[Guide] Diablo 2 Mercenaries

Mercenaries are NPCs players can hire to fight alongside them. While Mercenaries were largely a novelty in early versions of Diablo II, they are substantially upgraded in Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, and can be quite effective when properly equipped and supported.

There are four types of mercenaries, Rogues (Act 1 archers), Town Guards (Act 2 spear carriers), Iron Wolves (Act 3 sorcerers), and Barbarians (Act 5 warriors). Players can only use one mercenary at a time, and hiring a new one permanently dismisses the current merc.

Mercenaries can be outfitted with weapons (of the appropriate type), body armor, and headgear, and they benefit from most of the same bonuses that your characters enjoy. Mercenaries have inherent stats and bonuses as well, and can survive without quality equipment, though the combat mercs are basically harmless without a good weapon.

In v1.10+, mercs are all available for hire at levels near those of your character. In earlier versions of the game, they were often much lower, and newly hired Mercs had to be leveled up extensively to make them useful and hardy enough to survive, especially when obtained on Hell difficulty.

Act I: Rogue Scouts:

Rogue mercenaries are obtained from

Kashya in the

Rogue Encampment. (She gives one as a reward for completing the

Blood Raven quest, and will hire them after that point, or to any character over level 8.) Rogue mercs are ranged attackers who use bows to attack from a distance. They are fairly fragile and must be kept from harm, but can dispense solid artillery support from behind the front lines. Their AI largely keeps them from harm, but they can be come confused as to how far they should stand from the action, and will sometimes wander back and forth uselessly.
These rogues may add fire or cold damage to their

Arrows; this option is only visible in the hiring window, and makes little difference to their overall damage, though the cold can add a useful chilling effect, especially in the early going when new characters need all the help they can get.

• All rogue mercs can cast the Amazon skill
  Inner Sight. This skill lowers the defense of all enemies by a set amount, and sticks a glowing white dot over their heads.

• Skills:
  Cold Arrow and
  Inner Sight or
  Fire Arrow and
  Inner Sight

• Allowed Equipment: Armor, Helms, Bows (no Crossbows or Amazon-only bows).

Names:

The names are randomly selected each time a list of mercs for hire is generated; the names do not have any connection to their other abilities or damage types. As is the case with lots of weapons in the game, and especially with the names of NPC mercs, the Blizzard North designers worked in the names of Blizzard employees, and notable members of the Diablo II fan community. This was taken to an extreme with the Rogue mercs, as seemingly every male Blizzard North employee worked in their girlfriend or wife, and every Blizzard North female employee threw in her name or alias. Fans were honored too, Elly and Gaile were webmasters of Diabloii.net, as was Flux (found in Act Three).

Act II Mercs

The Hirelings of Act II are available from

Greiz in

Lut Gholein. They are melee attackers and use spears/javelins or polearms to great effect. These mercs are the most popular hires in the game, since they come with various auras that can greatly benefit their employer.

• Skills:
  Jab attack.

• Auras: These mercs have a variety of auras. There are three types available on each difficulty level, though the auras found on Normal and Hell difficulty levels are the same.

• Allowed Equipment: Armor, Helms, Spears, Polearms, Javelins (Used solely for melee weapons.) They can not equip Amazon-only javelins or spears.

• Equipping the mercenary with +X to All Skills items (weapon, helmet, armor) will increase the effectiveness of his aura.

Names:

The names are randomly selected each time a list of mercs for hire is generated; the names do not have any connection to their other abilities or aura types. As is the case with lots of weapons in the game, and especially with the names of NPC mercs, the Blizzard North designers worked in the names of Blizzard employees, and notable members of the Diablo II fan community. Azrael was the webmaster of Diablo2.com, a prominent fansite in the pre-Diablo 2 days.

Auras by Difficulty:

• Combat (Normal):
  Prayer

• Combat (Nightmare):
  Thorns

• Combat (Hell):
  Prayer

• Defense (Normal):
  Defiance

• Defense (Nightmare):
  Holy Freeze

• Defense (Hell):
  Defiance

• Offense (Normal):
  Blessed Aim

• Offense (Nightmare): Might

• Offense (Hell):
  Blessed Aim

Aura Levels:

Act III Iron Wolves:

The Hirelings of Act III are available from

Asheara in the

Kurast Docks. These are the only magical mercs, and each one specializes in Lightning, Cold, or Fire. Their AI is similar to that of the Rogue mercs and they tend to stay behind the lines and attack from a distance, even though they carry shields and can achieve fairly high defense and resistances.


