I still think there should be support without obvious penalties. You choose to sacrifice output for buffs/healing.
As for using alts as companions they would definitely need to be nerfed some. No need for say a maxed out paragon best geared Barb being a companion just wiping the floor with enemies and bosses while you sit back and heal it IMO.
Oh no obviously
Like in Poe there would be a level equalizing
For example your alt couldnât use skills that are higher level than you and he wouldnât have items effect to trigger
Ie: level 5 and he has a weapon that casts meteor on hit
Having character classes as the mercs would be boring imo.
Make mercs their own unique classes, with their own skills etc. That is more work of course. But probably also easier to balance.
Of course. I would still prefer them to be similar to WoW Hunter pets doing like 15-25%(max) or less. Nor reason they need to be like playing with another player. Unless they increase the difficulty to compensate for the follower if they will be like equals.
That should of course happen.
Anyway, I agree, while I think mercs should be very powerful, they should not be stronger than your character. And probably not even anywhere close either.
Now, that doesnât necessarily mean they should be unable to outdmg your character, because maybe you make a very tanky low dmg character, and a glasscannon merc, in which case it seems fine if the merc is a big part of your total dmg (even though, realistically that setup might never manage to be very competitive).
But the glass cannon merc should not be able to outdmg you if you had made a glasscannon character.
I agree
The companion should be considered as a player in term of effect on game difficulty
Heâs meant to complement you, not be a bonus
Yeah, I know some are calling for them to do serious damage.
Doing serious dmg does not mean they have to be stronger than you. They should be able to do serious dmg.
Like, if a boss has 1 million HP, and your character deals 700k dmg, your follower deals 300k dmg, that is still a significant help in killing the boss. But also much less than you dealt.
And of course, this is on average. If you are fighting against an enemy that your build is severely disadvantaged against, then the merc might do by far most of the dmg in that single fight. The extreme here is of course D2, where the merc might do 100% of the dmg against an enemy immune to your dmg. Which is fine. Not the immunity part of course, that is bad, but the part where the merc basically carries you against enemies you are weak against. As a theoretical example, a fast enemy against a point-based attack, where your build struggles to hit the enemy, while the follower is using some AoE or seeking missile or whatever, that allows it to easily hit that enemy.
Even with the help from the merc you are still worse off than if you had not been weak against that enemy, so it does not remove your weaknesses, it just alters them (just like you could choose to use the merc to double down on your strengths rather than reduce your weaknesses).
With grouping all other characters and bringing them with you you arenât solo
It is still singleplayer. Which is what are usually meant when saying solo.
Baldurs Gate is still a singleplayer/solo game despite having 6 team members.
Some people will create a new thread and as soon as the thread gets hijacked they stop participating.
Thatâs a thing
They whine about people making threads but they are the ones derailing them lol
An interesting approach.
In general, Iâd like it if the mercenary wasnât just a dumb blocker like in D2. D3 did a slightly better job of giving the mercenaries a little bit of depth. But of course, that could be fleshed out more and also include more of the mercenaryâs development in a side story. In the end, it would be as if you really choose a companion and he actually becomes a friend on the way, with his own character, soul and depth⌠worthy of an RPG.
Whether you should really take the other heroes for this. hmmâŚ
Thatâs probably a bit oversized? What talents do you want to give the hero NPC then, etc.? Maybe itâs better to raise the mercenaries differently.
However, as I said, also with the effort to make the mercenary a reliable partner, which is not quite as simple as it is currently in D2 and D3.