"Dear Commandos: Use your Heavy Weapons, dangit!"

[Acyer]

Im gonna agree with night here even tho we had this argument. Cannons should be used in groups of mobs as if u get damage on mobs u get aggro. Dont worry bout anything else your main role is tanking cannons help you do your job easier. Also rifles should be a must on single targets imo.

[Moogerfooger]

hat's not taking into account the thing about armor that Moogerfooger mentioned, which...is that definitely true?

Yes, that is definitely true in PL, and I would be willing to bet the same for SL. DPS does not account for the enemy's armor...it is hypothetical damage output against air, so to speak. That is why high base damage weaps in PL and then SL are generally more effective against high armor bosses/mobs. I won't get into the debate going on about Commandos as mine is only lvl 11 or something and I don't know enough about the class...but in general, lower DPS but higher base damage weaps can overwhelm enemy armor values more.

Stupid made-up example with made-up numbers:

• Enemy mob with 35 armor
• Weap 1: Pistol that has an avg of base dmg of 55, speed 0.8 (roughly 69 DPS)
• Weap 2: Rifle with avg base 65, speed 1.0 (65 DPS)

Eight seconds.

Weap 1 gets 10 shots in 8 secs = (Base dmg - enemy armor)*10 = (55-35)*10 = 200 actual damage dealt.
Weap 2 gets 8 shots in 8 secs = (65-35)*8 = 240 actual dmg dealt.

Barring any kind of proc/AoE that Weap 1 has that may make it more handy, gamesetandmatch for Weap 2, despite having a slightly lower DPS.

Again, made up example numbers....until someone figures out some of the mob/boss armor like Physiologic did for most of PL, and disproves this with real numbers.....base damage (USUALLY) > DPS.

Speaking of aggro....I have the new Op skill maxed at 6...when that is active, I am running 79 crit and unfortunately steal aggro from Commandos quickly on bosses sometimes. Double-edged sword.

[Raulur]

I'm only 20ish on my comm, but I will say that by feel it was best to use the heavy weapons (aoe) on mobs and a rifle of some sort on bosses. You can wreck mobs at a wicked pace by starting off with auto attack, using the pull skill near a wall, stomp, then back away and hit the aoe knockback skill. In the end I always get frustrated that I can never find a good engineer to run with. Then I go back to my engineer and help guildies.

I just experienced firsthand how ridiculous a commando with pistol and shield is. I died 3 times against the Director Droid becaue I was effectively the tank as I was doing more damage than the Commando with pistol and shield. I was livid. I didn't accept the revive and just kept hounding the tank to switch weapons and do his job and tank so I can do my job and heal him. A commando not tanking is like me running around not healing and calling myself an attack engineer. Ok end rant.

I had a similar experience this weekend on my engineer. The attack engineer bit made me chuckle though. I don't understand the attack engineer thing. If you want damage, there are 2 other classes that are better suited at it. Yes, even commandos if they are played right.

[Rob Prose]

I'm kinda reluctant to go for pistol+shield simply because of the damage factors. I remember reading in the commando forums that when someone tried to use the plat pistol for tanking because of the higher dps it actually backfired and they couldn't hold agro as well. What I'm curious about is if there is some kind of agro modifier for using the cannon because when I go between my SGT rep rifle(25) and my wastelander(25) against bosses the wastelander seems to hold more agro despite being a non-premium green. As for the armor factor from the shield I think thats a moot point seeing as any 1/4 brained engineer has empathy and trans at 6 which does mad overhealing. It was also found that bosses require less armor to mitigate damage than the clustermobs where it is just a skill spam rather than a coordinated fight so the additional armor isn't even necessary. IMO shields seem more like an OP/eng item to help keep those squishies from dying.