Doryani Merc builds ruin the game

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TreeOfDead#4438 wrote:

this helm so op? what best use for it (exact vid or build showcare anywhere)?

Not saying it's OP; just that it's fun. :)

There's really only one use for that item (or, at least, that version of it) - Arakaali's Fang. I've not made a build guide for it, though I assume somebody has. I just enjoy 40 of the little invincible bastards running around all over the place; it's satisfying, in a way.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate#2605 wrote:

You're half right, OP. Here's the corrected version:

Mercenaries ruin the game.

What I find so irritating is that so many people questioned mercenaries the second they were announced, and how OP (or totally useless) they were inevitably going to be. It took less than a day for nearly every impossibly powerful item combination to be commented on in every online forum location. Finding out they basically couldn't die was quite ridiculous. As you said, no risk, no downside, nothing but pure powercreep beyond anything even harvest gave us.

I might even place this league as the absolute WORST league that has ever been released. Yes, even higher than the early leagues like Talisman and Anarchy. I just.....don't want to play. I can't remember ever having that feeling one week after league launch (except for Kingsmarch, which I initially considered the worst idea ever implemented before this one).

The inclusion of Kingsmarch idle mechanics was a bad choice, the memory maps rolling t17 mods at ALL tiers was a bad choice, Mercenaries were a problem from the ground up, its just so BAD. And even worse; they had the longest amount of time they have ever had to think up and test this....

My solution is just never even think about optimizing your merc or bother with it. The most I did was slap on a Perquil's Toe which dropped on the ground. I'm wayyyy too lazy to go on the trade site and spend divines on gear for them and look for the right mercenary who can equip it all lmao

Having to check boxes and min-max one build is enough, I don't need to do it for some NPC. Them giving me the quant of half a player is already good enough, I got good loot in maps and finished what I wanted to do in this league anyway. Mercs are 0/10, not balanced at all and hope they never go core. The endgame part of this patch is nice though, and the lore is cool. The only cringy boss is the "bring roses to me" mmo-ahh boss, feels like a PoE 2 boss shoved into this game and I don't like that.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

Having to check boxes and min-max one build is enough, I don't need to do it for some NPC. Them giving me the quant of half a player is already good enough, I got good loot in maps and finished what I wanted to do in this league anyway.

In a single week? You've done everything you wanted to do for a league that's running at least 3 months in a single week? And that's healthy to you?

Also....min/maxing one build is enough? You play a single build per league? For a week?

Oof

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

Having to check boxes and min-max one build is enough, I don't need to do it for some NPC. Them giving me the quant of half a player is already good enough, I got good loot in maps and finished what I wanted to do in this league anyway.

In a single week? You've done everything you wanted to do for a league that's running at least 3 months in a single week? And that's healthy to you?

Also....min/maxing one build is enough? You play a single build per league? For a week?

Oof

Pretty much. And yeah its normal for me to be done with 36 or 40 challenges by the end of week 2, I just did a speedrun of it this time and rushed more while buying carries.

Campaign is too boring for me to play more than 1 build per league, and I can't find a good/fun/strong build to copy anyway. They're all either bait,too expensive with impossible mirror-tier rares that I will never bother to make because crafting is cringe in this game, or they have uniques that are expensive af. I really don't understand why so many build guides have these items with 50 crafting steps and all kinds of special mods, why can't it just be a simple life/resist item lmao, by the time I farm out all these items and currency to make it I'm gonna be bored out of my mind.

So nothing to do but move the game to my HDD and play other stuff after I'm done with challenges.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

In a single week? You've done everything you wanted to do for a league that's running at least 3 months in a single week? And that's healthy to you?

Also....min/maxing one build is enough? You play a single build per league? For a week?

Oof

I know, right? Imagine actually making a build that plays the game instead of sprinting to 36 challenges via carry runs, slapping together some half-baked mess with zero layers of defense, and then acting surprised when endgame content doesn’t politely roll over.

