Path of Exile 2 Mercenary Starter Guide

In this Path of Exile 2 article, we’re going to be taking a look at theMercenaryclass. This is a guide on the basic mechanics of this class, how it functions, and what are the things that make it unique. This is not an advanced build guide or a specific build guide. It’s not meant to get you all the way through the game and into harder difficulties or endgame, etc. It’s simply here to explain certain mechanics about the class if you’re having difficulty and show you how the class is supposed to be played.

Path of Exile 2 Mercenary Starter Guide

So there are a couple of key features about the Mercenary or anyone that is usingCrossbowskills in general. And the first thing is that there are many different ammunitions that do different things. So a big part of playing Mercenary or using a Crossbow is going to be figuring out how to use those ammunitions and when to use them in conjunction with each other in order to get the best effect.

Some of these ammunition skills actually combo together for increased effect. So learning how to use those or just trying to figure out what’s the best ones with your passive skill tree and how to use them is a big part of this. And swapping your ammunitions on the fly in combat is a big part of playing the Mercenary class. I would suggest that this is a little bit more complicated than your average class in Path of Exile 2 from what I’ve played so far. So if you’re having a little bit more difficulty with this class, it wouldn’t be surprising. However, I do think that once you get the mechanic down of switching ammunitions, loading them up, and keeping them loaded, etc., it can be fun to play.

And note that there are different crossbows in Path of Exile 2 that have different reload speeds and some of them have different effects. For instance, there are crossbows that will load an extra bolt into the crossbow, which is particularly great for skills that only have one ammunition. Because this will double the amount of ammo those skills have, making them twice as effective.

However, the do come with slower Reload Time, which makes them less useful for Ammunition Skills that have lots of rounds already. But definitely be on the lookout for crossbows that do that once you get a little ways into the game. And you would be smart to have at least two crossbows, one that you use for skills that have more ammunition and one that has that extra bolt, and set it to use skills that only have one ammo so that it has two ammo on those. So you can use the best crossbow for each skill that you’re using is a great way to play the Mercenary.

Another thing that you should know is that there is a support skill gem calledDouble Barrel, which will actually add an extra round to an ammunition in exchange for a longer reload speed. And again, this is particularly good for skills that have one ammunition. So between the specialized crossbow and the Double Barrel support gem on one particular skill, you may actually get up to three shots for that skill, making it even more effective if you don’t mind a longer reload.

Something I do want to mention, though, and something that you’ll figure out very early playing the Mercenary is that you may be interrupted when reloading your crossbow. Your reload has a different length of time depending on which crossbow you’re using.

And if you interrupt yourself while you’re doing that reload, for instance, maybe reloading and you fire a grenade, or you’re reloading and you dodge roll, you’ll have to reload again. This can be kind of frustrating. So you should try and get in the habit of reloading before you roll or use another skill to avoid like having to reload a second time.

Now, the other main mechanic of playing with a crossbow or the Mercenary class is grenades. These work a bit differently than ammunition skills, and they simply have charges that recharge over time and you’re able to fire them out and they cost mana. And they do AOE explosions that do different things from just exploding into enemies for fire damage or setting poison on them or electrocuting them with lightning damage. And it’s a very valid play style on Mercenary to just lean into grenades and leverage grenades against enemies if you take passive skill points that benefit them.

Now, I find that usually when I play Mercenary, I either go fully in on ammunition skills or I go fully in on grenades. And the reason for that is because the passive skills that benefit grenades do not benefit your other Skills, even though many passives that benefit those Skills will still benefit grenades.

And you might think, well, I can use grenades and weapon skills and you absolutely can. But if you’re taking, 10, 15, 20 passives that benefit grenades in the first 40 levels of the game, your other attacks are going to suffer a bit. And one of the things that a lot of those passives do is reduce the cooldown time of your grenades so that you can just fire them at will, basically. And if you can fire grenades at will, there’s really no reason to stop firing grenades. It just makes you lean into grenades.

So you’re either going to probably play like just fully grenades or you’re going to probably play full ammunition. Although you can mess around with doing both near the beginning of the game. But I would recommend at some point just kind of going one way or the other.

Path of Exile 2 Mercenary Starter Guide - Armor and Stats

Now, moving on to the passive skill tree, the Mercenary starts at the very bottom of the center of this skill tree. Early picks include projectile damage or armor and evasion. I highly recommend projectile damage. Projectile damage will actually impact pretty much everything you do, this includes grenades. Now, one of the things about the passive skill tree that is kind of annoying is that if you’re using controller, but if you right click on a passive skill, you can see the damage increase that you’ll theoretically get for each skill that it applies to.

