Bio nerfed tracer lock during the last down time.

[MrSIlverSurfing]

In the 1.2c so called Commando/Merc bug fix they said that our debuffs were stacking with others. They also said that our TMs were putting on more heat signatures than intended. Was this happening since launch? If so why was all balance for 1.2 done with this the way it was? They really need to increase the heat signature amount the way it was in 1.2. Keep it where our debuffs dont stack and where we don't get the benefits of others debuffs. Put heat signature debuffs back to the way it was in 1.2, except not stackable. Them changing these 2 things at the same time totally destroyed the class. PVP is all I play, so coming from that perspective.

 

PS: Why is it taking so long to address this since these classes are so important to SWTOR and the history of Star Wars? My money is that Lucas Arts wouldn't be happy with the way this reflects on Star Wars. lol

Edited May 9, 2012 by MrSIlverSurfing

[Undorett]

What "skill" are you talking about, I am so confused by what you are trying to say here.

 

Sorry man, you need to read the dev post before my post to understand it, but the skill referenced is Rail Shot.

[SCICAN]

Even though i am not a fan of the recent /cough, rebalance on some bh changes, this time the dev is correct and you need to read what he says..

 

tracer lock has always required 5 shots to stack 5, tracer lock effects Railshot +5%(stacks 6 times)

 

Heat signature that increase Heatseeker, only take 3 tracers with the skill traited.

 

Now that said , pls give us our AOE area back with DFA, have u seen the trooper and sorc circle? its insane and they said it was brought down to match the other class aoe skills

 

Also we need a very slight up on damage (not mutch i still do ok in PvP and Pve) we just dont seem to be playing our role anymore...

 

i dont mind being made of glass, i just wish i could have the cannon back...

[TimoTribal]

Did they balance the BH DPS in 1.2 with the bug, then by by fixing the bug throwing off it's DPS burst potential? All I know is that my Heatseaker missle hits for less than it did pre 1.2. I also think that TM hits much less than the 10% nerf that it was supposed to take. Was the heat signature issue there since game launch? If so when it was corrected was the burst DPS of the class ever looked at?

.

 

I would say that yes, they in fact did balance the class which was inherently bugged to begin with. Not the bug where other mercs tracers was amplifying damage but the bug in which tracers were actually adding x2 the damage boost to Heatseeker that it should have, even when solo.

 

That is why it hits for less than pre 1.2 and unquestionably one of the main factors in the arsenal tree being bottom tier now as it was not factored in testing for the rebalance in 1.2. The class has plenty of other problems going right now and always has done, no real utility etc however this change totally killed the class.

[Bluetickone]

While Light 'Em Up has never effected Tracer Lock, with the changes that went in during 1.2 (having us fire off a barrage unload basically every 5 seconds and lowering the damage of tracer) it should...getting 5 stacks of Tracer Lock is impossible before the skill is ready to fire again...at most we get 3 and the skill may as well be on a 25s cool down.

 

Exactly right. Its also conclusive proof that BW's class development team is incompetent. They simply shuffled a few skills around to make it more "interesting" to play, but in the process borked the entire underlying mechanic for the class. What a joke man, pathetic.

 

I would be ok with this if BW hadnt also pounded healing into oblivion. Class just got absolutely *********** annihilated in 1.2, no other way to put it.

[Bluetickone]

What "skill" are you talking about, I am so confused by what you are trying to say here.

 

You and BW brother, you and BW. All that matters is the takeawy: shelv your merc until BW gets it together, hes right on the money about how silly the class design is.

[StrykerOne]

A lot of the complaints about Mercs / Commandos seem to be PvP related. The main "problem" in my opinion is that Mercs and Commandos have very little burst damage and burst is king in PvP. Their sustained damage is fantastic, quite possibly higher than any other class in the game due to their relative ease in managing resources, but they lack burst.

 

Is this actually a problem? In my opinion it isn't. They may suck in 1v1 PvP but in larger scale fights the fact that they don't run out of energy like a Smuggler or Agent means that they get to actually keep pouring on the damage. They're also very handy in PvE boss fights, again because they can provide steady DPS for long periods without having to use a ton of weak attacks to avoid running out of energy. I really think that all they need is a bit more utility to help with fighting melees... maybe give them a version of a Sorc's Force Speed or something, or a bit more in the way of snares. But just because the ability to provide good steady DPS from range for as long as you need isn't valuable in a 1v1 PvP fight doesn't mean that it isn't valuable plenty of other places...

