This proposal is about evening all mercenary types and specializations, through some skill changes and sub-type additions. Each mercenary type would have 3 specialisations to choose, each with 3 skills. Additionally, a new type of mercenary is proposed to be hired from Tyrael in Act 4.
Each mercenary type’s three specialisations would have slightly similar role types in the party, given by their skill sets:
- Tactic / Lightning / Magic: Great fighters on their own, they’d use advanced techniques to distract the enemies and mighty attacks to beat them, but would not focus much on helping the party.
- Offensive / Fire: Good damage dealers and great offensive aids, they would increase the party’s weapon fighting abilities.
- Defensive / Cold / Fast: Good protectors and fast fighters, they’d boost the party’s defensive capacity and stop the enemies with cold skills, so other members can get rid of them safely.
Rogue Archer: Adding a third specialisation, changing a skill in the other two specialisations to further diversify usability.
- Magic: Magic Arrow + Multiple Shot + Decoy. New specialisation focused on magic archery and distracting enemies with Decoy. Same equipment and looks as other specialisations. The decoy would look like the Rogue Archer.
- Fire: Fire Arrow + Immolation Arrow + Inner Sight. Remove Exploding Arrow, add Immolation Arrow. Exploding Arrow is not offensive enough when compared with Freezing Arrow.
- Cold: Cold Arrow + Freezing Arrow + Slow Missiles. Remove Inner Sight, add Slow Missiles. This defensive change on skills would match the freezing and chilling effects of this specialisation.
Desert Mercenary: Coupling Auras to get 3 specialisations instead of 6. Some current specialisations are rarely used, since other Auras are more useful. The 3 merged specialisations would keep both Auras active at the same time, even on Normal difficulty.
Two specialisations would use a different attack skill from Amazon’s Javelin and Spear tree, so none of them would share skills. One Aura would be changed because one of the proposed Act 4 mercenaries would need it.
- Combat: Lightning Strike + Prayer + Thorns. Remove Jab, add Lightning Strike. Stack Prayer and Thorns. A lightning attack to hit multiple targets, paired with two Auras that allow an interesting different tactic. Prayer and Thorns are probably two of the less used Auras on the Desert Mercenaries, but complement each other when stacked together.
- Offensive: Fend + Might + Blessed Aim. Remove Jab, add Fend. Stack Might and Blessed Aim. Fend is a good fast attack to multiple targets, paired with good Auras that stack well for party’s weapon fighting, boosting attack rating and damage. Blessed Aim is a rare pick after Normal difficulty.
- Defensive: Jab + Defiance + Vigor. Remove Holy Freeze, add Vigor. Stack Defiance and Vigor. Coupling a fast attack with higher defense and increased movement speed and stamina for the party would always be useful, and most characters needing either defense or speed would also benefit from the other.
Iron Wolf: I’m not sure about some of the current skills being the best, but I can’t propose better alternatives either. This should be discussed.
They should attack with their swords more often when enemies approach them, this way they would be able to use Chance to cast on attack / on striking efficiently.
They should be able to block attacks with their shields, maybe it would require adding animations for the block effect.
- Lightning: Charged Bolt + Lightning + Static Field. High damage specialisation. Nova could be considered intead of Static Field.
- Fire: Inferno + Fire Ball + Enchant. Remove Fire Bolt, add Inferno (again). Offensive support specialisation. Inferno should have been fixed in 2.4, not replaced with the single target, mild damage Fire Bolt. They should have fixed the AI for the Iron Wolves to target Inferno well and maintain the channeling better. Hydra could be considered instead of Inferno.
- Cold: Ice Blast + Glacial Spike + Chilling Armor. Defensive freezing and chilling specialisation. Frozen Orb could be considered instead of Ice Blast or Glacial Spike.
Angelic Soldier: After countless years of speculations on the net, Tyrael would at last lend some of the High Heavens’ soldiers at Pandemonium Fortress to aid the heroes. Why wouldn’t he do so and then do it 20 years later, even himself fighting together with humans? Maybe he would get inspired to fight after having convinced some soldiers to help in the assault on the Burning Hells…
The Angelic Soldiers would be able to wield one scepter or staff. They would benefit from equipment’s +to skills (Paladin / Sorceress only) for their own skills.
