S-TIER | BUILD MERCENAIRE SUPPORTING FIRE TACTICIAN (@KallTorak) | SAISON 5

Build Video

Build Overview

Welcome to this guide for the Supporting Fire Tactician build, nicknamed the « One Button King » by its creator KallTorak. As the name suggests, this build revolves around a single skill: Supporting Fire, an exclusive ability of the Mercenary’s Tactician ascendancy that rains a massive volley of arrows down on your enemies. And yes, you can increase its area of effect enough to hit monsters off-screen. The result is an incredibly comfortable gameplay loop where you sprint through zones while arrows sweep away everything that moves.

Introduced in patch 0.2 but long overlooked, Supporting Fire received massive improvements in patch 0.5 that finally make it a solid skill. This build also benefits from the new season’s buffs to deflection, armour, armour/evasion, minions, new Breach rings, and belts — all while making command skills much more enjoyable to play.

Beyond comfort, it is an excellent league starter: it is solo self-found (SSF) and hardcore compatible, and has already cleared all tier 3 content in both modes. Its distinctive feature is scaling on both Strength (damage) and Dexterity (area of effect), making the character naturally durable through stat stacking, armour, and deflection.

Strengths / Weaknesses

Skill Gem Setup by Step

This build offers 6 progression steps from leveling to the final build. Select a step to see the corresponding gem setup.

Act 1 Crossbow Act 1 Minions Act 2 Supporting Fire Start Act 3 – Cartes End Game Deep Late Game

Acte 1 Crossbow

5 skills • 8 gemmes

Grenade explosiveExplosive Grenade

Contagion

Bombe de givreFrost Bomb

Grenade assourdissanteFlash Grenade

Danseur du ventWind Dancer

Acte 1 Minions

6 skills • 9 gemmes

Grenade explosiveExplosive Grenade

Contagion

Bombe de givreFrost Bomb

Tireurs d'élite squelettiquesSkeletal Sniper

Mur de flammesFlame Wall

Esprits enragésRaging Spirits

Acte 2 – Supporting Fire Start

7 skills • 15 gemmes

Tir de soutien

Tireurs d'élite squelettiquesSkeletal Sniper

Guerrier squelettiqueSkeletal Warrior

Mages de givre squelettiquesSkeletal Frost Mage

Bondissement

Mur de flammesFlame Wall

Bombe de givreFrost Bomb

Acte 3 – Cartes

9 skills • 35 gemmes

Tir de soutien

Tireurs d'élite squelettiquesSkeletal Sniper

Guerrier squelettiqueSkeletal Warrior

Incendiaires squelettiquesSkeletal Arsonist

Mages de givre squelettiquesSkeletal Frost Mage

Bondissement

Mur de flammesFlame Wall

Bombe de givreFrost Bomb

Ravageurs squelettiquesSkeletal Reaver

End Game

9 skills • 40 gemmes

Tir de soutien

Tireurs d'élite squelettiquesSkeletal Sniper

Guerrier squelettiqueSkeletal Warrior

Clercs squelettiquesSkeletal Cleric

Mages de l'orage squelettiquesSkeletal Storm Mage

Bondissement

BlasphèmeBlasphemy

Mur de flammesFlame Wall

Ravageurs squelettiquesSkeletal Reaver

Deep Late Game

10 skills • 53 gemmes

Tir de soutien

BlasphèmeBlasphemy

Bondissement

Tireurs d'élite squelettiquesSkeletal Sniper

Guerrier squelettiqueSkeletal Warrior

Clercs squelettiquesSkeletal Cleric

Mages de l'orage squelettiquesSkeletal Storm Mage

Ravageurs squelettiquesSkeletal Reaver

Mages de givre squelettiquesSkeletal Frost Mage

Incendiaires squelettiquesSkeletal Arsonist

Recommended Equipment

Here are the gear pieces to aim for once you reach endgame. Most are inexpensive and easy to obtain, which reinforces the league starter aspect of the build.

• Main weapon : Trenchtimbre massively increases your damage (it grants levels to all your minion gems) and can house a Greater Rune of Leadership, which grants your minions 10% of physical damage as lightning damage. In the late game, switch to Chober Chaber Grand marteau en plomb paired with Giant’s Blood for an enormous boost.
• Body Armour : The Brass Dome, a colossal body armour that you can potentially keep for the entire playthrough.
• Belt : Meginords Girdle, inexpensive and providing a great deal of Strength along with cold resistance.
• Amulet : Astramentis to boost your Strength and Dexterity (then your Intelligence later on).
• Key support gem : Kurgals Leash, the best-in-slot for minions. You can farm it yourself in Act 4 in the Nakaku’s Abyss Well.
• Stats to prioritize : minion skills (amulet, sceptre, helmet), Spirit (amulet and body armour), armour and deflection.