[KainrycKarr]

and yea i need to l2p also... my 90 valor rank gained in wzs only (no ilum) are not enough to know my class..every single troll come here because they want mercenary to be easy target/kill for them...

 

I am in a guild of primarily PT's and Mercs, and most of us top damage boards quite easily.

 

Valor rank means nothing.

[Marcus_Cade]

they destroyed the mercenary and now they are even trying to find excuses about how our skills work... there is not even 1 other class wich is doing so less damage/healing and die faster then us or like us... and they expect to increase the nr of ppl with this kind of unbalanced game... but this will never happen... and no i do not ask any nerfs for other classes i do ask to get mercenary in line with others... if you cant do it then do not count on ppl wich have played from start and do not want to change to other classes to stay on this game ....

 

If you don't change, as things do, you will die. My BH does fine & hasn't even noticed the damage being spread across other abilitys.

 

While Light 'Em Up has never effected Tracer Lock, with the changes that went in during 1.2 (having us fire off a barrage unload basically every 5 seconds and lowering the damage of tracer) it should...getting 5 stacks of Tracer Lock is impossible before the skill is ready to fire again...at most we get 3 and the skill may as well be on a 25s cool down.

 

Just because it kicks in, doesn't mean you have to use it. The choice of using it there & then or stacking up your buffs (& maybe getting another one) is part of the game.

[Ansalem]

@DavidBass. Yes that is how it works, but since you altered it so we don't have to use TM as much it now takes longer to get our 5 stack up which makes it more viable to just use Rail Shot on cd rather than waiting for the full 5 stack in a way you made it harder for us to do damage. Also most of the problems with BH arsenal arent from our longer waits or having to use rail shots before the 5 stack...the problems are with heat signature. It still is reducing armor correctly, but for some reason it is not reflected in our dmg. I have provided combat logs in other posts about the subject that show arsenal bhs are losing dmg with higher stacks of heat signature which should not be happening. In one log I posted I started on a testing dummy with zero debuffs on it and hit non crit for 1518. My next shot hit for 1561 with the 2 stack heat signature up which seems to be about right, however my next tracer missile hit for a measily 1484 with the 4 stack heat signature up which is obviously lower. My final tracer missile with the 5 stack heat signature hit for 1496. Higher than the 4 stack but lower than the 2 stack or the no stack dmg. This is consistent this is not a one time occurence. It is also across the board on all of our dmg attacks. Why after a month are we still seeing lower dmg from our attacks with our stacks of heat signature up? Why has bioware not seen the problem yet? I feel like bioware is ignoring the BH community or misunderstanding us. Can you please get someone who actually plays the game and the class to check this out so they can fix this and I can continue to play this game? Edited May 10, 2012 by Ansalem

[Anavarra]

@DavidBass. Yes that is how it works, but since you altered it so we don't have to use TM as much it now takes longer to get our 5 stack up which makes it more viable to just use Rail Shot on cd rather than waiting for the full 5 stack in a way you made it harder for us to do damage. Also most of the problems with BH arsenal arent from our longer waits or having to use rail shots before the 5 stack...the problems are with heat signature. It still is reducing armor correctly, but for some reason it is not reflected in our dmg. I have provided combat logs in other posts about the subject that show arsenal bhs are losing dmg with higher stacks of heat signature which should not be happening. In one log I posted I started on a testing dummy with zero debuffs on it and hit non crit for 1518. My next shot hit for 1561 with the 2 stack heat signature up which seems to be about right, however my next tracer missile hit for a measily 1484 with the 4 stack heat signature up which is obviously lower. My final tracer missile with the 5 stack heat signature hit for 1496. Higher than the 4 stack but lower than the 2 stack or the no stack dmg. This is consistent this is not a one time occurence. It is also across the board on all of our dmg attacks. Why after a month are we still seeing lower dmg from our attacks with our stacks of heat signature up? Why has bioware not seen the problem yet? I feel like bioware is ignoring the BH community or misunderstanding us. Can you please get someone who actually plays the game and the class to check this out so they can fix this and I can continue to play this game?

 

I hate to break it to you, but those numbers you're quoting only show that you haven't acquired an adequate sample size.

 

If you're attacking an operations target dummy, than the difference in damage between with Heat Signature and without Heat Signature is about +6%. Unfortunately, the damage range of your Tracer Missile (the difference between the low and high end damage) is wide enough that a 6% increase does not ensure that the minimum damage with Heat Signature would be higher than the Maximum damage without Heat Signature. One string, or even several strings of occurences where you perceive TM's damage to be lower than you think it should are easily explained as confirmation bias and bad luck.

