How to improve Mercs?

[WumpusRat]

On 9/29/2019 at 2:06 PM, StrikerFox said:

Soul Extraction:

+Toggle power, with minimal Drain (might change)
+Fires off every 10 seconds with an AoE than Summons a Zombie per dead foe nearby, no more targeting required, There is no upper limit to how many you can have, but they only last ~25 seconds

This seems absurdly powerful to me, to be honest. Like, far too powerful. 

[StrikerFox]

23 hours ago, WumpusRat said:

This seems absurdly powerful to me, to be honest. Like, far too powerful. 

Not sure, possibly. It depends how strong they make the Soul Extracted zombies, and what power(s) they have. Also the radius of the AoE summon. 

 

I'll probably never get a chance to test it, barely have any time to log onto the HC servers nowadays. Hopefully someone on CoXG makes a video on it.

[BGSacho]

Brawl is the highest DPA attack for *all* mercs, by a very wide margin(x3 for Spec Ops/Soldiers, x2 for Commando). It's no wonder the AI tries to sneak it in. Improving the garbage damage on their other attacks will probably make them more reluctant to use brawl. As a comparison, punks and enforcers rarely use brawl, which is only roughly 1.5 times better than their other attacks.

Edited October 2, 2019 by BGSacho

[WumpusRat]

1 hour ago, StrikerFox said:

Not sure, possibly. It depends how strong they make the Soul Extracted zombies, and what power(s) they have. Also the radius of the AoE summon. 

 

I'll probably never get a chance to test it, barely have any time to log onto the HC servers nowadays. Hopefully someone on CoXG makes a video on it.

The problem is that if you make it a toggle like that, you're essentially giving necromancy a permanent version of gang war. 

 

Imagine a necro who also had group buffs for his pets with no real cooldown, like from thermal, sonic, cold, force field, etc. Those little temporary zombies become extremely durable, as well as gaining all the benefits of the various set IO auras. 

 

The more you kill, the faster you kill, and it feeds on itself.

 

A necro would turn into a giant army of zombies flying through missions destroying everything in their path. You could just leave it at +0/8, and the moment you started the ball rolling, it wouldn't stop. 

 

It would be amusing to test it, but I have a feeling it would be quite overpowered.

[Shazbotacus]

I would also love to see that in action. I imagine it can be balanced with, say, a target cap and depending on how strong each zombie is. Each zombie only lasts 25 seconds also, so that plus a target cap can be used to set an effective maximum number of these things one player can have. An actual horde of zombies sounds really fitting for necro, and it might be a lot of fun to see in action. I know it looks insane, but I see so much potential in it. It reminds me of pet-specced Necromancers in Guild Wars; once they got their army of undead horrors built up, they became extremely powerful, but the fact each pet would decay faster and faster, eventually making keeping them healed impossible, meant they each had to be replaced eventually, new bodies had to be made, and so momentum had to be kept up to maintain the rolling death stampede. But we’re also splitting off the original topic of mercs.

 

I’ve played Mercs when they launched with City of Villains. They’ve needed love since day 1; I know that for sure. Ninjas as well, in fact, but let’s stay focused for now. I am very hopeful that mercs will get some strengths so they can be competitive with the other primaries to at least some degree.

Edited October 3, 2019 by Shazbotacus

[JPax]

On 8/31/2019 at 2:39 AM, kelly Rocket said:

Also un-fuck Serum.

Apply it to every soldier, lower it's cooldown. Make it worth the slot for sure.

[SmalltalkJava]

On 10/3/2019 at 7:04 PM, JPax said:

Apply it to every soldier, lower it's cooldown. Make it worth the slot for sure.

That would work.    After testing mercs with nature. 

 

What ever is done, or however they should implement it. The end result should be that their DPS should be equivalent to the other pets DPS, Whether it is just a simple accross the board pet DPS % increase or via a pet wide Serum buff.    Their overall DPS should be equivalent.  Right now,  after testing Demons/Ninjas/Beasts/Mercs with Nature, the first 3 are in a similar range,  Mercs was way way behind.   

 

Back when I played Dark Age of Camelot, their first pass at damage balance would be to do a % damage increase.  To get the classes in line to their counterparts. that way each realms similar classes would be in a close range regarding DPS.   Then if more tweaking was needed they'd do more difficult balancing regarding actual abilities. At least from what I remember.