A good Mercenary build?

Hi there!

I’m interested in trying to make Merc work for me, and I’m interested what kind of builds people go for, any interesting breakpoints etc. In a perfect world I could try everything, but green dust is more expensive than gold :rofl:

I’m interested in both builds with Halberd, Exe sword and even mace/1h if people make it work, and the appropriate talents and properties and traits involved.

Educate me with your bestest Merc builds, please!

Crit build is a lot of fun, if you manage to get 5% crit on both weapons and trinket, in addition you get 10% from passive and talent. Swift Slaying + Paced strikes = windwill mode.

I find a shotgun with scrounger goes well with a crit build, if you’re out of ammo you just smack things with the stock of the shotty 'till you’ve got shots again, meaning you don’t really have to ever pick up ammunition. And any melee weapon goes really, but the halberd is such a monster on Mercenary when you use the first swing with block/cancel on hordes.

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Most of my builds focus on Chaos damage as I rarely have any issues with SV and make do with everything else. Someone else will have to help in terms of actual breakpoints though.

1H Mace with Crit/Chaos on weapon and Chaos/AS(Inf could be nice too), on Charm is great for a melee build. Repeater or Handgun for Elites. With 1H Mace. you have lots of CC, mobility and survivability. The headshots with charged attacks are insane too. They make SV quite easy to deal with as you can quickly take their heads off. That’s why I don’t bother with any Skaven damage.

  • 1-2 cancel combos
  • push-attack 3 combos
  • charged overheads

I go for the same with 1H Sword too. While having the potential for incredibly fun gameplay and damage, it’s harder to make use of, if you’re not used to melee. This is because it has no strong stagger outside of the short range charged attack and you must make use of lots of mobility for survival. This build almost gets me killed because it’s so fun going ham with it. Bouncing between charged attack side sweeps and light combos is what makes it so fun. The Elite killing leaves a lot to be desired, but there’s a combo which makes them a little easier (hoping they’ll buff the third light attack on armour).

  • 1-2 cancel combos
  • push attack 3 combos
  • charged attack spam
  • 2 charged 1 light combo on Elites

Yeah I don’t know, I find the halberd to be notorios for letting attacks go through block, it seems to happen way more often than with other weapons.

It wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case, if so I’m one of the lucky in that regard that don’t experience it so much, but it definitely does happen. (getting attacked through block)

Perhaps the 2H mace is more to your liking? It really shines on Merc with his increased cleave, well, most weapons do. :>

He doesn’t have a 2H mace, so I’m assuming you either mean 1H mace or 2H hammer :stuck_out_tongue:

I like crit build with max crit chance and attack speed buffs on charm/weapon, crit power also sounds good with crit chance. I use exe sword, with all attack speed buffs and SS you can control hordes pretty easyly, and charged attack is great against elites, being able to oneshot stormvermins and zerkers (if you hit the head, or get lucky with crits). For ranged I have weakness for handgun with headshot ammo (to kill chaos warriors and specials), but bbuss is great either, with scoundrel, also you can regen ammo with meele hits of bbuss, witch is very helpfull. Repeater is a bit off, sadly. And for talents - crit chance is great, if you are going for crit build, alternativley 30% healing could work with Natural bond, and stamina regeniration is also great if you’re not using executioner, and don’t rely on SS that much. Then the more the marrier is the best option in my oppinion. For 15 I prefer blade barrier, but strike together is fine as well. I would still take HP from kills rather than crits. And On your feet!, great for legend games and especially abduction deeds. For neckless I like more HP, attack speed on charm, curse and crit on trinket. And you can take whatever traits on them, depending on what you like the most. This build worked very well for me, and I glad I made non-halberd Kruber to work nicely :slight_smile:

http://verminbuilds.com/#e7e1dc3b3f3a-0365bdd3d473

Remember, you’re a support. Your job is to give teammates +10% AS and to revive them when in critical situations. Other stuff doesn’t matter, and I am like 100% serious.

