Bounty Hunter Tracer Missle/Heat seeker

[Annikus]

go test HSM...its broken...I have tested extensively hoping for a ninja fx but no...it is broken...only useful as an opener I guess considering it doesn't benefit from your own heat sig anymore >.>

[Adelise]

There actually is a small benefit like 500ish damage with all 5 heatsigs.

[Annikus]

There actually is a small benefit like 500ish damage with all 5 heatsigs.

 

not in my realm or on my toon...i'm an mmo vet...trust me!...its broken....when HSM hits for less than the tooltip with 5 heat sigs...over and over...in full top end pve gear....its broken.

[rafter]

 

can we all agree that it is definitely NOT +10% damage based against pre 1.2 ability which 1.2 stated it was buffed?

 

I absolutely agree. Overall we are doing less damage and that needs to be looked at. However, heat sigs are NOT the problem and people need to quit saying they don't work because they do and it's clouding the real issue.

 

not in my realm or on my toon...i'm an mmo vet...trust me!...its broken....when HSM hits for less than the tooltip with 5 heat sigs...over and over...in full top end pve gear....its broken.

 

Why would we trust you when we've tested it ourselves and found it's NOT broken? Your MMO vet status means nothing next to hard numbers. Both my post and a post on the last page show it is indeed working.

[Goodmonson]

Heat Sigs are working. What is not working is the HSM power. It does not take into consideration our own personal Heat sigs and it looks like HSM damage has dropped even in comparison to the Tool Tip.

 

What is not working is the fact that the class is reliant upon TM spamming to be effective. Too many powers demand use of TM to proc. Its crutch that is being used to make it seem like there is some sort of dynamic interaction is taking place. Pre 1.2 I press 3 buttons over and over. Post 1.2 I pressed 4 in a constant rotation. 1.2c I am back down to 3 again. Others can be put in rotation for sure to maximize damage but the basic rotation is only 3 powers again. HSM needs fixed.

[Wrestle]

After reading quite a few posts, It looks like the 4% per hit global armor debuff is not working. Its obvious that heatseeker is gaining the benefit from heat signatures. People please test this so we have some concrete info. Edited April 24, 2012 by Wrestle

[Annikus]

I absolutely agree. Overall we are doing less damage and that needs to be looked at. However, heat sigs are NOT the problem and people need to quit saying they don't work because they do and it's clouding the real issue.

 

 

 

Why would we trust you when we've tested it ourselves and found it's NOT broken? Your MMO vet status means nothing next to hard numbers. Both my post and a post on the last page show it is indeed working.

 

I know what I see...I know what my parser says. TO ME, it appears that heat sigs are not working FOR HSM...heat sig is not broken...HSM is broken (because it is not recognizing the heat sigs). No idea why it is different for you or whoever else. Both me and another merc I know have the same issue...both of us are in Lord Praven...no idea but I'm not going to argue with you when I know what "raw numbers" i saw.

[LukeStormstout]

I'm doing some tests on the operations training target MK-5 right now.

I am currently lvl 50, full augmented orange gear with rakata lvl 58 mods/armoring/enhancements/barrels lvl 56 crystals and lvl 50 augments in 8 pieces of gear, black hole ear, matrix cube, columi relic , rakata implant, augmented columi implant and orange bracers and belt with 58 mods/armoring.

 

This test is being done self buffed with Hunters Boon only and high velocity gas cylinder.

 

Ranged Stats

Damage 674-903

Damage 80-149

Bonus Damage 406.3

Accuracy 101.61%

Crit Chance 39.66%

Crit Multiplier 69.74%

 

Tech

Bonus Damage 715.8

Bonus Healing 492.6

Accuracy 111.61%

Crit Chance 40.78%

Crit Multiplier 69.74%

Activation Speed 0.00%

 

my spec is 7-34-0

 

I tested 20 shots of heatseeker with no heat signatures and 20 with 5 heat signatures here are my results

 

no heat sigs

1426

2950

1410

2796

2831

2780

1444

1427

1443

1465

1476

2815

2842

1459

1456

1469

1463

2909

1410

2901

 

5 heat sigs

3811

1877

1936

3887

1905

3751

3870

1938

1893

3888

1929

1860

1888

1926

1903

1923

1892

1943

1837

3900

 

So there is some raw data for you

 

This is the sort of damage range that I also see. These are the numbers other players seem to be getting. The range of damage for HSM was higher in patch 1.15e.

Edited April 24, 2012 by LukeStormstout

[Wrestle]

I know what I see...I know what my parser says. TO ME, it appears that heat sigs are not working FOR HSM...heat sig is not broken...HSM is broken (because it is not recognizing the heat sigs). No idea why it is different for you or whoever else. Both me and another merc I know have the same issue...both of us are in Lord Praven...no idea but I'm not going to argue with you when I know what "raw numbers" i saw.

