Are Legendary mercs worth it ?

[pascal.difolco]

By June ingame I'm hoarding $200K+ still only using my starting team (Limewire Barry Blood Fox) plus high LDR teacher guys to do militia training (Raider and Buns)
Can't decide to spend lotta money on Legendary mercs, should I ? :)

[echoes222]

Yep.

[Bloodwest]

If money isn't a problem, they mostly are. There are few I wouldn't bother even for lower salary. When money isn't an issue, merc limit becomes one, so you want them to be BIS, Legendary usually give you just that.

[Urmel]

no,

they have nothing, you couldnt do with a elite or veteran merc.

[Vote Quimby]

I took only 1 for two achievements. Perhaps for Lone Wolf it is a good idea to take Gus for late game though.

[Dies Horribly]

Magic 100%!
Scully is a bit expensive for what he offers...
Haven't tried the rest.

[Lightning]

I hired the Gus squad for fun in my first playthrough but not sure about on Commando now cause the money income is alot less than what it was on First blood

[Null Winter]

Some of them are pretty great, but by the time you can afford them reliably a different merc can be trained up to that level in terms of raw stats; some of the Legendary mercs are also saddled with the Old Dog trait which means they can't increase stats outside of using magazines.

Unique talents and traits (and dialogue!) might be their only real selling points, except most of them have subpar or very niche options. Reaper's guaranteed crit and forced Panic has applications, and Len's "everyone absolutely wreck this one target" command can remove most of the HP sponge bosses in a single action. Fauda's ability to gain Grit when hitting multiple enemies in a blast is less cool than it sounds due to a simple fact: if you just hit the last 5 guys you can see with an RPG, then you probably don't have anyone dangerous left alive to hit her.

[Lightning]

Yeah I think this time i'm saving up magazines for Old dog perk mercs

[[ScrN]PooSH]

Maybe Legendary mercs are better, but after 50h of playing, I got so emotionally tied to my squad that I cannot let them go. Even after I switched the difficulty to Mission Impossible (you can do it anytime via game options), my squad of IMP + Raven + Barry + Fox + Wolf + Lifewire annihilates everything. Despite Lifewire's hating Raven (-1AP), the latter usually boosts team morale by killing 3+ enemies in a single Overwatch session with fully upgraded RPK.

[Urmel]

Dr. Q can "kill" with only one 3 ap meele-hit every super end-boss enemy.
doesnt matter what armor or lvl or skills.

(he only want 8k $ a week and is one of the best medic / fighter)

[Bloodwest]

Originally posted by Urmel:

no,

they have nothing, you couldnt do with a elite or veteran merc.

Lower tiers require investments to match legendaries. They can also theoretically outscale many of them but then again is it really worth if by that point you can buy everyone available, including battle-ready legendaries.

[Rampage]

I dont find them to be so much better to be worth the money. I only took Skully, the rest of my team are cheaper mercs who become just as good with minimum training.

I have 500k to spare but not even looking for another Legendary merc, in fact my last hire was Vicky

[RejectedByAnthonyDavis]

Worth it for what. specifically?

To win? Not at all. You can comfortably beat this game without using any of the top-tier mercs. Its more about tactics than characters.

[Trolleur_Durden]

One thing that really puts me off hiring higher tier mercs is the perk allocation, I feel like most higher level mercs come with terrible perk choices, so much that I now actually value the fact that a merc is lvl 1.

[sooshon]

Originally posted by Urmel:

no,

they have nothing, you couldnt do with a elite or veteran merc.

That's just straight up not true. Fauda's unique ability is amazing for a late-game heavy weapons specialist. Being able to completely ignore cumbersome gear and still have free move while carrying around HK21, RPG, mortar, heavy armor etc. is very useful and I absolutely love this merc. Don't be put off by her mediocre marksmanship, it's pretty irrelevant with machinegun as her main, Fauda in my game still has a 60%+ average accuracy just using a machine gun, and keep in mind a lot of overwatch hits get activated even on the edges of vision cone where obstacles are in the way and there is 0% chance of hitting a whole spray. She's also quite cheap for a legendary merc and her perks serve her well.

Shadow also has a unique ability of sneaking while standing that you can't do with anyone but him.

Do you NEED to hire them? No, you can do just fine without them on any difficulty but that's very different than saying they have nothing you couldn't do with other mercs, get your facts straight.

PS: old dog mercs can still level up and gain new traits for those wondering, they just can't be trained or learn from fieldwork for skills.