2.4 A5 Frenzy Barb Merc

The act 5

Frenzy merc works great with a character that uses

Conviction on themselves: either a paladin or an Infinity spearzon. I've been using one with Sazabi's Grand Tribute and Lawbringer. Super affordable, he hits well because

Conviction reduces enemy defense, he has a large life pool from the full set bonus, he procs

Decrepify, and does extra damage to undead.

One, who likes this swift boy, must try him with upped

Eth

Headstriker socketed with

Shael and Grief. AF and

Guardian Angel, too.

basicnecromancy wrote: 2 years ago

One, who likes this swift boy, must try him with upped

Eth

Headstriker socketed with

Shael and Grief. AF and

Guardian Angel, too.

I read that they were BIS because of the dmg calculated as for 2 handed sword but they fixed it recently, is that true?

seanbizon wrote: 2 years ago

basicnecromancy wrote: 2 years ago

One, who likes this swift boy, must try him with upped

Eth

Headstriker socketed with

Shael and Grief. AF and

Guardian Angel, too.

I read that they were BIS because of the dmg calculated as for 2 handed sword but they fixed it recently, is that true?

Oh, I didn't mean that bug. I mean,

Eth

Headstriker is an absoulte monster on A5 merc. And Grief is, well, Grief.

I don't want to pull a new topic so here are my questions:

1- My Barb has this merc. He wears upped

Guardian Angel with socket,

Eth

Headstriker with socket, 40/399 Grief and

Arreat's Face with socket. So, is there a IAS break point for merc? I didn't find any from web in some calculators but I'd like to here if anyone knows about it. What'd you use those sockets? Maybe one with AR but the rest?

2- Is Last Wish worth giving it merc with upped

Eth

Headstriker? Or maybe with Grief?

Life Tap,

Fade procs and Might aura seem perfect but does it actualy worth? I really want to see it in action but it is beyond expensive after all.

3- And what is the optimal way to increase his attack rating? Especially while with Diablo he misses a lot.

Thanks in advance.

basicnecromancy wrote: 2 years ago

I don't want to pull a new topic so here are my questions:

1- My Barb has this merc. He wears upped

Guardian Angel with socket,

Eth

Headstriker with socket, 40/399 Grief and

Arreat's Face with socket. So, is there a IAS break point for merc? I didn't find any from web in some calculators but I'd like to here if anyone knows about it. What'd you use those sockets? Maybe one with AR but the rest?

2- Is Last Wish worth giving it merc with upped

Eth

Headstriker? Or maybe with Grief?

Life Tap,

Fade procs and Might aura seem perfect but does it actualy worth? I really want to see it in action but it is beyond expensive after all.

3- And what is the optimal way to increase his attack rating? Especially while with Diablo he misses a lot.

Thanks in advance.

Disclaimer: Numbers referenced taken from maxroll planner so if they're off, so is this

Generally speaking, unless things have changed (which would be news to me),

Frenzy considers your MH IAS but not your OH. So make sure your Grief is in the MH.

With the 40 IAS that gives you, your merc hits the 9 frame

Cap at 6 stacks of

Frenzy. From that point forward, no further IAS will make a difference. For stacks 1-5 however, it might.
With 0 and 1 stack, you're still at 11 frames. 20 more IAS would push that to 10 at 0 stacks. 30 more IAS has you reaching the 9

Cap as early as 2 stacks (3 stacks with 20).
To hit 9 with 0 stacks, you'd need 65 added IAS which isn't going to happen in your setup. To hit it at 1 stack, you'd still need 43 more which is also not going to happen.

Based on the above, I would say it depends on how and where you play. If your merc's

Frenzy never drops once it is built up because you move from mob to mob fast enough, I would be fine with the 6 stack break and just stick with the 40 IAS from Grief, plowing the rest into more dmg (and anti-freeze).
If you do lose stacks repeatedly and start from scratch, you could put in 2 40/15s to get 30 more IAS but keep in mind that those would have to be in your arreat's and guardian as

Headstriker IAS won't count (hence you not reaching the above 43 as well). Because of that, you won't have room for an anti-freeze

Cham anymore, meaning you need to deal with that. I for one would only consider that if you play in areas where your merc never gets frozen.

