Hey guys, just to start things off I am in no way an expert on Bounty Hunters / Mercenaries in general. That being said, I have been playing a merc that I recently got up to 55, and I've been (what appears to be) the only pyro merc around anymore. So, I figured why not help out the people "taking the other path" with what's working for me right now.

First off, here's the spec I've been using:

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#300MZMccZfGbrzRrffzz.3

Of course, as with any spec, there are some talents here and there that are more or less preference (when you're deciding to have more health or to have stealth detection / ranged + melee defense, really doesn't matter from a pve standpoint), but in that build I do think I've taken all of the "necessary" talents for pyro.

I especially want to point out the points into bodyguard and arsenal:

Improved Vents is a no-brainer.

Ironsights is also a no-brainer.

I went with Mandalorian Iron Warheads instead of Stabilizers because honestly, if you're managing your Chaff Flare well, you shouldn't be getting hit to a point where you'd want to lose damage to decrease pushback.

And here's the one where there may be some discretion, so I'll just explain my choice now:

Upgraded Arsenal is without a doubt a better talent to take than Hired Muscle. While Hired Muscle gives you ranged and tech critical chance, it gives less ranged crit chance, and the only real tech damage attacks are your grenades and missiles (which I'm not even 100% sure that those ARE tech damage). Your big-hitters (Rail Shot and Power Shot) are ranged attack - they go off of your ranged crit chance, and scale with your mh/oh - aim - power, not your tech power.

Ok, so now the spec is out of the way.

As for stats, not sure really on optimal. I've been shooting for some random numbers I feel comfortable around:

Roughly 30-35% tech crit (your ranged crit will be higher)

Roughly 70-75% Surge

100% ranged accuracy 110% tech accuracy

If you're at that point, then: http://pic.jpgdump.com/14347.jpg (If you don't want to laugh or have no sense of humor, at this point you want power)

The biggest concern I think most people have is how to manage your heat. First off, let's just put out some good overall merc practices that I've gleaned over the levelling / gearing process:

1) stay below 30% heat as often as possible. You can easily do this by adding a rapid shot after each cast-timed ability (Power shot, fusion missile, NOT UNLOAD -- the point of doing an instant cast after a cast-timed ability is to "combine" the GCD of the abilities; with channeled abilities, it will seem just like using two instant cast abilities, whereas with a cast-timed ability, it will seem like you're nearly only using one GCD, as your GCD for the cast-timed will finish during the cast)

2) If you go above 50-60% heat and there is not a break in dps coming up, use Vent Heat.

3) Remember your rapid shots do more damage to burning targets (pyro only) - they aren't necessarily "bad" to use if you're around 40% heat or so.

4) Save your Thermal Sensor Override for high cost skills like Fusion Missile.

Ok, so those out of the way, here's what my general "rotation" is:

1) Maintain Incendiary Missile at all times, and if at all possible, don't refresh it while it's still active (wait until just before it drops off to reapply, as it will take a second for the missile to reach the boss)

2) Maintain Thermal Detonator at all times (this basically means use it on CD)

3) Combine Thermal Sensor Override with Fusion Missile on TSO's CD - I use this for both big burst phases / opening, as well as aoe if DFA is on cd.

4) Rail Shot before using anything else (i.e., before you proc the free one)

5) Combine Power Surge with Power Shot on CD -- CAREFUL here, only do this if you're comfortable on heat. Power Surge costs 19 heat so you can blow above 50% doing this if you've just reapplied dots or just done another power shot.

6) Rail Shot on proc and CD.

7) Unload on CD provided you have the heat for it (unload is a FANTASTIC ability from a heat management standpoint. It is rarely not ok to use this skill).

8) Power Shot + rapid shot combo

9) Missile Blast - If you have literally nothing else to do or are looking to apply a burn and do a small burst rq. This only applies if you take the Volatile Warhead talent like I do.

Lots of you may just tl;dr this, or ignore it (because screw pyrotech, that's why) - but this is a pretty good setup. I've been pulling threat off of tanks and dps using this setup since hitting 55 (only had campaign gear waiting for me, so wasn't insta-geared or anything), so it seems to do a pretty good amount of damage

Please respond with comments / critiques, I'll see if I can justify myself to your criticism, or I can change the post to reflect your brilliant ideas!

I believe all merc pyros think they are alone. It's not too far from the truth and indeed there are good reasons to not touch it.

I used to run something like your spec with pyro to TD before 2.0 but I've worked on a more aggressive heavy caster spec which was at its best when the 2 set bonus was stackable.

Quoted my "spamcaster" build thread below:

Despite having many misgivings about Pyro in general and defenses in particular I've cleared 8m HM SV with it and did respectable damage comparable to Arsenal.

Have you tested the damage your build can do on a dummy vs arsenal or other builds?

I haven't actually delved much into the world of parsing for swtor; I've been trying to hold back from that, as I got really in-depth with it in WoW and it ended up burning me out pretty quickly. However, I do think I'd like to give it a try at some point if you have any tips / suggested methods to do it?

