Mercs are going core later

For those who didn't check the announcement, the Mercenaries league is going core. They won't be making it to 3.27, but they will be implemented at some point in the future.

This is... disappointing. I hope they get nerfed into the ground so they become an optional power increase.

Otherwise, the opposite will happen and players will get nerfed on a massive scale which will necessitate you having them enlisted. And if they die, they can't be used for the remainder of the map, crippling your max potential DPS/defense.

I'm a summoner main, but I don't want to be forced into having a second AG tagging along.

If the core merc is so bad compared to the current version, then they have no reason to be re-introduced as some joke of what could have been. The harsh truth is that POE2 takes the vast majority of their attention, leaving little for POE1 and its issues like merc tuning. Without POE2 there would have been plenty of eyes and attention on merc tuning to make them core NOW instead of nuking them from orbit.

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mnieradko#6070 wrote:

If the core merc is so bad compared to the current version, then they have no reason to be re-introduced as some joke of what could have been. The harsh truth is that POE2 takes the vast majority of their attention, leaving little for POE1 and its issues like merc tuning. Without POE2 there would have been plenty of eyes and attention on merc tuning to make them core NOW instead of nuking them from orbit.

Were you around for the glory days of Harvest league, the best crafting system GGG ever implemented? They completely destroyed it after the first league it went core, now it's only good for duping div cards and rerolling essences.

Becoming a shell of its former self is not a reason to not nerf mercs.

The alternative here is to nerf players across the board to account for the massive power spike mercs give. You think you love them now, but wait until they die in a map and take half of your DPS/defenses with them.

They're gonna be nerfed into the ground, they didn't let us keep OG Harvest. They didn't let us keep a single sanctum relic on your character with 2 affixes. They didn't let us keep wildwood ascendancies and charms. They didn't let us keep the Sentinel skill tree, now that mech has been reduced to a random encounter in maps, not even having its own scarabs/atlas tree nodes. We didn't even get to keep the funny crucible weapon skill trees.

Mercs are like all that powercreep I described combined together x10. If GGG didn't mind the occasional powercreep or fun system, Harvest would have been untouched. We still would have had all the fun crafts, like removing/adding certain affix,all the amazing chromatic color crafts,all the fun div card crafts, all the "sacrifice map for X" crafts(was a great way to farm master missions).

But harvest was pretty much deleted and replaced with a watered down version with only a few powerful crafts that are costly. Like the only thing I use it for is to make a +2 amulet and gamba some div cards late in a league lmao

Mercs should just be an optional thing if people want extra rarity. But some builds are better off just swapping 1 support gem on their 6-link out for 21/20 Increased Rarity Support and slapping on a Gold Flask than using a merc.

Yeah it was a cool enough league but I am absolutely not looking forward to them being core in any way. They'll either be nerfed so much it's pointless, or be a mandatory extra character to gear every league. Well see if they find a middle ground, but not excited for it. At least it's not coming yet and they might still decide it's not possible to balance.

This is the discontent I came here for. :)

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

. Like the only thing I use it for is to make a +2 amulet and gamba some div cards late in a league lmao

Mercs should just be an optional thing if people want extra rarity. But some builds are better off just swapping 1 support gem on their 6-link out for 21/20 Increased Rarity Support and slapping on a Gold Flask than using a merc.

Your inability to craft, or understand the value of party loot multiplier, is not representative of the actual game state.

To be clear. Harvest is still very useful in current state, and mercs are extremely valuable even if all they do is add party loot multiplier.

I think they will operate similar to how heist NPCs do.

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Piousqd#0073 wrote:

This is the discontent I came here for. :)

What can I say, I don't like pure powercreep content. Nothing good ever comes from them in the long term, assuming they're not discarded after the debut ends.