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Mandos/Mercs need a better buff in 7.2


SentinalMasterWW

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I'm sorry but swapping Hold the line with propulsion round isn't going to fix the class. I don't know why Bioware has it out for this class and Snipers/slingers. I think they are of the idea that mandos/mercs should be the most immobile thing ever. The problem merc/mando has is the key defensives/abilites are locked and you have to pick which one. Echoing Detterence the biggest healing shield in the game, or a key movement Immunity ability, or a 4 sec stun. Compare that to others like Sorc, where all they have to do is pick out which neat passive sounds nice and barely suffered any prunning when 7.0 launched. The Buff to gunnery a couple months back was appreciated but this class is suffering from numerous issues. There is a good recent article from Vulkk going over the 7.2 class changes (https://vulkk.com/2022/11/12/swtor-7-2-combat-style-balance-changes-overview-and-ruhnuk-pts-preview/#h-Mercenary-and-Commando)which I'm going to quote as Endonae explains the issues perfectly than I could. 

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This whole slow tanky feel that BioWare is trying to give to Mercenaries / Commandos (and Juggernauts / Guardians) only makes sense on paper from an RP perspective. It does not work in practice where these combat styles just do not have sufficient mobility, especially in PvE.  Mercenaries / Commandos (and Juggernauts / Guardians) lack the ability to move quickly and precisely to where they want to be.

One of the Reasons Merc/Mando are not really a good option is they are just as immobile as snipers/slingers, but those specs have cover and cannot be leapt to, not to mention they have the best AOE Reduction ability in the game with Hunker down. 

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When are Mercenaries and Commandos gonna get actual solutions to the problems with their combat style instead of these dollar store band-aid “solutions”? Practically everything BioWare has done in the past few expansions to fix the combat style has been a hacky afterthought. 

Instead of actually fixing resource management, they gave IO/AS a ridiculously overpowered DoT that happens to make the trash filler ability statistically stronger than the actual filler. 

They opted to lock away the raid buff in a choice where no one in their right mind would ever take it instead of actually fixing the bad interactions with their raid buff that can destabilize rotations and consistently lower the DPS / HPS of whoever uses it without providing any tangible benefit to most of the rest of the group.

Attempting to fix mobility issues by just swapping the position of the 2 mobility abilities.

Merging Vent Heat and Thermal Sensor Override / Recharge Cells and Reserve Power Cell without any immediate compensation for what that would do to resource management.

Locking away garbage extra abilities instead of pruning them, robbing us of actually interesting ability tree choices like other combat styles have gotten. 

Meanwhile, it remains a DPS loss to actually use Unload / Full Auto because it does not generate Supercharge stacks and the Speed to Burn / Blazing Celerity proc can still get desynchronized if you aren’t careful.

Let’s not forget that if you overheat / run out of Energy Cells, you basically can’t do any DPS for a significant period of time while being incentivized to push the limit as much as possible. Most other disciplines don’t have to deal with that.

This one go's more into IO/AS's Energy management issues, and the fact that there is no good passive to regen energy, compared that to other classes that literally have passive energy regen into their specs.  When you look at the patch notes and see all the other classes getting solid buffs', Merc's/Mandos have been getting the short end of the stick, Ever since 7.0 Dropped this class has been maybe 2nd to Sniper/Slingers struggling in terms of viability. 

In order to fix this Bioware needs to make the following changes. 

1. Better Survivability across the board, Echoing Deterrence should be a mainline ability, They can swap it with whatever passive/Ability. This way players can choose if they want, the stun, Movement ability, or option 3 (whatever that would be) 

2. Energy cost Reductions across the board, or better ways to regen energy. Make it so that your DOT's passively regen Class energy for IO/AS. Gunnery really doesn't have energy issues like IO/AS but if they could introduce some passive energy regen across the board great. 

3. Better Damage across the board for Gunnery and IO/AS. 

It's unfortunate the state this class is in, It's my main one and my favorite class to play, but it sucks that Bioware is buffing the overperforming classes, and leaving specs like this high and dry.

If you have anything else that would improve this class, feel free to share it. 

 

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  • 1 month later...

They had a patch like a week or so ago that changed Ionic/Particle to a 7 sec cooldown.

Thats huge because we can now slot alacrity to the -.1 gcd threshold and not get punished as well as use the random charge package implant.  Can even use Explosive Round on proc now and be a little looser with the rotation.  Supercharged Cells has like a 50%+ uptime now

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12 minutes ago, ZUHFB said:

yes I can, my merc has both too - you never change your combat style after the patch you'll keep both until you change 

aaaaah, so it's a bug lol. thanks for the quick answer i was going crazy & thought i missed something in my ability list.

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  • 1 month later...

This class needs a rework. I did not mind spamming tracer missile until i have a proc like it was prior to introducing priming shot. I believe this ability completely messed up our class and balancing. We are bottom of dps list every single patch.

 

Please make merc great again.

 

Why we cannot see any of the developers answer these threads?

 

I wish we got some attention.

 

 

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