Each weapon is good, but for the up close and personal, the burst cannons are great, paired with overcharge (Sting) or Targeting telemetry (Blackbolt) you can drop a satellite circling scout in 1 or 2 bursts (if spec'd right) keep in mind that if you do a lot of combat at 2500-3500 meters you see a huge drop off in performance. Choose the weapon that fits your play style, I switch between the burst cannons and the quads (increased range) depending on what I feel like doing play style wise. Some days you want that dog-fighting combat other times you want the more strike fighter distance role.

Pot5 does have a lot of good pilots and the ques seem to pop quite often, which with the holidays is pretty amazing. I saw band-aid flying around in one of the matches I was in yesterday and hope to see more people come check out our pilot community.

The problem with electronet in PvP is it can be purged by many different class abilities, and the cooldown is to long. A solid healer will purge it off before it even is noticed by the player its cast on. Make it non purgable and reduce the darn cooldown. That's only the tip of the iceberg though.

My 3 suggestions: 1.) Reduce the cast time on concussive missile to an instant cast. As it stands now we have one CC (electrodart), the knockback on jet boost is garbage because most times as soon as you use it you are either forcechoked or they just jump right back on you, meaning no separation at all to help survive, and the root on rocket punch is utter crap as it does next to nothing to help me since I have to be in melee range to use it and the root effect wears off while I'm still in range of jumps or other distance closers. As I said I think this should be an instant cast ability and maybe have an AoE stun effect like flash bang/awe. We all know the name of the game is CC 2.) Add a finishing move, almost every DPS class has some sort of less than 30% health finishing attack, to be on par we should have one as well, rather than watching that healer who is at 12% health heal right back up because HSM and any other hard hitting attack is on CD and tracer takes 1.5 seconds to cast (1.4 if you have that 2% alacrity skill, if you cast faster then why the heck you stacking alacrity? please share.) 3.) Add a proc for an auto crit or a instant refresh on HSM either to compare with sniper's auto refresh on series of shots or the crazy smash autocrit that makes smash monkies so devastating in almost every aspect of the game. Why take a mercenary when you can take along a class that has an autocrit every 20 seconds for insane damage Jumpy Von Jumperson wins that battle of class choice every time. These are just some ideas, maybe I'll post some others once they decide on this representative, thanks.

I noticed another suggestion on additional companions and thought to build off that idea. In other Bioware titles namely the Baulder's Gate series there were numerous companions throughout the land and they could be acquired through various means or lost in much the same manner. I know the decision to lose companions in SWTOR was removed during Beta and for just reasons, but I would love if we as players had options on who our crew members are rather than seeing every Bounty Hunter with the same 5 base companions, 1 ship droid that only is used to run crafting/resource missions and if you desire it HK-51. I understand the changes to the storyline to these particular companions would be tedious so I have an idea built on the foundation already in game. Once you acquire level 50/55 there should be placed throughout the game other companions with an associated quest that you can add to your crew. In keeping with the limits of companion characters per player once you select one of these new companions to join your crew you must select one to leave your team. This is similar to the maximum characters you could have in Baulder's Gate. If over time you would prefer to reacquire the companion you dismissed you simply go to the cantina on the planet they are unlocked in your storyline and do some "re-earn their trust type quest" This would allow for more custimization on the companions each player has vice seeing every bounty hunter running around with Mako etc. This also leads to the question: What about my healer if I trade them for a different companion? This is where a new system building off the customization slot comes in. Have the skill package attached to a customized item similar to the appearance ones we use to make each companion appear a little more unique. If I want to use HK-51 as a healer instead of DPS I equip this item and the default healing abilities are now available for him and his DPS ones are no longer available. This way there is more flexibility in the existing companions, while also allowing the new additional companions discussed above, to have skills that are desirable (most people I know on PvP servers run with a healer). It opens up options and players love more customization options. Thank you for your time, Calithon

I noticed that crafted crystals are not pursued in most cases because the exotic color options that the cartel market has available over crafted versions and the ability to use these items at level 10 vice waiting for level 50 to use +41 stat crystals. My suggestion is to help make crafted crystals competitive or more sought after than they are currently, this suggestion has two parts either or both may be implemented. First part is allowing crafted crystals to have more than one stat, this can either be a straight across all crystal addition such as: +41 Power/Critical/Expertise/Endurance +20 Endurance This was a tank who wants to increase hit points could have a crystal that adds +61 to endurance per crystal Another variant is to allow the artifice to select the secondary stat and have it fall in line with the traditional class stats +41 Power/Critical/Expertise/Endurance +20 Aim/Willpower/Strength/Cunning Or quite simply make crafted crystals augment supportive and Cartel Crystals are not supportive of augmenting. I know the statement will be made that this makes the cartel crystals worthless to which the level restriction on these being level 50 (or 55 with Makeb coming down the pike soon) the desire to outfit alts or low level characters with the cartel market variant will still be viable. The second part of this suggestion is to implement a color pallet for all crafters to select from (this helps in armors etc as well) and let them choose the color they craft. If player X wants a black-blue or some other rare color combination the schematic can be looted in high end content or via ranked warzone comms for those who prefer PvP content. I feel these couple of suggestions would help add demand for crafted crystals for high level players without diminishing the gains of outfitting cartel crystals on lower level characters. Thank you for your time. Calithon

