Some buff ideas for mercenaries.

[PsychoThruster]

Look I'm still a noob at this game, never played live, and also suffer from altoholism so I don't have a good grasp on the mechanics, but I know mercs while being my favorite set are also the weakest set I've played.  

 

I know the community has tossed out a bunch of ideas but of the threads I've read I've never seen these smaller tweaks suggested. 

 

-Make every burst-like attack they have a cone with respectable width. Basically they have shit damage but that's fine if they are hitting everything on the screen. It's also thematically fitting what with them filling the floor with all that hot brass. MOAR DAKKA! 

 

-Give the medic the same range as regular soldiers. Give him a second medkit with the equip upgrade. Make stimulants aoe.

 

-Make flash bang on spec ops have larger aoe, I don't think I've ever seen it hit more than two targets. Reduce recharge time on web grenade by 30-50% 

 

-Remove serum and replace with "claymore mine" you target a soldier and they place a mine, works like trip mine, less damage perhaps or a longer recharge, haven't played enough to know if a direct copy is OP.

[Darmian]

Mercs might be "weak", but hell they're a lot of fun, especially if you're playing themed!  Just working on getting my "Mercenary" badge, or perhaps one of the Invention badges, anything from "Sniper" to "Lord of War" 🙂

 

 

[PsychoThruster]

Personally I love mercenaries for the hilarity of just constant mag dumping. Kudos to the original devs for the little touch of spawning shell casings, I love it! It does however become a wee bit disappointing when it takes approximately 1000 rounds of ammunition to down a single longbow mob 😟

 

However if all those attacks were cones I think my DAKKA DAKKA joy could be fully realized!

[StrikerFox]

I think the Mercs themselves could use some tweaking. Wider cones, AoE with larger radius, shortened cooldowns for some powers. Maybe a +15% damage buff across most of their attacks. Players in the past suggested Serum to be an AoE so all Merc pets can get the buff. Some wanted Serum to be changed to a pet, maybe into Gun Drones (Mainly to help cram in all the pet unique IOs)

 

I had an idea to turn Serum into a "Formation" power. Once picking Formation at level 18, it unlocks a set of military tactics with each providing a different benefit (Sort of like Staff Mastery or Swap Ammo). Fire Support (AoE +def to all positions), Guerilla Tactics (+stun/immob to pet attacks), Flanking Maneuver (+tohit/dam to pets), High Ground (-res debuff to pet attacks). I think it would be kind of unique setting different formations to different pets but I haven't put a lot of thought into it. There's probably a hundred different problems with it.

[PsychoThruster]

Yeah I read through a few old threads. I was trying to suggest something that doesn't require developing new mechanics and is mostly number edits, or works based on precedent established by existing powers. Like ninjas have that power that gives a henchmen blinding powder, I suspect you could use that same template to do the claymore suggestion. 

 

I'm personally not a fan of ammo swapping templates in that context because I generally prefer more active powers on primary sets and masterminds already have two upgrade powers that are essentially passive in nature but absolute requirements. I realize I may be in the minority here as I have read many mm players skip their attack powers, but I find them enjoyable. 

 

Straight damage buffs could work though I prefer it is accompanied by something more flavorful. 

 

The gun drone idea is neat but arguably doesn't fit the theme, more of a robots flavor imo. 

 

Thematically I like the idea of cones on all attacks and think it could be sufficient alone, but like I said I'm a noob at this. 

 

Hopefully we get something though, if nothing else I want serum changed. 

[Xandyr]

I think Swap Ammo would be cool.

[Coyote]

Mercs take a pretty long time to attack... 4+ seconds on Full Auto is okay when it's a Tier-9 attack with 90 second Recharge and does pretty good damage. Even then, it's not a great attack due to that animation time. The Mercs version has a 16 second recharge time... and 6+ seconds of animation time. That's just really, really bad. And with its cone width, it's practically a single-target attack, too.

 

Fix the animation times on these (and some of the Robots cones, too), and the set would be a lot better.

