S-TIER | BUILD MERCENAIRE SUPPORTING FIRE STR STACK (@Crouching_Tuna) | SAISON 5

Build Video

Build Overview

This Mercenary build comes down to a single gesture: you walk, you hold down a button, and a rain of arrows covers the screen. Supporting Fire plants a beacon on the ground; from that exact spot, projectiles keep falling on anything that comes into range. Crouching_Tuna reports around 1 million single-target damage per second, which is solid enough for a build whose main selling point is clear speed.

The hidden mechanic is worth dwelling on, because it explains everything else: it’s not your character who’s shooting. Supporting Fire summons an off-screen minion, and that minion fires the arrows. So all of your power scaling runs through minion damage. Hence the Chober Chaber, a weapon whose text ties the two worlds together: « Increases and Reductions to Minion Damage also affect you ». On top of that, the weapon grants +4 to minion skill gem levels and a hefty spirit reservoir; add a +4 sceptre in the other hand and you reach +8 levels total, which remains the build’s main damage lever.

The rest comes down to Strength. The Giant’s Blood keystone lets you wield a two-handed weapon in one hand, but triples the attribute requirements: you need roughly 300 Intelligence just to equip the Chober Chaber. So you stack Strength and Intelligence in parallel: Strength fuels the damage, Intelligence foots the bill and comes with comfortable mana regeneration on the side.

Strengths / Weaknesses

Skill Gem Setup by Step

Crouching_Tuna’s planner contains only one set, the build’s final version: 11 skills and 60 gems in total.

Set 1

Set 1

11 skills • 60 gemmes

Tir de soutienSupporting Fire

MaliceMalice

Clercs squelettiquesSkeletal Cleric

Incendiaires squelettiquesSkeletal Arsonist

BlasphèmeBlasphemy

Meute de loupsWolf Pack

Ravageurs squelettiquesSkeletal Reaver

Tireurs d'élite squelettiquesSkeletal Sniper

Mages de l'orage squelettiquesSkeletal Storm Mage

Dernier soupirLast Gasp

BondissementPounce

Recommended Equipment

• Main hand, the Chober Chaber: the piece without which nothing works. It transfers minion damage bonuses onto you, gives +4 levels to minion gems and a good chunk of Spirit. Look for the copy with the lowest possible Intelligence requirement: it starts at 100 and ends up tripled by Giant’s Blood.
• Off-hand, a sceptre: +4 levels to minion gems, plus Strength and Intelligence. This is what rounds out the +8 total.
• Body armour: maximum Energy Shield and Spirit per filled socket.
• Helmet, gloves, boots: maximum Energy Shield, plus an Intelligence suffix on each of the three pieces. Elemental resistances need to be capped; chaos doesn’t matter, Chaos Inoculation handles that.
• Rings (×2): global attributes, Strength and Intelligence. The new cursed-quality rings roll up to 40% attributes, and Crouching_Tuna calls them « pretty crazy rings ».
• Belt: Strength, increased damage with command skills, and the craftable affix that gives a chance to gain Archon of Undeath when creating an offering (46% on this copy). This slot stays open: Mageblood or Headhunter are solid alternatives, the loss is minor.
• Jewels: three rares carrying 15% increased Energy Shield recharge start speed, then Controlled Metamorphosis, From Nothing (the conduit that unlocks two otherwise-unreachable nodes) and Against the Darkness.

Gameplay Tips

• Re-trigger Archon of Undeath with the Skeletal Arsonist: its command skill is the easiest to chain, and each use gives a 15% chance to trigger the buff.
• Keep Pain Offering as a backup button: linked to Overabundance, it gives you several chances to get Archon of Undeath when the Arsonist isn’t enough.
• Stack Puppet Master before heading out: the first casts cost movement speed, later ones barely any. Chain them at the start of a map.
• Play in WASD: the command skill on left click, held down while walking. That’s what gives the build its « walking simulator » reputation.
• Summon as many different minion types as possible: Muster rewards diversity, not numbers. Each distinct type is worth 7% more damage.
• Go grab the Eaten Rat at the Woven Hold: it’s the cheapest spectre in Spirit cost in the game, so 7% more damage for almost nothing.
• Bidding III or Bidding II? Tier III gives 80% cooldown recovery, tier II gives 30% and adds 30% damage. Under Archon of Undeath, the recovery gap is barely noticeable: tier II remains a defensible choice.

