Realistic options to fix Merc PVP

[TezMoney]

Every time you post, you post about something you have no idea about. I've cast Static Barrier 20 times in a wz, making certain to cast only on full health teammates, and then have gone out of my way to not do direct heals. No healing score in endgame stats. Medals? Does anyone even care about those? The devs balance based on meta average output. Which is biased, on top of being already grossly unbalanced for off healing dps subclasses.

 

You're going by old stuff. WZ's were patched years ago to count damage absorbed by a static shield as heals for who ever casted it. Those people you put static barrier on didn't take any damage while it was up.

Edited January 9, 2015 by TezMoney

[Floplag]

Sages and Sorcerers do not regenerate Force anywhere near as fast as the other classes. If we use powers like Benevolence it can crash our Force quickly.

 

 

 

Scoundrels have Slow Release Medpack which can keep a constant HoT on them forever.

 

 

 

Merc off-healing could use some help, I said that above. What's your point?

 

 

 

We don't have an advantage over Operatives/Scoundrels. We do against Mercs. As I said above. You all keep saying that Sorcerers/Sages are heads and shoulders above the other healers and that's just not true and never will be because they gave one of the best healing powers in the game to DPS Scoundrels.

 

 

ANYONE that spams anything will crash their resources, thats not the point.. the point is whether or not you can heal yourself to full within the confines of a given fight, the answer on a sorc is yes, on any other dps/offf heal class the answer is no.

 

A scoundrel HOT will not heal as fast as you can either so another nice misdirection, but apples to oranges.

 

I agree that Mercs need help either on heals or other survivability, but the point inst mercs right now its to illustrate how spoiled Sorcs are in that regard.

 

You are wrong that you dont have an advantage over both... you have similar survivability rates to an Op, both of which are light years ahead of Mercs, but its for different reasons. If we are talking pure healing, you are the only one that cna spam a heal, thats a fact.. you have an emergency heal others do not, another fact.. you have an immunity bubble.. still fact... ops can drop combat to stay alive, and have nice mitigation tools, but thats not the same thing. Mercs, well Mercs have... nice armor.

[ElcorHamlet]

The only change KO needs is for 30% DR while active to be made baseline for all troopers.

 

You are absolutely correct Grimm. It's a really obvious and effective fix.

[Master-Nala]

ANYONE that spams anything will crash their resources, thats not the point.. the point is whether or not you can heal yourself to full within the confines of a given fight, the answer on a sorc is yes, on any other dps/offf heal class the answer is no.

 

You're just plain wrong. I play DPS specs off all three and I H2F on my Ruffian Scoundrel all the time.

 

A scoundrel HOT will not heal as fast as you can either so another nice misdirection, but apples to oranges.

 

That would be relevant if Scoundrels only had one heal, except Scoundrels have three heals. They can run the HoT, use Kolto Pack on cooldown and even use Diagnostic scan as filler. Since apparently we're talking about being out of combat since if you try to use benevolence in combat you will get interrupted and killed.

 

 

You are wrong that you dont have an advantage over both... you have similar survivability rates to an Op, both of which are light years ahead of Mercs, but its for different reasons. If we are talking pure healing, you are the only one that cna spam a heal, thats a fact.. you have an emergency heal others do not, another fact.. you have an immunity bubble.. still fact... ops can drop combat to stay alive, and have nice mitigation tools, but thats not the same thing. Mercs, well Mercs have... nice armor.

 

Actually, Ops and Mercs are the only ones who can 'spam' a heal. Benevolence cannot be 'spammed'. You will run out of force. You will not run out of energy if you spam Slow-Release medpack & Diagnostic Scan. Mercs can spam Kolto shot, which sucks, but it's free.

 

Mercs do in fact have an emergency heal. It's even called "emergency scan" lol. Mercs don't have an 'immunity bubble.' But Sorcs don't have 10% additional DR, a damage resist cooldown, 360 degree KB or any of the other things you take for granted and conveniently forget in your quest to say your Merc sucks.

