Mercenary - About to give up on it - any help?

Cheers,

now, I know that some builds have a hard time leveling. They tend to be very much un-fun until certain skills have been unlocked. In PoE1 I always hate levelling a Boneshatter Marauder because it’s no fun until you get Sunder.

Now, there are additional issues with the Xbox version and the controller support:

*Skills not triggering when activated
*Auto aim switching targets seemingly at random

So, I can attribute some of my struggles to these elements when a switch of ammunition does not register, that I throw a gas grenade, but the follow-up Explosive Grenade isn’t thrown or that the grenades are thrown all over the place, sometimes behind me …

And yet, even when things go right, the damage seems to be sub-par. I need way longer to kill stuff than with any of the other character classes, it seems. And the first fight against Jamanra, the Risen King (whom you encounter on the walls, not the final boss of act 2) was the first time I struggled with a boss. Like in dying 10 times because the fight wouldn’t end and I ran out of potions.

Since I only have PoE2 Early Access for Xbox, it seems my PoE2 characters are invisible on my profile and I have not found a way yet, to make them accessible. So words must suffice:

Crossbow: 10 – 30 damage, 1-7 lightning, 12% attack speed, +3 to level of projectile skills

I had a crossbow with a higher damage listing but checking the skills, the +3 to levels seem to do more damage.

Skills:
Crossbow regular + Envenom (209.57 dps)
Flash Grenade + Scattershot + Overpower (109.73 dps)
Explosive Grenade + Fast Forward + Fire Infusion (188.48 dps)
Gas Grenade + Corrosion + Ignition (55.13 dps)
Rapid Shot (171.57 dps)

Although the regular bolt pretends to do more damage, Flash Grenades usually finish off enemies, while I need 2 – 3 regular shots, so that is the first oddity.

But the stuff just doesn’t kill! When I circle like a madman, I can drop in flashies and gassies and pop the occasional bolt until stuff is dead. Against Jamanra, though, I barely scratch him, am constantly out of mana and grenades are terribly ineffective as he moves around so much and grenades have such a long fuse time.

The Merc is no fun to play at the moment. By then I was rolling through enemies with every other character – with Merc … yuck!

So – what am I doing wrong? What would/should a reasonable dps be at level 24? Is Merc really 120% dependent on gear?
My level 29 warrior (close enough in levels to compare) does 925.3 dps with the main attack, that is more than 4x what the merc does and the attack speed is higher.
I mean, getting damage numbers for PoE2 is difficult as you usually need synergies as in do A, wait for B, then use C to do 10x more damage than the skill normally does. But if my Sorc’s Cold Snap does 3k damage without counting the frost buildup … that’s more than 10x the damage of my Merc with just the plain skill and no extra from frost buildup.

So – what am I missing? What is the secret to have a Mec that can actually kill stuff in an entertaining manner that is not 100% tedious circle running and mana quaffing while spamming highly inefficient skills? (And hopefully does not involve constant ammo switching because that#'s no fun to me at all)

DPS alone doesn't give you the full picture. Flash grenade is telling you dps per grenade, you fire at least 3 of them with overlapping AoE. You also fire once then reload which slows your total DPS but it also means more of your total damage is dealt in a burst while normal shot deals more total damage than a single grenade over about 3 seconds or longer.

That means your true dps on flash grenade is more like ~330 in bursts which is significantly better than 209 DPS on normal shot delivered over multiple shots.

DPS values can be very deceiving in this game. For weapon based skills, It is almost always a better idea to prioritize flat damage over gem levels. One thing you should look for is flat damage for attacks on gloves and rings to improve your early game dps significantly.

Another unfortunate part of Merc early game is that nimble reload, the tier 3 support, makes your primary crossbow skill feel infinitely better with very fast reloading. If you have a character that can access tier 3 support gems you can give them to your low level Merc to make the game much smoother since the support gems don't have level restrictions.


Also consider armour explosion with corrosion on gas grenade.

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fouquet#0993 wrote:

DPS alone doesn't give you the full picture. Flash grenade is telling you dps per grenade, you fire at least 3 of them with overlapping AoE. You also fire once then reload which slows your total DPS but it also means more of your total damage is dealt in a burst while normal shot deals more total damage than a single grenade over about 3 seconds or longer.

