I miss when my Merc didn't have pray I don't get singled out in PVP, the Arsenal spec should be what the Merc is all about but instead it was nerfed into irrelevancy, for those of you that don't know the history of it, early on, the Merc appeared to be pretty OP in warzones, forum rage ensued and they were nerfed, mainly tracer missile and its benefits. The problem was that early on most players did not know how or didn't think it worthy to interrupt channeled abilities, well around the time the Merc was nerfed most players started to use interrupt on a regular basis further nerfing the Arsenal tree which is based around tracer missile (a 2 sec or so channel ability).

My initial suggestion is to make tracer missile a instant ability with a short 2 sec cooldown, or however you can keep it from being a interruptable skill. any other suggestion on how to make Arsenal relevant in pvp again.

As much as I'd like my aresneal merc to be more useful in PvP, I think making TM an instant cast would make us far too OP, unless they made the cooldown so long as to make it useless.

Shortening the cast time a bit would be good, though, possibly through skill points. That way, we'd still be ineterruptible, meaning that our effectiveness could still be impacted by other players, but with less of a chance of an interruption being a problem for us, as either we'd get fewer interrupts, or be able to recover from them quicker.

That would be a huge nerf to Commando in PVE for no good reason.

Best idea is a talent in the gunnery tree which adds a "Run and Gun" proc to stockstrike giving you 3 charges which make the next 3 casts (could just make it the next 3 grav rounds/charged bursts) instant.

I think that, along with a reliable escape mechanism, would help the class a lot, wouldn't make us OP, and make us an actual threat in warzones when under fire.

Should probably make curtain of fire make FA uninterruptable as well.

My opinion on the Mercenary/Commando class has changed somewhat from what it used to be. After having played a Merc at 50 for a while, I now think that we are less underpowered than what I had originally thought, but there are still some adjustments which should be made. In my opinion, it's not THAT bad.

Pretty much the only times I feel like it's just plain unfair, other than when against a few players of various classes who seem to be very good at their class, is against Warriors. Nerfing the Warriors' anti-ranged effectiveness would probably help Mercs and Sorcs a lot.

Regarding changes directly to the Merc (as opposed to indirectly by nerfing other classes):

- Arsenal already has big damage potential IMO, and might be difficult to balance for PVP. Some sort of idea similar to the Run and Gun idea might be the best.

- Pyro is already in a fairly good place in my opinion. The only thing I'd like to see changed is a talent which gives Power Shot a 100% chance to proc the Cylinder DOT, exactly like how PT's can talent Flame Burst.

Obviously both of the above are after Warriors have been fixed.

My opinion on the Mercenary/Commando class has changed somewhat from what it used to be. After having played a Merc at 50 for a while, I now think that we are less underpowered than what I had originally thought, but there are still some adjustments which should be made. In my opinion, it's not THAT bad.

 

Pretty much the only times I feel like it's just plain unfair, other than when against a few players of various classes who seem to be very good at their class, is against Warriors. Nerfing the Warriors' anti-ranged effectiveness would probably help Mercs and Sorcs a lot.

 

Regarding changes directly to the Merc (as opposed to indirectly by nerfing other classes):

 

- Arsenal already has big damage potential IMO, and might be difficult to balance for PVP. Some sort of idea similar to the Run and Gun idea might be the best.

 

- Pyro is already in a fairly good place in my opinion. The only thing I'd like to see changed is a talent which gives Power Shot a 100% chance to proc the Cylinder DOT, exactly like how PT's can talent Flame Burst.

 

Obviously both of the above are after Warriors have been fixed.

There's no denying that with the lack of team utility, the damage just isn't enough, in either spec, to bring to Rateds. You're either one of the best burst damage specs in the game or you aren't. Pyro PT is. Pypro Merc ain't. Since we DON'T have that kind of insane burst, we need some sort of utility to make us worth bringing, and we don't have that. They made sure that heal classes would have absolute worthless healing when not specced into it, then used the heals as an excuse to short us on utility because BW is full of incompetent idiots who are somehow allowed to determine class balance.

Don't think utility is enough to justify a spot on a ranked team? I give to you bubble spec hybrid. Mediocre damage, mediocre healing, but bubble stun makes it all worth it.

Now the problem with our damage is that its burst is backloaded, and even then it's mostly just steady damage. Absolutely wonderful in PVE where maintaining high DPS is very important. Not nearly as important in PVP where burst is king. ESPECIALLY since the buff we have for Demo Round is based on a debuff on the target, so if they die before the Demo goes out we have to start all over again.

The other big problem with our damage wise is simply our inability to reliably get that damage out under pressure, so even the steady pressure of it becomes pointless.

So we need

a) Ability to get damage out under pressure. Run and Gun is a great example of how to do this

b) Team utility as an argument to bring us along. Even if we could get our damage out reliably why bring us over a sniper? Their burst is better than ours, and Flash Bang is an amazing, game winning ability, and Orbital Strike is good area denial ability, while the group shield is awesome on defense. We bring.....what?

^ You make some good points (in particular I agree that BW has grossly overestimated the useful all healing classes' heals are when specced as DPS), but we will still disagree on exactly how underpowered the class is, and what it does and doesn't bring. I'm not going to respond to everything because I think you've already made up your mind anyway.

