Which merc survives Andariel?

Life leach is nerfed so much it effectively doesn't work against bosses. I showed the calculations on an earlier post.

Regarding GA, poison is not the main issue, it is physical (although poison helps)

Lawbringer - Great, it has

Decrepify, which is great vs. bosses. 1/2 attach speed and 1/2 damage = 4x boss nerf. -50% physical res against 66% to start = 2.4x damage boost.

CoA - up to 31% physical damage reduction, which is also great.

Lawbringer + Coa with Act 5 merc might work. Only thing I don't know is if the Act 5

Battle Cry or

Taunt will overwrite the

Decrepify too often.

varangium wrote: 2 months ago

- It's easier to boost mana than health with items like

Frostburn, soj, etc. Also rings and uniques tend to have higher +mana than +life. But you just have the frostburns and not the SOJ, so you are getting only +40%.
- Super fast regen with Insight. But you don't have Insight on merc. Mana regen is still better than health, but w/o Insight it's not too crazy unless you have a really high mana pool with an all out ES build.

Max Mana regeneration only dies to souls. They drain faster than any regeneration.

I tried it offline: 350 energy, 75% lightning res, 34 points

Telekinesis and 34 points

Energy Shield. No Damage reduction and no absorption.

World Stone: Souls, exploding mob and Vipers → dead, almost immediately

She did

Mephisto and Diablo fine but not

Baal.

ceving wrote: 2 months ago

varangium wrote: 2 months ago

- It's easier to boost mana than health with items like

Frostburn, soj, etc. Also rings and uniques tend to have higher +mana than +life. But you just have the frostburns and not the SOJ, so you are getting only +40%.
- Super fast regen with Insight. But you don't have Insight on merc. Mana regen is still better than health, but w/o Insight it's not too crazy unless you have a really high mana pool with an all out ES build.

Max Mana regeneration only dies to souls. They drain faster than any regeneration.

I tried it offline: 350 energy, 75% lightning res, 34 points

Telekinesis and 34 points

Energy Shield. No Damage reduction and no absorption.

World Stone: Souls, exploding mob and Vipers → dead, almost immediately

She did

Mephisto and Diablo fine but not

Baal.

I run 20 hard points into TK and level 40 ES with skillers, soj, maras/fcr ammy etc, and also CTA and mana charms. After CTA I have around 3300 mana/800 life if I am running 105 fcr, and if I drop down an fcr tier and use frostburns I think it is around 3800. At level 40 ES, 5% of damage goes to health, but level 34 is 11%, so it is a decent amount more. Also I use a vipermagi for 13 magic damage reduction, meaning it takes a hit of 13*20=260 elemental damage before anything elemental touches my health. I could have a bit more life and mana, but I balance magic find and run an upgraded vipermagi taking a little more strength. Also my skillers have

Gold find and faster run walk, not life, just because I'm generally fine and don't need more life. I use

Cham in a socket for QoL also. I play on console where you can't TP as precisely so I like the FRW to more precisely position my sorc and also to pick up all that

Gold

If I went full life skillers, and ran a non upgraded vmagi, I could probably hit 1000 life/4000 mana with frostburns, which would be cool, but is unnecessary in softcore.

But without fully maxed gear, I understand it is different. Also I use

Nova, which is actually a pretty good defensive skill as it 360's around you and knocks back all enemies. And I never go into hit recovery myself with only 5% of attack going to my health. So essentially I go into any mob, they have a split second to try to damage me, and then after that they are in constant hit recovery / get obliterated by

Nova.

I have no fear teleporting anywhere, and only time I have died is when I forgot to cast ES. I do have to be careful around souls and dolls in the sense I cannot just be completely unaware of my surroundings and blindingly spam

Nova, but they are not particularly scary or threatening. For souls I have to make sure I tp quickly versus stand still if they start launching lightning at me, and then just tp close enough to hit them with a

Nova or two. For dolls, I'm generally fine spamming

Nova immediately after I tp somewhere. Even if there are a few dolls in exploding distance, I can take a few explosions and the

Nova pushes the rest back. But I can't like delay and let all the dolls surround me, and then hit

Nova.

Blood mana curse when combined with Cure is just a mild annoyance, not a huge deal, but it does require being more judicious with

Nova casts until the 5-10 seconds after which it wears off.

For

Baal, sometimes I have to use 1 rejuv if he mana burns me or blood mana curses me.

varangium wrote: 2 months ago

Semirotta wrote: 2 months ago

ceving wrote: 2 months ago

Feel free to go into detail about what "proper endgame gear" might be.

Meant like good runeword armor and weapon with decent helmet. There are many to choose and it all depends what your build is and needs are.

Most people don't realize that the merc survives because the main char draws the fire, and the main char kills the boss quickly. Mercs are 8x nerfed versus bosses (1/4 attack damage and 2x damage received). Even with "proper" gear, few mercs can truly take down a boss 1v1.

But it kind of goes back to how it is a theoretically interesting, but arguably practically pointless challenge. Best to just make the main char powerful enough that it kills quickly and can take more than a few blows without ever being in danger on hard core.

Also note I accidentally said

Frost Nova not

Frozen Orb on my prior post. Have edited.

Never have I ever used myself as the meatshield. That is my mercs job, to keep the attention away from me, the player.

I'm pretty sure that Act 2 Insight + Cure one can do the job nicely.

But Act 5 shouldn't have much troubles either because he is mega tanky, although I would assume that Cure has advantage over Andi's/Arreat's LL but don't quote me on that one.

Another easy solution is any one paired with full Enchantress because fully synergized

Enchant will just melt her in seconds.

And for

Mephisto you can just

Chain Lightning him to the death over the moat, no need for Merc or anything. Just be careful of his lightning which he sometimes manage to throw it can easily one-shot you (well I don't know with ES because I never play with that)...