Most specialisations do not move. Five do.
Twelve specialisations were ranked in both queues, and seven of them sit in exactly the same tier either way — if you play either Sorcerer school, Shadowstrix in either stance, Revenant Seer, or Withered Knight on greatsword, the queue you pick does not change how good your build is rated. The interesting part is the five that do move, and one class owns three of them.
- Seven specialisations hold their tier across both queues, so switching queue is not a reason to switch build.
- Five move, and none of them move by less than a full tier.
- Three of the five are Mercenary stances, which is why "is Mercenary good" is an unanswerable question as posed.
The five that move
Positive means the specialisation is rated higher in trio. The reasoning is the trio-side reasoning, because that is the half that explains the change.
| Specialisation | Class | Solo → Trio | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hammer | Mercenary | C → A, up two | Solo it cannot catch anyone: your target has more evades than you have gap-closers. In a trio it does not need to catch anyone — it holds a frontline and peels divers off your back line, and the unique hammer adds a spammable area effect that slows and shortens enemy dodges |
| Sword & Shield | Mercenary | A → C, down two | The damage that makes it strong solo stops mattering when the enemy simply walks past you. The source says plainly that it ignores Mercenaries and goes for the back line instead |
| Blasphemer — left path | Seer | B → D, down two | Losing super armour is survivable in a duel you chose to start. In a three-stack somebody will always be free to stagger you, and the path trades super armour away by design |
| Perfect Parry | Mercenary | B → C, down one | A parry answers one attacker at a time. The verdict for trio is blunt — it does nothing for a team fight |
| Blasphemer — right path | Seer | A → B, down one | It still opens a fight well, but it has roughly ten seconds of cooldowns to convert and then contributes little, which a third team arriving will punish |
Hammer
- Class
- Mercenary
- Solo → Trio
- C → A, up two
- What changes
- Solo it cannot catch anyone: your target has more evades than you have gap-closers. In a trio it does not need to catch anyone — it holds a frontline and peels divers off your back line, and the unique hammer adds a spammable area effect that slows and shortens enemy dodges
Sword & Shield
- Class
- Mercenary
- Solo → Trio
- A → C, down two
- What changes
- The damage that makes it strong solo stops mattering when the enemy simply walks past you. The source says plainly that it ignores Mercenaries and goes for the back line instead
Blasphemer — left path
- Class
- Seer
- Solo → Trio
- B → D, down two
- What changes
- Losing super armour is survivable in a duel you chose to start. In a three-stack somebody will always be free to stagger you, and the path trades super armour away by design
Perfect Parry
- Class
- Mercenary
- Solo → Trio
- B → C, down one
- What changes
- A parry answers one attacker at a time. The verdict for trio is blunt — it does nothing for a team fight
Blasphemer — right path
- Class
- Seer
- Solo → Trio
- A → B, down one
- What changes
- It still opens a fight well, but it has roughly ten seconds of cooldowns to convert and then contributes little, which a third team arriving will punish
Mercenary is the whole story
One class holds three of the five moves, and two of them point in opposite directions. Hammer is the worst Mercenary specialisation in solo and the best one in trio; Sword & Shield is the exact reverse. That is not a small correction — it is a four-tier swing between two stances of the same class, and it is invisible on any tier list that ranks Mercenary as one row.
- Queuing trio on a Sword & Shield Mercenary is the single most costly build-and-queue mismatch in the data.
- Both stances are on the same character, and swapping stance costs nothing, so this is a decision you make in the lobby rather than on a new character.
- The wider point holds beyond Mercenary: talents reset for free, so matching your specialisation to the queue is close to free.
What this does not tell you
The movement is only as good as the two tables it is computed from, and both come from a single per-specialisation source ranking at purple gear. Three limits are worth stating plainly rather than leaving for the reader to discover.
- Four specialisations are missing because the source placed them in only one queue — both Blackarrow stances, Lightning Strike Sorcerer and Polearm & Shield Withered Knight. No movement is reported for them rather than a guess.
- A specialisation that holds its tier is not necessarily doing the same job in both queues. Revenant Seer sits at the bottom of S in solo and is named the single best pick in trio, and both of those are S.
- This ranks PvP strength, not farming efficiency. A specialisation can be poor here and still be an excellent way to make money, which is ranked separately on the gold farming guide.