Please can you give some idea of when there will be balance changes to Mercenaries/Commandos? As it stands we have little or no utility or survivability in PvP. Our DPS is easily shutdown, our heals are easily interrupted and as a community we just feel let down. I think I speak for all mercs/commandos when I ask - what are you going to do about this?

everyone go do this.

I've managed to keep 99.5% ranged without losing out on other stats. Just a case of min-maxing.

this ^^^

If you want to have some low level fun in PvP i recommend a sniper/gunslinger. They are the overpowered ones in low pvp! I had a lvl 42 sniper hit a 4.6k ambush on me the other day... Also very decent at 50.

As someone who has done more pvp than most people have time for (on a mercenary) I am just going to say that DPS mercs are not broken they just have a much higher skill cap than other DPS classes. A good merc can and will do well in any warzone - IF they roll pyro or arsenal/pyro hybrids. Full arsenal is just broken, I don't care what any of you say, I will destroy you 1v1 as pyro vs arsenal regardless of your skill/rotation, I will out dps you in any warzone related situation, and my utility/burst is much better due to the consistent dot pressure on healers, as well as not relying on tracer missile. All the pyro tree lacks is an interrupt. The arsenal tree needs some serious love to make it competative. At this point I don't even know what will save it, maybe some kind of unique escape/kiting ability? As it stands on my server (the nightmare lands) there are 2 maybe 3 DPS mercs in ranked teams across THE ENTIRE SERVER. 2 of them are pyro and 1 is arsenal. I have farmed war hero heal gear for my team. There are well over 20 ranked teams. Go figure.

We (until our merc healer quit, due to rl stuff) cleared EC HM with a merc healer without problems, and we do nightmare pilgrim every week with 2 merc healers. They seem to be fine in PvE? Also Arsenal can get upto 1850-1900 sustained dps, check some of the guides on the forums by Aerro and others, mercs really should have NO problems with dps. Especially after the recent unload target tracking fix.

I can post screenshots of me completely out-dpsing anyone all day in arsenal: http://files.enjin.com.s3.amazonaws.com/157692/module_gallery/original/588758.jpg Doesn't change the fact that we are flat out destroyed by a marauder playing even half-well, or a sniper, or a juggernaut, or an operative, or an assassin... etc etc. We need to be carried to survive. That is the problem. No amount of L2P is gunna solve that. If you play Pyro it is possible to deal with assassins and snipers, but it leaves you even more vulnerable to marauders due to the decreased knockbacks. There are just too many trade-offs with this class at the moment, with little to no hybridisation between trees.

Yeah what the hell is going on with the dev posts in this thread? I could only see the first one after someone quoted it and now I can't see the second one.

^^ this

Please stop suggesting advanced class transferrs, because we both know that is never going to happen. Mercs are damn good healers in any ranked team, you just need a dedicated tank to guard you (like all other healers). We just need some love to the arsenal and pyro trees, for one there should be pushback reduction in the pyro tree, and we should just get another defensive cooldown, or interrupt immunity. DONE. No need for this trash talk about changing classes, if you want a powertech, go bloody roll one. You can legacy transfer all your war hero armorings over as well, so that means you only have to invest 60-70 hours levelling and then you have your request.

I am fully aware of all this, the guy in the post above me was talking about his PvE dps. I think it is obvious that we suck in PvP for DPS. Heals still works if your team looks after you, and Pyro is OK if you can kite well and are really well geared. Just feels like we have nothing going for us right now apart from average healing, and the ability to burst weak healers down in Pyro.

I have had this bug since release. It is really annoying

My raid group (i couldnt make it last night so they subbed for me) said that they couldn't kill kephess due to server lag also. Fix this please Bioware, I logged on this morning and there seems to be intermittent server lag in war zones as well, instant abilities sometimes taking 3-4 seconds to activate etc.

I agree with this, I am BIS arsenal geared, (with what i think is a good rotation) and I average around 1800.

