It's been a while since my last report - I've been busy, uh, "testing" the Expansion Set.  :)  It's really a completely new game - once you've been playing it for a month, going back will seem like the stone age for many more reasons than the mere resolution change.  The single biggest reason to have the XPack isn't the new classes or the new act; it's the hundreds of new magical modifiers that make a difference.  Even still, this report will focus on mercenaries and the large changes they bring to gameplay.

Mercenaries in D2 classic were of limited usefulness.  You couldn't resurrect them, you couldn't bring them from act to act, they'd get killed faster than you can imagine (especially against act ending bosses), and you couldn't heal them without going to town every minute.  All of that is thrown out in Lord of Destruction.  The single biggest boost mercenaries provide is to Sorceresses, hands down.  More on that later.

Many players get their free mercenary from the Blood Raven quest and stick with her throughout the game.  Reason?  They're great!  Those moderately-useful mercs in Act 1 can become quite powerful as they level up with you.  You can equip rogues with the bows you find to make them more and more powerful, and they either provide you with a superb ranged attack to complement your minions if you're a Necromancer/Druid or they act as a support unit for you if you're melee.  If you're a ranged attack character, however (such as a Sorceress or bow-using Amazon), you'll want to move on to the Act II mercenaries as soon as you get the opportunity.

Yes, mercenaries level with you.  They gain stats, hit points, DR, damage, and resistances automatically every level up.  They don't level up at the same time as you - they have their own experience system - but you'll find that as you level, your merc does as well, keeping pace with your progress.  In Act II, the once-useless spear-wielding warriors carry auras with them.  There are three flavors: offensive, defensive, and combat.  These three flavors have different auras as they grow.  Offensive starts with Blessed Aim, defensive has Defiance, and combat begins with Prayer.  The fact that these auras change later on is good and bad - many players get annoyed when their defiance boost suddenly changes to something else.

As a Sorceress, you will LOVE the Defiance-based Act II mercenary.  You can equip them with spear or polearm class weapons and they'll provide a massive amount of damage.  In fact, my mercenary was doing almost ALL of the killing, since Sorceresses tend to be weak while developing (I hadn't yet reached my target skill and only had 1 point in all my prerequisites).  I'd just support him by freezing enemies with Glacial Spike and providing the occasional healing potion.  Equipping him with armor that provided -2 magic damage reduction made him invincible to firewalls (that bug will never be fixed, apparently).  With his defiance on and myself providing him with the biggest DR armor and helm I could find, he had 639 DR in Act II!  And his Defiance aura boosted my DR to very respectable levels as well, providing me with protection that I needed due to my now pitiful blocking percentage.  I plan to keep using this mercenary throughout my Sorceress' career (which of course is short lived since she'll be wiped when the beta ends).

In Act III, the mercenary that everyone loves, the cold Sorcerer, has been nerfed a bit.  In D2 classic, he would Glacial Spike every enemy he saw.  Knowing this would make him FAR too powerful with the new system, Blizzard changed him so that he uses both Glacial Spike and Ice Blast.  Most of the time, he will use Ice Blast to freeze single enemies, and every 6 or 7 shots he'll use a Glacial Spike.  It's a good balance, in my opinion, and done well.  Melee characters will find the cold merc just as useful as before, since it's easier to keep him alive now.  Summoning Druids and Necromancers will naturally desire to stay away from these mercs, since they don't leave many corpses around to use.  Think of what an aura-based Act II merc could do for all of their minions, though...

Act IV doesn't have any mercenaries, of course, but Tyrael will handle all of your resurrecting needs.  What a nice guy.  He charges you money - what does an archangel need money for?  :)

In Act V, the ubermercs come in.  No, I don't mean uber in the sense that they're too powerful - it's just that if you want high hit point melee killing machines on your side, get one of these Barbarians for hire.  They use sword class weapons (no shields though) and just tear up the place.  In normal difficulty, I had an Act V Barbarian who wielded almost 200 damage with a run-of-the-mill sword I found.  Give this Barbarian a great piece of armor and the highest damage sword you can find and watch him go to work.  My Druid loved watching him kill everything on the screen as my summoned wolves distracted the enemies.

So, now for more general mercenary notes...

Mercenaries are ethereal now, just as with all minions (something suggested during last year's original beta test, but oh well).  They will no longer get in your way and block you in the Maggot Lair or Arcane Sanctuary.  Valkyries will no longer trap you in the Palace entrance of Act II, and all of those Necromancer skeletons will not annoy the hell out of his partners.  However, the mercs still ACT like they are blocking your way.  This is important in those tight areas of the game such as the Maggot Lair mentioned above.  If the mercenary is a melee one and he's standing behind you (which is almost always the case as you travel a level), when you sight enemies coming toward you, the merc will run up right behind you and wait there.  Why?  It's because the merc thinks he can't walk through you.  You'll have to run through him so that you're behind him, and then he'll move in to attack.  Just a heads up for players using melee mercs, so you're ready for that when the game's released (unless Blizzard fixes it).

Yes, there's lots of bugs still present from the original, and some new ones.  Some of them will be caught and fixed in this beta, and some won't.  It's anyone's guess as to which will be corrected, though.  Check out my next report on the Assassin for more.