I have been playing in NS for a year now and I saw many changes that improved many underpowered classes so now I would like to make some suggestions for Mercenary – the class I’ve been playing for almost half a year. This is based on my own experience with different gears over time so please take some consideration at it.

First I will list out the reason why this class needs improvement:

- PvE aspect: In general, a mercenary’s roll in a party is fairly unimportant compare to any other classes
A merc is a little bit tanky but compared to real tanker like knight and guardian who can constantly keep aggro now having a merc in tank roll is not a good choice. In dps role, merc’s dmg output is quite weak compare to berserker, gladiator (these 2 power classes have decent diminishing defense skills and ignore def skills so they play a much better role than merc does) shadow walker, adventurer, scout, hunter (these agility classes have better diminishing defense skills than berserker’s or gladiator’s so they benefit the whole party in general), magician and warlock (2 classes with best damage output in pve).

- PvP aspect: As most classes have been buffed, mercenary becomes even weaker.
Agility classes now have much more evasion than they could have because of the evasion figure in their mail gears. In a fight they can survive much easier than a mercenary with any build (tank build, evasion build or dps build in a same gear situation) Mercenary might have higher damage output compare to hunter, scout or shadow walker as they are not supported much with ignore defense skills but an adventurer with 3 short cooldown ignore defense skills they probably can out damage the mercenary.

The other Power classes mainly berserker, gladiator or barbarian usually has an upper hand in combat if they are in same situation as merc:

Barbarian can use 4 ignore def skills in both their skill tree and 2handed weapon skill tree with a rate of 10 ignore defense hits per minute. This class also has high dmg DoT skills that cover their weakness of damage output (ie: 700 dmg, 1k dmg per second with their 2 short cooldown skills). They have the same kinds of buffs that mercenary has but more offensive (as merc’s are more defensive).

Berserker and Gladiator have always been the overpowered classes in this game as they can be in combat with a long duration of having ignore defense hits with them ( Gladiator with an average of 18 ignore def hits per minute and Berserker with an average of 21 ignore def hits per minute combining with a reset cooldown skill as well).
What merc has is a rate of 17 ignore defense hits per minute given that their chilled tempest penetration buff works every 2 mins (this skill is unstable and you cannot really depend on it as sometimes it doesn’t even work in a whole Death match) Unlike the other power classes, the skills Mercenary has are quite dependent on luck and even with them working properly they are still nothing compare to either of the other 3 classes. I find it hard to defeat berserker, gladiator with the same gear as mine (self skills might be a factor but I’ve played mercenary for so long and it’s quite hard to win classes with many active ignore def skills with them).

Magical base classes are quite strong against Mercenary. Warlock has high dmg output as it’s magical based combining with the windfort skill it has which is impossible for mercenary to disable. A warlock can be immune to mercenary’s hit for 30 seconds and constantly deal back high value of damage. Magician as recent buffs applied, it can chain stun, slow and immobilize the target much better than before with a shield value of 20k dmg block so even with immunity skills of mercenary it’s still quite a challenge to chase and kill one.


As stated above, you can see that Mercenary has quite a problem with its role in this game so here is some suggestions (that I think) are necessary for this class:

- Charge: Increase charge’s stun duration from 1.5 sec to 3 sec. Reason: charging in with a 1.5 sec duration you basically can only hit the target once and mercenary’s damage output depends on a combo skill that u must pull off, 3 sec will allow Merc to use that combo skill that takes at least 2 constant hits to work.

- Accelerated Jab 2: Change the provoke effect of accelerated jab 2 from +10 defense in 20 secs to either +200 evasion value (20%) or +200 hitchance value (20%) in 20 secs. Reason: Accelerated Jab and Accelerated 2 are basically two useless skills as they add 10 defense on proc (even if they do proc they give no bonus so it’s just a fake figure).

- Chilled Tempest Penetration: Increase its chance to activate to a higher figure or 30%. Reason: this skill requires you to hit the target to activate the buff it gives, as mercenary is melee, it’s hard enough to even touch the target and a too low chance to activate makes this skill somewhat unreliable.

- bWarrior’s Will: Increase the max duration from 10 to 20 secs. Reason: a 10 secs immunity to stun won’t help you as most classes have skills with slow debuffs, immobilize debuffs lasting for more than 5 secs that totally shut down Mercenary’s effectiveness as a melee fighter. Having a longer duration of stun immunity would really help a lot in pvp situation as now Magician can chain stun you still in 1 place for a really long period of time.

- Devided Slash 2: increase the max value of the debuff from 260 to 320. Reason: even though it’s a small bonus but it would help if u have 6% more chance to successfully hit people with high evasion value.

- Tempest Slice: increase the max value of the debuff from 47 to 100. Reason: as stated above, a better chance to hit people with really high evasion value is always a good improvement even though it’s small.

Sorry for the lengthy post but this idea I’ve been keeping for so long and recently I've found that this improvement is even much more needed to help balancing the game.