For some reason, this does not show grenades, even though if you pick a lot of passive skills, they will impact grenade damage as well. So don’t be thinking they don’t impact grenades. And what you can do is you can actually go to your skills and look at your grenade damage before taking a passive skill and look at the DPS number… and then look at it after taking a passive skill to see which ones are applying to it. You’ll find that for some reason it’s just not showing in the passive skill tree, but they still apply anyway. So keep that in mind.

Now, immediately after you pick either projectile damage or evasion and armor, you’re able to kind of go different routes. If you continue south, you can focus on ailments. You can focus on more projectile damage, which is, of course, great. Or you can focus specifically on grenades. If you take the Volatile Catalyst passive skill, it will apply to grenades.

There’s like a little path there with three nodes that will just basically give you passive skills that will benefit your grenade usage by reducing like cooldown times, etc. So this is a good route to go if you plan to focus on grenades, even though picking up like projectile damage, etc. would also be good as well. But if you’re not going to focus on grenades, don’t take the Volatile Catalyst passive.

Now, if you’re focusing on a ranged mercenary and you’re using crossbows and you’re not like trying to make some mashup of melee/ranged character, you’re going to be focusing predominantly on the southeast part of the skill tree after you make it through this part. That’s where, all the ranged passives are going to be, more projectile damage to lightning damage to ways to benefit your grenades, including more charges and area of effect for them. And you will notice if you look through this part that there is a big focus on lightning damage when it comes to elements.

There isn’t a lot of focus on fire damage or ignite or a big focus on freezing, but there are a lot of lightning passives and some elemental passives. So looking for lightning skills is going to particularly benefit you if you’re playing a ranged mercenary.

The primary stats for this class arestrengthanddexterity. Those are the ones needed for the skill gems for crossbows. This opens them up to a lot of support skills because you have tons of dexterity and strength. You can use strength and dexterity support skills very, very easily. You also have a good amount of armor in terms of the stat for that because you’re going to be able to use armor that provides the armor stat as well as evasion.

So you’re going to have pretty good protection on your mercenary compared to some other classes. And that’s great because a lot of the ammunition skills are kind of close range and that allows you to be close and not die. And keep in mind also that strength adds health to your character. So you’re going to have a higher health pool than a lot of other classes as well.

Path of Exile 2 Mercenary Starter Guide - Skill Trees

So moving on to skills, we’ll take a look atCrossbow Shotfirst. This is basically the default skill on your crossbow. I find I’m still using this skill at nearly level 30. It just has really high damage per shot. It shoots pretty quickly. It has a decent clip size. It’s really good for single target damage. And I just find that it’s just a good all-around skill to have, particularly if you’re using something likeHerald of Ashfor your permanent buff.

As it allows you to detonate enemies for decent damage when you overkill them. That will then apply to the ignite on enemies around them. Because the amount of ignite that’s going to happen when you’re using Herald of Ash is based on how much you overkill an enemy. So being able to hit them for a lot of damage in one shot will allow you to get more out of that ignite.

Next we haveArmour Piercing Rounds. Armour piercing rounds fire more quickly than regular shots that have lower damage. It holds like 13 rounds if I’m not mistaken or 11 rounds, something like that. And it breaks armor while it knocks enemies back. But frankly I find most enemies die before you break their armor anyway. So this is predominantly used on elites and bosses if you’re going to use it.

And something interesting is that if you break enemies' armor with this skill and then use the high velocity round skill. That skill will deal way more damage to enemies that are armor broken. But it will consume the armor broken status effect and then you’ll have to switch back and apply it again to do this. I find this completely tedious most of the time. So I don’t recommend trying to pull off this combo. And I would recommend either just using high-velocity rounds with people when you’re like cooperating with people that are breaking armor for you, or just not really worrying about it at all.

NowFragmentation Rounds, this is a skill that holds only one round when you use it. So you reload after each shot. It does less damage than crossbow shot but it does have like a bunch of fragments that can hit the same enemy multiple times and it shoots out like in a cone. So it’s kind of like a shotgun effect. It’s really good against big enemies that you can hit with multiple fragments at the same time, and also pierces enemies so it can hit large groups.

The claim to fame for this skill is that it detonates frozen enemies for huge damage, making it synergize well with Permafrost Bolts. So if you like the permafrost bolts skill and you like to freeze enemies and then swap to this and then detonate them. That’s a great combo. Or if you want to use this skill if you’re cooperating with maybe somebody that’s freezing enemies for you and then you’re just detonating them. It’s also a really deadly combo.

You might want to consider using double barrel, the support skill with this if you like it. Or again using a crossbow that adds an additional round.

