4/5 keys a dps commando/mercs spams is grav/tracer...

[sithgrizley]

it's more like this : "I'm standing there in your face melee range and I'm doing more damage than you can dish out even though I am clearly a ranged class, I don't even bother to knock you back since that way you can escape. I just keep you close and handy and simply kill you faster than you can possibly do".

 

As for interupts , well I'll just use my railshot and heatseeker and then I can spam tracer again.

 

Interrupts in this game are not all that, I agree with that. In the Mercs case though, if you interrupt that second TM or better his Unload you will take MUCH less damage.

 

If you interrupt the second TM they need to either Use RS/HS or Unload. None of them have been buffed and they're on considerable cooldowns. The least damage loss is probably using Unload or just switching to powershot. That means you have at least another 4 seconds before he's got a big HS or RS built up and since interrupts are on a 6-12 second cooldown you will get another couple chances to interrupt.

 

Arsenal mers are completely immobile. They rely on you being too stupid to get in their face and hit them. They have pathetic defensive utility. They have no interrupt. If they knock you back as a Marauder jump back in and start Master Strike. They can't avoid it.

[Dreadker]

There are two types of merc you'll run into, and two types of people who fight against them... I'm a merc...

 

I tracer twice to get my 4 stacks then don't touch it until i've used up heat seeker, unload is on CD, rail shot is on CD or the 4 stack is about to expire....

 

Merc type two just tracer tracer tracer all day long...

 

There are two types i fight against... those who don't interrupt the easily interruptible tracer cast...

 

And those who interrupt and prevent tracer cast for x seconds... i actually prefer these people, because if i beat them, either they screwed up something, or i managed to use just about all my abilities to mitigate, defend, interrupt, damage etc. making it a real fun fight...

 

Tracer doesn't need a nerf.... people need to learn how to interrupt. Its like people complaining that a jugg is hard to kill with a healer... kill the fricking healer!

[Corran]

BH merc casts a 1.5 secs tracer missile.

Several things happen.

 

1) a 1-2k normal or 2-3k crit

2) 4% armor debuff(stacks up to 5 times)

3) vulnerable to rail shot for 15s

4) 6% increase to railshot damage( stacks up to 5 times)

5) 5% damage increase to heatseeker missile (stacks up to 5 times)

6) 30% chance to finish the cooldown of unload and increase it's next damage by 25%

 

 

it shouldn't be as low in the tree it is in , hit as hard and on top of that add a buff/debuff.

 

Should be moved to the top of the tree if it's such a main ability , get a 6 s cooldown, or at the very least get it's damage cut, since it's a debuffer shot after all, or at least get it's cast time increased to 2.5 secs so commandos/mercs have a chance to learn where their other hotkeys are.

 

 

Elephant in the room and all that.

 

Discuss.

 

you forgot the stacking dmg resistance buff (stacks 5 times)

[mjAstro]

it's more like this : "I'm standing there in your face melee range and I'm doing more damage than you can dish out even though I am clearly a ranged class, I don't even bother to knock you back since that way you can escape. I just keep you close and handy and simply kill you faster than you can possibly do".

 

As for interupts , well I'll just use my railshot and heatseeker and then I can spam tracer again.

 

LOL okay...are you saying your UNBUFFED railshot and heatseeker will be doing enough damage when locked out of tracer? That is just funny. If you are owning someone who is interrupting/using knockbacks/etc, then you are playing bads. I have ZERO issues killing ANY mercs as a SNIPER. There is NO WAY you are doing more damage getting interrupted vs someone unless they are terrible. Plain and simple.

[mjAstro]

Tracer doesn't need a nerf.... people need to learn how to interrupt. Its like people complaining that a jugg is hard to kill with a healer... kill the fricking healer!

 

That right there

[DarthBloodloss]

I have ZERO issues killing ANY mercs as a SNIPER. There is NO WAY you are doing more damage getting interrupted vs someone unless they are terrible. Plain and simple.

 

Probably because you play on a noob server with low population, where everyone who casually joined a few weeks after release is playing.

 

I could kill you without even using Tracer. Power Shot does more damage anyways. If I have my cooldowns and you don't, you're not going to win. Plain and simple.