Each Iron Wolf is either fire, lightning, or cold based and although they can each use two or three spells, this only adds slightly to their variety.

• Fire:
  Inferno or
  Fireball.

• Cold:
  Glacial Spike,
  Ice Blast, and
  Frozen Armor.

• Lightning:
  Charged Bolt and
  Lightning Bolt.

• The cold are the most popular, since that element has the effect of chilling and slowing targets, but the damage dealt by the three types is equivalent.

• Allowed Equipment: Armor, Helms, Shields and Swords

• Notes: Iron Wolves very rarely hit anything with their weapon, so are best equipped with a sword that has spell-caster bonuses.

Names:

There are quite a few tongue-twisting names available for Iron Wolves. One is randomly assigned to each of the Iron Wolves your character sees on the hireling menu. As is the case with lots of weapons in the game, and especially with the names of NPC mercs, the Blizzard North designers worked in the names of Blizzard employees, and notable members of the Diablo II fan community. The last 3 Iron Wolf names (they are listed in this order in the game database file, making it clear that the honored fans were added last) are all fans; Jarulf is the author of the famous Diablo guide. Flux was one of the webmasters of Diabloii.net (co-webmasters Elly and Gaile both showed up as Act One rogue mercs). And Scorch was the author of the first monster specialty site, Darkness, which was hosted by Diabloii.net.

Act IV: NONE

There are no Mercenaries available for hire in Act Four, though

Tyrael will resurrect fallen Mercenaries retained from other acts.

Act V Barbarians:

The Hirelings of Act V are available from

Qual-Kehk in

Harrogath once you have completed the Rescue the Barbarians quest. Unlike

Kashya in Act One, he does not reward you with a free barbarian merc.

• Skills:
  Bash and
  Stun

• Allowed Equipment: Armor, Helms, Barbarian Class-specific Helms, One Sword (can't dual wield).

Names:

The names are randomly assigned to each of the Barbarians when the hireling menu is generated. As with the other mercs, Blizzard North worked a lot of employee and friend names into the list of Barbarians, and honored a few fans as well. Varaya and Khan were two of the best known mod-makers from the days of Diablo, famed for their well-made Lord of the Rings-themed mods. Lanth was another of the early staff members of Diabloii.net, but earned his merc name by being a moderator in the Diabloii.net chat room, which was regularly frequented by Peter Hu (AKA Isolde, see the rogue merc names), the chief architect of the v1.10 patch, in which Lanth's name was added. Lanth also contributed general gameplay feedback, quality of life improvements and other ideas to Peter, many of which made it into the v1.10 patch.


v1.13 Barbarian Merc Name Change
The v1.13 Diablo 2 patch "updated" the names of two of the mercs. As players who dug into the game code informed us:

In 1.13, MercX136 is called 'Klar', in 1.12 it was 'Weohstan'.
In 1.13, MercX135 is called 'Tryneus', in 1.12 it was 'Erfor'.

This data was taken from: https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Mercenaries

Another story from Cthu’s scarred old desk:

The items equipped on a merc will disappear with the merc, when you hire a new one.

This also applies for changing the merc of the same type e.g. A2 combat vs A2 defensive.

Thus, always remove equipment from the merc prior to getting a new one!

Otherwise your Infinity will be lost - like mine 15 years ago - and your table will be bitten and scarred from your anger.

General Mercenary Facts

Items/Mods

• The mod: Prevent Monster Heal does not work for mercenaries. It has no effect at all.

• Most other mods (Crushing Blow, Open Wounds, Chance to Cast on Striking, Faster Cast Rate, Faster Hit Recovery, Increased Attack Speed, etc.) do work for mercs. There are some other specific instances that I'll cover in later sections.

• Mercs can use Critical and Deadly Strike. Both effects will double only the physical damage of the attack.

• For questions about using the Delerium runeword on your merc, see Delirium.

• Ethereal items will not lose durability when equipped on a mercenary.

• Equiping a mercenary with the mod "-x% to Enemy _____ Resistance" will help your merc's damage, but it will NOT help your character's damage.

• Medium and Heavy armors do slow down the movement speed of mercenaries.

