travincal hydras shred merc

im level 88 and my merc is 88 . i have an act 2 merc with 90% fire resist with

Guardian Angel and kiras. why does he keep dying to the hydras in trav almost instantly?

In this case, there are two solution.
1.use a5 merc with Last Wish +

Phase Blade socket with +11~15 all resist and

Crown of age +

Ort x 2

2.You need

Vampire's gaze or

Crown of Ages . Socket with

Ber x 2. Upgrade

Guardian Angel. A2 merc defense is not enough.
They have

Amplify Damage. Your merc die in lightning + physical attack. For the case,

Conviction aura, the thing you need to do is kill the one has aura
not build things anti his aura. I tried this but realize it is costly and draw down your merc's attack power.

if you are bar, physical+lightning attack can be

Stun by warcry. Even if your lightning resist is not full, you can cover it by

Stun. it does not need to be super-high light-resist or very high physical resistance(I tried this , it makes merc tank but cant beat them alone and costly return with poor performance).

so the hydras do physical damage in addition to fire? i clear the council in less than 30 seconds. so theres no damage or auras other than the hydras. his stupid pathing usually keeps the merc outside getting pelted by the hydras

if you care only

Hydra, easily way is to equip fire absorb

Steel Shade. it is cheap and useful. Socket with

Vex.

I tried this, immunity to

Hydra.

The reason why council Hydras often shred mercs is because their Hydras do the full damage to mercs, whereas vs players, their Hydras suffer a ~1/6 damage penalty (same as for PvP combat). In other words, players receive less damage from Council Hydras than they are supposed to technically, and mercs don't get that luxuary. I.e., the Hydras do 17% damage vs players, but 100% damage vs mercs.

Another way to put it is that mercs take x6 damage from council Hydras compared to players, before resistances & absorb is considered.

For this reason, besides high fire resistance, fire absorb is very useful for mercs (the flat non-% kind more than % absorb). High life leach is also helpful of course.

I've got same setup but with

Kira's Guardian and

Guardian Angel socketed with

Ral to counter with

Conviction aura. He's got high life leech (14%) as well.

If he just stands there and gets blasted by all the

Hydra's then, yes, he'll eventually die as well but it very, very rarely happens because either I kill the council quickly enough or use Enigma to reposition merc. If the merc is fighting and leeching,

Hydra's can never kill him.

If you don't have Enigma/

Teleport or the fastest kill speed, Fire Absorb is probably you're best bet. If you're going to replace Kira's with

Steel Shade, I recommend putting a

Ral in it and your

Guardian Angel if you haven't already.