage?

Bottom line is, you cannot just buff raw damage, improving mobility, defenses and ability to do unhindered damage is what's needed.

Sure you can. Just improve the bonuses on 4 piece pvp gear. Done.

Look, you can also attempt to fix merc dps by improving damage output while under pressure. But you don't seem to understand just how invulnerable to stun/pushback/cc/interrupt Merc dps must be made in order to get their real world dps on par with other subclasses. That stuff would literally need to bounce off the Merc 100% of the time in order to make up the 50% damage gap that current exists. Even then it probably wouldn't bridge the gap. And making those sorts of changes just wrecks the sub-50 game where Merc dps is already OP because it is too easy to pilot.

Your talk of "flimsiness" of the Merc class is irrelevant, since even if Merc had 90% dmg reduction at all times, it would do nothing to improve their DPS when they have constant interrupts on them.

It isn't irrelevant unless you want all classes to be identical. Which does seem to be where you are pointing. My position is quite the opposite. IF Merc had massive damage reduction capabilities then the class could be viable even if it had subpar damage output. Or you could have Merc dps do more damage than other dps, but flimsier. But you MUST have a relative advantage vs. other dps classes. Right now that does not exist.

The alternative design philosophy which you seem to hold is to make everything the same. Same "raw" (training dummy) damage output. Same resistance to countermeasures in order to generate the same real world dps. It's boring. Nor in fact would it even work. Training dummy dps and even pve boss fight dps is biased towards single target dps. Forcing damage equivalence in this environments will always leave the AoE dps classes OP for both pve and pvp.

Now you are simply word smithing in an attempt to defend ignorant statements you made which are untenable. If you had read my post, you'd have understood that even in low pressure situations, merc dps is far behind that of other dps subclasses. Your position that "raw' damage output across classes must be the same basically equates to claiming that the devs must anchor class balance first and foremost to damage output vs. training dummies - a prerequisite that DOOMS any functional attempt to achieve class balance. For if that is what damage equivalency is based upon, you would need to make all classes equally affected by interrupts, pushbacks, stuns and cc's in order to maintain that level of equivalence in wz and ops. And uniform equivalence is BORING. Why even have different classes at that stage?

 

 

 

Sure you can. Just improve the bonuses on 4 piece pvp gear. Done.

 

Look, you can also attempt to fix merc dps by improving damage output while under pressure. But you don't seem to understand just how invulnerable to stun/pushback/cc/interrupt Merc dps must be made in order to get their real world dps on par with other subclasses. That stuff would literally need to bounce off the Merc 100% of the time in order to make up the 50% damage gap that current exists. Even then it probably wouldn't bridge the gap. And making those sorts of changes just wrecks the sub-50 game where Merc dps is already OP because it is too easy to pilot.

 

 

 

It isn't irrelevant unless you want all classes to be identical. Which does seem to be where you are pointing. My position is quite the opposite. IF Merc had massive damage reduction capabilities then the class could be viable even if it had subpar damage output. Or you could have Merc dps do more damage than other dps, but flimsier. But you MUST have a relative advantage vs. other dps classes. Right now that does not exist.

 

The alternative design philosophy which you seem to hold is to make everything the same. Same "raw" (training dummy) damage output. Same resistance to countermeasures in order to generate the same real world dps. It's boring. Nor in fact would it even work. Training dummy dps and even pve boss fight dps is biased towards single target dps. Forcing damage equivalence in this environments will always leave the AoE dps classes OP for both pve and pvp.

^^^ word! good post.

the one item i "disagree" with, even tho i actually agree, is your stance/view on character variation.

while i would love to see Mercs be a class of their own and be unique, i just don't see BW putting in the time to code such things. they cannot even fix bugs that have been here for months, let alone lag issues, etc.

my crusade of VG/assault vs. Merc/pyro in terms of DPS in both PvP and PvE environments, how it is significantly different, and how casting is the bane of DPS'ing, is only to point out they do not have to reinvent the wheel to get Mercenary on par with a class that is performing nicely.

while it may be boring and not quite unique, i will gladly take that over a "broken" class that cannot compete in PvE or PvP in terms of DPS.

i'm more realistic than optomistic, in terms of what can or will be done to improve the Merc class. i don't see them using any of the well thought out ideas in these forums. and, if you've played MMO's for any amount of time, you would know this to be the norm. (not listening to the actual player base)

45s cooldown? not sure if serious.

