Risk of Rain Vanilla Mercenary
The Mercenaries normal four moves are...
Laser SwordThe Mercenary takes a small step forward while swinging his sword, hitting up to 3 enemies caught in its wake for 130% base damage. No cooldown.
Whirlwind
WhirlwindThe Mercenary hops slightly upward and hits everything around him twice for 80% base damage per hit. The player cannot control the Mercenary for the (brief) duration the skill is active. 2 second cooldown.
Blinding Assault
Blinding AssaultThe Mercenary lunges forward a modest distance, hitting all enemies he passed through for 120% base damage and stunning them if possible. The Mercenary is invulnerable during the lunge and for a brief period after it has completed. If he hit any enemies with Blinding Assault, he has a grace period in which he can initiate a second Blinding Assault before the proper cooldown begins. If he hits any enemies with this second Blinding Assault, he once again gets that grace period to then use a third one. The third Blinding Assault immediately sets it into its cooldown once used. 6 second cooldown.
Eviscerate
EviscerateThe Mercenary becomes momentarily invulnerable and except for jumping cannot be controlled. If an enemy is nearby the Mercenary, that enemy is targeted with 6 110% base damage slashes. If the target dies before all the hits have been delivered, Eviscerate will re-target with the remaining hits if possible. 6 second cooldown.
And since I got two Ancient Scepters yet again here's what one of them turns Eviscerate into...
Massacre
And since I got two Ancient Scepters yet again here's what one of them turns Eviscerate into...
MassacreAs per Eviscerate, except that if Massacre lands the finishing blow on an enemy, it will reset its number of hits and select a new target, potentially infinitely.
Laser Sword is the start of the underwhelming-ness. Every other seriously melee-oriented class has true splash on their basic attack. The Mercenary being stuck with only hitting up to three targets at once, while it's ignorable in the early game, makes him noticeably less able to cope with mobs as the game progresses compared to the other melee classes. Whirlwind and Blinding Assault help make up for this, but Blinding Assault is more notable for how it protects the Mercenary than for its damage output -I could compare it to Full Metal Jacket, which does 320% base damage every 3 seconds, as opposed to Blinding Assault doing 360% base damage at a rate worse than every 5 seconds. And Full Metal Jacket reaches farther. Whirlwind's damage isn't very good either, and while Eviscerate has good damage and can shift targets if the old one dies it's not scaling to enemy count and so doesn't help solve this problem.
However, that's at base. The Mercenary can be thought of as the Commando of melee classes; he delivers a lot of hits, and these hits can all trigger on-hit effects. Blinding Assault and Eviscerate also give him significant periods of invulnerability, making it a lot easier for him to leverage damage effects centered on himself without getting killed, and even Whirlwind's brief little hop can be used for extra maneuverability. If you get a lot of on-hit effects like ATG Missiles, the Mercenary can do quite well.
He's also just far more mobile than other melee classes. The other melee classes tend to get bogged down trying to fight things. The Mercenary can deliver damage literally in passing, hop along while activating Eviscerate just ahead of pursuing enemies, and since Blinding Assault and Whirlwind both are area of effect it's perfectly okay for the Mercenary to corral enemies into groups to then be efficiently dispatched. At the beginning of the game when enemies are generating too slowly for such tactics to be swift, Eviscerate will rapidly kill stuff like lone Lemurians, allowing you to harvest enemies for gold and experience without it slowing you down the way eg HAN-D ends up stalled out. And Whirlwind even acts as a small second jump, allowing the Mercenary to make jumps other classes can't all else being equal, and speed up stuff like ascending hills via a carefully-timed Whirlwind getting him up two steps at a time instead of one.
Like the Commando, the Mercenary has luck as a greater factor in his runs than most classes, but unlike the Commando the Mercenary's damage output isn't actively bad against single targets and small groups, and the Mercenary is considerably harder to kill. He also has some advantages when it comes to eg killing Tiny Imps. Usually, not getting the on-hit or passive damage gear you want simply results in falling behind the curve and things going slower, not a fairly rapid death like the Commando is prone to suffering.
It can be tempting to use Blinding Assault for additional speed, but it hard-stops the Mercenary once it finishes, so unless you're running through a group of enemies so you can chain it its speed isn't as great as you might hope and more importantly as the game progresses that can be a dangerous habit to have developed. Blinding Assault is the Mercenary's primary tool for escaping problem situations, as well as his primary tool for making them less problematic. You don't want it to have just entered cooldown when a pile of extremely dangerous enemies teleports right on top of you.