[Clave Dark 5]

A Merc MM was one of my first characters back on Live so I have a fondness for the set, but it does need love, yeah.  There was good thread some time agi in the Suggestions forums detailing how Mercs use outdated animations for their weapon attacks, then went into a few other tweaks that would really make the set sing.  Maybe I'm biased, but after reading that thread, were I a Dev, I would have started implementing it right then and there, they were all 100% reasonable and solid suggestions.

[PsychoThruster]

I'm sure other people more plugged into the community know better, but generally devs have a schedule and we likely will see some tweaks when they roll around to a "balance pass" or something.

[Clave Dark 5]

Yes, because I was not engaging in some kind of hyperbole but was aiming to insult the mods somehow.  😁

[CaptainLupis]

On 3/5/2021 at 10:31 PM, Coyote said:

Mercs take a pretty long time to attack... 4+ seconds on Full Auto is okay when it's a Tier-9 attack with 90 second Recharge and does pretty good damage. Even then, it's not a great attack due to that animation time. The Mercs version has a 16 second recharge time... and 6+ seconds of animation time. That's just really, really bad. And with its cone width, it's practically a single-target attack, too.

 

Fix the animation times on these (and some of the Robots cones, too), and the set would be a lot better.

That is just... insane. I knew it felt long, but I never actually checked and assumed it was about 4 seconds. For the damage it does that is just stupidly bad. No wonder I parked my mercs/time at 39 and rerolled it as something more fun.

 

That definitely needs fixed, even if it's technically not broken it's still broken.

[Coyote]

3 hours ago, CaptainLupis said:

That is just... insane. I knew it felt long, but I never actually checked and assumed it was about 4 seconds. For the damage it does that is just stupidly bad. No wonder I parked my mercs/time at 39 and rerolled it as something more fun.

 

That definitely needs fixed, even if it's technically not broken it's still broken.

 

Absolutely. Robots have the same duration on their Full Auto Laser, for comparable damage, and can't even slot -Def procs to help out the damage. And I think either the Assault Bot or the Commando, I forget which, might also have like a 6 second animation on their Flamethrower. Some of these ridiculous animation times really need a balance pass desperately. Bots at least are okay because they have some OTHER attacks that are great (Incendiary Swarm Missiles are broken in the other direction), but Mercs really have no exceptionally good attacks to balance out their exceptionally bad ones.

[tjknight]

Mercs are ok.. you can do just fine as a /Mercs MM. But they are so outclassed by the other MM sets it makes them look terrible (not just mediocre). For example, thugs do the 'elite soldier' thing much better than mercs. I agree with a lot of the suggestions though, fix the animations, buff the medic, and make serum AOE.  I also think their crowd control powers of the second tier pets could be looked at and buffed. 

[CaptainLupis]

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

 

Absolutely. Robots have the same duration on their Full Auto Laser, for comparable damage, and can't even slot -Def procs to help out the damage. And I think either the Assault Bot or the Commando, I forget which, might also have like a 6 second animation on their Flamethrower. Some of these ridiculous animation times really need a balance pass desperately. Bots at least are okay because they have some OTHER attacks that are great (Incendiary Swarm Missiles are broken in the other direction), but Mercs really have no exceptionally good attacks to balance out their exceptionally bad ones.

The ingame numbers (I'm assuming are right) are as follows: assault bot flamethrower is actually worse, it's 6.3 second activation with a 10 second recharge! Full auto laser for the drones is 6.33s with an 11.70s recharge (plus a whopping 15 degree arc).

 

Commando flame thrower is 3.5s activation with a 20s recharge.

 

Those bot numbers are bad as well. No wonder getting them to heel when commanded is a pain when they are stuck in those animations so long.

 

Edit:  It's weird to think if they just dropped the animation time to 3.5s and left everything else the same, even if the full damage was still taking the 6.3s, that could still be a significant boost to their overall damage and survivability.

Edited March 8, 2021 by CaptainLupis

[StrikerFox]

This was posted in the latest Beta patch notes:

 

 

Can read about it here:

 

 

[Coyote]

2 hours ago, StrikerFox said:

This was posted in the latest Beta patch notes:

 

 

Can read about it here:

 

 

This deserves a 12 Full Auto salute.

