In the original game 20 years ago, hirelings were the last-moment addition and did not work, dying only moments after being hired. It was impossible to heal them or gear them. They would disappear between the act transition. In LOD, hirelings were greatly improved with the inventory and ability to heal them. However, in D2R, everything is exactly as it was LOD. In a way, this is the spirit of D2R. But some things still could be improved without changing the main experience. The inventory restrictions, the poor AI that is bad at pathfinding. Issues such as certain skills and auras are only available at a certain difficulty, meaning you only have one chance to choose your hireling during your character progression, i.e., Holy freeze is only available in Nightmare difficulty if you try to bring the Nightmare merk to Hell, it would be useless. At the same time, it is very difficult to level up the Merk as they are mostly gaining experience through the player, and high-level players will have an exp penalty.
There is no way to leave hireling in town and adjust their behavior in combat. Huge gear restrictions related to the game art style more than anything else. Original devs did not want to make all the graphics to all hireling gear combinations, thus restricted hirelings to the gear they started with. Only two AI for the hirelings avoid combat shoot from a distance (Rouge/Iron wolf) and melee (Sand Merc/Act 5 Barbarian). All of this is not contributing to the modern Diablo II experience in any meaningful way. So the following improvement benefits the game:
1. Merc gear to be seen in a game – in sprite-based original Diablo II, each item visible on the character in the game required hundreds of sprite animations for the different character actions. D2R is a 3D-based game, so that is not an issue at all. Thus, it would be a very nice cosmetic improvement for the gear worn by the merk to be visible in the game, just like the player himself. This is very true to the while D2R idea.
2. Merc to use the full gear - some restrictions for the weapons are reasonable, such as Rouges can’t use swords or barbarian’s missile weapons. Still, otherwise, there is no reason for all gear to be available for the merk (rings, amulets, belts, gloves, boots). After all, it was already done in the mods countless times over the years and did not constitute a somehow non-true Diablo II experience.
3. Merc skills – at this point, if you need to change your merk skills, you need to hire a new mercenary. Frequently it is not a very good option in the late game as the merk would be at a different level, and it’s hard to level the merk up if his level is different from yours too much. Why not have an option in the Merk inventory window to select Merk abilities, i.e., Fire or Cold for Rouge, Aura choice for Sand Merc, Fire, Cold or Lighting for the Iron wolf merk (Barbarians do not have differences in their abilities which probably could be addressed as well). I have played the Diablo II mods in the past that added more skills to the mercenaries, most notable haste to Rouge and few others. It was fun to play, but that may be against the idea of pure-play Diablo II experience for some of the playerbase.
3. Merc AI –better pathfinding would be a wonderful upgrade (negating the need for teleport for merk control), furthermore, if some simple commands could be given to the mercenary or at least the ability to set the Merc behavior something very basic such as Offensive (actively engage enemies), Defensive (avoid combat when possible). Some Merc AI’s survival skills are an attempt to disengage combat if the player is leaving or if Merc is sustaining too much damage. This can be expanded with a potion menu for the merk to drink automatically if below a certain health level, but some may consider this too radical change.
4. The ability to leave Merc in town – In some situations, you are better off without your mercenary. Mercs are useless in PvP, and losing money on reviving the Merc after PvP is not fun. On the other hand, if the Merc is heavily geared with endgame items, this can change the PvP balance quite a bit. Boss fights are another example where less geared merk would die nearly instantly. This can be done through merc hiring/revival NPC as a separate command “Leave hireling in town” that despawn the Merc, and then he can be “hired” with the same gear at no cost. As devs of D2R clearly have access to the source code even the behavior of turning Merc into NPC in town is potentially possible with rather despawning the Merc will stay in-game as new NPC that can be called back as Merc at any time. Not sure how well it work with 8 players leaving 8 different mercs in town i.e. pandemonium fortress is not really meant for 8 additional NPCs.
5. Fix the bugs – There is a bug in the current version of the D2R. When you bring your Act II Merc from Normal difficulty to Nightmare in his inventory screen, the game will indicate the wrong skill, i.e., Thors instead of Prayer, even though the active skill is still Prayer. The Merc experience gauge is also bugged, being always full.
This is the D3 forum. D2R forum is in the next building. Try there.
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Sorry about that, can’t delete the topic and flagging the topic for deletion only involve stuff like threats and hate speech.
If you don’t have D2R then buy the game and put this in the D2R forums. It really is that simple and the game doesn’t cost that much.
I know that if you give your hireling good gear like Fortitude Rune Word or any other strong rune words in the hem and armor they will be able to last longer.
Sure the path finding isn’t great for them and wouldn’t be too bad to improve. But they don’t need anything else that I know of other than the path finding issue.
I am cool with not seeing the same type of gear on the hireling as the character. That is what sets them apart from you.
Hirelings don’t need to use all available gear slots that the character has. They have enough if you put the right gear on them. Just because mods done it means that it needs to be done in D2R. VV has an authentic remaster of people’s childhood.