Merc revamp

We all value and love our rogues, emilios, barbs, and to a lesser extent those weird dudes from act 3, but we all have the feeling they could be a little better don't we?
Let's discuss how to improve them while leaving them in a supporting role. My ideas would be
1) improve pathfinding and targeting. my heart bleeds every time the rogue shoots 20

Arrows into a wall, or calmly stands two screens away while i struggle
2) give them vitality, energy and mana - mostly an asset, but in part also a liability since mana needs to be managed
3) give them sashes, gloves and

Boots. a nice boost, a way to reach the critical breakpoints, and a use for all those ethereal items we waste!
4) give each of them five useful and synergetic skills, and two starting skill points so that they max all slvl to 20 out at clvl 99. it really hurts to see lvl 50

Inner Sight..

Ideas for skills

Rogue

Inner Sight,

Slow Missiles, Avoid, and either

Fire Arrow +

Exploding Arrow, or

Cold Arrow +

Freezing Arrow

Emilio

Jab,

Critical Strike,

Polearm Mastery or

Spear Mastery (you have to pay attention which weapon type he uses),

Mind Blast, and one of the auras

Act 3 fire guy

Warmth,

Enchant,

Fire Mastery,

Fire Bolt, fire ball

Others .. don't know much about

Thoughts? Would we love to see it in a future patch, could it come?

Don't forget the Act 5 Barb Merc. He shines for some builds.

ganseng wrote: 1 month ago

Rogue

Inner Sight,

Slow Missiles, Avoid, and either

Fire Arrow +

Exploding Arrow, or

Cold Arrow +

Freezing Arrow

It would be interesting if they added +1% to

Pierce per level, so that bows other than Mist could be used. This would provide an additional incentive to reach 99lvl so that rogues have a 98% chance of

Pierce.

Give all mercs a single grand charm slot so they can be given a sunder.

Rework the AI of essentially all of them but especially A1 and 3. Looking at merc behavior next to e.g. a bound Heph is just painful.
(The same applies to druid pets, give them that same updated behavior! Getting tired of wolves just casually strolling across the screen instead of actually attacking something)

Beyond that, A2 and 5 are fine as is imo.

A1 could use some more run speed and should - as part of the AI rework - stick closer to the player so something like Faith doesn't constantly drop out of aura range. Slight dmg boost at the same time to bring 'em closer to A2/5.

A3...A3 needs help. Bad. Give them mastery skills and synergies. Give them

Conviction (fire),

Meditation (cold) or

Salvation (lightning). Give them...something...they're just terrible. A fraction of the utility of the others with a fraction of the dmg is kind of a pointless mix.

Schnorki wrote: 1 month ago

Give all mercs a single grand charm slot so they can be given a sunder.

Rework the AI of essentially all of them but especially A1 and 3. Looking at merc behavior next to e.g. a bound Heph is just painful.
(The same applies to druid pets, give them that same updated behavior! Getting tired of wolves just casually strolling across the screen instead of actually attacking something)

Beyond that, A2 and 5 are fine as is imo.

A1 could use some more run speed and should - as part of the AI rework - stick closer to the player so something like Faith doesn't constantly drop out of aura range. Slight dmg boost at the same time to bring 'em closer to A2/5.

A3...A3 needs help. Bad. Give them mastery skills and synergies. Give them

Conviction (fire),

Meditation (cold) or

Salvation (lightning). Give them...something...they're just terrible. A fraction of the utility of the others with a fraction of the dmg is kind of a pointless mix.

I mostly agree but A3 mercs should not have

Conviction. Such powerful auras like

Conviction and

Fanaticism should not come for free but only with powerful gear. I think A3 needs much more damage, for sure. Cold merc could use blizzard if the targeted is at least a champion, fire merc uses

Meteor, light merc uses Static.

mikelessar wrote: 1 month ago

[..]
I mostly agree but A3 mercs should not have

Conviction. Such powerful auras like

Conviction and

Fanaticism should not come for free but only with powerful gear. I think A3 needs much more damage, for sure. Cold merc could use blizzard if the targeted is at least a champion, fire merc uses

Meteor, light merc uses Static.

Imo giving up a "useful merc" for it is cost enough.
Though it was just one random idea either way.