Yes you are republic, and the merc power shot has a higher degree of RNG than the commando charged bolts. My point still stands. If the two set bonuses are mathematically identical in every way (which your spreadsheet actually confirms, not denies) it is 'logical' to take the PvP one, because you can use railshot on the move, and for mercs, it is a more reliable attack. Does your spreadsheet not agree with my maths? you got identical results within 3 damage average (this is not significant, as it is far less than 1 standard deviation would be) for the PvP and PvE eliminator sets. Armor pen is essentially irrelivant in my calculations - I have taken average numbers for the damage of both power shot and rail shot on a target with no other armor debuffs other than the talented 60% on rail shot, and as I have shown, the 15% crit for both of them is mathematically identical. Maybe now you agree since you got the same results from a different approach? I dunno if am just unlucky, but attacks DO and WILL miss on bosses, yes your high impact bolts will miss on bosses. Mine do, my logs show it, and I also notice it a lot, AND I have almost 2% more accuracy than you do. My final point is this, you stated that: This is correct, but as I (and you) have shown, both set bonuses incur an identical amount of damage assuming a 2:1 ratio of powershot/railshot usage, so neither set bonus gives a higher average hit. Can we agree that for commandos it probably doesn't matter as much which set bonus you choose? And that for a merc the PvP set is probably better? (from the fact that power shot is not as reliable as charged bolts)

You are all quite wrong. Offhand misses from powershots occur around 42% of the time as I said, I dont know what you mean with 'phase shields' but its known from devs that bosses have 10% defence for any non tech attack. If you read my calcs accuaracy means nothing here. Dont post stupid graphs when you don't understand them. Tell me what is wrong with my maths or just accept that I am correct.

You guys are not considering a vital point, which is that if your railshots/HiBs don't crit the 30% talented surge is worth nothing. Yes you will be casting more power shots than railshots. I am going to try and show you guys that there is NO mathematical difference between taking a 15% crit boost to railshot or power shot, and also why the railshot crit would be preferable. ROUGH THEORETICAL PARSE Taking your parse as being 100% legitimate, you are casting 2 Power Shots per Rail shot. I am going to assume numbers from my own testing for the damage of both abilities. My gear looks like this, which is very close to being BIS (according to you guys) for a pyro (it is BIS for arsenal). From a few rounds on a test dummy, fully buffed with an exotech stim, I have come up with some rough numbers for average damage or powershot/railshot. I have rounded them down to the nearest hundred just for the ease of this: ((NOTE: THESE NUMBERS COMPLETELY IGNORE MISSED ATTACKS FROM MAIN HAND OR OFFHAND. THIS WILL BE CONSIDERED LATER)) Powershot: AVG non crit damage: 1700 AVG crit damage: 3100 Railshot: AVG non crit damage: 2200 AVG crit damage: 4600 Now assume we are going to use 200 powershots for every 100 railshots. I also want to consider a case where without any set bonuses we are going to have 35% ranged crit chance, which is realistic. CASE 1: with the PvE we have 50% power shot crit, and 35% railshot crit. Out of 200 powershots, 100 crit and 100 don't crit. Out of 100 railshots, 35 crit and 65 don't crit. Total damage: (100*1700+100*3100) + (65*2200+35*4600) = 778,000 CASE 2 : with the PvP we have 50% railshot crit and 35% power shot crit. Out of 200 powershots, 70 crit and 130 don't crit. Out of 100 railshots, 50 crit and 50 don't crit. Total damage: (130*1700+70*3100) + (50*2200+50*4600) = 778,000 So as you can see, on paper there is no difference between the two set bonuses, the REASON I suggested the PvP over the PvE is the simple fact that Power Shot's damage is extremely unreliable, the offhand hits will miss frequently. Railshot is mainhand in terms of ranged accuracy and will rarely if ever miss if you are geared properly. I will get a set of black-hole modded PvP gear together just to show that the dps is equivalent to being the same. ANOTHER benefit of having more sustained railshot crits is the fact that you can use them on the move. How often in denova hardmode do you have the luxury of being abelt o sit there and spam powershot? I can tell you from experience that I would really prefer my railshots to deliver more 'umph' while on the run from a pesky assassin droid in the middle of a minefield or running between the railshot droids on kephess. ACCURACY Now let us consider the case of accuracy. In my current gear set-up I have 5 enhancements, each with 57 accuracy on. The other two enhancements have power/surge. My ranged accuracy is 101.39% mainhand, 68% (cant remember exact I am not at my pc right now) offhand. I take this to be a roughly optimal set-up, as without those 2 surge enhancements you drop below 70% multiplier, which I personally hate. It has been confirmed that bosses have a flat 10% defence rating, so my mainhand atacks have a 8.61% chance to miss and my offhand attacks have a roughly 42% chance to miss. So we parsed 778k damage earlier from 200 powershots and 100 railshots, ignoring any misses and showing that in this perfect scenario the set bonuses are completely identical in terms of damage. Let us have a look at what happens when we apply some misses to both mainhand and offhand attacks. Out of 200 power shots, (200*0.086=17.2) 17 main hand attacks will miss. Out of 200 power shots, (200*0.42=84) 84 offhand attacks will miss. Out of 100 railshots, (100*0.086 =8.6) 9 railshots will completely miss. Let us quantify this such that our previous count of 200 powershots and 100 railshots is effecively (though still using the same number of gcds) 91 railshots, 183 main hand power shots, and 116 offhand power shots. Now the hard part is to work out how much damage on average comes from the mainhand and offhand hits of power shot, let me update my post a bit later once I have got home and done some more damage testing. I am going to include an extremely rough estimate of how dps loss is affected just from memory: From my experience, the offhand damage on a power shot is somewhere between 300 and 400, so let's say 350 damage is the average for a non-crit power shot offhand contribution, applying 75% surge to this it seems logical that if it crits, the offhand will deal (350*1.75=612.5) roughly 600 damage. (For the record, offhand rolls are done seperately from mainhand in terms of hit/miss, does anyone know if the crit chance is rolled seperately? or if the mainhand crits does the offhand crit automatically? I am going to assume they are separate rolls for this, correct me if I am wrong) Now let us do a slightly more detailed parse of what is going on in the two cases we have considered, including hits/misses. SLIGHTLY LESS ROUGH THEORETICAL PARSE Out of 200 MH power shots, (200*0.086=17.2) 17 will miss, 183 will hit. Out of 200 OH power shots, (200*0.42=84) 84 will miss, 116 will hit. Out of 100 railshots, (100*0.086 =8.6) 9 will miss, 91 will hit. CASE 1: with the PvE we have 50% power shot crit, and 35% railshot crit. Out of 183 MH power shots, 91 will crit and 91 won't crit (just trying to keep numbers even here) Out of 116 OH power shots, 58 will crit and 58 won't crit Out of 91 railshots, 32 will crit, 59 won't crit. I will be calculating new main hand damages for power shot too, just on the fly. Total damage: (91*1350+91*2500) + (58*350+58*600) + (59*2200+32*4600) = 680k CASE 2 : with the PvP we have 50% railshot crit and 35% power shot crit. Out of 183 MH power shots, 64 will crit and 119 won't crit (just trying to keep numbers even here) Out of 116 OH power shots, 40 will crit and 76 won't crit Out of 91 railshots, 45 will crit,46 won't crit. Total damage: (119*1350+64*2500) + (76*350+40*600) + (45*2200+45*4600) = 680k Sorry to make such a long post but I just wanted to share some proofs that these two set bonuses make no difference in terms of damage, and you must consider that concentrating more on power shot rather than railshot is just bad, because ~20% of power shot damage comes from your offhand, which has around a 40% chance to miss on bossfights.

