To the OP, before 1.2, I ran a variation of the Hybrid spec you linked to and enjoyed it alot. But after 1.2, I don't see why you would choose to go with that anymore. The 16 heat cost of Kolto Shell just isnt that worth it. The ability is real nice for 1v1, but the only time you can really apply it to yourself is before a fight begins otherwise you will get overheated quickly. And the 50% nerf to the Power Barrier in arsenal just sucks now for the Hybrid as well. When 1.2 hit, I was LOVING arsenal. Like others have said, I didn't notice ridic damage in raiding (my group has 2 arsenal mercs). But what i did love was that Heatseeker missle was actually a great finisher. it was so nice to be able to burst down a marauder with some nice crits. The 1.2.1 patch or whatever it was broke Arsenal for me badly. After reading up on alot of extensive posts and doing some of my own testing, my hypothesis is that Tracer Missle is not correctly debuffing the armor of the target by 20% for our own attacks. You can test this easily by shooting 10 Tracers in a row and seeing that the damage never significantly increases for 20% armor debuff. They need to fix this asap because I really enjoyed Arsenal post 1.2. But more recently, I have been going full Pyro (0/10/31) and have been loving it. The mobility is really nice and I love the more bursty aspects with lots of railshots and thermal detonator. Im gunna be sticking with Pyro until something gets done with Bodyguard or Arsenal. In terms of changes that I think they should do to make Mercs better for PvP and 1v1: 1) We absolutely need an interupt. Make it a 30 second CD, I don't care 2) We absolutely need a root in place effect after Jet Boost like Sorcs and Snipers. Movement speed slow is terrible in comparision 3) (My creative idea to add to the thread) Something needs to be done to change Missle Blast to make it part of our rotation as dps to provide some mobility. I think that similar to the Target Lock buff for rail show, they could add a similar buff to ourselves that would increase damage of next missle blast by 10/20/30% and decrease heat by 8/16/25 or something like that. Thoughts? Comments?

This is my build currently: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#300ZMIkZMIrbzGGRR.1 There are a few differences with my build to the "cookie cutter" Merc Pyro build. I built this so that I wouldnt constantly be needing to respec between PvP and PvE. I did this through the following talent choices: 1) 2/2 Rapid Venting - necessary for raiding and really nice to have for PvP 2) 2/2 Energy Rebounder - I love this ability so much for PvP, if you think about it, in 15 seconds of getting beat on while you have Energy Shield activated, the cooldown has already been reduced by 30 seconds (every 1.5 sec x 3 sec CD reduction) 3) 1/2 Automated Defenses - I chose to put 1 point in here because heat management is an issue in PvE if you don't use TSO with Unload properly. The CD reduction on TSO is great, and the CD reduction on Kolto Overload is nice for PvP and PvE 4) 3/3 Stabilizers - I just do this out of preference. I can't stand pusback on abilities. It's pretty necessary in raiding because you don't ever want Unload to get stopped early, its one of the best ways to vent heat outside of the PPA railshot proc. And, it's nice in PvP to do a full Unload on some melee who is training me Just my thoughts on Pyro because Arsenal has started to become quite boring in my eyes since 1.2

Huh? I only have one 50, Valor 63 Full BM Arsenal Merc. Operatives make me

I am really beginning to think that Bioware has no idea what a QA enviornment is. Honestly, do they ever test the changes that they make to code? This seems like a stupid oversight that could easily have been identified if they tested these changes before they pushed out another patch "fix". I think a typical Bioware Dev staff meeting goes like this: Dev1 - "Heatseeker Missles is hitting for like 8k, something is wrong guys" Dev2 - "Yeah it seems to be stacking with other BH Heat Signatures" Dev1 - "Understood, lets just delete the part of code that buffs Heatseeker Missles, that will most likely fix the problem" Dev2 - "Right away sir, code deleted. Lets push a patch to the Prod enviornment right now" Dev1 - "BRILLIANT" This is just getting ridiculous. I'm losing all faith in Bioware that they can actually maintain an MMO for more that 6 months. They nerf'd Arsenals survivability, provided no new utility, and now a ninja nerf to our damage. I know it will likely get fixed, but good lord... what a bunch of amatures... (not sure how to spell that lol)