One thing which I'd really like to point out though, is that pretty much every time I see when people discuss the Merc in PVP, the focus is on how to make Arsenal good (and as I wrote I agree that something similar to Run and Gun could be good for that spec).

Keep in mind though that a lot of these Arsenal fixes are focused on fixing problems which do not exist when playing as Pyro.

^ You make some good points (in particular I agree that BW has grossly overestimated the useful all healing classes' heals are when specced as DPS), but we will still disagree on exactly how underpowered the class is, and what it does and doesn't bring. I'm not going to respond to everything because I think you've already made up your mind anyway.

 

One thing which I'd really like to point out though, is that pretty much every time I see when people discuss the Merc in PVP, the focus is on how to make Arsenal good (and as I wrote I agree that something similar to Run and Gun could be good for that spec).

Keep in mind though that a lot of these Arsenal fixes are focused on fixing problems which do not exist when playing as Pyro.

Admittedly quite a few of us would prefer to use gunnery for whatever reason.

I disagree that pyro doesn't suffer from many of the same problems. You have an opening whose burst is decent. Not great. Not Assault VG/Pyro PT, but decent.

The problem is you IR > SG > HiB > FA > AP > HiB (75% of the time) which is all well and good and....then what? You need Charged Bolts to reset HiB again, but now you have the same problem as gunnery commando except you probably suffer from more pushback.

Meanwhile you have even less utility, outside of a stealth scan with more uptime, if you even spec into it. Gunnery has the better knockback, has the LOLmeleeroot, and the 70% slow on full auto. Assault has a 30% RNG snare.

Assault is more mobile in the sense that you can run around Hammer Shotting and IRing to put DoTs on everyone which will make for good damage, with the occasional double HiB. You still won't win the DPS race against good burst classes.

Basically you have pretty much all the weaknesses of the VG/PT version with less burst (our HiB does less than theirs), less utility, and generally none of the things that really make that spec and class such a powerful force in warzones.

BTW I've made up my mind, but my professional life, such as it is, mostly consists of learning that I'm wrong and having to change my mind, so I'm all for you debating me. I'll listen, but know I'll dissect all your points looking for the tiniest flaw. That won't mean you're wrong, but I'm still gonna do it.

How exactly underpowered do you think it is? I think it has an extremely steep learning curve at 50 if you want to be viable in normals without just having an absolutely stellar team or facing an absolutely bad one. In ranked, if you're foolish enough to go in as a 50 Commando then the other team should make you almost their first target because of the disparity between the damage when allowed to free cast and the damage when under pressure in any spec.

Admittedly quite a few of us would prefer to use gunnery for whatever reason

Sure, the Gunnery tree has a number of desirable PVP focused talents, which you mention: The better knockback, the (mostly useless) root on Stockstrike, and the snare on Full Auto. Another reason might be because at least in my opinion, managing heat/ammo is much easier as Gunnery than as Assault, and if nothing else, it's a different playstyle which some people prefer.

Personally I prefer Gunnery for PVE and Assault for PVP, partly because in PVP I don't like being so dependent on one single casted ability both for the important buff, debuff, and overall DPS. Assault being less focused on any one ability is also why I think it has less problems in PVP than Gunnery.

What we both agree on is that currently the effectiveness of melee shutting down a Commando is too high, however it seems as though the main difference in our opinions is that you (and many others who discuss Commando changes) are focusing the entire balance changes on buffs to Commando, while I would prefer to see a smaller buff to Commando, at the same time as a small nerf to some melee classes' anti-ranged effectiveness. (which would also at the same time fix many of the issues which Sorcerers have)

For balance in terms of a 1vs1 situation I don't think it matters much which route you take, but in my opinion if ranged simply can keep themselves constantly close to their potential maximum damage, then that quickly becomes overpowered in a team situation because of the advantages which ranged has over melee.

One simple example is in having two players attacking one enemy player, for example a healer. If the attackers are melee, one Operative Flash Bang or Vanguard Neural Surge is enough to give the player some breathing room, one AOE taunt or damage ability will hit both attackers, and so on.

Because ranged do not have some of the disadvantages which melee has in a situation like this, there needs to be other disadvantages to being ranged in a team situation, and in my opinion the best solution is indeed having ranged classes become immediately noticeably less effective when being focused on, in particularly by melee. However I'll reiterate that currently, the amount which a Commando loses is not in line with how easy it is and how little melee classes lose while shutting down a Commando.

How exactly underpowered do you think it is? I think it has an extremely steep learning curve at 50 if you want to be viable in normals without just having an absolutely stellar team or facing an absolutely bad one. In ranked, if you're foolish enough to go in as a 50 Commando then the other team should make you almost their first target because of the disparity between the damage when allowed to free cast and the damage when under pressure in any spec.

I think that the learning curve is steeper than what it is for some classes (Vanguard), but similar to some other classes (Operative). However regardless of exactly how much underpowered Commando is, I think that because of how obvious it is that Commando is underpowered and because of how obvious the way to counter them is, it causes the problem to seem bigger than what it actually is.

I say this both from a psychological sense where things which are obvious often seem bigger and more important than what they actually are, as well as from how it plays out in game, where it makes sense to keep hunting the easiest prey with the lowest risk.