[Xaradus]

give grav round a cooldown and remove the snare off of lighting/rocks and the interrupt from leap. there fixed

[Organikal]

give grav round a cooldown and remove the snare off of lighting/rocks and the interrupt from leap. there fixed

 

Lol @ this smuggler/operative

[BuckeyeChris]

These tracer missiles complainers are so painfully obviously made by people who don't play arsenal mercs. Like others have said, friggin everything else has a cooldown. There are times where I am LOOKING to cast something other than tracer missile but don't have any good options. If you made it a 6 second cooldown you break the class, it's an absurdly ignorant suggestion.

Any mercs that actually are spamming tracer missile are easy to beat, unless you are a total fail at using interrupts, LOS, stuns, knockbacks. Nevermind the fact that their feet are planted firmly in one spot while they are casting all those tracer missiles.

If you can't beat tracer missile spam, the tracer missile spam isn't the problem. Your poor skills are.

[LanceUpercutt]

when i get hit by a tracer missile i like to walk away

[Loxion]

Sure, my Vanguard has a couple of ways to interupt, but not on 1.5 second timer.

 

My vanguard has 4 ways to interrupt, if you include stuns

 

Look, this is all true but it does not change the fact that grav round/tracer missile are not working as intended.

 

Anyone with half a brain who analyzes the middle tree for merc/commando can see that it is intended for tracer missile/grav round to set up the classes damage. It was never intended to be a primary damage ability, yet right now it is.

 

Reduce damage of these two abilities by about 20%, and increase power shot/charged bolts by 20%. That alone would bring commando/merc into balance.

 

I agree it does do a bit too much on its own, it is by now means the primary damage ability. You can produce more DPS with only 2 tracer stacks on the target than you can spamming that one skill with the advantage of mobility (when not tracering) etc.

Edited February 14, 2012 by Loxion

[maradigamer]

Look, this is all true but it does not change the fact that grav round/tracer missile are not working as intended.

 

Anyone with half a brain who analyzes the middle tree for merc/commando can see that it is intended for tracer missile/grav round to set up the classes damage. It was never intended to be a primary damage ability, yet right now it is.

 

Reduce damage of these two abilities by about 20%, and increase power shot/charged bolts by 20%. That alone would bring commando/merc into balance.

 

No it wouldn't, you'd have to reduce heat cost, too.

[LeonkRAV]

1) It's channeled.

2) Most other classes have interrupt-and-timed-lockout powers which completely neuter spammers.

3)

1. Stealthing breaks it,
   
2. Knockback breaks it,
   
3. Mezz breaks it,
   
4. Interrupt-and-timed-lockout breaks it,
   
5. Stun breaks it.
   

4) It can't be moved to the top of the tree because at the top of the tree is the finisher for it.

 

but your busy interupting their heals so when the time comes to interupt something else youre screwed. Sorry but commandos/mercs are healing classes yet they are extreme more versatile then they should be allowed to be in that regards.

Play a jug, interupt a commando or merc and youre left staring at them as they cast another heal or pummel you with channeled spells while you sit and wait for your cd to go off. but you can run b/c youve been knockbacked snare combo or frozen.

 

Ive yet to understand why all ranged classes are giving ability that knock you back and then snare or root you in place for a duration. This does nothing to other ranged classes but it abuses the hell out of melee. Then 20 sec on the kb, moves like snares and root should be treated like the cc breaker, use it smartly or get screwed for wasting it on a bad decision.

[Loxion]

Ive yet to understand why all ranged classes are giving ability that knock you back and then snare or root you in place for a duration. This does nothing to other ranged classes but it abuses the hell out of melee. Then 20 sec on the kb, moves like snares and root should be treated like the cc breaker, use it smartly or get screwed for wasting it on a bad decision.

 

I know, why on earth would a ranged class be given an ability to help keep the enemy at range lol! I would also like to point out that all ranged classes do not have such abilities. As a tank vanguard I do not have any knockbacks at all but I do have two gap closers .... now that is strange, a ranged class who has skills to put the enemy in melee range!

 

If you take those from the ranged classes then you have to take the gap closers away from all the melee also, think before you type!

Edited February 14, 2012 by Loxion

[Nahela]

Interrupt tracer/grav -> watch merc/commando panic -> victory.

[Umythiel]

I really need to roll a Sorc or Merc. Why bother playing harder with an Assassin?