Also, note that while Massacre sounds like an amazing upgrade over Eviscerate, it only triggers the reset if Massacre itself delivers the finishing blow. Drones, passive damage, and damaging on-hit effects like ATG Missiles -all of which are things the Mercenary wants- are quite prone to preventing Massacre from actually chaining. Even when that doesn't apply, Massacre is only really likely to get a chain of kills if eg you've weakened a bunch of Lemurians with Blinding Assault. It sounds way cooler than, say, the Engineer's Mk. 2 Auto-Turret upgrade, but while it has the potential to be utterly amazing, a lot of times it won't provide any benefit at all. It also seems to me that, where most Ancient Scepter skills were designed with the base version as the base version and the Ancient Scepter version as an enhanced version, in the Mercenary's case Massacre was the base concept and Eviscerate was a downgraded version come up with because Massacre seemed too strong on paper or something. Which is particularly odd given how underwhelming Massacre usually is.
And... that's all the classes! Next we get started on covering Artifacts.
Laser Sword is the start of the underwhelming-ness. Every other seriously melee-oriented class has true splash on their basic attack. The Mercenary being stuck with only hitting up to three targets at once, while it's ignorable in the early game, makes him noticeably less able to cope with mobs as the game progresses compared to the other melee classes. Whirlwind and Blinding Assault help make up for this, but Blinding Assault is more notable for how it protects the Mercenary than for its damage output -I could compare it to Full Metal Jacket, which does 320% base damage every 3 seconds, as opposed to Blinding Assault doing 360% base damage at a rate worse than every 5 seconds. And Full Metal Jacket reaches farther. Whirlwind's damage isn't very good either, and while Eviscerate has good damage and can shift targets if the old one dies it's not scaling to enemy count and so doesn't help solve this problem.
However, that's at base. The Mercenary can be thought of as the Commando of melee classes; he delivers a lot of hits, and these hits can all trigger on-hit effects. Blinding Assault and Eviscerate also give him significant periods of invulnerability, making it a lot easier for him to leverage damage effects centered on himself without getting killed, and even Whirlwind's brief little hop can be used for extra maneuverability. If you get a lot of on-hit effects like ATG Missiles, the Mercenary can do quite well.
He's also just far more mobile than other melee classes. The other melee classes tend to get bogged down trying to fight things. The Mercenary can deliver damage literally in passing, hop along while activating Eviscerate just ahead of pursuing enemies, and since Blinding Assault and Whirlwind both are area of effect it's perfectly okay for the Mercenary to corral enemies into groups to then be efficiently dispatched. At the beginning of the game when enemies are generating too slowly for such tactics to be swift, Eviscerate will rapidly kill stuff like lone Lemurians, allowing you to harvest enemies for gold and experience without it slowing you down the way eg HAN-D ends up stalled out. And Whirlwind even acts as a small second jump, allowing the Mercenary to make jumps other classes can't all else being equal, and speed up stuff like ascending hills via a carefully-timed Whirlwind getting him up two steps at a time instead of one.
Like the Commando, the Mercenary has luck as a greater factor in his runs than most classes, but unlike the Commando the Mercenary's damage output isn't actively bad against single targets and small groups, and the Mercenary is considerably harder to kill. He also has some advantages when it comes to eg killing Tiny Imps. Usually, not getting the on-hit or passive damage gear you want simply results in falling behind the curve and things going slower, not a fairly rapid death like the Commando is prone to suffering.
It can be tempting to use Blinding Assault for additional speed, but it hard-stops the Mercenary once it finishes, so unless you're running through a group of enemies so you can chain it its speed isn't as great as you might hope and more importantly as the game progresses that can be a dangerous habit to have developed. Blinding Assault is the Mercenary's primary tool for escaping problem situations, as well as his primary tool for making them less problematic. You don't want it to have just entered cooldown when a pile of extremely dangerous enemies teleports right on top of you.
Also, note that while Massacre sounds like an amazing upgrade over Eviscerate, it only triggers the reset if Massacre itself delivers the finishing blow. Drones, passive damage, and damaging on-hit effects like ATG Missiles -all of which are things the Mercenary wants- are quite prone to preventing Massacre from actually chaining. Even when that doesn't apply, Massacre is only really likely to get a chain of kills if eg you've weakened a bunch of Lemurians with Blinding Assault. It sounds way cooler than, say, the Engineer's Mk. 2 Auto-Turret upgrade, but while it has the potential to be utterly amazing, a lot of times it won't provide any benefit at all. It also seems to me that, where most Ancient Scepter skills were designed with the base version as the base version and the Ancient Scepter version as an enhanced version, in the Mercenary's case Massacre was the base concept and Eviscerate was a downgraded version come up with because Massacre seemed too strong on paper or something. Which is particularly odd given how underwhelming Massacre usually is.
And... that's all the classes! Next we get started on covering Artifacts.
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