… That’s literally not what crowd control means. It’s fine if that’s how you personally want to categorize it for yourself, but don’t start calling Mercenary a crowd control career when he isn’t. He has crowd control, he has stagger output, but that doesn’t make him a crowd control career. He’s a melee frontliner.
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Not likely, but definitely more fun for the reasons I described. I also don’t want to take Crit on my main Weapon, because he’s a pain to get SS up anyway, so I’ve opted for running AS instead.
Oh, I’m talking rubbish actually, I have a Crit/BCR build too. I just prefer the BCR, Stamina one vs Elites.
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I’ll test tomorrow, but i’m like 99% sure, 10% AS doesnt outclass ranged cdr, even on crossbow by just sniping elites and specials. unless going melee the entire map and just sniping specials, then maybe.
Yes fun is a valid reason, if you don’t care about optimal. It probably works, and if it works thats totally fine. I just wanted to let you know that you were missing out, because maybe you honestly didnt know ranged cdr is better, unless for the playstyle reasons described.
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Oh, I do use it for 1H and DW Maces, dw.
Just going through a phase where I want a WHC/Merc style Career for Bardin and the closest I could come without sinking too many stats, or being slow-mo as IB, was this.
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The point is that crowd control, melee frontliner are just names that we arbitrarily give to the careers.
At this point I could say that both WHC, Zealot, FK, IB, Merc, Slayer can be considered melee frontliners. But we need to be more precise… for example FK has a different role than WHC.
Honestly I have seen used “crowd control” term since d1… I have used it as well, and this is the first time someone says “it’s wrong”.
Now, the poin is that: regardless how I call Merc, this does not affect my previous speech on him (to which you can agree or disagree, obvious).
Yes, all those careers are frontliners. But that’s not all they are, you don’t assign a single ‘role’ to a career and be done with it, there are several labels a career can fall under. Mercenary can be considered a melee frontliner, support and horde clear. Foot Knight is melee frontliner, crowd control, etc. Mercenary is not focused on crowd control, so you don’t call him a crowd control career.
I don’t agree. As said there are many hybrid and exceptions, but a minimum of guidelines exist. FK is mainly meant to stagger and resist… Merc to deal with hordes (a mix between damage and stagger)… etc etc.
Merc has worse mobility than Zealot. He also doesn’t get Saltz’ weapons. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Zealot’s horde dps with the Billhook seems to be comparable to Merc’s with the Exec, even if it’s not as good. Zealot’s ult may as well be a passive attack speed buff that lets him walk through hordes and passively deal damage with how low the cooldown gets. Zealot will pretty easily have a higher overall dps than Merc so long as he hit trades effectively. He has better boss damage and suffers less against shields because of his attack speed. WHC blows Zealot out of the water for sure though.
Zealot can aggro tank while attacking without blocking almost ever on Cata. Merc can only do that during his ult. This makes Zealot’s attack uptime superior.
I’d still say Merc is better overall in a team context, but for QP Zealot’s more useful. 40% Damage reduction won’t save someone if they don’t know what they’re doing, and Zealot’s better for clutching.
Then again, that’s the soloing the final Runes of FoW/elite packs/bad scenarios mentality getting to me again, so everything I just said may not matter in a team context.
TLDR: Y’all lack faith in Sigmar, Taal hippies.
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When I initially suggested GK should be able to block warpfire I meant it as a unique interaction that the bretonnian sword and shield would have rather than a career passive but they chose the latter route for it
I agree he should be far more durable than he is currently and have more attack speed (or bonus crit)
ok but Merc is more effective at all of those things
Claiming GK is a support hero is a miscategorization if there ever was one. What exactly does he support? He supports nothing, his passive ability does and it does so by fiat of him existing.
Like I said, I think GK is, imho, roughly in a good place, only needs some tweeking to be less gimmicky. He is, more or less, a (slightly) lesser version of Slayer or Zealot, with a (potentially) mighty team-buffing ability, but without the mobility or potential ranged capabilities. Or attack speed. Or survivability. The only thing that makes him stand out is that he has shade’s active ability (sans the safety provided by invis), but that’s what he has to be compared to. He doesn’t fall behind that much, but he is not on the same level.
Seriously people, does this thread not kinda prove that there is some “need” for more dedicated discussions towards all careers? I remember threads about Ranger Veteran, Huntsman, Handmaiden or Foot Knight.
But we never (or rarely?) had threads concerning the overperformers like WHC, Shade, Mercenary, etc… There are surely ways to make them more in line without taking away their reason for existence. Also, toning some careers a bit down would help to make them more fun, balanced and unique.
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True, but I think it would be alot easier to bring the few kinda “meh” ones up to speed with roughly everything else than the other way around (I’m looking at you, Ranger Veteran). The game is in, arguably, one its best states it has ever been in. You basically see almost all carreers played and they all perform roughly on the same level in their respective roles. WHC, Shade and Merc are definitely top tier, but at least they are “melee heroes” (remember the ranged meta? Remember?) and their reign is not as supreme as it is sometimes made out to be.
