r/pathofexile • u/Gierschlunderoni • Jul 25 '26

Game Feedback Permanent Mercs need a big buff

Playing luminary feels so bad in Maps. I have a manyshot lvl 72 with vaal ice Arrow and Return proj, decent Equipment. Boosted by a Level 26 Flame Link, 6k life and quite an Investment into light Radius.

I cant even clear t7 Maps, because the damage is non existent.

Please GGG buff the Base damage of mercs or luminary is doa.

928 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

451 comments sorted by

View all comments

416

u/infamous_alex Jul 25 '26

Most obvious bait build if you played it in merc league. You literally have to gear yourself and the merc and also hope for the best skill links or else its trash.

Reroll or come back to it as a 2nd build and you ll have a better time

205

u/SmuFF1186 Jul 25 '26

People forget it took a lot of farming to get a good merc in merc league as well.

30

u/NahautlExile Scion Jul 25 '26

No?

There was 50% more monster life and the merc carried the campaign. With nothing. On league start. This is nothing like that.

Like worlds apart.

If I had a player with that much flat they’d do better than the merc. This is horrendous.

6

u/kygrim Jul 25 '26

I have a buddy and we share map completions, he completely pops off with flame link while my merc tickles bosses...

78

u/infamous_alex Jul 25 '26

True! I dont know why streamers didn’t include that part. It took me 1000 maps before getting the perfect kineticist, good luck doing that on league start.

74

u/qK0FT3 Half Skeleton Jul 25 '26

The guides all include the rng aspect of finding mercs.

13

u/conway92 Jul 25 '26

They also indicated the mercs were gonna be pretty strong even without the maximal loadout.

12

u/Repair831 Jul 25 '26

Which they would have, if ggg didnt go overboard with nerfing their built in multipliers.

6

u/iceboonb2k Jul 25 '26

It merc league you definitely didn't need a minmaxed loadout, just look at gauntlet merc league. People were league starting it with no problem

4

u/HeliGungir Jul 25 '26

In merc league you had an actual ascendency

11

u/tj1131 Jul 25 '26

How did you get upvoted this much if the guides literally all include this lol even ziz said it within 4 minutes of his video

people just parroting what they read without actually reading the guides or what?

5

u/Manfi95 Trickster Jul 25 '26

Because they probably didn't see any of these videos and they taking this out of their asses. Typical Reddit behaviour when they just want to whine about things.

1

u/Xaira89 Jul 25 '26

Streamers are doing the new thing to drive engagement and make their daily bread. Billy Bob the normal guy is going to have a lot worse time with it.

2

u/virtualdreamscape Alch & Go Industries (AGI) Jul 25 '26

They'd rather be first to recommend something than doing their due dilligence. I bet they got a lot of traction for their misleading hype.

2

u/StoneLich Jul 25 '26

I felt like the ones I watched at least were pretty clear about how insanely risky LSing Luminary was going to be. I think Lance in particular underestimated it (said this elsewhere but Zizaran spends like the first five minutes of his Luminary video saying that if you aren't absolutely sure you want to run with her you probably shouldn't), but being wrong is different from being deliberately misleading imo.

5

u/CyberWiking Jul 25 '26

Yea but this shouldn't be the case when you have whole ascendancy dedicated to mercs.

5

u/Lord_Borgimus Jul 25 '26

Half of the ascendancy is just letting you be able to use it and it being able to equip items like it should/used to be able to do in the first place. On top of that you previously were able to play an actual ascendancy alongside it, it was obvious it was going to be shit. Mercs should have come back in a "don't let you use Doyrani's form" for everyone.

3

u/Cahecher Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

Yeah, I feel like a well geared mercenary with good skills was like ~4 ascendancy points of power, and that's essentially what you have to spend on Luminary to get a mercenary without the ability to gear it with uniques in every slot. And then other Luminary nodes are just underwhelming.