 

I shelved my scoundrel( mix bm/champ gear) and my shadow( few champ pieces) to make a commando. All I can say is even in crappy gear I am surpassing anything my other two toons come close to. I suggest you make a merc and stop pulling your hair out. The game is so much more fun when it's easy.

[DarthBloodloss]

Interrupt tracer/grav -> watch merc/commando panic -> victory.

 

Interrupt Tracer and you're just gonna get Power Shot'ed. Basically the same attack with a different name. But its so low key that people dont even know it exists.

 

The BH squats similarly to Tracer Missile, but only goes Pew Pew at the end instead of WHOOSH-BOOM!! So no one even pays attention to it.

[LeonkRAV]

I know, why on earth would a ranged class be given an ability to help keep the enemy at range lol! I would also like to point out that all ranged classes do not have such abilities. As a tank vanguard I do not have any knockbacks at all but I do have two gap closers .... now that is strange, a ranged class who has skills to put the enemy in melee range!

 

If you take those from the ranged classes then you have to take the gap closers away from all the melee also, think before you type!

 

See, youre HIGHLY over exaggerating the context of my statement. Frirst off, youre a vanguard youre level of rang-ability is a joke. Vangaurds are tanks and dont need to be at range.

 

the point i am making is the game can be highly abusive in regards to CCs. a ccs knockbacks fine and great, but then you get ccs that knockback AND snare or root the player in place. sure if things worked as intended maybe there wouldnt be a problem. but Melee classes, not hybrid melee/ranged class such as inquisitor and powertech are greatly screwed in this regard. sure you want to keep the enemy at bay and thats logical but the enemy doesnt HAVE the mechanisms to put up a decent counter-move to these.

 

so either these ranged classes need longer cast times to even out the gap, or lower dps. Or ccs need to have their times drasticly reduced.

 

You atk a sniper he does his knockback and youre stuck or he ccs you, he has enough time to run to the otherside of the map befor your anywhere near out of his cc, and all you have to break every variation of a cc is a 2 min CD cc breaker in a world where your majority of targets have 2-4 ccs/kbs/snares with short cds.

 

I didnt initially think this, but s i started to pvp more with my other toon, my jug i began to notice.. hmm ive been cced for a long time now HOW long does this last.

[Zarzob]

oh someone forgot tracer round is yellow damage. If it was white, this thread wouldn't exist.

[SentinelBorg]

They should give Tracer Missiler a short cooldown (~ 4.5 sec) and move some of the secondary buff effects to Power Shot. Because here lies the major problem, that one ability completly outshines another AC specific ability. I actually can't think of another AC dps spec where this is the case. It would also help with the issue that Mercenaries are way too tech attack heavy and would make them use their weapons more.

[SentinelBorg]

Anyone who suggests giving tracer a cooldown is a complete moron with no understanding of the tree.

What exactly would be the problem, if you put a 4.5 sec CD on TM and add Power Shot to the Tracer Lock skill?

 

You would then:

• stack your armor debuff slower, actually the same speed as Guardians do it with Sundering Strike
  
• it would take you now ~10 sec to get the maximum damage from Heatseekers, but well other classes also have some longer damage setup times
  
• no change in the usage of Rail Shot
  
• you would deal less yellow and instead more white damage, so that avoidance also work against YOU now
  
• you would use one more button in your regular rotation, getting you a bit closer to some other dps specs that use 7+
  

Edited February 14, 2012 by SentinelBorg

[Makavelian]

exactly - the 31 point skill should do more than simple damage , the 11 point skill should not do 6 things in one.

 

Tracer missile is pretty much the same damage as power shot, same cast time, yet it's a skill nobody uses.

 

If there was a reason to use power shot instead of tracer missile maybe it wouldn't be so obsolete.

 

In my previous Juggernaut example both "assault" and "sundering assault" give you 2 rage, sundering assault is on 5 sec cooldown and cannot be spammed, even though it's clearly the better ability, since it gives 4% armor debuff.

 

Anyway - 2 cr and all that.

It's replaced by grav/tracer in the gunnery/arsenal tree....and those trees only. Power Shot is used by those in the healer or shared tree. I don't see why you choose to complain about grav round/tracer replacing a skill and not about thermal det/assault plastique replacing sticky grenade/explosive dart.

