I haven’t touched Mercenary for months and nobody reported this problem so far so I’m curious, does anybody play Mercenary at all?
Haha, I guess not. Considering the sexiness of the others you made its kind of an ugly sister.
So considering this and also looking at MP games I see that the most popular classes are Stalker, Nosferatu and Voidcaller so I’m assuming I have to do something with this class. What’s your opinion?
Voted new mastery, though Frost Knight is pretty cool (I have breifly tried the exisitng Frost Night mod).
Soldier still kinda fills the ‘mercenary’ option so I haven’t bothered with it.
Would like maybe a Chaos/Physical class? I really like combos like Shadow Strike and Ring of Steel for dash-stun/freeze-finish for melee.
I find the problem with ‘Soldier’ type classes is the animations are quite limited (unlike i.e. Diablo 3 where there are heaps of melee animation types/skills that differentiate them - ignoring the issues of that game…), so they feel ‘samey’ in the end.
Therefore in GD I find the best melee skills are those that add an effect like Primal Strike, Amarasta’s Blade Burst, your Elemental Burst in Paragon class, etc. Those make melee attacks interesting where animations don’t exist otherwise 
Agreed there is not much to add
To follow up, I would really like a super mobile melee class (Assassin?)
Perhaps with the expansion offering (?) pistol/melee combo this becomes even more interesting.
The class:
More than one ‘Dashing strike’ type skill, with different effects on impact - explode, stun, lay mine, confuse, etc
High single target damage skills, with some CC too (slows, stuns)
Naturally squishy but very mobile and hard hitting. Target prioritisation becomes key, rather than AoE/tankiness.
Cannot equip shields.
Fire/Vitality or Chaos based perhaps?
Use energy for increased movespeed…
i did go through a phase of everything being merc as secondary 
i have voted replace with new mastary but ide be happy with frost night 
I did play frostknight in DIAL, and it was a pretty underwhelming experience. Slow, difficult by itself. Probably unbalanced when maxed and combo’ed with other classes, but getting there might be painful.
Mercenary, on the other hand, has a flexible and strong (although bugged as of now) LMB, 2H and 2W support, phy/trauma/pierce and bleeding support, which makes it pretty handy. It also gives good all around defenses and useful skills early on in the tree. Personally, I’m loving the templar (druid + mercenary) for the phy/trauma and tanky setup.
I wouldn’t remove it, really. Maybe add a bit of elemental support and revise a few skills, but it’s a great alternative to soldier for now (as a jack of all trades melee class). And Soldier is sooooo boring!
I want to change my vote. Luperkal has changed my mind from new mastery. My childish side made my choice for me, always wanting new toys instead of appreciating what I have. Tune that bad boy up!
Any ideas what skills should be changed/replaced?
I haven’t played it but I would start with the name. Mercenary is very dry and basic. Maybe Desperado or Praetorian, something with a bit more flavor.
I like most skills, really. That said…
Evasion is a bit dull. The class could go with a few defensive buffs though. Also there’s whirling blades (or whirling death?) and a very similar skill, which feel redundant. The latter is a weaker but non-melee version and I guess it could be better for ranged chars, but I see too little support for ranged chars in this class anyway (too bad bolt launcher! I’ve got like 20 of them from mysterious lockers…). Also, whirling death needs a slightly larger radius imo.
As for Berserk stance, I dig it. It’s very strong and straight forward. I see why the cooldown is long, of course, but perhaps it’s a little too long. I don’t want to be able to spam it, even with high CDR, so it shouldn’t need like 30 seconds of recharge. I’d say 55 would be better than 60, and it should also last a little longer. Say, 20 seconds instead of 15. It would refresh even faster that way, thanks to the built-in cooldown reduction.
All in all my advice is: rework Evasion (not the cleansing skill! I like that one); remove the whirling death ranged clone (maybe replace it with a defensive aura, buff or passive), fine-tune Berserk.
Hmm… Mercenary is usually my secondary class and I can’t remember the last time I used breaking blows.
Pretty much this. It’s a bit of a halfway between Soldier and Nightblade (since it has DW options) and so can go well with either while not feeling completely redundant. That’s why I voted for leave it.
Forgot to ask, what’s wrong with it?