I literally just explained the travel times and I'm still calling it garbage. It's great when it works but it is very badly designed.

The tactical is garbage for a few reasons: -travel time between grav round and your dot grenade may interrupt the spread. You cannot instant cast throw your nade after your grav round or it doesn't spread. You need to space it out with a filler gcd otherwise the instant grenade hits before the grav round debuffs your target. You need to allow time for the VERY slow debuff spread. It is not instant. - you cannot fire demo round immediately after your dot grenade or the demo round arrives before the debuff gets spread and consequently it doesn't proc the demo round aoe. You need to use a filler gcd before demo round the delay Is that bad. -the demo round secondary explosion has a 30m range from you and any debuffed target. It doesn't matter if all debuffed targets are within 30m of the original target. So basically you need to stand within 30m of ALL mobs for it to proc on every debuffed target. Best to use this tactical in melee range. If a couple targets are debuffed but greater than 30m from you they do not trigger the tactical proc It's the travel times of all the abilities that makes it look like it's bugged.

Thanks for replying. The 4pc bonus debuff sounds terrible. Shoulder cannon has a 1.5min cooldown and you need to deal your damage within the 5 seconds the debuff is up. You couldn't fire all your rockets in that window. You'd have to wait until you could ion wave again to fire the rest. Meteor brawler completely overshadows the set with it's 4pc bonus of 10% damage for 15sec every 30 sec. Would be interested to find out if rockets daisy chain and/or if rockets turn into an AOE once multiple targets get debuffed by ion wave. It would seem dumb to spread the debuff with ion wave but still keep rockets as single target only.

I can only guess how the set works and I've never seen anyone use it. The synergy between tactics/ap getting extra rockets and the two supporting utilities could make the set an interesting choice. That's IF rockets can daisy chain and the utilities affect rocket procs.

The set for anyone curious: Set Bonus: (2) +2% Mastery (4) Ion Wave makes all targets Vulnerable to Shoulder Cannon for 5 seconds. While Shoulder Cannon loads missiles you restore 2 heat per second. (6) Each Shoulder Cannon rocket has a 75% chance to trigger an additional rocket. What I am wondering is if shoulder cannon rocket procs can further proc off themselves. For example, if you only fire one missile could the set bonus daisy chain a bunch more automatically or is it the one missile you fire only has a one time 75% chance to proc? The former would actually be really good while the latter would make the set trash. I don't want to invest all the effort into the set just to find out it's garbage.

Wait what?? You just blew my mind. Either there is a tooltip error or vanguards are double dipping in the bonus.

If you get globalled fast, especially playing a merc, then it's not your set choice that you need to worry about. I have a lot of experience with playing a stealth class in PVP and I can tell you I don't fear stealth scans. They are easy to avoid and I will always get the opener I want. You have to get lucky every time with your scans and that simply isn't going to always happen for you. I get stealth classes are really strong on their burst opener but the price you are paying is way too high for the very narrow chance it works. You give up amazing DPS set bonuses and also a utility point that could be better spent on something else.

You may want to re-check the tooltip. It says elemental and kinetic damage. AP doesn't benefit from it really because AP uses weapon damage, energy damage, internal damage, and very little kinetic damage.

The crit tactical isn't just flame attacks, it affects elemental and kinetic abilities. For plasmatech, that means EVERY attack you use except high impact bolt(weapon damage) is impacted by the tactical.

Not viable at all IMO. The cost of using the stealth scan set is way too high. If you're a PT you would NEVER give up meteor brawler and Mercs would not want to give up the concentrated fire set. Your damage will fall off a cliff. Stealth scan is most effective if used immediately after the vanish. How often you catch people is entirely dependent on how fast you react to a vanish. The set is incredibly gimmicky and for the most part only useful in some situations. The vast majority of PVP you get more mileage from straight-up damage sets because those bonuses work all the time for any situation.

I had to go back and read the patch notes and I have no idea where I got the tactical thing from. I think I clicked the wrong link or something. Anyways... The cone aoe only hits for 30-35k damage and plasma flare hits for 36k-40k. Those are not big hits in 6.0. Little bump in damage would put it more in line with how hard other classes can hit now.

They buffed a pyro tactical that was worthless to use. It's still overshadowed by the 100% crit tactical even after the buff. If the crit tactical gets nerfed too hard it'll bump the class back down to being the worst choice for pvp again. Literally only thing pyro has going for it is really good damage. They still get destroyed under any sustained pressure like they did in 5.0.