 

Its currently hitting like doo doo. Who knows what the heck is going on???

[Wrestle]

I did the math on many of your hits pre and post heatsigs and it appears that heatseaker 25% is working. It also shows that the armor reduction is working. In other words everything is working as inteded. If this is the case, which it looks like it is, then I feel sorry for Mercs. They were sledge hammered. Dont worry it will only take them 4 months to balance this out, just like they did with the snipers. Edited April 24, 2012 by Wrestle

[rafter]

Does anyone know if the target dummies have any armor at all? If they do I might have found the problem. It seems that turning on or off High Velocity Gas Cylinder has no impact on damage at all. If it is in fact not working that could be the cause of our severe damage drop. That 35% armor debuff would account for the lower numbers people are seeing.

[JustTray]

Does anyone know if the target dummies have any armor at all? If they do I might have found the problem. It seems that turning on or off High Velocity Gas Cylinder has no impact on damage at all. If it is in fact not working that could be the cause of our severe damage drop. That 35% armor debuff would account for the lower numbers people are seeing.

 

I tested this on the warzone dummy and it increased my dps to have on high velocity cylinder. It did not increase my dps to stack tracer 4% armor debuffs. Very easy to test.

 

Just fire tracer missle 10x. Damage should increase every time until the 5th shot. It doesn't. It stays stagnant every time.

Edited April 24, 2012 by JustTray

[Wrestle]

I tested this on the warzone dummy and it increased my dps to have on high velocity cylinder. It did not increase my dps to stack tracer 4% armor debuffs. Very easy to test.

 

Just fire tracer missle 10x. Damage should increase every time until the 5th shot. It doesn't. It stays stagnant every time.

 

Have you tested this with high velocity not on, just to make sure you didn't go over the armor the dummy has?

[Aquatine]

I think Meluna has got to be the worst Mod in history that doesn't work for Sony. They just closed the thread in general and redirected people here, while quoting George Zeoller on a totally unrelated topic. The thread you just locked wasn't about Heatseeker, jfc.

[JustTray]

Have you tested this with high velocity not on, just to make sure you didn't go over the armor the dummy has?

 

Armor penetration is a %, it is impossible to go over the amount of armor, because it doesn't work that way.

 

But yes I tested with and without high velocity cylinder. Either way, no increasing damage as expected.

[JustTray]

I think Meluna has got to be the worst Mod in history that doesn't work for Sony. They just closed the thread in general and redirected people here, while quoting George Zeoller on a totally unrelated topic. The thread you just locked wasn't about Heatseeker, jfc.

 

Ya they're f'ing morons. What can you do other than unsub and wait for them to lose their jobs?

[Mulgero]

Tested against OP dummy in ship and high velocity gas cylinder seemed to work as expected more or less but TM is not benefitting from heat signature debuff on OP dummy and not on 50 level mobs in Ilum. HSM is hitting now that 25% extra with heat signatures but damage is soo low compared to pre 1.2c.

[Maginor]

I tested this on the warzone dummy and it increased my dps to have on high velocity cylinder. It did not increase my dps to stack tracer 4% armor debuffs. Very easy to test.

 

Just fire tracer missle 10x. Damage should increase every time until the 5th shot. It doesn't. It stays stagnant every time.

 

Shouldn't damage increase every time until the 3rd shot? There's a talent that applies 2 armor debuffs at once.

[Tridius]

Love to see that the Sniper class was boosted today mostly because people don't know how to play the class, sniper in my guild for PvE out dps's everyone including full rakatta maurader and this was before the boost. All the while my Merc is being nerfed into uselessness, cant even re-roll him to heals if I wanted.... Edited April 25, 2012 by Tridius

[rafter]

Tested against OP dummy in ship and high velocity gas cylinder seemed to work as expected more or less but TM is not benefitting from heat signature debuff on OP dummy and not on 50 level mobs in Ilum. HSM is hitting now that 25% extra with heat signatures but damage is soo low compared to pre 1.2c.

 

After playing with it some more this is what I'm seeing also. So basically HSM is the ONLY skill that is actually benefiting from our signature debuffs. And, yes, it hits for significantly less damage than before the patch.

Edited April 25, 2012 by rafter

[Epiphany-Rising]

Okay, the top three mercs in our guild all see a notable reduction in what HSM is doing. I lost nearly 2K on HSM even when on my own with no other heat signatures.

 

Patch 1.2 HSM damage was supposed to go up by 10% in addition to the head signature application. Yes, not adding damage for other BH Mercs heat sigs makes a difference in multi-merc situations but still the damage when your alone should have gone up by 10% and instead has gone down for most of us.

 

We were very OP before for so many things and Bioware is trying to balance things out a bit. I understand that and can appreciate their desire to make sure that all classes are viable.