 

Mercs need help, Sorcs are in good shape. It's not this chasm you say it is. I have DPS specs of all three healing classes at level 60. In my signature, Alana is a Balance Sage, Myschal is a Ruffian Scoundrel, and Chisami is an Arsenal Merc. I've been playing Chisami most of this week and it's not anywhere near as bad as you all make it out to be.

Edited January 9, 2015 by Master-Nala

[Floplag]

You're just plain wrong. I play DPS specs off all three and I H2F on my Ruffian Scoundrel all the time.

 

 

 

That would be relevant if Scoundrels only had one heal, except Scoundrels have three heals. They can run the HoT, use Kolto Pack on cooldown and even use Diagnostic scan as filler. Since apparently we're talking about being out of combat since if you try to use benevolence in combat you will get interrupted and killed.

 

 

 

 

Actually, Ops and Mercs are the only ones who can 'spam' a heal. Benevolence cannot be 'spammed'. You will run out of force. You will not run out of energy if you spam Slow-Release medpack & Diagnostic Scan. Mercs can spam Kolto shot, which sucks, but it's free.

 

Mercs do in fact have an emergency heal. It's even called "emergency scan" lol. Mercs don't have an 'immunity bubble.' But Sorcs don't have 10% additional DR, a damage resist cooldown, 360 degree KB or any of the other things you take for granted and conveniently forget in your quest to say your Merc sucks.

 

Mercs need help, Sorcs are in good shape. It's not this chasm you say it is. I have DPS specs of all three healing classes at level 60. In my signature, Alana is a Balance Sage, Myschal is a Ruffian Scoundrel, and Chisami is an Arsenal Merc. I've been playing Chisami most of this week and it's not anywhere near as bad as you all make it out to be.

 

uh huh, and how long does that H2F take on that scoundrel in comparison to the Sage? Half the time? less? Certainly not within the confines of a single fight timeframe.

You should know i play or have played all three as well, and im well aware of how long this take, im just curious to see if you can be honest with yourself on this one... Daig scan is crap, just as the Merc healing shot.... and the Op large heal requires TA... Sages have no such resources requirement.... you know that as well as I, Using those skills it would take 20-30 GCD to H2F, stop with the misdirection.. on your sage you can do it in half the time or less, thats the problem.

 

You are clearly delusional on the status of things, and are desperately trying to make it sound like your beleoved Sage is somehow weaker than EVERYONE else knows they are.. and you are failing, miserably.

 

My advise to you is to simply stop at this point... If this is the best you can do, youve already lost.

[TezMoney]

Crazy idea... what if they made kolto shot heal for half but took it of the GCD. When support cylinder/cell is on it goes back on GCD, gets a 100% heal buff, and you need support cylinder on to get the heat reduction.

[cs_zoltan]

Crazy idea... what if they made kolto shot heal for half but took it of the GCD. When support cylinder/cell is on it goes back on GCD, gets a 100% heal buff, and you need support cylinder on to get the heat reduction.

 

It is crazy. Non-cd skill can NEVER be off-GCD.

[Master-Nala]

uh huh, and how long does that H2F take on that scoundrel in comparison to the Sage? Half the time? less? Certainly not within the confines of a single fight timeframe.

You should know i play or have played all three as well, and im well aware of how long this take, im just curious to see if you can be honest with yourself on this one... Daig scan is crap, just as the Merc healing shot.... and the Op large heal requires TA... Sages have no such resources requirement.... you know that as well as I, Using those skills it would take 20-30 GCD to H2F, stop with the misdirection.. on your sage you can do it in half the time or less, thats the problem.

 

In the interest of science, I repeatedly threw my Scoundrel off a cliff in the Black Hole to get to about 20% in health. In three attempts it took an average of 17.1 seconds to heal. The highest was 19 seconds and the lowest was 14.4 seconds.

 

I then logged in my better geared Sage and Noble Sacrificed about the same amount of damage from her, and it took an average of 15.68 seconds to heal. The highest was 15.98 and the lowest was 15.3. Not a lot of variance there.

