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

[Fado]

(02-14-2012 11:04 PM)bural Wrote:  I've been meaning to model 2) for a while. It appears it's not going to get fixed anytime soon. Question: have you had any luck getting consistently free Unloads after TSO+DfA?

First, thanks for your work on the sheet Bural. And no, no luck getting Unload to work. For some reason it seems there is a slight delay on UI when starting a channeled hability. I could never use DPA+Unload having both free under TSO. Honestly i didnt test it to be sure, since its easier to line TSO+DFA CD with HSM missiles.

(02-14-2012 11:04 PM)bural Wrote:  I would imagine (improved) Vent Heat used at 56 followed by a string of abilities not including Rapid Shots would be optimal. "Occasional" Rapid Shots are definitely best used when weaved in one at the time between other abilities. If we had a damage meter I'm a firm believer we'd see the best dps'ers with a far higher sum of Tracer Missiles and Rapid Shots with a rate about 1 Rapid Shot for every 2 Tracer Missiles. If you use more than that, you have been building heat up consistently, robbing yourself of Tracer Missiles+Barrage procs+Target Locks in the long run.

I wasnt clear, on my numbering i didnt actually meant a rotation for point 4. After using a vent heat best to use is usually HSM/unload since if you use a RS or a tracer you might be sitting at zero already and losing heat dissipation. Im standing at a lower rate than 2/1 for rapid shots. I would say at most 3/1 forced by heat and then mobility related.

There is something that also influences staying low on heat that is andrennal usage. running with Rakkata crit one so actually it helps on maintaining the heat down when on about 20. All helps on making those nice CDs getting throught

[Dastey]

So regarding the new surge rating.
I got a question regarding the relics.

Here is a case scenario:
- 35% crit
- 73,41% surge
- 7658 - 9948 damage

Crit/Surge relic:
- 40,31% crit
- 78,30% surge
- 7658 - 9948 damage

Power relic:
- 35% crit
- 73,41% surge
- 8516 - 10806 damage

So my question is. Which trinket would be the favorable in this scenario?
5% crit is nice, 5% surge is not a lot though. 860 extra bonus damage also seems like a lot. But any of you smart guys that is clever enough to calculate what would be the best?

[Toxic]

I'm no math whiz but I've been using the power relic over the crit/surge since the old soft cap values. Since the change to surge, I think it is more valuable to use the power relic since its 100% up time whether you crit or not.

The DR from surge now is huge. It appears that stacking past 250 is not worth it. The problem is that most DPS is already soft capped on accuracy (I'm actually trying to shave some accuracy off since my tech is 111%) so we're limited on what mods to get. I'd like to stack power but the only choice we have is power/surge and power/accuracy. I'm guessing that the mods of choice will still be power/surge since there are no power/crit mods and we're not getting anything from continuing to stack accuracy. Unless the power/accuracy mods have more power on them then the power/surge mods.

[Freehugs]

Well, having too much accuracy at least frees up some skill points for more Alacrity.

[Aldare]

A bit offtopic since this is the Arsenal thread, but Pyro doesn't have one yet so here goes.
Has anyone tried modelling Merc Pyro in a spreadsheet to get some comparative numbers? The OP assumes Pyro is weaker than Arsenal but doesn't really provide any math to support that claim. Personally I find the Pyro playstyle much more enjoyable (love the mobility), and if the specs are extremely close to each other damagewise I'm thinking Pyro might even pull ahead of Arsenal on movement intensive fights.

[Rakunvar]

Gwarrr

Quote:I want to take a brief section to talk about the Pyrotech tree. It used to be a "PvP" tree, but they have made many strides in making Pyrotech more universally applicable. It's not different enough to require a brand new Compendium, so it gets this tiny section instead. We also don't know if it's actually comparable to Arsenal DPS, which is why it's relegated here until Pyrotech proves itself...but it may be promising.

Overall, I am of the opinion that Pyrotech DPS is still weaker that Arsenal DPS because of the sheer apen floating around in the Arsenal tree, hence it's a small section of a thread as opposed to its own thread. It is an alternative method of DPS though, so I wouldn't say it's "unusable," it's just "suboptimal," in a sense. Once we have more numbers we can put it to rest, but at the worst I wanted to raise the subject matter.

Just to be clear, he made sure to specify it is possible it could hold some weight as well as saying it was his opinion that it was weaker. Just in case there was a misunderstanding of it..

Also, I do believe like Bural may be getting to that eventually as well as a few others but I'm not entirely sure. Most of them are tied up with trying to make theirs work for the main specs most people use ie. tank/healing/arsenal currently. Seeing as there's no log and such it makes it way harder for them to do everything accurately and without bugs.

I do as well think that it could pull ahead in some cases for sure. Especially movement related and once you reach a decent gear level. Although, I don't think it would in a 8-16 man environment if there was around 3 BH arsenal there. Only reason I say that is due to the weird effect of Heat-seekers using EVERYONE'S armor debuff stacks and adding 5% dmg per debuff. I've personally had 10k hits with around 4-5ish BH in raid at the time. I'm also sure having that many armor debuffs probably helps everyone else move up enough on the dps to outweigh it to possibly.

