After watching some of this, I have to conclude that you might enjoy Powertech Pyro a lot more than Merc. You tend to fight in melee range quite often and make use of Rocket Punch more than Power Shot. Overall the video was alright. I'm not a big fan of pvp highlight videos disguised as "guides" but those movies have some merit as well.

Congratulations you now have the longest title in the game.

Not sure if trolling...

Overall I like it. The leveling experience is way ahead of its time, but the endgame is quite lacking. It feels like they didn't really think the end game pvp system out and now are paying the price for it.

Don't do it, they don't shoot lazors. Just white snowflakes. * * * *

I really like the mantis, as it fits the Bounty Hunter perfectly. Sure its not as nice as say the IA ship or as a vast as the smuggler ship. But it's just what you would expect from someone who makes a living hunting down people. You would definitely need a ship that can fight after you just picked off some important republic diplomat. Overall I would say that they could have made better use of the vertical space in the ship. You could totally fit 3 decks instead of just 2 in the space of that ship, but for some reason they must have expected that 12 foot tall aliens would be using it.

Perhaps they could put a 10 second cooldown on Kolto Shell instead of the heat cost, that way you can't spam it like you can now. (Not that you would) They also should remove the cooldown on Healing Scan, since it heals for so little and is only really used to reduce the heat cost of Rapid Scan. I think they might have been trying to tone down Sorc healing with the Kolto Residue change. Perhaps they could allow for critical heals in some talent or another to provide double the amount of SCG charges every 6 seconds, to offset the change to the talent. I think everyone would be okay with it if they could use it more frequently.

My spec will be exactly the same post patch as the spec I am now. That is 31 Pyrotech, Mecenary of course. I think Bioware is really going to be cracking down on tank like specs doing tons of damage while having lots of survivability like Carolina Parakeet provides. It is also worth pointing out that Sorcs are getting nerfed pretty hard in damage and the healing department. Specifically with their force bending and madness change. For Powertechs I imagine we'll see more people trying out Advanced Prototype, or most likely just going 31 Pyrotech even with the changes to PPA.

They did a good job at creating a character that responds like a real women.

There is a helpful talent in the Pyrotech tree that reduces the cooldown of Thermal Sensor Override whenever you get a critical hit. So you can basically pop this sucker out quite frequently if your getting lots of crits. (Rapid Shots pretty much ensures a critical hit which procs the talent.)

I think it would be nice if we could have say an emergency Vent Heat ability. Something you can only use once you hit 100% heat. Basically you could use it every 3 minutes and it would automatically vent all your heat but you would suffer a 50% damage and healing reduction for 20 seconds afterward. That way you'd be punished for not managing your heat, but you wouldn't just be using rapid shots for the next 20 seconds.

Well we can't really fully evaluate how much damage each stat gives us at this point to know for a certainty that Accuracy is a bad stat. It's certainly not very noticeable. However it is quite annoying to be hit capped against raid bosses in PvP gear. We're just gonna have to steal the mods from other people's gear for the time being.

Enjoy it while it lasts, in 1.2 voidstar ends as soon as the 2nd round team gets farther than the first round team. So long games like that are going to be few and far in between.

I tried posting this on the PTS forums but it disappeared in the sea of qq posts that seem to be posted there on a second by second basis. Basically I want to propose an alternative to the current changes we are going to see to the talent Prototype Particle Accelerator for Pyrotech for both Powertechs and Mercenaries. The talent would be reworked to look something like. Basically it would curb our burst damage while giving us more sustained reliability to the Heat Management mechanism of Pyrotech. It would also reward us for planning out our rotation in PvE. The Powertech version would be similar but with proc rates to reflect the instant cast nature of their abilities. You can read a little more in depth about it on my blog if you want.http://bountyblacklist.blogspot.com/2012/03/prototype-particle-accelerator.html Please let me know what you guys think.

Your forgetting the one thing sorcs and sages both have which is interrupts. Sure you can juke one but then they also have stun. As far as casts go Power Shot does even more damage than Tracer Missile and the only thing that makes it better to cast for Arsenal are the talents that directly affect it. Sorcs can't cleanse our Pyro dots they are considered tech effects. Cleanse from operatives and other mercs can be an issue though. Thermal Detonator is used for the damage it does, which is quite significant, not the stun against weak mobs as you suggest. Merc Pyro is not a PvE build, I'm not really sure how you came to this conclusion. There are no encounters where it is better to have the mobile damage that Pyrotech offers rather than the turreting capabilities that Arsenal provides. Arsenal is the frail arcane mage in warzones with almost all their damage being based off one single attack. Without combat logs I can't truly comment on how Sorcs and Mercs compare in PvE. I think you are either trolling or misguided when you say that Arsenal is the superior spec for warzones because of the Tracer Missile debuff that other classes can easily provide. I know that it does stack right now with other debuffs of the same type, however we know for certain that they are going to fix that. Therefore I have to conclude that without the stacking tracer missile debuff there is no reason going Arsenal in Rated Warzones unless you hate yourself and don't mind fake casting tracer missile most of the game.