 

Right now it's gotten to the point where HSM isn't used a lot by many of us mostly as it's simply not as good as it used to be and still costs 25 heat. Bioware wanted to have the goal where we wouldn't just spam Tracer but for some things they make it more prevalent. Do I use Unload more than I used to? Yes. Do I use HSM less? Yes. I find I get more DPS from other choices and my two other Rakata geared buddies in my guild find the same thing.

 

I can still pull agro way too easily and have to watch the bursts but the bursts take longer now that Tracer does less and costs less.

 

Does this "ruin the game". No. Every game even the one that shall not be mentioned went and continues to go through adjustments to try and make sure there is balance. Every class must be viable and roughly equivalent in ti's own area and Bioware is simply doing it's job to try and get things to that point.

 

While they may have gone a bit overboard in my opinion there will be adjustments in the future too that may give back part of what we've lost.

 

For me the biggest issues isn't HSM it's Death From Above. All other DPS classes have an 8 meter raidus AOE but we are now second class AOE citizens with a 5 meter radius job.

 

So you refuse the explain how I am top 2 DPS in WZs and in Ops with my Arsenal Merc?

 

Because, if HSM and our DPS was truly hurt, how would I be able to do the damage I do?

 

I crit HSM 5k still. I don't see how it is broken.

[Flying-Brian]

With the lower damage from HSM now, has anyone come up with a different rotation to try to get the most out of the damage we can do?

[viktore]

With the lower damage from HSM now, has anyone come up with a different rotation to try to get the most out of the damage we can do?

 

TM x3 - Unload - TM - Unload - TM - Rail Shot

 

Then just keep getting those Barrage procs. Unload is your friend.

 

On the subject of HSM, right after 1.2 me and my merc buddy in our guild were hitting 7-8k crits. Then after a 'fix' patch we we're doing 5k crits if we we're lucky. Something definitely changed.

[HeVans_]

I did extensive testing with the test dummy last night (1-2 hours) and i found that heatseeker does indeed not get a net 25% damage increase from 5 tracer stacks.

 

The amount of data I took accounted for about 100 heatseekers with stacks, and 100 without.

 

The dps difference in the two should statistically be ridiculously easy to tell apart, but alas the figures are almost exactly the same.

 

(just a hint btw, pyro is so superior in pvp its not even funny ^^)

[Denerian]

Just an observation. I've seen this happen in pretty much every MMO I've played going back to EQ 1. In EQ, it was the Necromancers (which was my main). Was the class overpowered compared to other classes? Absolutely, a necromancer pet given 2 summoned swords tanked better than a well equipped PC warrior, and were gods at PvP. So what happened? The nerf stick beat the class so hard that it played nothing like it used to, and towards the end were relegated to mana-batteries and negligible DoT DPS. Many people rerolled, others adapted and learned how to play the class differently. Was it ever the crazy OP class that it was? No, but eventually it was playable again.

 

The sequence of events here are scarily familiar. BH's were a terror in WZ's for a long time with rocket spam rotations being a popular topic of complaint. Eventually the cries of all of the other classes focusing on BH's as the source of all their troubles prompted Bio to nerf us down. Unfortunately, as I've seen in the past, they end up "overcorrecting" in their desire to put an end to the whining and avoid having to continue to deal with it because unless everyone that was whining about BH's doesn't immediately stop losing to them they will claim that nothing was "fixed" regardless of what was done. So, they couldn't just resolve the problem and actually "balance" the class by fixing the "error" the located. They had to neuter the class (at least for a while) until people forgot about being dominated by them. So, they trade the complaints of all the other classes for the complaints of the BH's complaining that their class/build is now impotent.

 

The other times I've seen this happen in other MMOs this will go on for quite awhile, the BH player base will die off some and usually around the time where a new expansion is rolled out, or a new class is introduced they will do a set of "class balancing" across the board. This is usually the point where the class will become viable again. It will never be a dominating class again, but will at least be tolerable, rewarding those that stuck it out through the horror of being the last kid picked on the playground but again the class will never be the class that almost everyone had as either a main or a pocket toon just because it was so fun...

 

The big problem I see happening here though, is that the skill they nuked is the pinnacle of that build tree, it's what the player had their sights set on from the time they chose that build, or perhaps even when they chose merc over powertech. So it's not like getting something like unload nerfed where there is a similar skill like power shot that could kind of take its place. This is the reward skill for the build and if it becomes pointless, then the whole build (and in some peoples cases the class) becomes pointless.

 

It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. It just makes me feel relieved that I didn't just focus on my BH alone, I enjoyed seeing the individual stories unfold so have 3 different toons all at the same level so if my BH goes to the wolves it would suck, but not as much as the tons of players who chose that as their main and have yet to look back...