Top 3 Questions Finalists - Continued Discussion

[ekimmak]

Ok, apologies Odawgg, but I find your personal thought on the PVP question (We need 30M stun back) to be... strange. Did I like the range nerfs? No. But is bringing it back suddenly going to make you a perfect ranged class that can kite with ease? What does it give you that suddenly fixes the PVP viability of the class?

 

But then, I probably have no right to this thread. Just because my first 50 was a merc, doesn't mean I have any reasonable feedback. I'm of the rare alt-player mindset, so my synopsis of the class is "Has a brilliant opening AoE burst".

Edited September 11, 2013 by ekimmak

[cashogy_reborn]

The sad thing is that I HAVE been playing pyro on PTS. The two characters I've been playing arenas with are Merc and Operative.

 

Healing in arenas with merc is fine. You basically pop supercharged gas once fight starts, kolto missile the group, and then rapid scan until you're dead. Healing is actually more viable in arenas than arsenal or pyro atm and that's saying a lot. Mainly because they're uninterrupted casting.

 

Which is not very long.....

[oaceen]

From the Juggernaut/Guardian Answers. I think they could be talking about us there as well, so what does that mean for our first question?

I'm especially worried about the 'damage gap is already small' part. We really need to drive home the point that while other classes are even worse, we are way behind Snipers and Marauders.

New utilities sound great but we really need to tell them that our current ones dont really help the raid as a whole.

 

i think this is a very important point.

 

honestly, i don't believe the gap is that large (especially compared to other classes), and once orbital is 'fixed', it will be even less than it is now.

i think we can use the question to pose very specific suggestions about things we want (increase proc chance for barrage, for example) or simply ask about certain mechanics (6s internal cooldown on CGC or volatile warhead only proccing on one target, for example). i almost feel like the resource management question is basically that, so maybe we should completely refocus it altogether. i think it's a safe bet to focus on healing in PvE if we decide to go with the general utility cooldown question for PvP

 

granted, we don't have a lot of time, but i believe if we feel we've run out by friday, we have the option to ask for more.

[AMightyKnight]

I dont think we should dump the first question. IMO this hole question thing isn’t only about getting some interesting answers from the devs, its an opportunity for us to explain to them how we feel about certain issues. Frankly, if the answer for our first question would be “yes, we accept what you’re saying and we’ll try to address the issue” I would be okay with it.

So because they indicated that they were looking at the performance of tank and healer classes in the damage role we should embrace to opportunity to tell them what we think needs done. Odwaggs question would still work IMO, but maybe it needs more emphasis on our damage output and what that means for the usefulness of our utilities.

I’m bored, so I gave it another try :

Question: Can you please comment on how you think Merc DPS stack up against their raid spot competitors with regards to what they bring to the table for ‘Nightmare progression raiding’.

More specifically, why would you consider taking a merc in your raid group over a Sniper (or even a Marauder) if faced with the option?

Comments:

Although there is a predominant feeling that Mercs are ‘viable’ in both damage and healing roles when it comes to nightmare progression content, we also think that we are falling short in key aspects of progression raiding.

One of our rdd competitors (Sniper) seems to be a much better choice than Mercenary in pretty much every NiM boss encounter, especially when it comes down to sustained (single) target dps and raid wide utility.

Many Merc players have a hard time accepting the apparent (only initial?) design policy that ‘pure dps classes’ like Snipers or Marauders should dominate damage charts, while on the same time providing the raid with the very best and much sought after raid wide utilities.

Given that you already indicated some changes with the answer to the second Juggernaut question (PvE), we feel that the perceived usefulness of our own class raid wide utilities (cleansing, battlerez, off heals, armor debuff) in progession raiding is somewhat exaggerated.

This is the case mainly because many of us think, that the main job of a damage dealer should be to generate the necessary damage to kill a boss. Which implies, generally speaking, it is not the job of the damage dealer to help healers do their work.

In practical terms, every casted off heal hurts our dps severely. Since our consistently achievable, sustained single target dps is subpar to begin with (mostly due to the randomness of the barrage proc), there is often just no time / gcds / ammunition available to do other (utility) stuff. And frankly, even the best utilities in the world won’t grant us a raid spot if we are already struggling to come up with the necessary damage as damage dealers and simply cannot afford to do much else (healing mostly).

Even our main advantage (armor debuff) pales when we consider the fact that Snipers can apply armor debuff with a very minor dps loss, while their total dps currently is registering well over five percent higher than top Merc dps (not to mention the fact that the armor debuff generally is provided by Guardian tanks as well anyway).

On top of that, Snipers have a rooted AoE knockback, overall better AoE damage, a beautiful sniper shield for raid damage reduction, rolley polley, entrench and – most importantly – overall much better consistently achievable, sustained dps.

