I don't get why we still haven't gotten any merc DPS buffs on the PTS. People were complaining before, but I figured that since you guys have handled most of the other class balance in a satisfactory manner (at least for PvE DPS), you'd eventually release some buffs for merc DPS to counteract the nerfs the Concentrated Fire set that were clearly designed to nerf healers. Right now, both DPS specs have lost about 1.5-2k DPS. This has to be made up with balance changes to the disciplines or it'll be just like it was with the initial nerfs to the Gathering Storm set bonus for sorcs!

 

Given how you've made other specs easier in 6.0, generally by reducing the number of abilities they need to use and largely getting rid of energy management, I think it would be prudent to buff merc DPS by making it easier as well. For both specs, you'd do this by removing the need to use Rapid Shots entirely provided that you use the rotation correctly. For Arsenal, you could do this by reverting the changes you made in 5.0 by bringing back the Barrage proc for Blazing Bolts so it actually reduces the cost again and if needed, could also increase the damage dealt as well. For IO, I think all you'd need to do is reduce the heat cost of Power Shot and Fusion Missile to 5 Heat. It would also be really nice if the Volatile Warhead proc also caused Missile Blast to generate 1 stack of Supercharge as well, so the rate of getting supercharge stacks doesn't decrease when you're attacking something below 30% health.

 

Let me be clear, I don't think the specs necessarily need to be buffed in that way, but right now they are quite a bit more difficult to play optimally than most other specs at the moment because they actually have to manage their heat while others don't. I am not interested in anyone expressing elitism about this either, one spec shouldn't be significantly more difficult than another without being able to do additional DPS and it's not good to such a significant disparity between DPS because then you get FOTM classes which don't add anything to the game, therefore, there can't be a major difference in difficulty between the specs either. Regardless, I want to again be clear that my main point in this post is that merc DPS need a buff to compensate for the set bonus.I don't care nearly as much how they get buffed, I'm just pointing out a difficulty disparity that exists that probably should be addressed.

 

In addition, there are a couple of QOL changes that would be nice to have. First, the Concentrated Fire extra supercharge stack proc has a chance to be useless if it procs off of an ability that already generates supercharge stacks and you have 9 stacks of supercharge already (so you have 9 stacks, you use Rapid Shots and go up to 10 stacks just from the regular ability and then the set bonus procs and goes on cooldown but is completely wasted). It's also such a low chance that there will be a lot of variability in the effectiveness of the set bonus. There are many different ways to fix this. You could make it so that it doesn't proc off of abilities that already generate supercharge but has a higher chance to generate it from the other abilities; you could change the effect so that it just makes it so all abilities that generate a supercharge stack now generate 1 additional stack (including from tactical items), or you could make it so that supercharge stacks to 11 or 12 while the ability still costs 10 to use.

 

The other QOL thing is the Power Barrier utility, right now in IO, it's rather difficult to maintain the buff if you waiver in APM at all or the mag shot proc gets messed up, if you made it so Power Barrier lasted 20 seconds or was just a passive like the other DR utilities such as Sith Defiance and Chem-Resistant Inlays instead of building stacks off your abilities, it would be so much better.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who understand how resoundingly bad this is for Commando DPS. Unfortunately, our concerns/complaints continue to fall on deaf ears. Commando DPS lives don't matter, they just want to make Commando heals bad again.

 

And yeah, it's absolutely atrocious how bad our energy management is compared to other classes. At least Sages don't have to worry about energy management. Now, Commando's are gonna have bad DPS AND still have to worry about energy management.

There was a bit of an uproar early on, but that seems to have faded away, and without a response from the devs then either.

There was a response though..IO got the 10% crit back in their passives