Florensia Mercenary Guide

Florensia Mercenary Guide by Leeman

In this guide I will be going over the two hand and passive skill trees of the Mercenary, if you are looking for a guide for a one hand Mercenary then I suggest you look elsewhere. I will also be going over two popular stat builds for the mercenary however I will not be giving specific ratios etc. for people to use. Take note that what is written here is only from my experiences of playing CB1 and CB2, these are my opinions and what I say doesn’t necessarily make it the truth or the right choice and furthermore changes may occur to this class.

From my memory this is the English Mercenary skill tree, I don’t know why but the
JP version has the skill requirements at different levels.

Spiral Slash
The first attack skill. Damage increase is rather low at level one but helps for effective grinding in the early levels. Mana cost is relatively low but this skill soon becomes useless when you reach higher level skills.

Warriors Shout
A must have buff for any two hand mercenary, not only does this skill increase your striking power by +16% (at level 5) it also increases your attack speed which is rather handy. The buff lasts 60 seconds but costs little in the way of mana so there is no problem having Warriors Shout constantly on whilst your levelling.

Striking Up
A great stun skill that inflicts moderate damage. This skill is essential not only for unlocking later skills but because of the stun duration which lasts 2.5~3 seconds and in addition to this a fast cool down. Although the stun duration is the same as Warriors Strike (see below) and the damage is less, this skill is essential for fast, effective levelling and boss stun-locks.

Provoke
A good skill for many situations. Provoke has saved me, the party and many quest NPCs from certain death. The effectiveness of this skill can not be overlooked. It decreases enemies defence power but increases their attack speed. Although the enemy will now be doing more damage to you, you will be also doing more damage to it and your skills are much more deadly than the average monsters attack, even with provoke on.

Warriors Strike
Although not in the two hand tree, it rests in the middle. This skill is somewhat like Striking Up but with more benefits. Compared to Striking Up (see above) this skill provides more striking power and in addition causes bleed on the enemy over 15 seconds. The stun duration is again around 2.5~3 seconds and the cool down time is low. Use this skill in conjunction with Striking Up for some awesome stun-lock combos.

Zoom
A passive ability that adds to your accuracy. I didn’t find any use in going higher than level 1 in this skill because even with low accuracy you still hit monsters 95% of the time. Each point of quickness gives +1 accuracy and upgrading your gloves also gives an additional bonus to accurary so for the time being I’d say this is a skill to stay at level 1.

Stone Skin
A passive ability that adds to your defence. This is a good skill even for a two hand build, it raises your defence by quite a lot per level and is useful when cancelling out the negative effect of Light Warrior (see below.)

Cutting Sacrifice
Sacrifice up to 20% of your health to deal massive damage to the enemy. A good skill, the reuse time is very high at 45 seconds so effective levelling is not guaranteed with this skill. However for a low level skill this does deal out an incredible amount of damage however take note that as a two hand build you wont have a massive pool of health so take care when you use this skill, especially in a boss fight.

Two hand mastery
A passive ability that increases your natural striking power with two hand swords. Not much can be said about this skill other than to get it.

Life Force
A passive ability which increases your maximum health. At level one the increase is 100hp, and I believe it goes up in increments of 40hp after that i.e. lvl2 = 140hp, lvl3 = 180hp. This is a good skill as it adds much needed health to your build when tanking (yes unfortunately you have to tank sometimes) or taking a beating from a boss.

Tornado Slash
An area of effect skill (AoE) which deals massive damage to targets surrounding your player. A great skill for partying with other AoE classes or damaging the bosses ‘ads’. Mana wise this skill takes up a lot and the cooldown is less than to be desired at one minute so I can’t see this as being an effective levelling skill just yet but at higher levels it may surprise me. Just a little note: this is the coolest looking Mercenary skill i’ve seen, its worth it just to look at.

Aggressive
A passive ability that increases continuous striking power. I believe this skill adds more damage the more times you hit the monster but I’m not certain of this, it may however just add onto your base damage but I never did testing with it.

Light Warrior
A must have buff for strength builds. This skill increases your attack speed (which stacks with Warriors Shout) and movement speed but decreases your defence by 10. At the max level of Light Warrior and Warriors Shout, the attack speed of your two hand will be 1.35 seconds which is 0.05 seconds slower than a one hand sword. The increase in movement speed makes getting around the map and to monsters a lot quicker, the only major downside to this skill, apart from the -10 defence is that it costs around 100 mana and only lasts for 60 seconds.

Cutting Raging Wind
The highest level skill for the mercenary. A very high damaging skill which adds around +140 attack power at level one. This skill is a must for boss fights and some mob fights as it deals out the real damage that your mercenary is capable of. The downside is that the cool down is around 15 seconds and costs ~50 mana at level one.

STR vs. INT
A question which I often saw in the shout channel was whether being an int build mercenary was a good call, I can safely say that it is but I will now go over the Pros and Cons of each build.

STR
Pros:

• High two hand damage with a fast attack speed (if using Light Warrior and Warriors Shout) • More health than the int build which will make you harder to take down

Cons:

• Low mana pool, you will need a lot of potions if your using many skills. This can take up a lot of inventory space • Your skills will not do as much damage as could. E.g. Str: ~400dmg with Cutting Raging Wind, Int: ~600dmg with Cutting Raging Wind

INT
Pros:

• High skill damage • A large mana pool and mana regen (if wis is high enough) so you can spam skills

Cons:

• Low health so you are fragile against bosses and in PvP • Low two hand damage

What do I think is better?
At the moment I’d say that the int build certainly is faster for levelling in the later levels but I’m not sure how effective it will be in the earlier levels. Please note that nerfing of the mercenary may happen and the int build may become much more worse than it currently is. Below is an example comparing the strength of the int build to the str build in PvE.

STR: As a level 36, I was killing level 36~37s in about 10~15 seconds getting hit 2 maybe 3 times.
INT: As a level 36, I was killing level 39s in the same amount of time as the level 36~37s but only being hit once.

However in PvP I’m undecided, although you will be dealing a lot more damage to other places with an int build you will also have a lot less health, so if you don’t stun first, the likelihood is that you are going to die if you are against a decent player, with good equipment.

Future Updates? mainly rumours although some are stronger than others, the final decisions are down to the Florensia team. I just put these here so you can think about your future builds for your Mercenary
• Warriors Strike will no longer have a stun effect
• Bosses and monsters will be able to use skills
• There will be a passive stun resistance ability at the second job
• There may be a third job

General Tips
• Pull monsters with Provoke or your Rifle
• Level on monsters which give you the highest exp per 10 minutes
• Don’t be afraid to use potions, money is easy to get. I usually carry 400+ health potions and 200+ mana potions
• Experiment with different skills and stat effects, just because i’ve written this guide doesn’t make me right about anything