Share your Merc tips & tricks

Crossbows are, in fact, two-handed weapons, which means the cluster shaped like a sword (down left beneath the mercenary start) with the three notables—Overwhelm, Curved Weapon, and Colossal Weapon—should all apply to crossbows. (took me a while)

Some crossbow skills get more ammo with quality, while others get straight-up more damage.

The skill combos are your real damage dealers, like the recently nerfed Gas Grenade + Ignite skill, and the Glacier Bolt + Fragmentation Rounds.

Fragmentation Rounds shoot 10 projectiles, which combine into one hit if they hit the same enemy. This should mean ailments and bleed scale accordingly, but I have no data on this.

Hey,

Thanks for the info, are you sure that two-handed damage works with crossbows?

I would also like to know since grenades are projectiles, does the damage of the projectiles increase the damage of the grenades? I play for the moment gas and grenade fragmentation + the shot to break the armor. act 3

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Touroop#2326 wrote:

Hey,

Thanks for the info, are you sure that two-handed damage works with crossbows?

yes it does - as long as it says 2-Handed and not 2-Handed Melee.

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Touroop#2326 wrote:

I would also like to know since grenades are projectiles, does the damage of the projectiles increase the damage of the grenades? I play for the moment gas and grenade fragmentation + the shot to break the armor. act 3

Yes, it definitely should.

Another one I liked:
Under Warrior or, in general, is a Spirit Gem called "Salvage Armor," which gives a Thorn aura and +% MORE Armor when active and stacks 10 times. This is really good when you go for Armor Break.
Fragmentation Rounds are really good for Armor Break.

PSA: After the patch, Splinter still does not work with High Velocity Rounds!

Playing Merc, have some questions.

Basic attack on Merc says it is aoe, so I tried out conc effect but it didn't seem to do anything. Am I not noticing the increased damage or is it not working?

Is armor break the same as stun?

Will stacking stun help armor break?

not a tip or a trick but i'm wondering how useful attack speed and accuracy are for crossbows? Also what's are people's opinions on the ascendency nodes so far? I've only gotten the witchhunter to one ascend and i took the corpse explosion node which has so far seemed entirely underwhelming... my build so far is just detonating a lot of different grenades constantly, it's fun but not very refined

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Berserkering#6225 wrote:

@

Basic attack on Merc says it is AoE, so I tried out Conc Effect, but it didn't seem to do anything. Am I not noticing the increased damage, or is it not working?

If you can socket the gem, it should work, but I also ran into gems not working, so I would just shelve it for now and try something else. That said, you can always check how your DPS changes when socketing gems in the gem view.
Press the arrow pointing to the right next to your DPS number to get the breakdown. All blue-marked stats at the top are modified by your supports, as far as I know.

Is armor break the same as stun?
No.

Will stacking stun help armor break?
No, stun is related to physical damage. Armor breaking is its own mechanic, not related to any damage type.

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zacmax#2299 wrote:

not a tip or a trick but i'm wondering how useful attack speed and accuracy are for crossbows? Also what's are people's opinions on the ascendency nodes so far? I've only gotten the witchhunter to one ascend and i took the corpse explosion node which has so far seemed entirely underwhelming... my build so far is just detonating a lot of different grenades constantly, it's fun but not very refined

Don’t ask me about that. I’m really annoyed and frustrated with the trials, so I won’t get the second ascendancy for a long time. In general, they don’t feel powerful—nothing does unless you’re tremendously overleveled.

I chose Gemling Legionnaire because it seemed convenient. The 10% quality was only noticeable because my Glacier Bolt now has two ammo instead of one. Beyond that, it’s underwhelming and not worth the hassle.

Most nodes in the Gemling tree are frustrating because they require additional perks to fix their downsides. For example, "Attribute requirements depend on your highest attribute" is great, but you need it if you want the -30% skill cost perk on the other side. This defeats the purpose of ascendancy, as you're solving problems you imposed on yourself rather than becoming more powerful.

