Destroyer/Hammer Merc skill build/guide by kommand

Note: all information below come from our volunteers in the Freedom guild, thanks for their efforts.

Destroyer build by request of Chaose5of Freedom







Why do you get all skills? Looksnoobish but i think its neccesary. It just turns out that most mercenary skillshave a retardly long cooldown so if you want to make use of your superarmor andkeep the spamming.. I suggest you do take all the mercenary skills. I suggesttaking out heavy slash and heavy hook from your skill bar when at PVE to makespace for ur Merc skills. Well the build is pretty self-explanatory to peoplewho have a decent experience playing mercs but for those still wondering..

Lvl 5 Battlehowl: Have I stressed howimportant crits are for hammer mercs? See below for reason why

Lvl 4 Iron skin: making it lvl 5 wontadd much. Only 2.5 armor and same duration :(

Lvl 3 Rolling attack and whirlwind: These2 skills are just equally good and important in my opinion. Although whirlwindis the boss slayer, rolling attack is just better at everything else beside it.Lvling both to 3 is all my sp can afford for it.

Breakig point at lvl 2: Yeah i canjust place it at lvl 1 just to get maelstrom howling but it's still decent atpvp so I decided to put it at 2.

Gigantic Bomber: The skill you get ifyou decide to use hammer Ok so some people say that this one of the worstultimates ever... well it USED to BE. But ever since the patch came where merctech tree got changed this skill has been buffed pretty damn well. Even if thepatch notes say its only a 20% buff I could hardly believe thats all there isto it. Well imma just show the damage my Giga Bomber used to deal pre-patch inthe first few minutes of this vid:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arVB9r7Wv_0&;feature=mfu_in_order&list=ULand compare it immediately at my test run immediately after the said patch:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw7oOC_TWlA&;feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL...Note that I did not change any of equips/stats in both tests. And yes themonster is different and fat bastard may have higher defense but seriously...18k to 90k (later I tested out my damage to fat bastard reached 34k on 1 of 2hits of the ulti no crit).... You can do the math and see Giga Bomber has 1586%damage with only 120 sec CD and Typhoon Wheel
has a damage of 1663% but with a CD of 150 secs! Not to mention Gigabomber is not only fast but safe to cast from a distance. I can pretty muchtell that GB is the better PVE ulti compared to TW. Though Typhoon Wheel isstill the ultimate PVP skill (for obvious reasons).

Typhoon Wheel: The skill you get ifyou decided to use axe. Pretty notorious skill in PVP, for bringing a wholegroup in Protection down in your knees. Using this skill is also so easy all youneed to do is to get a little near your enemy and just click the button.. noaiming, no need for combo.. no strategy (does casting your iron skin andcharging to the wilderness count as a strategy?).

Tips before making a merc:

If you plan to make a mercenary asyour first char and you don't have a lot of cash to back it up. I must warn youthat in this game Mercenaries are probably the most gear-dependent class. Why?Cuz well.. we don't have block, parry, no range, no evasive maneuvers and ourskills our slow so at the end of the day we do get hit. Mercs compensate byhaving superamor skills (skills that when cast reduce damage and immune to flinching)but even superarmor wont save you on noobish armors.. also if you decide tododge too much your DPS would most likely be garbage cuz the skills are slowand tends to be inturrepted. Im not saying mercs are weak.. again im justsaying that we are gear dependent. My main character was a paladin first and itfunded my merc pretty well.

Tips before making a hammer merc:

If your making one cuz hammers arecheaper than axes.. or because hammers have good stun and delay stat.. then Iadvise you to reconsider. Stun and Delay are pretty much INVISIBLE stats now... Iused to have 15,500 stun and all I got was a few laughs for easily downing theonly one boss (Black Manticore) that is affected by it. Delay.. is also not noticeablein PVE, and a guy name Fearless from freedom said it doesn't do much on pvpanymore just like what my observations are telling me,, The one good thingabout hammers though is that it have pretty good max damage compared to axes. Alvl 40 grade A axe would only have 700+ max damage while a hammer would giveyou 1k.. You can make use of this by raising your critical parameters withbattle howl, crests and pot codes. Crit ensure that ur damage will always be onthe upper limits of your attack power. 6-7k crit (not including buff) isessential and rewarding... but if don't reach that then the low minimum damage ofhammers would hurt your DPS a lot. So its as costy to fund a hammer merc thanan axe merc.


Analysis of 3rd job skills:If you don't have much experience about using mercs then you can stay away fromthis one.

