With Vessel of Hatred you get companions in Diablo 4 that can support you in battle. However, one expert is skeptical and doesn’t expect much from the mercenaries.
The first expansion for Diablo 4, “Vessel of Hatred”, will be released on October 8, 2024. It will bring a new area, fresh content and the continuation of Neyrelle’s story into the game. There are also four new companions waiting for you to help you fight the monsters in Sanctuary.
After the announcement at gamescom 2024 and Blizzard’s blog post, there is lively discussion about the mercenaries. Some experts and players are skeptical and see primarily disadvantages. Others find the new mercenaries exciting and praise their cool features.
How does the expert assess the mercenaries? In a YouTube video, Diablo expert wudijo presents the features and skills of the mercenaries based on a Blizzard video. He doesn’t expect the mercenaries to “cause any damage” at all, but we’ll see.
He says: “I imagine they’ll become irrelevant pretty quickly in the late game and they might die all the time. Also, it doesn’t look like we can actually equip them with gear.” He also fears various disadvantages, such as them “attracting aggro” when you don’t want them to. Wudijo is unhappy with having to use mercenaries.
In a livestream on Twitch, wudijo suspects that the mercenaries can also die. He notes: “Seems like they have an HP bar and mainly serve as debuff bots (or are dead)” (visible here in the stream).
The content creator Chronikz is also in the chat. He compares the mercenaries to minions and writes: “Now everyone has to suffer under the minion AI.” Wudijo replies with a laugh: “Now we are all Necros.” In Season 4, the necromancers’ companions were buffed, making the minion builds the strongest. However, it also happens that the golem and skeletons simply stop in battle or get stuck somewhere for a short time.
In the video you get an insight into the skills of the mercenaries:
Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred shows mercenaries in gameplay trailer
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Expert praises special mechanics of mercenaries
Are there any positive opinions? There are also experts who seem confident about the mercenaries and see advantages.
Diablo expert Raxxanterax highlights a mercenary mechanic in his YouTube video that he finds helpful:
There’s a very, very cool mechanic they introduced called reinforcements. You can set the mercenary to help in certain situations, like when you’re stunned, or you can set them to perform certain skills that are tied to your own skills. […] This is actually a pretty great idea, and if the mercenaries are actually going to be helpful, I’m sure there will be a lot of opportunities for optimization here. […]
I have a feeling that if the mercenaries aren’t completely useless, there will be some very cool ways to use this feature in the endgame.
Raxxanterax also says that this provides an opportunity to introduce something specific to hardcore mode to keep the player character alive, since death in that mode is permanent.
Content creator and necromancer expert MacroBioBoi comments on the mercenaries in his YouTube video as follows:
They use very different skills […] So it’s almost certain that the individual mercenary styles will compensate for the weaknesses of certain builds. Personally, I hope that they aren’t so necessary to the gameplay that there are certain builds that couldn’t exist without their mercenaries.
I don’t think we can really avoid this in the future, but I have some concerns about the mercenaries in the game in general. But at least their skill sets look very unique and interesting, and I like how they are built differently.
How helpful and useful the mercenaries ultimately are in the game will become clear in October, when the first expansion for Diablo 4 is launched. Until then, this is just speculation based on first impressions.
At gamescom 2024, Blizzard presented a lot of new content for the “Vessel of Hatred” expansion in Diablo 4. In addition to fresh endgame content, there will also be a feature that fans of group activities in particular have been asking for. The expansion brings a function into play that makes it easier for you to tackle various endgame activities in groups. You can read more about it here: With Vessel of Hatred, Diablo 4 finally brings the feature that everyone is asking for for endgame content