1) I would agree with you on this point that DFA damage hasnt really changed. It hits 6 times instead of 3, with average hits being ~600 normal and ~1100 crit for me. The radius reduction sucks, but its not that bad 2) Yeah Expertise went up, but in different ways. Damage is now the most scaled buff from Exp, follow by damage reduction and lastly healing. So, everyones damage just went up alot in PvP, more so than the damage reduction. This leads to everyone in PvP gear having less survivability than pre 1.2 3) NO WAY should you be using Power Shot, you must be kidding me. Both abilities got a 10% nerf in damage. Tracer Missle hits for Elemental damage or whatever its called, so armor and sheifl and defenses and stuff do not affect the damage. Power Shot is white damage and hits like a Nerf gun (childrens toy reference), and it can be dodged, blocked etc. just like Unload can because they are both white, weapon damage. USE TRACER MISSLE Overall, I am pretty dissapointed with the 1.2 changes. Howver, the buff to Heatseeker missles is INSANE. With my Power Adrenal and a Crit/Surge relic popped I can easily hit 6k/7k crits with these and that is NASTY damage. Tracer Missle def got a damage reduction, I think more than 10% that they told us. I'm basically full BM except for my weapons and pre 1.2 I used to crit TM for around 2800-3000. After 1.2, I am getting crits for like 1900-2100. Thats a pretty significant drop in damage. And the fact that they said they wanted to make our rotation more active or whatever BS they told us in the patch notes is just laughable. All we do differently post 1.2 is use Unload a little bit more. For some unknown reason, I seem to be having alot more Heat Management issues running Arsenal than I did pre-1.2. I think there is some slight underlying bug that is affecting Tracer Missles heat or the number of times that we can proc the 8 heat vent ability from the talent tree. And I would agree that survivability completely went out the window. Marauders, Juggs, PT's and Operatives completely dominate me now. Before 1.2, I would usually put up a fight to the more skilled players and could actually kill the not so good players. Def not the same any more.

Hey everyone, So I've been getting really bored with my Mercenary and wanted to try out something different. I have been full Arsenal before (good damage, not good in PvP). Ive been Bodyguard, but I only have a Centurian set for this. And I am currently Pyro spec'd, but I just cant quite figure out what I really like for PvP. I have been thinking about running the following 23/18/0 spec that looks like this: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#300rfMkRzcbzZMIkbR0d.1 It seems like it would be fun for Warzones because I mostly que solo and would provide good survivability with the healing bonuses, Kolto Shell and Kolto Missle. The best part would be to have Power Shield for 100% interupt immunity and no pushback on heals or Tracer Missles But at the same time I would still be able to cast Tracer Missle, Unload, Explosive Dart and Rail Shot and do some decent dps. I tried to build the spec around using High Velocity Cylindar instead of Combat Support. I did this because I like the heat venting from HV and the 30% armor penetration. The benefits of using Supercharged Gas or the 3% healing/damage buff at 30 stacks just don't seem worth it. For gear, I would be wearing all Champion Eliminator except for 2 piece (boot/gloves) of the medic set to buff my energy sheild even more Anyone have thoughts on this spec? Has anyone played it before to give me some feedback on its performance in warzones?

I'll just drop this from another thread I posted in. Basically just sums up my position on the 1.2 BH changes: On the whole Tracer Missle argument, I literally don't care about a damage nerf. They could have lowered the damage of Tracer Missle by 30% and I wouldn't care at all - AS LONG as they would have spread that damage out to other abilities. The heatseeker missle 10% damage buff was a nice compensation, but rail shot remains meh for Arsenal. And now they have nerfed Power Shot too? How in the world did they expect that this would provide a more "active gameplay rotation"? There are still about 6 things in the Arsenal tree that REQUIRE us to be spamming Tracer Missle, so with these changes they have not accomplished anything except for making us use Unload with Barrage procs a little bit more frequently. Arsenal is boring as hell to raid with and even worse in PvP due to its terrible survivability and weakness to melee interupts/pushback. My suggestions for Arsenal changes would be the following: 1) A Jetpack disengage ability that pushes us ~30m away from our target 2) Some sort of proc to boost damage and give us a free, no heat Missle Blast (literally havn't used that ability since like level 10) 3) Some sort of temporary immunity to interupts or gap closers that would give us a fighting chance against melee bashing our face in Now to talk about the healing changes, which are the BIGGEST overall nerf of 1.2 to the Bounty Hunter class. As others have mentioned, I've played MMOs before, I don't really care about damage and healing % nerfs, those are quite ievitable. What I do care about is the resource management system that Bounty Hutners have to use (Heat) which is terrible compared to Operatives and Sorcs. Cutting the heat venting of SGC by 50%, increasing the heat cost of a Rapid Scan after a healing Scan by 50%, AND making Kolto Shell (an already almost useless ability) now cost 16 heat? These changes are absolutely ridiculous in terms of PvE and PvP. Managing our heat during healing intensive raid encounters or high burst pvp situations was already hard enough, now they are essentially making it 2x to 3x times harder to maintain ustained healing without needing to spam our Rapid Shot healing at them for half the fight. Overall, I'm very dissapointed with the way Bioware has handled the 1.2 changes. I was really looking forward to some new content, new warzones and new gear. But with these very large, unwarrented changes to my only character... I find myself counting down the days until D3 drops so I can play a better, more fun game without a Sub to pay. /endrant