 

My Merc wasn't in a great place to do this test, but I let a gold NPC beat on her to about 20% and did the same. Only once and I was able to heal in 19.68 seconds. Which frankly surprised me, I thought it would be more, and I want to test it more when she's in a better place to test.

 

So no, nothing like 20-30 GCDs for any of them. It took the Merc about 13-14, the Scoundrel, 11-12, the Sage, about 11 even. Not even as big of a variance as I suspected it would be. And there were some other factors that artificially made the Sage do better. Like I alluded to, she is by far the best geared of the 3 with full purple Tier 10 augments. She also has the utility that buffs Force Mend by 30%. And even with all that, she didn't do that much better than the other two.

 

I'm happy to compare results, if you're willing to be honest.

 

You are clearly delusional on the status of things, and are desperately trying to make it sound like your beleoved Sage is somehow weaker than EVERYONE else knows they are.. and you are failing, miserably.

 

My advise to you is to simply stop at this point... If this is the best you can do, youve already lost.

 

Here's where I know you're full of it. Because I said nothing of the sort.

 

This illustrates my whole point. You are so lost in your own hyperbole that you can't even absorb what I'm saying. I have never said anything other than Sorcerers and Sages are better healers than Mercs/Commandos. That's patently true. They are NOT meaningfully better healers than Operatives/Scoundrels. My Sage only beat the Scoundrel by 1 GCD with significantly better gear.

 

You have fixed it in your mind that Sorcerers are this godmode class that you can't even contemplate the idea that you're exaggerating. No I haven't 'lost' anything. I can see reality. Not so sure about you.

[Master-Nala]

Crazy idea... what if they made kolto shot heal for half but took it of the GCD. When support cylinder/cell is on it goes back on GCD, gets a 100% heal buff, and you need support cylinder on to get the heat reduction.

 

Wouldn't that mean that as fast as you can mash the button you could heal?

[TezMoney]

Wouldn't that mean that as fast as you can mash the button you could heal?

 

yes for like 500-700 a pop.

Edited January 10, 2015 by TezMoney

[Zoom_VI]

yes for like 500-700 a pop.

 

That would be fine if macros didn't exist.

[TezMoney]

That would be fine if macros didn't exist.

 

if you're suggesting someone would macro so that KS is constantly being spammed, it would mess up their input for their active abilities. I tried this once with old healing rapid shots and it kept locking up my char

[Theodulus]

if you're suggesting someone would macro so that KS is constantly being spammed, it would mess up their input for their active abilities. I tried this once with old healing rapid shots and it kept locking up my char

The old shots were also on the GCD. The reason why you perceived your input queue got messed up was because you have ability queue enabled by default. Without a gcd or icd you would be able to fire off a thousand medshots a second or so until the ancient Hero Blades explodes.

[TracyKirkham]

First post ever, be kind. With that, I merc pvp 95% of my time in swtor; regs and solo ranked and hate that our best strat in ranked is to be a 20 sec punching bag before death. Since BW isn't known for tossing out new abilities, and seems adamant about supplying us with lackluster defense or off-heals, I suggest an equally lackluster upgrade to an existing ability.

For every charge of supercharged gas, a 1% flat damage reduction per charge. That, coupled with stabilized armor , would give us 40% DR in those initial moments in arena when we're focused (assuming everyone is building charges before the match starts). Not an ability to force a hard switch or a super jetpack escape I know, but enough to mitigate the "blow up the merc" strat and provide a few more precious seconds to utilize our subpar offheals, shield, chaff, and cure.

Some might say that'd make merc OP in regs blah blah, but everything is viable in regs.

When supercharged is used for dmg boost the DR goes away...so in arena, just enough for that first 2 sin/pt/jugg mauling.

[TezMoney]

The old shots were also on the GCD. The reason why you perceived your input queue got messed up was because you have ability queue enabled by default. Without a gcd or icd you would be able to fire off a thousand medshots a second or so until the ancient Hero Blades explodes.

 

Well of course it would have to have some icd.

