Reduce Arsenal's heat management back to how it was before 2.0 and they will be fine.

Quote: Originally Posted by Ryvirath View Post

 

Make all healing generate supercharged gas for the merc and make supercharged gas grant 25% alacrity. Change the wtfrubbish talents (Peacekeeper and Kolto Jets) and replace them with the following:

 

Emergent Triage 1/2: Healing a target below 50% health has a 50/100% chance to reduce the cooldown of Emergency scan by 9 seconds.

 

Kolto Mastery: Targets affected by Kolto Shell receive 5/10% more healing from rapid scan, healing scan, rapid shots, emergency scan, and kolto missle.

Edited October 28, 2013 by Lalainnia

Reduce Arsenal's heat management back to how it was before 2.0 and they will be fine.

 

Eric,

 

If you all fix the heat you also fix the majority of the dps concerns.

Arsenal Mercs should have the free rail shot added back in, but I don't think the rail shot should be tied to a set bonus. It should work off something from the skill tree, like how pyros get a free proc and ap pt's get a free rp.

 

My idea for rail shot:

- Tracer lock now also reduces the heat of the next rail shot by 2 heat per stack. (Maybe lowering dmg per stack to 4-5% to offset a little)

 

Also, the interrupt change would be an amazing QOL adjustment. With the amount of raid wide dmg that the new bosses do, I find my channels constantly longer than expected. I can't count the number of times that my unloads last tick has been clipped. This would result in a dps boost, that would help up compare to snipers/marauders(if they do indeed get some nerfs).

Purely from a pvp perspective, as someone who is succeeding as an arsenal merc in 4s, playing with a merc healer in 4s, and playing pyro in solo queue...

 

All specs:

- add a disengage move like hunters have in wow. We have a jetpack ffs. Would help us get off additional hard casts as well. 30m. 45 sec cooldown.

 

Bodyguard: In general, you need to model this class more off the paladin/shaman in wow since that's what it is

- some type of chain heal ability

- another instant cast such as a holy shock type of ability

- more buffs from using supercharged gas. it's interesting and makes merc healing fun

 

Pyro:

- dots being dispelled are ok, just make them tick harder. make the talent "only affects players" if it screws with pve too much. When I play pyro, the burst combos feel like they're just not quite enough. Harder ticking dots would make up for this. Lethality snipers are the perfect example of a dot class.

 

I feel arsenal is in a good place. I would suggest not to mess with heat management because I think it's in a great place and you can tell a noob from how they can manage their heat. If I had a disengage I would feel like arsenal merc was the most complete class in the game.

 

As I said in the sorc thread, watch mudclot's stream tonight for jugg tank, op heals, lightning sorc, arsenal merc. You will see our strengths and our issues as casters.

In Terms of PVP,

 

The Mercenary community has been asking for a disengage ability for quite some time now. The ability to use my jetpack to put some extra distance between myself and a opponent would be nice. Many of our opponents have better escape abilities than we do such as stealth/vanishing moves. Plus the bounty hunters have a jetpack that is hardly even used. Having this ability or seeing the return of the knockback effect on Rocket punch would be greatly appreciated.

What is the point of having separate Commando and Mercenary threads? They should be combined into a single thread so readers can view ALL responses, not just half of them. New ideas can grow from existing ideas that are posted, and splitting up the posts onto 2 different threads only hinders the process and helps in no way.

 

That being said, I think Mercs are fairly decent in solo ranked arenas. I really don't have a problem with being interrupted anymore because that's not how the fights pan out these days. With 2 charges of Power Surge, the Merc has enough options to last until someone dies, weather its the Merc or not. (The only way you are going to stand still and spam tracers is if you are 4 on 3, in which case you would most likely win regardless of what you do. Key to winning is equally "Kill Someone" as well as "Dont Die First")

 

Weakness in solo ranked arena: Dual Stealther opening burst. Puts you in survival mode for the rest of the round and never lets you go on the attack

 

Strength in solo ranked arena: Hydraulic Overrides, Off Heals

Having this ability or seeing the return of the knockback effect on Rocket punch would be greatly appreciated.