@maylen If you are enjoying the mercenary class, you will be fine through the normal story mode without an interupt. You will have plenty of dps and heals to survive. I would make 2 recomendations: 1) Spec arsenal for leveling, unless you wanna be the heal spec and let companions do most dps 2) Use Mako, the healer, as your companion 100% of the time. Unless you go healer again, then maybe Skadge or Torian

THe mercenary never does get an interupt. I will say that the talents, esp in the Arsenal tree, will somewhat help with this because it lowers the cool down on jet boost which you can use to interupt. And also provides rocket punch with a short 4/5m knockback that can be used to interupt mobs. If you would feel more comfortable with having an interupt, I'd turn around right now and just roll PowerTech (as you are only lvl 13). It's really all about what play style you prefer, melee or ranged dps. Personally, I went Mercenary and have been regretting every single second of it post-50...

I really like you suggestion about swapping Improved Vents and System Calibrations. I think that would be a great change to benefit both trees. I think they should just add Fusion Missle to the Stabilizers talent to help pyros out too, because as a Merc pyro I actually use this skill alot. My biggest gripe with the 1.2 patch is the HUGE nerf to Merc Pyro in regards to the cylindar requirement for Prototype Particle Accelerator. Let me preface this by saying that this will be a ridiculous nerf to the heat venting capability of the AC in raiding, I'm not talking about PvP at all. As it is right now, High Velocity Gas Cylindars enables the heat cost of rail shot to be reduced by 8. It starts at 16 heat, so when you have HVGC enabled it costs 8. When you have the 4 piece Eliminator set, it reduces it a further 8 making it a free spell. This helps so much when you are Arsenal and is INVALUABLE when you are raiding as pyro becuase we have no other abilities that help us vent heat. With this change, we will now just use rail shot and it will be neutral if it hits a burning target instead of venting 8 heat. This is just an overall bad idea and I believe to compensate they should enable some talent in the Merc Pyro tree to reduce the heat cost of rail shot by 8. Thoughts/feedback/suggestions?

Just thought that I would throw a quick build suggestion to anyone in here who is thinking about going Pyro. I raid and pvp and was getting sick of having to respec back and foth between Arsenal and Pyro. This is my build that has the best of both worlds. Pyro does require much more skill to be viable in PvE but I love that. You basically just need to manage your heat better because you can't just spam TM or Unload and vent heat. My "lightbulb" idea was to split 2 points between Automated Defenses and Energy Rebounder. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#300ZMIkZMIrbzGuRs.1

Gunna use a CoD:Black Ops zombies reference here: for anyone who has unlocked the Zeus Cannon (like a grav gun) this will make sense... Basically I envision the commando taking his huge grav cannon thing and shooting directly at the ground angled backwards. It would emit this shockwave animation and just boost himself backwards. Ooooohhhh.... I just really want this ability to be added

Gunna hi-jack this suggestion from another thread but: I have to say that the suggestion to switch Improved Vents (16 more heat) and System Calibrations (4% alacrity) is quite possibly the best suggestion that I have ever come across on these forums to date. What in the **** was Bioware thinking not doing this in the first place? Pyro uses alot of heat, we need to vent more... Healing needs alacrity... WAIT, lets just switch these two talents around for no reason! BRILLIANT!!

I have to say that the suggestion to switch Improved Vents and System Calibrations is quite possibly the best suggestion that I have ever come across on these forums to date. What in the **** was Bioware thinking not doing this in the first place? Pyro uses alot of heat, we need to vent more... Healing needs alacrity... WAIT, lets just switch these two talents around for no reason! BRILLIANT!!

I would have to agree with both of your later suggestions for changes to the Merc Pyro tree. Thank you for some constructive criticism and input for this thread. I wasn't ever trying to start a flame war between PT's and Merc's. I just felt that the Merc Pyro Tier 1's are completley out of place and are sub-par to PT equivelant Tier 1's. Some sort of buf/added utility to Powershot in Tier 1 for Pyro Merc's is exactly what I'm looking for. It's a pretty solid filler move that doesn't benefit as much as Flame Burst and Rocket Punch for PT's get. Great suggestions and thanks for feedback. Happy posters = better thread