There's a lot to love about the Bounty Hunter in Star Wars the Old Republic. Namely, you get to blow stuff up and set things on fire... a lot.  In this first player guide, we'll take a look at the Mercenary Advanced Class and offer some insight on how you should play it.  Feel free to add your own thoughts below! The Mercenary is an advanced class of the Bounty Hunter. Its skill trees are Bodyguard, Arsenal and Pyrotech. The Pyrotech tree is shared with the Powertech Advanced Class, but for now we're focusing solely on the Merc.  Also worth noting? The Mercenary is the mirror class of the Commando, meaning names and animations of skills may be different, but the class functions exactly the same.  We'll visit the Pyrotech Tree and PVP strategies in a later guide.

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• Bodyguard is a healing spec that uses probes to heal quickly with kolto injections.
• Arsenal is a DPS tree that uses missiles to damage enemies and lower their armor.
• Pyrotech is a shared tree that focuses on better management of heat and self-preservation.

Playing a Bodyguard:

Essential Skills:

• Power Surge: Your next ability with an activation time will activate instantly. Effect lasts 15 seconds.
• Cure: Cleanses a friendly target of up to 2 negative tech or physical effects.
• Healing Scan:  Heals a friendly target
• Combat Support Cylinder: While active, Rapid Shots charges your powercell with each use. Charges increase all damage and healing dealt, up to a maximum of 3% at 30 charges. In addition, targeting an ally with Rapid Shots will heal the target for 100% of your tech bonus healing. Only one cylinder can be active at a time.
• Rapid Scan: Heals a friendly target.
• Emergency Scan: Instantly heals a friendly target.
• Kolto Missile: Heals up to 3 allies within 8 meters of the targeted area.
• Kolto Shell: Deploys a kolto shell around the target that has 10 charges and lasts 5 minutes. When damaged, the kolto shell loses 1 charge and heals the target. This effect cannot occur more than once every 3 seconds. Only one Kolto Shell can be deployed at a time.
• Supercharged Gas: Converts 30 charges of Combat Support Cylinder to supercharge your blasters, venting 16 heat and increasing all damage and healing dealt by 10% for 10 seconds. While active, the following abilities gain Supercharge effects:
  • Healing Scan: Cooldown reduced by 100%.
  • Kolto Missile: Places a shield on all targets, reducing damage taken by 10% for 15 seconds.
• Rapid Shots: Fires a quick stream of bolts, causing weapon damage.

Bodyguard is a very basic healing spec. Healing Scan, Rapid Scan and Rapid Shots will be your main heals. Rapid Shots heals if used on friendly targets if you have Combat Support Cylinder active. As an instant heal that causes no heat it can be spammed but the amount healed is very low. Healing Scan has a cast time, generates 16 heat and is on a 12 second cooldown and if talented will reduce the heat generated by your next Rapid Scan. Rapid Scan is a weaker version of Healing Scan without a cooldown, but generates 25 heat unless used after a Healing Scan. Rapid Scan will also generate three extra charges of Combat Support Cylinder if talented. Cure removes debuffs, Kolto Shield allows your tank to get hit harder without dying as fast through its damage absorption, Kolto Missiles lets you heal 3 targets at once while increasing the healing they receive by 10% if talented and Emergency Scan is just that, an instant heal for emergency situation.

Playing an Arsenal:

Essential Skills:

• High Velocity Gas Cylinder: Loads your blaster with a high velocity gas cylinder. While active, armor penetration is increased by 35%. Only one cylinder can be active at a time.
• Heatseeker Missiles: Fires several missiles that deal kinetic damage. This damage is increased by 5% per heat signature on the target.
• Rapid Shots: Fires a quick stream of bolts, causing weapon damage.
• Tracer Missile: Launches a missile at the target that deals kinetic damage and applies a heat signature, reducing the armor rating by 4% for 15 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times. Heat signatures leave the target vulnerable to Rail Shot.
• Unload: Unloads your blaster into the target, dealing weapon damage every second. Weak and standard enemies caught in the blaster fire are stunned for the duration. Fires both blasters if dual wielding.
• Rail Shot: Fires a very powerful shot at the target that deals weapon damage. Only usable against incapacitated targets and targets suffering from periodic damage.

The Arsenal spec is all about reacting to procs and layering debuffs. Unload is your most powerful attack with talents nearly doubling its power, and attacks causing the cooldown to finish much earlier than it would alone. Tracer Missile is your main attack, adding heat signatures to the target, lower its armor and causing your next Rail Shot to do more damage. Heatseeker Missiles also does a large amount of damage but is not prioritized as high as using unload. Its advantage is that it is an instant attack. If everything else is on cooldown, and you have all 5 stacks of Tracer Lock built, throwing in a Rail Shot won’t hurt your damage. Rapid Shot is your filler shot when your heat is too high and vent heat is on cooldown. Using any skill is better than using no skill, but if you can manage, every skill is better than Rapid Shot.

Playing a Pyrotech:

• Power Shot: Charges up both blasters and fires off two powerful shots that deal weapon damage. requires two blasters.
• Incendiary Missile: Fires a missile that explodes on contact, igniting the target for elemental damage and additional elemental damage over 18 seconds.
• Rail Shot: Fires a very powerful shot at the target that deals weapon damage. Only usable against incapacitated targets and targets suffering from periodic damage.
• Combustible Gas Cylinder: Loads your blaster with combustible gas, giving all of your blaster attacks a 10% chance to deal additional elemental damage over 6 seconds. Only one cylinder can be active at a time.
• Unload: Unloads your blaster into the target, dealing weapon damage every second. Weak and standard enemies caught in the blaster fire are stunned for the duration. Fires both blasters if dual wielding.
• Rapid Shots: Fires a quick stream of bolts, causing weapon damage.
• Vent Heat: Rapidly vents 50 heat over 3 seconds.

The Pyrotech is a very CC focused spec with lots of dots. For PvE rotation, Incendiary Missile should be your first attack used and used again just before its dot runs out to keep the burning effect up. Besides that Rail Shot will be your strongest attack, ignoring 30% of your targets armor, venting 8 heat after use and refreshing Combustible Gas Cylinders burn effect if active. To get full use of Rail Shot as a Mercenary though, using Unload on cooldown and Power Shot as a filler will reset the cooldown of Rail Shot and make it free. On those occasions where you have too much heal, use Rapid Shots to give it a chance to cool down. Luckily the Pyrotech spec gets 30 seconds off the cooldown of vent heat.  To be honest, it's probably the least useful tree of the bunch, but it's great for certain situations.

The Mercenary Wrap-Up

Ultimately, how you play the Mercenary is completely up to you.  As both a healer and a DPS class, it can really lay down the hurt and offer up plenty of support when need be.  The Powertech is the more tank-appropriate class, but for players looking for a lot of versatility and the ability to step up and heal when their team needs it, there's no better Empire Advanced Class than the Mercenary.