Gameplay Tips

• Rush ascendancy in Act 2: as soon as Act 2, head straight for your ascendancy points (kill Bubala) to unlock Supporting Fire around Level 19-20.
• Bidding first: slot Bidding I as early as your first supports — it reduces the cooldown of Supporting Fire and increases its damage.
• Level 28 = permanent uptime: grab all the major cooldown recovery nodes to keep Supporting Fire active almost continuously.
• Campaign bossing: keep at least 3 Skeletal Sniper, place Flame Wall to ignite the target, cast Supporting Fire on cooldown then spam Gas Arrow (which explodes on ignited enemies).
• Act 3 and beyond: add Muster to Supporting Fire and your archers (Level 36 for the 3rd slot), and equip a Rattling sceptre that summons Skeletal Warriors to boost Muster.
• In maps: add Blasphemy with Temporal Chains for survivability, and stack armour, deflection and glancing blows.

How Supporting Fire Works

Supporting Fire is a minion command skill with a very short cooldown. Its scaling is unusual: it only carries the « minion » tag — it is neither a projectile nor an attack, which severely limits the damage progression levers available. Worse, it can never be considered « in your presence »: banners and other presence-based effects therefore have no impact on it.

This forces us to focus on three axes. First, cooldown reduction, to spam Supporting Fire as often as possible. Then minion levels, which raise both the damage and the effect of Muster. Finally, Muster itself, which grants more damage per unique minion present. This is why you will see lots of little skeletons running around: most of them serve no purpose on their own — they are there to inflate Supporting Fire via Muster.

The brilliant point of this build is that Supporting Fire scales off Strength and Dexterity, making stat stacking extremely efficient. Strength increases damage while Dexterity increases area of effect, to the point of enabling off-screen clears. Stacking these stats for damage simultaneously makes you very tanky.

Leveling: Crossbows or Minions

For the early progression, KallTorak offers two setup options to choose from, to be played until Act 2 where Supporting Fire takes over.

The first option uses crossbows with grenades. This is by far the fastest way to reach Act 2: grenades clear solidly and consistently, and crossbows gain a lot of power early thanks to two-handed damage nodes on the passive tree. The downside is that at the end of Act 2 you will need to spend gold to respec your passives from the crossbow tree to the minion tree. Grenade runs are roughly 40 minutes faster.

The second option bets on minions from the start: Explosive Grenade with Multishot I and Fire Attunement, then transitions to Skeletal Sniper with Gas Arrow and Flame Wall to ignite. It is slightly less efficient for the campaign, but avoids wasting gold on a mid-game respec. Choose whichever style suits you.

Progression and Transition to Supporting Fire

Once you reach Act 2, head straight for your ascendancy: kill Bubala to claim your first points and unlock Supporting Fire around Level 19-20. From that point on, the skill carries all the clear and you can switch to a full minion setup.

With your first two support gems, take Bidding I which reduces the cooldown and increases damage. At Level 28, you will have enough passive points to pick up all the major cooldown recovery nodes: combined with Bidding, this gives you near-permanent uptime on Supporting Fire. For bossing at this stage, keep at least three Skeletal Sniper with Bidding, Multishot I and Fire Attunement, place Flame Wall to ignite, cast Supporting Fire on cooldown and spam Gas Arrow.

In Act 3, your first level 3 minion support will be Muster. At Level 36, the 3rd support slot of Supporting Fire unlocks: slot in Muster, and also add Muster to your archers. Use a Rattling scepter that summons Skeletal Warriors to boost Muster, then add as many minions as possible (Arsonist, Frost Mage, Reaver). At the end of Act 4, farm your Kurgals Leash from Nakaku’s Abyss Well: it is the best minion support in the build, and you will keep it all the way to the end.

End Game: Tanky and Off-Screen

In the endgame, the goal is to become as durable as you are effective. Stack armour to take full advantage of the Tactician’s polish, the new deflection buffs from the patch, and glancing blows. Add Blasphemy with Temporal Chains to slow enemies and improve your survivability.

At Level 90, you unlock your last support slot: try slotting in Uul-Netols Embrace, and aim to have as many minions as possible capable of boosting Muster. At this point, you should be exceeding 2500 Life, with massive amounts of armour and deflection while maintaining permanent uptime on Supporting Fire. This is also the time to target Chober Chaber paired with Giant’s Blood: in the endgame, it provides four minion levels, additional Spirit, and more sockets for leadership runes. It is essentially a better version of Trenchtimbre.

Skill Tree