Merc shot rotation/heat management

[poke]

Heya folks, so I love ranged dps nothing better than spanking mobs monsters and players alike from afar

 

Obviously folks want to play their class to the best of their ability, be it maxing out their dps/healing/aggro etc, What do you folks do for your shot rotations to get the best balence of dps while keeping your heat down for as long as possible?

 

I myself have found putting 3 tracer missiles on the target (with that talent that allows 2 heat signitures instead of 1) followed by rail shot and homing missile, deal a huge ammount of damage without maxing out my heat.

 

taking a brief pause to get a few rapid shots in to allow my heat to go down to approx 25% and firing the odd tracer missile to keep my armor reduction stack and popping another heat seeking missile or rail shot when they are off cooldown.

 

what do you folks use or reccommend to put out the most you can?

[Sinsavz]

It's pretty straight forward, as you've already said build up your tracer stacks, use heatseekers when they come off cooldown, use rail when you have 5 stacks of tracer lock, use tracers to refresh the heat sigs stack, use unload when it procs. All the while keeping your heat below about 40 with a few rapid shots. Jobs a good'un. We have an extremely easy rotation and resource management.

[Yazule]

It's pretty straight forward, as you've already said build up your tracer stacks, use heatseekers when they come off cooldown, use rail when you have 5 stacks of tracer lock, use tracers to refresh the heat sigs stack, use unload when it procs. All the while keeping your heat below about 40 with a few rapid shots. Jobs a good'un. We have an extremely easy rotation and resource management.

 

meh, my alt is sorc, i worry less about resources with her than i do with my BH, I dont think i have ever been oom with my sage, overheating? often til i figured it out.

 

our rotation is more basic but resources not so much.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Yazule

[Kiphere]

I've seen some people say they open with Unload which I don't agree with personally.

 

I tend to open with the following:

TM > TM > TM > HSM > Unload > TM > TM > Rail

Depending on heat I'll vent at this point, if its still low because of lucky crits I drop into the priority list, as soon as my heat gets into the > range I pop vent and start weaving rapids in to keep it in the 'fast' regen leve.

 

the priority list for me is:

 

TM

HSM (with 5stack of HSig)

Unload (on barrage proc + 5stack of sig)

Railshot (5stack of Lock)

Rapidshot anytime heat gets to >>

 

 

this might not be 'the best' but the opener I use is for a reason. I don't open with Unload because you can get more damage out of it with a full stack of sigs so I prioritize Hsigs then pop HSM and unload, then finish my stack for rail. Max potential damage that way. I also ignore a barrage proc if it pops on the first TM after unload and finish my opener out, theres enough time to get the next TM and rail off before barrage dies.

 

The trick is never let your stack of sigs fall off, never get into the slow heat vent without vent being available, and try to never waste a barrage or HSM cooldown.

For me railshot is the 'bonus' shot that I'll throw out only if I've got a 5stack of lock, occaisionally it sits available because I need to worry about heat.

[Yazule]

I've seen some people say they open with Unload which I don't agree with personally.

 

I tend to open with the following:

TM > TM > TM > HSM > Unload > TM > TM > Rail

Depending on heat I'll vent at this point, if its still low because of lucky crits I drop into the priority list, as soon as my heat gets into the > range I pop vent and start weaving rapids in to keep it in the 'fast' regen leve.

 

the priority list for me is:

 

TM

HSM (with 5stack of HSig)

Unload (on barrage proc + 5stack of sig)

Railshot (5stack of Lock)

Rapidshot anytime heat gets to >>

 

 

this might not be 'the best' but the opener I use is for a reason. I don't open with Unload because you can get more damage out of it with a full stack of sigs so I prioritize Hsigs then pop HSM and unload, then finish my stack for rail. Max potential damage that way. I also ignore a barrage proc if it pops on the first TM after unload and finish my opener out, theres enough time to get the next TM and rail off before barrage dies.

 

The trick is never let your stack of sigs fall off, never get into the slow heat vent without vent being available, and try to never waste a barrage or HSM cooldown.