Analysis of Destroyer skills:

Breaking point: Woah this skills isridiculously overpowered! To the point that if have a multi-hit skill ready(eg. Rising Slash, Whirlwind, Rolling attack etc,) you can be confident thatyou will cancel out the monster's attack! But theres a catch to it... The developersmade this skill not work for NEST BOSSES making this skill from overpowered to PITIFUL.Seriously how dumb can a balancing design get to make one class-defining skillworthless to something you'll be doing 80% of the time playing this game. Thisis the reason why some mercs stray away from the Destroyer class. A part of mestill hopes that the developers will think of changing this skill in the future.. But while one skill flops let's see what our lvl 47 and lvl 50 skill has tooffer..

Flying Swing Ex: Thank goodness thedevs didn't screw this up.. in PVP its still hard to hit enemies just usedmainly for its armor. Flying swing has always been the staple merc skill in PVEwith not only offensive, defensive and armor breaking purposes its also one ofthe few merc skill that have a low CD and is the best damaging among them..Though its damage lose out to other skills when kept at lvl 3 but Barbs willstill use this skill to save their ass in dire situations. Destroyers have the luxuryto buff this skill up to a useful 11 and get 60% (each shockwave deals 20%)bonus damage more. Now thats a worthy damage boost.




MaelstromHowling: Excellent skill.. PVE this prolly the best mob-control you'll everhave. Its base damage is higher than bone crush and why would you not likeanother life saving heavy –armored skill the skills triggers fast as well and doesn'thave a long delay after casting so it won't put you in danger like the othermerc skills. In PVP its pretty awesome too.. The suction effect deals minordamage so it flinches its victims making them unable to blink or do anythingmaking everything within its range to NOT BE ABLE TO ESCAPE, and I must say therange (higher range and AOE than circle swing!) and suction of this skill is justepic, that my guildmate nicknamed it "Blackhole on steroids".

Analysis of Barbarian skills: 

Heat Combo: Really good skill, cuz itworks on nest bosses too unlike Breaking Point. The damage boost is ok but thescary part of it is when its boosted by the FU's time accel. Cant really thinkof much to say about this skill since its just all about damage.

Stomp Ex: Some mercs decide to dropthis skill for a few reasons.. First why would someone spent so much SP on anattack skill that wont contribute much to his DPS anyway? Stomp is pretty muchjust a mob control skill yet mob control in this game lose out in importance inthe long run. In PVP the skill is pretty good but just like crisis howl..sometimes it just don't hit.. sometimes the 2nd wave doesn't evenappear.. Also the slow effect is as even more unnoticeable than the SM'sHemmorhage skill. Its still a must get skill if ur a PVP fan.

Bone Crush: Good but kinda overrated?...the 397 bonus damage this skill gives is not converted by skill % attackbonus.. so it happens the bonus you get from battle howl will be 3x more noticeable.If any barbarians can correct me on this please do cuz that's the only thing Ifound testing this skill on the lvl 45 quest. Another downside to this skill isthe long delay both on execution and after it.. so in pvp its really easy tododge and counter.. to the point that if someone gets hit on it does an aerialevade does a drop kick the caster would actually be hit.

This is my opinion about hammer/axemercs:

PVP: one on one and protection, In myopinion both hammerers and axers are on equal ground now cuz of Maelstorm howl,but I have no ability to browse to Kr and Chinese forums to see destroyers makegood use of this skill in pvp.
Nests: Pretty equal even without breakingpoint hammers are compensated by better pve skills like GB, and FSeX.
SDN: Barbarian wins this one cuz theycan max their howl taunting without losing much DPS (stomp ex is so easy tosacrifice) and even the 397 flat bonus of Bone Crush would help with 8 peoplehitting the same mob, and if theres an FU it would help a barb pretty nice.However I don't think that destroyers are
completely useless in this one cuz ive beenthrough SDN for only about 4-5 times and I noticed Breaking point works in alot of monsters there namely the ogres of stage 2 and the lizards of stage 5,and suctioning/superarmor could help in various occasions as well.


Some people go as far as to thinkDestroyers are "useless".. well that's just laughable.. The gap between barband destroyer is nowhere near as far as majesty & smasher nor inquisitor &saint. Who knows if the developers make breaking point to a "decent" skill alot more people would consider being one. For me im pretty happy with FSeX andMaelstrom howling so I don't regret being a destroyer.. Those skills just looksmuch more bad-ass fashion-wise. xD