The only way Mercenary might work as a carry, is in a heavy melee comp. I think he’s second best to Slayer in terms of DPS, cause crazy OP Halberd + bonus AS turn Kruber into one man army. His main problem though is that among melee classes he’s on the squishy side, and while WHC at least has infinite block and Shade and HM have escape tools, he has nothing. So you gotta be really offensive and kill everything before it stacks up.

Also he’s very boring with boring ranged and boring ult and idk why anyone would play him. Even WHC or BW are more interesting.

I think he is the best meele horde-clearer, and I’m into that stuff, I just like to meele hordes. He can easily kill everything exept bosses. I don’t get, why you call him borring, he’s just a standart frontliner, but it’s a fun role in my oppinion.

Cause with him you can’t leap into the the middle of the horde with terrifying scream and start choppin rat heads left and right while your screen is read and all you hear is your heartbeat.

Also you don’t get any fun passive powers, like getting stronger when losing HP and immunity to death or building your power up as you hit enemies. Just plain boring 10% AS with plain boring ult, which has a long CD and does nothing cool.

But as I said:

Maybe even tied or better than Slayer when it comes to horde clearing.

Yeah I’m seeing more and more that Merc just isn’t very good. He’s good at melee horde clear—so what, so many chars can safely dispatch a horde in melee, and from ranged too of course.

I keep seeing Mercs go down in relatively ‘easy’ situations, carrying the halberd. I really, really don’t think it’s as good as people think.

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He had the potential to be amazing with pre-NERF Ex Sword but it was high risk, high reward and required extremely aggressive play. Why they removed the one thing that let him potentially compete with other classes, I don’t know.

When was exe sword nerfed? (aside from the ‘mistake’ )

Did they revert it? I thought it was still pwnt into the ground. If it’s back to normal, you could try that. To keep up with other classes still requires very aggressive positioning and you have to time/land your charged attacks non-stop on every non-trash enemy. Otherwise, he’s just bland, melee horde clear in general.

Yeah it was fixed 2 days later in the next patch. It’s still super slow and super dangerous to use though. And exe sword in general will get you killed if you get stuck with shielders mixed in with maulers etc. It’s just too slow even on light attacks to make a dent in anything that isn’t just trash or alone.

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Yeah I’m not saying it’s great but if the risk pays off its output is quite high. Certainly not consistent.

In my experience, Merc can be built to have such horrific temp health generation through just killing and his career skill that he ends up being tankier than Knight. Stronger heals affect temp health generation, and he is possibly the best horde clearer already. You don’t even need to stack everything for that, as even with only +30% healing from Talent he already is a candidate for using Natural Bond, in my opinion. Add another 30% from Trait and your choice of lv25 Talent, and he stays alive through temp health alone.

Of course, I too think that he is a bit… simple to play. Far from useless, though, at least in my group.

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Yeah, and all that goes away as soon as you take your second grim and start dying from 1 marauder hit. That’s the main problem with his temp HP.

He is just vanilla, nothing special, your V1 character with a bit flaff that doesn’t affect gameplay in a big way. I think he is underrated because he has nothing outstanding (exept from instant revive, that, to be honest, dosen’t work that well in PUG, when people often forget about it). Overall, he is a cool and fare character in what he does well and actually fun to play. Main idea - he is fare, he doesn’t have any gamebreaking abilities that are super powerfull for you to design your gameplay around (like shade or slayer), nothing is over the top (exept maybe cleave, but you don’t feel it that much). He is as good as you are with weapons you take. And it actually feels fresh to play character without somesort of super powerfull ability or surviveability. At least it is so for me. It may look borring on paper, but not having any cool insane theme, and having to rely on just simple basic combat is actually interesting in it’s own right.

Good for you then. It’s always great, when you have one more character to enjoy. I, on the other hand, as well as many other people here, find Mercenary boring. But should you care as long as you enjoy him? No.

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