About merc with Might+Pride or Double Last Wish (Let's draw a line)

Hello d2 Community !

The last couple of weeks we have been discussing mercenaries on the forum.

1. forums/barbarian-sword-combinations-t1428057.html - Barbarian Sword combinations (include Mercs)
2. forums/best-merc-bases-t1426075.html - Best Merc bases
3. forums/dual-last-wish-on-a5-merc-t1423892.html - Dual Last Wish on A5 Merc

Now where were we ? let's try summarize again

Barb with double Last Wish on merc act 5 with 34 lvl aura might
or
Desert merc with Pride 20

Concentration and 19 lvl might (21 with

Andariel's Visage)
or
are we missing the archer from act 1 with Faith
???

I will say that in most of my builds I use Desert merc (might) with Pride. I use it for everyone - frenzybarb, wwbarbarb, throwbarb, bowazon... (I can say that merk gives clean from 700-1000 plus damage (depending on the character) - clean ( removed and put Pride there were 5 thousand became 6, there were 7 thousand became 8, there were 8 thousand became 9 and so on).

who is drowning for what ? and in my humble opinion I should have forgotten about such armor as Chains of Honor (to raise the aura level Might by 2 more levels) doing by inertia Fortitude.

PS moreover, I find it a more profitable option to use on a mercenary Chains of Honor because it has LifeLeech if you replace the

Cap with to Cure (with hope to ShadowHeart), for example on Lighting

Nova Sorc. If earlier the mercenary treated himself thanks to the

Cap (Leech from

Vampire Gaze, or

Andariel's Visage, or

Tal Rasha), now it's time for him to treat himself from the armor Chains of Honor. (Forgive me for this digression , I was carried a little in the wrong direction (the

Key in this paragraph with hope to ShadowHeart ) )

Side note : can you rename "Arab" merc into Desert merc or act2 merc ?

Always seems weird to have our world's geographic / population transferred to Sanctuary.

Necrarch wrote: 1 year ago

Side note : can you rename "Arab" merc into Desert merc or act2 merc ?

Always seems weird to have our world's geographic / population transferred to Sanctuary.

Yup .. sorry

Necrarch wrote: 1 year ago

Side note : can you rename "Arab" merc into Desert merc or act2 merc ?

Always seems weird to have our world's geographic / population transferred to Sanctuary.

If we nitpick to names, the correct name for those "side characters" are "hirelings". "Desert mercenaries" are just Act II hirelings.
But since virtually everyone uses Act II hirelings, their name got shortened to just "mercenaries" and expanded to all hirelings. Well, actually even Blizz confused those in the linked website...

Yeah, well, the other namings are rather explanatory and less... prone to possible issues, let's say

Trang Oul wrote: 1 year ago

Necrarch wrote: 1 year ago

Side note : can you rename "Arab" merc into Desert merc or act2 merc ?

Always seems weird to have our world's geographic / population transferred to Sanctuary.

If we nitpick to names, the correct name for those "side characters" are "hirelings". "Desert mercenaries" are just Act II hirelings.
But since virtually everyone uses Act II hirelings, their name got shortened to just "mercenaries" and expanded to all hirelings. Well, actually even Blizz confused those in the linked website...

I just didn 't express myself politically correctly , but what do you think about the topic of the post ?

Bass wrote: 1 year ago

Barb with double Last Wish on merc act 5 with 34 lvl aura might
or
Desert merc with Pride 20

Concentration and 19 lvl might (21 with

Andariel's Visage)
or
are we missing the archer from act 1 with Faith
???

this is such a narrow view on this whole topic and it clearly gives away what kind of answer you expect. It looks like you want to confirm your own bias

For me personally your choices are nowhere optimal in any of my builds or any of builds i would try to accomplish. I had expressed this mindset already before: backward's reasoning. Take a look what you need and go back from there and try to accomplish that.

A Reaper's Merc still outperforms Last Wish and Pride alltogether under the right circumstances. Do these circumstances matter to you? That's factors you need to give some weight to.

When you use Grief on P1 it doesn't matter if you take Last Wish, or Pride or reapers Because your damage is through the roof anyway. If you're on P8 normal monsters probably live through one or two hits but once you're go against bosses you're merc is probably there and has Dec casted on that boss. So do you want the hassle of having your Merc need to cast Dec? Do you consider this as hassle in the first place? If this isn't a problem by itself, then the Merc's Pathfinding sure is. That's more Points you need to factor into that eqation.

