Illusionary Viability

[GuyTallman]

I have had a 50 merc (mostly arsenal, but went bodygaurd for a full month to fill a role for guild) since early January, and have come to a conclusion regarding our viability in WZ.

 

We dish out tons of damage, non stop, and with easy energy management, especially now with barrage operating the way it does. We can crush people, but this comes with a caveat. We can be super effective, but only if we are left alone. Mild to moderate harrasment results in a catastrophic dropoff in DPS, and any serious targetting is an instant dirtnap.

 

The problem is a combination of the way our skills work, and the resources we have to deal with someone getting in our face. Despite what people might think, we are still reliant on tracer missile, it is the heart and soul of an arsenal merc, and it is still just as easy to interupt as it was pre 1.2 . We use unload more, but this isn't the gift most make it out to be. Unload charges you the heat cost at start of cast, has a very long channel time, and is super noticeable. A stream of lasers points back to you so that anyone who feels so inclined can interupt you. If tracer missile is interupted, you lose little, as there is no heat cost until after cast, but with unload, you find yourself building the heat quickly.

 

More importantly though, is the nature of resolve. Rocket punch, builds resolve. Jet boost, builds resolve. Using both in close conjunction will fill someone resolve bar. Melee classes can chain immobilize (no resolve stack) interrupt (no resolve stack) knockdown (reduced resolve stack) and pull in some occaisions. We are fragile as can be at close range, and the tools that we have to deal with keeping ourselves at range simply don't work when you compare them to the counters our opponents bring.

 

We are extraordinarily situational. If you have a tank guarding you, and pulling/snaring/immobilizing others away from you then you are a force to be reckoned with. I can't help but feel, though, that the perception that we deal ungodly damage is an illusion created in WZ where something is happening that should almost never happen. In low competency pvp, we shine, gods amongst newbs, but against people with even a rudimentary understanding of how to play we simply do not stack up.

[AAmedeo]

+1

 

I agree. As an Arsenal Merc, I find myself constantly thinking about how to deploy in such a way as to limit the enemy access to interrupt / melee me.

 

Not all bad, as that is "strategy". But really what determines if I will do well is if I am NOT a threat. If the other team notices that I have been effective, they easily put an end to that

Edited April 18, 2012 by AAmedeo
spelling

[otherworlder]

Couldn't agree more. You summed up my complaints about this class as well as anyone could.

 

Left alone to freecast or supported by a great healer/tank combo we are walking nukes and can wipe the floor with people. But solo or against any team that realizes we are a threat and understands our class, we spend half the match dead and the other half running away while firing off useless missile blasts or trying to trick someone into interrupting a power shot so we might get a tracer off instead.

 

Very frustrating. No mobility, no utility, no control or reliable cc, absurdly cast-time reliant rotation, no escapes, limited defenses. Massive burst was our only real advantage, and many classes now do that much better and can do it on their own terms while on the fly and bringing many other assets to the table.

[Enkaizu]

Good points and well deserved complaints. Being the only class without an interrupt and reliable snare/root (jet boost is not adequate for kiting 75% of the time) has been one of my main complaints since day one.

 

I would even be ok with the developers changing pyrotech to be useful for mercs. The snare on CGS is abyssmal. 16% per blaster attack is just too low to be reliable. I don't want to lose a fight based on RNG, or win one for that matter. Thermal Det is ok damage but honestly with the lower sustained damage as pyro, it leaves the taste of pryo merc lacking to say the least.

 

I find that any and all melee ACs (as long as they have any idea what they're doing) can sit on my merc and not a thing can be done in retaliation to survive -except- in huttball with the high ground advantage.

 

All we can really hope for is a reliable snare and a better way to escape melee in the future. Hopefully near future >.>

[Verraton]

All we can really hope for is a reliable snare and a better way to escape melee in the future. Hopefully near future >.>

This.

Sweltering heat, could use and increase in consistency.

Badly need an escape ability, its been posted all over these forums numerous times.

[GuyTallman]

This.

Sweltering heat, could use and increase in consistency.

Badly need an escape ability, its been posted all over these forums numerous times.

 

Yes and no.

 

I honestly don't believe that one or two skill additions/changes would really adress the problem. As I was trying to say in the original post, this is a general and multifaceted problem that encompasses almost every aspect of the class. Another example.

 

The efficiency of pushes vs pulls/charges. Now, lets look at the mechanics of this. For each of these moves, there is a small activation time, during which a character can move a very small distance. For someone who is being pulled or charged, this small distance is entirely negligible 99% of the time, even with latency as it is. However, for a push, this is often devastating. Someone moving a foot or two in point blank range completely alters their trajectory, and when combined with the poor latency, it makes effectively using pushes near impossible. Combine this with the fact that the majority of a mercs survival comes from pushes, and you see that simply tweaking a skill isn't going to really help when they underlying mechanics behind the way the skill operate, work against the merc.

 

Our survivability skill is one of the worst, just look at inquisitors shroud, or marauders force cammo for comparison. This is understandable though, because while generally ineffectual for an arsenal or pyro merc, for a bodygaurd it works quite nicely, even without the talent points to alter it. Reducing damage on a target that is getting heals over a long duration is nice, but without the heals, its pointless. Other classes survival skills aren't entirely reliant on having other players around to be fully effective.

 

These are just two examples. It isn't just the skills, but the entire way the game works and how the merc fits in that. With the current design the way it is, it would take a complete overhaul to fix the merc in pvp, so that all of the specs were functional. The way it currently stands, to bring arsenal back on to par with even middling tier pvp classes would again imbalance bodygaurd and potentially pyro.

[Yazule]

good points, but as for unoad

 

it is not a heat hog, due to it's cast time it vents heat (3 ticks) and if you crit and are specced right you will end an unload with lower heat than you started.

 

it is the gem it is defined as... from parsing i find it to be 30-35% of all my damage now (parsing on the dummy around 1200 unbuffed)

 

we are not a solo class, there is no argument from anyone that we are the worst 1v1 class

 

but with only 4 maps to play over and over and over (and over) i would rather play BF3 fps than SWTOR pvp atm... at least they have more maps.