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NDB -> RE: =ED= Tactical Mercenary Balance Thread (8/7/2018 13:28:37)
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Tactical Mercenary has always been unique in that it lacks any burst damage or debuff. Now with battles becoming faster and damage is higher, poison is also going a bit out of style. Therefore, I do think that a reasonably strong Surgical is logical to give the class some fire power.
But with that being said...
I think that the last update did bring it up a tad bit too much, especially compared its Super Charge counterpart. Before this update, both skills had the same base damage, with Super Charge being a tiny hair stronger at Level 40 due to level scaling (~2.6 damage). However, Super Charge scaled/s with 1 damage per 0.5 Tech whereas Surgical was 1 damage every 0.4 Tech. So even before this update, with 120 Tech, Surgical would be about 100 damage stronger than Super Charge, which in most cases more than makes up for Super Charge's 20% defense ignore. Now with the recent update, Surgical scales with 1 damage every 0.3 Tech, making it yet another 100 damage stronger at 120 Tech, which far makes up for the 10% defense ignore buff that Super Charge got. All the while, Surgical maintains the massively useful 50% Rage reduction effect and has no weapon requirement.
I think that a better approach would have been to bring the scaling of Surgical to, perhaps, 1 damage per every 0.35 Tech. This would have made it 43 damage stronger, rather than 100 damage stronger, at 120 Tech, which is roughly on par with the 10% extra defense ignore that Super Charge got against the average 5-focus build. Even then, I don't think it would hurt to bring Super Charge down to 1 damage every 0.35 Tech. That would make the two skills the exact same in base damage if level scaling was also fixed to be the same, but with Surgical having the 50% Rage reduction effect and Super Charge having the 30% defense ignore effect. I know this is the Tactical Mercenary Thread, but it's hard to make a point without bringing in the Super Charge.
On a different note, the issue with Frenzy, I think, stems from the buff to Primary scaling which inadvertently made the skill much more powerful than it previously was. Because it is now unblockable, it may make sense to take away the 10% defense ignore, but there are a lot of other simple fixes that could also work, though.
On a different note, I think it may be a great idea to buff the Stun Grenade on Tactical Mercenary (but not Bounty Hunter), perhaps on par with Plasma Grenade or even quite a bit more. Stun Grenade is currently 20 damage weaker than Plasma grenade and scales at 1 damage every 0.44 Dex compared to 0.4 Tech, making it ~23 damage weaker at 100 Dex/Tech. Buffing Stun Grenade on Tactical Mercenary would be a step in the right direction for making the classes all have different skills and hopefully give the class a more viable Dexterity build. This is beneficial because, as it stands, Tactical Mercenary is really lacking in the caster build department compared to other classes, and Dexterity builds, in general, are arguably the most underpowered stat builds in the game in 1vs1 (which wasn't always the case).
Oh yeah, and I know it's been said a few times already, but Atom Smasher should be unblockable.
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