The Mercenary can ascend into Witchhunter or Gemling Legionnaire in Path of Exile 2 (PoE 2). Check out more information on the Mercenary's ascendancies, class guide, skills, and how to play Mercenary!

Mercenary Ascendancies

The Mercenary will have two available Ascendancy classes for the Early Access, with another Ascendancy coming soon. Below is a list of the confirmed ascendancy classes for the Mercenary:

Witchhunter

Witchhunters can increase their defense against magic in exchange for lesser defense against physical attacks. They can also disrupt spell casters, slowing the cast interval of enemies for their survivability.

Witchhunters can have a chance to make their enemies explode, the chance percentage for this doubles against demons and undead enemies. They also have a chance to deal up to 30% of an enemy's total health as damage with their initial attack.

Witchhunter Ascendancy Overview and Skills

Gemling Legionnaire

Gemling Legionnaires can enhance their abilities by embedding gems in their flesh. Gemling Legionnaires can gain extra skill slots, increase elemental resistances, and use any gem without meeting the attribute requirement.

Gemling Legionnaire Ascendancy and Skills

Should I Pick Witchhunter or Gemling Legionnaire?

Witchhunter is the Meta Pick

Due to its much more simple Ascendancy passive tree, the Witchhunter is the meta pick as they are capable of acquiring a wide variety of damage buffs which makes the class very straight forward. On the other hand, the Gemling Legionnaire features a lot of stats and Gem buffs which requires you to have a good understanding of game mechanics to help fully optimize the ascendancy.

Note that this is a meta recommendation, although most players choose the Witchhunter for its ease and efficiency, the Gemling Legionnaire is still a powerful class.

Mercenary Class Overview

Class Summary

The Mercenary
Attribute	Dexterity/Strength
Weapon	Crossbows

The Mercenary can utilize multiple crossbows and ammo types to deal with any situation from range. It can destroy enemy shields or armor with rapid fire, block paths will a wall of ice, or shotgun bosses to burst them down.

Dexterity and Strength Focus

The Mercenary is a Dexterity and Strength-based class, focusing on applying high AoE damage while having good versatility during combat. The Mercenary is a ranged fighter that specializes in using crossbows with multiple ammo types.

Mercenary Skills

All Crossbow Skills

Crossbows is the default weapon for Mercenaries in PoE 2, however you can still choose any weapon to obtain any skill for your Mercenary. Listed below are Crossbow skills that were mentioned and showcased during the ExileCon Mercenary showcase:

Tier	Skills
1	Fragmentation Rounds			Armour Piercing Rounds			Glacial Cascade			Permafrost Bolts
3	High Velocity Rounds				Incendiary Shot				Flash Grenade
5	Rapid Shot			Ice Shards			Galvanic Shards			Gas Grenade
7	Ripwire Ballista			Explosive Shot			Glacial Bolt			Voltaic Grenade
9	Artillery Ballista				Stormblast Bolts				Oil Grenade
11	Hailstorm Rounds				Shockburst Rounds				Emergency Reload
13	Siege Cascade				Plasma Blast				Cluster Grenade

List of All Gems

All Mercenary Persistent Skills

The Mercenary has 8 Persistent skills each of which grant passive buffs that are extremely helpful to any build.

Tier	Skills
4	Herald of Ash				Herald of Thunder				War Banner
8	Shard Scavenger				Overwhelming Presence				Defiance Banner
14	Attrition						Dread Banner

List of Spirit Gems

Recommended Skills

Skill	Effect
Explosive Grenade	Fires a bouncing Grenade that unleashes a devastating fiery blast when its fuse expires.
Gas Grenade	Fires a bouncing Grenade that causes a burst of Poison gas when its fuse expires, damaging enemies and leaving behind a growing Poison cloud. Burning effects or Detonator skills will cause the cloud to explode in a fiery blast.
Galvanic Shards	Loads your Crossbow with a clip of charged bolts that fragment in flight, releasing Chaining Lightning beams when they Hit enemies. Using this skill again reloads the clip.

The best Crossbow skill for Mercenary is the Galvanic Shards as it is extremely useful for mobbing and boss fights. This is capable of procing various effects multiple times depending on your build as it fires 6 fragments per shot and can chain to other enemies.

Most Mercenary builds also use the Gas Grenade + Explosive Grenade combo as it deals a huge amount of damage from both the Explosive Grenade and Gas Cloud explosion.

How to Play Mercenary

Useful Tips for Mercenary
Change Ammo with Skills Reload on Empty Clip Grenades Do Not Require Reloading Uses Various Elements

Change Ammo with Skills

Unlike most classes, the Mercenary utilizes Crossbow skills that can change the ammo type of your default Crossbow Shot and fire different kinds of shots depending on what you have loaded. Keep in mind that using a crossbow skill will only change your default attack so in order for you to fire your loaded skills, you have to use the default attack itself.

Requires Reloading

Majority of Mercenary Crossbow skills fires Bolts that have a limited amount of ammo. Once you have used up all the Bolts, you will hear a clicking sound that makes your character stop firing and fully reloads the clip.

Keep in mind that your Reload Time depends on your equipped Crossbow but can be adjusted on other skills using Support Gems.

Grenades Have No Reload

On the other hand, Grenades do not use Bolts but instead have charges that automatically refresh on cooldown. Firing a grenade uses one charge and immediately puts that charge on cooldown without having to reload anything.

Make sure to time your Grenades in advance as all of them have a Fuse Duration that only explodes once the duration is up.

Uses Fire, Cold, Lightning, and Poison Elements

Mercenaries have access to Fire, Cold, Lightning, and Poison skills from their Crossbows. This includes elements for different ammo types as well such as Grenades, Shotguns, and Rifle type ammunitions.

Unique to the crossbow, the Gas Clouds from Gas Grenade can explode once triggered by either Detonators, Flamewall, and Ignited enemies.

Path of Exile 2 (PoE 2) Related Guides

List of Classes

List of Early Access Classes

List of Upcoming Classes