 

If you really want to verify if Heat Signature is working or not, I suggest the following pattern:

- Spend 20 minutes hitting a target dummy with nothing but Rapid Shots. This ensures no interactions with other damage increasing skills or abilities. Parse that, and see what the average damage of your rapid shots is per hit.

- Repeat the same scenario, only this time, start by stacking Heat Signature to 5 before using Rapid Shots. Refresh Heat Signature so it never falls off. Parse that, and see if your average damage on rapid shots is slightly higher.

 

That should give you a sample size of around 2000 individual hits with Rapid Shots, which may or may not be sufficient for the level of accuracy we need, but should at least provide useful data.

[Caeduz]

Truth be told i'm not a number crunsher but there's two raiders in our Denova team who are a Merc (me and our DPS Officer) obviously we don't have the numbers pre 1.2 but our rotation is as good as it can be yet for each bosses in Denova (single target) we're doing 100K+ less damage than a Sorcerer with similar gear that's about 25% less....and that can't be right!!

[StrykerOne]

In one log I posted I started on a testing dummy with zero debuffs on it and hit non crit for 1518. My next shot hit for 1561 with the 2 stack heat signature up which seems to be about right, however my next tracer missile hit for a measily 1484 with the 4 stack heat signature up which is obviously lower. My final tracer missile with the 5 stack heat signature hit for 1496.

 

Ops target dummies have very high armor, as confirmed by a dev post. It's high enough that even with five stacks of Heat Signature you aren't dropping their actual mitigation by enough to fully overcome the random variance in your damage. You definitely need a large sample size to make any real conclusions about whether the debuff is working based on damage logs.

 

Truth be told i'm not a number crunsher but there's two raiders in our Denova team who are a Merc (me and our DPS Officer) obviously we don't have the numbers pre 1.2 but our rotation is as good as it can be yet for each bosses in Denova (single target) we're doing 100K+ less damage than a Sorcerer with similar gear that's about 25% less....and that can't be right!!

 

How is your damage comparing to the Snipers in your raid? Sorcs (and Sages) are pretty much the only other class that can match a Merc or Commando in resource management. However, Sorcs don't have armor debuffs so while they may well outdamage a Merc if you look only at personal damage dealt, the Merc is actually responsible for something like 5-6% of the entire group's damage (assuming a boss with high armor) since they are debuffing the target's armor. So if you have several people hitting the boss you are actually contributing more damage than the Sorc, it's just that part of that damage gets counted on other characters' stats since it comes from making them hit harder.

[Ansalem]

I hate to break it to you, but those numbers you're quoting only show that you haven't acquired an adequate sample size.

 

If you're attacking an operations target dummy, than the difference in damage between with Heat Signature and without Heat Signature is about +6%. Unfortunately, the damage range of your Tracer Missile (the difference between the low and high end damage) is wide enough that a 6% increase does not ensure that the minimum damage with Heat Signature would be higher than the Maximum damage without Heat Signature. One string, or even several strings of occurences where you perceive TM's damage to be lower than you think it should are easily explained as confirmation bias and bad luck.

 

If you really want to verify if Heat Signature is working or not, I suggest the following pattern:

- Spend 20 minutes hitting a target dummy with nothing but Rapid Shots. This ensures no interactions with other damage increasing skills or abilities. Parse that, and see what the average damage of your rapid shots is per hit.

- Repeat the same scenario, only this time, start by stacking Heat Signature to 5 before using Rapid Shots. Refresh Heat Signature so it never falls off. Parse that, and see if your average damage on rapid shots is slightly higher.

 

That should give you a sample size of around 2000 individual hits with Rapid Shots, which may or may not be sufficient for the level of accuracy we need, but should at least provide useful data.

 

well you really didnt read my post very well. I gave a small sample as example but said I had tested and recorded multiple scenarios. And the test was not on an operations test dummy just a normal one. The buff seems to be working just fine when the 2 stack is up its just everything after that that breaks though I havent tried changing my spec so that I only get 1 heat signature per tracer missile cast yet to see where exactly its breaking at. The weird thing is that heat signature is indeed lowering armor correctly I tested on a friend in a duel with both of us in 0 expertise. But every test...talking around 40+ hours of combat logs in and outside of operations, flash points, pvp, etc...it comes out the same. There is roughly a 5% dmg loss between the 2 stack and 4 stack and a 4% increase from 4 stack to 5 stack.

[Undorett]

Just because it kicks in, doesn't mean you have to use it. The choice of using it there & then or stacking up your buffs (& maybe getting another one) is part of the game.