For me railshot is the 'bonus' shot that I'll throw out only if I've got a 5stack of lock, occaisionally it sits available because I need to worry about heat.

 

I open with unload sometimes, esp when I am at zero heat, because it is free dps, at the end of unload i am still at zero heat, and unload is our biggest hitter for one click, why wouldnt you start with it (in pve)

 

in pvp i start with TM to debuff them as fast as possible and lead up to a good burst as soon as possible.

 

but in a boss fight, hell yeah i open with free dps.

[RyuKazuha]

For pvp, I found the best base rotation to be:

 

TMx3

RS

RS

Unload

HSM

Rail

RS

 

It's 15s long (and ideal in that, normally the time for the last RS probably gets swallowed by serverlag), basically heat neutral and allows für easy use of HSM and Rail on cooldown. Extra TMs replace the RS when heat is low enough to add some extra punch, or when I get into Burst at the end of the fight or get to use Override.

 

Yes I lose on plain damage on one Railshot, but I get them of on cooldown, so it balances out.

 

Needless to say, unless we get ourselves some parser, we'll have to trust our intuition and what we "feel" is best.

[_Nyth]

I've seen some people say they open with Unload which I don't agree with personally.

 

I tend to open with the following:

TM > TM > TM > HSM > Unload > TM > TM > Rail

Depending on heat I'll vent at this point, if its still low because of lucky crits I drop into the priority list, as soon as my heat gets into the > range I pop vent and start weaving rapids in to keep it in the 'fast' regen leve.

 

the priority list for me is:

 

TM

HSM (with 5stack of HSig)

Unload (on barrage proc + 5stack of sig)

Railshot (5stack of Lock)

Rapidshot anytime heat gets to >>

 

.

 

It's wise to start with an ability that front-loads your heat cost; which means any instant and Unload. That way you spend your heat right away. Benefit of unload is that by the time it finishes you regenerated most of it.

 

Also your priority list makes no sense, putting TM as top priority means you spam it all the time. I guess you meant to put TM above rapid shots.

[Kiphere]

It's wise to start with an ability that front-loads your heat cost; which means any instant and Unload. That way you spend your heat right away. Benefit of unload is that by the time it finishes you regenerated most of it.

 

Also your priority list makes no sense, putting TM as top priority means you spam it all the time. I guess you meant to put TM above rapid shots.

 

You're completely right I typed that faster than I should have. After my opening salvo my priority would be

 

Unload (Barrage proc + 5 Hsigs)

HSM (if 5 Hsigs are present)

Railshot (if 5 HSigs and 5 Locks are present)

TM (If heat is ok or Hsigs are about to drop)

Rapid shots.

 

Thank you for pointing that out.

 

 

As for unload as an opener, it runs into a problem with the fact that its damage is broken up into muliple 'hits' each hit rolls against the targets defense abilities (raw defense, dodge, deflect, etc) which means while on tooltip it looks great, in functionality it's a dot with multiple defense checks against it. When I did some tests it always performed well on weaks of even or lower level but once you jack the level or the difficulty of the mob up its performance goes downhill fast and TM will out damage it unless the full stack of sigs are up and you have a barrage proc (as far as DPS, not talking heat).

 

Heat wise, yes it makes total sense to open with an unload, but it also makes a lot of sense to save that first unload for mid rotation and pop a crit adrenal when you start your TM stacking, you can catch the Unload inside your crit adrenal to get the potential heat dump and with it's channeled time you can actually end up with less heat than you started if you get a crit off the adrenal. Assuming defense effects crit chance (I believe it does) then having some HSigs up on the target will increase your crit chance and make Unload even more useful as a heat dump later in the rotation.

 

that said, if you've got the full 30% chance to proc barrage then by the time you've finished stacking your tracers you'll have refreshed unload anyway so theres no reason to NOT open with it.

 

I'll do some more testing this weekend.

[Yazule]

You're completely right I typed that faster than I should have. After my opening salvo my priority would be

 

Unload (Barrage proc + 5 Hsigs)

HSM (if 5 Hsigs are present)

Railshot (if 5 HSigs and 5 Locks are present)

TM (If heat is ok or Hsigs are about to drop)

Rapid shots.

