Love the mercs- would love to see this content expanded

Mercenaries are better than any other AARPG companion I have ever seen before with the limitless number of options for what they can achieve due to the random set of skills with random support gem sets in addition to the ability to full swap out gear. Side note- as a minion fanatic, I too wish to have 5+ mercenaries since they are account wide and not character bound.

For QoL there are a few things that should benefit the experience overall but for this feedback I want to focus on the support gems.

When we find a mercenary, it would be stellar if they could have an "empty" support gem slot where we can pick what support gem fills that slot.


What I propose
WHEN a mercenary is encountered
AND their skills are randomly generated from the pool
AND Their gear is randomly generated from the pool
AND their Support gems are randomly generated from the pool
AND *new - an empty gem slot is visible on a random damage dealing skill
AND the exile chooses to Hire the mercenary
AND the exile wins the duel to hire the mercenary
THEN the empty skill slot can be interacted with on the mercenary inventory Page
AND the exile can choose 1 support from the pool for that skill
AND the exile must sacrifice 2 level 20 support gems to the mercenary to "craft" the new support

Thank you!

Honestly....this suggestion is the absolute baseline of what they SHOULD have been. I think it would have even been better to have the mercs come with randomized "skill points" and skill sockets that WE could completely customize the merc based on available skill points. Greater supports require more skill points, etc. That way, whenever we find the class we want, it would ALWAYS be skill-useful.

They already made it so knowing the skills the Merc uses means absolutely nothing in the actual fight against that merc.

The fact that skill rolls were ENTIRELY random and GGG implemented that thinking it was a good idea was straight up dumb. It is antithetical to all the things that PoE stands for regarding skills. Even D3 physically let us choose between two different skills on our mercs lol. Yet to do that here, one needs to find a totally new merc AND have the free slot to use it AND go back home and enter a new area.

Sure we can gear them, but we have stupid restrictions on gearing (another dumb design flaw). But the thing about skills being totally reliant on RNG, when the TYPE of merc is already totally reliant on RNG is just insulting.

Like....it took me over 200 maps to even come across ONE cruel mistress. Now add randomness of skills and randomness of skill supports to that, and we are looking at probably less than 1 in 100 cruel mistresses (or 20000 maps at that rate) to even get a chance at decent support layout on the correct skills.