Jagged Alliance 3 – What Are Your Must Have Perks / Builds

What Are Your Must Have Perks / Builds

There isn’t that much to consider on interactions with perks, but there’s some to be had with talents and traits.

For instance, effects which trigger “on attack” don’t seem to proc from explosions or any other damage. You need to actually use your weapon to deal damage with direct hit. Revenge and Reactive Fire can be useful for Meltdown, but they don’t really compliment other interrupt builds in notable ways, in my experience. Similarly, Barry cannot make Inspiring Strike trigger as often as some other mercs because it won’t trigger on explosions and shotguns (with which he can get more free move with) are unlikely to cause over 50 damage.

• Steroid – Free movement, overwatch and explosives (throw enemy into group with his ability and set up overwatch or explosives on top of them)
• Mouse – Free movement and stealth, you can use Distracting Shot to get up close and personal even through overwatch zones so consider taking that
• Kalyna – Aiming, use with hollow point weapons
• Omryn – Overwatch obviously, SMG can make it easier to move and weaken enemies for overwatch kills and has less friendly fire incidents than shotgun
• Grizzly – Minimi is not cumbersome IIRC so you can still use it with free movement, but you’ll need to secure kills to use the ability repeatedly
• Barry – Free movement so you can get to places that you need to explode
• Raven – Overwatch obviously, but you can’t apply mark if target is out of sight, so free movement is also useful
• Thor – You can probably afford to take a bit damage with his herbs and high health, so you can afford to go for more aggressive builds, and maybe use Painkiller to buffer up hurt allies
• Ice – Aiming, so you won’t miss with his talent
• Blood – Free movement, stealth and grenades since he can only equip them in his other set along with his unique knives
• Meltdown – Overwatch, Revenge, Reactive Fire, anything that maximizes her attacks per turn
• Buns – Crit and/or stealth, so she can reliably finish off enemies that have been hit by other allies
• Vicki – Overwatch, you get most out of machine pistols that way, and crit procs
• Raider – Same as Buns, go for high damage from crit because you get accuracy from ally overwatch
• Tex – Arterial Shot and overwatch, obviously
• Nails – Probably the most aggressive default build in the game, so put that to good use with free movement and close range effectiveness, maybe some melee stuff
• Dr Q – I wouldn’t go full melee, use pistol or SMG to make him more mobile and tackle enemies, especially for allies who benefit from allies setting up enemies, like Buns, Raider or Nails. Night Ops won’t really benefit melee or sniping either (because you want thermal scope for sniping anyway) so he’s actually a midliner with defensive disabling punch
• Red – Same as Meltdown, you won’t get anything out of his talent if he’s never attacked, so give him Revenge and Reactive Fire along with overwatch stuff
• Hitman – Aiming so he can sit down wherever he wants, Opportunistic Killer might allow free reload without losing focus?

You probably won’t be able to level up some legendary mercs more than once or twice, but you can still influence their builds with gear choices.

• Magic – Aiming, so you can actually make use of that crazy crit buff when you need to, and to negate any distance penalties from high ground
• Scully – Free movement and similar tanking features, so you can position optimally and maintain your grit gain. Death Squad armor should be ideal for Scully so he can get free move while also absorbing damage
• Reaper – Aiming, and anything that works off the guaranteed crit
• Sidney – Stealth, aiming, and Lightning Reflexes (I forgot if he has that already). You could also use Pin Down and have him work as linebacker away from the fray, but Scope is probably much better for that
• Shadow – Somebody suggested using SMG with Run and Gun so you can get multiple stealth kills in a row, not sure how viable it is in grander scheme of things but probably fun enough to consider
• Scope – Killzone should allow guaranteed Pin Down kills on most targets, so get some free movement to allow her to reposition where line of sight can be maintained
• Fauda – Overwatch for machine gun use and free movement so you can optimally damage multiple targets with explosives whenever desirable
• Len – Free movement is pretty important so he can get close enough to enemies on which his talent can be effectively used on

Flay – Aiming, and you can also make him bit of a bruiser with his good physical attributes and default melee perks. His talent should work for melee groin hits as well, so you might be able to make some proper hit and run moves in close combat.

Larry – His talent is pretty bad IMO, but with Hit the Deck you can probably absorb damage from pipe bombs and such no problemo, while free movement lets him get up close and personal with shotguns and bombs. His AP is too low to make much use of overwatch so forget about that.

Pierre – His stats are so weak by the game you get him, that you’ll probably be hard pressed to formulate any synergies with his talent, but overall you’ll probably have better odds to make use of it with free movement, tanking stuff like Vanguard, and perhaps Battle Focus or Linebreaker if you somehow manage to train his health or strength that high.