Mercenary feels awful

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Urza_Mechwalker#7393 wrote:

Mercenary is the EASIEST start of all classes. I re rolled into mercenary yesterday. I Died only in act 2. I only took damage from bosses, never any mob touched me in act 1.

I reached end of act 2 in less than 3 hours (took me 11 for warrrior)

It is super agile. OP view is 100% opposite to reality.

As someone who started on Warrior and switched to Merc after having a tough time staying alive I can 100% confirm this as fact.

The only one would have such a disconnected experience is by not paying attention to the very obvious on screen cues that help you play Merc smoother. Trying to reload while already reloading is what causes most of what is described so just do not try and reload while you are already reloading it is very simple.

Let me reiterate that I did not state that Mercenary is weak. The class is clunky and buggy which creates and unfun and annoying experience. So being 100% off of reality is a wild statement, since you haven't refuted the fact that the class is clunky and buggy.

I believe one of the main reasons the mercenary feels clunky is the movement slowdown when reloading!
By removing the movement slowdown when reloading I believe this class would feel 1000% better to play! Now I haven't played any other class yet(and have not played PoE1 for any significant anmount of time), but I don't think this would put the mercenary at that much of an advantage.
I can accept slowdown during firing and I don't mind the ammo switching etc., but the slowdown on reload does not feel right!

Other than that, the bug around the weapon not firing after switching ammo types also contributes to the Mercenary feeling clunky:https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3596230/page/1

The class is decently strong, But some skill geel very clunky

Grenade centered builds work because you can get a massiv amount of Cooldown reduction and they have good effect combos and barely slow you down


But ammo based gameplay is hard to enjoy...

Most crossbow reload quite slow and there isnt a lot of reload node lying around...(found only three so far) QUESTION: do attack speed make reload faster?if not...it probably should!

the choice of crossbow also doesnt help the gameplay much compared to ranger quiver and monks staffs.
The early one are meh but its act 1.
act 2 alloy crossbow is responsiv reload and shoot faster
doubel shot crossbow pay for it in reload and attack speed...which make it horrible once again
Bombar is nice for grenade build but that is all
the final clockwork crossbow feel like it has nothing to speak of


Personally for ammunition based gameplay switching ammo should be smoother (be faster doesnt slow you down) ennemies are getting into melee range quite fast sand makign their job easier feel horrible...and you should get 2-3 bold per default after a few level in the skill.

also most ammunition skill require on ennemies taking the ailment not on you doing a combo like grenades builds...

Reloading is literal dogshit and one of the worst mechanics to exist in an arpg. This is especially the case when you're switching between multiple ammo types, but still bad on a single type when rolling interrupts it.

Whether it is weak or strong is largely irrelevant because it feels fucking atrocious as a mechanic.

I am lv 80 with merc, and I agree on all opinions posted, it's strong but clunky, and yes main problem is reload.

Reload as mechanic is cool, but does not work in it's current state. The game is fast paced, merc is slow. Yes you can get the reload notables and i feel like it is a must. It should not be that way. I am currently going different route in passive tree and reload time is awful.. have tried the support gem, works ok but still there is something weird about reloading.

If you can clear your screen with one clip you are fine and have time to reload before the next pack. But if your damage is too low basically you are in trouble.

Other classes i have played i feel like a godly being. Even with warrior i feel strong. Now we have mercenary who dont know how to run and reload his weapon at the same time. If they fix the reload and let us reload while running and dodge rolling, it would feel totally different. I dont get it why grenades reload automatically but ammo you need walk and wait to reload. Feels stupid and unfair.

Just roll gemling+spark. Stack int on gear, get widowhail and +2 quiver then just fine tune. You'll do better than all those sparkmages out there.

Im currently running a weird merc build where i cast ice wall on ignite then use frag shots to destroy the ice crystals.

I’ve played around with a lot of combos from a permafrost cast on freeze build to an ailment build using poison, ignite, maim, bleed, pin and blind lol.

When you compare crossbow skills with other classes they seem weaker overall however i think that XBow is all about stacking debuffs and thats why it feels so clunky with the timing issues of reloading etc.

Gemlings are incredibly strong however when you look at the top builds for them very few actually end up using crossbow skills and instead go for stat stacking pillar builds.

Because Gemling is so strong Witchhunter inherently feels weak and is less popular to play.

I’ve played witchhunter to level 80 so far and it feels slow however it does get the job done and i enjoy playing it when everything comes together. I do feel like if witchhunters sorcery ward was tweaked so that it didn’t lose as much as 50% armour and evasion for 30% elemental shield then it would stand up a lot better.

If they were to buff witchhunter i would either reduce the 50% to 45% or increase the amount of ward to 35% (70% at max)

This would mean that the class which deals relatively small damage (compared with other classes) was able to tank a little bit better while chipping away.

All that said im still enjoying my Witchhunter.