Devs - you say you buffed everything. But...you nerfed merc

[DariusCalera]

Unless the devs change their design philosophy for mercs/mandos they probably won't ever be "fine" for ranked. Yes, there will still be some there but other classes will still be greatly preferred simply because of better DCDs and not having to be babysat as much.

 

Stabilized armor will work if you take it, but doing so will cause a drop in DPS because you won't be able to take other heroics.

There is no drop in dps if you take Stabilized armor unless you mean the loss of Power overrides which kinda gets covered by Priming Shot.

 

While interrupts are a pain, having interrupt immunity does nothing for the myriad stuns, mezzes, pushes, chokes, or knock backs that are in this game that most use to stop a merc/mando from doing damage.

With all the dot spreading in 3.0 mezzes will break early most of the time. Getting "stunned, knocked, pushed, choked" harms meeles more. You will only need to stand still for your occasional Tracer Missile. Warriors will be longer glued while casting Ravage than a merc casting his Tracer.

 

In short, mercs/mandos will still be at the bottom of the PvP ladder and other classes will still be preferred.

 

Answers in red.

 

PS is on an 18 second cooldown so giving up 2 insta cast TMs from Power Overrides is a DPS loss. (Not to mention giving up 2 insta heals if need be or a heal and a CM)

 

Secondly, it doesn't matter if "mezzes break early" because as soon as it is used a mercs rotation is interrupted. Doesn't matter if it's for .005 of a second, that's enough to interrupt us.

[texoc]

PS is on an 18 second cooldown so giving up 2 insta cast TMs from Power Overrides is a DPS loss. (Not to mention giving up 2 insta heals if need be or a heal and a CM)

 

Secondly, it doesn't matter if "mezzes break early" because as soon as it is used a mercs rotation is interrupted. Doesn't matter if it's for .005 of a second, that's enough to interrupt us.

 

Its not a dps loss! You are still bound to global cooldown. It is a uttility loss. Your 2 Instant heals are gone anyway Rapid Scan is gone, now you have only Healing Scan which has 13.5 secs cooldown and Emergency Scan which instant anyway. With the addition of PS you have more instant casts than you have currently on life you are just bit more restricted.

[Macroeconomics]

If you watch dev livestreams, you see what they do. If they test anything it's usually on a dev server. Or they do flashpoints. Show me a dev that ques up for ranked to test class viability and I'll kiss your ***.

 

Philosophically the devs don't believe they need to personally play ranked matches in order to balance the (sub)classes. Since the start of this game, they believe that their in game statistics collection allows them to accurately judge which classes are outperforming (underperforming) other classes. This is why at various times the devs have boasted that they a) knew if too many Concealment Ops were locking down their targets, that b) all the classes were within 5% of each other in output, that c) that the classes are balanced because they look at the win/loss ratio of each class in ranked. All statements that seem ludicrous but are seemingly backed up by BW's collected statistics.

 

The problem with BW's reliance on meta statistics is that these are heavily influenced by player migration to (and from) subclasses. The overpowered subclasses always have a greater inflow of new players. And these new players have less gear, less skill and lower output. Which reduces the meta average performance of the class. This masks the OP nature of the subclass from BW's meta statistics collection efforts.

 

I have previously suggested (multiple times) that these analytical weaknesses could be compensated for by using statistics focused on a static group of top players. For instance, measure which classes are overrepresented on teams that win ranked pvp matches. And someone at BW must have been listening because shortly after I made that suggestion, they trotted out the "we measure each classes win/loss ratio in ranked". But that is not the same thing and is clearly an inferior metric. For example even if Merc Pyro has the same ranked win/loss ratio as Sorc Madness, I can guarantee you that Merc Pyro has a far lower representation in winning ranked teams. And if you don't understand why that occurs, then (like BW) you need to review basic statistical theory.

 

But as far as 3.0 goes, I'm certain we will hear the familiar refrain from BW - "we'll see how the classes play out in 3.0", i.e. we're going to wait to make play balance adjustments until we can collect meta statistics on the subclasses. I think we all know how that is going to work out.