Bounty Hunter PVP

[Aiden]

At 50 i have played all three trees, and the fundamental issue i find with pryo tree is as a merc all your "main" abilities are basically channeled. So regardless your not going to be as mobile as a PT who specs pryo because many of the PT abilities are instant cast witha 1.5 second cooldown.

Currently in the Pyro tree mercs focus on Power shot, Unload, Incend Missile & rail shot. The key is to get rail shot to proc often. The major flaw of this is that your frontloaded damage is significantly less then a 31 point TM/HS merc. The lack of frontloaded damage when facing teams who have good healing pretty much eliminates the viability of a pryo merc, because you cant burst through the healing where as the TM spam merc can. On top of that your still not very mobile because power shot is 1.5 channel & unload is 3 seconds channeled.

Additionally, the bonuses for both heatseeker & tracer missile are to significant while the bonuses for the pyro abilities are basically minimal in comparision imo.

last but not least TM/HS are based on power/tech power, which is an easy stat to boost, and i am not positive but i think power shot is based on ranged damage. Currently in full tier 1 except the chest my tech bonuses are higher then the ranged bonuses.

PS: i am also curious if anyone has done any testing to see at what point the focus should shift to boosting crit/surge.Currently in pvp gear crit & surge are lower then i would like, around 29% & 77%. This is mostly due to the pvp stat replacing or reducing other stats.

[damoven]

I've been noodling around with pvp and trying to come up with an alpha strike for my merc BH. I'm running a PVE build with the first few points in healing, and I'm finding that I am actually viable if not optimal in PVP. I can nuke down enemies pretty fast.

What I am doing is working on a sequence of moves that will deliver the most damage in the fastest possible time (for example to nail the ball carrier in huttball). Before applying this strike I would have aimed to get at least a few tracer missiles onto the target.

My first thought was to hit with paralyze, then thermal overload, heat seeker, railshot, explosive shot, unload... That should deliver a good dose of damage, but I haven't run the numbers compared against heat buildup yet. Does anyone have a good alpha strike rotation?

[Daderic]

In re: Merc pyrotech,

It would appear to me this build excels in 1v1 and open world pvp. Against decent melee classes you will be unable to get your three stacks from tracer missile without lots of interrupts. By increasing the mobility and (minorly) dot capability at the cost of burst you make yourself better at outlasting.

Outlasting opponents as per the 'solo tank in pvp' strat is actually very useful for mercs. Front load what you can, apply dots, and then kite. When you run out of kiting options, self heal. You don't have the staying power of a full heal spec, but should have enough to give yourself some time for short kiting cool down, i.e. knock back to return.

However, in organized or group play you fall short. The merc should be, in a perfect world, on the sidelines healing or raining down extreme death. If you are with a group and unable to burst down key, selected high value targets, you lose your forte. Think of the sniper who finds the most innocuous position possible to just cause steady high dps. You should do similar but find clumped up healers and aoe them. This forces them to blow cool downs or let others die.

In summary, you excel as pyro build in outlasting or winning by attrition. This is very viable for solo especially against melees counting on you to face roll tracer spam. On the other hand your group role leaves something to be desired.

In the interest of full disclosure this is from the viewpoint of a jugg/PT, I do not have a merc above 20.

[bluekieran]

This is the build I'm using for Powertech PvP, with mostly Supercommando PvP gear: http://r2-db.com/skill-tree/calculator/9...0c00000000

Was really unsure about the last few points here and there; I could have grabbed more tanky stuff as I can't be bothered respeccing for the few HM FPs I do (as my guildies mostly haven't levelled up yet). I'm a little guilty of spamming flame blast when I don't have time to check whether RP or RS are available, hence the point in prot. burn enhancers. Advanced tools is because I seriously <3 grapple, especially in Huttball.

Comments?

[Gunz]

(01-09-2012 05:25 PM)damoven Wrote:  My first thought was to hit with paralyze, then thermal overload, heat seeker, railshot, explosive shot, unload... That should deliver a good dose of damage, but I haven't run the numbers compared against heat buildup yet. Does anyone have a good alpha strike rotation?

1. Try to never open with stun. Save it for when you really need it. A good example is to stun a Sorc/Cons the second they pop Sprint.
2. Use Thermal Overload on Unload if possible because of Terminal Velocity (heat reduction on unload/missile crits). Unload hits multiple times.

Alpha Strikes
1. Explosive Dart, Tracer, HS, RS
- Dart will blow up about the same time Tracer/HS hit.

