D2R Mercenaries Guide Changes 2.4

Hiring a Mercenary in Expansion mode will now always offer mercenaries that match your character's Level, instead of having a randomized Level difference from your character's Level.

Act 1 - Rogue Archer

  • Updated each stat/skill gains in each difficulty to match so that there is no disadvantage of leveling up a Hell difficulty mercenary versus a Normal difficulty mercenary.
  • Can now use Amazon Bows
  • Can now gain + Amazon skill bonuses from gear

Cold Arrow

  • Added Freezing Arrow

Fire Arrow

  • Added Explosion Arrow

Developer Comments: The Rogue Archer is getting new flavored ranged skills that will scale as she levels up. These new skills should improve her AoE (Area of Effect) damage effectiveness and thus make her a more effective ranged damage dealer.

Act 2 - Desert Mercenary

  • Updated each stat/skill gains in each difficulty to match so that there is no disadvantage of leveling up a Hell difficulty mercenary versus a Normal difficulty mercenary.
  • Nightmare and Hell difficulty now have all 6 different aura types available from the Hire menu, instead of separating them out by 3 per difficulty. Normal is unchanged.

Thorns (Combat - Nightmare)

  • Thorns aura level scaling increased and will now continue scaling up beyond the highest-level threshold up to max level.

Developer Comments: The Desert Mercenary is already popular, but we saw an opportunity to add some quality-of-life improvements by allowing players to hire all six different Aura types in Nightmare and Hell difficulty, rather than having to switch between modes. With the general improvements to “Thorns,” we wanted to improve the level scaling to make this aura mercenary type more meaningful.

Act 3 - Iron Wolf

  • Updated each stat/skill gains in each difficulty to match so that there is no disadvantage of leveling up a Hell difficulty mercenary versus a Normal difficulty mercenary.
  • Life baseline and scaling increased by about 25% (Now has Life similar to the Rogue Archer)
  • Defense baseline and scaling increased by about 40% (Now has defense closer to the Rogue Archer)
  • Resistances baseline and scaling increased by about 20% (Now has the highest resistances baseline compared to other mercenaries)
  • Swapped frozen armor for Chilling Armor

Cold

  • Now casts Glacial Spike more often
  • Glacial Spike level scaling increased
  • Frozen Armor level scaling increased

Fire

  • Removed Inferno
  • Added Fire Bolt
  • Increased chance of the Iron Wolf casting Fire Ball
  • Added Enchant - Now the Iron Wolf will cast Enchant on himself, the player, and nearby allies

Lightning

  • Added Static Field
  • Charged Bolt level scaling increased
  • Increased chance of the Iron Wolf casting Lightning

Developer Comments: The Iron Wolves are great elemental sorcerers, but we saw they have been underperforming in higher difficulties. We improved their core stats so that they are more in line with other mercenaries while also having a distinct advantage with having the most resistance values. For skills, we wanted to embrace their elemental fantasies, so we decided to give new flavorful utility skills, to further incentivize reasons to want to use these mercenary types.

Act 5 - Barbarian Warrior

  • Updated each stat/skill gains in each difficulty to match so that there is no disadvantage of leveling up a Hell difficulty mercenary versus a Normal difficulty mercenary.
  • Life baseline scaling increased (Now has the most life compared to other mercenaries)
  • Defense baseline and scaling increased and the scaling at higher levels was reduced (Now has the highest defense baseline compared to other mercenaries)
  • Bash level scaling increased and will no longer be capped at level 80
  • Stun level scaling increased and will no longer be capped at level 80
  • Added Battle Cry
  • Can now gain + Barbarian skill bonuses from gear
  • A new ferocious Barbarian is available for hire from Qual-Kehk. These warriors cannot use two-handed swords. but are well trained in the art of dual wielding. Utilizing the Frenzy, Taunt, and Iron Skin abilities, they lure enemies in and unleash a fierce barrage of attacks.

Developer Comments: We want to give the Barbarian Warrior more identity while still maintaining his Barbarian fantasy. So, we decided to give him the “Battle Cry” skill as a new way for him to debuff enemies, which should prove to be a useful utility for players. In addition, we wanted to increase his Life and Defense scaling to ensure that he is the tougher mercenary type.

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