An intelligent discussion of Bounty Hunters

[Mystry]

I posted this on the PvP forum, and would like the views of you, the mercenaries, on it.

 

Copypasted below:

 

This thread is an intelligent and hopefully insightful discourse on why Bounty Hunters are so overplayed, and why Mercenaries in particular are considered to be overpowered.

 

I will endeavor to make this as short and simple as possible.

 

Firstly, Merc BHs are played so often because they, along with inquisitors, received too much 'highlighting' and attention during trailers and other advertisements. Now they are played so much because of the incredibly low skill floor required to play one. While arsenal mercenaries can have a sufficiently high skill ceiling, in almost all cases, you can simply spam tracer missile for the same effect and less effort.

 

Why is this?

 

Because of the nature of the heat resource system, and many poorly thought-out talents in the Arsenal tree.

 

Tracer missile has an inherent 'cost' of 25 heat (I say cost but in reality it generates heat). But this is not its true cost, no, due to talents in the Arsenal tree TMs true cost is 16 heat, and even this is reduced to 8 when the mercenary crits. This is a problem.

 

There is also the issue that too much utility is placed on one ability. Ask yourself the question: What incentives do mercenaries have to use other abilities? Almost none. For example, a mercenary gains THREE buff effects just from tracer missile. First, they gain the armor debuff, which stacks very, very quickly, secondly, they gain Power Barrier, which reduces their damage taken by up to 10%, and thirdly, they gain bonus damage on their next rail shot. A solid 70% of the talents in the entire arsenal tree encourage tracer missile spam, and this isn't even counting the problem where Heat is constantly being vented during casts, giving them the ability to freely cast it over and over and over again.

 

Another point I would like to make is that Troopers cannot be considered a mirror to BHs, due to them using Ammo instead of Heat. The intrinsics of the trooper ammo system limits them from spamming as many grav rounds as a BH could spam tracer missiles.

 

With these points in mind, and the knowledge of what is truly wrong with tracer missile, I propose the following changes:

 

A. Remove the Ammo system and give Troopers the Heat system. Let them be real mirrors.

 

B. Remove the over-reliance on this one ability for mercenaries. Give them a REASON to use their other abilities, besides a finisher rail shot.

 

This can be done in several ways. Firstly, a cooldown should be added to Tracer Missile, due to its armor shredding nature. 10-15 seconds would be appropriate, and in line with other abilities that also reduce armor. Secondly, allow other abilities to grant a heat signature, so mercenaries can retain the playing style of building up to a big heatseaker missile attack. Missile blast would be a good candidate for this, it sees entirely too little use. Thirdly, close range abilities such as rocket punch and flamethrower should give stacks of power barrier and target lock, encouraging mercenaries to have a more active playstyle, and not stand there and be a rocket turret all day.

[Gaidax]

A. Remove the Ammo system and give Troopers the Heat system. Let them be real mirrors.

 

B. Remove the over-reliance on this one ability for mercenaries. Give them a REASON to use their other abilities, besides a finisher rail shot.

 

Huh?

 

You do realize that Ammo and Heat are completely the same thing? It is reversed, but the actual costs are pretty similar as is regeneration rate. Ammo is like heat, but the bar is going from full to empty instead of empty to full, that's all the difference really.

 

Another thing is... why do you feel like the spec needs a change? So there is a spec in the game which has less stuff to manage, big deal... In case you do not realize it - in every decent MMO out there you will have a spec or two that are designed to be easier to use - it IS ok, not everyone is a frikkin' pianist, you know.

 

 

If you somehow bypass this mental block of seeing someone using one ability most of the time, you will realize that Arsenal Mercs do not really do anything exceptional. So they have 4 main damage abilities to care for, while others have 6 or so... And? All it does is making them a bit lighter on keybinds, that's all.

 

 

I am a Sniper, for the record.

 

 

P.S. As a Sniper, I don't consider Arsenal Mercs to be that much of a threat really, they are very easy to shut down - they are basically Sniper-lite, really, they have to deal with all the **** Sniper deals with plus interrupts and minus deflects and honestly, I'd rather not care of interrupts, because deflects are purely my choice of a target, while interrupts are completely outside my choice options.

 

Pyrotech are the dangerous ones, really.

Edited March 3, 2012 by Gaidax

[DarkenDragon]

you have some flaws in your argument, your trying to say that arsenal mercs in pvp are over powered in pvp? yet spamming tracer missiles requires you to stand still, in any pvp game we all know that standing still is easily counter-able by out manuvering, if you stand there and let them hit you over and over again when you know you cant handle it, your doing it wrong. get out of their range and/or out of their sight, all the WZs dont even require you to kill to win, just play the objective

 

I'll agree that the heat component of the ability is fairly efficent, but it isnt gonna kill. the 1.5 cast time really does hurt since a person can out heal the damage that you do. you MUST use the other abilities to insure that kill fast. plus its not like spamming the ability wouldnt over heat you, it will eventually. you need to use unload in order to keep the damage up and to reduce your heat.

