Merc travincal setup

Hi,
If u use weapon on merc without lifesteal, is there any chance for merc to survive without

Guardian Angel?

Currently using

Guardian Angel with either

Crown of Thieves or

Vampire Gaze. But i am kinda tired to switch setup just for

Travincal and would like something general purpose.

Currently trying

Vampire Gaze with gladiators bane, but flat magic damage reduction seems like not enough.

Another option i would think of is Chains of Honor with double vexed

Crown of Ages?

sO

Guardian Angel isnt giving you enough res. Its just upping your max res. Duriels shell is a really good/cheap merc armor. And you can up it for more defense. OR you can Look up Treachery for an armor and put it in a 3 soc

Eth base. IT wont give you're merc any res. but the attack speed will be enough to keep them alive longer. And for helms Just go anything with high life steal. Vamp gaze is fine.

And If oneof the high council spawn with

Conviction aura your merc might die regardless of what they are wearing.

Short answer is "yes".

Longer answer:
Depends on the rest of your merc's gear and on you.

Crown of Thieves is really the only thing you "need" for trav because not only does it offer sufficient life steal in itself, it also adds to your extra gold (typically wanted for trav) and it is sufficient to

Cap your merc's fire res. Fire being the critical one as the single most dangerous thing for a merc in trav is the hydras.

Now, if your merc is running around with a total crap weapon then yeah, he's still going to get wrecked because no dmg = no leech. But if he runs around with say an

Eth gp Obedience or really any solid dmg weapon choice, he'll be fine. Even more so if you can add a Fortitude.

The latter would

Cap the remaining res, overcap fire even more (helping in case of

Conviction) and adds massively to his dmg.
Duress would be a solid budget alternative.

Mind you, if you let your merc face-tank a full set of hydras while the council spawned with

Conviction, he's pretty much guaranteed to die, regardless of his gear. But that's where you come in to take some of the heat off him. How and to what extent obviously depends on your overall build and strategy (does the merc do the killing? do you and he assists?) but in a full merc hork setup for example, you can just bunny-tank everything and he could frankly do an entire clear without any life leech whatsoever.


Generally speaking, you don't absolutely need anything for trav that you wouldn't want everywhere else as well. A solid weapon. Capped res. And some form of leech. I.e. weapon, Fortitude and really any leech helmet (matter of preference), same as most merc setups.


PS: Obedience and Duress work just fine in terms of making your merc kill stuff and survive but keep in mind that neither is typically the top-end choice. Especially if you're horking after your merc as both come with cold dmg that can blow up the corpses and deny your hork.

Well, I guess it kinda depends on your character.
The merc of my Wind druid was doing just fine with ethereal

Duriel's Shell and Andy before I could afford Forti.

Sanjozko wrote: 3 years ago

Hi,
If u use weapon on merc without lifesteal, is there any chance for merc to survive without

Guardian Angel?

Currently using

Guardian Angel with either

Crown of Thieves or

Vampire Gaze. But i am kinda tired to switch setup just for

Travincal and would like something general purpose.

Currently trying

Vampire Gaze with gladiators bane, but flat magic damage reduction seems like not enough.

Another option i would think of is Chains of Honor with double vexed

Crown of Ages?

no matter what fancy dress you put on your merc, you cannot beat a 20 year old bug. Well maybe you can, but it's far too much effort for its worth.

https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo2/commen ... _to_hydra/

https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo2/commen ... st_hydras/

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofdiablo/c ... _vs_hydra/

My barb is running a GA with

Um, Tals with

Um and weapon with 11 ar jewel brining him to 90 at lvl 85.

Gaze has cold damage but If you don't need corpses even better I guess.

Mercs weapon is Pride, with GA he can survive but tired of swapping gear. Maybe i could use

Vampire Gaze with GA outside of

Travincal too. If i would socket them with rare jewels with all res and fire or light res i could get 90 fire res and light res on him.

In theory i could use Chains of Honor or gladiators bane together with magic 3os

Tiara with 8ll and socket it with double

Vex or even triple

Vex in case of CoH.

Shop for a

Wand with

Life Tap that way every hit will recover him. Personally I aggro the council then run back to the side of the pool on the left with the poison spitter. It will pull 3-5 of them but merc takes them out no issues then run up for the rest. I also use a gavel of pain on my off hand to use Amp damage curse so they die in like 2-3 pokes. If you can afford it put a

Cham in his helmet cause the frozen slows him down, if not your Gladiators Bane is real cheap alternative for cannot be frozen. But without leech on a weapon I would recommend a

Life Tap

Wand.

Fire is what kills, so put

Ral in your merc's

Guardian Angel or helmet, and use

Crown of Thieves for the fire reistance & awesome life steal %