Arsenal Merc Tips

[Drunkstain]

Hey all,

 

About time to make an alt for me to play with some of my new buddies. Thinking about rolling an arsenal merc. Any helpful builds/tips on how to play would be appreciated. I cant seem to find much for a 6.0 guide.

 

Thanks in advance

Edited January 25, 2020 by Drunkstain
Make it more clear what Im wanting from post

[steveerkcanjerk]

hey man cool to see you rolling a fun class. here is a couple of tips. Been playing this class since launch if credentials matter i guess.

 

Gear:

- Concentrated fire, a 10% crit increase and an auto crit on railshot. Really nice set bonus super easy to obtain.

- For your 7th piece take amplified champ 1 piece to get an extra blue amp.

- Amps for dps armor pen gives the biggest bang for their buck. Careful because it does not effect barriers and such or evasion but its pretty consistent for the most part. For healing medtech? its the one that make tech healing increase not sure if thats the exact name.

- Tactical i like to take the one that lets you use rapid scan while moving (for kiting all those stealthers), I also keep life warden in my pocket just in case, and also thermonuclear fusion for some dps fun.

- Augments take crit and reach the first tier of alacrity.

- Enhancements i take mostly all power crit to reach those 68k+ hits and the alacrity from augments sits in a nice spot

 

Tactics:

- Learn to kite, manage hydraulics and use them to make distance. Keep your off heals ready and always have a plan to kite when entering a fight.

- Careful with stealthers and don't just burn reflect when they pop on you. Right now sin's are kinda cancer with their mauls so just be ready to be on the move and manage out your dcds.

- I take the energy rebounder utility (the one that makes energy shield cooldown get lower when you get hit) and use that as my first cooldown. If things get rough you can click the shield off from your buff bar and take the heal (also a utlity)

- Missile blast root is nice and make sure to remember to use it pretty liberally.

 

There is more stuff you can do but these are the basics good luck and have fun out there.

[Drunkstain]

Hey appreciate the advice!

 

Also if anyone would be so kind to kind of let me know priority on abilites? I feel like I have quite a bit and should just be able to get rid a lot of these. Basically what Ive been doing is spaming tracer missile, using heat seekers when up, and using rail shot when it procs at 5. I also use unload when its up seems to do good damage.

 

Other then that its just been CCing with electro dart and concussion missile. I feel like my abilities are pretty bloated and should be able to remove quite a bit from my bar, but im only 35 currently.

 

For my utility points so far I have:

Afterburners so missle blast immobilizes

Improved vents....not sure how I feel on this one dont seem to overheat to much

Adhesive supplments so tracer missile snares

 

Death from above, fusion missile, explosive dart, and sweeping blasters dont seem very appealing to me. Ive only been using sweeping blasters for when theres multiple people trying to take a point or something. Any reason I should use those abilities? Am I wrong in my current state of mind with this class?

 

My keybound abilities:

Heatseeker missiles

Unload

Tracer missile

Rail Shot

Missle blast

Disabling blast

Electro dart

Jet boost

Concussion Missile

Kolto Overload

Energy Shield

Determination

Hydralic Overrides

Rapid shots for those rare occasions when I am overheated and vent is down

 

Is Supercharged gas worth binding? Im not a numbers guy. Armor pen seems good, not sure how much 3% alacrity helps me after stacking.

 

ANyway, any build recommendation/priority abilities you want to throw out to me would be great. Thanks all!

[Hoppinswtor]

Supercharge Gas (SCG) is one of the most well-designed and synergistic offensive abilities in SWTOR; it should be keybound and used on cooldown. Its benefits are manifold:

 

(1) Activating SCG while wearing the 6-piece Concentrated Fire set bonus will cause your next Rail Shot to critically hit ("autocrit"). A 5-stack autocrit Rail Shot will inflict upwards of 50k damage. Pair that with a 60k Priming Shot from the Burning Bright tactical and you'll have the potential to kill someone from 40% HP in just 1.5 seconds.

 

(2) SCG vents 10 heat per use. You'll get about 3 uses of SCG per minute; most of your abilities cost 15 heat, so you're basically getting two free abilities per minute (on average).

 

(3) It triggers the effects of two utilities: Supercharge Defense and Tag and Bag. The former makes you uninterruptible and harder to hit during SCG; the latter decreases the cooldown of Kolto Overload each time you use SCG.

 

(4) The Concentrated Fire set bonus will add extra stacks of Supercharge throughout the fight. If you use SCG on cooldown and have a reasonably high APM, you'll have a SCG uptime of more than 30%.

(5) The armor penetration and alacrity bonuses while under the effects of Supercharge provide a small DPS boost. This is really just icing on the cake, but you'll receive a ~5-7% increase in DPS during SCG.