Generally speaking though, since OH IAS won't count and you (read: I) would want a

Cham for anti-freeze, the question is really just "add 15 IAS or not add any?" imo. Adding 15 IAS as opposed to 0 would mean:
- You hit 10 frames at 1 stack (as opposed to 2)
- You hit 9 frames at 4 stacks (as opposed to 6)

That may well be worth it if you keep losing stacks. But if not, you'd probably get more out of focusing entirely on dmg, rather than dmg/ias.

As for Last Wish: I may get lynched for this but in my opinion, LW is the single most overrated piece of gear in this entire game and pretty much always worse than significantly cheaper alternatives.

Attack rating is a pain for a

Frenzy merc, that's just the sad truth of it. You could throw some AR in via sockets but beyond that, you either change up the gear entirely or you take away the need for AR yourself (

Battle Cry works wonders for hit chance).
Level is also a factor in hit chance btw. The lower your merc's level, the worse he'll perform against higher lvl mobs.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

basicnecromancy wrote: 2 years ago

I don't want to pull a new topic so here are my questions:

1- My Barb has this merc. He wears upped

Guardian Angel with socket,

Eth

Headstriker with socket, 40/399 Grief and

Arreat's Face with socket. So, is there a IAS break point for merc? I didn't find any from web in some calculators but I'd like to here if anyone knows about it. What'd you use those sockets? Maybe one with AR but the rest?

2- Is Last Wish worth giving it merc with upped

Eth

Headstriker? Or maybe with Grief?

Life Tap,

Fade procs and Might aura seem perfect but does it actualy worth? I really want to see it in action but it is beyond expensive after all.

3- And what is the optimal way to increase his attack rating? Especially while with Diablo he misses a lot.

Thanks in advance.

Disclaimer: Numbers referenced taken from maxroll planner so if they're off, so is this

Generally speaking, unless things have changed (which would be news to me),

Frenzy considers your MH IAS but not your OH. So make sure your Grief is in the MH.

With the 40 IAS that gives you, your merc hits the 9 frame

Cap at 6 stacks of

Frenzy. From that point forward, no further IAS will make a difference. For stacks 1-5 however, it might.
With 0 and 1 stack, you're still at 11 frames. 20 more IAS would push that to 10 at 0 stacks. 30 more IAS has you reaching the 9

Cap as early as 2 stacks (3 stacks with 20).
To hit 9 with 0 stacks, you'd need 65 added IAS which isn't going to happen in your setup. To hit it at 1 stack, you'd still need 43 more which is also not going to happen.

Based on the above, I would say it depends on how and where you play. If your merc's

Frenzy never drops once it is built up because you move from mob to mob fast enough, I would be fine with the 6 stack break and just stick with the 40 IAS from Grief, plowing the rest into more dmg (and anti-freeze).
If you do lose stacks repeatedly and start from scratch, you could put in 2 40/15s to get 30 more IAS but keep in mind that those would have to be in your arreat's and guardian as

Headstriker IAS won't count (hence you not reaching the above 43 as well). Because of that, you won't have room for an anti-freeze

Cham anymore, meaning you need to deal with that. I for one would only consider that if you play in areas where your merc never gets frozen.

Generally speaking though, since OH IAS won't count and you (read: I) would want a

Cham for anti-freeze, the question is really just "add 15 IAS or not add any?" imo. Adding 15 IAS as opposed to 0 would mean:
- You hit 10 frames at 1 stack (as opposed to 2)
- You hit 9 frames at 4 stacks (as opposed to 6)

That may well be worth it if you keep losing stacks. But if not, you'd probably get more out of focusing entirely on dmg, rather than dmg/ias.

As for Last Wish: I may get lynched for this but in my opinion, LW is the single most overrated piece of gear in this entire game and pretty much always worse than significantly cheaper alternatives.