Maybe this could be a skill box? Some players prefer a root because it doesn't build resolve, and can affect a full-resolve opponent.

 

And if its a skill box, you could swap it depending preference. Huttball walkways and Voidstar bridge are main 2 areas where a KB would be superior to a root. But in an arena, a KB might not be as useful since resolve is possibly more important.

Edited October 28, 2013 by DarthBloodloss

I'm going to be tackling the issue from the perspective of merc dps in pvp.

 

The issue is not with our damage, and its not even with our burst. When I play merc dps in pvp, I always wonder why I'm not playing another of my characters(I play my merc because it was my main for pve and my first char, so it has all my stuff on it). I don't think any player should get the feeling of, "Why am I playing this class?" for either pvp or pve.

 

On a point by point basis, where the merc lacks in comparison to other classes:

 

 

Defensive Cooldowns:

 

This one is fairly blatant, exaggerated even more so in warzone arenas. Spiking is the most effective way to dps in pvp(combining several dps to one target). Mercs get Energy shield(a mere 25% dr) and kolto overload(which doesn't even heal half of what your average player is able to dish out and isn't very effective against spiking by its design). Chaff flare gives +25% defense chance when spec'd into, but even so all defensive cooldowns combined on the merc will do very little to keep an enemy team from spiking the merc down. To make matters worse, these take a total of 3 global cooldowns to apply what in aggregate is weaker and less effective than a single GCD use ability of pretty much every other class in the game.

 

 

Mobility:

 

Again fairly blatant, Mercs have one ability for mobility and that is hydraulic override. Hydraulic override is great against slows in matches like hutt ball, but as mobility goes for chasing or escaping, its pretty weak. So mercenaries still lack an effective way to get into fights, let alone away from them.

 

 

General Utility:

 

Concussion missile is the poor man's sap or flashbang. In order to make it as effective as sap, the merc must use power surge.

 

Power surge exists solely to compensate with the merc's extreme vulnerability to interrupts(mercs have no form of interrupt immunity on any of their important channeled abilities).

 

Stealth Scan is actually a nice ability unique to mercs, but it can only be used effectively to stop escapes. Otherwise the player needs to know where the stealther is in advance. Attemps to use it defensively then cap a node simply result in the player being sapped(sap outranges the stealth scan zone which is very tiny).

 

Electronet, again a nice anti-stealth measure, but only to keep them from escaping, it doesn't stop them from coming in.

 

 

Most other classes have extremely effective utility skills, the list of which would be too long to bother naming. Best way to look at this section is think of any other class and compare their list of utility abilities with the mercenary.

 

 

Suggestion for changes:

 

Besides improvements to the above areas, I think it'd be nice if mercenaries had more of a unique role rather than simply moving them to be more like powertechs or some other class.

 

My proposal would be to make them a strong anti-stealth class. Stealth is currently a really useful tool in pvp, and if mercs actually had strong anti-stealth defensive capabilities they'd suddenly become a whole lot more useful. I'd suggest changing stealth scan into an anti-stealth emp field, dramatically increasing radius and duration to start.

A change that would help commandos would also benefit mercs:

 

Do away with Tiered Energy system by making it more like a sorc's energy system (though, please no consume like ability to lower hp in order to gain more energy).

Merc healing - Pvp Perspective only

 

There is a couple problems with merc healing verses the other two healers. The first is the lack of any proactive heals. Sorcs have bubbles and ops have hots but mercs have kolto shell that only can go on one person and doesn't trigger enough to be super useful. I would suggest that the abiliity be able to be placed on 3 people and the energy cost be reduced to zero (as it was pre 1.2). This way, you can have some proactive abilities going around but not enough to overwelm the battle field.

 

The second problem is energy management. Mercs have, by far, the worst resource management of all the healers with no good way to recoup for losses. I would suggest one change here. Have activating supercharged gas, when activated vent 25 heat instead of the current 8. This would go along way to get the energy management on par with other classes.

