40/40 Completed - Mercenaries League Feedback: Look Ma, No Carries!

It's great to be back in the game after almost a year of Settlers league. Got another 40/40 league completion under my belt, and this time without using carries!

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Highlights

1. I obtained a chase unique for the first time ever. After farming essences, I saved up enough currency to purchase Svalinn on week one or week two.



2. As I was working on the final challenge grinding uber lab, I got the option to transform a support gem into an awakened gem. I'm now the proud owner of an Awakened Multistrike Support. It's too bad I got it so late, would've done wonders in fighting the uber bosses.



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Core Expansion: Secrets of the Atlas

It's good. Nothing about this content comes off as problematic. The pinnacle boss fights are the most reasonable of all the ones GGG has released thus far. No surprise 1shots from offscreen, no invulnerability phases that will instantly kill you if you fail to solve a puzzle quickly enough or dodge a bullet hell. It was pretty chill. I like it, and I want to see more of it.

Originator memory maps are an alright addition to the game. I think the biggest problem I had with T17 maps have a lot more to do with the special mobs that spawn there, plus the uber-like bosses which have a nasty tendency of smearing my tanky minions, more than the map mods you can roll. T16 maps having 50% T17 map mods still allows you to engage in some valuable currency/map/scarab farming.

My only issue with the expansion are the petal skills provided by these maps. With the exception of the gold coin conversion, I forget the other ones exist and don't use them. It doesn't help that they're bound to the F# keys which means I have to put my hand at an awkward stretch just to tap them.

Recommended solution: Add an altar at the end of an originator map where you kill the boss. You can turn in the petals for something.

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Mercenaries of Trarthus

It's a great power fantasy league. I can't speak to the extent of how busted you can make mercenaries, because I fell in love with the Striker who uses Decoy Totems as early as league start, and stuck with him throughout the entire thing. I didn't even try gearing him into being a second Animate Guardian either.

However, because it's a power fantasy league, I strongly recommend you not to roll this into core. I know how GGG behaves, and adding such content into the game is going to come with significant nerfs that will make them a necessity rather than an option. Let's not open Pandora's Box on this one, please.

The big issue I have with the league is that it's not rewarding. I've been binging the game all day for a month and so far I've found 5 divines from them. Two dropped one each, a third dropped three. These occurrences happened very far apart from each other. The vast majority of the loot they had available consisted of augments, transmutes, and alts, generally things my loot filter hid.

To put into perspective: I've found 50+ divines off the ground this league as recorded by the ring of plunder MTX. Mercenaries only account for 1/10th of that.

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League Challenges

I don't have much to say about them this time. They weren't unreasonable for the most part.

That being said, it would be nice if you didn't put some behind RNG to complete. I was hung up for a good length of time getting 5 mercenary items with infamy modifiers, as well as getting the correct Memory Thread penultimate bosses to spawn.

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What Comes Next?

I'm gonna take a much needed break. I left off in the middle of The Sultan's Game and I wanna get back into that. Rift Wizard and Rogue Empire were previously on sale which I picked up and might wanna try. My fiance would also appreciate my company playing Nightreign with her.

I'll probably hop back in after a few days to test more currency farm strategies in preparation of next league. I wanted to try several, but couldn't due to the flickering screen problem which has finally gotten fixed.

Stay sane, exiles.

Nice writeup. Thanks!

The mercs themselves don't really drop good loot because they themselves act as loot multiplier. You play quasi-partyplay with a merc, he is counting as half-player.

What this game needs, is /players command from Diablo II, where you could simulate a party game while playing in single player. You could benefit from way more XP and loot dropping, if your build could handle it of course.

In POE this could be in form of a scarab that adds a phantom "player" to the map and makes the map count as a multiplayer map.