Somehow there’s always enough currency for multiple carries, but not enough to make a real build in trade, where people are literally deleting content with dirt-cheap items and few div setups that don’t require a second mortgage. But nah, anything short of mirror-tier is apparently “unplayable” or “expensive.”

Meanwhile, SSF players are cruising through content with even worse gear and conditions.

And really, you can’t min-max a second character if you haven’t even bothered to max your first one to a halfway decent level. When someone’s only option for progressing is to pay someone else to play for them… that really says it all, doesn’t it?

Dude doesn't even like the game he spends inordinate hours of his life in a single week playing.

He is the poster child for everything wrong with modern gamers.

Mercs are fun, i hope they go core.
Not just that, i hope you would be able to kit out an entire party of them, level them up, change their skills, change their AI/behaviour.

Whats "broken" is the items. A merc without items is just a strangely tanky toon who boosts mob HP by a lot. Give merc wacky broken items and suddenly they break the game.

Use meta items and suddenly game becomes easy ? Wow, who knew.
Mercs themselves are a fun addition and it has been fun to chase a better pokemon. The constants and variables might need some tweaking, but dont blame mercs, blame the already existing and broken items, you all know you use on your main char.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

I might even place this league as the absolute WORST league that has ever been released. Yes, even higher than the early leagues like Talisman and Anarchy. I just.....don't want to play. I can't remember ever having that feeling one week after league launch (except for Kingsmarch, which I initially considered the worst idea ever implemented before this one).

Couldn't agree more with most of this, but I'd still put Talisman in the #1 slot. GOD that league was bad... Mercs is number two, though, and that's not the kind of silver metal you want to win. Like, Invasion league occasionally added random instant-reflect enemies to maps, so there was about a one in twenty chance you'd just suddenly, instantly die while blasting. That felt less bad than this, because it didn't ruin the rest of the game.

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Henide#3803 wrote:

Whats "broken" is the items. A merc without items is just a strangely tanky toon who boosts mob HP by a lot. Give merc wacky broken items and suddenly they break the game.

Use meta items and suddenly game becomes easy ? Wow, who knew.
Mercs themselves are a fun addition and it has been fun to chase a better pokemon. The constants and variables might need some tweaking, but dont blame mercs, blame the already existing and broken items, you all know you use on your main char.

You fundamentally do not understand how game balance works, and it seems like you also don't understand the problems with these specific items. Let's talk game balance first because it's faster; I can do it in a single sentence.

Games are not balanced around low-end players.

Now, as for the "broken meta items." The problem with Doryani's Prototype and Perquil's Toe, but it also applies to all of the other uniques which problematically break the game, is opportunity cost. It is very difficult and expensive to gear yourself in such a way that you take full advantage of a Prototype, and Perquil's Toe is objectively a downside to 99% of builds if you wear it yourself. But by projecting those items onto a mercenary, you get to use the upsides of these (and other) items without suffering any of their penalties, while still getting to wear gear which maximally boosts your own build.

As cow pointed out, most of us knew this from the announcement trailer. We all saw this coming, because there was no possible way an infinitely revivable mule-battery for our Prototypes and Kingmakers and curse-on-hit rings wasn't going to create very serious balance issues. And the most frustrating part of the whole thing is that GGG once knew it too. When they made Heist league, they very specifically and deliberately chose NOT to let Rogues use player character gear, because back in 2020 they understood the problems this would create. Somehow, in the 4 1/2 years since then they just... forgot? Or maybe the people responsible wanted this the first time, and Krillson told them no. I don't know, I'm not privy to these discussions, probably because if I were in the meeting when this was suggested I would have shouted "ABSOLUTELY NOT, DID YOU GET A CONCUSSION ON THE WAY INTO THE OFFICE THIS MORNING?" when the league was pitched.

The laid out reasoning really highlights that the conceptionist of this league does not understand the game too well at least thats how i read it.