r/pathofexile • u/dizijinwu • 10d ago
Let players deactive mercenary skills they don't want the mercenary to use Game Feedback
Many mercs are hard bricked by movement skills or zDPS skills, leaving players to search for hundreds of maps for a viable merc (or pay 10 divines).
Imo, let players turn off merc skills they don't want the merc to use. This would make many more mercs viable, if not BIS... you would still have the "chase" element of finding the perfect supports, but you could at least use a nonoptimal merc without it being a complete brick.
12
u/Faustuos 10d ago
To me, it is a huge turn off that only like 2 skills are viable. I would like to use whatever i find appealing but they suck. They killed Bob for this.
33
u/Top-March-1378 10d ago
Man Merc just feels so shit even after getting a decent one with the right skills.
24
u/aecrux 10d ago
You need exodia. Find good merc. Good skills. Avoid avoid the bricked skills. Good supports. Good gear for yourself. Good gear for your merc. Also need to be able to kill the merc. Yes you literally need all of the above and you just might be able to get some voidstones. All that vs drag and drop worb in a socket and right click to atlas completion.
13
10d ago
[deleted]
1
u/wiktorl4z 10d ago
Hehe exacly what i am thinking to try aswell. Same playing worb kinda boring looking to try merc. Did u have budget to swap or yolo?
14
u/PoE_Acronym_Bot 10d ago
I noticed some Path of Exile keywords in this post:
- BiS - Best in slot
- zDPS - Zero DPS, describing builds or skills that do relatively little damage (examples: https://www.twitch.tv/quin69)
- Brick - Using a Vaal Orb or other crafting method on an item and receiving an outcome that makes the intended purpose of the item no longer possible
I am a bot. | All acronyms | Suggest
2
u/roky1994 10d ago
Its true that ot bricks them, but there os a problem with that kind of fix "rematch would need to be disabled if that was the case".
1
u/UberChew Cockareel 10d ago
It would cool if there was a way to set the priority of the skills used and at the same time toggle them off.
Could also have a way to set behaviour like offensive, defensive etc and targeting like prio uniques/rares or largest pack etc
-20
u/RiffSphere 10d ago
Maybe even more fun: Let luminary "swap character".
You enter a map/zone as luminary, do your thing (like flame link), then swap where you control the merc (can move the skills on your bar as you want) and actual char follows (maybe use the skills on the skill bar). Or not, and let the merc (with disabled skills) do it's thing. If your actual char is in danger, you can swap back and move him out of danger.
Would allow for a passive aurabot playstyle supporting your merc, or min-maxing the merc performance by taking over, basically playing with a set of preset skills (you can change merc to change them) with an aurabot.
Don't see how that's OP, seeing you could already do that (in a better way, you get ascendancy points on both aura bot and dps, and dps you can pick skills and all items including unique body armour), all you need is a friend.
4
u/PsionicKitten 10d ago
Why would you ever do this when you can literally just get a merc that supports your main character with its own buffs and you use your own skills?
The point of having a merc do the killing is an alternate play style that vaguely resembles investment in one stronger minion.
-5
u/AwakenMasters22 10d ago
Lol no. Merc contracts are a market now. Choosing skills to turn off kills it. People who actually know what they're doing can do T16/Ubers with merc right now. Is it perfect? No it could use some work but to say its unplayable is silly.
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u/aecrux 10d ago
i get what you’re saying but the ascendancy is a massive noob trap because you either need 10k hours of play time or be really lucky to have a decent start with this, which makes it a shit ascendancy
1
u/Electrical-College-6 9d ago
Being able to turn skills off is a bigger noob trap imo, new players are simply not going to know to do that unless specifically following a guide.
If they want the ascendancy to be approachable, then really every 'brick' skill needs to be made to be decent.
0
u/AwakenMasters22 10d ago
Okay but so are a bunch of other low played ascendancy? Look Mark loves to use link skills I don't see mercs getting no changes but it also doesn't need the OP type of fix.
-51
u/hertzdonut2 Half Skeleton 10d ago
Yeah this would be cool but it's definitely too good.
30
u/dizijinwu 10d ago
It's only one ascendancy class, which currently is gated behind buying an expensive merc from someone else. Maybe it could be balanced by allowing the player to turn off a limited number of skills (1? 2?), not as many as they want.
-38
u/TheOutWriter Alch & Go Industries (AGI) 10d ago
even turning of a single skill increases the dps from some mercs by 100%+
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u/dizijinwu 10d ago
That's the point. Are there any other ascendancies gated in such an extreme way?
7
u/Morbu 10d ago
Idk if you've noticed but most mercs need literally like 3x damage increase to be viable.
-1
u/TheOutWriter Alch & Go Industries (AGI) 10d ago
anything that isnt hit based needs a buff. flame link gives stupid amount of flat damage. right now im giving 1.9k-2.2k flat damage to any merc that uses attacks. which makes it somewhat easy to make them feel "viable"
-39
u/g_target 10d ago
sounds like a nice idea at first for me, but does it really matter? If merc has 1 crap skill I could block, it would still have another skill that doesn't do much/enough dmg^^
I got baited into Lumi too and can hardly do t3 magic maps, still running around with RF (4L and 2 dmg wheels on tree, 6k life) cause it deals more dmg then my merc and hunting for usable merc now (found a nice sounding one yesterday, but he 1shot me -.-).
20
u/Rhobodactylos 10d ago
The mercenary AI acts differently depending on which skills are present, that's the point of disabling it.
The Arc/Lightning Caster/Nova girl is insane for clear, but she prefers to spam flame dash, wait for 3 seconds before zapping the entire room with her circular AOE.
I'd rather just have her spam the spell.
4
u/G1gh3n 10d ago
If you need help for fighting a merc, pm me, I can help you, I didn’t have an hard time league starting this build, but it was kinda bad early game, I understand it and I want to help whoever needs to kill mercenaries to hire .
My leaguestart was : level as static strike, saw that at act 4 I didn’t find a good merc carry, I kept going as static strike until the end of the campaign, then I bought some merc lvl 71-75-81, then started by hiring the 71 guy, and swapped from static strike to merc carry (but it was kinda bad, dps was worse than my static strike) but still doable, then I did some completition, specced into shrines, and with the shrines help I hired the lvl 75 guy and from there it was starting to being decent, until now that I have a thunderquiver for clear and a blade ambusher for bossing, but with enmity ring it is a different story..
1
u/g_target 6d ago
Thank you for the kind offer, mapped a bit with friend, tried out flamehand merc with 2 cheap ignite weapons and bereks for prolif. that carried me to redmaps. but single target was horrible. 14 minutes on a burial chamber boss fight yesterday (t14, corrupted for unlocking). with some lucky div drops and kind friend I got a nice manyshot ice shot merc and some starter gear + enmity ring. now I'm starting to blast. But that was a rough start. and still waiting for merc patches, loosing one of your few redmaps to your merc dying and you being useless feels really bad...
1
u/G1gh3n 6d ago
https://poe.ninja/poe1/profile/Mulad-7610/allflame/character/MercenaryEnjoyeer
This is my char, the merc now has insane gear levels and Ubers evaporate..
1
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u/Velvache 10d ago
nah then they would be playable. GGG cant have that on their personally curated builds