Do you have an Enigma? If no, you need CnbF on that Merc

Do you need the Speed of an A1 with Faith? Since Fana's damage bonus is halved for other Partymembers don't expect to get higher numbers than a A2 with might would give you. A1 Faith Merc is a mean of getting Speed not Damage.

Do you want to the Merc itself to be viable as a damage Dealer? Then it's speed > damage in most cases (Treachery > Fortitude)
Are your runs long runs or short? If you have longer runs and

Fade can proc it's Treachery > CoH aswell

In terms of utility

Holy Freeze Aura from the A2 Merc is probably the best you can get. It Freezes everything even Cold Immune immunes. You could make an argument that one might have "enough damage" (i know, as crazy as it sounds) so by that point

Holy Freeze would be your best choice



An act 5 merc to me is only an opportunity to use even more runewords with more auras. Before using an a5 merc you should ask yourself if you should use him and what he brings your build, not how much more auras you could out of him.



If you really want to draw a line you really should have a definitv end of what you're trying to achieve and grab the gear that fits the best to that situation or to your playstyle in any given situation

I use a might merc with Doom

Cryptic Axe with my Tesladin

I think it depends on your needs:

Pride Merc provides a multiplier of ~5.8
Faith merc of only 1.3 but adds 33 IAS.
Double LW 4.0 and procs
Hustle and LB decrep and 14 IAS

If you swing a big slow hammer that one-hitd things or have very low base damage or die constantly you might have different needs id argue.

Trang Oul wrote: 1 year ago

If we nitpick to names, the correct name for those "side characters" are "hirelings". "Desert mercenaries" are just Act II hirelings.
But since virtually everyone uses Act II hirelings, their name got shortened to just "mercenaries" and expanded to all hirelings. Well, actually even Blizz confused those in the linked website...

A "hireling" sounds too feminine as opposed to a masculine sounding "mercenary". Given the nature of the game no wonder players adhere to the latter rather than the former.

xigua wrote: 9 months ago

Pride Merc provides a multiplier of ~5.8
Faith merc of only 1.3 but adds 33 IAS.
Double LW 4.0 and procs
Hustle and LB decrep and 14 IAS

I’d only add the act 1 Faith wielding NPC hireling sprite also casts

Inner Sight, which takes away a lot (if not all) the enemy’s def, making it much easier to hit something (it’s better than an act2 desert NPC hireling sprite’s

Blessed Aim aura)

I have to agree with Flippy that the initial post seems a bit biased and limited in it's options.

First off you really can't ignore the Reaper-mercenary as an option. In fact it's my favorite in most cases. Especially since they added Cure to the game, since you then also get life-leach on the weapon and are free in choice of armor.

Also, for Act 5 it seems weird to focus on double Last Wish. I'd much rather use just 1 Last Wish, and pick either Plague (for

Cleansing), Crescent Moon (for Static proc) or

Azurewrath (for

Sanctuary Aura).
Or in some cases Lawbringer (for both

Sanctuary Aura and

Decrepify proc), tough the

Life Tap and

Decrepify curses will override each other.

Act 1 with Faith should deffinetly be consided, but as mentioned for attack-speed rather than damage. Among others my Tesladin lowes the Act 1 merc helping it reach max attack-frames, and it would get a lot less from all the others as so much of the damage is the added lightning damage rather than physical.

For my Strafezon, I prefer the dual LW-Merc over Pride. My reasons:

The bonus to damage from the aura is lower, but the range is higher. I never lose the aura bonus. Since I don't use Enigma, this evens out quite a bit and with maxed IAS Faith and

Atma's Scarab, damage is through the roof already.

Second, the Pride merc is a lame duck, he can't even tank

Baal. He regularly dies in full games and more often than not, falls behind. The Barb merc is a Beast, nearly unkillable and fast as f..., a great and reliable companion!

And last but not least: Diversity. Pride is commonly used by physical classes. If you join a party, you don't add much with the third or fourth Pride merc in team. The LW Barb is an appreciated addition to many parties.