Levels

• Mercs hired in normal difficulty have better stats than those hired in Nightmare, and those are both better than those hired in Hell. In 1.11, you should always hire your mercs in Normal, since they will always have better stats, the exception being the Nightmare Act 2 mercs, which have different auras than Normal A2 mercs. The level of your character when you hire them has no bearing on their stats, only the difficulty you hire them in matters.

• The highest level a merc can be is 98.

• When mercs levels up, their current life is set to their new base maximum life. So, if a merc is under life bonuses from
  Battle Orders,
  Oak Sage, or equipment, you will see thier life drop. Don't be alarmed when this happens, your merc isn't about to bite the dust.

Skills

• Mercs skills do synergize each other when applicable. As an example, an Act 3 Iron Wolf's
  Ice Blast will synergize its
  Glacial Spike.

• Related to the above, mercs are NOT affected by the
  Charge synergy bug (bug removed in 1.11).

• Mercs will benefit from:

• +all skills

• +fire skills (when applicable - Fire Iron Wolf or
  Fire Arrow Rogue)

• +specific skills (if they already have the skills (e.g. an act 3 merc will benefit from an
  Ormus Robes' skill if he posseses that skill already, even though it says (Sorceress Only)))

• The A5 barbs will benefit from +
  Bash or +
  Stun on a barbarian
  Helm. However, those helms shouldn't exist in 1.1x, but in very rare cases they can spawn.

• Mercs will not benefit from:

• +class skills (not even barbarian mercs with +all barbarian skills gear)

• +skilltabs

Misc

• Mercs only have Strength and Dexterity, so +Vitality and +Energy mods have no effect. They do have life (so +Life works), but not mana.

• Since mercs do not have mana, mana potions and Mana Burn will not work on them. If you try the shift + 1 method to feed your merc a mana pot, he/she will thank you, although you yourself will drink the potion. They are simply granted "infinite" mana to cast spells.

• "Act 5 mercs regenerate their health fully in 16.4 seconds, whereas all other mercs require 41 seconds." - Zath

• Poison can kill your merc, even if you are in town.

• You can use healing potions or rejuvination potions on your mercenary by selecting a potion and dropping it on their portrait in the top left corner of the screen. Another way to do this is to hold Shift and press 1,2,3, or 4 - which correspond to your
  Belt slots. Yet another way is holding Shift and right-clicking on a potion in your
  Belt. On xbox pad the combination for healing merc is LT + Arrow.

• Similar to giving a merc a potion using the portrait: you can give your mercenary equipment via the portrait. If they are able to equip the item, it will work. If they are already wearing this type of item, it will be exchanged for the new one.

• If your merc is wearing either Gold Find or Magic Find gear, you will receive those respective bonuses to your drops when the merc makes a kill. Example, 100% MF on char, 125% MF on merc. If you make the kill, 100% MF is in effect. If the merc makes the kill, 225% MF is in effect.

• The price of resurrecting your merc is capped at 50000 gold.

Mercenary Facts from Theamazonbasin

Udyret wrote: 2 years ago

• You can use healing potions or rejuvination potions on your mercenary by selecting a potion and dropping it on their portrait in the top left corner of the screen. Another way to do this is to hold Shift and press 1,2,3, or 4 - which correspond to your
  Belt slots. Yet another way is holding Shift and right-clicking on a potion in your
  Belt.

Could you add information that on xbox pad (on PC but same goes to xbox I guess) the combination for healing merc is LT + Arrow.

When I started D2R I couldn't find this info, so I played like until late Nightmare without healing merc.

PTR Patch 2.4 Mercenary Changes

Blizzard wrote:

Hiring a Mercenary in Expansion mode will now always offer mercenaries that match your character's Level, instead of having a randomized Level difference from your character's Level.

Act 1 - Rogue Archer
Updated each stat/skill gains in each difficulty to match so that there is no disadvantage of leveling up a Hell difficulty mercenary versus a Normal difficulty mercenary.

Cold Arrow

• Added
  Freezing Arrow

Fire Arrow

• Added Explosion Arrow

Developer Comments: The Rogue Archer is getting new flavored ranged skills that will scale as she levels up. These new skills should improve her AoE (Area of Effect) damage effectiveness and thus make her a more effective ranged damage dealer.