 

What I am pointing out is that using the skill on cool down is no longer as effective due to the mechanics change BW arbitrarily made. In changing the refresh rate of unload by adding another 15% to barrage, it changed more than I feel they meant to change - pre 1.2 you could get 5 stacks to boost Rail Shot on cool down in optimal rotation pretty regularly. Light 'Em Up is already a nearly useless skill outside of PVP in my opinion, as once you have your Heat Signature stacks on the mob they don't come off until one of the two of you dies. Adding doubling the proc rate of say the 1% shield and 6% boost to Rail Shot on Light 'Em Up as well as the Heat Signatures that it already doubles would be more worthy of the location within the skill tree. It would allow us to get to full defense more quickly and allow us to get a damage boost of about 10% out of Rail Shot if you are using it on cool down (5 stack vs 3 stack, 1.3/1.18 ~ 10% boost), and allow you to fire it off about one more time per minute if you are firing it at full stack (firing a rail shot instead of most likely a Tracer Missile that GCD). This would be almost completely negligible in PVE, however it would help slightly with burst / speed to max survivability in PVP without impacting max damage or maximum survivability.

[Evolved_Monky]

I really think that all they need is a bit more utility to help with fighting melees... maybe give them a version of a Sorc's Force Speed or something, or a bit more in the way of snares. But just because the ability to provide good steady DPS from range for as long as you need isn't valuable in a 1v1 PvP fight doesn't mean that it isn't valuable plenty of other places...

 

I think a teleport/jump ability would fit more. Select it and you get a reticle like "death from above" then you fly in the air and land back down on the spot.

[Smuglebunny]

I cant even finish my class quests with my merc I had to abandon it.

 

Cannot beat the avatar of sel makor on voss. Never get it under 50% health. It nukes me everytime and I am trying to interupt it but I have only one ranged and 1 melee. Its impossible. Im already over its level.

 

Where as I mashed buttons on my sent and killed the emporer in like 1 min or less.

[Anavarra]

well you really didnt read my post very well...But every test...talking around 40+ hours of combat logs in and outside of operations, flash points, pvp, etc...it comes out the same. There is roughly a 5% dmg loss between the 2 stack and 4 stack and a 4% increase from 4 stack to 5 stack.

 

I did read your post, and again, my point is not that you're wrong, but that you haven't proven that you're actually right. Using Operations, flash points, or PvP logs won't give you meaningful results, there's too many conflating variables in a group dynamic. Perform a methodical, repeatable test, that eliminates all variables but the one you want to test. That information would provide some useful data to the developers, and might actually clearly reveal the problem that you're claiming exists.

 

You need indisputable proof, and right now, you haven't shown that you have it.

[StrykerOne]

I think a teleport/jump ability would fit more. Select it and you get a reticle like "death from above" then you fly in the air and land back down on the spot.

 

That would certainly fit the BH, though since Troopers don't have jetpacks they might need an alternate animation that takes the same time for them.

[DrEville]

I think there might be some confusion here between two different abilities/skills, so let me attempt to clarify, and if you still believe it's not working this way, I'll have someone from the Combat team take a look.

 

• The Tracer Missile ability stacks a debuff on your target. Without the skill "Light 'Em Up", it takes 5 shots to build the stack to 5. With the skill, it takes 3 shots (as each shot now grants 2 stacks). I just logged in to check, and it still does work this way.
   
  
• The skill "Tracer Lock" grants a buff on yourself, increasing the damage your next Rail Shot will do. This is not affected by "Light 'Em Up," and I don't believe it ever has been.
  

 

Can you please look at both your buff and your target's debuff and confirm this is working the way it should be? The debuff should stack twice as fast as the buff, neither of which have been changed. If you guys have more questions, let me know and I'll get someone to take a look.

 

Thanks!

 

The issue is the tracer missile 4% armor reduction per stack is not being applied. The heat sigs are working right wih respect to heatseeker missile (if armor reduction doesnt stack with heat sig bonus damage). Use PVP training droid on ship fire off missile blast to get base line damage. Now fire off 3X tracer missile then missile blast you will see a 4% increase in damage of your missile blast instead of a 20%. If you go 3x tracer 1x heatseeker you will see a 25% increase in damage.

[Gyronamics]

The issue is the tracer missile 4% armor reduction per stack is not being applied. The heat sigs are working right wih respect to heatseeker missile (if armor reduction doesnt stack with heat sig bonus damage). Use PVP training droid on ship fire off missile blast to get base line damage. Now fire off 3X tracer missile then missile blast you will see a 4% increase in damage of your missile blast instead of a 20%. If you go 3x tracer 1x heatseeker you will see a 25% increase in damage.

