Out of the Mechanist League's workshops and onto the battlefield rolls a heavy artillery specialist riding his own cannon like a steed. He bombards, he scatters, he calls in air support — and somehow he does it all while perched on top of the same cannon he's firing.
His name: The Cannoneer.
The newest Mechanist League adventure-scaling hero, the Cannoneer is a physical-damage area-control specialist whose forge is where things start to get genuinely interesting. The base kit looks standard. The endgame forge is where he turns into a real boss-brawl threat.
So, let's load the cannon and figure out exactly how this guy fits into your roster.
| 10 | +10% Area of Effect |
|---|---|
| 20 | +1 Projectile(s) |
| 30 | +10% Area of Effect |
| 40 | BOMBASTIC: Every 15s, Cannoneer spawns a collectible bomb. Once collected, Cannoneer's next attack will shoot double the amount of projectiles. |
| 50 | All Heroes: +12.5% Physical Damage |
| 60 | +Physical Damage |
| 70 | All Heroes: +Damage |
| 80 | AIR SUPPORT: Every 3s, Cannoneer calls for air support, shooting out a massive bomb at a random target dealing 480-5000% damage. |
| 90 | All Heroes that share Faction: +Area of Effect |
| 100 | SHORT FUSE: Every kill fills a meter. Once full, the Cannoneer starts spinning, unleashing a barrage of cannonballs upon enemies. |
| 120 | All Heroes: +Physical Damage |
| 140 | Strong Stat Bonus: +3 Projectile(s) |
| 160 | All Heroes: +100% Damage |
The Cannoneer slots into the Mechanist League — a faction that's already deep with strong heroes like Circuit Breaker, Tinkerer, Empire Queen, and Clockwork Mage. Faction depth matters because share-faction bonuses scale up as you collect heroes in the same group, and the Mechanists are one of the easier factions to fill out for free-to-play players.
His base kit is solid: area of effect, +1 projectile, more area of effect, and a movement speed bump. The 140 stat bonus is +3 projectiles, which late in the game lands as roughly a 15-20% damage increase depending on your existing projectile count. That's a strong endgame stat bonus and one of the reasons the Cannoneer holds up at higher star levels rather than peaking early.
The faction bonus he provides is +physical damage, which is fine but a little underwhelming compared to something like Echo's +crit. Not a knock on him specifically — most physical heroes share this faction tax — but worth noting if you're optimizing across factions.
The Cannoneer's globals are mid. Below average to mid, honestly. Let's run through them:
If you're hunting heroes purely for global value, this isn't the prize pull. The shelf-hero verdict on the Cannoneer is "fine, not great" — but his real value isn't in his globals, it's in what the forge does to his skill kit. Read on.
This is where the Cannoneer earns his keep. The forge is built around boosting skills directly, and several of the upgrades are genuinely strong. The level-2 fork in particular has me re-evaluating where I'd slot this hero on the tier list.
Level 1: Both options are reworks of Bombastic. Condensed Blast — instead of doubling projectiles, Bombastic shoots a single explosion with +100% area. Loaded Rounds — Bombastic affects the next 4 base attacks instead of just one. Loaded Rounds is the bigger unlock, especially for boss brawl: quadrupling a 100%-projectile-damage buff window is roughly a guaranteed sustained damage amp on a stationary boss target. Condensed Blast is the cleaner pick if you're clearing spread-out hordes in normal/hard mode.
Level 2: Both options modify Air Support. Barrage — drops 2 additional bombs per cast (so three bombs per 3 seconds instead of one). Quick Reload — cooldown decreases by 2 seconds, dropping it from every 3 seconds to every 1 second. The math on these is similar in raw damage, but Quick Reload feels much smoother in practice — bombs falling constantly is more useful than three bombs in one big pulse, especially for sustained boss-brawl pressure.
Level 4 (Scatter Bombs): The weapon evolves and explosions split into multiple splinters that spread outward. Evolves off Damage Tome, which is core in every build, so getting here is easy. This is where his AoE coverage really opens up.
Level 5: Two flavors of cannonball behavior. The first variant has cannonballs slow enemies with each hit before detonating. The second variant — Rebound — has cannonballs chain between enemies instead of traveling in a straight line, with every three hits triggering Scatter Bombs. Rebound has the higher ceiling in tightly packed hordes (arena, normal mode). The slow variant is safer for boss brawl and consistent damage. Test both.
The forge converts the Cannoneer from a "fine shelf hero" into a real damage threat. The level-1 Loaded Rounds pick is the unlock that makes him interesting for boss brawl in particular, and the level-5 fork is one of the more genuinely meaningful choice points in any recent forge.
The Cannoneer has three skills, and all three are damage. There's no shielding here, no utility — which means he's not your nightmare-mode or Dragon's Tower carry. He's a damage stack, and that damage stack scales hard with star levels.
Every 15 seconds, the Cannoneer spawns a collectible bomb. Once collected, his next attack shoots double the amount of projectiles. The really nice piece here is that star levels reduce the cooldown — at five stars it drops from 15 seconds to roughly 9 seconds, which is a 33%+ damage uptime increase. This is one of those "looks small, becomes large" skills as you invest in him.
Every 3 seconds, the Cannoneer calls for air support, dropping a massive bomb on a random target. Adventure scaling here is dramatic — damage at four star levels is roughly 10x the damage at one star level. This is where the "you have to push star levels to maximize Cannoneer" pattern becomes obvious.
Kills fill a meter. When full, the Cannoneer starts spinning, unleashing a barrage of cannonballs. Mechanically this is essentially the same as Pirate Queen's Crimson Wheel, but with much higher scaling — 480% at one star ramping up to 5,000% at four stars. The newer adventure heroes get massively rewarded for star investment.
One thing to flag from try-mode testing: while Short Fuse is active, Bombastic appears to pause — the collectible bombs stack up on the ground but don't get consumed until the spin ends. That's a small but real damage nerf during the ultimate window. Worth knowing for boss brawl pacing.
Watching the Cannoneer in try mode, the read is genuinely fun. He auto-aims, the cannonballs bounce off the screen edges (with the right evolve), the air strikes drop, the spinning ultimate covers the field — and visually he's actually riding the cannon the whole time, which gives him a kind of Rocket Pilot energy. The art and animations land in a way that some of the recent special-faction releases don't.
From a tier perspective, the Cannoneer is a strong A-tier hero. Globals don't move the needle, but the kit holds up across normal mode, hard mode, faction wars (he plowed through Faction Wars 40 at level 1 with no skills in testing), and the forge gives him real boss-brawl upside. He's not a nightmare-mode or Dragon's Tower carry — no shielding, no utility — but as a clear hero and damage stacker, he delivers.
The big watch-out: the Bombastic-pauses-during-ultimate quirk. If you're optimizing for boss brawl, you'll want to time your Short Fuse usage around your Bombastic stacks. It's a small thing but it's the kind of thing that separates a mediocre boss-brawl run from a great one.
If you pull the Cannoneer, congratulations — he's a real hero, not a shelf piece. Push him to four star levels, get the level-2 forge upgrade locked in, and he becomes one of your reliable late-game damage options. The Mechanist League just got deeper.
