As title says, got a question about a splitspec as a merc

Most mercs have 42 shield 50 DW rest in one specline and parry.

Did anyone ever tried a splitspec in two weaponlines and lack shield?
I just had thoughts about it, as a RR5 merc a e.g. spec would be:

35Thrust (most enemies got chain)
35Slash (nearly the rest in rvr got studded)
50 DW (high damage out of the styles)
rest parry
(problem no usefull stun-attacks, but used maximum out of Autotrain)

or

35 Thrust (most enemies got chain)
35 Crush (well followup of an anytimer, 6sec stun)
50 DW
rest parry
(well not many enemies in grp rvr will suffer due crush but you have a stun)

edit:

new idea (with rr6 or rr7)

34 Thrust (most enemies got chain)
34 Slash (nearly the rest in rvr got studded)
50 DW (styledamage)
34 Shield (8 sec stun behind-style)
rest parry
(maximume out of Autotrain)

what do you think? is it worth to change damage type in rvr but you cant slam/emergency guarder?

This has been done before (mainly by BMs though, can´t recall to many Mercs that did this), and it works great. As long as you have some1 to slam the target for you, you will deal more Damage!

Asloan wrote:This has been done before (mainly by BMs though, can´t recall to many Mercs that did this), and it works great. As long as you have some1 to slam the target for you, you will deal more Damage!

Well yeah some BM uses this splitspec and BM access 5sec sidestun, while merc can only receive a stun with shield or crush
I think i will try some of those splitspecs cause mainly the other merc(s) have shield for a slam

The choice between thrust and slash damage is great in group rvr. Best spec i had so far on my BM.

go for 50DW 30thrust 29slash 42shield. no need for any compromise as alb

Yay, go for that spec when you reach rr11, else you will deal less damage than a melee cleric!

On live, many mercs went for 50dw 34 slash 34 crush, due to the artefacts + 1vs1 valuability thx to crush+stun.

On Uth going 50dw 34 slash 34 thrust would make much more sense for grouprvr, especially due to the fact that you are to be most likely not the only one merc in group for slam.

satz sry i highly doubt u r right. u can go this spec starting from rr4 np. u ll ve a little more variance resulting in a little bit less dmg, thats all. the difference is not that big.
slam on each merc is much more important than some more variance. if u go pure assist train u ve already lost the fight anyway

you can go 50 dw 42 shield 31/31 weapon. Uthgard mechanics are broken, remember? makes minimal difference having composite or not. Besides, you only use DW and thats where the damage comes from anyway.

If you are very worried about this you could still go 50 DW 37 Slash 37 Thrust 23 Shield (for backstun)..

Which weapons would you use with such templates ?

if u run in grp u can just take crafted weapons. no need to waste money in overpriced drops.

I would absolutely go crafted. you wont need (or get) the extra utility, and odds of getting any dropped tiems stats to match up are null.
and honestly, as a merc there are only two kinds of procs youd want for max dps: dot (if not worried abotu snares), and dd. wasting the money for a lower delve lifetap proc seems silly on a dps class as you want to kill things fast.

I pity the fool who actually has to run that spec tho.
- carry shield lefthand and thruster offhand.
- rear stun target trying to run
- drag and drop mainhand
- start styling
- have to drag and drop offhand 50% of the time to match dmg type.

would it pay off? sure. but seems like a buttlaod of work.
-or you could be lazy and neevr swap the offhand weapon, but that will cost you in damage. and the whole point of this excessive swapping was to min/max to the extreme.

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you also miss out on setting up your styles. most hybrid mercs can use the single weapon line anytime instead of DW. this means that if you are slow in swapping out of shield after slam (or if you happen to have to float guard) you can still use styles easily. not knowing whether you will be slash or thrust until inc is a pain because now you need three diffrent weapon lines worth of styles on your bars or qbound.

some of that can be fixed with the some /qbar macros. you could /macro slash /qbar 1 1, /macro thrust /qbar 1 2. then qbind them so you could rapidly switch between slash and thrust styles with one key press. unfortunately im not sure that you can remap your qbars to anything other than the default number keys (and im not sure why you would). on live you would be allowed to use a nostromo to remap them so long as its a 1:1 key correlation (no macro tools to do multiple keystrokes).
On Uthgard you'd be opening yourself up to whatever the GMs interpretation of rule §7.1 "Prohibition of hacks and tools" was. it is not clear if it is possession or use of the tools that will get you in trouble.