Figured the addition of auras (or curses) would largely be an alternative, rather than an addition to the "give them actual dmg" idea. So even with

Conviction, you'd get

Conviction with limited effect radius against groups (as the merc's AI would still have them keeping their distance) on a merc that does comparatively little dmg and doesn't tank anything vs. say an Infinity A2 merc that yes, isn't free, but would also be vastly superior due to running in to cover more targets with the aura radius, bringing solid dmg himself if/when needed and being a tank all at the same time.
Plus you could always just keep the

Conviction level a bit lower for balancing purposes. Doesn't have to be Infinity+.

I'd be happy if we could equip more than just a chest armor and

Helm (apart from weapon/shield). Anything to give them better survivability.

For that matter why are all of us running around pantsless? Do demons and undead never bite your legs? Give us leg coverings!

wulfen777 wrote: 1 month ago

Don't forget the Act 5 Barb Merc. He shines for some builds.

I don't forget, just never tried him so don't have much to say.. out of the top of my head, would be nice to make one of them a walking Call To Arms, so that we can try something fresh on swap.. and additional gear pieces / better skill synergies would help with survivability against ubers and heralds wouldn't it?

also thought about

Pierce as a skill instead of avoid.. since it's a support role with some survivability issues e.g. against ubers, corrupted rogue archers or stygian witches, my preference would be avoid
and you could always add some

Pierce with

Razortail

deathertier wrote: 1 month ago

ganseng wrote: 1 month ago

Rogue

Inner Sight,

Slow Missiles, Avoid, and either

Fire Arrow +

Exploding Arrow, or

Cold Arrow +

Freezing Arrow

It would be interesting if they added +1% to

Pierce per level, so that bows other than Mist could be used. This would provide an additional incentive to reach 99lvl so that rogues have a 98% chance of

Pierce.

also thought about the sunders, maybe even coupling to the sunder in player's stash.. undecided about that, might make them a bit too powerful, would need testing

and i agree that the mercs are mostly fine, my point is to make them a little bit better.. doesn't lvl 50

Inner Sight or

Fire Bolt disturb you?

as for the act 3 guy, i wouldn't go the aura path, it's too generic imo. on the other hand, full synergies with five skills and fcr from aracnid's mesh,

Magefist and double Spirit and maybe

Ormus or vipermagi would give him 1k+ on

Enchant dmg and 5k+ on

Fireball @ ~3 casts / second, which is quite respectable isn't it?

i'm sure we can also construct something interesting with the lightning and cold guys from the sorc toolbox

Schnorki wrote: 1 month ago

Give all mercs a single grand charm slot so they can be given a sunder.

Rework the AI of essentially all of them but especially A1 and 3. Looking at merc behavior next to e.g. a bound Heph is just painful.
(The same applies to druid pets, give them that same updated behavior! Getting tired of wolves just casually strolling across the screen instead of actually attacking something)

Beyond that, A2 and 5 are fine as is imo.

A1 could use some more run speed and should - as part of the AI rework - stick closer to the player so something like Faith doesn't constantly drop out of aura range. Slight dmg boost at the same time to bring 'em closer to A2/5.

A3...A3 needs help. Bad. Give them mastery skills and synergies. Give them

Conviction (fire),

Meditation (cold) or

Salvation (lightning). Give them...something...they're just terrible. A fraction of the utility of the others with a fraction of the dmg is kind of a pointless mix.

Would giving mercs full 40 slots for charms while cutting their inherent life by ~20% and res by ~33% (1 res point per lvl instead of 1.5) be a good idea?
more customization, but more labor
and let's admit it, we all get a lot of charms we'd love to keep, but the stash is full

i wouldn't allow anni, torch and renewed sunder, but latent sunders would be okay

@gangseng: With all your ideas and motivation to overhaul Uniques, Rare and Magic Items, Mercs, etc., maybe you should send Blizz a job application...

I really like how PD2 did it.

They all got their own aura. And they got stronger spells like Blizzard. Barb mercs got

Battle Orders and so on.

Moreover, any merc now can wear gloves, belt and boots. This really opens up gear options.

In D2R I downright hate the fact that 90% of all players are using A2 merc with the same two weapons and that one single helm.

Too many builds that are centered around ONE merc weapon (Insight, Infinity, Faith), how sick is that?

I am trying to give other mercs a chance, I even have two Ironwolves in my department. But to be honest, they suck badly even when you have a build that is oriented in using Ironwolves, like my Poisonmancer with his

Lower Resist curse or my Infinity-wielding fire Summoner.

In general, the ranged mercs don't do enough damage to compensate for their lack of tankyness and their weaker aura options.

If I were designing merc revamps, I would use item slots to compensate for aura and skill strength. Mercs having weaker or more specialised auras would have more item slots than, let's say, a Might Aura or

Conviction merc.