Edited January 26, 2020 by Hoppinswtor

[SlimPikinz]

As a main Mercenary player that only does PvP, I use every ability except Supercharged Celerity.

 

Death from Above for Yellow AoE damage

Sweeping Blasters for White AoE damage and to spam interrupts

Explosive Dart as your last ability before death to AoE interrupt channels for buying a few more seconds

Fusion Missile in Innovated Ordinance spec.

Tech Override before Full Auto/Blazing Bolts or DfA/Sweeping to save heat

Stealth Scan instantly on vanishes/cloaks

Power Surge with Concussion Missile or Rapid Scan

 

Mercenary has a lot of abilities. I have almost 4 full bars 1-9, Shift 1-9, Ctrl 1-9, q,e,r,f,x,c

 

Check out my Mercenary Arsenal/IO PvP YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdYrALX70uf4_3czGZK-B0g

[TrixxieTriss]

hey man cool to see you rolling a fun class. here is a couple of tips. Been playing this class since launch if credentials matter i guess.

 

Gear:

- Concentrated fire, a 10% crit increase and an auto crit on railshot. Really nice set bonus super easy to obtain.

- For your 7th piece take amplified champ 1 piece to get an extra blue amp.

- Amps for dps armor pen gives the biggest bang for their buck. Careful because it does not effect barriers and such or evasion but its pretty consistent for the most part. For healing medtech? its the one that make tech healing increase not sure if thats the exact name.

- Tactical i like to take the one that lets you use rapid scan while moving (for kiting all those stealthers), I also keep life warden in my pocket just in case, and also thermonuclear fusion for some dps fun.

- Augments take crit and reach the first tier of alacrity.

- Enhancements i take mostly all power crit to reach those 68k+ hits and the alacrity from augments sits in a nice spot

 

Tactics:

- Learn to kite, manage hydraulics and use them to make distance. Keep your off heals ready and always have a plan to kite when entering a fight.

- Careful with stealthers and don't just burn reflect when they pop on you. Right now sin's are kinda cancer with their mauls so just be ready to be on the move and manage out your dcds.

- I take the energy rebounder utility (the one that makes energy shield cooldown get lower when you get hit) and use that as my first cooldown. If things get rough you can click the shield off from your buff bar and take the heal (also a utlity)

- Missile blast root is nice and make sure to remember to use it pretty liberally.

 

There is more stuff you can do but these are the basics good luck and have fun out there.

 

What do you sacrifice (trade off) to take those 2 utilities?

[TrixxieTriss]

As a main Mercenary player that only does PvP, I use every ability except Supercharged Celerity.

 

Death from Above for Yellow AoE damage

Sweeping Blasters for White AoE damage and to spam interrupts

Explosive Dart as your last ability before death to AoE interrupt channels for buying a few more seconds

Fusion Missile in Innovated Ordinance spec.

Tech Override before Full Auto/Blazing Bolts or DfA/Sweeping to save heat

Stealth Scan instantly on vanishes/cloaks

Power Surge with Concussion Missile or Rapid Scan

 

Mercenary has a lot of abilities. I have almost 4 full bars 1-9, Shift 1-9, Ctrl 1-9, q,e,r,f,x,c

 

Check out my Mercenary Arsenal/IO PvP YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdYrALX70uf4_3czGZK-B0g

 

Yep, I’ve got a 4 bar stacked setup for my GUI too. Do you stack up?

 

Celerity is also the only thing I don’t use as it’s not useful in pvp.

[PhatMcMuffins]

Mobile Rapid Scan is a very scared tactical to play with. The only place you could warrant using this as dps is in solo ranked when tunneled. You should never need life warden as a merc.

 

Arsenal has plenty of survuvability if you take the right utilities. trauma regs, kolto surge, energy rebounder are musts. Stabilized armor is better than Thrill of the Hunt in ranked due to merc being higher on the focus list as of 6.0. DOuble power surge and power shield are great for arsenal, as well. In first teir, lower cd on cc break, vent heat while stunned and slow on tracer missile. You could swap the vent heat on stun for larger knockback distance

 

To be an effective arsenal merc, you should be running Burning Bright or Primed Ignition. The buffed priming shot or burn are a huge burst or net dps gain. Burning Bright will give you 60K + priming shots but it is white damage and a lot of classes mitigate it. Primed Ignition gives a burn to priming shot that is internal and ticks for 45kish over 13s

[SlimPikinz]

Do you stack up?

 

2 bars are stacked with another pair to the right.

 

If things get rough you can click the shield off from your buff bar and take the heal (also a utlity)

 

I feel like a lot of newer Merc players do not know about this. Can be very clutch.

