Mercenary feels very clunky

[76561199350145337]

Talking about until lvl 20 idk if it gets better...
Reload time of the crossbow skills are way to long
Switched to grenades. The time to explode is also way to long. Also it is hard to hit with them a lot do not rly hit. And if so the dmg is much to low. even with split shot. I saw later you can get a shot to activate the explosion instantly. but the way you get that shot is much too long. For me it feels not fluent to lvl up a merc. and starts to lose interest in this class

[Orclover]

Greatest thing about playing a merc is...........at least you are not playing a monk. That class feels like a job.

[dickehoden3000]

yeah, he needs nukes to clear whole maps

[Bombadil]

My first char was a lvl 52 merc. I had a terrible build. I did no boss dmg whatsoever. Fought an actual 15 minute fight with Jamanra. Total snoozefest.

Anyways.. since then I made a new Merc who's lvl 64 currently. Almost done with cruelty act 3. Never played grenade merc once. Some advice from me. Don't use auto attack, it's a trap. I rotated between permafrost bolts too freeze my enemies and fragmentation rounds to blow em up. Did that from beginning to end. I added herald of ashes when I could. Blowing up frozen enemies does a lot of overkill dmg. It's not really until halfway through act 3 were I started having some issues. Permafrost bolts didn't work that well anymore. And there were simply just too many enemies. Plus I invested nothing in defense. So I was essentially a glass cannon. Anyhow, grenade build is by far the strongest merc build imho. But untill you get it going try my rotation out for the earlier levels

Goodluck to you

[DirtyMick]

I put fast forward and scattershot on the grenades and I just blow everything up immediately in the early game. Only got to like lvl 15, but yeah, works like a charm. Then regular crossbow shot for everything else while grenades are on cooldown. I don't bother with shotgun or machine gun yet. We'll see if I branch out later. I imagine there will eventually be another skill i like.

[FDru]

Can pretty much go through the whole game with just fragmentation rounds and explosive grenade. Don't even worry about setting up combos (but I guess breaking armor is not a bad idea since leveled up armor piercing rounds can shred TENS OF THOUSANDS of armor per second).

Though it does feel like crossbow skills are actually broken, in the sense of being buggy. Swapping ammo can cause 3-4 seconds of your character standing around like a ♥♥♥♥ unable to shoot (even with full mana) and grenades sometimes just stop recharging and stay depleted forever or get an extremely long reload time for seemingly no reason.

[<#C77>ex_IllusionisT]

The problem is crossbows.

https://streamable.com/0sm99l

Just slap something else on it.

[Eerie Gloom]

attack speed affects reload time btw, as in makes it faster.

[Sergalius]

if only we can reload in a roll like remnant did
if only

[Kai Be]

There's a definite bug with reloading in merc, which makes that particular approach to the class feel REALLY clunky. My xbow currently has a 1.1s reload time, yet, on standard shots it takes closer to 2-2.5s. Now, I also use the galvanic shards, which adds another 50% reload time - which means I'm literally waiting for 3-4s when it should be closer to about 1.6-1.7s.

I've tested this numerous times with a stop watch. I start the reload, and the time from the reload until I can actually shoot is 2-3x longer than it should be. What's interesting, is that the timer on the ammunition itself seems to be accurate. It's almost like the game is doing the reload, the ammunition is available, then it's doing a "weapon swap" after it, because even though the ammunition is available, my character most certainly isn't.

It's incredibly frustrating, and makes the class a real pita to play currently.

[Elgareth]

I'm currently leveling one, Galvanic Shards really melts hordes of monsters. But I haven't found a good way against bosses yet, the damage is really low, and the change to chain freezes really nerfed the frost+fragmentation rounds combo.

[Noop]

Wudijo I think had a super strong grenade merc. Otherwise I saw people use all stat merc with monk abilities.
There are a ♥♥♥♥ ton of good builds for it, you just seemed to went with one that either sucks or isnt build properly.

[thestile]

I liked the mercenary but I switched to a ranger and liked the feel more because it just feels like a better pace. I like the feel of poison gas more than grenades also.

I was only level 22 on the merc though, so stuff might change later. Exploding arrows felt really fun with grenades though. Pretty damn cool

Yeah, waiting for grenades to explode sucks. The mobs are on the other side of the map by the time they go off, Lol. You can use exploding arrows to make them go off when you hit level 22 though.

[Wyrtt]

Originally posted by Trax-POE2:

Talking about until lvl 20 idk if it gets better...
Reload time of the crossbow skills are way to long
Switched to grenades. The time to explode is also way to long. Also it is hard to hit with them a lot do not rly hit. And if so the dmg is much to low. even with split shot. I saw later you can get a shot to activate the explosion instantly. but the way you get that shot is much too long. For me it feels not fluent to lvl up a merc. and starts to lose interest in this class

Pick nodes that reduce reload times and increase attack speed. Take a crosbow with additional bolt. I just use fragmentation rounds and clear screen with zero IQ required.

I heard nades are busted when you stack nodes to reduce fuse time and cooldown time. Also there is a crossbow that fires additional grenade.

[F.O.A.M]

my brother played and still is playing a merc and he does some big diik dmg. there is a node that makes reloads far faster or instant (idk which one im pretty sure the node is just called instant reload or quick reload)

[Wyrtt]

Originally posted by großer Schwanz:

my brother played and still is playing a merc and he does some big diik dmg. there is a node that makes reloads far faster or instant (idk which one im pretty sure the node is just called instant reload or quick reload)

Reload on enemy kill