 

Mercs would be *required* to be within melee range to get the effect of Run and Gun. which means they are coming under attack from at least one, possibly multiple melee opponents. the knock-back effect would only be available to the Arsenal spec which, even with all the changes i suggested, would be a sub-par PvP spec to Pyrotech.

 

 

 

do you not play a merc? while i appreciate your opinion, if you have not played a Merc at high-level end game PvP, you do not really understand what the problems with the class are. its performance against bad pugs is irrelevant; that is not how you balance a game. you balance a game based on the highest level of play, where the balance is actually important and highly visible.

 

i have to play at an obnoxiously high skill level in order to compete with even bad FOTM players.

 

and ive said this multiple times: damage output does not suddenly magnify when casted abilities activate instantly. the difference is Merc would actually be able to use those abilities when they are having lightsabers inserted into their rectum.

I'm sorry but there's no way that having all that on a 9 second CD wouldn't be OP. You seem to forget you can also mez people, which by itself gives you free heals. Plus hard stun. No melee in the game would be able to beat a decent merc/commando - ever - under any circumstances. Right now we can beat a melee with proper timing/usage of CC & heals - this would just make it a joke. I think mercs could use *some* love but lets be realistic. Just consider that you could heal 3x back to back with no cooldown...that by itself would be OP...every time you randomly were near someone enough to use that skill.

Right now we can beat a melee with proper timing/usage of CC & heals

No you can't. Not unless the melee is incompetent. When I am on my melee and I attack a Merc/Commando, they always die. Always. Well OK, that is a slight exaggeration. But excepting for the sort of cases where the melee is at half health and Merc/Commando is at full health, or the melee has all his abilities on CD, etc. the Merc/Commando should never beat the melee.

Now I am not a big fan of the "Run & Gun" suggestion since it helps the Merc Pyro not at all. But I was rather taken aback by your claim that the Merc could use that ability to heal 3 times in a row as a trump card. I mean seriously? Who cares if a Merc dps casts 3 heals? You don't think the damage output of a Carnage Mara or Rage Smash Monkey in 9 seconds is well over the healing from 3 Rapid Scans? A reasonable melee dps is more than capable of killing a Merc healer. He's going to make mincemeat out of a Merc dps who tries to be an ersatz healer.

No you can't. Not unless the melee is incompetent. When I am on my melee and I attack a Merc/Commando, they always die. Always. Well OK, that is a slight exaggeration. But excepting for the sort of cases where the melee is at half health and Merc/Commando is at full health, or the melee has all his abilities on CD, etc. the Merc/Commando should never beat the melee.

 

Now I am not a big fan of the "Run & Gun" suggestion since it helps the Merc Pyro not at all. But I was rather taken aback by your claim that the Merc could use that ability to heal 3 times in a row as a trump card. I mean seriously? Who cares if a Merc dps casts 3 heals? You don't think the damage output of a Carnage Mara or Rage Smash Monkey in 9 seconds is well over the healing from 3 Rapid Scans? A reasonable melee dps is more than capable of killing a Merc healer. He's going to make mincemeat out of a Merc dps who tries to be an ersatz healer.

If its so far apart that you can't win by recovering 30%+ of your health (50+ with medpack), then you're awful. I get the "I always kill mercs" argument, because I experience the same thing. That being said, 1vs1 on my merc I also always win. That's because the vast majority of people are really bad at PVP and/or gearing.

If its so far apart that you can't win by recovering 30%+ of your health (50+ with medpack), then you're awful. I get the "I always kill mercs" argument, because I experience the same thing. That being said, 1vs1 on my merc I also always win. That's because the vast majority of people are really bad at PVP and/or gearing.

Did you even read my post? Yes, if you are piloting a Merc and your 1v1 opponent simply stares blankly at you while you cast 3 heals, you probably are going to win. But against any reasonable melee opponent that isn't going to happen. I said it before and I'll say it again - against a reasonable melee opponent, a Merc dps that tries to win the duel by being a healer is just making a bad situation worse.