For leveling go pyrotech lots of guides out there on how to spend your points but basically you want to get the 3 points to make flame burst 100% chance to apply CGC effects (burn DoT) then get the free railshot proc skill (particle accelerator) once you have that set up your going to really roll through mobs and players. The best companion is the one you get on day one, Mako will keep you healed up so you can roll from mob to mob without stopping to do any reloading up to full health.

Wow, Werdan I feel your pain.....try to help out like you do in almost every post and get slammed.......if I get 5 medals a match I feel like I did poorly. I see a lot of these "we suck" posts and honestly I understand the concept of glass cannon (I'm full arsenal) and I know running into the masses trying to kill someone = dead Calithon. Werdan posted a long time ago in his "ask a merc" thread that you need to play to the classes strengths alas some just are never happy unless they have the OP FoTM class. I like a class that is a challenge it keeps all the e-peen f*cktards away from the class and allows the ones who truely love the class for what it is to enjoy it. BTW, Thanks Werdan for all your help in that ask a merc thread, I learned a lot of great material from that thread.

I'm a lvl 50 arsenal spec'd merc and in PvP it's important to understand your weaknesses and your strengths and play to them. Do I get my butt handed to me in close range by some classes, sure do, as I do not have a great deal of long term CCs to get away and other classes seem to be able to chain CC me until my health is so low I'm pretty much dead anyways. Even so most matches I finish with double digit kills to single digit losses normally along the lines of 20+ kills to 2-4 deaths. In good matches where my team sticks together I tend to see 30-40 kills and 0-2 deaths. The thing is I know my class is not designed to charge right into the fray and come out alive, we're "glass cannons" meaning we pick and choose where to situate ourselves and attack from afar. The problem we see with all the OMG our class needs heplzorz is because people assume the class wearing heavy armor can go into a large mass of people kill them all and walk out alive, that's just not going to happen with good players playing. I die, I click the rez button and continue fighting, kill counts and death counts don't mean crap in the grand scheme of things.......it's about having fun and as long as you enjoy the class don't let the other crap get to you. The PvP zones are so fast paced and exciting and while I'm sure there will be some tweaks in the future it has been one of the best launches i have seen for a MMO ever.

They posted this on the forums before they did their scrub for the official launch, one of the devs posted that it made sense and was something they would do. I thought Stephen Reid posted some follow up but I didn't see it in the dev tracker, I don't use twitter so maybe it is referenced over there for linking

The devs have already stated they were going to swap the animations of fusion and tracer missiles they just have not completed it for patching to the game yet.

You start to see a more defined separation of roles higher up, the first few flashpoints are designed as a get your feet wet. I'm currently level 43 and there is no way my arsenal spec'd merc could heal well enough in any heroics let alone flashpoints. Trust me you'll see what I mean in a few more levels.

It depends on your level, once I got to level 20 and got tracer missiles (which most of the upper arsenal tree is built around) I moved some of the lesser used skills off my main keys. Even though I do not use a great deal of melee skills I still have them handy for when a mob/player closes the distance, rocket punch hits a close up target very hard, plus has a knockback from afterburner skill box. I use mostly tracer missile (to stack to 5 as fast as possible and refresh it as needed), rail shot (with tracer lock stacked at 5 it adds 30% damage, 6% per stack), Unload (tracer and powershot have a chance to reset the cooldown and increase the damage on the next use of unload by 25% if you spec "barrage") the rest will be what you use, such as Death from Above, various missile attacks, CC's etc. Hope this helps

Once you get closer to lvl 30 you start to see more variety in the gear stats, like defense, surge, power, alacrity etc. Most BH Mercs I see stack, AIM (since it's core to our AC), and Critical. After those two the other stats are pretty much a free for all some use alacrity to "cast" faster.

Presence - Increases your healing, as well as the health of your companion including their dps/healing.

Play and spec out to your liking, I think a lot of class performance comes from the player, you may not have all the high end skills raid groups may be looking for but you should be fine if you do like werdan spec wise, very smart build imo

Yeah I noticed once I got tracer missiles things got much quicker because of how the arsenal tree is designed to build off the tracers, I see it only getting better once you get some of the additional skills like the 100% vent heat on critical hits etc.