We recognize that this is not only a Mercenary problem (Sorcs have similar issues) and you’ve already hinted at some changes, but we are really struggling to answer the question why a raid should choose a Merc over a Sniper if and when much dps is needed.

We don’t seem to have any crucial advantages on our side. Any further insight into your current thoughts on the issue with regards to Mercs would be greatly appreciated.

I think the heals should get Cashs PvP question but its odwaggs decision to make anyway, so feel free to ignore everything I wrote

Edited September 13, 2013 by AMightyKnight

[cs_zoltan]

i think it's a safe bet to focus on healing in PvE if we decide to go with the general utility cooldown question for PvP

 

On my Merc I'm doing nightmare mode content as a healer and doing ranked pvp as Arsenal, so here is my thought about the pve and pvp questions:

 

Healing in PVE is a good spot now, i still think Merc is the worst healer but only by a small margin (in movement heavy fights we are even better then Sorcs). The 3rd question, heat management, and the promised crit buff is enough for us healers in PVE imo, maybe a change to Peacekeeper but that one talent is hardly worth 1 question. PVE could focuse on Arsenal RNGness maybe (heatseker crit and barrage proc)? Or make a Pyro excluseve question

 

As for PVP i went for Arsenal for ranked since healing is just plain and simp,e not viable at all. Pyro got nerfed to the ground so that's not an option, but Arsenal is very competative in PVP right now. So my thought is to focus the PVP question for healers

[PerinnAybara]

I've logged more hours pvp'ing on all three specs then most of the mercs in this game combined.

 

Go with the bodyguard healer question. Pyrotech may not have the burst it used to have, basically no backloaded burst, but bodyguard has been in the worst place in pvp for a much longer time and they suffer more than other classes in pvp. The discrepancy in sustained damage for pyrotech and arsenal isn't different, merely the burst. While bodyguard is very clearly underperforming in comparison to sorcerer's and operatives. The nerfs to alacrity, our strongest strength pre 2.0, and how our mobility buffs do not synergize with our class, really puts bodyguard at a low tier in pvp. We're a reaction based class in pvp, where we're also racing against other classes interrupt cd and pushback with poorer mobility than the other two healer classes. Yet we have tighter resources than our dps brethren, (free railshots) and 8 heat vented every six seconds.

[BigDumbViking]

I don't think that any amount of buffs can make BG more appealing than healing on an Operative. Luckily I already have a geared operative so if I need to go healing I just hop on that character.

 

This is just wrong.

 

I've run rated as merc heals and I regularly run within a few percent of an equally geared Op on the healing meters. In longer, more contested WZ's I'm hitting over 1M heals in partial conq gear that isn't min/max'd. We aren't faceroll healers, but we aren't in a hopeless situation like you seem to think either.

 

Addressing energy management, the Cooldown situation, and our crit issues would probably be enough to get us back in the game.

[cs_zoltan]

Addressing energy management, the Cooldown situation, and our crit issues would probably be enough to get us back in the game.

 

This. And change peacekeeper

[SpaniardInfinity]

This is just wrong.

 

I've run rated as merc heals and I regularly run within a few percent of an equally geared Op on the healing meters. In longer, more contested WZ's I'm hitting over 1M heals in partial conq gear that isn't min/max'd. We aren't faceroll healers, but we aren't in a hopeless situation like you seem to think either.

 

Addressing energy management, the Cooldown situation, and our crit issues would probably be enough to get us back in the game.

 

This in a nutshell. The funny thing is, most people I talk with say they love their Commando/Mercenary -- they just find it too unforgiving for one reason or another. And they definitely have a point, but it's not nearly as broken as people make it out to be. Like that guy earlier in the thread saying the class is viable if you just spam Rapid Scan/Medical Probe -- yeah, because going OOM within the first 10s of any fight on any class is totally the smart way of doing things.

 

I am looking forward to these answers. I have a feeling we might get something like Sages along the lines of "its an easy-to-lean class, but difficult-to-master" and I don't think that's incorrect. I think there's a few too many problems for just a single solution to resolve them all, but it's not like the solutions are impossible. Its mostly cooldown lengths and utilities that punishes the class. Ammo is also very tight, but from looking at the other class responses, I'm not sure if they'll address this or not. It might fall under that "hard-to-master" umbrella.

 

 

 

EDIT: The one thing I'd mention in the Bodyguard question is that under "basic utilities":

 

Bodyguard Mercenary healers have always seemed to be designed for a different game. From the get-go they were missing basic utilities (healing cleanse, in-combat revive, interrupt) and there never was a clear strength present that justified these.

