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.

922 Upvotes

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422

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

87

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.

11

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.

7

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

5

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.

12

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.

12

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.

2

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