Mercenaries need to go core!

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

If player power, both existing and growing, were a significant motivator for developers to increase difficulty, we’d see a very different game. Instead, there’s nothing beyond Uber fights that really challenges players, and even Uber content has become easier over time. The entry ceiling has been lowered so much that high-end content feels like a breeze.

Wrong. Shaper used to be pinnacle content. REGULAR shaper. Compare that to the current storyline bosses we have now, to sirus, to maven. Power creep has shaped this game's development in a huge way.

Just because you no longer FEEL it, being able to gear better and faster than maybe your first year playing...doesn't make that huge difference in "entry level difficulty" go away.

The fundamental issue with trying to argue that Mercs are optional, is that literally everything else starts falling into the optional category too, with the only caveat being how easy it is to integrate them and what trade offs are being made.

Cluster jewels are optional and some of them are extremely hard to produce. Doesn't alter the fact they are the single strongest upgrade you can make to your (and most) builds. Literally almost every top tier build defaults to using 1p Voices too. Still optional.

Mageblood is a rare optional unique item that suggests you to give up 4 slots you could otherwise use for unique flasks to make full use of it. It's also enkindling orbs that arguably make the belt so strong.

Fossils, harvest, essences, beasts, all are optional, the only thing that matters is which of them is appropriate for your craft.

Ascendancies are optional, you only have to force yourself to pass through the lab, but no one is forcing you to use them either.

Delirium mirror is fully optional, but if you want the maximum loot possible from the possible sources it uses, it stop being optional, the crux being only if you can handle them.

Mercs directly displace the AG slot. You can use both, but Mercs don't come with the use use your gems slots, can become useful with minimal gear and the only slight inconvenience in using them is the (up to) 50% more life modifier, which not only is trivial to overcome, comes with increased pseudo IIQ/IIR.

Trying to argue that the only reason to not use them is FOMO comes from an extremely biased and narrow opinion. Once a mechanic provides enough baseline power with minimal opportunity cost, it becomes mandatory.

The only fair way to keep them is for them to replace the AG spot maintaining all it's weaknesses. Otherwise, even lower ceiling and higher floor of difficulty.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Wrong. Shaper used to be pinnacle content. REGULAR shaper. Compare that to the current storyline bosses we have now, to sirus, to maven. Power creep has shaped this game's development in a huge way.

Just because you no longer FEEL it, being able to gear better and faster than maybe your first year playing...doesn't make that huge difference in "entry level difficulty" go away.

Precisely. We're not at Diablo 3 levels yet, but Mercs sure as hell ain't how you pump the brakes on that trend.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Wrong. Shaper used to be pinnacle content. REGULAR shaper. Compare that to the current storyline bosses we have now, to sirus, to maven. Power creep has shaped this game's development in a huge way.

Your insight has only further reinforced the point, those once challenging encounters have become increasingly trivial thanks to power creep.

Fights like Eater, Exarch, and Maven demand roughly the same mechanical and build requirements as Shaper and Sirus did back then. The required ceilings haven’t shifted.
Achieving around 1–2 million damage is sufficient, enough to not feel like a zDPS, and coupled with just enough survivability to withstand a boss’s casual gesture, sending you hurtling into oblivion. This has been the baseline ceiling since Shaper. Moreover, surpassing this threshold by a considerable margin is hardly a challenge, often occurring well before you even reach the point of engaging with such content.

What has changed is how effortlessly those ceilings are surpassed. With every new introduction of player power, it becomes easier and easier to exceed the bare minimum needed to clear these fights. What once required skill and effort is now routine thanks to the constant influx of stronger gear, mechanics, and passive buffs.

There was truly nothing done to counter player power in either the last expansion’s pinnacle content or the latest expansion’s pinnacle bosses.

Even the newest pinnacle bosses follow this same pattern: similar demands on paper, but in practice, trivialized by how quickly players can outpace the intended difficulty, even on mediocre builds.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Just because you no longer FEEL it, being able to gear better and faster than maybe your first year playing...doesn't make that huge difference in "entry level difficulty" go away.

Oh, it's definitely not just me. The game has evolved significantly over the years, introducing a wide array of systems that grant players more power—faster and more efficiently. As a result, many aspects that were once challenging have become far more trivial.

Take Settlers of Kalguur as a prime example. This patch alone introduced a substantial spike in power creep due to the way quality now functions. And this isn’t an isolated case—there have been multiple instances where new mechanics were folded into the core game, each one nudging the baseline power higher and making earlier content feel increasingly easy by comparison.

So no, it’s not just about a personal shift in perception. The entire foundation of player power and difficulty has changed.

In this context, it hardly matters if GGG were to add mercenaries to the core game, even without any nerfs. The game is already being trivialized by the sheer influx of power, and nothing truly would change. The difficulty has already been eroded, and the introduction of mercs would barely make a dent in this ongoing trend.

On the positive side, mercenaries would merely provide additional options for players, and that’s always a welcome addition in a game of this scale. More choices are never a bad thing, especially in a game as expansive as Path of Exile.

Big +1 to getting mercs into the core game

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

In this context, it hardly matters if GGG were to add mercenaries to the core game, even without any nerfs. The game is already being trivialized by the sheer influx of power, and nothing truly would change.

Then why not add the ability to hire up to 5 mercs at once, also every merc give you 30 skillpoints and 100% more quant? We get way more fun with increased quant, 150 extra skillpoints makes "more choices are never a bad thing" and by your logic "nothing truly would change".

But in reality it would change. I feel it in other games, when you use cheats and become OP, it can be fun for the first little amount of time, but very quickly become not interesting - you close the game and have no desire to play it for long time.

