Mercenary

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Discipline Guides

Advanced Class Set Bonuses

Apex Predator

Increased drop rate from Dxun Nature of Progress operation. Not available for purchase from Tech vendor.

(2) +2% Mastery

(4) Activating Power Shot, Tracer Missile or Rapid Scan increases the critical chance of your next Power Shot, Tracer Missile or Rapid Scan by 10%. Stacks up to 5 times but is removed on 6th stack.

(6) Dealing damage with Power Shot or Tracer Missile or healing with Rapid Scan grants a stack of Power Step, stacking up to 5 times. At 5 stacks, your next Power Shot, Tracer Missile or Rapid Scan is more effective and generates no Heat.

Comments: The Apex Predator essentially gives your filler ability an average critical chance buff of +25% (rotating from 0% - 50%) and every 6th use is free and buffed further. This set bonus is not that strong as compared to other BIS set bonuses for other advanced classes but is likely left as the preferred DPS set bonus as of 6.1.2 due to the nerfs to Concentrated Fire.

Concentrated Fire

Increased drop rate from PVP.

(2) +2% Mastery

(4) Damaging an enemy or healing an ally has a 10% chance to generate a stack of Supercharge. This effect cannot occur more than once every 5 seconds.

(6) Activating Supercharged Gas makes your next Rail Shot, Mag Shot or Emergency Scan critically hit or heal.

Comments: This set bonus was redesigned in 6.1.2. Formerly the BIS for healers and DPS due to its very high uptime on a +10% critical chance buff, now the set bonus is much weaker. The incremental extra Supercharge and the periodic auto-crit is nice but far weaker. More analysis is needed but at this point I expect DPS to prefer the Apex Predator set bonus and healers to prefer the Tech Medic set bonus. This set will also have use for healers who want an "off-DPS" set for certain fights with tight DPS checks.

Notorious

Increased drop rate from operations.

(2) +2% Mastery

(4) Power Surge grants Precision Targeting, increasing armor penetration by 10% for 6 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once a minute.

(6) Power Surge gets an additional charge.

Comments: A poor DPS set bonus compared to other options. Increased utility from one of your key offensive cooldowns is nice but is outperformed significantly by Concentrated Fire and its nearly permanent buff to critical chance.

Tech Medic

Increased drop rate from conquest crates.

(2) +2% Mastery

(4) Onboard AED becomes an instant-cast.

(6) Kolto Shot leaves Lasting Meds on its target, restoring health over 18 seconds.

Comments: Tech Medic was redesigned in 6.1.2. It now sits as the very likely BIS healer set bonus due to its revamped 6-piece set bonus that provides a HoT via your free spammable heal. By rotating periodic use of your free energy heal onto multiple team members taking damage, you can maintain the HoT on several players at once and provide a small but noticeable increase in sustained healing.

Rapid Response

Increased drop rate from The Nature of Progress Operation on Master Mode Difficulty, and has a small chance from Unidentified items on the Spoils of War vendors.

(2) +2% Mastery

(4) Activating a healing ability has a 15% chance to grant Combat Medic's Critical Bonus which causes your next Rapid Scan to be critical.

(6) Healing an ally with Rapid Scan applies a buff to them for 10 seconds. Each enemy defeated by this ally increases your healing by 2%, stacking up to 5 times.

Comments: This set bonus was introduced in 6.1.2 with MM Dxun. The name is duplicative of another general class set bonus and may ultimately be named Restorative Drive. The 4-piece extra crit on your base heal every 30 seconds is nice but not very powerful. The 6-piece sounds interesting but required the healed ally to kill enemies, so on fights with lots of adds this could lead to very high uptime on a +10% healing buff and make it probably a hands down BIS set bonus, and for fights without lots of adds a very poor choice.

Advanced Class Tacticals

Cool Your Jets

Increased drop rate from PVP.

Rocket Out vents 20 Heat and immobilizes enemies around you for 2 seconds as you leave.

Comments: A neat PVP utility for heat management and immobilizing melee DPS while kiting. Not useful in most situations though.

Jettison

Increased drop rate from conquest crates.

Jet Boost increases your movement speed by 50% for 3 seconds. For each enemy hit with Jet Boost, the cooldown of Hydraulic Overrides is reduced by 3 seconds.

Comments: Not a great tactical. I find that Hydraulic Overrides and Rocket Out together are plenty of utility for movement speed, so I want DPS/HPS boosts from tactical items for Mercenary disciplines.

Missile Backblast

Crafted from Biochem.

Missile Blast knocks its target back and refunds 10 Heat.

Comments: Another PVP utility that could be helpful for kiting and energy management similar to Cool Your Jets but more frequently available.

Power Cycle

Increased drop rate from Onderon and Mek-sha daily missions.

When you use an ability with Power Surge, that ability is not put on cooldown.

Comments: This utility sounds interesting to enable a double cast of a strong cast ability via Power Surge. The tricky part to this tactical is that apart from fillers most really powerful discipline abilities are either instant or channelled, greatly limiting its potential utility.