why are people including aoe attacks into rotations? honestly is it even worth it? you'll want to use tracer missiles up to 5 times before rail shot gets cooled down, I've never found any time in between to do a fusion missile or DFA. also if I use DFA its at the start of the fight, and by the time the cast is over, the cost would have been vented already through the duration honestly the only ability in our rotation that I find that gains the most out of it is unload.

they give us sniper volley, which improves our alacrity by 9% and then also gives us target aquired at level 50 which gives us 20% more alacrity for 20 seconds. its almost like they're screaming that we should use alacrity. yet its been proven to be such a bad stat to use. is there something bioware is hiding from us? or something we're over looking? should we be using alacrity? even our Teir1 gear set buffs our target acquired ability to give us 10 energy when used, thus it expects us to use it.

from what I read, like debuffs will not stack on each other, the debuff is for everyone, but to trigger effects, only your own will be calculated. so if an arsenal merc used his tracer missles, only his debuffs will be taken into account to calculate the damage of his heat seeking missles, but everyone benifits from his armor reduction. it just takes the largest one. so just to note, dont bother using this ability if you have an arsenal merc on your team or a jugg that puts a full sunder stack up if anything only use it first to apply the 20% while they build theirs up

heres a better question for you, how much alacrity are you sporting on your gear? 0? whats 9% of 0? 0 hope that answers your question

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#300McZMcZfhMrzGhrs.1 that should be your talent build and if you read the talents carefully, the procs of the combustion gas cylinder does a lot for you. making it the easy choice as to which one you should use

yea, i donno if its just you but I find that my tracer rounds are still only costing me 16 heat every shot. so for me its working fine, just the tooltip isnt displaying correct information, but its been like that for ages now

I dont really get the whole using it on fusion missiles since I dont add that to my normal rotation, I just dont have the room for it. also i've been trying it with unload and it seems to work much better as a heat reduction if im under 40 heat, using this means that for 3 seconds im venting heat. thats 15 heat vented plus 8 if I get a crit which I usually do. if I used it for tracer missles i'd only be venting 5-7 heat plus 8 if I crit which isnt always true if I used it for heat seeking missiles, it'd be similar to using it for tracer missles. and for rail shot..... yea rail shot is already too cheap as it stands. so i find the best use for this is on unload, any other thoughts?

your arsenal, you never use rapid fire like that, and you dont even use that cylinder. you need 30 charges for this talent to work, its not gonna happen.

heres the way I think about it and the priorities I have for myself for my stats priority 1. get crit up to 35% - the higher my crit chance, the better I'll perform cuz i'll have more consistant crits to vent my heat through terminal velocity. the lower my heat is the more damage I can do simple as that priority 2. get accuracy to 100% ranged and 110% tech, majority of your damage is coming from your tracer missles, you want that to be hitting all the time, the only ranged abilities you will be using are unload and rail shot but those are only used a fraction of the time. priority 3. everything else, power and surge are bonus stats for all I care.

you really should take your own advice, cuz your claim that there is no global cooldown for cast-time/channeled skills is fairly wrong this is because if you are interrupted during that cast time or channel, your still effected by it's global cooldown of 1.5 or less depending on what the cast time/duration for that ability is

each cylinder is based for each talent tree you go down. each talent tree will provide a boost to each cylinder and thats how you determine which one you use obviously the combat support cylinder is for healing since it allows your rapid shots to heal and you'll get talents that will interact with it such as one allowing your rapid scans to add to the cylinder's charge and theres others that are effected the high velocity cylinder will provide reduced heat to rail shot, and also vent 8 heat when using your primary abilities for that tree when they crit. this is for the arsenal tree combustable gas cylinder is the pyrotech's cylinder of choice due to the fact that the tree heavily relies on the targets to be on fire and this will do the trick, along with many of the talents will give benifits to this cylinder you can think of the cylinders as the different stances to the bounty hunter as to which role they'll be playing

level restrictions are based on the mods in the item. take the mods out and the level restriction will change

your real problem isnt the cover bar, its understanding what abilities are you using. the way I have my hot keys set up is lower bar is all melee abilities and CC, right bar is my AOE and buffers, left bar is my stances and speeders, and my top center bar is my shots in my non cover I have all my abilities that are instant non cover shots that I would normally use if I was on the move. my cover abilities are all the ones that I would only use if I was in cover and non that I would not. you gotta figure out what abilities are you gonna be using and what arent, you seem to be in the mind set that im gonna use all my abilities, but in reality you wont be. as a Marksmen sniper I rarly ever use corrosive dart or explosive droid, though I have it on there still just at the very ends. not because they're bad, just they dont fit into my rotation. if your an engineer, then its a different story and you'll have different abilities, just because you have an ability doesnt mean you must use it. organize your abilities and you'll find a use for all your bars

just an fyi, all "rating" stats are scaled with level, the higher the level you are, the more rating you need to gain 1% so you cant really have a simple equation such as that. I dont know the exact equation at the moment but really alacrity isnt a worth while stat for an imperial agent at the moment (or for any other class for that matter outside of healers

for a healer, bigger heals vs more heals, more heals would always win this is because when your heals are on cooldown, or long cast time, that just means more time for you to die in. but if you can cast faster, or cast more heals, that window of death time is shortened. but this only matters if the amount heals within that time is equal to the amount you would have gotten with that big heal.