Act 2 - Desert Mercenary
Updated each stat/skill gains in each difficulty to match so that there is no disadvantage of leveling up a Hell difficulty mercenary versus a Normal difficulty mercenary.
Nightmare and Hell difficulty now have all 6 different aura types available from the Hire menu, instead of separating them out by 3 per difficulty. Normal is unchanged.

Thorns (Combat - Nightmare)

• Thorns aura level scaling increased and will now continue scaling up beyond the highest-level threshold up to max level.

Developer Comments: The Desert Mercenary is already popular, but we saw an opportunity to add some quality-of-life improvements by allowing players to hire all six different Aura types in Nightmare and Hell difficulty, rather than having to switch between modes. With the general improvements to “

Thorns,” we wanted to improve the level scaling to make this aura mercenary type more meaningful.

Act 3 - Iron Wolf

• Updated each stat/skill gains in each difficulty to match so that there is no disadvantage of leveling up a Hell difficulty mercenary versus a Normal difficulty mercenary.

• Life baseline and scaling increased by about 25% (Now has Life similar to the Rogue Archer)

• Defense baseline and scaling increased by about 40% (Now has defense closer to the Rogue Archer)

• Resistances baseline and scaling increased by about 20% (Now has the highest resistances baseline compared to other mercenaries)

Cold

• Now casts
  Glacial Spike more often

• Glacial Spike level scaling increased

• Frozen Armor level scaling increased

Fire

• Removed
  Inferno

• Added
  Fire Bolt

• Increased chance of the Iron Wolf casting Fire Ball

• Added
  Enchant - Now the Iron Wolf will cast
  Enchant on himself, the player, and nearby allies

Lightning

• Added
  Static Field

• Charged Bolt level scaling increased

• Increased chance of the Iron Wolf casting Lightning

Developer Comments: The Iron Wolves are great elemental sorcerers, but we saw they have been underperforming in higher difficulties. We improved their core stats so that they are more in line with other mercenaries while also having a distinct advantage with having the most resistance values. For skills, we wanted to embrace their elemental fantasies, so we decided to give new flavorful utility skills, to further incentivize reasons to want to use these mercenary types.

Act 5 - Barbarian Warrior

• Updated each stat/skill gains in each difficulty to match so that there is no disadvantage of leveling up a Hell difficulty mercenary versus a Normal difficulty mercenary.

• Life baseline scaling increased (Now has the most life compared to other mercenaries)

• Defense baseline and scaling increased and the scaling at higher levels was reduced (Now has the highest defense baseline compared to other mercenaries)

• Bash level scaling increased and will no longer be capped at level 80

• Stun level scaling increased and will no longer be capped at level 80

• Added
  Battle Cry

Developer Comments: We want to give the Barbarian Warrior more identity while still maintaining his Barbarian fantasy. So, we decided to give him the “

Battle Cry” skill as a new way for him to debuff enemies, which should prove to be a useful utility for players. In addition, we wanted to increase his Life and Defense scaling to ensure that he is the tougher mercenary type.

PATCH 2.4 PTR NOTES

Mercenary stats and breakpoints


Rogue, Town Guard, Ironwolf, (Barbarian) Breakpoint Tables
Mercenary - Basin Wiki

Ultimate Merc Guide V3.0

Extensive Mercenary Builds Guide

librarian's FAQtoids

D2R Ladder PTR 2.4 Changes

Blizzard wrote:

Act 1 - Rogue Archer

Can now use Amazon Bows
Can now gain + Amazon skill bonuses from gear

Act 3 - Iron Wolf

Swapped

Frozen Armor for

Chilling Armor
Swapped

Fire Bolt for

Redemption Aura

Act 5 - Barbarian Warrior

Can now gain + Barbarian skill bonuses from gear
A new ferocious Barbarian is available for hire from

Qual-Kehk. These warriors cannot use two-handed swords. but are well trained in the art of dual wielding. Utilizing the

Frenzy,

Taunt, and

Iron Skin abilities, they lure enemies in and unleash a fierce barrage of attacks.

Developer Comments: Our hope with these changes are to continue to bring the non-Act 2 mercenaries up in viability so that they see increased usage, and to push each one further into their class archetype by allowing them to use class specific equipment.

2.4 Mercenaries Patch Notes

Blizzard wrote:

Hiring a Mercenary in Expansion mode will now always offer mercenaries that match your character's Level, instead of having a randomized Level difference from your character's Level.