All specialisations would have one Paladin’s Combat Skills weapon attack, one Paladin’s or Sorceress’ magic attack from above, and one elemental Offensive Aura. The magic attacks should all get the same inner cooldown (4 to 8 seconds?) to prevent too consecutive casts or too much stacking.
They Angelic Soldiers would look like Hadriel, showing no weapon unless it was also possible to add a one handed rod. They would need to get new animations done for movement, hit recovery and both weapon and spell attacks.
- Lightning: Conversion + Fist of the Heavens + Holy Shock. This set of skills would allow the Soldier to deal Lightning damage on attack while trying to convert enemies and decimate hordes of undeads with Fist of the Heavens. Holy Shock would synergize with FotH and increase its lightning damage.
- Fire: Zeal + Meteor + Holy Fire. Zeal would deal damage many times, each of them boosted by Holy Fire, the weakest of the elemental Auras when not synergised. Meteor would deliver heavy fire area damage.
- Cold: Charge + Blizzard + Holy Freeze. Defensive and highly movable specialisation. Holy Freeze and Blizzard would slow enemies, and Charge would allow the Soldier to attack anywhere needed, with added cold damage from Holy Freeze. Holy Freeze would need to be removed from Defensive Desert Mercenary, but Vigor would be a good replacement for them.
Barbarian Warrior: Adding a third specialisation, changing some skills in the other two specialisations to further diversify usability.
Taunt is proposed to be removed from the Warrior’s skill sets, but they could use it with two rune words’ chance to cast on striking.
- Two-handed: Stun + Berserk + War Cry. Remove Bash and Battle Cry, add Berserk and War Cry. Tactic specialisation, would disable enemy offense for an instant with Stun and War Cry, and deal huge magic damage with Berserk. When Berserk’s debuff were active, they should try to keep the enemies around stunned. War Cry would synergise with Stun and boost its effect duration.
- Dual Wielding: Frenzy + Whirlwind + Battle Cry. Remove Iron Skin and Taunt, add Whirlwind and Battle Cry. Indirect offensive specialisation, weakens enemies with Battle Cry instead of boosting party offense. Whirlwind would work well with two swords and after getting Frenzy’s speed boost.
- Sword and Board: Concentrate + Leap Attack + Shout. These movable and defensive specialised Warriors would wield a one-handed sword and a shield, which should enable them to block attacks. They would use Leap Attack to attack fast where needed, use Concentrate to attack uninterrupted with high defense, and highly boost party defense with Shout. Graphics and animation should be added for the shield and block effect, Large Shield would look good on them.
I’m open to discuss some of the skills I’m proposing, and may even change my mind and propose different skills.
Aditionally to these changes and new ideas, some other improvements should be considered:
- NPCs that allow players to hire mercenaries could get a new feature to let players save some different mercenaries, including their names, experience and equipment, so we’d be able to choose who’d be coming with us every time we’d leave town, in a way not very different than Diablo 3 Followers.
Maybe it would be right to save one mercenary of every type, or a limited number (from 3 to 10) of any mercenaries we want. - All followers, including mercenaries, pets and convinced enemies, should have their AI, movement and targetting improved. Some enemies could also get similar improvements as well.
- An agression setting tool could be added for followers, so we’d be able to decide if they stay close or away from our character, or they would be agressive or reactive towards enemies. This tool could work separately for every kind of followers that have portraits on player screen, just by expanding a small menu under each portrait. Mercenaries could have this setting tool included in their equipment and stats window.
- Mercenaries, and maybe also other followers, could get a simple improvement to be of some use when facing enemies with immunities. For example, a minimum proportion of 10% damage could ignore immunities or resistances.
- It would be interesting to consider enabling mercenaries to use Oskills from equipped items. That would allow further customisation, giving mercenaries access to more skills, viable items to equip and new strategy options. At least a discussion about that is worth it.
This proposal doesn’t include enabling skill charges for mercenaries. Even though it would be possible if oskills were, charges would be tricky to implement, since mercenaries don’t need their equipment to be repaired and often use ethereal items which can’t be repaired. Also, there are many items charged with summoning skills, which would probably be messy to enable.
Assassin and Druid skills are excluded from any specialisations in this proposal for two reasons: First, Acts 1 to 4 mercenaries should be available on Diablo 2 without expansion, so adding expansion content felt wrong. Second, Act 5 mercenaries only have Barbarian skills and I don’t want to change that.