Hulk > Thor

In solo pvp I'm loving my merc. I also play a carnage marauder and I love the merc more. I think the merc is better at solo play. My solo rwz rank is better on my merc. I think I'm close to 1500 on the merc and only 1200-1300 on the marauder. The marauder can also be awesome sauce BUT I think he relies on support more than the merc. The merc can adapt better to random class make ups on both sides. For solo play I'm almost forced to play rage on the marauder because that spec is better in more situations and I'm seeing my rank improve. It could simply be that I'm personally better at the merc play style than the marauder... I'm only reporting what I'm personally observing. The biggest difference I found in solo play is that I have a very hard time on the marauder when I need to solo kill an OP healer. With the merc it is still difficult but because I can dps while he's stunned I have a much higher (it seems) success rate on the merc. That alone makes me like the merc more. I think there is no question that the arsenal merc is balanced now. Given the right team and strategies they can succeed. But they are not going to succeed in every situation. If you go up against a melee heavy team and neither side has a healer... well that's going to very difficult... at least for me it is.

I think I'm 30 - 10 solo rwz. If it's all dps vs dps AND the other side is all melee, I have a hard time. If there is a healer on my side, or the other side consists of a ranged dps... I do pretty well. If there is a healer on my side and they focus me, my team and I can dps someone while they try to kill me. Basically you have to be ready for the focus and get good at hit/run/heal but if they have 4 smahers or 4 assassins you're going to be toast

I went back to arsenal after a few solo rwz. Don't get me wrong I'm not claiming pyro is inferior. I just am personally much better at arsenal. I will say yes arsenal has better consistent burst. But Pyro does have those occasional burst spikes that are a HUGE rush when they happen. When it happens I'm like "wholly crap!" It doesn't happen enough for me to stick with it. But I can see that someone that masters the spec is no longer a push over.

Great point and I often do...

Originally I went long tirade with this post and I deleted it 2 times and started over. I'm going to just do what's important: I have never served in the military nor do I have any immediate family members that have. So I can never truly understand your sacrifice. But to all of you in this thread that have all I can do is thank you.

We are squishy if we are focused but so are most classes. I'd say we are middle of the pack.

Well I think some pvp'ers need to try 2.4 pyro before you judge. I'm not 100% sold on it but I was pretty shocked by the burst. I played about 7 regulars and 4 ranked (solo). A small sample size I know... but the new rail shot seems to be hitting much harder. I like the new mobility and the change to chaff is really nice.

I want to know... does it recognize a joystick or gamepad

Well he did get the second highest kills on his team. The highest on the other side was only 15. It seems to me this was healer stalemate. He also had no deaths which is pretty good also. But this is a small sample size so I wouldn't claim anything really. But I think he's doing pretty well, I might try pyro this week.

I have to echo that for solo ranked I'm also doing very well. I have over 2x as many wins as losses. If you are focused with no healer you are toast but so is almost every other class. I disagree about the low damage on kiting. You do less damage of course but it's still packs a punch. Plus if you kite properly they are doing none.

I'm not sure if this is 100% accurate... For damage it seems that expertise bonus is showing up in your stats. For my bounty hunter and marauder I can go into my character page and look at the "damage" stat for ranged, tech, melee and force respectively . For example my bounty hunter's ranged page... When I had some pve pieces mixed into my pvp set (level 66 weapons min-maxed for power surge) I could see that I had 16k expertise outside of the warzone. I zone in and my expertise went up to 19k, my total bolstered pvp damage bonus was 56%. However when I swap for the min-maxed pvp conqueror weapons while zoned in... My expertise is maxed, the pvp damage bonus goes up to 60%, but my range damage stat goes down. I think the bonus damage line that is on every page (ranged, tech, melee, and force) is also effected but nothing else changes. So if you look at the damage line on your offensive stats you can gage if a pve piece vs a pvp piece is hurting you or helping you. But you have to be zoned into a warzone to do this. It has been claimed that at level 66 pve weapons are slightly better than conqueror gear and my experiment supports this. However I have not tested it with the latest bolster or the new pvp weapons. This works for the weapons because bolster factors in weapons., relics. armor. and implants separately. It's not all inclusive. So this is a side effect. I believe people have shown that 72 + weapons get less expertise bolster and are not as good as the pvp weapons. SO what does this mean. BOLSTER IS THE MOST UNINTUITIVE system I've ever used. You have to zone into the warzone and play with equipping and unequipping gear to figure out what pieces kill your stats and what pieces help your stats.

I'm assuming the OP means well... but I don't think this will ever change. Bolster is just too un-intuitive for the casual pvp'er to understand. I still see people wearing battlemaster gear.

Actually I read your post wrong... When my brain read "cast while moving" it though it was reading "all casts are instant"... for ten seconds. I actually would be fine with what you suggested.. but I'd prefer the two insta-casts. Casting while moving is great but IMHO two instant casts are better when under melee pressure and you are trying to kite away.

