Anyone got any essential tips for playing as a Merc in warzones? I'm new, and having a bit of a struggle. It's quite different then Galaxies PVP, hehe. Edited September 7, 2017 by doohickeyexpress

Take all the self heal utilities, run in front, spam tracile missile. Repeat

Depends. Which spec do you want to play? The only remotely challenging one is Innovative Ordnance, and sadly, it's not even as rewarding anymore as it used to be. Edited September 5, 2017 by BenitsubasaChiyo

What spec are you playing?

 

In short, you want the kolto and energy shield heal talents. Stay on the edges, keep enemies at a distance and save your HO/Rocket out for when you got to dive in and get that kill.

 

Sorta the same for healers. I use those same utilities to allow me to stand in the melee and heal myself with DCD cycling while I heal my teammates and support my dps with mez, stuns, nets, roots and knockbacks.

Edited September 5, 2017 by Wimbleton

Mercenaries are the meta right now. They have a ridiculous number of over-tuned defenses which the developers refuse to change, allowing them to facetank anything but a concerted effort. You should be fine. Spec into Adrenaline Rush and Trauma Regulators, and the class can carry anyone. Edited September 5, 2017 by Sabachthanus

Mercenaries are the meta right now. They have a ridiculous number of over-tuned defenses which the developers refuse to change, allowing them to facetank anything but a concerted effort. You should be fine. Spec into Adrenaline Rush and Trauma Regulators, and the class can carry anyone.

 

Can easily facetank concerted efforts up to and over9000.

Assuming you're an arsenal merc, though not all of these are exclusive to the arsenal spec or even to mercs in general....

 

The biggest thing really is just taking the right utilities. Mercs right now have extremely powerful defensive abilities (that correlates to high damage because you can stay afloat longer) if paired with the right utilities. You want to take the utilities that boost your survivability like trauma regulators and the one that boosts your kolto overload.

 

Another must have utility is the one that allows you to use blazing bolts on the move. Standing still like a turret often means taking damage in PVP so utilities that make your spec more mobile are always useful. It also allows you to keep consistent pressure on players trying to put distance between you.

 

There is annoying bug right now that resets merc utilities after each logout. Make sure you select them again after each login and before you jump into a warzone, since once in the warzone you won't be able to make changes.

 

As others have said, try to stay on the edges of the big full-team scrums (common in Voidstar matches, south in Novare coast, or mid in Alderaan). As a ranged class you want to avoid being in melee range of melee DPS as much as possible.

 

Don't pop your DCDs all at once. Spread them out and use them strategically. You're vulnerable when all of them are still cooling down. Go into your abilities tab and memorize exactly what each one does (something you should do for all of your abilities) so you know when and where to pop them.

 

When decently geared Mercs are one of the best dueling classes in the game right now. That may sometimes make avoiding or peeling off from the scrum at south/mid to go to the enemy's node on Novare Coast or Alderaan worthwhile, though of course that is highly dependent on the situation and a judgement call whether or not your teammates can afford losing your DPS contribution in that scrum. When done right however it can be a game changer and result in taking an enemy's node by your lonesome. Even when it fails it can sometimes be a game changer by causing the person you're putting pressure on to yell for help in Ops chat and pull two or three people off of another node, creating a mismatch elsewhere and opening a window of opportunity for your teammates.

 

If and when melee DPS are are on you, kite, kite, kite. Use knockbacks and stuns to keep them as much as possible out of melee range and rocket out if you're in trouble. That's also very useful if the melee DPS is supported by a healer, since you can sometimes pull them out of their healer's line of sight and then melt them. If ranged DPS is on you don't forget to use interrupts (like for example if a Commando is opening up on you with their equivalent of blazing bolts) if needed, particularly if you don't have a DCD up that can absorb it or exploit it for a big self heal. Use line of sight (putting hard objects like walls or pillars) between you and ranged DPS if they are hitting you harder than you them, or you're in trouble. Use self-heals when behind them.

 

Interrupts are also important when focusing an enemy healer. Break up your damage rotation with a strategic interrupt when you see him or her channeling that big heal. Stuns and knockbacks are also useful in breaking up a heal. Speaking of knockbacks...they are often useful for tossing a healer hanging on the edges right into a scrum of your own teamates. Melting sometimes ensues! Or for tossing him out of range of his team and then stunning/unloading on him.

 

Kiting can also be very useful in aiding your teammates in capturing nodes. When attacking in Voidstar matches for instance you can often lure melee-jumping DPS far away from the door which can open up a window for a teammate to cap. It's not the only map where you can use that tactic but it's probably the most common place where it works. If you want to be really sly you can pretend that your DCDs are all still cooling down and weather some damage (depending on how hard you're being hit obviously) to make the other team think there is blood in the water. You can often lure more than one kill-chasing melee DPS to follow you far away from an objective that way, only to pop a DCD that heals you to full far from the door, stun or knockback, and laugh as a teammate caps. Sometimes a Jugg or Guardian will even aid you by pushing you even farther away from the door and then jumping on you. Rocket out is another good ability to use there if you've got a fish or two on the hook.

 

Odessen proving ground is all about objectives, more than any other map. It is literally one or two players every match that determines the outcome by running objectives. The main thing that determines who wins isn't controlling the nodes (though of course thats important) but rather the battle mods that spawn around the map, enabling players to for example activate and control inactive nodes, multiply points gained in a controlled node, or deactivate one of the enemy's controlled nodes. Because mercs can take a lickin' and keep on tickin' they're one of the better classes to run these battle mods into nodes. It's going to be hard for opposing players to burn you down.