 

We still lack the basic ability to heal ourselves with our default heal (Rapid Shots) -- a basic function all the healers have. We do have a very roundabout way of doing it with Kolto Shell + Peacekeeper, but this is only minimally useful in PVP, worthless in PVE, and above all else, is not as simple as what the other healers have. We can only do that every 3 seconds and it costs heat to refresh Kolto Shell -- the other healers can heal themselves every GCD if they so please and it doesn't need to go through another talent. All of this extra effort for the same amount of healing the others can do on demand. I'm aware that Rapid Shots doubles as a weapon and is instant, two advantages, but that's not a good tradeoff.

Edited September 11, 2013 by SpaniardInfinity

[easeyway]

I don't know if this has been addressed/asked yet...But the top question should be:

 

Why Mercenary pushback has like 1 second delay, but Commando is instant?

 

 

Fixing Unload so it doesn't bug every third time would be nice too.

Edited September 11, 2013 by easeyway

[odawgg]

Thanks odawgg, it think those questions are great.

However, while I fully agree with your arguments, I was struggling to understand what you wanted to explain in the comments for the first question. Since we are dealing with the devs and god knows what they will read into it, I think we should be as clear as possible.

 

Thank you, I like your provisions, I will incorporate some if not all of it when I go to finalize

 

MVaglin, I'll put my touch on it

Edited September 11, 2013 by odawgg

[oaceen]

I dont think we should dump the first question.

 

i didn't mean we should dump it, just refocus it a little. since the answer we were mostly looking for was mostly answered already, i think we should look for specifics rather than a general repeat of the response juggernauts got.

[odawgg]

From the Juggernaut/Guardian Answers. I think they could be talking about us there as well, so what does that mean for our first question?

I'm especially worried about the 'damage gap is already small' part. We really need to drive home the point that while other classes are even worse, we are way behind Snipers and Marauders.

New utilities sound great but we really need to tell them that our current ones dont really help the raid as a whole.

 

I'm already expecting a "heal to full" and "gap not that large" types of responses...I don't think there's any possible way to avoid this tbh. No matter what questions we ask, comments we make, they are going to have "their" side of the story....My theory is that what's MOST important is to get the most commonly brought up feedback into their hands to read, not to mention I just want to hear it straight from the source how they feel mercs stack up against the others in their words...the idea here is to get a direct answer on how they view our AC. Hopefully that makes sense, even though it's a ways out, the commando side will be able to fine tune their questions based on the feedback we receive here. And it's going to take a long time for BW to act on anything for class balance anyways so it is what it is on that.

[odawgg]

Ok, apologies Odawgg, but I find your personal thought on the PVP question (We need 30M stun back) to be... strange. Did I like the range nerfs? No. But is bringing it back suddenly going to make you a perfect ranged class that can kite with ease? What does it give you that suddenly fixes the PVP viability of the class?

 

But then, I probably have no right to this thread. Just because my first 50 was a merc, doesn't mean I have any reasonable feedback. I'm of the rare alt-player mindset, so my synopsis of the class is "Has a brilliant opening AoE burst".

 

Don't you worry your pretty little head I would never make a primary question "Can you bring 30m stun back". Nor would I base any question off of a few words I put in parenthesis in a 'Afterthought' I added in specifically for further discussion because of previous feedback from the community regarding being easily shutdown and difficulty keeping foes at range. But thank you for your passionate feedback on that fraction of a sentence

[oaceen]

My theory is that what's MOST important is to get the most commonly brought up feedback into their hands to read, not to mention I just want to hear it straight from the source how they feel mercs stack up against the others in their words...the idea here is to get a direct answer on how they view our AC.

 

i completely support this direction and agree that it's a good way to go.

[odawgg]

We still lack the basic ability to heal ourselves with our default heal (Rapid Shots) -- a basic function all the healers have. We do have a very roundabout way of doing it with Kolto Shell + Peacekeeper, but this is only minimally useful in PVP, worthless in PVE, and above all else, is not as simple as what the other healers have. We can only do that every 3 seconds and it costs heat to refresh Kolto Shell -- the other healers can heal themselves every GCD if they so please and it doesn't need to go through another talent. All of this extra effort for the same amount of healing the others can do on demand. I'm aware that Rapid Shots doubles as a weapon and is instant, two advantages, but that's not a good tradeoff.

 

I was hoping for someone to elaborate on heat mgmt for healers so I'll try to use some of this and anything else I see pop up on this thread going forward

[odawgg]

Just some side notes not in the OP of what I plan to add (so far):

 

*Incorporate Pyro (specifically) viability more in the 1st question. IMO this spec should be pumping out higher dps if it's going to lack some of the utility and survivability of arsenal. Or add more utility/survivability.

*Regardless of which pvp question i go with, will incorporate things from the other finalists

*Comment on the high RNG for both damage output and heat management (since barrage procs affect both)

*More detail on BG Heat mgmt from your feedback.