Archon of Undeath: The Engine Behind the Mercenary Supporting Fire Build

This is the buff added this league that convinced Crouching_Tuna to level this character. Archon of Undeath grants 25% additional minion damage and, more importantly, 200% cooldown recovery rate on command skills. Death from Above, the skill that triggers the arrow rain, is one of those: without the buff, its cooldown limits the pace and creates those stalling moments where you’re stuck against a pack. With it, you can chain it almost without interruption.

There are two ways to trigger it. A passive grants a 15% chance per use of a command skill, hence the value of spamming Explosive Demise on the Skeletal Arsonist. A craftable belt affix adds a 46% chance when creating an offering, turning Pain Offering into a reroll button. The author actually demonstrates this unintentionally in the video: five failed 50% rolls in a row before finally landing it.

The piece that changes everything is called Dominion, a hidden notable reached through a very costly anoint. It removes the latency period during which Archon of Undeath can’t be regained. You lose a bit of the buff’s effect, but you keep it active almost permanently, a trade-off Crouching_Tuna considers, without hesitation, worth it.

Chober Chaber and Giant’s Blood: The Strength-Intelligence Trade-off

Chober Chaber was recently buffed, and that’s exactly what makes this build playable today. But the weapon is two-handed: to free up the off-hand and slot in the +4 sceptre, you need to go through Giants Blood, which allows one-handed use by tripling the attribute requirements.

The math then gets tight. Chober Chaber requires 100 base Intelligence, so 300 once tripled, on a character whose entire scaling relies on Strength. Every piece of gear that can carry Intelligence has to carry it: helmet, gloves, boots, both rings, the sceptre. Corruption can lower the weapon’s requirement, which is why a good Chober Chaber sells for a lot.

This cap also explains the gap between the 8,000 Energy Shield of the played version and the theoretical 14,000 from Path of Building. Reaching that second number requires 1,000 Strength from desecrated suffixes on every piece, while still keeping the Intelligence the weapon needs. The author admits that juggling both attributes then becomes very difficult.

The Minion Zoo: Muster and the Rat You Have to Go Find

The line of skeletons following you isn’t just for show. Muster grants 7% additional damage per different type of raised minion: diversity matters more than quantity. So you summon one of each category rather than a homogeneous army.

Hence a rather unusual hunt: the least Spirit-hungry spectre in the game is the Eaten Rat, found in a courtyard of the Woven Hold. Seven percent damage for a negligible Spirit cost is worth the detour. The rest of the menagerie each has its own role: the Skeletal Storm Mage occasionally apply a shock thanks to Overcharge, the Skeletal Reaver breaks armour with Uruks Smelting (a multiplicative reduction for Death from Above) and the Wolf Pack supports Amanamu’s Sight, which keeps three abyss modifiers active at all times.

These minions die a lot; they’re far more fragile than in an actual minion build, since nothing is invested in their survival. That’s why Last Gasp is on every skill bar: four seconds of grace on every death, enough time for the replacement to arrive. Essence Harvest on the Wolf Pack even turns those deaths into mana recovery.

Puppet Master: Removing the Movement Tax

Spamming a command skill comes at a cost: every cast slows the character down. That’s the drawback that, on paper, should make this playstyle a chore. Puppet Master gradually cancels it out.

This node gives a 40% chance to gain a stack every time a command skill is used. Each stack grants minions 2% movement speed, 10% increased damage with command skills, and a reduction to the movement penalty. The more you stack up, the less the next cast costs you, until the penalty becomes almost nonexistent. That’s what allows holding left-click down while walking, and with it the smoothness the build is known for.

The limit is clear: the Mercenary Supporting Fire build is only comfortable while walking. Sprinting nonstop across a map, that feeling drops off noticeably.

Energy Shield: Why Three Jewels Are Worth a Gear Slot

Faster start of energy shield recharge has been heavily cut this league, and it shows directly in play: without it, you take a hit and stay exposed. Crouching_Tuna compensates with three rare jewels each carrying 15% on that stat, plus a node on the new tree that grants 20% faster energy shield recharge while Archon of Undeath is active.

The rest of the Mercenary Supporting Fire build’s defense relies on Chaos Inoculation, which takes care of chaos resistance, and on stacked Strength. Note that the tree shifted during recording: a recharge node the author had taken was moved by yesterday’s patch, and he himself is considering repositioning his Against the Darkness jewel accordingly. Check the up-to-date planner rather than copying the video frame by frame.

Skill Tree