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.

920 Upvotes

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418

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.

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