Yes, I think, though it kinda “just” sounds like a separate damage buff which I’m not sure if necessarily a good thing (PoE being a case in point).
This is so fun. Yesterday evening while I was playing, I was just thinking About Merces, and how I`ve never read about it yet. Telepathy! 
I havn`t come up with ideas on my own and to what I would regard as an interesting or Fitting theme to LE. I like your ideas, especially having to Level them each individually, giving them value for each class ( = the thought process "which class and build am I playing, which healer am I taking?).
Ideally, I`d each give them a handful of skills that could have a handful of choices to spec. (e.g. heals lots and many but Little, or occassionally but then heals big, or heals at fatal Damage but rarely, etc.)
Archer: marks enemys, hits slow but big, or fast and Steady, Targets big Mobs or impales / immobilizes / CC`s them (Cold/stun/slow route)…
Melee taunts for defense or goes offensive barbarian or buffs some Health or regen or protections for you temporary (e.g. when Meeting elites) or permanently (aura/shout) or takes part of your protections/regen/glancing (e.g. "gains 30% of your XY with this node/skill/ability) for its own Survival
Or completely new arche-types:
The Time-warper: slows time ( = enemies), reduces cooldowns (or you can attach one of your skills which he will occasionally reduce cooldown for you, or grant a fixed reduction like 5-20% depending on Level), grants mana reg
A despised god: too weak to be a god, so he`s roaming time and space and decided to help you with being weaker than gods, but good enough for you with the available powers given to him: a melee / caster mix that has some abilities in both Areas and mixes them (has melee, crowd Control, buff and debuff abilities in pack)
The Lost Wanderer: Being lost in time himself, he´s happy to grant you his aid. Purely melee, either 2hand or with Sword and board. Master of Stealth and Survival, and deals good Damage himself.
The Technican: He will lay traps and fight range. He`s versatile and has many surprises in his pockets. Wears a crossbow and knows how to trigger stuff for AoE, single target and DoT. e.g. his traps taunt enemies, his Missiles deal good Damage and burns/bleed/etc. the foe
There go my ideas 
2 Likes
I like them! Yes it would definitely add another layer to last epoch, that isnt a hard feature to understand and as long as you could respec their skills for the price of some gold it wouldnt be a difficult thing that causes frustration or that you could mess up.
Awesome, then we could have another thread about respecing the merceneries & how it’s too harsh/too easy.
Nah first it would be why there. Genderlocked lol
2 Likes
Ok, so we’d have two more threads that we don’t really need…
Just because you want power creep, doesn’t mean you actually want power creep.
Its not about power. Its about another layered interaction. That requires stratedgy.
I domt use thorn totems on all my primalist builds to increase my power(excluding shaman) I use it so they block projectiles or distract mobs.
I dont use a companion in werebear form for power I use ir for defense.
Mercenaries aint meant to kill everything for you but they cam cover that 1 defensive thing your lacking that you couldnt fit on gear or maybe they get in the way and take that 1 hit k.o. for you.
1 Like
Power creep doesn’t have to be offensive, it can be defensive as well. If you had a new skill that froze mobs for 10 seconds allowing you to dps them uninterrupted that would increase your overall power. If you didn’t have those totems to distract mobs or block projectiles then you’d have to do more movement to not get hit & while you’re doing that you’re not going to be casting as many spells to damage the mobs.
I think this is a good idea, after all diablo2 had this, so why not last epoch?
All I can say to this argument is that if you look at it your way then idols should not have been introduced because they were a power creep.
Idols however are more than that. They introduced a fun creative interaction that required hunting testing and puzzling into your Build.
Mercenaries would be the same. Level them up. Spec them. Test there different buffs heals and what not and synergize your build wirh them
Just another interactive layer
2 Likes
They were power creep & that’s ok. Mercinaries would also be another way to specialise or generalise your build (though what about MP?) or ameliorate your build’s weaknesses. But they’d also be power creep from where we are at the moment (given the game is incomplete).
1 Like
I am all in on mercenaries with gear and skills! Super fun extra layer of depth.
The only suggestion: make them not character bound like in D2, but account available. I want to level all available types of them, put my spare gear on them, and switch them between my characters whenever needed. Just need to find a solution to scale them down to your current character?
So you could have a lvl 100 uber-geared merc on a new character? The (non-chapter 7 & 8) campaign is easy enough already!
Could make it so they are always the same level as the character that summoned them. But maybe you unlock them in your first play thorough of the story. Ideas ideas ideas
Same goes for any new char you roll. You put on all the best gear you already have from previous toons. I do not see this as a real problem for mercs.
That gear wouldn’t be your top level gear that has level requirements on it. Having a lvl 100 merc with 4x t4-5 affixes on all slots is going to be slightly more powerful than your character at low levels.
Well, effectively Mercs, as Boardman describes, sounds like a ‘sixth’ skill. That would require a LOT of re-balancing of everything, wouldn’t it?
Maybe instead of that they could be an ALTERNATIVE to idols. Something that provides different resources than idols but take up the full idol bank to do it?
welll thats kinda like saying idols is a 6th skill, idk if its quite that comparable. It is a whole additional layer to balance around though. But it could be mercenaries are only usable in out of party times. The moment you enter a party no matter the size they are unsummoned.
I wasn’t trying to say idols were like a sixth skill. My intention was more to say, in the spirit of more variety, much like with active skill choice in LE maybe, make it a choice with a trade off. You can have ‘this’ or ‘that.’
So, you did mention it was sort of like a ‘companion’ so maybe make it an actual companion that is available to everyone BUT it fills a skill slot just like a companion would.
EDIT: spelling is hard.
Which would more heavily penalise the Primalist compared to the other classes (unless they got an additional +1 companion by default) as they already have companions as part of their class.