 

Merc healers lack an "oh ****" button. Sorcs can bubble for 10 sec of invuln (which they can heal via tree option) and Operatives have vanish and to a greater extent, roll. Energy shield spec'ed with poweshield isn't enough. I suggest that Supercharged gases can be used while stunned and grants 3 charges of a buff that lasts 8 sec that, while you have one of these buffs, you can cast emergency scan without a cooldown and it automatically crits. So your oh crap button is being able to chain 2 emergency scans back to back that auto crits. With Mercs only having 2 other channeled heals, this seems reasonable given their vulnerability to interrupts.

 

Lastly, a slight increase to the base healing of the two channeled heal abilities. If Mercs are supposed to have the best single target heals, then buff their channeled abilities a bit.

 

[

Edited October 28, 2013 by SgtBranham

posted this in the Commando thread:

 

-Tech Override: base 60s cooldown

-Reserve Powercell: base 60s cooldown

-Fix the 6c internal cooldown in Assault for proc'ing the Plasma Cell DoT with Ranged attacks (makes it a real pain switching targets)

- Combat Medic needs a lot of love. There are countless threads on it that you could use (and should have already been using) as references Eric.

- *DO NOT* fundamentally change our resource management. It is unnecessary and IMO would the extreme long way of solving the problem. There are small, relatively easy changes that would provide the same improvements

 

Overreaching changes should be made to the Casting/Interrupt system. This was hinted at in the answers to the Mercenary Rep questions, and is an idea that I like. My suggested changes for how casting/channeling/interrupting should work:

 

-You can now Cast and Channel while moving (can still be interrupted)

- Casting while moving slows your movement by 30%

- Channeling while moving slows your movement by 70%

- Once interrupted, you cannot be interrupted again for the duration of ability lockout (iirc this is 4s)

- Alacrity now also reduces the slow effect from moving while casting/channeling.

 

 

Oh, and please fix the DR of a lot of stats. Crit, Alacrity and Accuracy all had their DR curves changed in 2.0 (I assumed to correct for stat inflation), but the changes were way more drastic than they should have been.

What is the point of having separate Commando and Mercenary threads? They should be combined into a single thread so readers can view ALL responses, not just half of them. New ideas can grow from existing ideas that are posted, and splitting up the posts onto 2 different threads only hinders the process and helps in no way.

 

Yeah, I completely agree. I think we can all handle the different terminology being used.

 

As for fixes. Free rail shot on Arsenal will fix a lot for PvE, that's on the top of my wish list.

Please don't change Kolto Shell, at it's current state it's an awesome tankhealing tool. Don't change it to something it wasn't intended for (raid healing tool). Right now we are only good at tank healing (really good at it tbh), so don't make us better raidhealers at the cost of tankhealing and turn us into an ok at both but good at nothing type of healers.

 

My suggestions for Merc healing PVE is to make heat management easier:

 

Well based only on my experince with overheating, I only overheal when my big heals refuse to crit and have to catch up (nothing to do about that) or there is a lot of raid healing required becuase of f*cked up mechanics.

 

Taken from that my ideas (not gonna say specific numbers, i'm not theorycrafter):

-a general small heat reduction to rapid scan and/or kolto missle

-and/or supercharged effect added to rapid scan: additonal small heat reduction (even mabye interrupt immunity for pvp?)

-and/or heat dissipation from kolto shell crit (maybe change Peacekeeper into this)

 

I don't want to make heat management scoundrel like easy, so all of this could be 1-3 heat.

Pretty much all the changes I would like to see were already mentioned, so I'll only say one:

 

Change Terminal Velocity as you have changed Prototype Cylinder Ventilation for Powertechs. Instead of venting 8 heat every 6 seconds, vent 2 heat every 1.5 seconds. It would still have the same effect but in smaller increments which would be immensely helpful. It would be like getting our free Rail Shot back.

One thing I have always been annoyed by playing a healing merc is that we can't cast Rapid Shots on ourselves. If you want to make it so we can't build stacks of supercharged gas (at least not in PVP, maybe) and only healing specced mercs can do it, fine, but not being able to do it at all still throws me off a bit.

I just remembered another change I would like for Arsenal. We all know it's very RNG dependant due to the reliance of Barrage procs. This is asuggestion to remove that RNG.

