The Mercenary in Path of Exile 2 offers a dynamic and deadly playstyle that revolves around devastating explosive effects, crowd control, and immense burst damage. By using a crossbow equipped with specialized skill gems, you'll be able to freeze, ignite, poison, and detonate enemies in a glorious symphony of destruction. This guide focuses on optimizing the Mercenary's crowd control abilities, explosive damage output, and survivability for a smooth progression into endgame content.

Core Skills and Support Gems

To ensure your Mercenary can handle any challenge, you need to effectively combine several skill gems and support gems that amplify your crowd control and explosive abilities. Here are the key skills and the best support gems for them:

1. Fragmentation Rounds

Skill Description:

Load your crossbow with Piercing Bolts that fire in a burst.

Bolts that hit a Frozen enemy consume the Freeze and trigger an explosion of shrapnel.

Bolts that hit an Ice Crystal cause it to explode.

Recommended Support Gems:

Leverage: Increases your Critical Hit Chance against Immobilized enemies, which synergizes well with the freezing effects of your crossbow.

Double Barrel: Grants an additional bolt but reduces reload speed by 30%. This tradeoff is worthwhile due to the increased projectile count and additional burst damage.

With Fragmentation Rounds, you can rapidly deal with large packs of enemies, especially when combined with freezing mechanics from other skills.

2. PermaFrost Bolts

Skill Description:

Fires icy bolts in a burst that deal damage to enemies and a small cone behind them.

These bolts are exceptionally potent at Freezing enemies, making them prime targets for Leverage support.

Recommended Support Gems:

Chain: This gem allows your bolts to chain to multiple enemies, improving your ability to freeze entire packs.

Cold Infusion: Increases your cold damage and allows you to stack cold buildup more quickly.

With PermaFrost Bolts, you can freeze and immobilize large groups, setting them up for destruction with Fragmentation Rounds.

3. Explosive Grenade

Skill Description:

Fires a bouncing grenade that explodes when its fuse expires, causing widespread damage.

Recommended Support Gems:

Scattershot: Adds more grenades to the burst, increasing the area of effect and overall damage.

Second Wind: Reduces the cooldown and recovery time of your explosive grenades, allowing you to launch them more frequently.

Fiery Death: Enhances the fire damage from your explosives, giving you more versatility in your damage types.

Explosive Grenade adds an explosive layer to your crowd control toolkit, enabling you to deal significant area damage while keeping enemies at bay.

4. Incendiary Shot

Skill Description:

Load your crossbow with Flaming Bolts that ignite enemies on hit and in a cone behind the target.

Great for sustained damage and crowd control, especially when combined with a Detonate skill to trigger explosions.

Recommended Support Gems:

Wildfire: Increases the spread and duration of the Ignite effect, helping you deal sustained burn damage.

Eternal Flame: Extends the duration of the ignite, allowing for a longer period of fire-based damage on enemies.

When combined with an Explosive Grenade or Explosive Shot, an Incendiary Shot can trigger chain explosions that annihilate groups of enemies.

5. Gas Grenade

Skill Description:

Fires a grenade that bursts into a Poison Gas cloud upon impact, damaging enemies over time and leaving a growing poison cloud.

The cloud can be triggered by Burning Effects or Detonator Skills, causing it to explode in a fiery blast.

Recommended Support Gems:

Primal: Increases elemental damage, enhancing both poison and fire effects.

Bursting Plague: Adds 200% additional damage per second to your enemies as Plague and scales with their health.

Gas Grenade synergizes perfectly with your other explosive abilities, creating deadly zones of lingering damage and additional detonation opportunities.

6. Explosive Shot

Skill Description:

Fires Flaming Bolts that explode on impact, triggering nearby grenades in the area of effect.

A powerful detonator skill that reloads quickly, letting you chain explosions together.

Recommended Support Gems:

Immolate: Enhances your fire damage by 30% at the cost of removing your ability to Ignite, focusing entirely on explosive damage.

Close Combat: Increases damage when enemies are within proximity, making it especially useful when surrounded by enemies or in tight spaces.

Explosive Shot should be your go-to detonator, setting off all your explosives for massive burst damage.

7. Oil Grenade

Skill Description:

It fires a grenade that releases Oil, slowing enemies and reducing fire resistance.

The oil can be ignited by Detonator Skills, creating massive area-of-effect explosions.

Recommended Support Gems:

Strip Away: Increases Exposure effects, making enemies more susceptible to fire damage.

Payload: Grants a chance to activate the oil release again, extending the duration and improving uptime.

Ingenuity: Reduces the cooldown of Oil Grenade, ensuring it's available more often.

Oil Grenade sets up your other explosive skills by reducing enemy resistance and slowing them, making them easier to hit with your AoE detonations.

Ascendancy: Zealous Inquisition

The Zealous Inquisition skill from the Witch Hunter Ascendancy is key to maximizing the Mercenary's potential. It grants a 10% chance for enemies you kill to explode, dealing 100% of their max Life as Physical Damage. This chance is doubled against Undead and Demons, making it a fantastic choice for both bosses and hordes of enemies alike. The explosion can even one-shot bosses or trigger their second phase with a single blast, ensuring that you can clear even the most challenging encounters.

Playstyle and Endgame Strategy

Crowd Control: Use PermaFrost Bolts to freeze and immobilize enemies, setting them up for follow-up explosions with Fragmentation Rounds.

Detonation Synergy: Keep the battlefield filled with Explosive Grenades, Incendiary Shots, and Gas Grenades, and use Explosive Shots to detonate them all at once for massive damage.

Explosions Everywhere: Focus on Zealous Inquisition to cause enemies to explode upon death, and trigger secondary explosions with your Oil Grenade.

Boss Fights: When fighting bosses, ensure you use your freezing skills and set up multiple detonators for massive burst damage. The Zealous Inquisition will help you tear through bosses quickly by triggering explosions with each kill.

Conclusion

The Mercenary Build in Path of Exile 2 offers an exciting, explosive playstyle that leverages crowd control and burst damage. With the right skill gems, support gems, and POE currency investments, you can easily tackle the toughest challenges in both campaign and endgame content. Make sure to optimize your gear and carefully synergize your abilities to achieve the maximum potential of this dynamic build. Happy hunting, Exile!