best gameplay = 1 button?

[theMornox]

i observe your higher rank mercenaries from the perspective of a guardian and i am aware the most successful mercenaries stand in the crowd and hit 1 button... is there likely to be a change about that? i mean i dont care about tracer missile dmg or whatever, it just bothers me to see that your most EFFECTIVE gameplay seems to be based on one single button with very slight adaptions. i guess its not that funny for you as well isnt it? Edited January 14, 2012 by theMornox

[MissTrips]

Err what?

 

One button? What mercs have you been playing with?

[Jigglypants]

Err what?

 

One button? What mercs have you been playing with?

 

Standard Mercenary play tend to be:

 

TRACER MISSILE TRACER MISSILE TRACER MISSILE TRACER MISSILE ........ etc

 

Most fun is that if you interrupt it in war zones, a majority of them will just stand idling untill it's off cooldown again.

[Joshthenosh]

i love it when i get my tracer interupted it means free heals.

 

Tracer missile works in pvp cause its situation and u are in and out of combat. in boss fights 15 secs of tracer and your at max heat

[Lygras]

Well if you think that Mercs using only 1 Button are effective, than you´ve either never seen a good merc or this is just another troll try

[MissTrips]

Standard Mercenary play tend to be:

 

TRACER MISSILE TRACER MISSILE TRACER MISSILE TRACER MISSILE ........ etc

 

Most fun is that if you interrupt it in war zones, a majority of them will just stand idling untill it's off cooldown again.

 

How boring. Even though I'm Bodyguard spec, I spend less than a third of my PvP time actually healing and DFA on a melee pack never gets old...

[Bialaska]

I'm one of the Arsenal Mercs and against single enemies the Tracer Missile is muchly used. But also Unload, Heartseeker Missiles and Rail Shot are used, when they are off cooldown.

 

The fact is that Tracer Missile has a lot of goodness attached to it. You become tougher, your enemy becomes weaker, it is cheap to activate, it increases damage of your heartseekers, rail shot and Unload.

 

Of course this is for single target DPSing and because of this mostly used in instances or against a single powerful enemy.

 

Against multiple enemies the Merc has other tools to his disposal and spamming only Tracer against several enemies is certain death, where Fusion Missile, Flamethrower, Jet Boost, Death From Above and so on would be your preferred tool of death and destruction.

[Hylfnur]

Actually,

I'm pretty sure that mercs dont have to be good players to perform well in pvp. Contrary to other classes.

 

tracer missile tracer misslie.... and hadouken when problems

[jackalious]

I think a lot of people seem to forget that Tracer Missile sets up everything. If Tracer cools down then it kinda kills everything. Also it sets up all people to do damage it just doesn't help Mercs. I normally attack with three to four attacks for ranged and perhaps add a couple for melee. All in all I use the same amount of buttons I just use one to to set everything up. There is a cap and I would like to set my cap up before I start using all my other attacks so they do bonus damage. You also must be fighting a new person because its not that hard to bounce someone back to razzle of a couple rounds then do it again. We have about 3 to 4 abilities to get people away from us. You just might have changed the game plan.

[Cegenaus]

i observe your higher rank mercenaries from the perspective of a guardian and i am aware the most successful mercenaries stand in the crowd and hit 1 button... is there likely to be a change about that? i mean i dont care about tracer missile dmg or whatever, it just bothers me to see that your most EFFECTIVE gameplay seems to be based on one single button with very slight adaptions. i guess its not that funny for you as well isnt it?

 

Standard Mercenary play tend to be:

 

TRACER MISSILE TRACER MISSILE TRACER MISSILE TRACER MISSILE ........ etc

 

Most fun is that if you interrupt it in war zones, a majority of them will just stand idling untill it's off cooldown again.

 

 

 

Actually,

I'm pretty sure that mercs dont have to be good players to perform well in pvp. Contrary to other classes.

 

tracer missile tracer misslie.... and hadouken when problems

 

 

ignorance at it best

[saido]

Yeah. Tracer x Mash... If they keep thinking it let them.

 

In reality. I use tracer / unload / railshot / electro dart / the default firing option to let the heat cool. Sometimes I'll throw in a concussion to let me manage one at a time. Flame if it goes melee. Some jet-boost. Rocket-punch. The works really.

[saido]

Oh yeah. Sweeping shots if it's voidstar or alderaan...

[Skeme]

I'm Pyrotech. A lot more than one button. Lots of running around and firing off instants, and channeling to do some real damage or lay down an aoe dot. It really is a lot of fun.

[vimm]

Err what?

 

One button? What mercs have you been playing with?

 

Arsenal ones?

[vimm]

I'm one of the Arsenal Mercs and against single enemies the Tracer Missile is muchly used. But also Unload, Heartseeker Missiles and Rail Shot are used, when they are off cooldown.

 

The fact is that Tracer Missile has a lot of goodness attached to it. You become tougher, your enemy becomes weaker, it is cheap to activate, it increases damage of your heartseekers, rail shot and Unload.

 

You can seek my heart any day <3

[Hylfnur]

Still 1 button class.

[Aedn]

Basically yes, best gameplay is one button, or more likely one primary attack to set up everything else from a dps perspective. Its the major flaw of the class imo, because it lacks depth of play. In addition so far, its the only viable healer/dps hybrid build i can find that works, due to TM.