 

Basically make it so Tracer Missile gives you a buff. If you have that buff and fire another tracer missile, unload goes off cooldown and gets the damage boosts (ie barrage procs). You can also keep the internal cooldown so this can only happen every 6th second.

 

That'd be the equivalent of barrage proccing 50% of the time, but the rng removal will likely be a straight up damage buff. So unload damage might have to be adjusted slightly.

To make matters worse, these take a total of 3 global cooldowns to apply what in aggregate is weaker and less effective than a single GCD use ability of pretty much every other class in the game.

 

Uh, dude? None of those abilities consumes a GCD.

Something I'd like to see but doubt will happen is the return of the 30m Electro Dart for Merc only. It's a ranged class, it deserves to be able to kill from a distance.

 

Something that really should be given, however, is a Gap Opener. Something like Wow's Disengage where you bounce backwards 15-30m or so would be lovely!

I say give electro bolt back it's 30 meter range and make concussion missile an instant cast.

 

I would also like the heat of missile blast be reduced.

 

Also Power Shot is useless. If you could do something to make me want to use that I wouldn't be against it.

 

Also please do not change the animation to Tracer Missile back, the old one was ridiculous. I think other classes just want to make it more easily spotted so they can interrupt it more often. If we are squatting like we are about to drop a log they will see it coming.

Edited October 29, 2013 by NathanielStarr

I would like to see a set bonus change back to the old free railshot, or just bake it into upgraded arsenal. I would also like to see a barrage proc also reduce the heat cost of the next unload as well. Pinning Fire doesn't really seem to do enough to merit two talents points. It would be nice if it made Unload castable while moving.

Ok, thought for one of the healing skills. Haven't looked at my merc lately, so don't know if it's the right name, but...

 

Supercharge Cylinders: It can now be used at any level of supercharged gas, but still consumes all of them and prevents them from building. It does, however, inflict a long term debuff, that prevents supercharge cylinders from being activated at anything less than 30 stacks. Each stack consumed reduces the duration of the debuff, to the point that 30 stacks will not activate the debuff.

 

This is to make it into an emergency healing skill if you desperately need to get it off twice in a row, sort of like how sentinels can gain 30 centering in an instant with a cooldown.

Give Death From Above a 5 target AOE heal in addition to it's damage. This would be helpful on healing Melee and allow Mercs to add to operational healing without losing DPS and due to the cooldown would not be over powered.

This post is written with arsenal mercs in mind and while I don't have suggestions for most of them, to me these are some of the more glaring questions.

What does everyone think of being able to be interrupted?

 

There are other higher dps classes that cannot be interrupted, so why do arsenal mercs have this disadvantage? I feel this is mostly a carry over from world of warcraft just because that is what they have on their casters. We need some beneficial trade off for this.

 

Why is our resource management so bad compared to other classes?

 

These other classes have the same output (or even better) and can do it for longer. We need some beneficial trade off for this or it needs to be brought in line with other classes.

 

We have terrible surviveability compared to snipers who are also a ranged class (that have higher dps).

 

Our shield is a measly 25% with such a long cool down. We also rarely get to enjoy the kolto overload because we don't have the defenses that powertechs have (especially since many of them dabble in the tank tree). When it does get to kick in we don't have suitable defenses to let it really get going. I am usually dead before I am able to see any benefit from it. Then I have to wait 3 minutes for it to fail me again.

 

Stealth classes eat us alive. Trying to find that assassin, operative or marauder that just disappeared with our Stealth scan is a shot in the dark. This is not an anti-stealther tool as much as it is something to play with while you are bored and guarding a node.

 

Make it so any within a certain range are exposed and increase the cool down. This would give us some defense as a class that is perhaps the most immobile in the game (snipers have roll) against these types that love to go after us for easy kills. This is part of the reason we are considered dead weight in arenas. Making us an anti-stealth class would make us much more desirable in PvP and could let you get away with some of the buffs that DPS operatives need.

 

Why are arsenal mercs essentially snipers with a bunch of handicaps that result in much less surviveability and less overall damage per second? This is honestly what it comes down to. Even in operations groups they'd rather have a sniper. Any off heals we offer are not substantial enough to be considered.

Edited October 29, 2013 by NathanielStarr