Pyro and Ars... two totally different beasts.

[Kiphere]

*** This will be primarily from a PVE leveling perspective ***

 

So,

 

When I rolled my merc I went Arsenal initially. I had read through the abilities and what not on Torhead to see what it was all about and did some math and numbers to figure out what the playstyle would be like. (I'm a min/maxer in most MMOs so I like the math ). For me, arsenal looked more 'fun'. I like turret style characters.

 

I didn't even know TM spam was a 'thing' until I came here. I looked at the abilitie and recognized that from the point you get TM till about lvl 30ish you're going to be using that one spell over and over just because it's the best dmg per heat per second you can do until you talent up rail and unload. early on Pyro might actually do more DPS through dots on a group of mobs simply because you can spread around the damage.

 

Last night I sat and did some extensive looking at the pyro tree and decided to respec into it to give it a go. this is what I found out from a leveling content perspective.

 

Pyro, prior to it's 31point talent isn't quite as bursty as Arsenal.

 

With Arsenal I can land a crit TM followed by a rail shot and follow that with unload. if I've got my five stack of tracers + barrage up that turns into a buttload of damage in about 4 seconds. Pyro can't do that level of single target damage until it gets it's 31pointer.

 

HOWEVER:

I took out groups of mobs much faster, especially groups that included multiple strongs as opposed to arsenal.

 

With arsenal when I run up on a group of mobs with more than 1 strong I tend to open with a DFA then splosion dart one of the strongs. I pick off any weaks that lived through that then start burning down the strongs one at a time. When the fights over, assuming hte mobs were the same level as me I end with maybe half heat and pretty high health (I run with mako in healy mode)

 

With Pyro I would open the same but I'd drop a burn on each of the strongs and tab between them doing rapid shot once on each, then powershot once on each. They went down very quickly and at the same time because I was keeping the burns active on both of them.

 

With smaller groups that only included 1 strong I found I could drop my dots on each mob and just stand there and heal and they'd die. Slower than if I was TM spamming in Arsenal but I'd end the fight usually full health and extremely low heat.

 

The biggest difference came against an elite.

 

For Arsenal the fight would go like this:

TM > TM > Stun > TM > Unload > TM > TM > Rail shot

For the most part that would be rinsed and repeated with Unload being thrown in any time barrage proced and railshots on cooldown. I've never had an issue killing an elite solo even when they were 2-3 levels over me. The higher level elites I'd have to medpack and maybe hit my companion ability that refreshes eleectro dart so I could toss another stun out for some additional healing time.

 

I picked a fight with an elite while in Pyro and it was an entirely different experience. I didn't have to 'spam' anything.

I loaded up the dots and alternated rapid shots with healing myself, refresh the incendiary missile, rail shot on cooldown, and just rapid shot/heal. It went smooth but took a while so I decided to bring out a different companion. Pulled one of the DPS comps out and let them do some damage while I did the same thing, healed myself mostly and kept dots up on the elite. It went smooth as butter and got me thinking about a hybrid pyro/bodyguard spec that I'll talk about later

 

the fights were so different I'm thinking that could be some of the cause of confusion on the boards. I'll say this flat out, and would be happy to do the math and post it later if people want to call me on it but Pyro, in a multi mob setting will out damage Arsenal hands down.

 

Single target DPS Arsenal will win mostly because of heat issues. Arsenal has better heat management because it's meant to be a VERY active spec, you're supposed to be chain casting abilities with very little break or even rapid shooting once your stats get high enough to be critting reliably. Pyro on the other hand can spread it's damage around on multiple mobs and while each individual mob may be taking less DPS than an arsenal can put out, the overall DPS being done is much higher. With the 31point talent Pyro can meet and exceed Arsenals single target DPS but not sustain it for as long so over the course of a long fight Arsenal will win in overall damage contribution.

 

I'm going to do some numbers on a bodyguard/pyro hybrid and see from a pve standpoint how amazing it could possibly be. having dots + heals + maybe a tank pet out could be an extremely dangerous combo for soloing content.