[Floplag]

In the interest of science, I repeatedly threw my Scoundrel off a cliff in the Black Hole to get to about 20% in health. In three attempts it took an average of 17.1 seconds to heal. The highest was 19 seconds and the lowest was 14.4 seconds.

 

I then logged in my better geared Sage and Noble Sacrificed about the same amount of damage from her, and it took an average of 15.68 seconds to heal. The highest was 15.98 and the lowest was 15.3. Not a lot of variance there.

 

My Merc wasn't in a great place to do this test, but I let a gold NPC beat on her to about 20% and did the same. Only once and I was able to heal in 19.68 seconds. Which frankly surprised me, I thought it would be more, and I want to test it more when she's in a better place to test.

 

So no, nothing like 20-30 GCDs for any of them. It took the Merc about 13-14, the Scoundrel, 11-12, the Sage, about 11 even. Not even as big of a variance as I suspected it would be. And there were some other factors that artificially made the Sage do better. Like I alluded to, she is by far the best geared of the 3 with full purple Tier 10 augments. She also has the utility that buffs Force Mend by 30%. And even with all that, she didn't do that much better than the other two.

 

I'm happy to compare results, if you're willing to be honest.

 

 

 

Here's where I know you're full of it. Because I said nothing of the sort.

 

This illustrates my whole point. You are so lost in your own hyperbole that you can't even absorb what I'm saying. I have never said anything other than Sorcerers and Sages are better healers than Mercs/Commandos. That's patently true. They are NOT meaningfully better healers than Operatives/Scoundrels. My Sage only beat the Scoundrel by 1 GCD with significantly better gear.

 

You have fixed it in your mind that Sorcerers are this godmode class that you can't even contemplate the idea that you're exaggerating. No I haven't 'lost' anything. I can see reality. Not so sure about you.

 

yeah, why am i not buying this.. oh yeah because i tested it myself and it was different, thats why, not to mention how many things you leave out to suit your case.... but hey tell yourself whatever you need to to buy into your own legend i guess.

If you truly think sorcs are no better than their counterparts, you are doing it worn, period.

[Master-Nala]

yeah, why am i not buying this.. oh yeah because i tested it myself and it was different, thats why, not to mention how many things you leave out to suit your case.... but hey tell yourself whatever you need to to buy into your own legend i guess.

If you truly think sorcs are no better than their counterparts, you are doing it worn, period.

 

To paraphrase Darth Marr, "No...I don't suspect you will."

 

Because it doesn't fit the fantasy you constructed in your mind. Like I said, you are full of it. Because you stated that it would take twice as long as a Sorc. Maybe if you only use Kolto Shot and never crit. But if you use Emergency Scan and Healing Scan on cooldown, it isn't likely to take that long unless you're wearing Strength gear or something. But who knows with you.

Edited January 11, 2015 by Master-Nala

[phat_maban]

First post ever, be kind. With that, I merc pvp 95% of my time in swtor; regs and solo ranked and hate that our best strat in ranked is to be a 20 sec punching bag before death. Since BW isn't known for tossing out new abilities, and seems adamant about supplying us with lackluster defense or off-heals, I suggest an equally lackluster upgrade to an existing ability.

For every charge of supercharged gas, a 1% flat damage reduction per charge. That, coupled with stabilized armor , would give us 40% DR in those initial moments in arena when we're focused (assuming everyone is building charges before the match starts). Not an ability to force a hard switch or a super jetpack escape I know, but enough to mitigate the "blow up the merc" strat and provide a few more precious seconds to utilize our subpar offheals, shield, chaff, and cure.

Some might say that'd make merc OP in regs blah blah, but everything is viable in regs.

When supercharged is used for dmg boost the DR goes away...so in arena, just enough for that first 2 sin/pt/jugg mauling.

 

Yep i spent about 3 hours doing ranked pvp today and i would say 90% of my matches i was focused first and hard.

 

By a end of a round i would have about 80 to 90k dmg done to me. Double my health..........i would have about 100k dmg.

 

the dmg taken tab would normally be a lot more then my team mates with most of the time being the most.