 

However, when TM has an armor debuff, and rail shot, power shot, and unload are all classed as ranged damage, which is mitigated by armor, its easy to see how the rotation should work.

 

In addition, the heat management is far superior as a DPS in the arsenal tree, vs the pyro tree. To top it off, the majority of your best utility effects are also found in the arsenal tree as well, and low in the tree which makes it easier to obtain them.

[ugig]

So, for the people who come in here complaining about the "one button mercs" and or the lack of skill needed to play merc without actually going and reading about the ability they tend to "spam":

 

Tracer Missle is the attack that pretty much everything else in arsenal spec worth using is built on, a hit with Tracer Missle does several things for a merc, gives an armor debuff to our target (stacks 5 times) gives a heat signature (stacks 5 times) that provides a buff to our rail shot dmg or heatseeker missle dmg (consumed on using one of these), also a shielding buff that reduces incomming dmg by 2% per stack (stacks 5 times) and has a chance to proc a reset of our Unload cd and buff its dmg. Not to mention its crits can lower our heat if talented.

 

So you can see your going to have alot of tracer missle going on just for making the other skills more effective, add in that it does decent dmg on its own, can you fault an arsenal specced merc for using it up to 5 times before using anything else?

 

This is not to say that some mercs out there dont over-use the ability for either lazy reasons or because they lack the ability to think beyond that one button, a properly played merc will be constantly assesing their stacks or buffs and debuffs compared to the situation around them and mixing in those other skills and their heals/cc's/and escapes as needed.

[Airees]

Standard Mercenary play tend to be:

 

TRACER MISSILE TRACER MISSILE TRACER MISSILE TRACER MISSILE ........ etc

 

Most fun is that if you interrupt it in war zones, a majority of them will just stand idling untill it's off cooldown again.

 

Or you know, they try to do Unload, get bugged and can't do anything for 3 seconds.

 

Anyways, if you see someone that spams tracer missile and nothing else, he's either under level 40 or just bad. Unload does more dps, HSM does more burst and railshot allows you to move.

[Aedn]

Or you know, they try to do Unload, get bugged and can't do anything for 3 seconds.

 

Anyways, if you see someone that spams tracer missile and nothing else, he's either under level 40 or just bad. Unload does more dps, HSM does more burst and railshot allows you to move.

 

I doubt that Unload does more damage then TM even with barrage. 3 second cast time vs 1.5 seconds, means you get 2 TM's off vs a single unload.

[Greatless]

Probably under lvl 40 and a bad player.

 

Tracer isn't even 30% of what i use in pvp combat. I set up with 3 tracers, but that's pretty much it. Only use tracer as a filler when not on the move. But how often do I get to stand still in pvp?

 

Tip to the bad players that do nothing when tracer gets interrupted. Put Power Shot back on your hot bar.

[MajinMLF]

Its easy why people think that - you need min. 3 tracers to build up all the effects for higher damage railshot etc - now when you have 35% crit and you crit 3 times in a row thats close to 10k damage or more depending on your gear - so people with an average of 14-15k HP (lvl20 have only 12) - are almost dead - and yes they think we only do 1 button press - because they dont see alot more - because they die - now look at a fight against a 24k health juggernaut - (which i dont see any merc can kill in 1:1) and you can pull out your full spectrum

[Prutt]

Oh noes! Arsenal mercs have a main nuke! What an outrage! Give them several main nukes at once!

 

Because I'm sure no other class in the game has a main nuke.

 

Herpderp.

 

And as to how you can find tracer spamming effective, do not know. Unless you're lucky with procs/crits to keep your heat down, you'd get overheated pretty quick.

My rotation is pretty much:

 

tracer x3 to stack 5 armor reduction

Unload (if proced)

Heatseaker (If unload didn't proc)

tracer x2 to get up to 5 stacks of dmg reduction

Unload (if proced)

 

In pvp it all becomes situational. I tend to run alot more in pvp, and probably fire off more unoads (For the speed debuff) and heatseakers (because they're instant) than tracers. And I'm at least fairly successful in pvp.

Besides alot of other abillities become more important in pvp.

Electro dart

Rocket punch (mainly for the knockback)

Jet boost

Shields and heals

 

and so on, and so forth

 

Now how do you expect me to bind all of that to one button?

[Wargamed]

This is not to say that some mercs out there dont over-use the ability for either lazy reasons or because they lack the ability to think beyond that one button, a properly played merc will be constantly assesing their stacks or buffs and debuffs compared to the situation around them and mixing in those other skills and their heals/cc's/and escapes as needed.

 

After enough time playing my Merc, it seems that my eyes and brain are getting used to seeing and keeping track of buffs and debuffs. I'm an old gamer, so this probably took longer for me than for you folks with younger eyes and less senile brains. I think more about what I need to do in combat. I'm slowly becoming more than just a button-masher.

Edited January 21, 2012 by Paralassa
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[Demorase]

Merc can be played in a very dumb fashion yeah (spamming 1 button endlessly) but it's not an effective way of playing it. So the class does take some skill to be good at.

 

FYI, the more you spamm an attack the more heat you generate, the higher your heat the slower your heat vents. So the most effective way of playing a merc is by staying at low heat by alternating between the harder hitting skills but less heat efficient and the less powerful skills that are more heat efficient.

 

I like the gameplay, and you can tell a bad merc from a good one miles away by just looking at their heat management.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Demorase