Anyone else just kinda hate the whole mercenaries mechanic?

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Aldora_the_Summoner#4021 wrote:

How are Mercs any different than playing in a party?

Several ways:

1) Party play requires coordination and socialization: mercs do not. This is actually quite a bigger deal than you might initially think....arranging a profitable and actually functional party is quite hard in PoE.
2) Party characters require incomparably more investment in both time and gearing to be as effective
3) Parties (most) require a split of loot found. Not every party is Empyrion no matter how much people think that's how it works across the board.
4) Parties ALSO GET MERCS! So.....already right there its ON TOP OF party play, not the same.

I mean....those 4 are enough to completely disassociate the two from comparison, but there are many many more that I didn't list because I don't really want to think too hard as I'm typing this.


I'd also add......you know its a problem when you are basically saying "how is this new system any different than one of the most broken and talked about problematic system that has ever existed in the game" lol. Even with all the differences in function, it shares many of the similarities of BAD interactions that exist within the party system.

Examples:
1) Additional party member power far exceeding the difficulty penalty
2) Additional loot exceeding the cost
3) Additional auras and buffs covering up fairly basic faults of supported build.

I know diablo gets a lot of hate here but I'll take you down a trip on memory lane for Diablo 3 for those who didn't play it seriously.

The "mercenary" in that game was called a "follower". For a long time they only received a few equippable pieces, they had 4 baseline weak abilities, they did no damage in endgame content, and they died to everything. Therefore, they were ignored by everyone.

Then there was a "follower overhaul" patch where they received a full set of equippable item slots (identical number to a player character), but more imporantly many unique items received the "emanate" feature. This meant that the listed unique power could be used passively/actively by your follower when that item was equipped. One popular follower item let you double the duration of shrine/pylon effects.

That "emanate" feature is analogous to the various uniques that are useable by POE1 mercenaries to help you in combat, except in POE1 it's not explicitly stated that works and what doesn't, so the wiki compilation exists instead.

The upgraded followers in diablo 3 still do no appreciable damage in endgame content, and they will still easily die without the appropriate defensive gimmicks (e.g. immortality relic). If the "emanate" feature was never introduced in that game, STILL no one would probably bother using a follower. Followers are also automatically disabled (they stay in town) in any partied content.

Back to POE1, unless you are mister money pants nolifer, your endgame merc is not doing appreciable damage in mapping/bossing. On the other hand, they probably can stay alive with some basic investment like life, armor, resistance caps, and some useful defensive skills (RNG).

So if we take away the unique item interaction benefits for mercenaries for most players, what will be left? A free aura and some more loot with a HP buff for the enemies? You don't even want those auras then? Who is going to run a mercenary then for no appreciable offensive or defensive benefit?

If mercenaries reach the core game, they will probably receive the harvest treatment where they are nerfed to hard into oblivion that they are relegated to the status of "ya they're in the game if you want them but why?" of something like harvest (ignoring the yellow juice gambling). It will be another thing destroyed for the fun of everyone because of the actions of a small few players who treat this game like a job.

^There are some comparisons that you make to the D3 merc that are.....less than accurate or inadequately equal or comparable to PoE.

1) Emanate: these were REGULATED effects, and severely limited. Meanwhile, in PoE 1 these are virtually Unlimited, unregulated, and exceedingly powerful because they were never meant to be used in the way they are being used. We would need a total overhaul of unique items and specific mods in order for the two situations to be remotely comparable to each other in terms of power, utility, and ease.

2) Survivability: you said it yourself....a merc in D3 needed a specific unique item that stopped it from dying to survive in certain levels of content. Giving up a valuable item slot. Meanwhile, even with -200% lightning resistance and NO investment into any kind of defense our mercs here can survive all but the highest difficulty juiced t17s. Stats that, had merc stats been OUR stats, wouldn't even let us survive probably Act 4 of the game.

3) "So if we take away the unique item interaction benefits for mercenaries for most players, what will be left? A free aura and some more loot with a HP buff for the enemies? You don't even want those auras then? Who is going to run a mercenary then for no appreciable offensive or defensive benefit?"

I mean....more loot alone would make everyone use them lol. A free aura on top of that is ENORMOUS. I frankly don't think mercs should have access to ANY of the auras that we have, and they should have far less powerful, more niche and unique auras similar to aspects. Being able to curse enemies is another way for mercs to be constantly useful. Even if that were all they did. Utility in PoE is crazy effective, and can mean the difference between: 5-10 passive points or more, an entire triggered or untriggered skill setup and everything that comes with it such as mana costs, supports, etc, 50% of your entire mana pool, and more. NONE of that is the same in D3. It doesn't even exist, there basically is no synergizing in all of D3.


I'd also add that comparing the environment of D3 versus PoE, along with the mercs, is much more difficult than you tried to spell out. For one, D3 is like magnitudes easier. You don't NEED your merc to curse / ailment / aura. You are constantly raining in legendaries, sets, and valuable items. It's not the fact that mercs couldn't "emanate" that led to them not being used: it was that the game itself was so goddamn easy that people pretty much forgot they were even a thing.