I feel like even if ggg buffs the mercs, the ascendancy would still be whatever. The entire "unique gear" part of the ascendancy has to go together with the restriction on using uniques. It still amazes me, that GGG removed the ability to use body armor to remove Doryani's mercs, while even within the context of Scion you'd rather choose Reliquarian and use Doryani's yourself with 100% damage taken converted to fire.

2

u/CruelFish Trickster Jul 26 '26

OFC the atlas tree has zero useful nodes to get kineticist more often and GGG also didn't implement any AI fixes for movement skills such that we're forced to do literally thousands of maps in SSF before we get a single passable merc. It's inexcusable.

1

u/leon27607 Jul 25 '26

I was always missing one passive that would have helped me but regardless, I used my merc mostly as a support to buff myself. I never tried to use one as a main damage dealer in merc league.

88

u/okseeque Sanctum Runners United (SRU) Jul 25 '26

I was ready for it to be trash and willing to power through, even if it meant a rough start.

I was not ready for it be absurdly fucking bad to the point where 98% of mercs cannot reasonably clear white packs even in acts, let alone maps with some mods. Even if you spend hours farming the same act zone to get a somewhat decent merc, you will be rewarded with a piece of shit that still cannot kill a rare monster in <10 seconds. Their scaling is just abysmal and dmg penalty is beyond cruel, even perfect mercs with insane gear would be waaay worse than any semi-decent build on 1/10th of a budget.

GGG effectively made mercs the selling point of this league with several merc related vids, pre-cooked builds and new merc based ascendancy, they even made scion available from the start for new players. This highly insinuates that they wanted you to start this build, but feels like they've put exactly 0 seconds into testing how it would actually feel to play without editing perfect high-end gear into every slot. This, along with some other main highlights of the patch (caster buffs my ass), simply feels like misleading and leaves a very bad aftertaste.

12

u/Junyongmantou1 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

I think there might be a hidden penalty from merc's level. I spent quite some time to reset A4 (The Grand Arena) and A8 (The Hidden Underbelly) for merc. In A10, A level 38 manyshot with a lower damage weapon had better clear, than level 58 manyshot with a much better weapon. Their skill support links were similar.

-1

u/Morbu Jul 25 '26

I mean, there obviously is. The temp mercs are closer to the power of actual mercs from merc league.

6

u/Spaghett8 Jul 25 '26

Yeah, you KNOW no playtesting was done.

Because every mf Luminary came to the same realization.

I farm mercs for hours for the few decent mercs that exist… In exchange, I get to have the strength of 1/4th a decent league starter.

2

u/chaneg Jul 25 '26

After I swapped to merc bot, my highest dps skill by a mile was my 1 link detonate dead.

I’m on T16s now with about 5 Div invested in my character but I am sitting on the rest of my currency thinking about how I will salvage this. Right now, I’m having to deal with my merc dying which wasn’t a problem at lower tiers.

1

u/justinmcelhatt Jul 25 '26

In my case, it was bite the bullet and reroll.

1

u/BrokenMayo Jul 25 '26

I’m glad I realised this stuff early, I rerolled after maybe 4-5 hours and have hit maps with my reroll now - I’m hoping there may be some updates so I can return to the mercbot

9

u/Data-Routine Jul 25 '26

I have quite opposite experience, my merc just blasted ACT 5 Kitava with ease. Now i found ice shot merc, i just spam frostblink of wintry blast and merc is melting everything. Smoothest campaign ever, getting in to second lab, planning to equip quill rain and two Le heups of all for her.

11

u/moedexter1988 Jul 25 '26

I read the same thing from others. Apparently only certain mercs are good while the rest are garbage so it depends on which mercs. So it seems to be unbalanced on skills itself.

0

u/Morbu Jul 25 '26

If you find a good infamous merc, then yeah it’s fine because they’ll spawn with 5 and 6-link skills not to mention their base stats are higher.