 

Merc survivability makes then good ball-carriers in Huttball for similar reasons, at least if you still have your DCDs available.

 

Don't forget your electro net. It's one of your most important abilities. It's main utility is not that it slows an enemy player down, though of course that's also useful, but more so that it can prevent opposing players from using some of their abilities. Sages and Sorcs for instance have a force bubble they can activate that makes them invulnerable to damage for a time, as well as phase walk (a teleport), and either can be used when in trouble and in danger of being killed. An active electro net on them however prevents either of those abilities from being used and is potentially the difference between a dead healer and a healer that survives, quickly tops up, and heals his or her team to full. It can also prevent stealthers from stealthing out. The latter is very important during arenas where a stealth class can use stealth to cheese out of a looming defeat and let acid determine the outcome. In Huttball save electro net for Sage/Sorc healers supporting enemy ball carrers, enemy ball carriers when you don't have a harder stun available, or enemy DPS chasing your ball carrier.

 

Don't forget stealth scans. They are useful not just for detecting people who stealth out on you in combat, but when stuck defending a node. If you're stuck defending a node spam it as much as possible at the node to prevent stealth caps. Don't stand on top of the node either, put some space between you and it. That will help prevent you from getting stunned and then the node being capped. Also stealthers will often ignore you and go right for the node, running into your active stealth scan and being forced out of stealth before they can attempt to cap.

 

Even as a DPS don't forget heals in arenas. They can sometimes be a game changer in a match where you're on a team without a healer. Probably more than 90% of the time rounds are won by the team that drops an opposing player first and creates a mismatch, so sometimes its more important to hit your own guy with a heal than an enemy player with a damaging attack. You don't want to try to play as a healer when you're on a DPS spec, but a DPS that throws out an emergency occasional off-heal? Maybe. Sometimes its better to break up your damage rotation to heal friendly player than to keep dishing out damage, though of course like much of anything else in PVP that's a judgement call that is highly dependent on the situation and the status of both teams.

Edited September 7, 2017 by Aeneas_Falco

Thanks so much everyone! Now I have some tools under my belt to take into the battle field . For those wondering, I am an arsenal Merc!

Thanks so much everyone! Now I have some tools under my belt to take into the battle field . For those wondering, I am an arsenal Merc!

 

Congrats you joined the ranks of the skill less baddies that need a class to carry them...

Edited September 9, 2017 by Kinsal

as far as utilities go, Take the missile blast root, the one that slows ppl down when hit by tracer OR the one that reduces the cd on your cc breaker. Then I think it's power barrier, and the one that increases hydraulics for 4 secs. then the healing ones. the one that makes kolto go to 70% and the one that reduces the cd on shield when you get hit. don't take the one that increases healing by 20%. last tier, take the trauma regulators and thrill of the hunt. casting while moving is huge. my rotation if everything is ideal, priming shot,blazing bolts,tracer,blazing,heatseeker,rail shot,tracer till blazing is reset again. never use fusion missile. order of cds, I use chaffe flair, energy shield, kolto, then reflect. you can right click off the energy shield on your buff bar if you need the heal early. remember, the shield will give around an 80k heal so try not to pop kolto or reflect while shield is still on. you should be able to take 400-600k damage before dying. depending on how many ppl are attacking you.

Congrats you joined the ranks of the skill less baddies that need a class to carry them...

 

What if he simply likes the class? God forbid that he does!

Congrats you joined the ranks of the skill less baddies that need a class to carry them...

 

Congrats you joined the ranks of the toxic jerks who give PVPers a bad name.

 

Maybe he just likes the gameplay class? There are also plenty of people who've been playing Mercs for years. A FOTM player is one who jumps from spec to spec with each PVP update, always playing the one that benefits most from classes changes, not necessarily one who just happens to be on a FOTM class. Besides players that have been on FOTM classes long before they became a FOTM class, there are some who take a spec that benefits from from an update and end up sticking with it long after another inevitable round of balancing puts other specs on top of the dogpile. That's not FOTM either.

 

FOTM classes are also probably the best starting point for new players just getting their feet wet in PVP, unless they really prefer another spec's gameplay. Why choose one that's harder to play as a starting point? That seems counter productive. When you're first learning to swim you don't jump into the deep end of the pool. Start with FOTM and move on to a more challenging class once you get the basics down and are ready to move on to an alt.

Edited September 9, 2017 by Aeneas_Falco

Congrats you joined the ranks of the toxic jerks who give PVPers a bad name.

 

Maybe he just likes the gameplay class? There are also plenty of people who've been playing Mercs for years. A FOTM player is one who jumps from spec to spec with each PVP update, always playing the one that benefits most from classes changes, not necessarily one who just happens to be on a FOTM class. Besides players that have been on FOTM classes long before they became a FOTM class, there are some who take a spec that benefits from from an update and end up sticking with it long after another inevitable round of balancing puts other specs on top of the dogpile. That's not FOTM either.

 

FOTM classes are also probably the best starting point for new players just getting their feet wet in PVP, unless they really prefer another spec's gameplay. Why choose one that's harder to play as a starting point? That seems counter productive. When you're first learning to swim you don't jump into the deep end of the pool. Start with FOTM and move on to a more challenging class once you get the basics down and are ready to move on to an alt.

 

Thanks for making my point for me.

Thanks for making my point for me.

 

You didn't make one.

Congrats you joined the ranks of the skill less baddies that need a class to carry them...

 

Hey man, hate on me all you want! It doesn't affect me. Like everyone else said, I enjoy being a dual-pistol wielding dude.