Mercs will be useless and insignificant. Link Skills ?

Merc is a downgraded version of animate guardian who doesn't listen to you...

As someone who was "minion main" for the last 5 years, we all know how the Animate Guardian worked and what you could get from it. Mainly could be enhanced by skill tree and gems. You could control how he behaves and how good his survivability is. And even a strong version of AG wasn't critical to your gameplay.

Merc on the other hand will leave your side and go die solo, you can't control him, his auras probably have a penalty and not so big aoe so it will be on/off for you most of the time, he won't receive anything from your skill tree, nothing. In T17, he's basically gone in 2 seconds. Maybe could be useful somehow with a link skill but I'm not getting any ideas atm. Too many YT videos thinking your merc would be clearing uber bosses... year right.

Merc at best is a novelty.

Mercenaries are the main league mechanic. I don't expect them to be balanced properly from the get-go, but if your merc can't survive high tier content, there's no real league mechanic left - I hope GGG realize that. The whole league mechanic depends on them surviving regular gameplay - if you gear them properly, of course.

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Rinzlow#2120 wrote:

his auras probably have a penalty and not so big aoe so it will be on/off for you most of the time

You prob have to face hug them at all times to have 100% uptime for the aura, just like you would have to stick very close to a random player in your party in order to benefit from their auras.

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Pashid#4643 wrote:

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Rinzlow#2120 wrote:

his auras probably have a penalty and not so big aoe so it will be on/off for you most of the time

You prob have to face hug them at all times to have 100% uptime for the aura, just like you would have to stick very close to a random player in your party in order to benefit from their auras.

yeah problem is, with AG you could set him to be at your side using a Gem, while Merc probably set to aggressive and will run away from you, so all auras, or items like explode mods and that stuff is out the window. Like I said, from my point of view he is a downgraded AG.

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Rinzlow#2120 wrote:

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Pashid#4643 wrote:

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Rinzlow#2120 wrote:

his auras probably have a penalty and not so big aoe so it will be on/off for you most of the time

You prob have to face hug them at all times to have 100% uptime for the aura, just like you would have to stick very close to a random player in your party in order to benefit from their auras.

yeah problem is, with AG you could set him to be at your side using a Gem, while Merc probably set to aggressive and will run away from you, so all auras, or items like explode mods and that stuff is out the window. Like I said, from my point of view he is a downgraded AG.

Use Minion Build and gain Double AGs with Mercenary.

They probably will suck. GGG is notorious for making mechanics like this that benefit the player absolutely awful.

There's zero chance the mercs are useless. I'm willing to bet there will be clips of "my merc soloing pinacle bosses".

Worst case scenario they give a free aura and utility. If you gear them well they might be much better than an AG which, last time I did a summon build, did not die during uber maven so, yeah.

Also, I expect they will be unbalanced during the first week or two aka too hard to kill, too easy to die, but after they are balanced it'll be fine, probably.

They better have figured sth out. If the merc just insta dies to every big boss mechanic the player has to dodge, that would be kind of a meme.

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TheAshmaker#5078 wrote:

They probably will suck. GGG is notorious for making mechanics like this that benefit the player absolutely awful.

Or maybe Double Summoners builds if has good summoners mercenaries.

we have no info on how useful they will be how can you already say this? I do think in typical ggg fashion they'll be weak as hell though