 

plus our role is to be a slayer. thats just how it is, we dont have speed manipulations, we dont have the ability to aid another player, all we can do is kill our targets as fast as we can, except we gotta do it while standing still 50% of the time. if the enemy chooses to stand there and take it, well then its their fault.

[Defang]

There is also the issue that too much utility is placed on one ability. Ask yourself the question: What incentives do mercenaries have to use other abilities? Almost none. For example, a mercenary gains THREE buff effects just from tracer missile. First, they gain the armor debuff, which stacks very, very quickly, secondly, they gain Power Barrier, which reduces their damage taken by up to 10%, and thirdly, they gain bonus damage on their next rail shot. A solid 70% of the talents in the entire arsenal tree encourage tracer missile spam, and this isn't even counting the problem where Heat is constantly being vented during casts, giving them the ability to freely cast it over and over and over again.

That is just the way the spec is designed. We use Tracer Missile as the filler nuke and the other 3 Heat Attacks when they have been buffed by Tracer Missile's various effects. I'm always having to use my Heat Cooldowns and rapid shots to manage my heat.

 

Another point I would like to make is that Troopers cannot be considered a mirror to BHs, due to them using Ammo instead of Heat. The intrinsics of the trooper ammo system limits them from spamming as many grav rounds as a BH could spam tracer missiles.

 

With these points in mind, and the knowledge of what is truly wrong with tracer missile, I propose the following changes:

 

A. Remove the Ammo system and give Troopers the Heat system. Let them be real mirrors.

 

The ammo system is exactly the same as the heat system. 8 heat is = 1 ammo.

 

The cap on BH heat is 100 so BH's have a 4% more on their total cap, but regeneration at that level is awful and capping heat like that really sets you back.

 

B. Remove the over-reliance on this one ability for mercenaries. Give them a REASON to use their other abilities, besides a finisher rail shot.

 

That's just how the Arsenal Tree was designed, much like say an Arcane Mage. They do use their other abilities. The other ones just have cooldowns, but all of them either hit harder, or vent more heat than tracer missile. So if all a Mercenary is doing is using tracer missile to the exclusion of everything else, he isn't doing nearly as much damage as he could be.

 

This can be done in several ways. Firstly, a cooldown should be added to Tracer Missile, due to its armor shredding nature. 10-15 seconds would be appropriate, and in line with other abilities that also reduce armor. Secondly, allow other abilities to grant a heat signature, so mercenaries can retain the playing style of building up to a big heatseaker missile attack. Missile blast would be a good candidate for this, it sees entirely too little use. Thirdly, close range abilities such as rocket punch and flamethrower should give stacks of power barrier and target lock, encouraging mercenaries to have a more active playstyle, and not stand there and be a rocket turret all day.

 

The armor debuff only lasts 12 seconds. Power Shot does more damage, but it doesn't buff your other skills nor have a chance at venting heat like Tracer Missile.

 

So in other words we would replace Tracer Missile with Power Shot? How does that solve anything people will complain about that instead.

 

Rocket Punch can also be a knockback in the Arsenal tree, but more on point Powertech's are the ones that use Rocket Punch and Flame Thrower, not Mercenaries.

 

Yes we are turrets, but so is every other ranged dps class.

 

Intelligent responses in orange.

[KhealThar]

I fail to see how switching Tracer missile dominance in the tree to using random abilities accomplishes anything.

 

I don't understand why people get so up in arms about Tracer Missile/Grav Round, Literally all you need to do to shut down a merc is stick a melee on him that has a functioning brain that can interrupt without getting juked. Without TM, BH damage is terrible.

 

The only people that die to TM spamming mercs are bad players, this is coming from a Rage Jugg.

[GrandsonOfSam]

Just wanted to clear up, that the resource mechanics are not the same for Mercenary and Commando. The difference comes from Mercenary having percentage (making the maximum effectively 100/100) and Commando a set number of 12/12. This allows for a lot better finetuning in the ability costs on the Mercenary side (where everything can be done point by point on a wide scale).

 

Here is what RuQu said about it in his thread on the Mercenary forums:

Originally built for Combat Medics, I spent the night converting it and building an independent Mercenary module since your mechanic is not an exact mirror (you are in max regen for 40% of your heat, vs 33.33% of our Ammo, for instance).

 

It's not a big difference, but still a noticeable one (at least I do notice the difference with ease). Also the other regen percentages are different between these "mirror" classes (I think RuQu removed those percentages from the post, or they are in the Commando forums thread).