[Patch 1.0-1.1 ARCHIVE] Mercenary | Commando DPS Compendium

[Zikkar]

(01-03-2012 05:49 AM)Hulabaloon Wrote:  It seems to me that until Rail Shot is fixed it is not even worth using over Tracer Missile? (except when you are forced to move and can use a Power Surged TM and RS and therefore not lose dps time)

Unless the lower heat cost of RS vs TM means that it is still beneficial to use regardless of the fact that it does significantly less damage?

I dont think I have seen any Dev acknowledgement that RS even has a problem and tbh mine seems to hit for what it should.

[Jaggens]

(01-03-2012 07:18 AM)Trollicane Wrote:  Sidenote, specced pyro for a chance and I must say I really like it. You definately need the upper tier talents for it to be good tho, also you really need Muzzle Fluting, 25 v 16 heat Power Shots makes a difference. I mostly PvP and I really like the spec there, but it also seems like a very solid PvE choice. Without dummies and logs won't know for sure ofcourse.

Don't want to go for pyro until Power Shot (main skill of rotation) is fixed. As of right now it takes 1.5 to cast PS, then around 0.25-0.5 for animation of shot to finish so you can use another ability. Not that much of an issue for pvp maybe, but will severly hurt early pve progression in a long term.

As of RS calculations it may be worth a try to shoot fully buffed rail shot on target with -20% armor from another mercenary/another class with armor reduction debuff (if ability is not exclusive to Arsenal Mercenary and republic version), but only conclusion about exact issue will be if RS do get bonus damage. Otherwise it may be either a bug, or intended feature to TM amplify damage of others in party and use biggest arpen source available to character (so it's HVGC 35%, TM 20% ignored).

[Trollicane]

To be honest I don't see the PS delay... Chaining it, my castbar is already moving when the projectiles are in flight. As for doing PS>Rail, Rail seems to be slightly delayed anyway, theres the little spinup, even when using instant Rail procs.

[Xyrm]

(01-03-2012 05:49 AM)Hulabaloon Wrote:  Unless the lower heat cost of RS vs TM means that it is still beneficial to use regardless of the fact that it does significantly less damage?

That's exactly what it means, but the damage isn't significantly lower. Maybe at lower gear levels in a non-raid scenario it does, but when raiding mine Rail shot hits for only 1-200 damage less than Tracer Missile (my TM hits for ~1700, RS for high 1500's), while costing half as much heat (I actually have the 4pc bonus, so it costs 0 heat for me). Since we are heat constrained it's always worth it even without the 4pc bonus.

Also, for those unaware, the PvE 2pc bonus gives 15% more crit on Tracer Missile/Power Shot, which is AMAZING when coupled with Terminal Velocity

Terminal Velocity
Bounty Hunter (Mercenary)

Activation time: Instant

While High Velocity Gas Cylinder is active, critical hits with missiles and Unload have a [50/100]% chance to vent 8 heat. This effect cannot occur more than once every 3 seconds.

.

[Tato23]

Ok so, looking at the PVE set pieces, is it just me? Or are they throwing a ton of Power onto the set pieces. Shouldn't our primary stat to stack would be crit than surge THEN power?

Would this warrant changes of the mods/enhancement slots into the ones maybe from Ilum to stack crit better? Or maybe the higher up mods and enhancemnents?

What is it you guys are doing? I know some people are taking the mods out of the pvp gear and putting it in their pve gear, is that mostly what i should be doing when i get duplicate pvp gear?

Also Xyrm what server are you on? Whats your character? If you dont mind me coming and talking to you 1on1 just to make sure im on the right track

[Chamillion]

Once you get more geared, you'll notice that you've hit the mark with crit/surge decay and you'll be glad to have all that power.

The 2 piece is completely ridic, and the 4 piece is pretty nice as well, making rail shot free. It prob should be swapped as the 2 piece is superior to the 4 but our bonuses are really nice either way. You can see the increase in damage very plainly from both.

[Jaggens]

(01-04-2012 05:25 PM)Tato23 Wrote:  Ok so, looking at the PVE set pieces, is it just me? Or are they throwing a ton of Power onto the set pieces. Shouldn't our primary stat to stack would be crit than surge THEN power?

It may be or maybe it isn't. As in pretty much same game you should be already aware of at some point (actually - every time you increase stat) getting more and more rating will decrease it's value against others (surge, power and accuracy). As of right now 2 pieces of set gives +15% crit on main rotational ability, so (just guess by some previous experience, not accurate without testing) 30% base crit chance or little less should be enough. Keep in mind that unlike critical rating or accuracy (or surge, not aware of that stat scaling) power do not decay ever no matter how much you get.

[Gorlough]

Power has a modifier of PowerBonusDMG=Power*0.23.
It's linear to get more bonus dmg out of this stat. But the Arsenal tree is built around crits, the more the better. As the curve for crit rating starts to flatten around 900ish and you're only able to put about 800 of crit rating on your gear, I'd clearly say, that you should better stack crit rating over power.
The other option would to swap power and surge. But this also is no option in my opinion, as the curve for surge flattens around a 600ish value and you can possibly get around 500 surge on your gear (without letting your accuracy below 100%).
So I'd advise to take accuracy as much as needed to reach 100%, crit and surge as much as you can possibly get.
Disregard power - it's no good for us.
The numbers above are calculated with the best mods avail at torhead (the 25ers Mastercraft), so the numbers are likely to even be somewhat lower in reality.

