Hello guys, I’m just a casual player and I’m having some problem with the Merc on Legend.
Now I’m lvl.30 with item power almost to 300 (total power is 550).
The problem is that my life is terrible low, few hits and I’m down. And i’ve got defensive talents and 1 item with +17% health.
How do you guys handle with that?
Thanks
Go back to Champion for a while. Practice dodging, range management, timing and positioning. Check your Damage Taken stat after each match, and see how it evolves. It’s more important to keep yourself alive so you can help your teammates, than to kill everything and die in the process.
You might want to check some people’s Twitch or Youtube videos of gameplay too. J_sat is a good one. On some of his runs, he’s teaching new players to play Legend, and as such, also goes through the necessary tactics. Any more than that, you can try to find someone to teach you in-game. If you do, good luck with that.
Oh, and while I like to help people, I’m nowhere close to Legend level yet, so I can’t help you there more than this (somewhat general) advice.
But it’s nice to see someone actually asking for help for once, instead of the constant griping on or blaming one thing or another.
If he wants to learn Merc well, changing to another career isn’t that good idea. Knight has higher Hit Points, and damage resistance to boot, so what FK can survive, Merc might not. The Career skills are completely different, as are the talents.
Then again, playing each of the other characters and careers for a while, to get a feeling of their capabilities is reasonable. After all, it’s good to know at least some of what to expect from one’s teammates.
Play with bots a few times. They have a consistent performance so you can mostly focus on your own.
If you can easily solo champ any map w/ bots then go for legend a map at a time.
I think that they are enough similar… specially if both played with halberd: panic button super, crowd control careers… first one with more cleave, second one with more defense. It is more easy learn weapons moveset, dodge, parry, block… if you need more hit to die. Anyway, IMHO.
What people are dancing around in this thread is that ideally you shouldn’t be taking many hits at all in legend. You should practice dodging, blocking and pushing until you feel like you are capable of taking very few hits in most situations. Consider that nearly everything in the game is dodgeable or avoidable, and then practice knowing and executing the proper dodge or block technique until it becomes intuitive to you.
If you want some in-game training you can run with my group, pm me for my steam handle.
Legend is tough and a few hits will make you go down for most characters, gotta get near perfect at blocking and dodging and positioning so you don’t take damage at all in most situations. That way when RNG hell breaks loose you can afford to take some.
This. If you can’t fight hordes without constantly taking damage, stop trying legend, go back to champ and learn how to not take damage in a more forgiving environment. The key to good play is to not take damage, and not seeing who can get the most kills/do the most damage.
Be aware of what is going on around you all the time, dodge incoming hits, block hits that you can’t dodge and push when there are too many enemies nearby. Learn good positioning, ensure that you don’t get surrounded, have as much visibility as possible to watch out for potential threats, etc. Once you are capable of that then you are ready for legend where the game will try its best to kill you with many different types of serious threats at the same time.
Horde aggression is increased in Legend compared to Champion though (though it was decreased in latest patch - see patch notes).
So he’d be better off training in Legend, as what works in Champ might not work on Legend.
Drop the difficulty down to champion until you are confident with avoiding damage through dodging and all that good stuff.
His issue is ‘few hits and I’m down’, meaning he probably is spending a lot of time downed/dead. He’d be better off on champion learning the basics rather than spending time spectating/not contributing to the team.
1.05 Legend is best done with 2 tanks or fake tanks like WHC on your team. You may be called upon to fake tank yourself as Merc in order to have 2 ranged for bosses, or else play with a Shade
Defensive properties in order of priority for Merc:
The first two are imperative. You need to be able to mix it up in melee fearlessly, and you are not the shade or the slayer. Health drops below block for Knight
Swift Slaying is fantastic if you can manage decent crit and don’t take too many hits; Merc has innate baseline crit and cleave which help with these. Otherwise Opportunist.
600 power with about +30% or greater vs Stormvermin will allow their attacks to be more easily interrupted; taking the halberd as an example, the push overhead attack will be able to interrupt their overhead on a body shot. Infantry, Skaven, Armored all count; Infantry > Skaven > Armored unless Armored works on Chaos Knights, which some people have claimed it doesn’t
hehe
take an executioner’s blade or halberd with swift slaying, lots of crit and attack speed, temp hp on kill, a Stamina/HP Necklace and cleave them hordes like crazy. Blunderbuss or heavy headshot armored enemies. and just stay near your teammates.
30+40 kruber main here.
The defensive talents aren’t very good. Your level 10 talent compounds after grims meaning it’s off until your last 1-2 hits taken from a trash mob; against stormverms and other things which kill people it does nothing. Defense on paced strikes at 15 isn’t bad but it’s not great either — if you’re using paced strikes well you’ll be stunning everything with your attacks, and again, 25% won’t save you from heavy hitters (nor would you have paced strikes up against them anyway).
Long story short you want to stack power talents. This will help you cleave, stun, and kill all targets in range. Put Swift Slaying on your weapon and take “And Stay Down!” to keep it active.
Executioner is viable but halberd is much easier to use, and honestly might be the best melee weapon in the game. It has exceptional range, armor pen, and can break a shieldvermin’s guard with one light combo. The first light is armor piercing and always cleaves all targets in range. Spam it by block-cancelling immediately after throwing it out. This has the added perk of actually blocking a hit once in a while even after you’ve started the next swing. Let me emphasize that mercenary is built to keep attacking! If you’re blocking you’re not using your paced strikes, bonus crit, bonus power, etc. and may as well be playing foot knight.
Lastly you want reduced CD on your shout. Your team can generate their own temp life and saving it to res people defeats its purpose — its perhaps the strongest ability for preventing damage through its space creation and special/boss stun. This is, for instance, the best way to save someone who gets hooked into a horde which is often a cause of death in legend.
Sorry for the long post but I hope you got something out of it. 
Excellent post, thank you!
Can you elaborate a bit on what you run on melee, charm trink etc? I’ve mostly played FK as Kruber but I’m getting into Merc and would love to know if you just go full crit+attack speed over taking powervs etc.
Exactly right: you want crit, attack speed, crit power in that order. High crit makes the halberd 2nd light stab pen armor once in a while which is extremely good for killing elites.
Same build for the executioner since its heavy attack is unbearably slow without swift slaying.
My current gear, nothing really fancy:
Crit power is really bad btw, crit damage is based on a curve and +20% crit power means that it moves 20% further along the curve, and apparently the curve gives diminishing returns, not to mention it only works on crits. You’d be better off stacking power vs.
Only real source of +crit power there is the charm so you’re not getting deep in diminishing returns. +power vs x will get you more dps but only against that tribe. I could see the case for +power vs monsters or armor, but you definitely don’t want it over crit chance.
