Mercenaries Feedback: AI needs some work

For a lot of the mercenaries, they have issues committing to targets. This is of particular note with melee merc's as they will sometimes wander inbetween two enemies without hitting either because it can't decide which to attack. This makes ranged mercs more preferable, as if they take note of enemies they can just attack because it doesn't require any extra pathfinding in that moment if its an open area.

They generally have issues with doorways and making the decision to move towards a position where they can hit enemies. This results in ranged mercs having more preferable behaviour, particularly spellcasters with aoe targeting.

When following the player, melee mercs will often prioritizing following the player rather than attacking nearby targets unless the player is (or maybe its more of the previously mentioned issues with them settling on an actual target).

If these issues can be addressed mercenaries would be even more fantastic. I never quite manage to play Dominating Blow despite occasionally wanting to, but having a mercenary that does is a lot of fun and since they have their own stats and minion power it eases up on the need to hybrid build a templar.

This has been a problem for 3 years lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZJEzd9nVkk

The problem is also in PoE2 for enemy mobs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxj0DsZU2hQ

There's very few melee minion builds for this reason

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Alysma#5080 wrote:

I think it would be great if we could give Mercenaries some simnple orders in a drop-down menu with check boxes or something, e.g.

• Alwasy attack closest target
• Stay within a range of X
• Do not attack Tormented Spirits
• etc...

would be nice to have an option to set them to attack from far away or close rnage, watching that merc with dark pact spamming the skill from range its so funny and at the same time so sad.