 

Thank you for pointing that out.

 

 

As for unload as an opener, it runs into a problem with the fact that its damage is broken up into muliple 'hits' each hit rolls against the targets defense abilities (raw defense, dodge, deflect, etc) which means while on tooltip it looks great, in functionality it's a dot with multiple defense checks against it. When I did some tests it always performed well on weaks of even or lower level but once you jack the level or the difficulty of the mob up its performance goes downhill fast and TM will out damage it unless the full stack of sigs are up and you have a barrage proc (as far as DPS, not talking heat).

 

Heat wise, yes it makes total sense to open with an unload, but it also makes a lot of sense to save that first unload for mid rotation and pop a crit adrenal when you start your TM stacking, you can catch the Unload inside your crit adrenal to get the potential heat dump and with it's channeled time you can actually end up with less heat than you started if you get a crit off the adrenal. Assuming defense effects crit chance (I believe it does) then having some HSigs up on the target will increase your crit chance and make Unload even more useful as a heat dump later in the rotation.

 

that said, if you've got the full 30% chance to proc barrage then by the time you've finished stacking your tracers you'll have refreshed unload anyway so theres no reason to NOT open with it.

 

I'll do some more testing this weekend.

 

so from my reading (second hand info) raid bosses have 10% defense bonus, and world bosses have 5% defense bonus, so the misses you are speaking of go away if your accuracy is 110%. I am at 109% currently and RARELY do i not see all three of the big ticks on unload as an opener. I am not going by the tooltip, I am going by the fact that every time I cast unload I watch for the three big hits (the little ones seem to only be about 2/3's of one big tick all combined). For me vs raid boss each big tick runs between 1200 and 1800 (with a rare 2700 that i like to call super crits, dont understand that mechanic fyi) so that is between 3600 and 5400 not even counting the 1k (about) damage from all the little ticks. I mean it is definitely the most under-rated of our skills imo (for pve).

 

Rarely do I get to 5 heat signatures without a proc on unload so I dont really see much issue with "wanting it" and not having it. Well, actually i always want it, but "realistically" wanting it (ie at 5 heat sigs).

 

i do not believe that defense affects damage in any way, including crits, Defense is the ability that completely avoids damage, not reduces it, much like parry in "that other game". It is in no way like block from "that other game". This info comes from my raid main tank who is a bit of a stickler with understanding his class and skills. It is absorb that effects damage taken (and he seems to think it is broken atm tbh).

 

I mean to each his own at this point. No combat logs = lose for those of us who want to crunch some numbers. We are all just waving our hands in the air and saying "i think THIS and I am a fart smeller so i must be right"

 

not trying to be confrontational, just sharing my logic.

[_Nyth]

As for unload as an opener[...]

 

Well I agree that Unload might not be the best opener either. It's not just the resist factor you mentioned, but also because the DPS isn't all that high without heat signature stacks up.

On the other hand that might be a benefit to keep initial threat down in PvE scenarios.

 

Frankly in a boss fight scenario it might be better to open with TM; my point was more that using a front load heat ability would be ideal.

 

In fact starting with Power Surge + TM might be the best combination available; assuming the fight allows you to use such a cooldown from the get go.

[scootle]

In fact starting with Power Surge + TM might be the best combination available; assuming the fight allows you to use such a cooldown from the get go.

 

Actually, the Thermal Override (or whatever) for a heat-free initial hit might be an option here moreso than Power Surge.

 

I've been experimenting a bit though... i'll do the TMx3 , then unload, then heatseeker as an opener, but then what i'll do is start performing a TM/rapid shot weave where I fire off rapid shots right after each TM (while the TM is in the air to the target)... this keeps my heat down very low... i hit unload every time it procs and fire off heatseeker whenever it is off cooldown. If I happen to notice I have a stack of 5x Tracer Lock, I'll fire off a rail shot... it's not worth using otherwise, imho unless the mob is near death and you need an instant.

 

That's about it.

 

Oh, and rocket punching for style points is always a plus.