Why Mercenaries should go core, a plea

Sorry for the wall of text, I like to couch my points as well as I can.
I've been playing Poe on and off since the league that released the stone gargoyle/hound pets many years ago. I've accumulated some thousand hours in this, and hope to continue playing for many, many years. I've seen ups and downs in this game, and in my head, the game has almost never been in a better state.

The Atlas rework was absolutely amazing. Giving players power over their own play experience is AWESOME, and the 3 different trees to switch by makes it so you can play the game your way, and not even get tired of it as easily.

My favorite league ever was Delirium. Not because of the league mechanic, it was, and still is not a mechanic I enjoy. But the cluster jewels were a revelation. It was like a whole other endgame. When you were finally "done" with your tree, you could start working towards clusters. Genius. As if that was not enough, a lot of them had WONDERFUL powers, enabling a whole mountain of new builds. I've never rerolled so many times as I did in that league. It was glorious. A lot of them has been nerfed, many of them deservedly. But what they did for the game was great.

Mercenaries do some of the same stuff, but more. These are the reasons I love Mercenaries.

- They give room for gear that might otherwise be vendored. Strange uniques, broken corrupted items and more open up new synergies. So many uniques and odd gear has been given new life and I love it. This is particularly important for poe I think, as so much gear is not even considered worth picking up. Because of trade, Poe has an issue with a lot of loot feeling worthless/not as good as whatever I can easily trade for. Now, I see a low tier unique on the ground and think "I wonder if my merc can use this". Thats a GOOD thing, and Poe needs it.

- They enable a lot of new builds. By offloading auras (like grace, determination etc) you can focus on more important, not to mention interesting stuff to use sockets and reservation for. The defensive options, paired with the potential for the mercenaries to be beefy enough to tank a lot of stuff, opens up the way for otherwise less/non played builds. Channeling skills are suddenly more interesting and viable.

- They give an additional road of progression in the endgame, which is always fun.

- They give the possibility for a sped up campaign for alts (yay!), enabling you to hire beefcakes to smash stuff for you on the road to endgame, making alts a faster and more fun leveling experience, without messing up the main run.

I absolutely adore Mercenaries, it might even top Delerium/clusters for me in amount of fun, and I absolutely pray that they will go core. I for one, love my new buddies.

PS: The new bosses and other league content is also great, thanks for delivering after such a long wait, JUST DONT TAKE MY TROOPS AWAY PLEASE!

PPS: Eu servers :(

Edit: Elaborated on one of my points.

I've gotta say I want them to go core but I have a difficult time thinking how they can actually do it, the power creep this league is absolutely nuts and the games already pretty scuffed from power creep as it is.

That might be the biggest argument for it tbh, just accept its gonna be a direct power fantasy from now on then just add them in.

That's a direct deviation from their general balance mantra however so I really have no idea what they will do with this one.

"

I've gotta say I want them to go core but I have a difficult time thinking how they can actually do it, the power creep this league is absolutely nuts and the games already pretty scuffed from power creep as it is.

That might be the biggest argument for it tbh, just accept its gonna be a direct power fantasy from now on then just add them in.

That's a direct deviation from their general balance mantra however so I really have no idea what they will do with this one.

I guess, but does it matter if its fun?

Also, not to derail the thread already, but Poe2 is the place to be miserable now. Cant they follow the ruthless philosophy in that game and let Poe1 be fun?

I agree. Mercs need to go core. As I've said in another thread: Currently, people are looking at them as pseudo stat sticks, but that's not all they are.

At the moment, I don't even use a Merc with auras or similar. No, my current Merc plugs a hole my build had/has: AoE clear. My Flamehand freezes packs and clears pretty well, allowing my Totems to focus on the big bad boys. That makes it possible to run a Breachstone, as ridiculous that may sound.

I use items such as Pyroshock Clasp and Expedition's End on her. Stuff I've never bothered to use before, but it actually makes sense to equip them on my "sidearm", so to speak. Utility is the name of the game, it's just gonna take a while for people to catch on and to stop looking at PoB DPS numbers go up.

I did the same at first, but I found that my DPS was already good enough and more DPS wasn't what I actually needed.

I've now cleared all of the new bosses first try, except for the fake Innocence guy. My Merc is going where I'm going. Simple as.

"

tzimize#5306 wrote:

...but does it matter if its fun?

Not to be a party pooper here, but yes - it does matter.

Temporary/league power creep is fine; new toys to play with, new "problems" to solve and all that. But if every bit of power is implemented into the core game, the "fun" is quickly over, and we're left with even a larger mess of things we "have to micromanage" and deal with.

I don't really know how they could balance the Mercs towards the core game without them either being OP or useless. As of now in the endgame, they are sort of a noob trap, in that they make the game harder for you unless you know what you're doing.

I wouldn't cry my eyes out if they went core. I just don't think they need to.

Power creep is always going to be a "thing" in PoE. At least mercs add some new dimensionality and utility to the game. As mentioned, they make good use of items which might otherwise not be worth keeping. They add to the strategy of build design. And they are fun.

Besides, if Kingsmarch can go core almost intact, I suspect that Mercs would be less of a leap for GGG. =^[.]^=

"

Raycheetah#7060 wrote:

Besides, if Kingsmarch can go core...

"Can" is one thing, "should" is another - regarding both mechanics :P