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

Might as well give my 2c here since I no lifed this past week as well. I played econc slayer into smite of divine judgment and it was very fun.

1. Fighting mercs
Fighting the mercenaries in maps and checking their gear/pockets was really cool in campaign and the first 2 days and then it became pretty tedious. I could expect them to have nothing of value unless they're infamous after that point (which is fine, it's just no longer a very engaging pinata.) Completing the 15 infamous mercs actually made me excited when I saw a new one in a map. I enjoyed that.

2. Mercs as companions
Because some combinations of gear are so much more powerful than others it makes me never want to switch off kineticist. I mostly used bastion for a free determination aura among other things and then I wanted to use brittle helm so I couldn't use him anymore. I don't have to think about gear restrictions and I can just put whatever I want on her. She even uses kinetic blast so she tags everything without issue.

I have this really cool infamous ilvl84 venom gyre guy who FLOODS the screen with venom gyres but he's restricted on what he can wear so I haven't really used him much. I might try aura-buffing him as a champion to see how fast he can clear T16s by himself.

3. We needed to be able to have more than 3 mercs
I don't care if it doesn't make sense lorewise to have a menagerie of mercenaries in your stable. I can't even try anything new without permanently losing something I want to keep and even if I did I have to go through the hassle of stripping them naked and stashing the gear first.

4. New memory endgame/maps
Personally, I hate T17s. I did 10 myself and got carries for the other 20. Sue me. I don't care for shaper touched, drowning orbs, impotence, volatile cores, ground degens, etc...lol. Being able to play similar maps in open layouts with the T16.5s was much nicer since I can actually dodge. Trying to move in the 1st part of the Theatre of Lies with dumb mods rolled almost made me ragequit. Hitting the buttons for the buffs didn't feel good but the loot/gold pops felt good. The content itself is clearly a first draft or 1/3 of a big expansion or whatever you want to call it so I don't have any issue with it.

5. Settlers/Kingsmarch being core
I ran maps with Kalguur scarabs for much of the week. The petrified amber tree mobs in T16.5s drop a ton of gold. Bismuth ore makes things drop a ton of gold. Lost shipments printed a ton of currency at the start (probably not great that they give you a crap ton of valuable tattoos.) Got a ton of craters, unfortunately no Svalinn. Fun stuff. At first getting the big gold piles in T16.5s to feed the town felt really good. Then it turned into the same FOMO mess it was before. Now the meta is to pay for gold maps in groups since they spit out ~300k in 2 minutes. Then you can feed your farmers for the day without thinking about it. My thoughts on this are coming as a person who plays SC trade. In SSF I don't think the issues with the town matter.

Ore/bars are worthless in trade league. You might as well turn them off unless you're drowning in gold. Yeah you can get some really high rolled STR/EVA gear that can sell but nobody is recombinating anymore so almost all pieces are disenchant fuel.

I'm still testing mappers but they appear to be the same as last league (a fun little gamble but also not worth the time or gold.) I have all 3 mappers running T16s constantly and it's paying for the gold cost but not the hassle. Straight up deleting your extra maps if you're not going to bulk sell them is a better use of your time/gold.

Crops are still king, assuming the value of big shipments wasn't nerfed. If not for crops you could safely ignore Kingsmarch altogether. You're paying ~10 div to gold map groups in return for ~1.5 mirror shards and ~3-5 divines on average. That's a no brainer.

6. Revamped Syndicate/Catarina
There are a few more interesting gambles now like the reflecting mist, cadiro uniques, etc., but in general I don't think it's much better. So many members are 100% worthless that from what I can tell everyone is stuffing good members into the good safehouses to quickly pump them and ignoring the other 2 entirely. Needs a lot more work. Catarina is a loot pinata now.

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kri4o9#7186 wrote:

Okay RMTer - 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.

Since when are build choices rmt? Are you good mate?
In case you don't know, OP runs a full glass cannon each league and calls everything overturned as soon as they die to something with a literal zhp build lol

While true that some of them are harder to fight it's still kinda the players fault if you die to all of them in one hit lol.