I just dont understand why even bother with making the difference between a techstaff and electrostaff, it should just be "staff" and same with swords, do we really need a difference between techblade and vibrosword? and dont give me the crap that they're different stats one being aim and one being strength, or wisdom. I've seen aim on sniper rifles, so that just throws that idea out the window

alacrity is great for healing companions, they have no resource so they can cast their spells all day long, all they're limited to is cooldowns. the faster they can cast the less of a chance you'll end up dead and the more heals they can throw out while still doing some damage in between cooldowns. hands down alacrity is the best stat for healing companions, and any companions with long cast time like gault

wow amazing logic, that was inspiring now can someone explain to me what the hell is he talking about?

just a penny for your thoughts, doesnt it seem odd how they did this though? arsenal mercenaries uses a lot of tech damage and cunning improves tech damage and our main stat is aim which (in its base form) increases ranged damage marksmen snipers uses a lot of ranged damage and aim improves ranged damage and their main stat is cunning which is the tech damage modifier. I just thought this was interesting XD

as an arsenal mercenary, most of our abilities are about 16-8 heat so theres not much in choice of what to use it on. the only 2 choices I find is either unload or heat seeking missles since they apply heat the second they are casted and they're both 16 heat costs (correct me if im wrong, apparently torhead doesnt have heat costs for any of the abilities). this is so that you dont have tracer missle's heat stacking ontop of HSM/unload causing 32 heat build up instantly. has anyone else find a better use for this ability? and while we're on the topic, how about power surge? the only ability we cast that has a cast time is tracer missles, which I doubt we'd want instant cast unless we plan on being mobile, is it best to just save it for an instant heal for emergency? (would love to know if anyone knows how to make a macro to cast both of these at the same time)

level 46 skill? *** are you talking about? a name would be a lot more helpful and also there is no damage ability that is unlocked at level 46, only carbonize which is a powertech ability is unlocked at that level, soooooooooooooo yea

wait...... what? o.O is this a thread about how healing as a merc is bad? or is it about mercs getting shafted? cuz theres like multiple stuff going on here. first off, no interrupt? thats fine, theres 3 other classes to do it, in a raid situation that just means 1 less load off our backs to deal with. in pvp, well then that just sucks for you, but we do have a stun which can be used just like an interrupt (except its on the global cooldown but then again so is the imperial agent's) but unlike an interrupt using the stun actually stuns the target thus they cant do anything at all giving you free pot shots. the idea of complaining about unload not getting a buff in the body guard tree? I dont get it, didnt you go down body guard cuz you wanted to heal? if you wanted to do damage you should have picked the other 2 trees. body guard is about protecting and healing not dishing out tons of damage. if your thinking of solo then gear up your companion and heal his butt while they wreak havoc. these companions can do so much damage if you gear them decently and dont forget they have no resource at all so they can go on forever kolto missles, yea they probably should make it 4 instead of 3, but I can see why they did this. mostly cuz for raid/operational fights. if I learned anything from other mmos, you'll never have more than 3 tanks on a boss, and well you can heal 3 people. if you look at bounty hunter's kit, you'll noticed we're built for single target healing, meaning we're a main tank healer. thats what we do best, and what we should be assigned to. kolto shell is a reactive heal, its great, you buff your tank with it then it'll buffer some damage they take, thus requires you to heal less with very little effort on your part. in other mmos, this was a great feature to those healers who have it, except they didnt get as many charges as this, so be grateful you have so many as for the dual weilding, its no different than getting a generator, its just something to fill your offhand slot, in the future patches, and when they increase the level cap im sure they'll add to it.

wow really? plz look at all the other mmos out there, they all do the same and yet they're more successful

or just do the simple fix of having primary stats scale a bit with the quality of the item when you RE discover a new schematic. instead of having an artifact quality item that has common primary stats

this is actually what you want to avoid thinking cuz if you say that abilities that has cast times doesnt triggers the gcd, this means that if I cancel the cast I can immidatly can cast an instant which I doubt is true.