Atlantica Online Mercenary Review: Prophet

 I've recently been on hiatus on these to try out various other games. I got some console RPG reviews sitting around, but not sure if I should publish them. I will continue to use the lvl 130 upgrades for stat comparison due to how some of the lvl 140 upgrades and lvl 80 skills do not apply in PvP yet somehow still contribute to stats. It's a bit too complicated so I decided it would be best to leave them out and to continue to use the 130 as the base of comparison. The recent patch added lvl 140 and lvl 150 upgrades which is a 2 tier jump.

The Prophet is a Bow type range mercenary that specializes in supporting melee mercenaries. Her overall damage is fairly low compared to other mercenaries, but using a Bow increases her damage just enough so that it is not too noticeable until later on when the upgrades result in a larger difference in strength. The Prophet has a passive skill called Concentrate that boosts the attack and accuracy of melee mercenaries and heals them a bit each turn. She also has various debuff skills that weaken enemy mercenaries of a specific type. The damage reduction is noticeable, but not very practical for most situations. The passive heals definitely helps in normal fights, but is not as useful in PvP considering that your melee heavy front row will often be under Holy Guard. Her debuffs also do not seal skills which makes it rather pointless to use for many. Overall, she is good for helping you maintain your front line in standard PvE situations (not skirmish), but declines at higher levels when your front and middle row needs to be under Holy Guard to prevent one boss' AoE from reducing your health to critical status.

The primary skill of the Prophet is Concentrate. Concentrate increases damage, accuracy, and restores a tiny bit of health every turn. It is actually useful for your melee mercenaries if they are under status effects such as Smoke Bomb and Weapon Rend. Unfortunately, it only applies to melee mercenaries who are primarily guarding in PvP and under Holy Guard for tough PvE fights. As great of a skill it is, it declines quickly at lvl 100+ when having better armor makes more of a difference. It is a great skill to have at low lvls, but the hp regeneration becomes smaller as your mercenaries have much larger amounts of health when they obtain better armor and enemies hit much harder.

The other skills all fall under a category that reduces the damage of specific types of weapons. Most players do not use just one type of melee making it kind of worthless. Most people in PvP have 1 Sword (Exorcist), 1 Axe (Druid), and 1 Spear (Guan Yu). On those rare occasions, some people will have an Odysseus and 2 Swords instead, but the Prophet's skills only works on 1 type of melee at a time. Later on you will also get the Elementalist which is the true anti-melee class. Unfortunately, you need a high level of the skill in order for it to reduce a significant amount of damage. This requires you to specialize and if you max Concentrate, you might only be able to take one of the other skills to a high level.