Act 3 fire merc - actually amazing!

Want a merc that can actually survive stuff like trav, choas, and

Baal runs while maxing out your fire res and giving you a level 37+

Enchant? Act 3 fire merc! He also takes out anything that’s not fire immune. I was curious how it would pair with my pure

Frenzy barb, and I am very impressed - I’ll bet you’ll be too!

Pros:
level 37+

Enchant - adds loads of ar, so no extra points needed in dex beyond min to wear gear for max chance to hit, adds a bit of dmg too,

Resist Fire aura - no need to get fire res from gear, and can free up a ring slot from

Dwarf Star for something better
ranged fire attack - gets those pesky enemies that stray away from your melee character, his

Fireball does ~3.5k damage which is actually not bad
Ranged merc ai - stays away from actual danger and doesn’t seem to agro monsters,
It’s fun!

Cons:
Cost: At least

Vex needed - Flickering Flame is a requirement, I bet Dragon and coh armour would also help, but I’m not there yet so a Lionheart works just as well
Pure fire dmg - if it’s fire immune, this guy won’t help

Gear: note +sorc skills won’t work on this guy, has to be +fire or +all skills to up his spells

Helm - Flickering Flame (+3 fire skills)
Weapon -

Hexfire (+3 fire skills), could use something +3 all skills, but I’m not putting my hoto on a merc
Shield - Spirit (+2 all skills), are there any +3 fire skills shields out there?
Armour - Lionheart (+strength & res), chains of honour (+2 skills, res and strength), Dragon (

Holy Fire aura - but wow I’m ssf offline, so that’s too expensive for me)

So who’s this merc for? He definitely adds value to a melee char (trav running barbs I’m looking at you!) especially one that isn’t hurting for a might/

Fanaticism aura. Also if your looking to augment your damage with fire and don’t need a mana aura, then yea he’ll help too. But if your a necro, hammerdin, fire sorc, or fire Druid, there’s probably better options.

Is it worth a

Vex? Not over other useful rune words like hoto/Exile, but if you already have those and a spare

Vex, then I’d say yes it’s worth it.

Try it out! Let me know what you think!

Also if someone can try this with a Dragon armour I’d be interested in the results!

Good luck

Well. I want to see how he performs with a Tesladin.

I was considering running one with my planned bladesin. Im missing just Phoenix which seems essential. AR is huge boost, fire damage is handy and i can use atmas scarab to break physical immunes

Just out of curiosity, what lvl is your merc to get him to 3.5k fireballs?

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Just out of curiosity, what lvl is your merc to get him to 3.5k fireballs?

85, yea sry I should have mentioned that!

That's...lower than expected actually.

Might have to give him another closer look. Albeit only for a couple of very specific builds, if at all.

guess + 3

Enchant /

Fireball

Ormus' Robes would be nice or 2 set bonus Trang-Oul's Avatar.

hmm hmm... this could be good with a tesladin indeed.

you would lose the +10 to skills and go down to +3, but you could push the fire aura even further to 44 with Hand of Justice if I'm not mistaken
might go boom indeed as the Hand of Justice also reduces fire res. nice.

They're still outclassed by every other merc, but I admit that the

Enchant is very convenient. Ran one with a Fanat zealot + Baranar's on switch — handled non-undead immunes nicely.

In case anyone is wondering: Oskills have the same restriction for mercs as they do for players; they're capped to +3 on native skills.

Udyret wrote: 2 years ago

guess + 3

Enchant /

Fireball

Ormus' Robes would be nice or 2 set bonus Trang-Oul's Avatar.

oooooh that sounds strong

Crispin wrote: 2 years ago

hmm hmm... this could be good with a tesladin indeed.

you would lose the +10 to skills and go down to +3, but you could push the fire aura even further to 44 with Hand of Justice if I'm not mistaken
might go boom indeed as the Hand of Justice also reduces fire res. nice.

Keep in mind that your merc won't have any

Fire Mastery or synergies to push that

Holy Fire so it really isn't worth it, sadly.

The

Enchant is certainly interesting though.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Crispin wrote: 2 years ago

hmm hmm... this could be good with a tesladin indeed.

you would lose the +10 to skills and go down to +3, but you could push the fire aura even further to 44 with Hand of Justice if I'm not mistaken
might go boom indeed as the Hand of Justice also reduces fire res. nice.

Keep in mind that your merc won't have any

Fire Mastery or synergies to push that

Holy Fire so it really isn't worth it, sadly.