My only method of "parsing" my damage is how often / if I pull threat from tanks, tbh. Which, if you pull threat on a ranged dps that's pretty impressive already, as from my experience on an assassin tank (primary character), ranged pull less threat than melee. I've downed up to thrasher on my primarily 66-modded pyro merc in hm SV, and was actually having to wait a couple seconds to start dps otherwise i'd pull (wiped us on Dash XD ). Because of this, I have serious thoughts that pyro is not only comparable to arsenal but possibly better. Though, like I've said, I have no parsing available to back this claim up.

EDIT - I actually took a look at your post before posting mine, and felt that mine might still be warranted considering you can't stack the set bonuses anymore.

I recommend looking into parses and parse readers.

It's good to know what your changes really do to your damage output.

You'd be able to compare to what a pyro cast only spec does (giving some leeway for gear differences).

It was better with the 2x2 set bonus but this is what it does as of yesterday with the new 4set.

http://www.torparse.com/a/273522/time/1370578045/1370578464/0/Overview

http://www.torparse.com/a/272581

Roughly whatever it does on a dummy can be called raid dps.

Don't know if you're still following this at all Gyro, but I did try out some parsing and was interested with the results (especially considering the raving-mad discussions of how much better Arsenal is than Pyro).

Granted that I'm not very well geared at the moment, the numbers in these cases don't matter as much as the differences!

http://www.torparse.com/a/285642 -- here's my arsenal (tried to keep them both roughly around 3:45ish for accuracy)

http://www.torparse.com/a/285631 -- aaaand here's pyrotech.

Only 30 dps difference between the two. Granted, I AM better at pyro than I am at arsenal, but I don't think I made an "fatal" errors in my Arsenal rotation (just a couple powershots here and there, lol). I may do more work on this and get better at arsenal, just to see what differences I can REALLY point out.

But for a pretty direct answer to the "what-so-many-think-is-answered" question: No, Arsenal is not necessarily better than pyro. It's what you prefer, how you play, and what you're more comfortable with.

dont know what your gear is now, but we have 3k parses with ars today... 1/3 more

We also have 2.8k parses from pyro with no armour debuff and 80-85% of the damage will increase from an armour debuff.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=637291

Yeah, my gear is terrible btw. NOW I'm about all 69's except implants / relics and my mh, so I'm not going to be putting up numbers like that. But I WOULD like to see a 3k parse! Looking into that sort of thing is generally useful to get better

A 2.8k parse from a pyro merc with no armour debuff is equivalent to a 3k parse from arsenal who already has an armour debuff.

This spec is just too easily shut down with a "cleanse" ability. And when we lose our dots, we lose a lot of our damage. The nerf to TD and the high heat costs to reapply our dots after they've been "cleansed" just makes this spec utterly worthless.

It pains me to say this as I've been playing Pyro exclusively since pre-release. Even during the tracer craze and stuck with pyro. But simply put, there is nothing that Pyro can do that Arsenal just can't do better and at a better heat management.

BW"s attempts to balance Powertech Pyro's have always been at the cost of Merc Pyro. Instead of hitting the skills and things that are only exclusive to powertechs (flame burst etc.) they just nerf the crap out of everything useful for Merc Pyro's so that they're gimped to the ground.

It's BW's fault that Merc's are in the sad state they're in. in 1.1 they got nerfed to **** and haven't been able to recover since. But because they're performing exceptional in PvE they don't want to buff them (dps metrics are apparently a huge factor in a pvp TEAM objective based match), and if they buff Pyro tree, they'll be bringing back the Powertech monsters of 1.7.

They don't want to buff the healing tree, because back in 1.1.5 merc heals were actually worthwhile, but because they couldn't be 1v1'd by unskilled saber wielders, they got nerfed to **** as well, and yet to ever return to their glory days.

TLDR; BW doesn't give a **** about Mercs/Commandos and they will do whatever is in their power to keep them from EVER becoming viable in RWZ. Austin Peckenpaugh must've been abused by his Merc/Commando uncle/parent/teacher/priest/coach/bully growing up so he wants to make sure that anyone who rolls that class has to be a masochist and that the class will never be desireable in RWZ play.

I am in a NIM TFB 8 man group at the moment pulling top mostly in the group here is my guide if u want to look it over

http://circleofenmity.enjin.com/forum/post/last/m/6221583/viewthread/7657722-22-pyrotech-mercenary#last

I died in the last second of the first fight but if u look under deaths you can see if my healers had kept me up i would have placed 6th merc dps on tor parse. that was in the spec i just gave you with that rotation.

