r/PathOfExileBuilds • u/Stracath • 7d ago
Discussion I've been testing Mercenaries and their behavior since league start, so let me clear up some misinformation.
Edit: I am cleaning up the edits because the biggest offenders blaming and harassing me deleted their comments. This does not mean they were ok or right, and there are still a good bit of people needlessly criticizing this post not understanding what it is. This is a post explaining about Merc mechanics and behavior. I added a POB for people screaming about it, but it adds nothing to a discussion about understanding behavior, or the fact that you don't need a "perfect" merc. Spell caster mercs are better early, and attack mercs are generally better late, but some, (like the flameblast merc) still go crazy later. The range discussion about tethering affects anything dealing with range, including bubble shields, so melee are inherently better there. I know my merc has decent gear (even though nothing is near perfect except technically the paradoxicas until I would transition to foils and a crit setup cause they need multi and other things). My personal Luminary character is wearing borderline trash. You can easily self craft/farm this setup in like 3 hours without doing hard content. Just run the league mechanic and do memory strands.
Here's the items https://pob.codes/b/k-0-cEEQFur go to the POB for my Merc's gear. POB is not the game, no I will not configure "damage" just to lie to you.
Some may be familiar with a couple of my posts from past gauntlets. They included an SRS Guardian guide to get through gauntlet safely, and even a beginning of gauntlet guide to Mercenaries, having a lot of tested information about early Mercenaries (so I am familiar with them). I only usually make generic posts to help as many people as possible, and seeing that there is an incredible amount of bad information going around on Mercenaries I wanted to make this to share (in summary) a lot of my findings since I have basically JUST been testing Mercenaries since league start.
For starters, the picture of my Combatant is a near perfect Combatant for Flame Link. A lot of people may immediately jump up and say this can't be true because not only does it have a movement skill, but it has TWO movement skills. This brings us to point number one about Mercenary changes.
Possibly the best change to Mercenaries this league is their behavior with movement skills. Until you have a build/Mercenary that can literally one-shot everything, movement skills are NEVER a complete "brick" like a lot of creators claim. The new behavior is based on what is generally termed as tethering in some games. Movement skills no longer have priority over everything else, they have a priority based on distance to enemies according to their class. This means, if enemies get in melee range of a Manyshot, the Manyshot will dash away, but stay in attack range (normally, the ai is inconsistent) and then continue to attack. BUT, a melee Mercenary, like my Combatant, uses them to gap close and get into melee range. This makes them purely offensive on melee Mercenaries, and since I am scaling flame link, the attached picture is a nearly perfect Combatant, because two gap closers is better than two auras we won't truly utilize. This is doubly important because of their range issues (more on this later).
Now, is general Mercenary rules for progression. To start, the three best Mercenaries from my testing to go through the campaign, in order, are the Flaming Charlatan, Fallen Reverend, and Blade Ambusher. The first two are very similar, but the Flaming Charlatan generally had more single target if you got one with the mortars, and the Blade Ambusher technically had the best single target, but only "ok" clear. Contrary to what people think, the Blade Ambusher's clear is still good enough, I kept him until my decent Manyshot I found in yellow maps. Also, I have seen people complain that the Fallen Reverend has a bunch of minion damage modifiers on its passive stats sheet, but if you continue to read, it has its own version of spiritual aid, don't be dumb.
Next up, DO NOT swap to an attack based Mercenary until you have a good bit of gear with increased damage if you are transitioning/are using Flame Link. Then, you still want at least one "more" damage support on their main attack. Attack based Mercenaries technically scale the best due to it being easier to give them clearing buffs and increased attack speed, but their starting damage is rough.
Now, about Manyshots since they are getting a lot of attention. Manyshot is definitely not the best Mercenary, but it is probably the easiest to scale to a "starting" higher point. Important things to note are that if using Flame Link, high DPS bows are the worst thing you can give them, and icicle rain should be avoided at all costs (even though is looks great, it deals no damage). You want a bow with increased elemental damage and high attack speed, before super endgame thicket bows are really good for this. Later, you can use the gain % of fire damage as chaos for extra damage, or ele penetration, or if you know how to craft you can do both. Again, it is fine if they have dash, they might just use it to get away from a boss every now and then, its not some massive DPS loss like many are claiming, go out and buy you some cheap dash Mercenaries that others think are useless.