2. Tracer, Power Surge, Tracer,.....
- Power Surge is incredibly powerful for getting around interrupts as well quickly establishing the Tracer buffs/debuffs.

3. Stun, Death from Above
- Ignoring my own advice, but it is pretty fun to do.


For huttball learn to use DoA above you, and on LoS objects people will use to hide from you.

[Pyros]

I've been seeing a lot of people who seem to use an hybrid build for mercs(haven't seen commandos use it yet but I don't pay as much attention to my own team). They run around with Kolto Cylinder, apparently have up to 21 in healing for Kolto Shell and up to 11 in DPS for tracer missile.

I'm wondering if someone played that, and could tell me if there's really any noticeable difference vs just running 31healing and getting the reduced energy cost on power shot and spam that instead. I mean obviously less dmg, but you have emergency scan, the bigger heals and so on. I guess they might be 30healing 11dps for just tracer missile, but that seems like a poor trade-off when power shot crits for 3k anyway and has a way less threatening animation(people are less likely to know what kind of dmg you output when you're doing a standard looking attack than tracer missile which everyone recognizes instantly).

[Milk]

(01-12-2012 11:20 PM)bluekieran Wrote:  This is the build I'm using for Powertech PvP, with mostly Supercommando PvP gear: http://r2-db.com/skill-tree/calculator/9...0c00000000

Was really unsure about the last few points here and there; I could have grabbed more tanky stuff as I can't be bothered respeccing for the few HM FPs I do (as my guildies mostly haven't levelled up yet). I'm a little guilty of spamming flame blast when I don't have time to check whether RP or RS are available, hence the point in prot. burn enhancers. Advanced tools is because I seriously <3 grapple, especially in Huttball.

Comments?

A thought. I would remove 2 points from power armor, put one into prototype cylinders, and the other into Neural Overload. The snare is important and extremely valuable, keeping targets snared for ~11 seconds (2 seconds following final shock tick) after every rocket punch has saved me so many times while racing to the health pack/speed boost/endzone/cap point.

[Toasty]

as a bounty hunter Powertech i tried out a pretty hilarious build which basically revolves around spamming rocket punch and rail shot and worked out incredibly well.

the build is 23/0/18 and you use combustible gas cylinder. since torhead is down today i have to link from somewhere else so...
http://db.darthhater.com/skill_calc/boun...fe2f5e2f2e

basically you run with a shield generator and spam rocket punch and rail shot on anything and everything while both come off cd nearly instantly. grapple/charge key targets for objectives

[choky]

(01-19-2012 06:31 PM)Toasty Wrote:  as a bounty hunter Powertech i tried out a pretty hilarious build which basically revolves around spamming rocket punch and rail shot and worked out incredibly well.

the build is 23/0/18 and you use combustible gas cylinder. since torhead is down today i have to link from somewhere else so...
http://db.darthhater.com/skill_calc/boun...fe2f5e2f2e

basically you run with a shield generator and spam rocket punch and rail shot on anything and everything while both come off cd nearly instantly. grapple/charge key targets for objectives

I'm using a similar build in pvp right now, but I'm rolling with the Ion cylinder which give you more survivability, and the ability to shield someone which is quite important in some cases.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#301hRG...MZbIbrzh.1

Good dps, great mobilty, decent survivablity and still a great assist with your shield, taunts and CC's.

[Toasty]

(01-20-2012 04:14 AM)choky Wrote:  I'm using a similar build in pvp right now, but I'm rolling with the Ion cylinder which give you more survivability, and the ability to shield someone which is quite important in some cases.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#301hRG...MZbIbrzh.1

Good dps, great mobilty, decent survivablity and still a great assist with your shield, taunts and CC's.

i think missing out on the crit damage bonus for rocket punch/flame sweep hampers burst quite a bit.

if ion cylinder is the way to go, which i am inclined to agree for guarding purposes, maybe something like this?

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#301hRG...ZZbIbbdh.1

the extra shock damage / duration from Supercharged Ion Gas hardly seems worth it for the type of build we are going for. the slow from Neural Overload is key. i think the points in tier 3 can be put into either talent. oil slick hardly seems worth it. lots of stealth detection, stealth scan every 15 seconds with a built in snare. and big numbers on rocketpunch/railshot/flamesweep

thinking about it again Shield Vents is clearly more synergistic with Flame Shield and is the superior t3 talent for this build