Anyone else just kinda hate the whole mercenaries mechanic?

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

A stat stick is something that provides so much damage for little to no drawback, to the point where it feels mandatory.

So basically it's mandatory to pick the best merc with the best support utilities to buff the damage out of your merc, cause there are no drawbacks for the free aura, curse, and item slots that provide you with even more things for free. All to the non existent drawback of mercs being close to immortal.
So yea they are just a stat stick since there's no point in using a merc who's not useful for your build in any way, unless you count the very little part boost as a bonus of course. In this case it's also mandatory to pick the any option to gain buff benefits in one or another way out of this league mechanic, else you can just hard skip it right away.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

And so is my Merc. A Wither Totem just debuffs your enemies, why is my Merc doing the same any different? It's not, just moving goal posts.

You cast the totems yourself and use your own gear to have those totems either cause you choose to play with them or you use them because you don't have other options to apply wither.
Your merc just gives you a bunch of extra stuff without you having to cut out on anything on your own side. There's no downside and just a gain of a lot of extra stats.

Mercs are honestly even a worse stat stick than the crucible passive tree. At least some of the nodes enabled interesting interactions, or had some sort of downside to counter the positives. Overall also just a stat stick but not as bad mercs are.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

and that is why Doryani's is 100% gonna get changed.

It's likely going to stay unchanged cause after the league we're back to the drawback of having to use the item on our character. If GGG cared enough they would have already made a mid league or early league change. But they simply don't care cause it's just a small layer amongst of free player power mercs can offer your character.

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Pashid#4643 wrote:

You cast the totems yourself and use your own gear to have those totems either cause you choose to play with them or you use them because you don't have other options to apply wither.
Your merc just gives you a bunch of extra stuff without you having to cut out on anything on your own side. There's no downside and just a gain of a lot of extra stats.

Ok, and in the case of my current build, my Merc is the only option to apply Wither. It's not feasible for me to use otherwise.

Mercs having no drawbacks is just false. They can die to Poison, Reflect, certain boss abilities. My Merc dies to Uber Atziri literally every time, because I can't stop her from hitting the mirror clone, and even dodging all the storms and flameblasts is tricky with the recall. I have to reroll Reflect maps even when my own character is immune, because giving them practical immunity to this shit is eiter unfeasible or gets expensive real fast.

They add 50% MORE monster HP, which is multiplicative with other mods. A map with 50% more monster HP becomes 125% more monster HP. Blight-Ravaged Maps with a Merc are stupid hard because of this (300% more monster HP instead of 200%). And you can feel it in regular T16/T17 maps with extra life mods, too.

Edit: As for your edit:

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Pashid#4643 wrote:

It's likely going to stay unchanged cause after the league we're back to the drawback of having to use the item on our character.

I'll be honest. If they remove Mercs next patch, I see no reason to keep playing. Mercenaries league is literally my most played league since Affliction, not accounting for Settler's inflated timeline. They opened up so many new possibilities, it'd be stupid to remove them.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

Ok, and in the case of my current build, my Merc is the only option to apply Wither. It's not feasible for me to use otherwise.

Not gonna lie, sounds a bit cursed if you don't have any other way out of a couple of reasonable choices.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

Mercs having no drawbacks is just false. They can die to Poison, Reflect, certain boss abilities. My Merc dies to Uber Atziri literally every time, because I can't stop her from hitting the mirror clone, and even dodging all the storms and flameblasts is tricky with the recall. I have to reroll Reflect maps even when my own character is immune, because giving them practical immunity to this shit is eiter unfeasible or gets expensive real fast.

They add 50% MORE monster HP, which is multiplicative with other mods. A map with 50% more monster HP becomes 125% more monster HP. Blight-Ravaged Maps with a Merc are stupid hard because of this (300% more monster HP instead of 200%). And you can feel it in regular T16/T17 maps with extra life mods, too.

Not really, reflect is the only problem if you don't pay attention to it but there's also a simple solution to that. Either don't roll it or throw a Dawnstrider or Wilma's on your merc and reflect is no longer a problem.

Everything else honestly isn't a problem cause even a t16 merc can survive t17 maps better than most builds out there which is kinda ironic if you look at their total bad stats and resistances lol They can even eat one after another uber exarch ball like a chad without giving a sweat.

