Ctrl+Click = Mercenary Focus?

As I’m going through a fresh playthrough of D2, I’m doing so while thinking, “What’s missing that would be easy to add in the remaster AND not impact otherwise classic gameplay?” So I’m in the Arcane Sanctuary as a lightning sorc, I’m getting bombarded by those lightning orbs that shrug off my lightning based damage and take a long time to die… unless, of course, my A2 mercenary attacks them, in which case they die in two or three hits. But of course, those lightning orbs were the last thing Ilzan wanted to attack…

And that got me thinking; how hard would it be to add a function that would assign a specific target to your mercenary? The game logic would be simple… you would ctrl+click your desired target (since that is not an existing keybind in D2 and thus wouldn’t interfere with old gameplay), and your mercenary would focus on said target until it was dead. Otherwise, your mercenary would act as they would normally.

I haven’t a clue how difficult this would be to implement from the developers’ end, but as a player I think this is a pretty solid idea. It would add just a touch of enhancement to your mercenaries, while keeping to my personal philosophy that any significant changes should be optional while leaving the old way intact.

Thoughts?

At best I would say have this on the merc and only the merc, simple hover over monster and hit a button to say him. Slippery slope is wanting minions or multiple pets be controllable, that leads to much different play.

The way I got around issue like that if available would be an item to give me teleport, or if sorc teleport, and position whoever you have clinging onto you where you want.

Not against this at all as I really don’t see much issue besides reducing some panic scenarios I would personally enjoy heh.

Arcane sanctuary I found just one of those places where range was the way to go if you wanted to run it for loot, or the in hardcore and not wanting to get close to the boss.

Ooh, I didn’t even think about how this could pertain to necro pets… and you’re right, that would be an entirely different game for necroes. Agreed that something like this should only apply to mercenaries.

It could even be made lore friendly, implying that just keeping undead allies on your side is too mentally draining to command them like a living mercenary.