Initial merc update thoughts?

I know that there’s still more to be revealed but of what has I feel like some opinions can be shaped.

it looks like we’ll only be able to trade excess coins for mercs we have that haven’t been maxed – yes I know this is the same verbiage that has been used before but I had hoped it would be an open ended system like dusting where we could craft mercs with excess coins.

it also looks like we can only make exchanges for 300 coins a day which I guess is better than nothing but also an obvious time-gate.

it sounds like the reworked task system may prevent us from being able to complete tasks that weren’t character specific like kill x mobs while said character was not in our party.

new daily tasks is obviously nice especially for those who have otherwise completed all of their other tasks.

So they are getting rid of general quest? That’s not the fix I would have hoped for. I guess that’s how they made them all available. If a player had the same quest goal, they would finish the quests too fast.
I don’t get why they won’t exchange maxed out portraits. I would think that we want to get rid of extra coins.

The exchange rate of excess coins to Renown to useful coins would be nice to know. I’m not too worried about the time gate since I typically just do two bounties a day anyway, and aside from the new batch all of the mercs I might actually use are already maxed.

The task re-rework (re-re-rework? I’m losing track of how many times tasks have changed) seems OK. Clearly better for new players, basically no change for the rest of us. Slightly better I guess since I can choose which new mercs to work on at a time. Unclear that I could actually use a full party of mercs who have tasks, but there’s always Heroic 1-1 :nauseated_face:, which would be pretty tempting when six new mercs are all on Task 13 or 17…

Not being able to advance the occasional task with the merc not in the party will be a loss, but to be fair requiring them to be in the party does make sense.

Agreed with TerminalTrip that converting excess coins into coins with which to craft stubborn new legendary mercs would have been nice. (Still grinding for Ysera and Murloc, thanks so much Blizzard for those stupid f’ing portraits in those “legendary merc” quest rewards… :unamused:). But again I’m not surprised they did it this way.

I read the article again, and it says they are going to have random general quest. So, they’re not complete getting rid of them.

And that too, yes.

My solution to such situations would be to take the three-member Fire team (Balinda, Geddon and Ragnaros) and farm an easier, but meaningful heroic bounty (something like Attumen, for example) while carrying three others. A compromise between efficiency, completing tasks and reasonable gameplay.

One thing to keep in mind is that the tasks are not going anywhere, so there’s no dire need to precrastinate (sic) and try to get them out of the picture a.s.a.p., even at the cost of sinking so low as resorting to the infamous quilboar.

Sometimes, though, you would still go to the Barrens — that’s where true Mercenary heroes are forged, I suppose — to ‘practise’ those skills on opponents in lower-lever bounties and such.

Is it the second one? The previous big one was that they’re available in chains… and before that was the Mysterious Stranger nerf.

Well, for newer players that could be very convenient: you start with Cariel, Xyrella and Samuro and progress with their tasks at the same time.