The monster HP is also not a problem cause they downright provide more damage in return to the point that you could even count them as 2 players instead of 0.5, and it wouldn't change your clear speed much. If anything mercs have only increased the clear speed of most builds.

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And you can feel it in regular T16/T17 maps with extra life mods, too.

Might be just a you problem if your build starts to hit a wall in terms of killing stuff while having a merc around.

Personally, 3.26 is the worst league ever and the worst mapping mechanic that was introduced to try and shake up and change how mapping is supposed to be like every single other major expansion since modern PoE (3.0).

Mercenaries are trash and a repackaged PoE 2 Rogue Exile. I hope they go back to Trashthus and stay there.

I do hope an ACTUAL mapping mechanic can replace current one as its been literally 3.5 years since its been updated (along with Atlas Tree). Frankly, its boring and why Phrecia was a breath of fresh air despite disliking Idols... granted, having new Ascendancies was incredibly fun.

It's mostly the currency that entices me to look at mercs. I've barely dropped any chaos and never dropped a stacked deck, yet mercs that I checked recently gave me a chaos and 3 stacked decks - which isn't much but helps in act 5.

Others have seen mirrors and locks in them, however those are probably an endgame thing (if I even see them at all).

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Ondrashek06#5795 wrote:

It's mostly the currency that entices me to look at mercs. I've barely dropped any chaos and never dropped a stacked deck, yet mercs that I checked recently gave me a chaos and 3 stacked decks - which isn't much but helps in act 5.

Others have seen mirrors and locks in them, however those are probably an endgame thing (if I even see them at all).

don't get your hopes up......."others have seen" is not exactly true. out of the MILLIONS of merc encounters, less than 5 TOTAL have been seen. Probably the same or lower rate than just nakedly dropping the mirror/lock in the first place.

**Ed: I lied about the stats. It was 5 seen at Day 12, so undoubtedly more now. But also....many millions more total encounters.

The currency works up until you start actually dropping chaos in normal gameplay. The second that starts to happen, the currency you get from mercenaries is probably the worst ever in the history of league mechanics.

You are more likely to get 3 or so augs and transmutes than anything else, even in t17 map merc encounters.

I don't hate it, but I don't necessarily love it either. Mainly, I think there should be a way to uplevel mercs. With the amount of randomness involved, there's nothing more frustrating than finding your ideal merc and then having to abandon it due to getting to higher level content but then never finding a higher level version of that merc (as previous commenters have already described as well).

So while I think it's a cool mechanic and wouldn't mind if it goes core, I think there should be a way to level mercs at least to a point where you can map with them. Also, allowing them to level up doesn't mean it has to be automatic. There could also be a droppable item that gives a merc some XP, for example, which would then allow you to invest in a merc's level if you managed to hire a good one.

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Miathan51#5605 wrote:

I don't hate it, but I don't necessarily love it either. Mainly, I think there should be a way to uplevel mercs. With the amount of randomness involved, there's nothing more frustrating than finding your ideal merc and then having to abandon it due to getting to higher level content but then never finding a higher level version of that merc (as previous commenters have already described as well).

+1, I wholeheartedly agree.

I think, not only that, but also the hiring process feels backwards. IMO hiring them should cost you gold and you won't have to fight them, and exiling them should require a fight or a gold fee. And not engaging with them should stay as is.

Nothing worse (figure of speech) than needing to exile one, but they happen to be super risky for your character. As of right now, if that happens, your only option is to either lose reputation or risk a potentially deadly fight. Lose-lose situation.

There are a couple tweaks necessary for sure.

Why should you not have to fight them to hire them? What, you think mercenaries are just standing around waiting to serve anyone who stumbles into their camp with a polite smile and no proof of competence?
Lore-wise, you prove you're worthy by beating them. If that’s a problem, maybe the issue isn’t the mechanic, it’s your build.

If you’re still getting rolled by mercs after all the nerfs, then yeah, maybe it’s time to rethink that masterpiece of a setup you're clinging to. Just maybe.

And if mercs ever go core, the easiest and least hand-holdy solution would be an Atlas passive wheel that makes specific merc types more or less likely to show up, y’know, to reduce the ‘tedious target farming’ some people seem to struggle with so much.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

Why should you not have to fight them to hire them? What, you think mercenaries are just standing around waiting to serve anyone who stumbles into their camp with a polite smile and no proof of competence?

Crack open a book for once and look up the definition of "mercenary".