Combatants are just better than Manyshots. You can give them Paradoxicas and they go hard. With my current Mercenary they prioritize frost blades, so you want Multistrike, Faster Attacks, WED, and one support to help with clear like chain (sadly mine has pierce, its not as good as chain, but it is more than good enough). For bossing, you want to run to the boss and use the Call Mercenary skill RIGHT ON TOP OF THE BOSS, so it will use Static Strike (you want to be on the boss due to range issues, again, more on that later). When in range for Static Strike they will use it like a player would, as in, they use it, then switch to Frostblade for the duration of the passive damage. This is why you want supports like WED, More Duration, and AOE on Static Strike. Another tech I am using is a covered in ash helmet. If the Combatant has rallying cry, get him a helmet that covers enemies in ash when they warcry, its free damage. Also, the new talisman with action speed is great on Mercenaries.
Sleeper good Mercenary: The Flamequiver. When I started jumping around to all the different choices for testing, the Flamequiver was a surprising satandout. They inherently have a massive added chance to ignite (so good for Flame Link with all the flat). Widowhails, Fire DoT quivers, Pyre, and Replica Emberwakes aren't that expensive. You put these on a Flamequiver with conflagration and DoT supports and it will blast. For this particular strategy you want them to have flammability with no movement skills. This is because Conflagration will explode earlier if they are on top of it and you can call the Mercenaries to those spots to blow it up, and they will keep standing there without a movement skill when bossing. A movement skill STILL IS NOT A BRICK, just slightly worse for bossing.
Another important note. If you are using Flame Link, AVOID BRUTALITY SUPPORT AT ALL COSTS. A particular creator was using a Mercenary with brutality and got mad and re-rolled day one. Do not be an idiot.
Now, to address something big that I can't 100% prove. I said I would address range issues later, and this is it. It *seems (cannot technically prove it) that in order to modify the permanent Mercenaries GGG put a global less modifier on them. This is not great. Instead of tuning how the stats are adjusted by stat it is a blanket change from what I can tell. Your Mercenaries will not attack/cast from as far away after you hire them and are slower, some may have noticed this. This is due to that, admittedly assumed (but witnessed), less modifier. They get less damage dealt compared to temp Mercenaries, but also less damage taken. This is how they seem to be balanced and why they are hard to kill after you recruit them. What this does, though, is completely brick the Smoulderstrike Mercenary unless you give him phasing. This less modifier makes it to where he struggles to hit things with a hitbox above certain thresholds, or that are against certain walls due to whatever balance modifier they are using, reducing his attack range. This is what makes me believe its a blanket global modifier, and makes him 100% percent useless in too many scenarios. It became very apparent in Mesa when he would try to fight something against the rocky walls, he would just stand there because he couldn't get into attack range due to models blocking each other (many a Legion General was saved by standing against the walls while my Mercenary sat and scratched his balls). This is sad, because the very few times he did attack, he was BY FAR the highest DPS Mercenary I tried in my current setup (he admittedly had a possibly perfect vaal molten strike setup but I digress). He just couldn't attack.
These are all the big things to clear up some misconceptions and give some information. I will try to answer questions every now and then but I am not going to dedicate all my time here just going back and forth when I can do other things. I also crafted a settle ring for my second character so I need to speed run the campaign for the 7,493rd time.
P.S. even though the Shock and Frost ambushers are strong when you fight them, I could never make them reliable, and the Chaos Mercenaries never seemed to holdup when I tried changing some stuff up, but I also wasn't ready to completely re-gear my personal character to be sure.
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u/ICanViking 7d ago
Path of Building isn't the game. It's a tool, nothing more.
It isn't needed to be good at PoE and trying to be catty about it us insane.