I'm leaning somewhat hesitantly towards sorc still being #1 for now. Merc healing could arguably be #1 in some situations and they're not a joke anymore. Their ability to absorb damage is unreal.

You ran into a good sorc and that's what they're supposed to do. You got outplayed. You counter it with better positioning or you root/cc them so they can't move.

Thank you! Glad you find them useful. A gentleman scholar worked out the exact amount for the crit softcap at 2820 points where mastery becomes better. If the base damage goes up then so does the crit amount, so crit can still be useful up to a point. Power doen't become better until it's a stupid high value. Maths here: I'm basically just looking for confirmation that bolster isn't capping stats and I haven't noticed.

Hoping someone has done some testing on bolster in level 75 PVP and could confirm or correct some assumptions for me. Bolster in sub 75 content caps mastery endurance and power, making tertiary stats like crit and alacrity better choices. From what I've seen it doesn't seem like bolster at 75 hard caps stats like mastery. I'm trying to work out how much crit and mastery I need to be stacking. I know the soft cap for crit, but if mastery is worthless then it's crit all the way. Would appreciate anyone with insight on this.

PT did get some improvements in 6.0 that did noticeably increase their life, but they are still the class with the worst survivability in the game. All they got in the current meta is really good damage, so being able to outlast an opponent isn't as critical. I figure playing a pt is going to be the same as an operative. The average players won't make it work but really good players are scary as hell.

I've only had 100k hit one time since I've been using it. Hitting more than one person is incredibly rare because of how small the aoe is. It really has to be a couple melee dps that are on you and don't notice it's about to pop or don't know you're running meteor brawler. It's got a 2min cooldown and it's impending doom is announced 15 seconds in advance, as long as the buff isn't clicked off. Easily avoidable.

Under completely perfect conditions it can hit for 100k. Like, every relic has procced, 4pc bonus is active, every possible debuff has been applied, every utility has procced, power yield is up to full stacks and they were willing to stand within 5m of you when it pops. When the stars align it's amazing. The reality of using this set is it normally hits for 55-65k on average. It's the same as what everyone else hits for. The aoe range is small, so it's actually very difficult to hit someone, it's melee range only. There are tacticals that deal more damage than this 6pc bonus.

I feel the same way right now about DPS being a bit overtuned compared to healing output. I have actually had people die on me where I am spamming heals and it's sometimes just not enough. I made the recommendation to look at commando healers for pvp since they're really well adapted to being a damage sponge. I find now I must roll with high casting immunity as protection because being able to spam healing now is such a necessity.

You may want to take a hard look at commando healers for pvp now. The extra utility point and utility tree rearrangement has made them a lot stronger for pvp healing. They can achieve ridiculous levels of casting immunity now and with the right utilities can face tank multiple dps. The tactical that lets them cast medical probe while moving is a one item wonder for pvp. The problem with commando healing wasn't the output, but they had to be immobile to put out the numbers and they just got shut down too easily. With 6.0 those weaknesses are gone and they are by far the tankiest healer with the most mobility. I put up a few videos of me healing using a facetank build for pvp on my youtube channel. Might be useful for those curious how commandos are doing now. I agree with the sentiment that 6.0 has really tilted the balance towards dps.

I had thought about those items interacting like that, thank you for confirming lol

Oh I just read today's patch notes. Okay, so it's not popping off shield now so that's good.

I agree, the other tacticals just really didn't seem worth it. So to use Meteor brawler effectively, you basically just need to supercharge your shield and then it's set and forget from there? You can just walk around knowing that when the shield is finished it'll hit everybody around you? The tooltip looks like you can trigger the damage potentially early at max stacks, but I am just making sure it doesn't cancel out your shield when it does pop.

I tried tactics out without any tacticals or set pieces and I agree it seemed like the damage sucked. The burst damage wasn't as lethal as it was in 5.0. I tried pyrotech and saw the damage was noticeably better than 5.0 and never looked back. I looked at the power load tactical being the strongest choice because the damage potential is really high if you're getting tunneled. That's IF and a big IF you get tunneled. If you don't get attacked at all then all you get basically is a free cell burst. High risk high reward basically. The plasmatech tacticals by comparison are zero risk high reward. Is meteor brawler worth it? The 40-45k aoe seems okay but doesn't appear to crit, as far as I can tell. Does it cancel out your reactive shield when it blows? Vanguard dcds are precious, so firefall clipping your shield would not be good for pvp.