Proof of concept - Merc leveling bots

Hi, since I'm a huge fan of Mercs and the idea of gearing them, I thought it would be fun to see what they can really do. At the same time I hate leveling, but like the idea of cheesing it. Be it by funny strategies, or overpowered leveling gear.

So what I did was to get 2 Mercs, that do the leveling for me. All I did was run.

To really show what they can do, I did it w/o spending any skill, or ascendancy points and just used Purity of Elements for res and ailment immunity and Wrath for some extra damage later on. That was needet, as I choose to use my lvl 44 Kinetic Merc till the end, instead of switching to my lvl 83 one, because this Merc would just obliterate everything, including bosses.

But at around act 8 it got slower and harder. So much, that I switched up the belt and body on my Merc. Luckily the Patch came and made the Merc more tanky, so I could go back to the damage belt.

IMHO the ideal Merc setup would be the following

• Level 21 Infamous Eruptor with VFoS for act 1 to mid act 3
• Level 50 Infamous Kineticist with double Kinetic Blast and Haste aura from level 30 till the end
• (Level 74 Infamous Kineticist with double Kinetic Blast and Haste aura from level 54 till the end to make it super easy)

Sadly we can just have 3 Mercs, so I only used the first wo ones. I also started out with a lvl 14 Eruptor, because I couldn find a level 20/21 one, but thankfully I got one during this run. So my starting Merc was switched, as shown in the video. But since the Merc can be 20 level above you, this setup still works. I also found a level 49 infamous Kineticist, but her skill setup wasn't working. Showed two Brine King kills to compare the damage.

Merc Gear:

Level 21 Eruptror - https://pobb.in/1b8dbh79ZRal

Level 44 Kineticist - https://pobb.in/HrIpTTJU6BLQ

Videos:

Level 1 - 24: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg2RxKmxVqA

Level 24 - end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrlkQjiyIdQ

My Gear, leveling time and deaths

This run took maybe 4 hours, but I killed way too many Mercs to show how my Merc measures up. My total time was a bit under 8 hours, but I planed, searched for gear on POE Wiki and bought it, whil being online on this char. I am sure I can easily beat 3 hours by just running and prepping some better leveling items.

My gear was mostly resistence, life and life reg items. I showed it in the clips. My final stats were just bad. 75/75/75/-41 res, 479 armor, 670 evasion and 1216 life and 588 life reg per second.

I died 28 times, with nearly all of them in the last act. Especially on Kitava. This fight was horrible, as I was mostly looking on my Mercs life, but she was solid. Due to the fact, that I used 0 skill points, I had no defensive layer, other than ele res and that showed. Nearly everything in Kitava's fight was deadly. Now add my skill to it and you got yourself a winner.