Netchel wrote:I would absolutely go crafted. you wont need (or get) the extra utility, and odds of getting any dropped tiems stats to match up are null.
and honestly, as a merc there are only two kinds of procs youd want for max dps: dot (if not worried abotu snares), and dd. wasting the money for a lower delve lifetap proc seems silly on a dps class as you want to kill things fast.

I pity the fool who actually has to run that spec tho.
- carry shield lefthand and thruster offhand.
- rear stun target trying to run
- drag and drop mainhand
- start styling
- have to drag and drop offhand 50% of the time to match dmg type.

would it pay off? sure. but seems like a buttlaod of work.
-or you could be lazy and neevr swap the offhand weapon, but that will cost you in damage. and the whole point of this excessive swapping was to min/max to the extreme.

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you also miss out on setting up your styles. most hybrid mercs can use the single weapon line anytime instead of DW. this means that if you are slow in swapping out of shield after slam (or if you happen to have to float guard) you can still use styles easily. not knowing whether you will be slash or thrust until inc is a pain because now you need three diffrent weapon lines worth of styles on your bars or qbound.

some of that can be fixed with the some /qbar macros. you could /macro slash /qbar 1 1, /macro thrust /qbar 1 2. then qbind them so you could rapidly switch between slash and thrust styles with one key press. unfortunately im not sure that you can remap your qbars to anything other than the default number keys (and im not sure why you would). on live you would be allowed to use a nostromo to remap them so long as its a 1:1 key correlation (no macro tools to do multiple keystrokes).
On Uthgard you'd be opening yourself up to whatever the GMs interpretation of rule §7.1 "Prohibition of hacks and tools" was. it is not clear if it is possession or use of the tools that will get you in trouble.

You dont need to swap offhand. Makes no difference. But yes, it requires to click something. But its np spamming a style while sticked. Swapping between mainhands is easy as it can be binded, its just swapping shield for offhand.

Also, as a merc, theres absolutley, ABSOLUTLEY, no reason to use anything else then DW styles. If youre less then 50 weapon spec, never use anything else besides dw styles.

Not that hard...
1 slam
2 anytime
3 posi side
4 posi back
And this on 3 q-bars for DW, Slash, Thrust.
Well, on the Slash one, youll need Slam and Amethyst only anyway

Having no slam on one of 3 mercs beeing this big of a problem?
Really?
Everyone laughed about shield hybrid mercs until i started this trend about 5 years ago on freeshards, after i watched a live video of a shieldmerc in 1vs1 and liked this idea.

First everyone was like: Eh, what hah youre a shieldmerc, and in about a months time they started popping around, and another 2-3 monthes later, some of the old mercs respecced to shield hybrid.

shield mercs were pretty popular on live ever since FUN II. even tho that merc was only 23 shield for the rear stun.

and yeah what i typed was wrong. your offhand weapon would be dragged and dropped, so if you had a slasher and thruster in bag, you could just drag whichever you wanted to match dmg type. and mainhand weapon could be solved by qbinding slash to right hand, thrust to twohand. then its just one drag and a keypress.
which is technically how i play my merc now.

why use slash or thrust styles when you are 50 DW?

1) someties your shield is out if you swing faster than you were expecting to. if you try a DW style then, you will attack unstyled. if you try a 1h weapon style though you will still hit for good dmg. sure it might only be 95% of the DW anytime, but its a true anytime anytime. unlike an equipment conditional anytime.

2) sometimes you want to keep your shield out to guard. if you ever want to make a peel tank cry, have the assisting merc guard the main assist. the peel tank flies over and tries to slam the main merc, only to have it blocked. they try again, blocked. thanks to no weaponskill penetration and high dex, the guarding merc can block a huge percent of the attacks. which means that you give up a little offhand dmg to gain a whole extra merc attacking. granted, if charge is up, who cares, go DW. but otherwise the best overall dmg for the group would be to lose 40-50% of one mercs dps in order to keep the other merc on the train.