Unfortunately pyro will never be viable in raids, even if it parses equal to arsenal. Reason? Tracer missiles not only give your damage an armor debuff, but also the rest of the raid attacking the target. Lots of people have been knocking mercenaries since 2.0 but forget that the tracer missile on the boss makes them do better too

As for PVP, can't comment there. I haven't tried merc's in pvp because of what ive seen and heard. If I were to, I'd probably heal but I already have a 55 sorc and operative that pvps so whats the point lol

Unfortunately pyro will never be viable in raids, even if it parses equal to arsenal. Reason? Tracer missiles not only give your damage an armor debuff, but also the rest of the raid attacking the target. Lots of people have been knocking mercenaries since 2.0 but forget that the tracer missile on the boss makes them do better too

This doesn't really matter, honestly. If you have any other class that does an armor debuff in your raid, you still get that bonus (Sniper, Juggernaut, another Arsenal Merc). So the fact that you can make up that armor debuff based on your raid group's composition pretty much makes that argument invalid.

Pyro is very viable for raids - it's just a bit more situational, as I've come to learn over the course of this. When I started the thread, I had literally JUST hit 55 on my merc. At this point in time I'm 5/5 hm tfb and 7/7 hm s&v with mine as arsenal. However, I have also cleared all this content specced as Pyro - that being said, our core raid group is comprised of 3 mercs and a marauder, so I still had the 20% armor debuff.

I've pretty much stopped parsing any kind of damage because the way I see it (as I saw it before, and I've more or less returned to that way of thinking) if the boss dies, enough damage is going out - so why does it matter?

Pyro is very viable in raids, to make it short. You just need someone ELSE to supply that armor debuff. And as far as pvp goes...pyro will beat an arsenal merc just about every time, unless you just let the arsenal merc freecast on you. Then you're ****ed.

Wait so in less than a month of raiding you went from being a fresh 55 to having cleared all HM and that is the logic behind pyro being viable? I can't speak to specifics as my merc has always been arsenal or bodyguard but it seems unlikely to me that in less than a month, so that is 3 resets you were able to become a contributing member of a raid group on HMs. I'm not trying to be insulting, its just that the only way that that is feasible is if you got all the gear drops which means you were being carried.

On the flip side saying that pyro will never be raid viable is equally ludicrous. The truth is that you are both right to an extent. For true min/max, arsenal is the best choice, however as long as you can sustain 2400 dps there is really nothing that says a spec is not viable. In my opinion it comes down to raid utility. Arsenal mercs provide a bit of utility whereas pyro do not and from that stand point there is only one choice.

Wait so in less than a month of raiding you went from being a fresh 55 to having cleared all HM and that is the logic behind pyro being viable? I can't speak to specifics as my merc has always been arsenal or bodyguard but it seems unlikely to me that in less than a month, so that is 3 resets you were able to become a contributing member of a raid group on HMs. I'm not trying to be insulting, its just that the only way that that is feasible is if you got all the gear drops which means you were being carried.

There was not much carrying involved at all, actually. My mercenary was my 6th character to 55. I had already nearly cleared hm operations (tfb and s&v) with two of my other toons (assassin tank and operative healer), and had an abundance of elite comms. Because of that, coupled with some money spent, my mercenary was in full 69's aside from non-moddable pieces the day she hit 55. After that was a lot of flashpoint grinding for elite comms and potential drops, and a few runs through story mode ops for last few 69 pieces.

It is incredibly easy to gear toons VERY quickly in this game, if you know what you are doing / are willing to spend some money on hilts / mods / enhancements.

EDIT: And I should correct - I had not JUST hit 55 on my merc when I posted this (it has been closer to 1.5-2 months).

Gyronamics, I recently got really bored with Arsenal on my Merc. Usually I heal, but when I get called on to DPS, I look at Arsenal and just go "ughhhhh" and sink in to my chair. So I switched to Pyro just for something else to do, since it's brighter and more appealing. I've been running it a few days, kind of guessing at what was the best playstyle, and decided to come here looking for the "right" way to play it.

Interestingly, basically everything you said is also what I've found works best on my own through trial-and-error. One of the first things I did was drop Unload completely. What I found was that:

• Unload doesn't generate enough heat
  
• Unload resets Rail Shot in an awkward way. When you reset Rail Shot with Power Shot, you can immediately fire it off. Because the reset can only proc on the initial hit of Unload, if it doesn't proc, you're out an extra-long delay before you can try proc'ing it again. If it does proc, you have a much narrower breathing window to do anything else before you need to start proc'ing it again.
  

Basically, Unload is just unnecessary mental clutter, rotational convolution, movement impairment, and distraction. Simply using Power Shot non-stop will proc Rail Shot very consistently and establish a much better rhythm and feel for the PPA icd.

The one thing I've been doing differently is I drop Thermal Detonator and use that point to take Tracer Missile, allowing me to always have the armor debuff up (since I don't run with a regular group of players). If I see the group has a guaranteed armor debuff I Field Respec back to TD, just because I like having more instant buttons to press.

I don't run any kind of amazing or intimidating content, I'm just your run-of-the-mill background player noodling around, but I thought it was interesting that we came to many of the same conclusions about the way the spec feels most effective.

Hey guys, I currently use Assault Spec in 16m nightmare progression raiding and put up some amazing numbers, some of which are the best for our class(s) in Torparse. Here's my guide and I hope it's relevant to your hardships:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=666178

It is in Commandonese however so I do apologize if it's confusing. I am well versed in Mercalish however.