Path of Exile 2 Best Mercenary build, how to play, best skills and best equipment
Dark fantasy hitman at your disposal.
Among the available classes in Path of Exile 2, one of the most singular is the Mercenary. This crossbow user has more than just a few special arrows under their sleeve.
In Path of Exile 2, classes have been designed to feel different regardless of the similarities they might have with each other. For example, playing a Witch is nothing like playing a Sorceress, even though both are spellcasters.
If you're looking for a fun and intricate long-range class to play, the Mercenary is the one for you. To help you literally blow your path through the game, we have put together the best Mercenary build. In this guide, you learn not only how to play the Mercenary, but the best skills and equipment for them too.
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How to play Mercenary in Path of Exile 2
Mercenary is a long-range fighter who uses their signature weapon, the crossbow, to shoot different kinds of ammo to stun, freeze, poison, and explode their enemies. This class is capable of dealing lots of damage at the cost of correctly positioning and managing your ammo. With the idea of taking advantage of the raw power of its kit and making it easier to play, we prepared this build focusing only on grenades.
When using this build, you want to use Explosive Grenade, which you can unlock considerably early in the game. This ability creates an explosion that deals a huge amount of area-of-effect damage. In the early levels, your main skill rotation for this build is to spread poisonous gas with Gas Grenade and follow it up with the explosive one. Once the grenade blows up in the middle of the gas, it triggers a massive explosion. Later, you want to provoke this effect using Explosive Shot.
There are two main rules to play this class. First, do not stop shooting. And second, movement is life and for the Mercenary, a class that has no escape ability, it is even more important. Practice walking around the map, shooting your grenades. You can look for skills like Permafrost Bolts for crowd control. Freezing enemies is the best scenario for using Fragmentation Rounds. We want to always have a long-ranged skill to use when boss fights force us to stay away to escape from mechanics.
Path of Exile 2 Best Mercenary skills
This build is based on blowing packs of enemies or huge bosses using the Explosive Grenade skill. Unlocking and upgrading this ability is your main priority. To make it hit even harder, we want to use this skill with two support abilities, like Fire Infusion and Scattershot. Alongside this one, at the earlier stages of this build, you want to always upgrade the Fragmentation Rounds, your shotgun-like ammo.
Although grenades are the bread and butter of this build, you still need to have tools to finish enemies who surround you or survive the explosions. Since the Fragmentation Rounds deal more damage the closest you are to the target, it's the perfect skill for emergencies.
Once you start getting Level 5 Uncut Skill Gems, you want to unlock the Gas Grenade. This ability is fairly strong at the beginning of the game since you can cover a large area with poisonous gas, which inflicts a damage-over-time stack on enemies, and will trigger the explosions we are looking for. To make the process faster, you can use the Explosive Shot skill – you can unlock it with a Level 7 gem – and shoot the grenades to make them explode.
One of the best skills to have is Permafrost Bolts since it inflicts freeze buildup and slows down enemies. During the first dungeons, this is going to be one of the strongest skills you have. Later, you may want to unlock Artillery Ballista to give you some support.
Path of Exile 2 Best Mercenary passive skills
If we consider that our plan is to explode enemies as quickly as possible, there isn’t much to say about which passive skills are needed. First of all: damage nodes. You want to start by unlocking the first nodes that increase projectile damage and Ricochet. Next, go for the Dual Wielding Damage nodes which are pretty close.
From this point, you want to focus on looking for nodes that increase grenade damage. One of the strongest nodes for this build is the Heavy Ammunition, which reduces your attack speed but gives you 40% of damage and stun buildup when using projectiles.
Investing some points on armor and attack speed is a good idea. When it comes to attribute nodes, it depends on the gear you have at your disposal, but in general, you want to put Strength so you can wear stronger armor and have more Life.
Path of Exile 2 Best Mercenary weapon
All the fun playing Mercenary comes from using a crossbow and explode demons all around you. Having a strong crossbow is extremely important for any Mercenary build, so be sure to always use the one with the highest attributes and physical damage value. This will make your life way easier during the campaign.
With that out of the way, it’s time to look for solid rolls for the weapon. You can always benefit from having a crossbow with extra physical damage percentage or flat physical damage. You rarely – almost never! – have both of them, but at least one is already enough to bump the numbers of your crossbow.
Some crossbows have a fixed bonus that increases the number of grenades that you launch, which is also a great attribute to have. But, if you have a crossbow that increases your attack speed, it is also a solid option.
Path of Exile 2 Best Mercenary armor
Whereas Mercenary is a sturdier class than the Ranger or the Sorceress, you can easily die if surrounded by too many enemies. To make it more likely that you will survive long enough to explode your grenades, we want to wear pieces of equipment that increase your armor and evasion rate. These are the most basic attributes but if they aren’t balanced with the current area you are in the game, you can easily get killed by a regular enemy.
It’s possible to find equipment, such as gloves, that come with rolls that add physical damage to attacks. In other words, this attribute increases how much damage you can cause, making your bombs reach higher numbers. Pieces that increase fire damage are also pretty useful for this build, affecting directly the damage outcome of the Explosive Grenade.
Lastly, it may sound obvious, but you definitely want to have at least a couple of pieces in your gear set that increase maximum life and elemental resistances. These two attributes won’t make you invisible. However, they will save you from death more times than you can think. So don’t underestimate a large pool of Life and reducing elemental damage.
Path of Exile 2 Best Mercenary accessories
When it comes to picking accessories, we want to basically boost everything else we have been working on with the rest of this build. First, it’s possible to find rings that add physical damage to attacks, which is perfect for you. To give you some extra sustain, you may want to run one that recovers Life when you kill an enemy.
Accessories that increase your maximum Life are pretty common to come across, making them the perfect generic option. Rings and amulets may help you defend yourself from certain types of elemental damage, making having more than one copy of them a good practice. You want to have options when preparing for a new boss in Path of Exile 2.
With your belt, in addition to having all the bonuses that we already talked about, you definitely want to invest in making your Life recovery flask stronger. From increased charges to increased Life recovery, you want belts that can take you out of risk.
Good luck playing as a Mercenary in Path of Exile 2!