At the very top of the class selection screen, Mercenary stands as Mistfall Hunter’s generalist warrior. While on the surface they may seem bland, the Mercenary offers up four distinct playstyles between their two weapons, the Sword and Shield, and the Hammer.
Let’s take a look at the good old sword and board with today’s Mistfall Hunter Mercenary build guide, discussing their best active Skills, Talents, and the potential archetypes you can utilize.
How Does the Mercenary Play?
Mercenary is the closest thing to an archetypal tank you’ll find in Mistfall Hunter. They bring two weapons to the table, the Sword and Shield and the Hammer.
Sword and Shield
Let’s start with the more defensive of the two, the Sword and Shield. With the S&S, the Mercenary can choose to focus on either part of the weapon combo, with higher damage for the Sword path or stronger defense on the Shield path.
Honing in on the Sword allows for wild multihit sequences and serious DPS if you can maintain your Sword Edge state. Alternatively, the Shield trees grant extra damage negation, guard points on certain skills, and the ability to Perfect Block at crucial moments. This way you can minimize even the strongest hits, while potentially staggering anyone too eager to swing at you.
Hammer
Now let’s say you don’t care about defending yourself in the slightest, you just want to hit the other guy as hard as possible. If that’s more your speed, the Hammer is the perfect choice. The Hammer is all about winning trades, shrugging off hits, and charging for the perfect swing.
Like Monster Hunter, the Hammer can be charged to deal additional damage, with talents allowing movement during charges and extra Super Armor. The Hammer can also inflict multiple forms of crowd control, from straight-up stuns to more flexible move speed slows.
With the Hammer, you’ll always be hitting hard and making it nigh-impossible for the enemy to fight back.
The Best Mercenary Build for Each Style
With three real ways to play the Mercenary, you’ve got multiple different loadouts you can try to empower how you like to play. As my personal favorite class so far, I’ll be showing you a few different builds that have served me well in dozens of runs.
Build 1 – Slicing Sword and Board
Starting from the top, leaning into your pointy stick will see you grow very comfortable with the Blade Edge and Strong Edge states. These enhanced states are entered whenever you land enough sword attacks, eventually extending to sword-based Skills.
By following the Sword path on the Sword and Shield Weapon Mastery tree, you can lower the hits required to upgrade your state to a measly 4. Both Whirling Cut and Stonebreaker Slash can be buffed to grant Sword Tip on hit, speeding up the process further and empowering your Stacked Slash constantly.
You’ll want to be weaving Stacked Slash into your combos whenever you enter Strong Edge. With your Talents fully kitted, you’ll enter this state every 8 hits, an easy fit with your multihits and fast attack speed.
For Weapon Skills, we’ll be running Whirling Cut and Stonebreaker Slash. As previously stated, both can be buffed to grant hits towards Blade Edge, and when in Blade Edge or Strong Edge, the Skills themselves will hit harder.
Weave in and out of Strong Edge to maintain massive damage, and use Stonebreaker Slash for a panic button defensive option when need be.
Build 2 – Stalwart Shield Smacks
On the other hand (literally), we can make use of our shield to negate massive damage and keep ourselves firmly on the front line. We’ll be trading out our Edge states for Momentum, swapping out Stacked Slash for a Shockwave Strike with our Shield.
Like the Edge states, Momentum is built up by attacking and landing Shield-based Skills. Spending these Momentum states for Shockwave Strike will lower all equipped Weapon Skill cooldowns. This makes up for the cheaper Sword buffs not being available with this build, while allowing us to spam our strongest techniques often.
Focusing on those techniques, this build runs Whirling Cut and Shield Slam, maximizing our time with our guard up. With the Foresight Talent from the Whirling Cut Enhancement Tree, we can make Whirling Cut a 360 degree Perfect Block, allowing for mass attack denial on demand.
With the Block Damage Boost talent from Weapon Mastery, all Perfect Blocks increase our damage, grant a shield, and buff our move speed. This allows us to stay in the front of the fight as long as possible, while rewarding smart defensive play with explosive offensive pressure.
Make sure to grab Sturdy Shield from Block Mastery as well, allowing us to stack damage negation via Indomitable Will whenever we block, with bonuses for Perfect Blocks.
Shield Slam gives us a great engage tool, slowing foes hit and potentially stunning with the right Talent upgrade. Alternatively, it can give three Indomitable Will on hit, an instant 30% damage negation for when times get hard.
Either way you pivot, this build will grant amazing frontline sustain, solid damage, and the stickiness to keep your foe on their butt.
Build 3 – Hammer Time
It doesn’t get simpler than this, after all, when all you’ve got is a hammer, everyone else is asking for it! The Hammer rewards you for charging right through hits, and that’s where our focus will be, abusing Super Armor to blow past anyone dumb enough to swing at you.
For this reason, maxing out the Hammer Weapon Mastery tree is an easy idea, not only enhancing our defenses while Super Armored, but also guaranteeing that our Super Armor wins in any clashes. The extra mobility is an extra boon, helping you keep squirrely enemies out of your reach.
Consecutive Attacks is our next focus, giving us easy Energy upkeep for our skills and mid-charge dodges while allowing successful hits to build up to devastating Stuns.
For our Weapon Skills, we’ll be using Hammer Spin and Earthshaker.
You’ll be very comfortable with Hammer Spin at this point, including the early Super Armor it boasts and the convenient ability to end it as soon as the enemy is out of range. It stacks our Stun well if multiple hits connect, and can batter down shields like nothing else. With the Steel Sanctuary Talent, you’ll have even more Super Armor to abuse.
Earthshaker, meanwhile, is the perfect Oki tool once you have the enemy down. For those who don’t know fighting game lingo, Earthshaker’s charged Super Armor and massive radius make it a great way to force downed opponents into awkward wake-up scenarios, giving you every advantage possible. You just need that first knockdown.
Once upgraded, Earthshaker can allow for movement and dodges while charging, and a faster cooldown whenever you land a charged attack.
The Next Step
With a few builds established, focus on using their differing strengths to rise in levels, taking on quests and eventually the Mist Lords that spawn in each Expedition. These bosses require full kits, near max leveled characters, and optimally a few friends.
Make sure you’ve unlocked Co-op before you give them a shot, and that you’re more than comfortable with the class you’ve chosen. With all those boxes checked, get out there Gyldhunter, waiting around won’t bring the next age!