Rail Shot is your hardest hitter and it can get up to 65% Armor Penetration with High Velocity Gas Cylinder. I use the Rail Shot bonus as full 31 Pyro. Also don't abort your Unload it deals a significant amount of damage if you let it do its thing.

I'm gonna have to disagree with the above poster about Tracer Missile being superior in PvP. I'm rank 65 right now with almost full battlemaster and I do way more damage in warzones as full Pyrotech. While tracer missile does have the big hits and its buffs and debuffs it doesn't have the one thing warzones call for and thats the ability to be mobile while dealing damage. As far as burst is concerned Pyrotech has way more burst than Arsenal. Sure you get some big hits with your Tracer x3 > Heatseeker > Railshot combo, but you can do the same thing with Pyrotech and your Fusion Missile becomes a nice damage cooldown with Thermal Sensor Override. Pyrotech also has dots that do more damage when targets are below 30% making it effectively an execute. With constant railshots being thrown out you can really rack up the damage quickly and dots also deal a significant amount of damage. As Pyrotech you have to remember that your damage is increased by 9% on burning targets so you need to make sure they are burning with incendiary missile before trying to burst them. You can line up a Thermal Detonator start casting Power Shot and use Rail Shot as that finishes to deal 30-60% of someones health. At the end of the day though I feel that only ranked warzones will really show which spec is superior. My feeling is that Arsenal Mercs are going to be hard pressed to not be chain interrupted when Rated becomes available simply because everyone knows how much damage a turreting Arsenal Merc can do. On a side note Pyrotech isn't penalized by using Alacrity like Arsenal making it a viable stat. Hope this helps you and causes you not to make the fallacy of going tracer missile spam.

Really another one of these threads? 0/10

Mercenary all the way. Don't let the Powertechs fool you, they all wish they had more than that little wimpy blaster they use. Plus your completely ranged as a Mercenary which is at least 30 yards better than being a melee class like Powertech.

This whole skill vs gear debate is really kind of stupid. I mean gear is probably the only type of progression in this game for people who pvp. The idea is simple: you do lots of pvp and do well and you are rewarded with gear that supports that play style. However several people feel that they are constantly losing because their gear is terrible or whatever, while saying that the game should be based on skill alone and not gear by any measure. I think perhaps the top end pvpers should be rewarded with a bit more power. Even if its just superior weapons. Otherwise ranking and different colored gearsets are the only thing to look forward too. While I do think competitive pvp is fun because it is fun to compete there also has to be incentive to keep pvping. So when both parties are fully geared out the competitive pvper that has obtained the high ranked weapons will be slightly more powerful but not so much that the other person never stood a chance.

You might benefit from running sideways and shoot and at the same time. A technique known as strafing. All in all though your going to be hard pressed trying to peel melee classes off you. Your best bet is going to be to utilize the terrain in your favor. In Huttball using the catwalks. In Alderan using the ledges. In Voidstar using the pillars.

I recommend using High Velocity Gas Cylinder in pvp as it leads to higher burst damage while Combustible Gas Cylinder gives you more sustained damage. You can also read some information on it on my blog post about this very same topic.

Thanks for the input guys and more importantly, actually discussing PvP on the PvP forum. While I am interested in what your saying I was also wondering if it was possible to get some actually intelligent discussion going against the constant tide of "nerf this or such and such is OP" threads. So once again thanks. I do agree that being able to adapt is key in Civil War, but I find most of the time the initial move determines the game. If your opening assault fails how do you go about taking another node. It can be almost impossible to take the side nodes once they are well defended, but zerging it before reinforcements arrive and actually capping is quite difficult. I find the only time we can really recover is by pulling their forces away from the Side and hitting the middle hard while they are fighting at the sides.

I'm sure plenty of teams will have these Lightning/Madness Hybrid specs in them. It's not about damage so much as it is about utility. Having another Rescue combined with the sprint > stomp combo is reason enough to take a Sorc over another dps class. It just seems that the Lightning/Madness Hybrid spec does the most burst damage out of the other specs. To say that Sorcs are mediocre at skilled group PVP is insanity, no other class has as many tools as the Sorc. I know its hard to see past your tinted view of Sorcs, but coming from someone who plays a Sorc, Merc and Juggernaut. The Sorc is by far the best.

Grand Champion of the Great Hunt, because I enjoy having a name that is 5 character lengths wide.