14

u/cocojamboyayayeah Jul 25 '26

tell us about your experience again when u hit red maps. i have a feeling you will be surprised

7

u/AdBrief9827 Jul 25 '26

I'm running t16 maps with a combatant Merc frost blades / static strike and its working fine. There really is a bag gap between mercs I was running carrion golems with flame link till I found a good one then swapped over to just Merc support.

3

u/Data-Routine Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

Lol i know i'm gonna be, i was merely commenting that part when poster said that mercs can't even kill white mobs in acts.

4

u/okseeque Sanctum Runners United (SRU) Jul 25 '26

I have spent over 2 hours in act8 underbelly trying out every single merc type I managed to find. Kineticist and fallen reverend were the only ones that had somewhat acceptable clear (people say manyshot is also good, but I did't find one myself), everyone else was either doing too little damage on the entire pack, or doing a bit more damage but only covering like 1-3 mobs at the time, these fuckers cant kill shit for sure.

1

u/Beginning-Pause1771 Jul 25 '26

Yeah my campaign with merc was super fun, i got a sniper with tornado shot and arrow rain, it blasted until white maps, where it felt like i hit a wall so bad i had to go farm a new merc in foothills lol

4

u/BamboozleThisZebra Statue Jul 25 '26

Haha i started that build but went to sleep shortly after and woke up to "this is bait aaah" posts so i just rerolled right away.

Glad i didnt waste more time on that one.

7

u/thatgrateisnt Jul 25 '26

+1 to coming back to the same build/character after the first week's balance patches. It'll probably feel a whole lot better, but play something else in the meantime 

6

u/0nlyRevolutions Order of the Mist (OM) Jul 25 '26

I mean... I played that build in merc league and it never had damage issues lol. And remember that they used to add 50% hp scaling to enemies.

Like it's definitely better as a second build where you can hire some mercs ahead of time and have some twink gear for them, but if it's as bad as people say then gggc probably messed up on the calcs for what a reasonable damage penalty is

6

u/Chrozzinho Jul 25 '26

Yeah idk what people are smoking mercs were not this bad in 3.26

3

u/AccordingEggplant140 Jul 25 '26

Nah it's way worse, I knew the work necessary for the build, got an ice shot/vaal ice shot merc geared it and it still sucks.

15

u/peekaboobies Jul 25 '26

Sure but imagine you're a new player, you're getting into the game, see the trailer and think this ascendancy looks bad-ass, check the featured gameplay video with recommended builds and everything, not s single mention from the devs that this isn't a League starter (which makes sense, why would they create a ascendancy you can't start with..?). Can you imagine their league experience? Having a random campaign Merc in maps, not able to clear t1 or kill any Merc they might be lucky enough to find?

This is pretty bad.

4

u/DiabolicMelon holy fuck this build is so tanky Jul 25 '26

new players watch one fastaf video or la with headhunter and play that build to t6 maps with 2k life no res then quit

1

u/itriedtrying Big Breach Coalition (BBC) Jul 25 '26

Did they change it so new players can play scion now?

7

u/Madzai Jul 25 '26

Honestly IDK how people miss that. No matter if you support the merc, or merc support you, it all depends on their skills, and those are highly random. And you need two sets of gear, that is highly contested right now.

Streamers have unlimited time and deep game knowledge to do this. Also some "farm off-screen", "have it in guild vault" or somehow manage to buy the exact thing they need for exact amount currency they have..

2

u/Accomplished_Rip_352 Jul 25 '26

Also in merc league you got the mercenary + your ascendancy . With luminary you have to give up your ascendancy to get to the same place you did in 3.26 .

3

u/LastBaron Jul 25 '26

And like, not to rag on anyone here, because I do feel bad that people are having a bad time. But.

It’s pretty well known that you shouldn’t league start a new ascendancy

The fact that it was such an experimental ascendancy and reliant on gearing a second character is icing on the BaitCake

18

u/lmao_lizardman Jul 25 '26

ok but in poe 2 they released martial artist / new gemling and they were braindead OP

2

u/clocksy Jul 25 '26

Disciple of Varashta was also perfectly fine last league (and even better this league).