Next isPermafrost Bolts. As I just mentioned this deals less damage. It works kind of similarly to fragmentation rounds. But it freezes enemies and again can hit enemies multiple times if they’re large. So it’s good for freeze build up on bigger enemies. And the strategy again, freeze them then use fragmentation rounds. Or some other effect you could use like herald of ice. If you have that to detonate frozen enemies as well that is also a good strategy.

Next we haveExplosive Grenade. This skill is actually on a cooldown and you have three charges by default. Allowing you to shoot grenades pretty regularly that explode in an AOE with a little bit of a delay. And this skill converts your physical damage to fire damage. So it’s a good way to do fire damage. It can ignite enemies. And I really really like this skill. If you’re leaning into grenades I really really like this one.

And I would recommend using something like Scattershot on it. In order to increase the amount of grenades that you fire out. For a little bit of decrease in damage and fire rate. In order to have more coverage on the screen. That will give you more effectiveness with this skill I find. And it’s just a really fun skill if you’re leaning into grenades. Definitely recommend this one.

Next we haveHigh Velocity Rounds. And this skill deals more damage than crossbow shot. But it only holds one round before you have to reload by default. It does pierce through enemies which is great. And it will deal way more damage against enemies with broken armor, but again you kind of have to set that up for yourself. The best way I’ve found to do this is by using Gas Grenade and putting the Corrosion Support Gem on it. So if you like this skill, recommend this setup.

Next isGalvanic Shardsand I really like this skill, especially if you like herald of thunder. It can trigger herald of thunder very very easily, and shocked enemies take more damage so that’s a bonus. It also has 5 rounds by default. So somewhere in the middle between some of the skills that have 10-11 rounds and 1 round. So if you don’t really like 1 round skills. This is a good one to have. Allowing you to fire more times before reloading.

And as I mentioned earlier there’s quite a few passives. Particularly in the southeastern part from where you begin. That boost lightning damage. So this is going to boost this skill which is really nice.

Next isRapid Shot. This skill has an extremely large clip size at 50 rounds. And allows you to fire rapidly after a little bit of a delay. Increasing it’s damage as the weapon heats up. You’ll see it start to glow orange. And it’s really fun to play with. It has really good damage. But the major downside to this skill is that it basically requires you to keep firing for best effect. So like even when there aren’t enemies on the screen. You’re going to kind of want to keep firing in order to keep your heat level up. And sometimes it’s really hard to just like keep firing constantly.

With enemies swarming you or you’re in a boss fight and the boss is in your face. And the heat level will go down as soon as you stop firing. So it can be difficult to use in some situations. But it’s a very very good skill. And it also boosts your grenade damage the higher heat you have. So if you like playing with grenades. This is a great skill to pair with grenades. Because you may get a lot of damage out of your grenades from it by using this skill.

Path of Exile 2 Mercenary Starter Guide - Ascendancy and Final Thoughts

And lastly taking a look at ascendancy classes. You haveWitchhunterandGemling Legionnaire. Witchhunter seems a bit more specialized and for the advanced player. Because it will allow you to change a good number. I think it’s 20 of your skill points into weapon skill points. Allowing you to like slot-specific skills for those. For that specific weapon.

And as I mentioned earlier. You probably want to set skills with one round to the specific type of crossbow. That gives you an extra round. And you might want to specialize in some particular nodes for those skills. While you want other ones for something else. For instance maybe you want grenades on one crossbow. And you take a bunch of grenade skills. But they’re not particularly useful for your other skills.

So then you take other weapon skills that benefit everything on the other crossbow. So now when you’re firing grenades they deal more damage. And when you’re using your weapon skills they deal more damage.

It would allow you to play a little bit more in the in-between area. That I was saying was very difficult to play before. Between grenades and regular skills. But again I find it to be a little bit more advanced. And I think Gemling Legionnaire is much better for new players. It simply just gives you really good buffs. That are just good for your character in general. And for instance one of them allows you to have two copies of each support skill. That can be used which is absolutely excellent. Makes things easier for new players.

So if you’re a new mercenary. Highly recommendGemling Legionnaire. If you know what you’re doing a bit more. And you’re more advanced. Maybe try out theWitchhunterascendancy and see if you like it.

So that wraps up our article on Mercenary. I hope you guys learned something in this article. Again this article is designed to just kind of help new mercenaries out there. People that are thinking about playing Mercenary. Find their footing and get used to playing the class. It’s not an advanced guide or anything like that. But as always if you have other tips that I didn’t mention for mercenaries out there. Please leave them in the comments. And if you have questions you can put them there as well. And I will try and answer them as soon as I can.