The

Enchant is certainly interesting though.

is the aura so weak? even on 44?

Kind of, yeah. At that point, the AoE is fairly pointless (<100) and the attack dmg bonus (still <600) is never used on an A3 merc anyways.

Also just took a closer look (assuming maxroll isn't too far off on that one):
Pushing

Enchant well past 40 really isn't that hard. However, even with the theoretically massive AR boost that offers, it doesn't really do that much in the end, solely because the % AR is flat added to other % AR boni you already have, resulting in a relatively small overall increase (2-3% hit against DClone for the builds I looked at). By comparison, an A1's

Inner Sight, A5's

Battle Cry or even (if you have it) an A2's Infinity perform worlds better in the end as they actually drop target def which makes a much, much bigger difference.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Kind of, yeah. At that point, the AoE is fairly pointless (<100) and the attack dmg bonus (still <600) is never used on an A3 merc anyways.

Also just took a closer look (assuming maxroll isn't too far off on that one):
Pushing

Enchant well past 40 really isn't that hard. However, even with the theoretically massive AR boost that offers, it doesn't really do that much in the end, solely because the % AR is flat added to other % AR boni you already have, resulting in a relatively small overall increase (2-3% hit against DClone for the builds I looked at). By comparison, an A1's

Inner Sight, A5's

Battle Cry or even (if you have it) an A2's Infinity perform worlds better in the end as they actually drop target def which makes a much, much bigger difference.

Excellent points! Eventually I do want to get an act 1 with Faith and Infinity with act 2, and a crazy good

Battle Cry (did not consider this before), but those take much more high runes than are currently available to me. But for a

Vex, I’m having some good fun!

Also I want to thank everyone for their comments, you’ve all been very helpful and friendly! The posts on this forum make me think people can be mature enough to respectfully use the internet after all!

Nate wrote: 2 years ago

The posts on this forum make me think people can be mature enough to respectfully use the internet after all!

It's a trap!

This is the merc I used during the 2 pre-ladder weeks with a MA assassin build (C/S

Phoenix Strike with Phoenix), mainly for his

Enchant. I thought I was the only one using him until now ^^'
He upped my normal attack to around 10k AR and while his overall damage was not great, it was really noticeable against a few annoying low fire res monsters like Gloams.

Pros
- You don't need to keep him alive. Lvl40+

Enchant is easy to reach and last around 20 minutes. Nice for ubers.
- Opens up a lot of possibilities for melee builds, even those who don't usually struggle with AR (you can make different skill/gear decisions)
- Cheap

Cons
- Not even comparable to A2 Infinity for pure damage

I won't keep him on my assassin but I agree he is definitely worth trying.

I recently found one of these and been having some fun with it on my Pally

uniques/dragonscale-t756.html

Wonder if that would be better option that Spirit here?

EDIT: Just noticed it's Paladin only shield.. Nevermind!

I noticed something else. Unlike Rogues and

Harrogath Barbarians, which are classified as Amazons and Barbarians respectively (for +skill purposes), Eastern Sorcerors are not classified as Sorceresses. Trang-Oul's Avatar set (helm and armor - it's all a hireling can wear) provides +18 to

Fireball for non-sorceresses. +18 on top of already maxed and synergized by

Fire Bolt

Fireball.

I made a simulation with perfect endgame items and

Fireball damage with dual Trang (slightly) surpasses Flickering Flame +

Ormus' Robes combo. It does it at the expense of Firebolt, however, which is not to be completely ignored, since the hireling uses both skills.

Not working.

Trang Oul wrote: 2 years ago

I noticed something else. Unlike Rogues and

Harrogath Barbarians, which are classified as Amazons and Barbarians respectively (for +skill purposes), Eastern Sorcerors are not classified as Sorceresses. Trang-Oul's Avatar set (helm and armor - it's all a hireling can wear) provides +18 to

Fireball for non-sorceresses. +18 on top of already maxed and synergized by

Fire Bolt

Fireball.

I made a simulation with perfect endgame items and

Fireball damage with dual Trang (slightly) surpasses Flickering Flame +

Ormus' Robes combo. It does it at the expense of Firebolt, however, which is not to be completely ignored, since the hireling uses both skills.

Did you actually test this in-game? As I mentioned above, mercs are supposed to be capped at +3 for native Oskills (which is not the same thing as +skill class bonuses) just like players are.

No, but once I find both items, I'll try it.
(Or maybe someone already has them and can do a quick test?)