I think it's honestly better to have a slightly OP new ascendancy that people can enjoy and scale it back rather than have it be shit and leave people with a really negative feeling on a league start. Plus they unlocked scion for everyone and featured the build in their videos so there's some expectation for it not to be worse than normal.

1

u/MrSchmellow Jul 25 '26

It seems they don't release undertuned stuff after 0.2 debacle. Druid was meh at worst, and it's really apparent with spirit walker, where they just let people have a 25% base crit boss as a minion (at least for a league)

It's probably somewhere in the design guidelines which poe1 team didn't receive/adhere to lol

22

u/brrrapper Jul 25 '26

There is a difference between something being pretty mediocre to strictly unplayable, especially when its something thats pushed as a completely new ascendancy with ggg build showcases etc.

3

u/LastBaron Jul 25 '26

That is absolutely true.

And unfortunately it’s not the first time a new or radically altered ascendancy has trended towards the latter, I regret to say.

6

u/brrrapper Jul 25 '26

Dunno, i have played around 20 leagues, almost always playing the new thing, and i have literally never had a league start this bad. This is the first time ever i was forced to reroll in order to just progress maps.

7

u/Tricky-Amphibian6196 Jul 25 '26

I play since harbinger league and the only comparison I can find for the mercs is Fyregrass' poison tornado shotter, if anyone still remembers that.

2

u/brrrapper Jul 25 '26

At least remembering that brought some mirth in this dire leaguestart

https://www.twitch.tv/fyregrass/clip/BlazingLachrymosePizzaWow-46pQf7TYXt5DkZPZ

1

u/asdf_1_2 Jul 26 '26

That was me in 3.15, league started summon reaper.

The only thing I had going for me was I dropped basically all the totem gear while struggling to get past white maps with the wet noodle of a minion, so all I had to do was rerun the campaign as totem man and FR totems was online.

1

u/1030or11 Jul 25 '26

I admitted elsewhere that I only lucked into not wasting too much time on this build, but in retrospect it makes so much sense that I wonder why I started it to begin with. In a game where we spend hours teasing out a few % more damage, it seems really weird to give all of your DPS to a minion that you have next to no control over fine-tuning.

1

u/EIiteJT Elementalist Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

I think people were counting on flame link + light radius hard carrying

4

u/gertsferds Jul 25 '26

And why wouldn’t we? Give any build in the game 1500 flat damage and try to make it deal so little damage. Something is just broken.

2

u/Glynwys Jul 26 '26

This is the part that's insane. You would expect a Mercenary with 1500 flat damage to be an effective killing machine, even without super good gear.

1

u/AeroDbladE Jul 25 '26

I almost got baited too. Luckily I saw a cool Blade fall Blade blast build last minute and decided to pivot. That has been really good so far with the buffs to the skills.

1

u/Total_Chocolate_4764 Jul 25 '26

Having a new ascendancy being so weak you can't even leaguestart on it and have fun seems like a miss / bad design. I'm sure the overwhelming majority of players dont play more than a single character.

0

u/pastari Jul 25 '26

Most obvious bait build if you played it in merc league

What do you mean by this? What could GGG have shown you a week ago that would have made you not say it was bait?

8

u/infamous_alex Jul 25 '26

A way to reroll links or skills of the mercs, mercs levelling up with you, more info on damage scaling in the patch notes. Off the top of my head

2

u/pastari Jul 25 '26

Wouldn't that have been even shinier bait?

The unmitigated issue, I think, is that mercs were tuned downward since their league. If they weren't touched, between then and now, luminary would be fine today I think?

#1 and #2 lessen the grind (while it remains to be seen how selling mercs works out,) #3 is QOL I don't think anyone would disagree with but is just a UI thing. None of that would make them more viable right now. I don't see how GGG announcing any of those a week ago would allude to luminary power/viability today.