Act 1 - Rogue Archer

• Updated each stat/skill gains in each difficulty to match so that there is no disadvantage of leveling up a Hell difficulty mercenary versus a Normal difficulty mercenary

• Can now use Amazon Bows

• Can now gain + Amazon skill bonuses from gear

Cold Arrow

• Added
  Freezing Arrow

Fire Arrow

• Added Explosion Arrow

Developer Comments: The Rogue Archer is getting new flavored ranged skills that will scale as she levels up. These new skills should improve her AoE (Area of Effect) damage effectiveness and thus make her a more effective ranged damage dealer.

Act 2 - Desert Mercenary

• Updated each stat/skill gains in each difficulty to match so that there is no disadvantage of leveling up a Hell difficulty mercenary versus a Normal difficulty mercenary

• Nightmare and Hell difficulty now have all 6 different aura types available from the Hire menu, instead of separating them out by 3 per difficulty. Normal is unchanged

Thorns (Combat - Nightmare)

• Thorns aura level scaling increased and will now continue scaling up beyond the highest-level threshold up to max level

Developer Comments: The Desert Mercenary is already popular, but we saw an opportunity to add some quality-of-life improvements by allowing players to hire all six different Aura types in Nightmare and Hell difficulty, rather than having to switch between modes. With the general improvements to “

Thorns,” we wanted to improve the level scaling to make this aura mercenary type more meaningful.

Act 3 - Iron Wolf

• Updated each stat/skill gains in each difficulty to match so that there is no disadvantage of leveling up a Hell difficulty mercenary versus a Normal difficulty mercenary

• Life baseline and scaling increased by about 25% (Now has Life similar to the Rogue Archer)

• Defense baseline and scaling increased by about 40% (Now has defense closer to the Rogue Archer)

• Resistances baseline and scaling increased by about 20% (Now has the highest resistances baseline compared to other mercenaries)

Cold

• Now casts
  Glacial Spike more often

• Glacial Spike level scaling increased

• Swapped
  Frozen Armor for
  Chilling Armor

Fire

• Removed
  Inferno

• Added
  Fire Bolt

• Increased chance of the Iron Wolf casting Fire Ball

• Added
  Enchant - Now the Iron Wolf will cast
  Enchant on himself, the player, and nearby allies

Lightning

• Added
  Static Field

• Charged Bolt level scaling increased

• Increased chance of the Iron Wolf casting Lightning

Developer Comments: The Iron Wolves are great elemental sorcerers, but we saw they have been underperforming in higher difficulties. We improved their core stats so that they are more in line with other mercenaries while also having a distinct advantage with having the most resistance values. For skills, we wanted to embrace their elemental fantasies, so we decided to give new flavorful utility skills, to further incentivize reasons to want to use these mercenary types.

Act 5 - Barbarian Warrior

• Can now gain + Barbarian skill bonuses from gear

• Updated each stat/skill gains in each difficulty to match so that there is no disadvantage of leveling up a Hell difficulty mercenary versus a Normal difficulty mercenary

• Life baseline scaling increased (Now has the most life compared to other mercenaries)

• Defense baseline and scaling increased and the scaling at higher levels was reduced (Now has the highest defense baseline compared to other mercenaries)

Dual Wielding

• A new ferocious Barbarian is available for hire from
  Qual-Kehk. These warriors cannot use two-handed swords, but are well trained in the art of dual wielding. Utilizing the
  Frenzy,
  Taunt, and
  Iron Skin abilities, they lure enemies in and unleash a fierce barrage of attacks

Two-handed

• Bash level scaling increased and will no longer be capped at level 80

• Stun level scaling increased and will no longer be capped at level 80

• Added
  Battle Cry

Developer Comments: We want to give the Barbarian Warrior more identity while still maintaining his Barbarian fantasy. So, we decided to give him the “

Battle Cry” skill as a new way for him to debuff enemies, which should prove to be a useful utility for players. In addition, we wanted to increase his Life and Defense scaling to ensure that he is the tougher mercenary type. By adding a new dual wielding Barbarian Mercenary, we hope to provide a powerful, fast-hitting merc that challenges the status-quo of common mercenary choice among players.

Act 5 Dual Wield

Frenzy Mercenary VS Ubers