The recent changes to D2R have been significant and Blizzard has continued to roll out other changes for patch 2.5. In today’s guide, we are going to be covering 5 super effective changes for mercenaries in patch 2.5 Diablo 2 Resurrected. 

5 Changes For Mercenaries In D2R Patch 2.5 -  Act 1, Act 3, Act 5 Mercs Updates

Mercenaries in Acts 1, 3 and 5 will become more efficient so that player usage is more varied than currently. The act 1 mercenary can roll over inwards in amazon specific bows and can equip them and gain the additional plus stats from plus skills, while act 3 mercenary will gain more stats with each level. The Act 5 mercenary will have the ability to use axe type weapons.

D2R 2.5 Merc Change 1 - Act 1 Rogues

From patch 2.3 to patch 2.4, act 1 rogues took a huge step forward, so their utility attacking from range to now being able to use freezing error or exploding arrow was a big step forward. In addition to that, they can now roll over inwards in amazon specific bows and they can equip them and then gain the additional plus stats from those plus skills. So if you have a plus three to bone crossbow skills grand machine bow or matriarchal bow, can then roll inside harmony ice etc for more dps. So that was very big step forward.

The ai and the ability to roll insight in bows now works very well for budget caster characters. Some people did a lot of stony tomb farming with the fire druid, an act 1 rogue that had an inside bow, no life leech and did really well for surviving compared to that to counterpart just because of the ai, they would hang back, they wouldn't jump right into monsters faces and absorb damage don't have life leach. Without a cta, more often than not, the act 1 rogue would survive. So they've taken a huge step forward, but there's one small simple change that we don't think would be op that would make a big difference in terms of their dps and their utility and how often people use them. 

We can remove the regular aeroshot from the cold and fire arrow counterpart. So instead of them shooting a cold arrow, a couple of freezing arrows and a regular attack regular arrow shot or the same regular arrow shot fire than exploding arrow, regular arrow in between really halts the dps especially if you have like a chaining pierce attack and you want the freezing arrow to go through monsters, that regular arrow is very interruptive. The cold arrow, freezing arrow, alternating back and forth or fire air and alternating back and forth exploding arrow would be a great alternative to the current setup and make them more useful. A very small minor change that would not be op, but it would help with their utility and a lot more people would use these rogues, even though we definitely recommend for budget characters to try them out, but a small simple change would go a long way.

D2R 2.5 Mer Change 2 - Act 3 Iron Wolf

Merc changes 1 and 3 both revolve around the act 3 iron wolf. Now they've definitely been improved a little bit from patch 2.3 to patch 2.4, but outside of a very niche case of using the static mercenary with maybe like a tesla and a high-end conviction aura to take advantage of a big radius and static field, there's really no incentive to use these mercenaries and the main reason is they don't have any distinguishing factor between the act 1, 2 and act 5 mercenaries. So act 1 is like range support, some crowd control you can use insight in a bow for man recovery. Act 2 you have your different auras, so might holy freeze, blast aim, prayer, etc, with a lot of very powerful rumors that you can roll in full arm specifically they provide additional auras on top of that. Your act 5 mercenary is just raw dps and really good damage.

What does the x-ray mercenary give you? You get a low enchant from the fire version, you get static feel. The cold version actually doesn't even give you anything other than a crowd control, but it's inferior to the freezing arrow variant of the act 1 rogue or using a holy freeze mirror sniff rack too. So the first thing they deserve or change is the dps bump and that could be accomplished via enabling them, the ability to use sorcerer's orbs. So in particular, a shooter's temper and death fathom, because those two weapons can provide up to 20% fire damage, 20% lightning and 30% cold damage. So that would be an initial damage bump with a very simple change and it falls in line with the idea of act 1 rogues. They're not necessarily amazons but we enabled them to use amazon bows. Iron wolves aren't necessarily sorceresses but they are casting spells. So let's enable the use of sorcerer's orbs to provide a different weapon alternative because as it stands, there's currently really only like spirit flag and then maybe crescent moon and lawbringer and crystal swords for the act 3 iron wolf. 

D2R 2.5 Merc Change 3 - Act 3 Iron Wolf

Maybe the fire iron wolf can cast meteor, maybe frozen orb for the cold variant, maybe chain lightning or a thunderstorm that does decent damage for the lightning counterpart. Any additional skill that would provide a little bit of a dps bump that would complement the use of orbs would make these a little bit more of a viable choice again. They really need a distinguishing factor to separate between the act 1, act 2 and act 5 mercenary. And additional skill choice could be a way to approach that. 

D2R 2.5 Merc Change 4 - Act 5 Barbarian 

For change number 4, we can see if mercenaries with the ability to use axe type weapons. This is not breaking the fantasy or the lore because if you zoom in on the character model, they're already holding a combination of swords and axes. But using axe type weapons would open up new rumored and unique options. So let's for instance take a look at the two-handed variant. What if you were to use an ethereal executioner's justice with an home run, that would be a ton of damage and the chance to proc to crept when you kill a monster 50% chance. So that mercenary with support with a fanaticism zealot, would have a ton of damage and would consistently proc decrepify and give you alternative option as opposed to the act 2 mercenary.

For the rune word beast, dual wielding beast for a higher level fanaticism aura for a frenzy barbarian setup would provide different alternatives. So that just opening up different weapon choices would be a really good option to make the active mercenary even stronger. 

D2R 2.5 Merc Change 5 - General Mercenaries 

D2R merc change 4 is not necessarily directed right at mercenary, so it would have huge implications and that is allowing rumors to be rolled in different bases. The biggest example of this was in patch 2.4 with the ability to roll insight and bows this was just an awesome alternative option to the standard act 2 insight mercenary setup, it provides an alternative option, so we'd like to see 3 different alternative options that would provide you more mercenary choice. 

• Insight: The first one is the ability to roll insight and swords, what if he found a nice ethereal cryptic sword rolled inside in it and paired it with oath and then equipped it on an act 5 frenzy mercenary setup. You have a dps source and meditation or maybe you wanted to have the static field mercenary and you throw insight and a crystal sword and use that to complement a sorceress, just shifting insight from pole arms and bows to pull arms bows and swords would provide different alternative options.

• Brand: The second one is brand swords, wouldn't that be a cool way to get a source of an amp damage brock on either an act 3 or an act 5 mercenary. They get hit, they proc amp damage, you do more damage as a melee character gives you an alternative to something other than the act 2 reaper's toll mercenary setup. That's just shifting the rumored brand into a sword. You might want to remove the chance to flee.

• Lawbringer: It would provide you an easy ranged source of decrepify and with freezing arrows that would add even more crowd control, very cheap easy to roll where it doesn't have enhanced damage, so you wouldn't have a crazy super tanky act 1 rogue but it would provide you a consistent and easy source of decrep and crowd control or melee character in a play through. 

These 3 would have a huge pronoun impact on mercenaries in patch 2.5 Diablo 2 Resurrected.