I only hope that the same fix is going in for the Robots, though, as they also have a Full Auto Laser that also has a ridonkulous 6.3 second animation time. And the AssBot's Flamethrower is also at 6+ seconds animation time.

[TheSpiritFox]

On 3/3/2021 at 9:05 PM, StrikerFox said:

I think the Mercs themselves could use some tweaking. Wider cones, AoE with larger radius, shortened cooldowns for some powers. Maybe a +15% damage buff across most of their attacks. Players in the past suggested Serum to be an AoE so all Merc pets can get the buff. Some wanted Serum to be changed to a pet, maybe into Gun Drones (Mainly to help cram in all the pet unique IOs)

 

I had an idea to turn Serum into a "Formation" power. Once picking Formation at level 18, it unlocks a set of military tactics with each providing a different benefit (Sort of like Staff Mastery or Swap Ammo). Fire Support (AoE +def to all positions), Guerilla Tactics (+stun/immob to pet attacks), Flanking Maneuver (+tohit/dam to pets), High Ground (-res debuff to pet attacks). I think it would be kind of unique setting different formations to different pets but I haven't put a lot of thought into it. There's probably a hundred different problems with it.

 

Agree.  Bigger aoes, more damage, make the commando's full auto have a 60 second cooldown and make the AI try to use it every time it's up, remove the medic from the T1 pets and replace serum with a medic summon giving you 8 permanent pets and a mule power if needed, 

 

Though honestly I really like your formations idea. Make it macroable so you can like hit a button and set all your pets to individual stances or whatever and pick who's doing what and it would be awesome. Maybe even give like, the more pets in a formation the stronger the buff they all get. You can "franken buff" your pets each with their own buff and they all get different benefits, or you can put them all in one formation and the buff they all get is decently stronger. 

 

That sounds like exactly the kinda pet management I signed up with this AT to have and would give me at least tens of hours of amusement figuring out ideal merc setups and macros. 

 

But seriously if nothing else buff their defense, resistance, and damage and do ANYTHING else with serum besides a goddamn crash buff. 

[TheSpiritFox]

6 hours ago, StrikerFox said:

This was posted in the latest Beta patch notes:

 

 

Can read about it here:

 

 

=0 I did not see this one in the patch notes damn that's a nice buff. 

[Elthenar]

Mercs need a massive overhaul. You could literally double the damage of every single power and they would go from worst damage to 2nd worst. That is not hyperbole. One assault bot can out damage the entire merc set.

[DrBasics]

This is the thing I never understood about Mercs power set. They are supposed to be the "military option", or as close to para-military as you can get. However, it is the Thugs power set that gets the leadership and rank structure bonus from the lieutenants and stuff. Never made sense to me.

[Elthenar]

On 3/17/2021 at 3:26 PM, DrBasics said:

This is the thing I never understood about Mercs power set. They are supposed to be the "military option", or as close to para-military as you can get. However, it is the Thugs power set that gets the leadership and rank structure bonus from the lieutenants and stuff. Never made sense to me.

 

It's because Mercs were the first set made for Master Minds. That's a big reason why it is so sub-par.  It's why their design is so bad, it's literally the first draft for the whole damned AT. Thugs were not released until after COV came out. It's a much better designed set. In fact, That's consistently true across the board with MM's. The weakest sets are all the old ones. Of the original sets, only Bots are good.

[kelika2]

I remember awhile back one of the devs said they are looking at enemy resistances across the board.  assuming lethal damage gets less resisted that might be enough of a bump.

[Elthenar]

7 hours ago, kelika2 said:

I remember awhile back one of the devs said they are looking at enemy resistances across the board.  assuming lethal damage gets less resisted that might be enough of a bump.

 

No. Not even close. Disregarding a targets resistance, merc damage is sad. You could literally double the damage of every merc power and they would still be bottom 2 in damage.

[Mack008]

One simple idea... Kill the REDRAW!

 

Seriously, I wonder how much Soldiers' DPS is affected by redrawing their weapon during a fight.

[PsychoThruster]

That's a good point