Mercenary vs Foot Knight

[Ziggylata]

Mercenary gives everyone temporary health and knocks down all nearby enemies, which is really useful for keeping your teammates alive via confirming a revive in a cluster of enemies or giving that extra bit of health in a boss fight.

Footknight has the aura that reduces damage on teammates as well as himself, 25% more health, and more stamina. His charge also seems useful but it doesnt seem as useful as id like, not doing anything against the chaos knight boss.

I think theyre both good but im just not sure which is better, I know I dont like Mercenarys passive but I really like his skill.

[Kao]

I'm quite in the same position, trying to figure out which one favours my playstyle.
the FK charge proved useful to me several times, for example when a friend is being mobbed while downed, I can charge to him, hold parry and revive him easily.
Also I use the charge A LOT to get out of a smoke cloud, to avoid being surrounded, or to close in on a special so I can either 1 shot him with my coach gun or mow him down. it's also good to stop an assassin/packrat from incapacitating a friend (i'm not sure the Merc shout does that)
Moreover (wow I actually used that word in my life), you can stagger a boss with the charge, giving your team precious seconds to deal damage or get back in shape.
The charge might seem less impressive than the shout, but you can be really creative with it.

as for the other passives, I guess it depends on your playstyle. if you like aggressive then surely merc might be better for the crit aura. I like to be a cc-bot with very high sustain so I go FK.

I look forward to hearing about other krub mains and their POVs

[Ziggylata]

Originally posted by Kaozium:

I'm quite in the same position, trying to figure out which one favours my playstyle.
the FK charge proved useful to me several times, for example when a friend is being mobbed while downed, I can charge to him, hold parry and revive him easily.
Also I use the charge A LOT to get out of a smoke cloud, to avoid being surrounded, or to close in on a special so I can either 1 shot him with my coach gun or mow him down. it's also good to stop an assassin/packrat from incapacitating a friend (i'm not sure the Merc shout does that)
Moreover (wow I actually used that word in my life), you can stagger a boss with the charge, giving your team precious seconds to deal damage or get back in shape.
The charge might seem less impressive than the shout, but you can be really creative with it.

as for the other passives, I guess it depends on your playstyle. if you like aggressive then surely merc might be better for the crit aura. I like to be a cc-bot with very high sustain so I go FK.

I look forward to hearing about other krub mains and their POVs

Mercenary doesnt get a crit aura I believe?

EDIT: When youre level 15, you can choose to spread your increased damage, more enemies hit and increased crit chance to allies as well so essentially youre kind of right.

[#1 Slime NA]

Huntsman gets crit aura, Merc just gets higher crit chance for himself.

Footknight is pretty much pure control, best used with a shield. Can use a 2h hammer okay but the ironbreaker is a much better 2h hammer user, because he has better talents and a better passive for it as well as drakefires to fall back on for secondary CC when necessary.

Merc can go either way. He's never going to be nearly as tanky or have as much stamina but he can still play a good controlling role and do a ton of damage at the same time with the 2h hammer, abusing the fact that it works amazingly well with his bonus cleave and attack speed passive. He brings good support with paced strikes AoE talent and raise morale, and even the crit chance bonus synergizes well with his supporting skills because A) hammer cleaves and staggers harder on crits, and B) you can roll the trait that reduces your ability cooldown on crit, giving you more raise morale to spam.

That's assuming you wanted to play control merc. If you want to go halberd or something merc is miles better than footknight.

[Ziggylata]

Originally posted by One Elf Spear Wall:

Huntsman gets crit aura, Merc just gets higher crit chance for himself.

Footknight is pretty much pure control, best used with a shield. Can use a 2h hammer okay but the ironbreaker is a much better 2h hammer user, because he has better talents and a better passive for it as well as drakefires to fall back on for secondary CC when necessary.

Merc can go either way. He's never going to be nearly as tanky or have as much stamina but he can still play a good controlling role and do a ton of damage at the same time with the 2h hammer, abusing the fact that it works amazingly well with his bonus cleave and attack speed passive. He brings good support with paced strikes AoE talent and raise morale, and even the crit chance bonus synergizes well with his supporting skills because A) hammer cleaves and staggers harder on crits, and B) you can roll the trait that reduces your ability cooldown on crit, giving you more raise morale to spam.

That's assuming you wanted to play control merc. If you want to go halberd or something merc is miles better than footknight.

I do love my long halberd, long weapons are a favorite of mine. Going back to merc now that I can give the paced strikes to allies as well.

[Ostrava of Boletaria]

Overall I'd say mercenary is a little better but this is also influenced by fk having to compete with ironbreaker, and ironbreaker is a meme. Foot knight is tons of fun and can be useful but mercenary can also cc quite well while killing like 3 enemies every time he swings his halberd while having more talent variety (revive on his ability is really good).

Another thing to consider is that foot knight's resistance aura is actually pretty small and doesn't come into play much. He'd be a bit more viable if that got a significant buff to range. Also, I'd like to see foot knight provide a bit more offensive capability to really distinguish him from ironbreaker. Perhaps this can be done by expanding on the concept of his aura and making the choices he has more interesting - suppose for example the option to remove the damage resistance on his aura but have it instead provide 10-15% power to people within it.