Improving Mercenaries

So I've been playing Mercs alot lately (and have also seen people complain about them) and decided to really compare the set to others. Now this set seems to look cool and conceptually bountiful at first glance, but when you delve deeper into the set you see the many problems it has.

First off, let's take a look at the Medic. Ah, the Medic! The Leeroy Jenkins of the group. The only pet with a heavy KB AoE in its Tier. Sounds promising, right? Wrong! This little bugger will get his head chopped off quickly if he fires off his aggro grenade in just the right spot. So why is one of the more supportive pets in your set so aggro heavy? Good question. I think every Tier 1 Soldier should be given a grenade, not just the medic. I also think the medic's Med Pack should be reduced from 20 seconds to 15 seconds, and the heal increased by 30 points. Reasonable, right?

On to the Spec Ops. Oh I do love these guys! I was excited the first time I got the second upgrade only to be disappointed by two things! One: The Recharge on the Spec Ops mitigation powers such as Flash Bang and Tear Gas are highly unreasonable. Two: They never seem to even fire off Tear Gas in the first place.

Now I've never seen anyone say anything about Tear Gas being bugged (and it might not be, but I haven't seen them use anything that looks similar to it), yet it appears to be bugged for the Spec Ops. I would suggest they get Tear Gas working if its borken, lower the recharge rate on those powers (including Web Grenade) to about 30 seconds for Flash Bang and 45 seconds for Tear Gas. If Tear Gas has a very weak animation, then replace it with the SWAT animation. Also, add Stealth Strike to Spec Ops Sniper attacks when they are fully stealthed and undetected.

Now on to the Commando. This guy seems pretty solid to me, except he's got one good AoE on a 4min recharge. Come on! The Spec Ops have high recharging attacks as well, no need for the Commando's best AoE attack to get the slow moving train. I suggest lowering the Rocket's recharge time from 4mins to 16-20 seconds.

Now on to the problem with all the pets! They only have 2 resisted damage types, Smashing and Lethal. My suggesting here would be to give them and extra 7.5% resistance to all damage excluding psionics. I mean they're Mercs, right? Aside from the Medic and Spec Ops there's not a lot going for them unlike some other Mastermind Primaries. If giving them resistances to all is too much then at least increase their Smashing/Lethal resistance by an extra 10%.

If you have anything else to add to this list/have your own list/share in this opinion/feel the need to point out the errors in my suggested improvements feel free to do so.

Reduce the Commando's LRM Missle down to 50 seconds and his Full Auto to 45, reduce the recharge time on the Tear Gas, and widen all of the cones to 20 feet and I'd be a happy camper.

Some of the ideas I have:

1. Make Serum a good single buff with some +health, resist and decent damage buff. I hate god-mode on a pet that can't generate taunt. It's not like Commando can grab all the aggro anyway. 1000s recharge on 60s duration and endurance crash is pretty pathetic. I've taken this power twice and I always end up respecing it out later.

2. A simple good buff on Spec-Op is just to reduce the recharge on the two aoe control powers.

3. Spec-Ops also suffer from having no aoe damage. Maybe a good way to buff them is to add damage to the two aoe control powers. Any aoe damage is better than nothing!

4. If the dev doesn't want to reduce the two aoe control powers, then at least reduce web grenade to 15-20s or make Riflebutt -> Bean Bag!

Spec Ops have Tear Gas???

/dinged 50 on his Mercs/Poison yesterday


I didn't have any really big issues with Mercs, though I'll agree that the Medic is a bit of a doofus. And I wish they all were wearing some fire-resistant suits. Oh, and that Serum really isn't worth all that much. When I want to use it is in an EB fight; if I do use it it's on the Commando, and either he dies anyway or he becomes worthless halfway through the fight. So I usually skip it.

50 Mercs/FF

1. Medic already has Aid Other and Stimulant. Give him Aid Self so he can bandage his own boo-boos. Give him Resurrect and I'll kiss Castle on the lips.

2. SpecOps stealth is pointless. Give them a stealth strike ability from hidden. Remove the stealth -speed debuff so they don't straggle behind. That or remove the stealth altogether.

3. Serum *sigh* Do something, anything with this that puts it even close to the level of Gangwar.

I agree to above points already, I have all primairies in the high lvls (2 50s, rest end/mid 40s) and although i picked probably the worst secondairy (TA) even without any support from the secondairy they perform really worse then the others.

For the medic:
Make heal non-interuptable, just like robot and (selfheal) necro. Nothing is worse then seeing him nonstop interupted by pretty much anything that comes his way (wich is easy, he's a melee freak).
Also, a 'true' medic on the field plays a way more defensive roll, give him less attacks (stupid handgrenade) and let him focus on what he really is.. a medic.

Mez/control:
Pathetic. But already said, seals have waaaay too long recharge and apart from that u only have a buckshot and that grenade.

But my main issue:
Redraw and DoT's. All attacks (apart from 2 commando attacks) are fully dots. Even if a mob is a 1% health and 1 initiate an attack all the others will do so alike due to the time it cost for the mob to hit 0%. Redraw on every freaking defeated mob is plain annoying, and will give unneeded delay in attacks (again, it aint part of the animation). Added appearantly their were never fully converted into the 'normalised' attack sequences like AR blasters. They remain way longer rooted and 'idle' before they fire off their next attack.
I would like a clear check on the redraw (just fix them with the weapon) and give them some instant damage attacks, like many other gun-whielding mobs have.