18,6k effective hit pool - checks out. Everything past yellow maps is overtuned for such a build. As is tradition.

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Crîmnor#4334 wrote:

18,6k effective hit pool - checks out. Everything past yellow maps is overtuned for such a build. As is tradition.

Yes, and builds with 10x this ehp still get oneshot. No its not balanced, nor was it tested at all.

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Crîmnor#4334 wrote:

18,6k effective hit pool - checks out. Everything past yellow maps is overtuned for such a build. As is tradition.

Yeah, that checks out, 18.6k EHP is way below what a halfway decent league start build hits with just campaign gear and passives. Naturally, later content slaps that around.

What blows my mind is folks thinking you need some secret tech or real money to have a reasonably sturdy build during league start. It’s really not that deep, maybe the game’s just a bit too honest for some people these days.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

Yeah, that checks out, 18.6k EHP is way below what a halfway decent league start build hits with just campaign gear and passives. Naturally, later content slaps that around.

What blows my mind is folks thinking you need some secret tech or real money to have a reasonably sturdy build during league start. It’s really not that deep, maybe the game’s just a bit too honest for some people these days.

I shouldn't be forced to play some boring HC build with 500k dps and infinity ehp just to enjoy the game. That's just bad design, and I also never asked for build help or anything here lol
I play on Softcore cus I wanna just have fun with the game, but apparently that's too much to ask and instead we have mercenaries that oneshot you in 0.1 seconds?

Who cares how much ehp someone has on pob, overtuned content is overtuned. That's a simple fact.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

I shouldn't be forced to play some boring HC build with 500k dps and infinity ehp just to enjoy the game. That's just bad design, and I also never asked for build help or anything here lol
I play on Softcore cus I wanna just have fun with the game, but apparently that's too much to ask and instead we have mercenaries that oneshot you in 0.1 seconds?

Who cares how much ehp someone has on pob, overtuned content is overtuned. That's a simple fact.

Nobody's saying you need 500k DPS and infinite EHP to enjoy the game. But acting like Softcore gives you a free pass to ignore all defense and then blaming the game when you get one-shot is missing the point entirely.

Softcore doesn't mean you're supposed to go full glass cannon and expect to face-roll everything without consequences. Even in Softcore, building some defense is just part of playing any ARPG with challenging content. That's not bad design—that's just how the genre works.

And let’s be real, plenty of Softcore builds are incredibly durable while doing more than enough damage, often more than these janky, unoptimized glass cannon setups that fold the second a mob looks at them wrong. The idea that you have to completely sacrifice damage to be tanky is just false.

These “overtuned” complaints almost always come from builds that are poorly thought out or trying to brute-force mechanics they aren’t built for. It’s nothing new. If your build isn’t cutting it, maybe it’s time to admit the build is the problem, not the game.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

I shouldn't be forced to play some boring HC build with 500k dps and infinity ehp just to enjoy the game. That's just bad design, and I also never asked for build help or anything here lol
I play on Softcore cus I wanna just have fun with the game, but apparently that's too much to ask and instead we have mercenaries that oneshot you in 0.1 seconds?

Who cares how much ehp someone has on pob, overtuned content is overtuned. That's a simple fact.

Nobody's saying you need 500k DPS and infinite EHP to enjoy the game. But acting like Softcore gives you a free pass to ignore all defense and then blaming the game when you get one-shot is missing the point entirely.

Softcore doesn't mean you're supposed to go full glass cannon and expect to face-roll everything without consequences. Even in Softcore, building some defense is just part of playing any ARPG with challenging content. That's not bad design—that's just how the genre works.

And let’s be real, plenty of Softcore builds are incredibly durable while doing more than enough damage, often more than these janky, unoptimized glass cannon setups that fold the second a mob looks at them wrong. The idea that you have to completely sacrifice damage to be tanky is just false.

These “overtuned” complaints almost always come from builds that are poorly thought out or trying to brute-force mechanics they aren’t built for. It’s nothing new. If your build isn’t cutting it, maybe it’s time to admit the build is the problem, not the game.

Well clearly other people on tankier builds are getting oneshot by mercenaries, so no it most definitely is an issue of the content being overtuned.