 

For the one who suggested a 4.5s cooldown, the majority of the time, the player your targeting usually dies in about 5-10 seconds, it'll take a total of 18 seconds to have the ability get off cooldown, fire it, and repeat 3 times. Firing off something MAYBE twice that has the ability to stack 5 times would be pretty useless, not to mention you'll be damn lucky to have any ammo after that period.

 

OH! And I use roughly ~18 of my abilities on my toolbars. Grav round is nice, but those who use it as their one and only skill are doing it wrong.

Edited February 14, 2012 by Makavelian

[Niil]

Anything suggested kills arsenal as a viable spec.

 

Increasing the cast time to 2.5 seconds means that the meat of the rotation (by design fyi) does almost half the dps at double the cast time. That is not a viable fix. Removing the debuffs and procs means that the procs need to be added back in somewhere at a comparable % chance per time of use of the ability in order for the damage output of the class to remain the same. Putting it on rail shot would mean that it would have to have almost 100% proc chance and the damage of unload over doubled as the use of unload procs are a large part of the actual dps of the spec. With a 15 second cooldown currently, I could get upwards of 3 procs in that 15 second time frame. Tracer spam in pvp is just easy and prior to this patch the unload pushback protection didn't even work. I'd be more than happy to have the damage of tracer reduced slightly and have heat seeker have the cooldown dropped. More stuff could be added to unload, but that's counter-intuitive as it already does a large amount of damage (more than tracer spam) and we'd just be offloading even more effects onto it. The rail shot and heat seeker buffs on tracer are a ramp up effect, so putting them on unload (due to the cooldown) would require that the ramp up time be eliminated and the duration of the debuffs drastically increased. This would not solve the issue you have with tracer spam in pvp, in fact it would make it worse. People would drop frontloaded damage in the form of unload, rail shot, and heatseeker missiles and then just tracer spam for the next 10 seconds anyways.

 

End result is you have no idea how arsenal spec functions. You're not interested in "fixing" the class for pvp. You're interested in neutering a spec that does range damage so that it can't do good range damage because you think it should hit more buttons than it does now. If your line of thinking were true, marauders would annihilate (bad pun intended) people because playing one requires significantly more finesse and skill than anything else I've played or seen played, thus the logical conclusion (using your logic) is that the damage they deal should be off the charts in comparison. It's not.

 

Edit: Power Shot damage is bad. It would need to be buffed in the tree to be comparable or it's a dps nerf. It also needs to stack the buffs just like Tracer does, or tracer needs to stack the buffs quicker (which effectively negates the entire point of adding power shot into the mix) because rail shot needs those debuffs to be worth casting in comparison to tracer missile. Same thing for Heatseeker. Feel free to come up with a design that mixes up the abilities used and does not nerf the damage output of arsenal spec. Because you want more abilities used right? That's the whole point, no? Or is it you just want arsenal nerfed?

Edited February 14, 2012 by Niil

[dirtyboxer]

Oh dear god the TEARS, keep them coming, im so hungry... nomnomnom

[Cegenaus]

but your busy interupting their heals so when the time comes to interupt something else youre screwed. Sorry but commandos/mercs are healing classes yet they are extreme more versatile then they should be allowed to be in that regards.

Play a jug, interupt a commando or merc and youre left staring at them as they cast another heal or pummel you with channeled spells while you sit and wait for your cd to go off. but you can run b/c youve been knockbacked snare combo or frozen.

 

Ive yet to understand why all ranged classes are giving ability that knock you back and then snare or root you in place for a duration. This does nothing to other ranged classes but it abuses the hell out of melee. Then 20 sec on the kb, moves like snares and root should be treated like the cc breaker, use it smartly or get screwed for wasting it on a bad decision.

 

our heals? we have two activated heals and one HoT. healing scan heals for 1449-1732 and has a 12 sec cd so we arent using that one. our HoT heals for 15% of max health (my health is around 17k so thats around 2550 over 10 seconds) with a 3 min cd so thats not being used a lot.

 

the final heal, rapid scan, heals for 2088-2372 with an activation time of 2.5 seconds. sounds nice but the kicker is that it generates 25 heat, this means it can be used 6 times before we over heat. so can we heal up completely? i venture to say yes. the one thing you fail to notice is that this fills up our heat bar which means we can only use our basic attack. so if you are losing to a healing arsenal merc then he is out healing your dps with 6 uses of a single heal and killing you with rapid shots, i feel really embarrassed for you