Mercs and core

There may be a polish pass for mercs needed, however, it looks strongly that most folks would like mercs to be more permanent. I think cool, sure. I have a suggestion though: Add rogue exiles as one of the factions to earn.

I am sure it would be more love than hate. If you beat a rogue exile, you can choose to hire them, banish them, or loot them.

Definitely have fun with the pokemon, and as a bonus they dont ninja loot.

I would go as far as say that you should be able to kit out an entire party of mercs and fine tune their skills/AI.

I dont even care if some people use meta items to break the game, if its fun its fun. Reminds me of D2 runeworded items on mercs. I mean, if you do the effort of actually gearing your merc, then reap the rewards, why not, wheres the problem.

Mercs or not, some meta crunchers will always break the game, so instead of worrying about the 0.01% who break the game and cry how they broke it, why not listen to the many people who just want to have some fun.

No. You don't want this added to core. Giving everyone an Animate Guardian for almost free is going to result in significant power spikes for all players. Whenever something like this happens, GGG nerfs the entire game by boosting all monster HP and damage. I've seen this happen 3 times, and each time it has, barely-viable builds are no longer viable, and the things that made builds powerful are now a necessity.

Mercs won't become an option in this scenario. They will become not only a requirement for any build, but only a specific group of mercs will become the only choice.

Trust me on this, you don't want them to go core.