GK is not “far off”, but you’re fooling yourself if you think he is “op” or on par. He literally brings nothing that other carreers cannot do more or less the same, but they can do it either more safely, more reliably, or with less effort.
(will post it any time I can so it does not get lost in all the bickering: High resistance against AoE damage as a passive, no slowdown/knockback from AoE attacks like warpfire, rattling gun, troll bile, plague ghosts and whatnot, ability to select the quests, and MAYBE passive critical strike bonus, and he’s good to go. Sad thing that FK already has a charge, since this whole “bravely charging into battle with evil demon-bois” is kinda the Grail/Questing Knights’ thing. Still wouldn’t mind him getting a small charge ability with his active, or causing knockdown to everything around him if he kills an elite, special or monster with his ability. There are enough hooks to work with when it comes to his kit).
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Most careers are in a pretty balanced state.
There are a few builds or weapons that need a look at.
Heavy spear, Billhook (Alt stagger).
Famished flames + Flamesword (BW).
Volcanic bolt is powerful in DWONS but in base cata, it’s pretty balanced/on par with careers like BH.
Merc has a lot going for him, just adjusting some of his numbers particularly damage reduction might be enough.
Bloodfletcher is a hot topic, a melee career having ammo sustain is up for debate.
They’re the only things that really come to mind, even then most of them aren’t truly busted compared to the past like perma invis Shade, lingering + famished BW, DK slayer, old bluntsman, thp WHC, there was a time where merc and WHC had almost 100% uptime on their ults.
So I think it makes sense to want some of those flawed/meh careers looked at first like:
RV, HM, Unchained, Footknight and now kinda GK.
It’s not just about buffing or nerfing, it’s also trying to open up more build variety and giving each career something unique. Weapon balance is also a huger factor too.
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For the sake of the argument, let me play the devil’s advocate here:
Gk does struggle to be the best at a specific role.
However, he has a finger in just about every pie apart from ranged and fulfills most roles reasonably well.
Thus, let us focus on what Gk does better than the classes he is commonly compared to:
Zealot:
+Gk has way more cc, more boss dmg and more support abilities.
-Worse horde dmg, worse mobility, worse dr, worse ranged.
Slayer:
+Gk has more boss dmg and more support abilities.
-Worse horde dmg, worse mobility, worse dr.
Merc:
+Gk has more elite dmg and more boss dmg.
-Worse support, worse dr, worse horde dmg, worse ranged.
Whc:
+Gk has more boss dmg.
-Worse horde dmg, worse support, worse ranged.
Bh:
+Gk has way more cc, more horde dmg and more support.
-Worse boss dmg, worse ranged, worse dr.
Shade:
+Gk has more cc, more horde clear (depends a bit I guess) and more support.
-Worse mobility, worse ranged, worse boss dmg.
Disclaimer: These are vague roles with vaguely and subjectively defined pros and cons, naturally people may disagree here and there. Especially how much better/worse sth. is is up to debate imo (see Gk duties counting as “support” when Merc has aoe stagger, dr and tmp hp and attack speed as support - the difference is quite staggering).
Now, do I think that these advantages outweigh all his disadvantages?
Not really, yet I do want to point out that he has a just about every role covered apart from ranged. Even though he is hardly the best at any of these given roles, he still performs well in most of them. Especially since Gk is usually not that far behind other classes that excel in any specific role (e.g. Shade boss dmg is definitely higher but not that much higher as to make Gk feel useless in comparison). A good player will skew perspective that even more.
Therefore, I think Gk only needs some slight buffs to bring him up to speed. He is missing a specific niche where he is the best , leading to the (correct) impression that he – for a melee only class – is a bit mediocre. Nevertheless, it does not mean that he is weak overall. Some slight tweaking and he should roughly be on the same level.
(Yes, obviously most if not all other classes that are considered top picks are quite versatile, more so than Gk. That is not a Gk exclusive quality. The point is that he is not that far off. Minus some exceptionally strong careers like Bw, Merc and Whc, balance is in a good place and only some weaker classes like Uc, Fk an Rv need serious buffs/reworks).
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GK really doesn’t have much crowd control outside virtue of confidence and that is less significant than WHC shout
Also WHC arguably has better support given the tag bonus is a 20% damage boon for everyone attacking a tagged target giving access to a variety of important breakpoints. Bonus crit chance is also extremely lucrative.
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Yes, that is what I meant 
Apologies if that was not clear enough.
As for the cc, I think the aoe shouts are generally stronger, agreed. Gk has more “minor” cc if you will - in the form of shield bashing and more stam regen. That should give him more of a cc role that Whc, at least outside of major “oh crap” moments where you need a shout to get out.
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I’m dumb, don’t worry
Also if we’re taking shield slams into consideration than billhook should also be considered
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True, fair enough, billhook is disgusting cc. I’ll change that point 
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Give infinite cleave and stagger on his sweep ult and we’d have a melee powerhouse against mixed hordes that’s not in the game right now.