 

Whoah there.

 

You are majorly misinterpreting what armour reduction means.

 

20% less armour on top of the 35% armour penetration from HVGC doesn't mean 55% more damage.

 

 

I'll do it with you hitting another BH, a BH has about 30% damage reduction right?

You'll hit him with, god knows why, a Missile Blast which for this example will be doing 1300 damage.

 

BH damage reduction is 30%. You hit him for 70% of 1300 which is 910.

 

You equip your HVGC and reduce the damage reduction by 35% of 30%.

 

BH damage reduction is 19.5%. You hit him for 81.5% of 1300 which is 1059.5.

 

You use Tracer Missile and reduce the damage reduction by 20% of 19.5%.

 

BH damage reduction is 15.6%. You hit him for 85.4% of 1300 which is 1110.2.

 

 

The difference between before and after Tracer Missile taking off 20%... is 4.6% damage.

 

Why? Because its taking 20% off 35% off 30%. It doesn't really do much.

 

You are getting exactly what you are meant to with armour reduction.

 

What you're confusing it with is Heatseeker getting a 25% damage boost which is because Heat Signatures do two things.

 

1) They reduce armour

 

2) They increase the damage of Heatseeking Missiles by 25%

 

They do not increase the damage of anything else except by the 4% extra you gain by lowering armour a tiny bit more.

Edited May 11, 2012 by Gyronamics

[StrykerOne]

It's not quite that straightforward. Heat signatures reduce armor value by 4% each, not damage resistance. If the target is moderately armored then their DR will drop by about the same amount as their armor, but for heavily armored targets that are well into diminishing returns with regard to DR from armor then you'll actually reduce their DR by less since at high armor levels another 4% armor is nowhere near +4% DR.

 

That's why training dummies (or at least the operations ones) tend to make Tracer Missile look weaker... they have a lot more armor than most targets so the DR reduction is lower than hitting a normal enemy. On the bright side they are an armor debuff rather than just armor penetration (like HVGC gives) so everyone hitting that target does more damage. That's why I feel like Gunnery Commandos and Arsenal Mercs are still viable for everything but 1 v 1 PvP... they boost an entire group's damage. Only by a few percent per person, but in 8- or 16-man op that adds up fast.

[Naizgrel]

This is misinformation... It takes 5 tracers in order to get 5 stacks of target lock, it was never 3, the only thing that reaches 5 in 3 tracers are heat debuff.

[Ansalem]

I did read your post, and again, my point is not that you're wrong, but that you haven't proven that you're actually right. Using Operations, flash points, or PvP logs won't give you meaningful results, there's too many conflating variables in a group dynamic. Perform a methodical, repeatable test, that eliminates all variables but the one you want to test. That information would provide some useful data to the developers, and might actually clearly reveal the problem that you're claiming exists.

 

You need indisputable proof, and right now, you haven't shown that you have it.

 

You may have read it but you aren't listening to it. those combat logs include normal and operation training dummies. I'm talking hours of data. I have one of my more tech and math sauvy friends crunching numbers. The data is there bioware just ignores it. They have better things to do like buffing marauders so they can ignore all my armor and expertise in pvp in order to kill me in 3 to 5 hits. Nothing quite as satisfying as watching a marauder in recruit gear kill me in 5 hits while I blow all my survivability CDs and only knock off an awesome 20% of his hps. war hero/bm gear and my 1284 expertise all worthless...oh well I cancelled my account bioware has until the time left on it wears off to fix arsenal or I'll just go play transformers or hello kitty island adventure.

[StrykerOne]

I cant even finish my class quests with my merc I had to abandon it.

 

Cannot beat the avatar of sel makor on voss. Never get it under 50% health. It nukes me everytime and I am trying to interupt it but I have only one ranged and 1 melee. Its impossible. Im already over its level.

 

Where as I mashed buttons on my sent and killed the emporer in like 1 min or less.

 

Is there any way to break line of sight? On my Sorc I had to fight a boss that spammed Force Storm and Chain Lightning and I basically ended up running from cover to cover taking brief potshots at her for several minutes. Mercs don't have any true interrupts (they have knockback, but that doesn't stop the enemy from immediately reusing the ability like true interrupt abilities do) so the best way to deal with charged abilities that you can't just shrug off while you burn the enemy down is to break line of sight or use a tank companion and let them eat the first few hits.