Not my fault, not my build either. It's just the game not being tested properly.

And to me, Softcore Trade is the easiest mode of the game, which means I should be able to have fun and play however I want. That's the point of an easy mode after all. So if I can't have fun with the game or an aspect of it in SC then I just drop it after completing my challenges cus there's nothing to keep me playing. No reason to keep playing, no reason for me to even farm a mageblood/gamba some apothecary cards in my hideout cus the only build I knew that uses it is dead now lol
And I know I'm not alone in this mindset.

These crazy merc NPCs that just onetap you before you can even realize what's happening are just bad game design, especially the ones with proximity bubble that are just anti-ranged and made to annoy anyone not playing melee. Not to mention their voice lines where they mock you, that's just not cool.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

And to me, Softcore Trade is the easiest mode of the game, which means I should be able to have fun and play however I want. That's the point of an easy mode after all. So if I can't have fun with the game or an aspect of it in SC then I just drop it after completing my challenges cus there's nothing to keep me playing. No reason to keep playing, no reason for me to even farm a mageblood/gamba some apothecary cards in my hideout cus the only build I knew that uses it is dead now lol
And I know I'm not alone in this mindset.

Oh yeah, totally, ‘I should be able to have fun however I want!’ Classic take. But here’s the thing, this isn’t a personal fantasy simulator. It’s an ARPG that’s always punished zero-defense builds, no matter what mode you’re in. Softcore lets you die without losing your character, it doesn’t mean the game should let you ignore every mechanic and still cruise through endgame untouched.

If your idea of fun is running around with zero HP, no mitigation, and hoping nothing ever sneezes in your direction, that’s fine, just don’t expect the game to reward that. It never has. Path of Exile isn’t balanced around “fun” meaning “I can play however I want with no consequences.” It never was, and it never will be.

And if the only reason to keep playing is a build that no longer works, maybe it’s time to admit you don’t really want to engage with the game, you just want a power fantasy on demand. In that case, might I recommend Diablo 4? It’s much friendlier to that kind of mindset… at least until you try pushing into higher-tier content there too and find out, surprise, even that game eventually expects you to build around not instantly evaporating.

Play how you want, sure. Just don’t act shocked when the game plays back.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

Oh yeah, totally, ‘I should be able to have fun however I want!’ Classic take. But here’s the thing, this isn’t a personal fantasy simulator. It’s an ARPG that’s always punished zero-defense builds, no matter what mode you’re in. Softcore lets you die without losing your character, it doesn’t mean the game should let you ignore every mechanic and still cruise through endgame untouched.

If your idea of fun is running around with zero HP, no mitigation, and hoping nothing ever sneezes in your direction, that’s fine, just don’t expect the game to reward that. It never has. Path of Exile isn’t balanced around “fun” meaning “I can play however I want with no consequences.” It never was, and it never will be.

And if the only reason to keep playing is a build that no longer works, maybe it’s time to admit you don’t really want to engage with the game, you just want a power fantasy on demand. In that case, might I recommend Diablo 4? It’s much friendlier to that kind of mindset… at least until you try pushing into higher-tier content there too and find out, surprise, even that game eventually expects you to build around not instantly evaporating.

Play how you want, sure. Just don’t act shocked when the game plays back.

I dunno man, I've killed 6/7 uber bosses on this build. I can make currency all day by spamming sanctum or farming endgame bosses. I have like 100 deaths or so at lvl95 which isn't that bad, I've had leagues in the 300s. I'd say I actually can play like this and get rewarded by the game, because when a boss gets deleted in 3 seconds I get rewarded for it with loot. I can absolutely run around with 2500 hp and 600 es and still have fun in this game, I just get oneshot sometimes out of nowhere kek

And I do want to engage with the game, but to me that looks like holding right click to win and hearing tink sounds on my loot filter while being showered in currency. I haven't been able to find a nice 1-button build to copy though so that sucks.

All I'm saying is mercenaries are boring,unrewarding and overtuned. Not even worth clicking unless its infamous cus the normal ones probably have like 4x Augmentation Orb or something in their currency boxes lol