 

You could swap the vent heat on stun.....

 

This utility gets so much value through the course of a match that it's hard to argue for replacing it. I never not take it.

 

Primed Ignition gives a burn to priming shot that is internal and ticks for 45kish over 13

 

I like this tactical a lot, along with Burning Bright, but it does have some drawbacks:

If Priming shot misses, then no extra damage. Same for Burning Bright.

It breaks soft CC

 

A few more tips:

• 
  You can dump a 4 stack Rail Shot to secure a kill. Not always necessary to cast Tracer Missile for 1 more stack.
  Same for the heal, a 4 stack heal has almost no cast time.

• I always Missile Blast first and look for the Root Icon on their bar then send Electro Net. This guarantees that net will land and not get resisted during roll, blitz, etc. Also, root doesn't add resolve. You can stun first then net but the stun might white bar and now cc breaker will clear hard stun and net.

• Save your instant Tracer Missile until after the first Blazing Bolts. This resets the cooldown on Blazing Bolts and you can fire off 2 back to back.

• Use Missile Blast root to adjust your position to get a good knockback. The root doesn't add resolve so this is ideal if you're aiming to knock them off the map or into hazards.

• Always cast Kolto Shot onto yourself or allies while moving to objectives.

• Hold Hydraulic Override until you get full resolve so you don't get stunned through your entire HO duration. Not always possible but ideal.

• Use interrupt ideally on spam abilities: i.e. Rapid Scan, Tracer Missile, Thundering Blast. Interrupt at the end of casting for all abilities. They waste time casting if you wait until the end.

• Save Rocket Out until after gap closers are used to get to you. It also has a small cc immunity during animation.

• The most important skill to learn for Arsenal is Kiting. Know how to cycle Missile Blast root, Blazing Bolt slow, Net, and Tracer Missile slow (utility).

[PhatMcMuffins]

 

I like this tactical a lot, along with Burning Bright, but it does have some drawbacks:

If Priming shot misses, then no extra damage. Same for Burning Bright.

It breaks soft CC

 

 

The burn actually applies even if the white damage is resisted (found this out yesterday) which is why Primed Ignition is more reliable than Burning Bright (also, i feel like the names should be swapped. shouldn't the burn one be called Burning Bright?)

Besides, the other tacticals for arsenal aren't worth using. AoE heatseeker is a waste. The radius that it will actually split is small and it's overall damage isn't great. Besides, arsenal is technically single target burst. Go IO if you plan to cleave.

 

And on your other point about the vent heat on stun: This is really only a necessity for IO and Bodyguard. It is tough to overheat playing arsenal if you're not spamming tracer. Still not a bad utility to take by any means for arsenal, just not as necessary.

I also don't feel missile blast root is great for arsenal. Missile blast is almost useless outside of the proc that IO gets. If you're worried about net getting rolled, bait the roll.

 

Lastly, I feel Apex Predator may be better than Concentrated Fire for Arsenal but I won't know until I get the set. I only PVP so I'm relying on conquest crates to get it. I'll report back once I have it.

[Aeneas_Falco]

As a main Mercenary player that only does PvP, I use every ability except Supercharged Celerity.

 

Death from Above for Yellow AoE damage

Sweeping Blasters for White AoE damage and to spam interrupts

Explosive Dart as your last ability before death to AoE interrupt channels for buying a few more seconds

Fusion Missile in Innovated Ordinance spec.

Tech Override before Full Auto/Blazing Bolts or DfA/Sweeping to save heat

Stealth Scan instantly on vanishes/cloaks

Power Surge with Concussion Missile or Rapid Scan

 

Mercenary has a lot of abilities. I have almost 4 full bars 1-9, Shift 1-9, Ctrl 1-9, q,e,r,f,x,c

 

Check out my Mercenary Arsenal/IO PvP YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdYrALX70uf4_3czGZK-B0g

 

Too add to the above Explosive Dart also some utility if you use it on someone who may be stealthing out shortly when your net is unavilable (you can often knock people out of stealth with it if you time it well) or in Regs when an opposing player is capping a node and there is a high likelihood you're going to eat a stun after doing some damage. Because of the delay the dart will interrupt a 2nd cap attempt while you are CC'd.

[Floplag]

Some good advice here, some i would question, but the one thing ill add to it is this, dont be a slave to the so-called "rotation".

A alot of things we have at our disposal that arent always used a lot, in my view, absolutely have a place in PvP.

The obvious is obvious, but look at what isnt obvious, and find reason to use it.

Even as simple as using something to bait an interrupt or to make someone use a skill to get it off the cooldowns list cannot be under stated in PvP.

Do not be predictable.