Attack rating is a pain for a

Frenzy merc, that's just the sad truth of it. You could throw some AR in via sockets but beyond that, you either change up the gear entirely or you take away the need for AR yourself (

Battle Cry works wonders for hit chance).
Level is also a factor in hit chance btw. The lower your merc's level, the worse he'll perform against higher lvl mobs.

First of all, thanks for the comprehensive answer again, as always.

I mostly farm Trav and CS with this WW Barb lvl 85) and he and merc actually work well. The reason I consider Last Wish is that it's might aura can speed up the process and it's

Life Tap proc can significantly increase the survival chance of the merc as well as

Fade proc for that matter. I'd like to try it but when it actually possible for me, that is.

For the

Frenzy stack, yeah, I don't want to use Enigma on Barb so he generally loses stacks. But what you explained and after that what I tried on maxroll, too, I can say that in MH with Grief,

Cham in AF and 40 or near ED jewel in GA will do okay, I guess. And of course I can try 15/40 jewels but I don't have one, only plain ED ones and they are also extremely expensive.

Or maybe if I find proper rare jewels with attack rating, they can work, too.

Thanks again.

Trav Run is really fast.
I don't think you will see

Fade and

Life Tap proc often.

basicnecromancy wrote: 2 years ago

...and it's

Life Tap proc can significantly increase the survival chance of the merc...

Sadly, that is only true on bosses. The blind proc reliably immediately overwrites

Life Tap on the merc's target (except for bosses as those are immune to blind), making the

Life Tap itself pretty much useless for him. It would help you if you attack a different target that got hit by

Life Tap but isn't being blinded but that's about it.

Might would help you as the barb, true, but if you're the main dmg dealer you're typically better off with an a2 might merc instead. If your merc is the one steamrolling things, just max out his dmg. With a decent bit of gear, he should also not have any survivability issues whatsoever.

Personally, before I switched back to A2 for everything (i.e. when my horker still let his merc handle things and just cleaned up afterwards), I used a

Cham'd arreat's, Fortitude, Grief and <tons of viable options for OH from Grief over Kingslayer to

Headstriker, depending on what you really farm with him> and he just plowed through everything with no problems whatsoever. The comparatively little leech from arreat's is more than enough to keep him going, thanks to the speed and overall dmg output he has.
(Though yes, Fortitude does come with the downside of the armor proc resulting in a thankfully teeny tiny chance of blowing up corpses - Chains of Honor makes for a solid alternative)

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

basicnecromancy wrote: 2 years ago

...and it's

Life Tap proc can significantly increase the survival chance of the merc...

Sadly, that is only true on bosses. The blind proc reliably immediately overwrites

Life Tap on the merc's target (except for bosses as those are immune to blind), making the

Life Tap itself pretty much useless for him. It would help you if you attack a different target that got hit by

Life Tap but isn't being blinded but that's about it.

Might would help you as the barb, true, but if you're the main dmg dealer you're typically better off with an a2 might merc instead. If your merc is the one steamrolling things, just max out his dmg. With a decent bit of gear, he should also not have any survivability issues whatsoever.

Personally, before I switched back to A2 for everything (i.e. when my horker still let his merc handle things and just cleaned up afterwards), I used a

Cham'd arreat's, Fortitude, Grief and <tons of viable options for OH from Grief over Kingslayer to

Headstriker, depending on what you really farm with him> and he just plowed through everything with no problems whatsoever. The comparatively little leech from arreat's is more than enough to keep him going, thanks to the speed and overall dmg output he has.
(Though yes, Fortitude does come with the downside of the armor proc resulting in a thankfully teeny tiny chance of blowing up corpses - Chains of Honor makes for a solid alternative)

I guess I will stick to Grief,

Headstriker, AF and GA set up for the Merc. If I get enough rich to spend some to Last Wish then I can try it but now it seems not that necessary. I don't want to use Act 2 Merc, though. I use them with my Pala and Necro and I kind of like Act 5 Merc so it's how it is now.

