Introduced withDiablo 4’s first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, Mercenaries are powerful NPCs that will support you during your adventures in Nahantu and beyond. There are four different Mercenaries that can be recruited through the Den, each with their own special abilities.
You can bring one Mercenary and one Reinforcement into battle with you. Your Mercenary will follow you around and engage in combat, while the Reinforcement only assists under certain circumstances. Below, we’ll rank each of the Mercenaries from worst to best, based on their performance in battle.
4Aldkin
Blasphemous Fate: Aldkin occasionally loses control, transforming into a demon for 22 seconds, granting him new abilities. While transformed, you and nearby enemies are Vulnerable, and dealing damage drains your Resource over 3 seconds.
Despite having one of the best designs of all four Mercenaries,Aldkinis sadly the weakest of the bunch. The main issue is his passive ability that randomly transforms him into a demon, which then drains your Resource when you deal damage. Without a solution to this, constantly running out of your Resource is too great a downside to consider using Aldkin.
Even if your build doesn’t rely on your Resource, Aldkin is still underwhelming as a companion. His Flame Surge skill tree has the potential to deal high damage, but in later Torment difficulties, it pales in comparison to your own damage, and choosing a different Mercenary for their superior utility options is preferred.
Aldkin has some decent utility in the Haunt skill tree, through debuffs like Daze, Slow, or Stun, but other Mercenaries have access to these and more. Aldkin’s focus on damage rather than utility may work fine in the early game, but the lack of utility in his kit makes him the worst of the four Mercenaries.
3Varyana
Massacre: You and Varyana stack Massacre when killing enemies, granting bonus Movement Speed at certain thresholds.
Varyana’s core Perk increases your Movement Speed as your kill streak increases, up to 100 stacks, at which point grants 20 percent increased Movement Speed. This bonus is great, especially for builds with low mobility, but it becomes a bit weaker for classes that can zip around the battlefield without Varyana’s help.
In Varyana’s Cleave skill tree, she will inflict Bleed on enemies, grant you Attack Speed buffs, and debuff nearby enemies with Vulnerable or reduced damage. In her Shockwave skill tree, Varyana will be knocking down enemies a lot, granting different bonuses against enemies she crowd controls.
Varyana’s DPS is negligible in both skill trees, but the utility provided in both is decent enough, just not as strong as the next two Mercenaries. However, she is definitely worth using if your build lacks Movement Speed or Mobility skills.
2Subo
Seeker: Nearby enemies and materials are marked on the minimap. Every 20 seconds, Subo marks a random enemy; killing the marked enemy restores 50% of your Resource and reduces the cooldown of Seeker by 10 seconds.
As far as utility,Subois a lot like Varyana, providing some damage, crowd control, and a few buffs for you. However, what sets Subo apart from Varyana is his Seeker Perk, which marks all nearby enemies and materials on the minimap. This is very useful when running around during Helltide, finding enemies in The Pit, and pretty much everywhere else.
Since the damage of Mercenaries is most of the time insignificant, their usefulness is determined by how helpful they are in providing support. Even putting aside all of the decent buffs and debuffs Subo provides, his Seeker Perk provides one of the most visibly tangible benefits of all four Mercenaries.
That said, Subo does have some decent combat support as well. His Wire Trap skill tree provides Slows, Knockdowns, and Immobolizes, while his Molotov line has Slows, Knockdowns, and increases your Damage Over Time effects, which is especially strong if you’re playing a Poison or Bleed-based build.
1Raheir
Valiance: When you would be damaged for 15% of your current health, Raheir instead negates the damage, knocks down nearby enemies, and makes you Unstoppable for 0.5 seconds.
Raheir is the first Mercenary you unlock, and is the strongest of the group, by far. Raheir provides the most damage reduction of all four Mercenaries, which is useful in all types of content, and he can heal, buff, and debuff.
Most of Raheir’s skills in both skill trees have some utility or support effect. His Shield Charge line Foritifies, Slows, grants additional Armor and damage reduction, Taunts, Stuns, and inflicts Vulnerable, depending on the skills you choose. This alone is a staggering amount of utility from just one Mercenary, easily outclassing the others.
Raheir’s Ground Slam skill tree doesn’t have quite as much utility, but there are some good skills here to choose from. This line mostly focuses on frequent but potent healing and Taunting. Both trees have nodes that augment Valiance, Raheir’s core Perk, causing it to apply different effects after it is triggered.