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felix0808#2550 wrote:

Then why not add the ability to hire up to 5 mercs at once, also every merc give you 30 skillpoints and 100% more quant? We get way more fun with increased quant, 150 extra skillpoints makes "more choices are never a bad thing" and by your logic "nothing truly would change".

What we have with mercs right now is within reasonable power levels, offering utility without breaking the game. Your suggestion of five mercs, 150 skill points, and double quant would trivialize everything a hundred times over, and no one would want to play that.

GGG clearly knows what they’re doing, which is why they limit us to one merc. While some decisions may be debatable, they avoid going overboard with absurd ideas like granting mercs skill points or overkill massive stat boosts.

Throwing out such unrealistic proposals only derails the conversation. My guess is you might be new to the game or its development philosophy, or perhaps just trolling, having run out of meaningful points to contribute. This discussion is about adding mercs to the core game, not “how can we turn mercs into absurd powerhouses to decuple our stats?”

If you want excessive power creep, maybe try Diablo 4 instead. Let’s keep this discussion grounded and focus on realistic improvements that enhance mercs as a balanced, fun feature.

I just follow your logic - "game already easy and adding mercs change nothing" and show that it flawed. If 2x more power (current mercs) "change nothing" because "game already easy", then why adding 5x more power is "no one would want to play that"?

But in fact adding even current 2x power mercs makes PoE less interesting, because of how easy it becomes. Not to mention that this makes other parts of the game less significant (crafting, earning currency, good gems and skill tree...) Because you can complete game with mercs even if you bad in all above.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

AGs and Mercs both optional... On the other hand, Mercs come with the early cost of a 0.5 party penalty, which lasts until they evolve from a burden into a beneficial asset.

Merc party penalty not a penalty at all, because you get same loot multiplier. It doesn't matter that mob have 1.5x hp, if you get 1.5x more loot from him. So mercs are huge free power up without any drawback. But you continue denying this obvious for everyone fact and saying that mercs "optional" and "change nothing" in terms of balance. And who from us is trolling is a big question.

You’re missing the point, mercs aren’t meant to be the total game breaker you’re hoping for. They’re optional content, designed to complement your playstyle or be skipped entirely. GGG has already nailed this, you can use mercs for some benefits, but you’re not left behind if you don’t. Any baseline merc won’t magically give you x2 benefits—they require proper investment and setup to get any significant boost.

The concept of “optional” seems lost here, or maybe it’s just the FOMO making you unsettled. Either way, I’m disengaging from this discussion unless you can stop derailing the topic for the purpose of trolling. This conversation is about the current state of mercs and their potential introduction into the core game, not about turning something perfectly fine into a mandatory, game-breaking mechanic.

If a 5x multiplier and endless player power are what you're after, there are other games like D4 that’ll scratch that itch for you.

I WANT IT CORE. And I want them to be as great as they are now, they are SUPER FREAKING FUN!

The only thing I would say is the lightning res stuff needs balancing, it is too good compared to other stuff. But it should be EASY to balance. Just make the mercs more susceptible to negative resistance, a damage multiplier or something.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

You’re missing the point, mercs aren’t meant to be the total game breaker you’re hoping for. They’re optional content, designed to complement your playstyle or be skipped entirely.

No....you are missing the point here, by continuing to only look at YOUR experience and failing to look beyond YOUR personal choices.

It may be optional ON PAPER, because you obviously get to choose how YOU play the game. But it is NOT optional in terms of the game, OUTSIDE of how you personally interact with the game. I recognize this is a bit of a strawman but it does illustrate a bit of the problem with your thinking: you CAN build a character that only uses tier 5 mods on all your gear. That's certainly an OPTION open to you. But the GAME is not balanced around your choice to do that. It is balanced around the MAXIMUM values possible.

Not getting ALL the maximums, all at once, on one character obviously. That's yet another hyperbole in the opposite direction. No one is saying the game is balanced around THAT. But an entire system that offers near 50% power boost conservatively, with a heck of a lot more utility attached to that too? It would be impossible to ignore (from a development standpoint).

This was the entire point of nearly every change made in patch 3.14. The systems that ran away with power were NOT optional: they broke the game that existed for everyone.

You are wrong on many levels with the things you wrote. The easiest way to demonstrate this is the fact that, because as you said, getting power is much easier now and our baseline damage is in the millions. As I have said, in direct response to this new reality, GGG has significantly multiplied monster hp and boss hp. We received new layers of defenses and ways to maximize defenses (back in the day, getting 80% max resists was CRAZY). In direct response to this, now even freaking white mobs of monsters deal so much elemental and physical damage that you need 90% to really "feel" the effect, with 75% no longer feeling good without other layers. Barrier to the first tier of maps used to be 2k ehp unless you were an exceptional player. Now its almost double that, if not more than double.

This is literally how power creep influences development....even if you never once built a character to +max resists, or ever used lightning arrow, or ever built an armour character, etc. etc. It STILL affects your game, because it is IN the game.


If development did NOT act against power creep, like you claimed, we would be one-tapping everything with 100k damage.....because that was the baseline damage levels back during Shaper days. But that ISN'T the case, because overall baseline damage went way up across ALL the players.


Actual DIFFICULTY has most definitely increased since shaper days. Since 3.8. Since 3.13. Since 3.23. Etc. The only difference is experience. Certain things are easier, sure, but OVERALL (again, big picture which you are ignoring) creating a character is much harder. It requires higher numbers of everything than before. It requires less mistakes. Gameplay requires far more dodging and knowledge of mechanics. There are tons of ways to die that simply....didn't exist 5 years ago.

Bump for mercenaries to go core!