Well, i would like see in my Mercenary this changes:

1 - One new defensive/escape hability, like a slow target (good against melles) or a speed boost hability.

2 - Rail Shot should hit one more nearby target if incapacitated or suffering periodic damage.

This could be good changes for our Merc's.

2 - Rail Shot should hit one more nearby target if incapacitated or suffering periodic damage.

 

This could be good changes for our Merc's.

Yeah, it'd be great for Assault/Pyro Commandos/Mercs (and Vanguards/Powertech unless they made it a Commando/Merc-only effect, like the +range to our stun & Assault Plastique).

As I understand it, 1.7 is supposed to be the patch that attempts to rebalance the classes. I'm pretty sure that EAware already has all the changes they're going to make set-in-stone and are only messing around with the mechanics to make them actually work, if they do not however, I'd like to make some suggestions to be implemented in 1.7 or implemented further along in the next class rebalance patch.

Although I've dabled in the DPS skill trees for a Merc, the Bodyguard (healer) tree is where I've spent more than 99% of my playtime in since launch, so I can only really provide (probably biased) suggestions for it.

Combat Medic Tree:

- switch System Calibrations (tier 1 Pyrotech) with Hired Muscle (tier 1 Combat Medic).

- change System Calibrations to increase alacrity by [1 / 3 / 5]%

- change Superheated Gas, a tier 2 box, to vent 16 heat (up from 8)

- allow Kolto Shell to be applied to an unlimited number of allies, and reduce its heat cost to 8

- change Cure Mind, a tier 5 box to the following: Cure now removes negative mental AND FORCE effects and heals the target for X

- reduce cooldown of Emergency Scan to 18s

I personally think System Calibrations is fine where it's at, although if it is increased to a 3 point ability, it should be more along a [ 2 / 4 / 6]% increase. If left at 2, perhaps increasing it to [ 3 / 6]% would be better than the [ 2 / 4]% it is now. I know from personal experience, and from my own observations, most Mercs remove most of thier mods and stuff that include Alacrity and trade it for crit, power, or surge. So it'd only add a small boost over where it's at now.

As it stands, Kolto Shell is bantha poodoo. The heat cost for it is still too high to be used as anything but a pre-fight ability, so I definitely think it should be lowered to at least 8 to make it somewhat viable to be used during actual fights. As already mentioned, being able to apply it to multiple people (I'd even be happy if you could apply it to at least 4 ppl) would make this an actual ability to get instead of putting points in other things (like I've recently done, and I'm a much happier and better healer because of it). If it must be kept as a single target ability, and it seems like it's intended purpose is to be more of a self-heal when upgraded and using Rapid Shots during a rotation, then at least increase the amount it heals. I know a charge going off every 3s is actually fairly quick, but these days you can lose more than half your health during that time and the heal you get for the charge going off doesn't even come close to being able to save your arse. I'd personally recommend increasing the amount healed to 10-15% of the applicants total health, but increasing the amount of time a charge goes off to say 5s. So a person with 20k health could potentionally be healed for 2-3k health every 5s. Not OP'd at all, but much better than how it stands now.

Although I do wish Cure Mind would remove all effects, I do understand why it only removes certain ones depending on what class you are. So as an alternative, remove the tiny, tiny, tiny, TINY, tiny, heal you get from using it and make it provide a slightly more substantial one, or at least add a small HoT to it to make it actually worth using if you try to remove an effect and it ends up being the wrong type.

For Superheated Gas, I agree with the suggestion to increase the heat it removes back to 16, instead of the 8 it got nerfed to.

I think Emergency Scan is fine where it is, but I wouldn't complain at all if it got reduced by a few seconds.

One addition I'd like to make is when Power Shield is up, it'd be nice if we were immune to both interrupts and any physical effects such as push, pull, and knockback. I can't tell you how often I have had my heals interrupted by those abilities, and in some PvP instances, I was affected by those mechanics the whole time my shield was up, unable to get off any of my main heals, only to be actually 'interrupted' when my shield went down. Death followed very shortly after. Extremely frustating to be a healing class that can't get a single heal off when employing an ability that should allow me to do so. For this added immunity though, I'd suggest switching it with Protective Field, that way only committed healers would be able to get it, especially when the expansion comes out. Although after reading and hearing about all the issues Arsenal Mercs have as well, they should have access to an ability that provides those same immunities.

