My 36/40 Review of Mercenaries/Secrets of the Atlas

So I did an any% speedrun of my challenges and got em in like 5-6 days of playing.

Here's my review:

Mercenaries - Way too overtuned in red maps, they were fine in campaign,white maps and yellow maps but the moment I got to t14+ maps they just start oneshotting(and certain ones are the worst offenders, if you've fought them you know). Feels like they just put random numbers in and didn't even bother testing them in actual endgame content. The scaling on them is probaby just all wrong.

Also the rewards on them are kinda meh unless you get lucky/get an Infamous one with nice stuff. The best thing I got out of them was 1 Ambush Scarab of Containment which sold for 250c(and it was on an Infamous mercenary, pretty sure those guys just have better stuff in their currency pouch by default).

But most of them just have bad currency like transmutes and augments in their inventory, like why is this stuff even appearing in Tier 16 maps? You would think they'd have something better. At least in campaign they seem to have lots of stacked decks, then suddenly in maps they barely ever have em. I remember them saying in the livestream reveal something like "the more map mods you have the better rewards mercenaries will have".

Well I ran 8-mod maps and their loot still sucked, which lead to me completely ignoring the mechanic and not even clicking on them anymore after I was done with challenges. I just have an Infamous lvl82 guy I hired with a Perquil's Toe I slapped on him and he follows me around to give me quant on my maps. Don't care about min-maxing their items, too much effort and currency.



And the Secrets of the Atlas part of this patch -

It's actually pretty good, the lore is nice. The bosses aren't as bad as I was expecting(except the "bring roses to boss" one which is just bad mmo boss design that doesn't belong in an arpg, get that poe 2 ahh boss out of our game please LMAO)

The "T16.5" maps just feel like t17s but without all the cringe enemy types although some of those originator packs can get tanky af. I still don't like t17 mods, they're still cringe af to roll so what I did was transmute+regal+annul to make them 0-mod rare maps for my challenges. I dislike t17 map mods that much.

Overall the endgame expansion is pretty good, can't wait to see where the story goes.

I saw you frequently in 820 buying most of your challenges. What good is a "review" when you just threw currency at it?

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

Mercenaries - Way too overtuned in red maps, they were fine in campaign,white maps and yellow maps but the moment I got to t14+ maps they just start oneshotting(and certain ones are the worst offenders, if you've fought them you know). Feels like they just put random numbers in and didn't even bother testing them in actual endgame content. The scaling on them is probaby just all wrong.

The problem is once again your zhp build and not the content lol

I also don't like this league mechanic, for absolutely zero of the reasons stated by OP. Mercenaries are perfectly reasonable, even in high tier maps.

In general, my biggest problem is how shallow the mechanic is... there's so little actual content here that it's mind blowing GGG thought it was substantial enough after a year of Settlers. Where are the bosses? Where is the progression system? Where is the ability to unlock new skills and supports? Where is the reward for skilled play a la keeping our mercs alive? For that matter, why in the world can we bring them back after they die? Why do we just pay them once and then they're our slaves forever? There's just nothing to this mechanic, once you get your merc of choice in a tier sixteen map you are literally finished with any meaningful interaction and every mercenary you find from then on is just an arcanist box with extra steps.

This felt like a real shark jump moment for PoE... I've got three friends who quit in the first week and a bunch more who don't seem like they're far behind. GGG clearly spent a lot of dev time on animations and voice acting, but it doesn't feel like they spent even ten minutes on gameplay. There is less to this league than there was to Prophecy, which came out nine years ago.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate#2605 wrote:

I also don't like this league mechanic, for absolutely zero of the reasons stated by OP.

I like this post. :)

I'd assume their rebuttal would be but what about Secrets?, which is all well and good - but as you've said, it's been a year, and I'd tl;dr 3.26's additions as "quality good; quantity bad."

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Crîmnor#4334 wrote:

I saw you frequently in 820 buying most of your challenges. What good is a "review" when you just threw currency at it?

Wut, I never even joined that chat channel the whole league. I always chill in 420 global chat and buy carries on tft. But yeah I bought carries for 30 t17 map completion and 4 uber bosses because I was too lazy to do it myself. And because it was the fastest way to get my 36/40 done. I will always do challenges in the easiest and fastest way I can possibly find, that's just the logical thing to do.

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Pashid#4643 wrote:

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

Mercenaries - Way too overtuned in red maps, they were fine in campaign,white maps and yellow maps but the moment I got to t14+ maps they just start oneshotting(and certain ones are the worst offenders, if you've fought them you know). Feels like they just put random numbers in and didn't even bother testing them in actual endgame content. The scaling on them is probaby just all wrong.

The problem is once again your zhp build and not the content lol

Don't know what you're on about, even tanky builds are getting oneshot just the same as my glass cannon build. Doesn't matter what defenses you have vs mercenaries, they just oneshot cus they weren't tested or balanced at all. And the latest patch did literally nothing they're exactly the same as before. Maaaybe if you have some multi-mirror 30k es mageblood splitting steel/lightning strike build you would be able to do them without dying. Oh wait, both of those builds are dead now LMAO

The only way I was able to kill mercenaries in t16s was hide behind a wall and completely abuse the terrain in the map by LOS-ing them and making them fight my totems instead of me. If I wasn't on a totem build I'd just be trying to buy carries for them or get a friend to help me with them. Or skip all the mercenary challenges/try to do most of em in t1 white maps then do other grindier ones to get 36 challenges done, one way or another.

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Crîmnor#4334 wrote:

I saw you frequently in 820 buying most of your challenges. What good is a "review" when you just threw currency at it?

Ask GGG, they're the ones who make accessibility to that content rare enough to make you have to buy your way to completing them.

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Pizzarugi#6258 wrote:

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Crîmnor#4334 wrote:

I saw you frequently in 820 buying most of your challenges. What good is a "review" when you just threw currency at it?

Ask GGG, they're the ones who make accessibility to that content rare enough to make you have to buy your way to completing them.

Exactly, people will always gravitate towards carries for ridiculously hard content or a challenge that's just complete RNG bs. Thankfully not that many of those this league but still a few kinda bad ones like "Defeat 15 different Infamous Mercenaries in t11+ maps". Buying a carry for an uber boss just makes sense, because the fragments are so expensive and it would take the average player so much time and currency to farm out t17s for them to then attempt the boss and risk losing all the fragments worth a bunch of currency.

Same reason why people buy voidstone carries for Maven, and especially for Uber Elder. They can't be bothered to gather those fragments because it takes such a long time, along with the risk of losing their portals and fragments if they try it themselves.

Why do that when you can get your voidstone guaranteed and risk-free? Then on top of that you can sell your own fragments to make all the currency you just paid for those carries back lol

Its all just a problem in the game's design and how risky it is to actually attempt any boss/hard content because you might be throwing a bunch of your currency away(which is basically your time spent farming) if you fail.

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Pashid#4643 wrote:

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

Mercenaries - Way too overtuned in red maps, they were fine in campaign,white maps and yellow maps but the moment I got to t14+ maps they just start oneshotting(and certain ones are the worst offenders, if you've fought them you know). Feels like they just put random numbers in and didn't even bother testing them in actual endgame content. The scaling on them is probaby just all wrong.

The problem is once again your zhp build and not the content lol

[Removed by Support] ZHP is the problem when Mercs are still overtuned and likely bugged - how is it that everything else is fine in the game and one shots don't happen except from the obvious one shot mechanics, yet Mercs frequently 1 shot players?

We're not going to buy currency for real money so we don't have a ZHP build just to survive a broken mechanic.

Thanks.