[oaceen]

I was hoping for someone to elaborate on heat mgmt for healers so I'll try to use some of this and anything else I see pop up on this thread going forward

 

basically, the rotation is not very difficult. you can keep your heals rolling and even keep charged shield up at all time if you manage things well.

 

 

the problem is that if you overextend and drop into low-tier regen, you're punished quite a lot if vent heat or TSO aren't available to help you get back to a manageable level or throw out a big heal while you have you heat to do so. you only have rapid shots (small heal) and emergency scan (long cooldown) while you slowly regenerate your energy, and no way to speed up the process.

 

in comparison, ops can use diagnostic scan and its crits can restore energy, and sorcs can use consumption, and they also regenerate force at the same rate no matter their force level anyway.

 

this is a problem because healing is a reactive thing. the amount of healing you need is based on the amount of damage that's going out, not trying to manage your resource to be the most effective cost-per-healing you can be. needing to overextend means that your ability to heal drops significantly and takes more time to get back up.

 

it would be interesting to see what they say, because they might point out 'well you guys get TSO and ops only have one energy restore cooldown', but i'd still like to see the justification. i know the resource management was ridiculously easy before 1.2. i basically never even used hammershot and never ran out of ammo, so i can understand some of the changes necessary to the mechanics (critical efficiency lowering the cost of rapid scan by 8 instead of 16) and adding a cost to kolto shell, but in terms of resource management for healers, the focus should be on how we can get back up to optimum healing efficiency after we drop below that.

Edited September 11, 2013 by oaceen

[odawgg]

good stuff, thanks oaceen

[cashogy_reborn]

About Pyro, judging by the recent changes made to the PT side of the spec, I think the devs are more interested in giving additional defensive cooldowns than actually helping our DPS.

 

If you are going to go with a Pyro related question, it might be worth it to include the 2.4 PTS changes in our discussion/comments. Additional survivability does not make Pyro more desirable or viable for either PvP or PvE. I think that would definitely be something worth mentioning to the devs, since they seem to just flat out not comprehend that.

[ekimmak]

in comparison, ops can use diagnostic scan and its crits can restore energy, and sorcs can use consumption, and they also regenerate force at the same rate no matter their force level anyway.

 

Doesn't consumption drain their force regeneration by a harsh degree unless they get a proc for it? I haven't put my sage through any difficult flashpoints, so I wouldn't know for certain, but the rotation to keep that proc may cost as much force as they get back from it.

[ekimmak]

Don't you worry your pretty little head I would never make a primary question "Can you bring 30m stun back". Nor would I base any question off of a few words I put in parenthesis in a 'Afterthought' I added in specifically for further discussion because of previous feedback from the community regarding being easily shutdown and difficulty keeping foes at range. But thank you for your passionate feedback on that fraction of a sentence

 

Well, that's a good thing, isn't it? Means that something you aren't putting in is the only thing I have an issue with.

[odawgg]

Well, that's a good thing, isn't it? Means that something you aren't putting in is the only thing I have an issue with.

 

Bringing back the 30m stun will likely be thrown into the PVP comments, not a direct question.

 

About Pyro, judging by the recent changes made to the PT side of the spec, I think the devs are more interested in giving additional defensive cooldowns than actually helping our DPS.

 

If you are going to go with a Pyro related question, it might be worth it to include the 2.4 PTS changes in our discussion/comments. Additional survivability does not make Pyro more desirable or viable for either PvP or PvE. I think that would definitely be something worth mentioning to the devs, since they seem to just flat out not comprehend that.

 

Same with Pyro, just gonna throw some stuff into comments on viability related to exactly what you just said.

Edited September 11, 2013 by odawgg

[phat_maban]

One thing I think would be useful in question 1 as its been said by the devs a couple of times before. "****** is a utility class and has all these abilities that is the trade off"

 

The addition could sound like this. "Feedback from the community indicates that a lot of arsenal mercs dont bring as much to a raid as a mara or sniper in terms of dps. Feedback indicates that this is because of our utility abilities and thats the trade off for that utility. A lot of the community would be happy to trade that utility to become more desirable in raids as the utilities we are given are not being utilized."

 

Or something along those lines. I have seen BW say this of other classes and frankly I want to be a dps class. Im not utility in NiM content because of kolto missile or any other utility's ability. the group will still wipe.

[schooch]

Doesn't consumption drain their force regeneration by a harsh degree unless they get a proc for it? I haven't put my sage through any difficult flashpoints, so I wouldn't know for certain, but the rotation to keep that proc may cost as much force as they get back from it.

 

It does, but it is super easy to get. In PVP it can be a little tricky if the other team is good but all in all its not a problem.

Edited September 11, 2013 by schooch