Mercenary Scaling (Need Suchbalance or Marco)

Hi,

So this season i was trying out different mercs. When i wrote my hmp guide, i was around level 125, so i checked every merc on every difficulty to see which one was best in which difficulty and then added those to my guide. But when i became 135, so i did the same process, but the results were different. So i got a bit confused about this merc scaling business. Can we get a scale formula or anything like that related to this?

My results:

level 134 merc, i am level 135

hell act 1: 7376 life
hell act 2: 10760
hell act 3: 14656
hell act 5: 17334

nightmare act 1: 7376 life
nightmare act 2: 10412
nightmare act 3: 14576
nightmare act 5: 13530

normal act 1: 4352 life
normal act 2: 6776
normal act 3: 8768
normal act 5: 11346

So all of the mercs are best if you buy them in hell.

level 125 merc, i am level 126

hell act 1: 6440 life
hell act 2: 9494
hell act 3: 12928
hell act 5: 15120

nightmare act 1: 6800 life
nightmare act 2: 9584
nightmare act 3: 13352
nightmare act 5: 12234

normal act 1: 4064 life
normal act 2: 6308
normal act 3: 8192
normal act 5: 10428

So act 1,2,3 mercs are best in nightmare, wheres act 5 merc is still best in hell.

I only did life because you can see them without buying the merc, if needed i can just buy all of them and check every stat they have. However life should be enough to discuss this.

So, what is going on here?

That's weird. I tested by buying all mercs 3 times at level 139 (I'm level 140). Here's the result:

Looks very consistent that all mercs are better if bought in Normal. Followed by Nightmare, and they're the worst in Hell.

well if there is some sort of calculation between area level and player level , that might explain it : the gap between area lvl and player level being higher in normal ..

NotCube wrote:That's weird. I tested by buying all mercs 3 times at level 139 (I'm level 140). Here's the result:

Looks very consistent that all mercs are better if bought in Normal. Followed by Nightmare, and they're the worst in Hell.

hey this is a cool chart, well done NotChart

NotCube wrote:That's weird. I tested by buying all mercs 3 times at level 139 (I'm level 140). Here's the result:

Looks very consistent that all mercs are better if bought in Normal. Followed by Nightmare, and they're the worst in Hell.

This looks very informative, but begs the question why the stats on "Buy screen" varies a lot, and how those mercs gets those extra stats when you buy them. Still need someone to give us formulas.

I'd also love to know whether the stats on a merc are the same if you level them from scratch or if you buy them at a higher level.

Glamdring26 wrote:This looks very informative, but begs the question why the stats on "Buy screen" varies a lot, and how those mercs gets those extra stats when you buy them. Still need someone to give us formulas.

This buy menu glitch has nothing to do with Sigma, ask former employees of Blizzard North if you want to know the answer. Each mercenary has 3/2/1 different types on normal/nightmare/hell respectively depending on their level in vanilla d2 and I believe the same could be applied to MXL, although it's not necessary to be these exact numbers. Once they reach a certain level threshold, they switch their type to the following one (if there is any). You might observe wrong values for life and defense on normal or nightmare because game doesn't care to select a proper type, you'll always get those numbers for the first type irregardless of the hireling level and its actual type.