But then, I can change something about my Barb. I use Grief 37/364 and Beast BA on him and maybe I can try double Grief to see the difference.

Thanks again.

mockingbirdreal wrote: 2 years ago

Trav Run is really fast.
I don't think you will see

Fade and

Life Tap proc often.

Yeah, but I farm CS, too. And maybe I want to try Ubers as a challenge.

Just did a couple of run with Drac and HoJ to test.
Seem like the blind overwrites

Life Tap but I am not sure 100% because it's all red (hydras and curses) so I can't see clearly.

Does Mercenary

Frenzy work similar to Barbarian

Frenzy such that when there are two or more monsters next to you, you hit one with the main hand and a different one with the offhand?

This is significant because the

Life Tap proc from Last Wish will be overridden by Hit Blinds Target whenever Last Wish hits something, but if you have a different weapon in main hand that doesn't have Hit Blinds Target, then your main-hand target won't have

Life Tap overridden and you will be able to enjoy being unkillable.

AFAIK however, the best weapons for act 5

Frenzy merc are double ethereal upped headstrikers. I remember seeing a demo where a streamer (I think Dbrusnki?) showed that double upped ethereal

Headstriker act 5

Frenzy merc cleared Eldritch faster than the same mercenary with double Grief.

mockingbirdreal wrote: 2 years ago

Just did a couple of run with Drac and HoJ to test.
Seem like the blind overwrites

Life Tap but I am not sure 100% because it's all red (hydras and curses) so I can't see clearly.

It 100% does. Only mobs that are immune to blind will keep

Life Tap when struck with a Hit Blinds Target weapon.

basicnecromancy wrote: 2 years ago

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

basicnecromancy wrote: 2 years ago

...and it's

Life Tap proc can significantly increase the survival chance of the merc...

Sadly, that is only true on bosses. The blind proc reliably immediately overwrites

Life Tap on the merc's target (except for bosses as those are immune to blind), making the

Life Tap itself pretty much useless for him. It would help you if you attack a different target that got hit by

Life Tap but isn't being blinded but that's about it.

Might would help you as the barb, true, but if you're the main dmg dealer you're typically better off with an a2 might merc instead. If your merc is the one steamrolling things, just max out his dmg. With a decent bit of gear, he should also not have any survivability issues whatsoever.

Personally, before I switched back to A2 for everything (i.e. when my horker still let his merc handle things and just cleaned up afterwards), I used a

Cham'd arreat's, Fortitude, Grief and <tons of viable options for OH from Grief over Kingslayer to

Headstriker, depending on what you really farm with him> and he just plowed through everything with no problems whatsoever. The comparatively little leech from arreat's is more than enough to keep him going, thanks to the speed and overall dmg output he has.
(Though yes, Fortitude does come with the downside of the armor proc resulting in a thankfully teeny tiny chance of blowing up corpses - Chains of Honor makes for a solid alternative)

I guess I will stick to Grief,

Headstriker, AF and GA set up for the Merc. If I get enough rich to spend some to Last Wish then I can try it but now it seems not that necessary. I don't want to use Act 2 Merc, though. I use them with my Pala and Necro and I kind of like Act 5 Merc so it's how it is now.

But then, I can change something about my Barb. I use Grief 37/364 and Beast BA on him and maybe I can try double Grief to see the difference.

Thanks again.

That actually changes things a tad:
If you use Beast, meaning your merc gets

Fanaticism off of you, then you have no reason whatsoever to give him any IAS. Between Grief in his main hand and fana alone, he'll hit the 9 frames

Cap even at 0 stacks. (Even if the Grief only had 35 IAS; at 1 stack for a Grief with less than 35 IAS)

Trubbs wrote: 2 years ago

Does Mercenary

Frenzy work similar to Barbarian

Frenzy such that when there are two or more monsters next to you, you hit one with the main hand and a different one with the offhand?