I would be most intrigued though to see the numbers in a sheet myself though. Also, would be awesome if you started to work on that.

---

(02-15-2012 03:50 AM)Toxic Wrote:  I'm no math whiz but I've been using the power relic over the crit/surge since the old soft cap values. Since the change to surge, I think it is more valuable to use the power relic since its 100% up time whether you crit or not.

The DR from surge now is huge. It appears that stacking past 250 is not worth it. The problem is that most DPS is already soft capped on accuracy (I'm actually trying to shave some accuracy off since my tech is 111%) so we're limited on what mods to get. I'd like to stack power but the only choice we have is power/surge and power/accuracy. I'm guessing that the mods of choice will still be power/surge since there are no power/crit mods and we're not getting anything from continuing to stack accuracy. Unless the power/accuracy mods have more power on them then the power/surge mods.

Yep pretty much same issue for alot of us. Although, I do think I found a method to deal with it alittle easier till they indeed add enhancement or something..I had to find a crafter for it but they def. seem to work out to be much better then just adding more surge/crit or pwr/surge. (Yes I know theres shield rating on them but its the best we've got atm..)

I also see a raid lvl 50 version but I'm not sure if they actually exist yet. Would love to confirm that though, I will be watching all of our nightmare/HM drops this week for them.

Advanced Reflective Enhancement 22
+18 Endurance
+39 Shield Rating
+27 Power
+27 Critical Rating

This is the raid version.
Advanced Reflective Enhancement 25
+24 Endurance
+51 Shield Rating
+33 Power
+33 Critical Rating

[Aldare]

(02-15-2012 10:26 PM)Rakunvar Wrote:  Just to be clear, he made sure to specify it is possible it could hold some weight as well as saying it was his opinion that it was weaker. Just in case there was a misunderstanding of it..

Oh absolutely, my post may have come across the wrong way, apologies.

I'm really just hoping to get the ball rolling with regards to Pyro, as it seems like it's been largely ignored based on the assumption that it is worse than Arsenal, when we in fact do not know this with absolute certainty.

Sadly I lack the skills to make these spreadsheets myself or I'd be happy to get started on one.

[Toxic]

(02-15-2012 10:26 PM)Rakunvar Wrote:  Yep pretty much same issue for alot of us. Although, I do think I found a method to deal with it alittle easier till they indeed add enhancement or something..I had to find a crafter for it but they def. seem to work out to be much better then just adding more surge/crit or pwr/surge. (Yes I know theres shield rating on them but its the best we've got atm..)

I also see a raid lvl 50 version but I'm not sure if they actually exist yet. Would love to confirm that though, I will be watching all of our nightmare/HM drops this week for them.

Advanced Reflective Enhancement 22
+18 Endurance
+39 Shield Rating
+27 Power
+27 Critical Rating

This is the raid version.
Advanced Reflective Enhancement 25
+24 Endurance
+51 Shield Rating
+33 Power
+33 Critical Rating

While those look like good alternatives to the power/surge, I think its basically the same. Although it might be slightly better to stack crit since the DR is not as bad as the new surge. Now if defense was swapped out for that shield rating, I might be inclined to gear that way. Less damage in with the all around hit to surge would help benefit the negative remarks healers are going to get from the surge nerf.

Personally, itemization in this game is crap. No idea why BW decided to put ACC on every piece of PVE gear unless the number crunchers are wrong on the 108% ACC but I doubt they are. I have yet to see any attack miss or deflect. If you wanted to min/max PVE stats, every merc would be running 2 piece Rakata Eliminator (chest/boots) and 3 piece Rakata Combat Tech and then waiting for the content patch to drop to strip out the armor mods from the combat tech to place into Eliminator pieces for the 4 piece bonus - which means you need comms/tokens for 2 pants, 2 gloves, 2 helms. I think when that content patch comes to strip out the base mods from Tiered gear, I'll be leveling Armormech and rolling around in Orange gear with augments slots and just strip all the PVE gear mods to place in the orange gear.

[GWARRR]

RE: Pyrotech section

I have been meaning to edit the Pyrotech section quite a bit. Its overall DPS is about equivalent to Arsenal's, a touch higher in ideal circumstances sans gear bonuses (I think Hugs mapped it out awhile back). Part of this is due to the presence of DoTs, whose elemental damage ignores armor. However, I'm still of the opinion that in a raid situation, you take an Arsenal DPS every time since Tracer stacks are global, which help everyone one, especially with the weird HSM bit going on that makes them hit like trains. Now I will certainly say that if you're pugging PvP, take Pyro since it's more mobile (Pyro will do much much better in Huttball, that's for certain). And it's also a playstyle thing, I would say. I don't have a ton of experience with Pyro (I can never get used to the heat management and rotation), so if anyone does and wants to chip in, please do so. It will certainly help me write the section on Pyro.

The only other thing I would say is that once you get the 2pc PvE bonus, Arsenal DPS goes through the roof, and may outstrip Pyrotech at that point with all the crits flying around. But that would require a sim or sheet of some sort, and I'm ill-equipped for that...

[bural]

Quick sneakpeak at the trinket calculations from next version of the arsenal sheet:

Numbers are normalized to Power, Augment slots filled with Reflex 25.