The "3 additional skills" and "+1 to all gems" nodes are also problematic. Both rely on the -30% skill cost, and I don’t even have enough hotbar slots to make use of extra skills. They might work for an aura bot, but that’s so niche it feels like a waste for most builds. Additionally, being capped at 20% quality (as far as the tooltip suggests) - Scrap that: it does go past 20%!. - makes spending two ascendancy points pointless when you can just farm Gemcutters. This puts the entire side of the tree on life support.

Gemling Legionnaire feels like wasted points until you gather enough gear and currency to mitigate its downsides. The good perks are locked behind inefficient ones, likely on purpose. The most efficient approach seems to be Adaptive Capabilities for high attributes, then doubled inherent bonuses for strength (for more life). After that, you can waste two points on either 3 skill slots or 10% quality—which becomes irrelevant once you farm enough Gemcutters, given their recent buff.

You could then pick +1 level if you have the mana regen for spamming, or go for double supports, which seem genuinely useful. Max resistances also seem impractical in this PoE, so they’re mostly wasted. Since nothing else matters but damage, double supports seem like the best pick on this side of the tree.

That’s how a straightforward build might work, but I’m not sure if any other builds would benefit without wasting ascendancy points.

I'm not even at endgame, as the game is a slog in Act 3 due to immense maps. But if I had a say, I would suggest reshuffling the tree and moving the extra skill slots to the point where the double supports are. This makes more sense.
The same goes for +1 level and 10% quality.
I would scrap the -30% skill cost for 30% more attribute requirement. Either make it directly -X% skill cost or design something else.
For the fantasy of the build and how unique other ascendancies are, I would like to see the extra skill slots scrapped and replaced by special skill gems that work like auras without reservation (like how the Hellhound does not cost reservation). These could cast skill gems socketed into them based on a trigger, such as damage dealt or a timer.

But maybe that's not the thread for this...

A few things I'm curious about are:

1. Does fire penetration support gem affect the explosion of the explosion shot? According to the tooltip it doesn't, but I haven't tested it.
2. Does the explosion from explosive shot not affect the monster hit by the bolt?

I've been running explosion shot so I'm trying to optimize boss damage since clear speed is is more than good enough.

As for tips, reload speed doesn't slow down the delay after emptying your bolts. From what I can tell attacks are sequenced like this:

fire bolt -> attack speed delay -> fire bolt(repeat until empty) -> another delay(I'm unsure if this is impacted by attack speed) -> reload(This is the only part of the sequence reduced reload time impacts) -> fire bolt

This means if you get the reload speed passives then keep this in mind. It only speeds up the actual chk-chk animation I think.

Also, if you only click your attack button once for you can continue to run at full speed while firing your bolts or you can hold the button down for the slow walk. You can maintain the same attack speed with slower weapons regardless of which method you use I've found which makes avoid boss aoe easy without losing damage. Depending on the gems you use this is important.

I am playing gad nade+high velocity for st and just galvanic ammo for aoe sweep.
Gas nade - corrosion - comorbidity - demolisher. That combo destroy boss armor fast enough to keep my scavenger plating buff up.
High velocity - double barrel(replaceable of u have 2 or more ammo by any means) - scatter shot - chance to not consume ammo. Once splinter sup gona be fixed u will destroy any boss armor approx. In every 2 shots. Id like to slap attack speed on that one too.
Galvanic aoe sweep is straight forward - u stack as much dmg as u can on that one and thats it. In my plans to use a specific elemental Xbow with that skill. While using pure physic on st set up.
Other honorable mentions: instant reload, ripwire ballista(very nice to hold trash and rares in place for gas nade).
Aura skills of your liking. I suggest scavenger plating and ranger evasion skill(only if u use evasion items with iron reflex passive node - i did not test if its gona work like that) otherwise aura for Instant reload trigger.