1.11- unlimited supply of mercs now

[purplelocust]

One change I noticed in 1.11 is that there seems to now be an unlimited supply of mercs for hire. If you hire the last one, then immediately there is a full set of new volunteers to head off to battle. This is a nice feature I think that I haven't seen pointed out elsewhere. This is in addition to the better-known fact that now the levels are close (within 5) to yours and those levels also seem to get updated even in the same game if you level up, which is also nice. In Classic, mercs are useful sometimes but without gear, they are often not long for the world (especially when poisoned, it seems) so a good supply is a bonus.

[DougDadyUsWest]

Mostly In act3. they are extremely helpful in normal act 3. Nightmare, not as much really, but they do help a little bit in any difficulty. and the close proximity to char level is awesome! they can actually help a little in hell mode, for a while, until you change acts :P ~ or the more likely result, they die to a quill rat.

[Lyrs]

A3 lightning Mercs are quite useful if you have a cold or fire sorc and can't completely kill all the Councils. If you don't have an +lightning staff, grab a merc and static, your merc will kill Toric if your merc is alive.

[Fearlessone]

One change I noticed in 1.11 is that there seems to now be an unlimited supply of mercs for hire. If you hire the last one, then immediately there is a full set of new volunteers to head off to battle.
I've noticed this too. But somehow I remember that it refreshed anyways before 1.11, maybe in LoD or in single player.

Blizzard should have fixed the mercs long before the expansion tried to say "oh look, we have improved mercs!" They were broken and needed a fix b4 LoD. Especially for peeps who played single player. When D2 first came out, a big majority of early buyers said they only wanted it for single player, they thought cheating wouldn't be controlled. Then bnet showed that most of the time the game is not a disaster area, and more peeps bought the game for the bnet experience...

If you played LoD, u noticed, particularly for players who didn't have the ability to BO their mercs, the great majority of players didn't bother with mercs: they died too often and 50K revival fee required too much effort to always be looking out for things to sell. Still, leveling up a merc wasnt that difficult, and they really help alot in LoD. Here in classic, they just die too fast and cost too much to be worth it, except in early play leveling up ur character.

[Nibiru-]

Yeah it's a shame, and you'd think after the hype of the LoD 'hey we've upgraded mercs' has faded, they should just give the updated mercs to classic players. LoD has been out for 4 years now. Besides, I own LoD and play classic out of choice. Oh well, i guess it's part of the classic gameplay.