 

This tells me there is really no incentive for another team in ranked to focus anyone else. they continue to burn me because they know the defensive's are not that good. Another reason to burn the merc is that their dmg is pretty good. We need a balance.

 

imho we need something that would really deter teams from focusing us. a reflective shield or something. if i see a merc there is nothing that will stop me atm from not focusing him for all im worth.

 

Boost our shield to something worthwhile like 70% for 8 seconds or something. Something that will make them switch targets for god's sake because im not doing it when i focus a merc and neither is anyone else. continue to burn through their cd's thats it.

 

All i know is that we should not be the go to burn target in ranked and if i was putting together a ranked them i would not pick a merc for that reason. its like starting with three ppl. Teams need something more then a dmg soaker which is what we are atm.

[TracyKirkham]

Yep i spent about 3 hours doing ranked pvp today and i would say 90% of my matches i was focused first and hard.

 

 

 

All i know is that we should not be the go to burn target in ranked and if i was putting together a ranked them i would not pick a merc for that reason. its like starting with three ppl. Teams need something more then a dmg soaker which is what we are atm.

 

Sadly that is our current state. Many dps merc/mandos are shelving their toons in favor of more viable options, while waiting for changes. PPl say they want baby steps in balance, and 1% DR per charge of SCG fits the bill.

 

I empathize with those mercs, and, outside of a handful of matches, have done the same in the past. But sitting out has become tiresome.

 

I hope those mercs reconsider.

 

I will continue to Q ranked through s4, since the inception of ranked 4's dps merc has been lower than worm spit, and If our requests for increased survivability aren't enough then perhaps the complaints of the wider ranked population being teamed with squish mercs will garner some attention. I doubt it though, and that may be the wrong approach...I've no wish to hamper anyones gameplay...but desperate times etc

[TezMoney]

All i know is that we should not be the go to burn target in ranked and if i was putting together a ranked them i would not pick a merc for that reason.

 

That's what's wrong with the PVP right there? Exactly WHY shouldn't merc's be the first target to burn

[Gyronamics]

That's what's wrong with the PVP right there? Exactly WHY shouldn't merc's be the first target to burn

 

There is no reason why not.

 

That's the whole point. Any other class is less attractive to focus fire.

[TezMoney]

There is no reason why not.

 

That's the whole point. Any other class is less attractive to focus fire.

 

That's not the point. He said "should not", which is a very different stance than "are". It's about entitlement.

Edited January 11, 2015 by TezMoney

[Transcendent]

I empathize with those mercs, and, outside of a handful of matches, have done the same in the past. But sitting out has become tiresome.

 

I hope those mercs reconsider.

 

I'll may briefly play my merc in yolo, purely because I'd like the season rewards on my main. It's possibly one of the most frustrating experiences.

 

Especially when you have target of target turned on and click over the non-stealthers on the other team.... all focussing on you Didn't even manage to do enough matches on the last ranked season. I've managed a few regs on my merc, it just feels like I'm throwing cotton wool at the enemies now (as well as being soft and squishy).

 

Really don't see the point in taking this class into PvP at all. It's not fun.

Edited January 11, 2015 by Transcendent

[Gyronamics]

That's not the point. He said "should not", which is a very different stance than "are". It's about entitlement.

 

No that's a twisted viewpoint.

 

There is a logical reason to focus mercs as they have no major immunity or recovery ability on top of offensive output being terrible under focus.

 

Merc is in need of a card to play in the current meta of jump on the merc 90% of ranked games and burn through their defensives because their only counter is to try and tank as long as possible.

[TezMoney]

No that's a twisted viewpoint.

 

There is a logical reason to focus mercs as they have no major immunity or recovery ability on top of offensive output being terrible under focus.

 

Merc is in need of a card to play in the current meta of jump on the merc 90% of ranked games and burn through their defensives because their only counter is to try and tank as long as possible.

 

Sigh... you completely missed the point I was trying to make. It has nothing to do with the class and everything to do with the poster. My view point isn't twisted, phat maban's is.

Edited January 11, 2015 by TezMoney