Theoretical numbers you can get (without extra skills) are: ~1800 Aim, ~800 CritRating, ~500 Surge and ~325 Accuracy
This translates to the following: ~38% CritChance (Aim ~12%, Critrating ~21%, 5% Base), ~100% Accuracy, ~94% CritModifier

PS: When I'm talking about flattening curves, I refer to an slope of less than 1 on a 10% to 500 points scale.

[Xyrm]

(01-04-2012 08:15 PM)Jaggens Wrote:  It may be or maybe it isn't. As in pretty much same game you should be already aware of at some point (actually - every time you increase stat) getting more and more rating will decrease it's value against others (surge, power and accuracy). As of right now 2 pieces of set gives +15% crit on main rotational ability, so (just guess by some previous experience, not accurate without testing) 30% base crit chance or little less should be enough. Keep in mind that unlike critical rating or accuracy (or surge, not aware of that stat scaling) power do not decay ever no matter how much you get.

Just keep in mind that it is also possible Bioware is intentionally giving us stats that aren't ideal so future tiers seem more appealing. Blizzard did the same thing in WoW, where the first tier or two of an expanion would have unideal stats, but the last tier would be "perfect". It's also possible they know something we don't about the class; keep in mind we don't have any hard theory tools to prove values, we are simply making guesses.

I WILL say you get far too much accuracy, in my opinion, with the main tier pieces. If you get the FULL set (including belts/wrist/earpiece/implants), then it seems to balance out. I'm starting to plug my last few non-columi holes, and my accuracy is nicely lowering back towards 100%. I'll also recommend when it comes to non-tier pieces (specifically, the ones that don't give set bonuses) don't be afraid to pick something that isn't "Eliminator". For example, the Rakata implants from the daily commendations vendor has a Combat Medic earpiece with Aim, Crit, and Surge, as opposed to the Eliminator which has Power and Surge.

(01-04-2012 10:52 PM)Gorlough Wrote:  Disregard power - it's no good for us.

I'm sorry, but this is wrong. While it's not as ideal as crit (which not only increases damage but alters the rotation in a positive way), it still increases the damage of EVERY ability we have. Using this stim, I see a NOTICEABLE damage difference, and most of the damage you get from it is actually from the +Power, not the Aim (but the Aim also provides crit). While surge makes you feel incredibly powerful (because you get massive numbers), I still question how good it is compared to power, which increases the damage of EVERYTHING. To be fair, our 2pc bonus does inflate the Surge, so this tier it may be superior.

And even if power is actually inferior to Surge, the margin will be fairly small, I think. As such, since the Mods from Columi gear have a level of 56, I'd bet that it's better to keep a power mod that is level 56 rather than switch it for say the level 50 versions you can get from dailies that may have more ideal stats.

(01-04-2012 10:52 PM)Gorlough Wrote:  The numbers above are calculated with the best mods avail at torhead (the 25ers Mastercraft), so the numbers are likely to even be somewhat lower in reality.

Theoretical numbers you can get (without extra skills) are: ~1800 Aim, ~800 CritRating, ~500 Surge and ~325 Accuracy
This translates to the following: ~38% CritChance (Aim ~12%, Critrating ~21%, 5% Base), ~100% Accuracy, ~94% CritModifier

PS: When I'm talking about flattening curves, I refer to an slope of less than 1 on a 10% to 500 points scale.

Good work here. Though even as a Cybertech, I can't seem to find a way to get anything higher than level 23 (and those are from the daily commendation vendors, I can only craft 22).

[BillyPilgrim]

(01-04-2012 10:52 PM)Gorlough Wrote:  Power has a modifier of PowerBonusDMG=Power*0.23.
It's linear to get more bonus dmg out of this stat. But the Arsenal tree is built around crits, the more the better.

I for sure see how crit works quite well, what I'm curious about is a couple things, First, the Merc DPS tier sets have Acc and Power, not crit or surge, I'm not really looking forward to changing all the mods out with ones from my PvP gear just to test what is better, not without any kind of combat log / damage meter.

An interesting point I would like to bring up is the talents we use that make crit so good (well, i mean they aren't the only thing but it seems to me what makes it exceptional) Terminal Velocity and Target Tracking. Target Tracking
Increases the critical bonus damage of Unload and Heatseeker Missiles by [15 / 30]%. And Terminal Velocity - While High Velocity Gas Cylinder is active, critical hits with missiles and Unload have a [50 / 100]% chance to vent 8 heat. This effect cannot occur more than once every 3 seconds. I wish the server weren't down so I could see exactly what I have for stats right now but I can't so this will be a little rough. Wouldn't it seem that having crit more than every 3 sec, though not BAD by any means would be of lower value, not making crit bad, but it seems to me that it slightly devalues crit, I just wish I could see where this happened in numbers, I would guess it's close to 50% (With 2pc merc this is very easy for TM to hit in an Ops group) Just curious, I'm not sure how that would work out. I'm still trying to figure out what's best and I can't tell, I just seem to pull agro so I guess whatever seems to work. I got 4pc last night and ran a heroic, I will say with all the +Power I noticed a pretty big difference in regular hits and such, but I can't really tell if it's better than if all the mods had been crit/surge, Meh, what I wouldn't give for a true damage meter lol.

Edit: Forgot to add about Target Tracking, Being that these aren't our main abilities, they more "Finishing Moves" the 30% DMG boost to crit isn't as useful, and +power helps them and everything else.