Path of Exile 2: Mercenary Leveling Guide

Of the six classes currently available in Path of Exile 2, Mercenary leveling is one of the easiest. While some classes struggle with hordes and can get overwhelmed, or have to stay in melee range to remain effective, Mercenaries have tools available to deal with just about every combat situation.

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But if you don’t know what you’re doing, it can be hard to play a Mercenary effectively – and some builds are just more effective for leveling Mercenary characters than others. This Mercenary leveling guide for Path of Exile 2 explains recommended skills and support gems to pick up and equip on your way to endgame, what items and modifiers you should look out for, and which Passive Skill Tree nodes you should prioritize as a Mercenary.

Best Mercenary Leveling Skills & Support Gems

While leveling a Mercenary, Path of Exile 2 players may find it takes a while for the class to come online, so to speak. That’s because many players fall into the trap of relying purely on their Crossbow bolts and ammo types rather than building into a Grenade-oriented playstyle.

Crossbows come with the inherent downside of a reload time, but as soon as you unlock Grenades to fill in that downtime, Mercenaries begin to feel very strong.

• In the early game, before unlocking the powerful Explosive Grenade, Gas Grenade, and Explosive Shot skills, you should be able to rely on the Fragmentation Shot and Permafrost Shot skills to take down most enemies. Fragmentation Shot works well in close-range against both single and multiple targets, especially if you can pump up its Stun damage with Support Gems.
• Permafrost Shot will freeze enemies quickly, granting extra damage to Fragmentation Shots as they shatter the target.

Later in the game, after unlocking your most powerful Grenades and the Explosive Shot ability, the playstyle vastly changes.

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• Gas Grenade will poison enemies over an enormous area, and can be detonated with a Detonation skill. Explosive Grenades will blow up after a few seconds, or when hit with a Detonator skill.
• Explosive Shot will detonate the Explosive Grenade and Gas Grenade skills, dealing immense damage over a huge area and granting powerful AoE clearing and single-target damage.
• Ripwire Ballista gives enemies something to focus on, while Glacial Bolt can prevent you from being overwhelmed by a horde of enemies.
  • Replace Permafrost Shot with Glacial Bolt.
• Oil Grenade can be useful for hordes and AoE situations, but is outclassed by Gas Grenade in most. Glacial Bolt tends to be more useful when exploring and leveling up in this slot.
  • Swap in Oil Grenade for Glacial Bolt for bosses.
• Galvanic Shards is a great low-danger horde clearer, useful if you don’t want to set up a bunch of Grenades for a single weak enemy. Replace Fragmentation Shot with this skill.
• Herald of Fire makes enemies Ignite nearby enemies on death for a percentage of the overkill damage dealt to it.
  • If you deal 1000 overkill damage to an enemy (1000 extra beyond 0), it will explode and Ignite nearby enemies for 1000 damage over time.

The Support Gems listed above are all either Level 1 or 2 Support Gems Path of Exile 2 players should be able to get before getting too far into Act 3. The interactions of the base skills are what makes this Mercenary leveling build so powerful, though, so use whichever Support Gems you have available until you get these recommendations.

Best Mercenary Passive Skills For Leveling

There are three main Passive Skills that you should keep an eye out for while progressing downward through the Mercenary Passive Skill Tree: Cluster Bombs, Repeating Explosives, and Iron Reflexes.

• Cluster Bombs makes Grenades take longer to explode but adds an additional Projectile, guaranteeing at least 2x Grenades with each Grenade Skill.
• Repeating Explosives grants a small chance for your Grenades to explode twice, and as you get more Projectiles for your Grenade skills, you’ll see this doubled explosion much more often.
• Iron Reflexes is an important skill for Mercenaries as it directly converts all Evasion into Armor, and directly counteracts the powerful Sorcery Ward Ascendancy skill

In the popular Witchhunter Ascendancy tree, which is also the best Mercenary Ascendancy choice while leveling, the Sorcery Ward skill will grant a fantastic barrier against all non-Physical damage in exchange for halved Armor and Evasion stats.

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This downside is severely dampened by converting all of your Evasion into Armor, and having high Armor will help ward off the Physical attacks that Sorcery Ward does not catch.

Other skills you should pick up while leveling a Mercenary include Cooldown Reduction, Projectile & Grenade Damage, and Area of Effect to boost the power of your Grenades.

Crossbow Reload Time, Crossbow Damage, and the Armor & Evasion duo nodes are all worth going out of your way for, but not prioritizing until you feel they are necessary. If your Grenades are doing just fine, skip Crossbow Passive skills until you need to add some variety to the build. If you aren’t dying to enemies, skip Armor & Evasion until you need them.

Recommended Items & Mercenary Stat Priority

While leveling Mercenary players must continue to upgrade their equipment and only equip gear that comes with powerful enough modifiers to be worth replacing what’s currently in that slot. Not everything is an upgrade, so you have to keep a keen eye out for useful items and modifiers that are worth picking up.

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The most important part of your kit is your Crossbow, the primary Mercenary weapon, which allows access to the Mercenary Skill Gems for use. When going for upgrades, you should always aim to replace the lowest-level piece of gear you currently have equipped. But in general, you will feel your character’s power increase the most from a strong Crossbow upgrade.

Mercenaries use both Dexterity and Strength in almost equal amounts as well as a fusion of Armor and Evasion for gear types. Look for gear that grants these stats to get a strong defensive foundation and meet Attribute requirements for powerful Skills and Weapons.

But these modifiers aren’t the only ones you should look out for – Physical and Elemental Damage, Mana on Hit, and Resistances are all incredibly important and become quite necessary as you continue to level and reach more dangerous areas. Rarity of Items, Movement Speed, and Attack Speed are useful while leveling and can greatly enhance your experience, but aren’t exactly required to get to the endgame of PoE 2 as a Mercenary.

• Dexterity
• Strength
• Armor
• Evasion
• All Elemental Resistances (except Chaos)
• Increased Physical Damage
• Increased Elemental OR Fire Damage
• Attack Speed
• Mana On Kill OR Hit
• Life on Kill OR Hit
• Rarity of Items Found
• Movement Speed

In addition to the recommended Item Modifiers and Stat bonuses listed above, Path of Exile 2 Mercenary leveling is made significantly easier with a Bombard Crossbow. This base Crossbow type will add another extra Grenade projectile to Grenade Skills, raising our minimum from 2 to 3 for each skill without factoring in Skill Gems like Scattershot.

Pick up every Bombard Crossbow you can for the chance to craft something powerful with one of the many PoE 2 upgrade currencies.

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