That means your true dps on flash grenade is more like ~330 in bursts which is significantly better than 209 DPS on normal shot delivered over multiple shots.

DPS values can be very deceiving in this game. For weapon based skills, It is almost always a better idea to prioritize flat damage over gem levels. One thing you should look for is flat damage for attacks on gloves and rings to improve your early game dps significantly.

Another unfortunate part of Merc early game is that nimble reload, the tier 3 support, makes your primary crossbow skill feel infinitely better with very fast reloading. If you have a character that can access tier 3 support gems you can give them to your low level Merc to make the game much smoother since the support gems don't have level restrictions.


Also consider armour explosion with corrosion on gas grenade.

Thanks for the info! What I would not give for a proper combat log which includes damage numbers. I don't care much for them floating onscreen but a nice log that you can look at after the fight to get an idea what worked well and what did not. Or have open while you play and record yourself which makes it easier to understand skill combo and damage output.

I'm actually having a great time with my merc, much better than my 1st attempt that was a sorc. I'm totally new to poe so learning a lot as I go on.

I think you'll need to swap ammos, you just get used to it.

My main attack is to freeze/stop things with glacial bolt. Then explode frozen mobs and kills the others by exploding the glaciers with fragmentation rounds. This is highly effective. You need to switch constantly between both.

For annoying swarmers and certain enemies galvanic shards are great.

Armour piercing rounds then high velocity rounds for armoured guys.

For bosses, you can kill them all with high velocity rounds. Trying to do combos or other attacks is really not effective or leads to high damage I find. Sometimes, on certain bosses you can, but most not.

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Ferdelizer#3373 wrote:

I'm actually having a great time with my merc, much better than my 1st attempt that was a sorc. I'm totally new to poe so learning a lot as I go on.

I think you'll need to swap ammos, you just get used to it.

My main attack is to freeze/stop things with glacial bolt. Then explode frozen mobs and kills the others by exploding the glaciers with fragmentation rounds. This is highly effective. You need to switch constantly between both.

For annoying swarmers and certain enemies galvanic shards are great.

Armour piercing rounds then high velocity rounds for armoured guys.

For bosses, you can kill them all with high velocity rounds. Trying to do combos or other attacks is really not effective or leads to high damage I find. Sometimes, on certain bosses you can, but most not.

Not sure if I can get used to the switching, especially if it doesn't load or loads twice or loads and then refuse to fire unless you load something else and then the thing you want. On Xbox here it has been very unsatisfying.

I decided to level up my ranger some and do the gas switch. I went to the Halani Gates where I had so much trouble with the Merc. Everything charging me on the walls was one shot, if something survived, it was burning and the next gas arrow finished them. The mini boss in between took 8 seconds to dispose of. And Jamanra, who took 10 attempts and then 3:45 minutes, was down in 20 seconds! And the gameplay just feels so much smoother. All skills work immediately, no 1 .. 2 second "reload" nonsense. No waiting for grenades to actually blow up after what feels like an eternity.

Ranger is simple (I like simple):

Method 1:
Drop flame wall, shoot Poison Gas Arrow

Method 2(mobile enemies)
Shoot a few poison gas arrows
Blow up the whole area with one flame wall

Method 3 for Bosses:
Choose Method 1 or 2 depending on mobility of the boss
Garnish the fight with Stormcaller Arrow
Burst (if need be) with Freezing Salvo

And the whole time - more or less on full mana. Very unlike the Mercenary who - in prolonged fights - is constantly out of it.

I will continue to try the Mercenary later on but in terms of fun he is a clear 2/10 so far. Monk: 8/10, Sorc 10/10, Witch: 9/10, Warrior 8-9/10, Ranger 10/10.

There's deffo problems with the game. Sometimes, as you say, ammos will not switch. Sometimes I just can't fire and I have no idea why. The crossbow makes a noise, but nothing happens, and I to mess around switching ammo to get it working again.

Also, yes, the auto aiming feature in this games make me rant out loud all the time. FFS, GGG, give us an option to turn this shit off!