One example for this:

A5 Barb merc gets Might aura, and may wear boots and belt.

A1 Rogue merc gets Resist Fire aura and may wear boots, belt, gloves and amulet.

A3 Ironwolf gets Resist Lighting aura and may wear boots, belt, gloves and two rings.

Infinity is downright broken, along with Enigma

I would be happy if they just made them stay with me and not wander off most the time,when i do

Battle Orders the idiot runs away from me .

A2 is fine i think, A1 could get

Pierce as a skill and maybe a damage bump, some more life to A5, and A3 could get elemental mastery with enough levels to make their damage actually noticeable. Plus all new skills

Fire *

Enchant,

Fireball,

Corpse Explosion,

Fire Mastery
Cold *

Revive,

Glacial Spike, blizzard,

Cold Mastery
Lightning *

Lower Resist,

Nova or

Chain Lightning,

Static Field,

Lightning Mastery

Also

Ice Bolt,

Charged Bolt,

Fire Bolt so they have a skill to cast at level 1 i guess

Idk, necro skills are unused on mercs and i think it fits act 3's theme

Pd2 mercs are ok but personally, i think it's better to leave auras as an exclusive a2 thing and find power elsewhere. Somehow

Agree with 3 charm slots especially to give a sunder to an A3 merc actually capable of dealing damage. Even some 5 all res small charms would be loved by my uber mercs ^^ Not sure what that ui would look like though lol

kerph wrote: 1 hour ago

Pd2 mercs are ok but personally, i think it's better to leave auras as an exclusive a2 thing and find power elsewhere. Somehow

Would it be enough to end the Desert Merc hegemony?

For most players mercs are there to buff or otherwise support the player character, not to do damage on their own - both because of their low damage and stupid AI. Even crowd control is useless, at least in SC. So mercs, to be usable, need either to buff the player character or debuff the enemies, both to increase the player's DPS. And auras seem ideal for this purpose - unlike castable buffs or curses, they are always active and applied in large AoE.

Desert Mercenaries are so popular because they have auras, both native and from polearms. While Patch 2.4 relaxed the restrictions of RW bases, it was not enough: the only meaningful changes were Mist (

Concentration) and Insight (

Meditation) in missile weapons.

Conviction is still restricted to Desert Mercs.

I'd remove auras from mercs and items, so the mercs are not used as additional equipment slots. For items, auras could be converted into ordinary item affixes, applied to the character only. Instead, I'd improve the mercs' AI and give them some AoE skills, so they are more aggressive and capable of fighting on their own. Not so much to enable an auradin-like lazy play, but at least to clear some trash mobs.
Something like Median XL mercs in this terribly outdated video (but toned down for vanilla D2). Each merc has at least one AoE skill, and they move very quicky (or even

Teleport), so they (usually) don't waste time wandering around.

Trang Oul wrote: 27 minutes ago

Would it be enough to end the Desert Merc hegemony?

For most players mercs are there to buff or otherwise support the player character, not to do damage on their own - both because of their low damage and stupid AI. Even crowd control is useless, at least in SC. So mercs, to be usable, need either to buff the player character or debuff the enemies, both to increase the player's DPS. And auras seem ideal for this purpose - unlike castable buffs or curses, they are always active and applied in large AoE.

Desert Mercenaries are so popular because they have auras, both native and from polearms. While Patch 2.4 relaxed the restrictions of RW bases, it was not enough: the only meaningful changes were Mist (

Concentration) and Insight (

Meditation) in missile weapons.

Conviction is still restricted to Desert Mercs.

I think it's fine that some things are restricted to A2 like Infinity but i would agree with opening up Insight even more to swords for A5. A1's

Inner Sight is underrated as a supporting skill imho, and much less suicidal than the melee mercs. Great aura support with Harmony/Mist/Faith. A5 has access to Lawbringer and other great swords. A3 is A3 but even still usable with

Enchant (don't get me wrong, not optimal). I still think they're all underpowered compared to A2.

A1 with innate

Pierce boosts her synergy with

Freezing Arrow and Delirium but maybe it's not enough. I like the slow missles idea, or maybe even

Decoy/

Valkyrie. I think it makes thematic sense for A5 to be weak skill-wise, so extra life and resists could solidify his identity as the go-to tank merc. A3 is definitely the weakest hence all new skills fire/cold might still be quite niche with

Revive/

Corpse Explosion, but i could see lightning with

Lower Resist be heavily utilized for single-element builds pre-Infinity and even pre-sunder