This is significant because the

Life Tap proc from Last Wish will be overridden by Hit Blinds Target whenever Last Wish hits something, but if you have a different weapon in main hand that doesn't have Hit Blinds Target, then your main-hand target won't have

Life Tap overridden and you will be able to enjoy being unkillable.

AFAIK however, the best weapons for act 5

Frenzy merc are double ethereal upped headstrikers. I remember seeing a demo where a streamer (I think Dbrusnki?) showed that double upped ethereal

Headstriker act 5

Frenzy merc cleared Eldritch faster than the same mercenary with double Grief.

I never specifically tested that but from my time of using a

Frenzy merc, I would say it works differently. He seemed to very consistently focus down only 1 target at a time. And he solo'd trav for me while I still had him so he was most certainly being swarmed by plenty of other viable targets.

Take that with a grain of salt though since I didn't specifically pay attention to testing that.

I found that keeping

Demon Limb in the stsh and using

Enchant on Merc makes him hit so much more often - plus gives added fire damage - not soo effektive in hell though. For really tough encounters, or making the runs swifter. I keep Gavel of Pain on switch for

Amplify Damage.

Made it my task to theory craft a gg

Frenzy merc. So far these are my best in slots.

Weapon

Eth

Headstriker upped,

Perfect Amethyst

Eth

Headstriker upped,

Perfect Amethyst [for dmg]
OR

Azurewrath [for chaos/baal run safety greater than any act 2 defensive setup]

Armor
Fortitude

Helm
Rare

Tiara 2 barb, 30 frw, 7 max dmg, 98% bonus attack rating based on char lvl, 60 attack rating, 8% life leech, Jewel 100 attack rating 7% FHR OR you can just get by with a

Perfect Diamond for 100 attack rating OR you can opt for a

Cham rune to get Cannot Be Frozen OR a Max Damage Jewel since act V mercs take +Max damage and it gets multiplied by 3 before being doubled if you're using 1 handed weapons, then doubled again due to the

Headstriker having 100% Deadly Strike (so 26 mx dmg * 3 = 78 * 2 = 156 [what it would be if you saw it as your weapon dmg] * 2 DS = 312 before off weapon ed%.

Secret is that the act v mercs major drawback from being gg is his chance to hit. With

Frenzy spiking up his attack speed, we should be focusing 100% of our socket and item selection towards optimizing his attack rating or chance to hit. The faster he can land his first hit, the more potential dmg he will have, and the more life he can leech. The

Tiara with the life leech and 1% bonus attack rating per char level is the must have item, this makes him op. With a base attack rating before his items and skills of say 1500 at level 98, the bonus from the

Tiara is more than him having flat ar increase from dual angelics. Once you add in 300 attack rating from the

Perfect Amethyst socketed in the Headstrikers, he is hitting most attacks. I am running a poison necro and when casting amp dmg on the monsters he is a one minion fishy mancer build.

Sherloc09 wrote: 2 years ago

The

Tiara with the life leech and 1% bonus attack rating per char level is the must have item, this makes him op.

He sounds like a monster I really want to try this when I'm rich enough for the swords. I feel like it may take years to find such a Tiara...

undertow wrote: 2 years ago

Sherloc09 wrote: 2 years ago

The

Tiara with the life leech and 1% bonus attack rating per char level is the must have item, this makes him op.

He sounds like a monster I really want to try this when I'm rich enough for the swords. I feel like it may take years to find such a Tiara...

So, just tested

Amplify Damage Eldritch, took 12.31 seconds on p8. I made a swap and found that you're fine just using

Perfect Amethyst in the Swords. He's a wrecking crew. Only issue is having to keep the

Iron Golem alive if you're a necro, so you'll need

Raise Skeleton or

Revive to escort the

Iron Golem around while the merc wrecks everything else.

Also attempted a run with 1 Ethereal

Headstriker and 1

Azurewrath. Both using a

Perfect Amethyst in the socket. Eldritch p8 took 19.89 seconds using

Amplify Damage. I didn't check, but I think Eldritch was Stone Skin based on how many hits it took to kill him.