Due the nature of their damage (apart from flametrower) everything being SL, their damage decreases as the game progresses due higher base SL resist from majority of mobs. Where this is highly compensated by ninja's due their demon and crit abilities, necro due dark dmg and thugs/robots due their great set of additional fire damage (and rage), they have no compensation whatsoever, apart from -resist of the secondaires. Serum is a plain joke to actualy use, their resist is too low compared to other sets specialy if u check the control-abilities. (although thugs have none, hitting softcap on these babies is not even that hard, same goes for bots).

Then, stealth of Seals. Whats the freaking use of it? Randomly going in/out and no bonus like the ninja's has (crit). Also believe they have a -slow penalty while being in stealth.

Finaly, why only a certain few sets (actualy thugs, necro and not sure /dark) accept recharge intensive pets? Some sets can slot all 4 uniques, while others plain cant.

My suggestions are as follows.

Absolutely shorten the recharge time on the Spec Ops special abilities like stuns and the tear gas.

Remove the AoE Grenade from the Medic and give it to the Spec Ops so they can get some AoE Make the medic buff ME before anyone else on the team (hate that fact he seems to ignore me and I pay him).

The Spec Ops stealth does nothing. Either give them some kind of Critical hit or Stealth Snipe or remove it totally.

Reduce the end cost for the Commando he burns through end fast. Also shorten the timer on his AoE attack as well.

Heh, I came on here just to start a thread about serum, but I support everything else that's been said in this thread as well. My first 50/namesake is a mercs/bubbler.

Serum is useless, as has been said. I have no idea why I would want to make a tank out of any of my pets, especially in the post bodyguard(i7?) world, where I make a MUCH better tank regardless.

Pointless stealth is a good point. Medic who seems to cycle between brawl and grenades also has always been stupid.

I'm not really sure what mercs have over any other set. They seem like thugs lite or something. AoE capabilities inferior to Thugs and Bots, ST inferior to um... everything, toughness inferior to Zombies, Bots, and Thugs (given enforcers. probably). I think mercs are supposed to have superior control, though I imagine the Lich probably outdoes them.

Give Übercharge to the Medic.

...

The rez idea is not a bad idea but that would require a big code change I would imagen because of how fast pets fade out.

50 Mercs/Traps

Like so many others here I have the same list of complaints.


Spec ops recharge times need to be shorter and replace Rifle But with beanbag. And ether give them a stealth strike with their snipe or replace it with slug or buckshot, preferably buckshot.

LRM on the Commando way to long of a recharge Also can he get that big *** Rocket launcher the 5th and the Council use? It would up his cool factor by about 20.

Medic I haven't seen him go running up to use brawl lately but his grenade should be given to one or both of your other T1 pets on a 30 sek recharge that causes KD and not KB if I want KB I have M30.

Serum needs to be completely redone and repurposed.

Wow...

I was just playing my mercs and looking through alot of thier powers a few mins ago, right before the server drop.

Then I decided to come here and ask why the hell is web grenade on a 30 second timer...

its like single target... and why is flash bang on a 2 minute timer... ?

what is the reason for the pets mitigation powers being so heavily penalized?

I have had no problems with my medic except that he gets interrupted by everything... all the time... like non stop... other than that hes great.

Havent gotten high enough for my commando or the second upgrade but so far the only slack I can see in the set is pulled in by the Spec Ops... They just arent hitting thier potential.

I know the 'cottage rule' means that you can't change what powers you have in a set, but I would FAR prefer a flash bang grenade instead of serum - especially as my mercs/pain has a far superior option (to serum) in pain bringer.

*sheds man tear* I'm glad to see more ppl playing mercs!

Yeah, you're right there. I was a bit trigger happy with my response, hence my edit after my brain had thought about it a bit!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger Quote: 16. Has Paragon Studios redefined "player" to require your mouse to subscribe separately from your keyboard? If your mouse has greater processing power than your gfx card, the answer is yes.

Dam the torpedoes! And that stupid rule! It needs to be completely redone from the ground up. There have been a number of threads on what to do with Serum. Some sugest totaly diffrent kind of power from what it is now but if were going to talk about it with that "Cotage rule" in effect then we need to keep somthing in mind and that is...

Q: What originally inspired the Devs to make Serum what it is?

A: Back in Vietnam, Desert Shield and Desert Storm and in many works of Science Fiction revolving around these events there is often a drug or cems given to the troops that was suppose to help them. Often not aproved for human use. Ether it was to contract the nerve gas/chemical weapons or as in comic books a "super solder serum" (Ala la Cpt America) but often with debilitating or lethal side effects.



It was along this idea that serum was designed the way it was a temporary boost with a crash the only thing that doesn't make thematic sense to me is its long recharge. Other than it may kill the soldier if it was used to many times in a short amount of time. If that's the case why can't I use it on a different soldier! Any way my point is that if you want to suggest a change in Serum you need to keep in mind what the point of the power was in the first place.


It is with this in mind that I suggest that Serum affect all my pets just like the upgrades do now. As well as its recharge be cut by 1/2 and that the crash only take 1/2 the pets End and stop End recovery for a short time.

I still think its unlikely they soon will get attention, its been like this since basicly the start of CoV. The only good things were the -recharge unaffected thingie, the increase AI stuff, errr.. well, that about. Also i cant remember _ever_ that devs mentioned mercs being 'behind' on the other sets, apart from some 'ya ya we look at it.. ok we have looked, kkthxbb'.

Normalisation never got totaly through to these, unlike the AR from blaster/corrupter.

Besides, GR gonna give demon summon, i rather pick that