For me the animation makes perfectly sense. Imagine yourself shooting off missile after missile from your underarm. There are a couple of problems with this: - To have a recoil-less firing you have to let the exhaust out of the back of the firing mechanism, that's straight into your face with your arm straight and aiming. (Animation wise) - Even if recoil-less its never completely still and your arm will shake somewhat. After a while i would imagine one becoming seriously tired in the arm. - If not recoil-less the problem will be even worse... On the other hand having it fire from your back you negate all of the above negative effects. You take the brunt of the force on your strongest part of your body, legs and back. Fusion missiles and Explosive darts are only fired now and then and are thus manageable to shoot from your underarm. Good work Bioware, you got it right on the first try!

What most people seems to forget is that Arsenal is a gun-platform and as such designed to be immobile while firing. You don't see Haubitz guns roaming the battlefield firing off every now and then? No they are stationary when unloading their 'death from above', same goes with Arsenal mercs. We need close support or shelter for survivability. Also a lot of all the QQ is about we can't go up against other players, especially 1on1. PvP in SWTOR isn't centered around 1on1 PvP but on cooperation and tactics. This might be a whole new concept to some but in reality that how it works. Our class does great damage and if we would be mobile at the same time the nerfbat would be swinging our way faster than one could say 'nerf-herder' and then the QQ would be even worse than it is now... We should be grateful that Bioware have had the courage to make classes different and not adopted Blizz'es way of class homogenization where every class can do the same stuff. What's the fun in that? I will not say l2p your class but learn to cooperate with others to maximize your winning probability. In the end of the day its crushing the enemy that counts!

Also everyone capable should use their CC to keep the loose mobs to a minimum. I positively love Bioware for reintroducing the need for crowdcontrol again. In a multimob pull where CC is used effectivly there will be maybe one or two loose mobs and thats not a problem for the tank to pick up nor for the healer to handle. Of course if there are players present not familiar with the concept of CC there will be problems since healing through an onslaught of multiple mobs aint working... So start teaching ppl the glory of CC and most pulls will be easy and aggro from mobs due to threat from healing will be virtually nil...

It's interesting to see that the history repeats itself over and over again. The discussion here is exactly the same as it has been in WoW for the last couple of years: every other class is so much better than the one (insert class of choice here) i'm currently playing. So now i want you (Bioware) to buff my class so i can take on every other class on my own!! This road only leads to one thing: homogenization of the classes. This is very boring since there will be no difference between the classes anymore and its more of a choice how you want your toon to look like. That will ultimately kill the game. So BH Mercenary using the Arsenal tree has low survivability against others you say? But our class is a gunplattform and thus being somewhat immobile we need close support! In a war you don't leave your haubitz gun emplacement undefended, instead you have good close support around to defend it. Otherwise the enemy can just steamroll your big guns and you lucked out... PvP in SWTOR isn't centered around 1vs1 PvP but instead focuses on team tactics. My few cents would be that if you find a good teammate to protect you from any harm you will have excellent survivability. And its not about having someone carry you through the battle, its more of a team effort. Everyone contributes to the overall goal of winning....