My 2 credits, and my excessive use of text.

Going to put my two cents in here. This is pvp dps slanted. I haven't done pve in almost 6 months.

The main problem with the merc is that it doesn't have a combat specialty. I believe the intent for the merc was to be a movable heavy turent with enough dps to hold off attackers and enough damage mitigation to out last a dps race with attackers if they close the gap. Going with that design the merc should be immobile while attacking and hard to damage while the merc is racking up damage. The first part is true currently but the second part is not. When the game first came out the mercs seem to be just that... "Steel cannons" (apposed to glass cannons). They did enough dps to deter most 1v1 assaults and enough damage to make hard to allow them to just run amuck. In short... they mattered. Now merc can still do a lot of damage if left alone but not enough to deter 1v1 encounters and with all rebalancing of classes the end result is the merc is easy to kill. Making them NOT matter at all in pvp.

There are two ways to go to try and fix the merc.

1) give them tools that will fix the current design

2) give them a new combat role

If you are going to keep the current design the merc is going to need much better defensive cool downs, interrupt protection, and better gap wideners. The merc like the sniper should be allowed to keep attackers at range. For this I would move the talent for turning the shield into interrupt protection somewhere so every spec can get that talent or make it a baseline ability. Give the 30m range back to the electro dart. put a 4 second root on the jetpack knock back (talented) and return the knock back to the uppercut and leave a 2 second root .

If you need to change the mercs combat role I strongly suggest you turn the merc into a kite class. In order to do this you simply allow Tracer Missile and Power Shot to be instant casts. This will should not effect pve dps and if it does tweak the damage or heat cost of them. But allowing the merc to fire on the run will solve a lot of it's utility problems and not effect it's dps.

Nothing I said hasn't been said before, but I was hoping to swing the conversation were we concentrate on the role merc should have and then how we fix the tools to allow the merc to perform well at that role. Right now people just list changes without thinking about how the merc play stile should fit in and still be unique. My vote is to turn the merc into a kiter. There isn't another class that can kite well. Both the sniper and Sorc are just better at staying at range (and escaping in the case of Sorc). But those classes also have to stay still to dps. Giving the merc a kiting role will set them apart.

If you need to change the mercs combat role I strongly suggest you turn the merc into a kite class. In order to do this you simply allow Tracer Missile and Power Shot to be instant casts. This will should not effect pve dps and if it does tweak the damage or heat cost of them. But allowing the merc to fire on the run will solve a lot of it's utility problems and not effect it's dps.

I agree with you that Merc dps need some role. Something it is the far and away the best at. Right now everyone objects if Merc gets anything better than what other classes have. Which leads to Merc being subpar at everything.

Dunno if they will make Merc a kite subclass though. The problem here is that the best Merc killing classes are basically unaffected by snares. So in order to have a Merc dps be kite capable, it would need a ton of stuns & roots. In which case it wouldn't need to move at all. Not that BW hasn't already endorsed such a profile (for snipers). But I'd wager that BW would be unwilling to make both snipers and mercs work that way.

There are plenty of options available though if you wanted to make Merc dps viable. Such as:

-Anti-stealth role: give Mercs an ability that makes Stealth Scanner invisible to enemies and roots an enemy stealther that enters its range for 3 seconds.

-Node defender role: let Merc DoT damage stop door/node cap processes (i.e. revert back to the way it worked in 1.1).

-Anti-stun class: give Mercs a talented ability that reduces damage while stunned, rooted or cc'ed by 50%. Combined with the change above, mercs might actually be able to defend a node.

The biggest obstacle to having Merc dps actually have a valued role on a PvP team is Bioware. They need to conceptually get over the idea that Merc dps isn't already the best class in the game. Until BW acknowledges what the entire player base already knows, namely that Merc dps is the WORST subclass in the game, no meaningful changes are going to occur.