Arsenal merc does not compete with pyro merc and the only people I have seen come close are Johner and Typhis with their average 600-800k games. Until I see arsenal constantly post 800k damage my opinion will not change. Feel free to post some screenshots of people that can do this because i have seen 2 on the Harbringer: Johner and Typhis I interrupt an arsenal with my dart and then shield with a hydrolic override get in an arsenals face and stun and wait for your tracer missile and then interrupt again and then wait for tracer and then jet boost. This will effectively eliminate most tracer missiles. I have a system to put 4 instant dots on anyone and kite like a pro. Arsenal is still a turret that can be interrupted. Yes they fixed it and we all like arsenal more but a 1 on 1 against an Arsenal is still an easy fight to win. Oh and for the crit - merc pyro gets an 8% crit bonus if you spec 6 into the middle tree for upgraded arsenal and 2 into the healer tree for body guard. Interrupt-able Turret or 4 dots the choice is yours.

As a shield tech you will struggle to kill people if you go all def mods. I noticed this quickly and then looked at my power, crit, and surge stats. They were all at 0. To fix this I bought the 50 PVP medic gun and implant that had power, surge, and crit. You can also afford to swap out 1-2 accuracy/defense or accuracy/absorption mods for power, surge, and crit. Do not touch the shield rating stat you want as close to 50% as possible. I recommend 47-49% sheilding and 40-45% absorption

This is my favorite looking armor. It turns the whole BH set white and light blue so sic. I had the chest piece ready for 1.3 and then accidentally reversed engineered it when trying to get MK-6's Luckily I found one on the GTM the next day for 17k.

The survivability is fine once you start wearing expertise. Common tactics I use to increase my survivability are as follows: Don't enter into WZ without medpacks. Many people want to use the wz credits for gear which is very smart, so get on a low lv and mail your 50 some medpacks Shield and kolto at 40% health and pop the med pack. This will take your HP to 70%+. This trick will not save you if you have 3 people beating on you. Use flamesweep on 3+ groups followed by carbonize and another flamesweep, and then flamethrower Pull an enemy to you out of group combat and then jetpack to the group leaving the enemy stuck behind alone Look at your power, crit, and surge stats. If you have no stats in these categories get some so you can kill faster. Buying a medic gun vs a tank gun will help. Or buying 1 medic implant/earpiece Having 47%-49% shielding is crucial - it will help proc rocket punch Diminishing effects on shielding happen at 50% so don't go over 50% Having over 40% absorption is crucial Remember you cannot shield tech attacks. No one can. Get your aim past 1400 so you have about the same DPS as a Merc in recruit gear. Do this with augments and datacrons

I believe it works like you said. The armor debuff applied to any BH in the past, but a recent update makes that debuff only apply to you for PVE and PVP. Honestly after playing the arsenal tree for 6 months I can tell you that if you switch to Merc Pyrotech you will burn everything down faster. It is sad but true. I love Arenal but I will not be going back to it until I start seeing Merc Arsenal put out 300k+ in pvp consistently . Right now I think the average Arensal DPS in PVP is 150k to 250k. 300k dps is probably possible for Arsenal but you will need a score of about 50kills to 5 or less deaths.

I understand Crit Crafting as RE an purple armor to learn the schematic and then crafting many until you get an Exceptional/Mastercraft version (has an augment spot). If I have this wrong please someone correct me. I am trying to catch up on all this lingo Is it possible after 1.2 to craft any orange armor multiple times until I get an augment spot? Does anyone else really like the look of the LV50 Electrium Onslaught BH orange armor? I want augment spots in that. Is that possible? I have been collecting all the different schematics just for looks but just realized my collection efforts may pay off after 1.2.

Did anyone else have their skill tree plan set for Heatseaker Missles? I found this great skill tree calculator for every class: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#300ZRckrordRkfz.1 Bounty Hunter has 41 skill points. It would appear that I need to wait until I get to lv50 to get all 41 skill points. If I missing something here please point it out. Like is there a way to get skill points through PVP or is it 1 point per level? I see you all talking about get this skill or that skill but according to that calculator to get certain skills you need level up the following rows: Arsenal example (Bodyguard and Pyrotech trees are different requirements but very similar) Row 1 needs 6 points to move up Row 2 needs 4 points to move up Row 3 needs 5 points to move up Row 4 needs 5 points to move up Row 5 needs 7 points to move up Row 6 needs 5 points to move to the final skill that needs 1 point. Final skills Heatseaker Missles, Thermal Detonator, and Emergency Scan require spending 31 points. Unfortunately you cannot get to final skills however maybe this will change with a level cap increase. I will have 10 points left to spend in other trees and will most likely focus on endurance, accuracy and crit Please give me some feedback!