+1 qft

the only use of the pve Eliminator set is the 2 piece for 15% power shot crit. the 4 piece is irrelevant. the only use of the pve combat tech set is the 4 piece for 8% railshot damage, the 2 piece is irrelevant. the 4 piece pvp bonus will give 15% rail shot crit. For PvE It would be a flip up between the combat tech pve and the eliminator pvp, i wouldn't even touch the pve eliminator.

I am considering trying pyro in PvE, my only question is: what set bonus is best? Is it best to re-mod and augment a set of PvP eliminator gear for the railshot crit? My thinking is yes. Another option is the combat tech 8% railshot damage, but mathematically it has been proven that the 15% crit is better for sustained dps. At the moment I am in a min/maxed arsenal build for PvE with over 1100 power, 2250 aim, and keeping the other cookie cutter stats. I am currently using the PvE eliminator 4-set which is obviously very nice for arsenal, but the only real bonus to pyro would be the 15% power shot crit, which although nice seems outweighed by other possibilities in pyro. What do you use?

Nice Idea but it won't happen

chaff gets rid of 25% of your current threat, don't expect it to do anything if you use it after 1 kolto shell.

sometimes i wish the OP had the power to remove posts like this. dksharktooth pvps lot in pyro, as you can tell from his youtube channel and his various guides.

I dont wanna sound dickish but with the target tracking fix, my Arsenal sustained is now between 1800-1950. Easily on par with any Mara.