With my current set up I'm still hitting 10k crits. With the level 66 ear,implants, and relics I've had 2 matches since Tuesday where my biggest hit was over 11k... So I don't think dps is a problem... my skill maybe :-) that's another problem

I don't like the suggestion to fundamentally change the resource system. I'd rather tweak what we have. I think your suggested change to rapid shots would be fine but not sure 3/6 is the right number... It can be tweaked of course. Not sold on your other ideas. But I understand where they are coming from. IMHO, PS is fine with 2 charges I would just lower the cool down a bit. I like the suggestion to make it a base ability. Other than that I really think mercs are in a good place. I like the answers they gave us but I am in the camp for adjusting our resources rather than change them.

Yeap I'm totally wrong my WH relic has expertise on it... but my experiment still stands. When I quip it with the Conquerer relic and 2 pve weapons. I'm getting a boost to dps even though my dps pvp bonus is 56%... However that's all moot for 2.4. I went with the crit and power level 66 relics and dropped the WH relic. Also equiped my PVP weapons. My dps has dropped a little but defense bonus is maxed. Arenas make survivability more important so I'm going to abandon the slight dps gain for the slight damage mitigation gain.

Actually now I'm not sure I was unable to play last night so I don't know for sure... Also I just remembered it's not the EWH one it's the WH one. So maybe that's part of the my mistake. I could have sworn the last time I looked at it, it was 145 power (with augment) and some endurance but that was it.

Has anyone found one that sounds like the classic blasters of the original series? I've been "looking" for a long time. Like this :

Ok I see the confusion. The expertise was removed from the EWH sets in one of the patches after 2.0. There is no expertise on my relic.

Thank you I did not know that about the matrix cube. I read a lot of posts about the SA/EWH relic being BiS. This is the first I heard about the Matrix cube being better than EWH relic. What I said was based on a lot of my testing focusing on the max ranged and tech damage stat in the character dialog. When I zone in I have something like 1900 expertise. The pvp panel says I have 56% damage bonus. If I swap out to my conqueror weapons. My expertise and pvp damage bonus nearly maxes out but my range and tech max damage reads slightly less. Now if I replace my EWH relic with another pvp relic. My expertise and damage bonus maxes but my ranged and tech max damage drops pretty significantly. I forget the actual numbers because I'm in work. You have to do this test when you are zoned in so you can gage bolster. I admit I don't do parse experiments so I could be totally wrong the way I'm analysing it.

Thrawn Trilogy I would start there seriously.. It's the series that started the "Star wars renaissance" in the mid 90's. It was the series that I wish they would make into the next movie trilogy... although I'm not sure the original actors would be able to pull it off because of their age... All the other books going forward have built of the success of those three novels.

I have zero crit on my armor but I get around 20 something crit when buffed. I have a couple of parts with accuracy on them so I have 95% range accuracy and if 2.4 wasn't around the corner I would have swapped them out. Other than that I have all power and surge with aim augments. You are lagging a little behind me with the aim and power because I also have the elite war hero power relic matched with the power proc relic and full power pve level 66 weapons. Your mods that have more power than aim are slightly better than mine because I have the ones with more aim. Again I would have swapped them if 2.4 wasn't coming. It's not that power is better than aim but your mods have slightly more when you add the two I think your mods have 8 more aim+power than mine. But our numbers on heatseeker are similar. Our stats are pretty close also. My HS was hitting people for 10k plus in warzones but I think a lot of people have min-maxed conqueror gear so I don't see quite those numbers anymore. I'm more in the 7-9 range right now... but I just did pop someone for 9786 about an hour ago :-) It was a sorc.

You could have stumbled upon some weird thing that happens at lower levels because of gear and bolster but I can tell you that at 55 I don't see this happening.. I can do some tests tonight but this doesn't seem typical to me. I've always noticed that power shot hits slightly less than my TM.

Yes crit is useless to stack now. You'll get enough from aim and talents. For pvp (it will differ for pve) you want to: 1) have just enough accuracy to have 95% ranged (some people will argue more or less) 2) then stack power and surge on every mod and enhancement and use all aim augments. 3) If you are 50+ and if you still have one of the pure power relics from the elite war hero sets equip that with the power surge relic. If you don't have the elite war hero relics then just use another one that applies the dot... 4) For weapons you can either use the conqueror weapons (power and surge modded with aim augments) or you can use a shell with pvp level 66 mods barrel and enhancement and a 41+ power crystal. The pve weapon will give you a little more dps and the pvp weapon more survivability. It's a trade off. Bolster will take care of the lack of expertise on these pve weapons. If you go higher than level 66 mods I think bolster drops you below the dps of the top pvp weapons. 5) Make sure you augment everything including implant, ear pieces and relics.