Mercs will be useless and insignificant. Link Skills ?

You forgot merc will also provide news skill gems with unique behaviour and gear with unique stat. I have a good feeling about it

I am absolutely positive that merc AI is going to off-the-charts stupid. As in....walking straight into sirus storms or shaper beam stupid.

These things are going to be total and absolute trash for probably a good 50% or more of the endgame.

Because....given how our own minions have behaved for the entire HISTORY of PoE, I find it hard to believe that GGG is going to "succeed" with these mercenaries lol, where we have even less player control over what we need them for. For it to work, they would need to program every archetype with a behavior pattern for each boss, as well as each type of content for them to stay alive even with the best of gear. No way in hell they did that work and testing....

And then if we can't customize in any way their behavior, then we also don't actually have the same amount of "customizability" that many are looking forward to. Can't just slap a set of gear and skills on a merc and expect it to work, if the merc AI is programmed to do something different.



I know its unproductive to be debbie downer before the launch, but I am anticipating and looking forward to the feedback frenzy that GGG gets on stupid Mercenary behaviors.

I'm looking forward to Mercs, actually. I heard ZiggyD say in the Twitch interview that his Merc was at times stronger than his character for a while. That makes me think they are far from useless. And they cannot be, otherwise the buff to monsters while having one would be a direct nerf to your build and there would be little to no incentive to hire one. Would make for a terrible, terrible introduction of a new, central gameplay mechanic.

Yep, I expect them to be completly useless either to bad AI/pathfinding or just dying all the time

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

And then if we can't customize in any way their behavior, then we also don't actually have the same amount of "customizability" that many are looking forward to. Can't just slap a set of gear and skills on a merc and expect it to work, if the merc AI is programmed to do something different.

Honestly they are going to be worse than AG and minions without any way to actually control them. Most of the time they will likely die to stupid shit and you can just sit wand watch. Or chase them around the map to benefit from auras and items they have, making it a scenario of the npc mapping with you and not the other way around, and you acting more like a support for the npc to keep their ass alive lol.

I can kinda already see that they likely add some bandage aid fix by adding additional skills or options that allow you to put them on "guard" or "aggressive" stance causing them to act slightly different but overall still clunky.

Kinda just some dirt cheap way to sink gold of everyone trying to make use of them lol

^yes that is what I'm anticipating.


Even something like a "convocation" for mercenaries would be welcome (and probably necessary) just to get around the standard map barriers that we blink over, but they probably can't or won't.

Act 3 Lunaris 2, the merc is just "stuck" on a platform that you blinked away from because to traverse normally, you have to go way way way around.

Act 8/9 going up cliffsides. Man oh man I can see it now lol.

even with best fitted Animate Guardian, he is constantly leaving your benefit radius, I have never, in last 5 years relied or counted on anything I put on AG. It's always been a sort of currency dump. Any minion player will tell you this.

I was literally considering making an aurabot and just powering up my merc with a link skill, but it would be a downgraded minion build. I dunno. I know 100% those who keep saying, AG + Merc, truly don't understand that AG is literally just a spent toilet paper next to your main minions.

For now, I see an insane tornado mirror build and merc is standing next to you providing bonuses because you are one-shotting the screen and everything is outside his aggro zone.

I fully expect them to be in a state of dead within 8 seconds of entering a map for the first 2 weeks. This will be intentional so they’re seen buffing instead of nerfing content. This is the new way. Release every league and interaction under tuned so buffs can be handed out as nerfs are off the table.

wont the merc at least teleport to you or catch up to you when you re fighting a strong rare ?
at least i count on this minimum behaviour.
hitting, they better be ranged build.

edit : forgot merc

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Rinzlow#2120 wrote:

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.

famous last words comes to mind
Looked fine in the presentation