Merc and Pally questions

Firstly I am playing NL so no access to sunder charms.

First questions is, what are good armor bases for merc? Plan to get/make a Fort.

Second, how are auradins w/o sunder charms? I thought it would be fun to make aa Holy Shock/ Holy Fire pally and wanted to know if they work well enough? Also does dteam Helm and Dream shilds Holy Shock aura's stack?

1) any Eth with around 800 is good, the higher def the better (given your merc has enough str to equip it)
2) tesladin is ridiculously powerful, no need for stupid sunder charms when you have high level Conviction, the very few monsters that still have lightning immunity even under your Conviction effect can be taken down with physical damage, and yes auras from Dream stack so you have 30 Holy Shock

1) Pick up and look
- any superior grey elite armor
- any grey Archon Plate, Hellforge Plate, Lacquered Plate, Shadow Plate, Sacred Armor

Don't give a damn on the Strg Req cause your merc will soon get to the point past 222 Strg that enables him to wear Eth Sacred Armor.

like the preceding author said, look for 800+ def but 780+ is OK imo as well if u don't intent to trade it soon because the lower the def, the lower the resale price (besides All Res roll, of course)

Just a few minutes ago, i larzuked and fortituded a plain Eth Sacred Armor and i'm happy with it.

Depending on how rich you are, you can have a look at superior Eth lower armors. My Fortitude is in an Eth sup Scarab Husk and therefore was at 700-ish defense, but the base was WAY lower. It avoids movement penalty also.

And if you want an even more budget option, the good old Eth Treachery works really well.
Sure, Fort is better (for act 2 merc, act 1 prefers more ias so Treachery is perfect) but it's much more expensive.

Archons are the best damn base for any armor period.
Eth ones if for your merc.

Lacquered if you want to slow him down for your build and give him the highest defense for base stats.

Sacred would be the same thing for a merc loadout that includes enough +str (e.g. Andariel's). Without extra +str, an A2 merc won't get past 213 str (@lvl98), making sacreds (and shadow plates) impossible to use, even when Eth (which lowers the str req by 10).

As for the Holy Shock, yes, 2x Dream does stack and gives you a lvl 30 aura. That's why any dreamer generally uses 2 of them. Lvl 15 is kinda mweh after all. They do not however stack with your own Holy Shock as a pally so if you get 30 from 2x Dream and you have say 20 pts in Holy Shock yourself, you won't get a lvl 50 aura. That's why a dreamer typically uses Conviction instead, adding significant -res, in turn bumping up the Dream dmg. The very few lightning immune mobs that your highlvl Conviction (lvl 25 = capped for -res) can't break can then be handled with the physical aspect of your dmg output. Even more so if you choose to go with a Grief to make that side of it actually pretty darn solid as well.

Necrarch wrote: 3 years ago

Depending on how rich you are, you can have a look at superior Eth lower armors. My Fortitude is in an Eth sup Scarab Husk and therefore was at 700-ish defense, but the base was WAY lower. It avoids movement penalty also.

And if you want an even more budget option, the good old Eth Treachery works really well.
Sure, Fort is better (for act 2 merc, act 1 prefers more ias so Treachery is perfect) but it's much more expensive.

Do keep in mind that the superior bonus doesn't add to base def but is summed with other ed (except for the '1 over max' def the armor will have).
So if you get a perfect 15 ed superior Scarab Husk, you get 475 * 1.5 * 1.15 = 819 def for an ethereal one.
If you instead get a mediocre Eth Lacquered Plate with say 770 defense, you might look at the scarab and go "that's way better!".

But if you then turn those into a Fortitude with its 200% ed, you get
475 * 1.5 * 3.15 = 2244 def for the scarab
and
770 * 3 = 2310 def for the Lacquered Plate

Even a mediocre (and hence typically rather cheap) higher armor tends to easily outperform a perfect superior lower one if you turn it into a fort.

Doesn't apply to Treachery of course since that doesn't have any ed on it but then again..this season very much reminded me of just how bad Treachery really is by comparison to fort and why it is merely a starter armor for them. It really is night and day.

Thanks Schnorki. Another new lesson learnt.

Schnorki wrote: 3 years ago

Necrarch wrote: 3 years ago

Depending on how rich you are, you can have a look at superior Eth lower armors. My Fortitude is in an Eth sup Scarab Husk and therefore was at 700-ish defense, but the base was WAY lower. It avoids movement penalty also.

And if you want an even more budget option, the good old Eth Treachery works really well.
Sure, Fort is better (for act 2 merc, act 1 prefers more ias so Treachery is perfect) but it's much more expensive.

Do keep in mind that the superior bonus doesn't add to base def.
So if you get a perfect 15 ed superior Scarab Husk, you get 475 * 1.5 * 1.15 = 819 def for an ethereal one.
If you instead get a mediocre Eth Lacquered Plate with say 770 defense, you might look at the scarab and go "that's way better!".

But if you then turn those into a Fortitude with its 200% ed, you get
475 * 1.5 * 3.15 = 2244 def for the scarab
and
770 * 3 = 2310 def for the Lacquered Plate

Even a mediocre (and hence typically rather cheap) higher armor tends to easily outperform a perfect superior lower one if you turn it into a fort.

Doesn't apply to Treachery of course since that doesn't have any ed on it but then again..this season very much reminded me of just how bad Treachery really is by comparison to fort and why it is merely a starter armor for them. It really is night and day.

Great answer and detail, Thanks for that. I don't have Andariels Visage so either try and trade for one (doubtful as I'm still poor) or get a lower str base at around 800 base def.

As for Holy Shock pally, what kind of A2 Merc should I use and what gear?

All my mercs are using perfect superior Eth Great Hauberk Fortitudes. It’s a pretty good choice as well