Scarecrow and Guardian Hirelings

[vitamin boost]

Anyone here bought the Collector's Edition or the Ultimate Fan Edition of the Expansions (and owns the scare crow and guardian, specifically)?
I am VERY much tempted to get them primarily for the permanent hirelings (scare crow and guardian- I already have the owlbears and the lvl 3 cleric). I'm thinking of a future fun/theme TR (maybe druid or palemaster or warlock, i'm currently on my 1st life aura lock) that focuses on summons/hirelings/pets and what better way to start than the permanent hirelings (on top of the platinum hirelings, summons and pets).

TLDR: are the perm. hireling scare crow and guardian useful/worth it/fun to use?

Edit: i mistakenly referred to the shield guardians as "defenders"

[Equilibrium]

Do not buy hirelings.

[Equilibrium]

They are worthless unless you need a lever pulled, in which case any other normal hire can

[Equilibrium]

The only reason people bought the ultimate pack was for the teleport clicky. DO NOT buy if you are a Hireling lover. HIRES SUCK.

[Taebrythn]

lol that could of all been said in one post but okie. So they're not wrong because of the ai hirelings. not to mention each one counts as .5 of a person when dealing with difficulty.

[Equilibrium]

Just trying to help friend. Enjoy the game.

[Soap]

As Taebrythn said, each hireling in the party will scale the difficulty up. What this means is that it's mostly a bad idea to solo a quest and fill the rest of your party with 5 hirelings. If it's an enemy you can see the hp of, then you can actually watch the number go up/down as you summon/dismiss the hires. That doesn't mean they aren't useful though. Pulling levers is only the obvious thing.

They can be used to set off traps in some cases or grab your stone if you die. If you buff them good they probably still won't match even a bad player, but some like the owl bear can tank a decent amount of aggro if you're playing a caster and just need a little bit of time to cast a couple spells, or an assassin rogue.

If you fight in melee, then they're also good to help corner enemies that move around a lot like kobolds. I've used this tactic many times against https://ddowiki.com/page/Crystal_the_Giant because he loves to hop and run around. For this tactic I'd recommend dismissing all the hires when the boss gets low hp, which will further reduce their hp allowing you to finish the fight faster.

[Doug]

Info on the next update suggests they intend to address the fragility of hirelings. It's at least theoretically possible that at some point in the near future, hirelings will be more survivable. That being said, at this point they mostly aren't. I have the L15 Shield Guardian, the L17/25 Owlbears and the L20 Panther. The SG survives in content that pretty much one-shots the others (I run mainly low skull Reaper). The fact that it can cast Blur is cool (also can heal player with Reconstruct if Construct). Its Displacement's well-nigh useless. Who remembers to have it recast that over and over? But it also self-heals with Reconstruct, which helps a lot.

They're of the greatest value, imo, in slayers. If you're lucky, they'll spawn more mobs to kill, and most slayer mobs aren't that OP.

The other day, I ran Lost at Sea solo on Epic Reaper on a ranged toon. I summoned all four of them, plus a cleric hire just for the end fight. They got initial aggro so I could start out with Sneak Attack damage. After that, they couldn't pull aggro from me, but they got in the boss' way so I could kite more effectively. Like anything else, creativity can be key.

[vitamin boost]

Thanks for the replies guys! Since I'm currently on my 1st life character (aura warlock), I'm only doing Normal on the quests (as anything higher is locked). The highest I might be doing for any runs might be Hard anyway, as I've tried Epic once, when a fellow player asked if we both could do it at that level (we were both lvl 6, I think, at that time, though I don't know what TR rank he was, if any) and I kept on dying on the 1st..trap..alone (it was some stairs with sonic traps scattered throughout it's length.. he had to slog through almost half of the dungeon with his hireling until a point where they both died and were still unable to reach the rest shrine..we had to call it a day after I dunno..4-5 wipes lol..it certainly didn't help his soloing odds that he was a squishy sorcerer and there were hordes of tough undead swarming everywhere). (now that you guys mention it, maybe it didn't really help that each of us brought 1 hireling with us. it might have exponentially increased the dungeon's difficulty..a hit from a trap practically one-shots me)
I am horrible at dodging and timing movements with traps so I'm just going to ban myself from Epics and higher now and in the foreseeable future :D

[Taebrythn]

i think you meant elite not epic. epic is level 20+ elite well that just means you need to be ready for harder damage more mobs etc. not to mention anything level 3 and above on elite you get what we call champions which are random mobs and orange names. red names aren't ever suppose to be champions. if you bump up to reaper well now you deal with less damage less self healing and now reapers. so each difficulty can pose an issue if you're just starting the game.


As you play and get better its easier to tackle some of these difficulties or even if you have a good build it becomes easier as well.

[Taebrythn]

Originally posted by Doug:

snip

lol i never think about doing them in slayer areas. i might do that since i do like slayer and some areas are harder to fill.

[vitamin boost]

Originally posted by Taebrythn:

i think you meant elite not epic. epic is level 20+ elite

hahah yeah. my bad that's what i meant. i get confused about the terms sometimes.

[Doug]

Originally posted by ishkalafufu:

Thanks for the replies guys! Since I'm currently on my 1st life character (aura warlock), I'm only doing Normal on the quests (as anything higher is locked).

On Normal, or even Hard, you'll get decent value from the Gold Seal Hirelings. On elite, especially as you get to higher levels, you get much less (They die easily). On Reaper they're often well-nigh useless (aside from the Shield Guardian, as previously mentioned. And with that, I can only speak to the Heroic version, since I don't have the Epic version and have never seen it in use.).

[Doug]

Originally posted by ishkalafufu:

(now that you guys mention it, maybe it didn't really help that each of us brought 1 hireling with us. it might have exponentially increased the dungeon's difficulty..

Dungeons are originally 'scaled' for 4 players. 4-6 player groups get identical difficulty. With fewer players, mobs are easier and there are fewer of them. Also, on lower difficulties there's more scaling for the smaller parties. In any event, hirelings count less than players, and Gold Seal hirelings count less than regular ones (to give them more value).

The two of you with two hires would have had the dungeon scaled similarly to three players, probably.

https://ddowiki.com/page/Dungeon_scaling

[Doug]

Originally posted by Taebrythn:

Originally posted by Doug:

snip

lol i never think about doing them in slayer areas. i might do that since i do like slayer and some areas are harder to fill.

Like I said, creativity is key.

Now if only someone could come up with a use for the stupid cosmetic pets ('creature companions').

[Longhaul]

Originally posted by Doug:

Originally posted by Taebrythn:

lol i never think about doing them in slayer areas. i might do that since i do like slayer and some areas are harder to fill.

Like I said, creativity is key.

Now if only someone could come up with a use for the stupid cosmetic pets ('creature companions').

Yup.... i am not even really sure how i managed it, but i have 14 friggin pets... and every single one of them is useless.