Best Act 1 fire merc Armor?

Hey all, I just farmed enough runes to make a Faith, but to get the most out of the runeword I was thinking I’d put it on a merc. That way my summoner necro, javazon, barb and even future Bowazon could all benefit from the

Fanaticism aura.

I have a Flickering Flame I made for an act 3 merc, plus I heard

Exploding Arrow is awesome.

I know it takes any fire damage on the user and adds it to the skill damage, so what does everyone think would be the best armour for an act 1 fire merc to max the damage?

Also what would be the best base for a merc Faith?

Thanks for any advice/feedback!

Matriarchal Bow or

Grand Matron Bow to be able to have +3 to bow skills
MB has faster base speed
GBM has higher raw damage.
It depends on your choice and your merc's

Helm, armor.

I suggest ethereal

Shaftstop socketed with

Um as armor for survivability.

Or a classical

Eth Treachery should work just fine as well for the armor. As for

Helm, why not try the Delirium to make a fire Manic Pixie Dreamgirl ?

mockingbirdreal wrote: 2 years ago

Matriarchal Bow or

Grand Matron Bow to be able to have +3 to bow skills
MB has faster base speed
GBM has higher raw damage.
It depends on your choice and your merc's

Helm, armor.

Can the act 1 merc use these? If so oh boy!

Great advice all!

Follow-up question: has anyone tried a bunch of facets in a rare/unique armour that has multiple sockets? Is it worth considering? I’m getting a bunch from my trav runs, so I could potentially put them to use

Nate wrote: 2 years ago

Can the act 1 merc use these? If so oh boy!

Yep, she now can.

Now I just need to find a

Matriarchal Bow with +3 skills... either with 4 sockets or rolled in the cube.

looks like I’m going to be doing some cow runs

Nate wrote: 2 years ago

Now I just need to find a

Matriarchal Bow with +3 skills... either with 4 sockets or rolled in the cube.

looks like I’m going to be doing some cow runs

Yup, they're not easy to find...

Highly recommend checking out the Manic Pixie Dreamgirl guide if you haven't already - Necrarch was alluding to this The guide & comments have full details regarding gear and IAS breakpoint calculations.

Manic Pixie Dreamgirl: An Alternative Endgame Hireling

I do have

Matriarchal Bow with +3 skills and 4OS that I am willing to part with, however not sure of price evaluation.

Revolana wrote: 2 years ago

I do have

Matriarchal Bow with +3 skills and 4OS that I am willing to part with, however not sure of price evaluation.

Non-superior ones seem to move for either

Mal or

Ist, but feel free to check it yourself, of course (I cross referenced both here and another trading site, not d2jsp).

As far as I remember Nate only does solo self found, I think.

Yea I’m ssf offline, sometimes i wish I were back on bnet for trading...oh well.

So I guess the best armour would be Dragon? Coupled with Flickering Flame and Faith would probably be a killer combo. I do have a spare

Sur sitting in my stash, but I’d still need to find a

Lo, and if I found that I’d probably make a Fortitude first, wa-wa

Yea one of these days I’ll do the manic pixie Dream girl, I just made that Flickering Flame and want to get some more use out of it

Nate wrote: 2 years ago

So I guess the best armour would be Dragon? Coupled with Flickering Flame and Faith would probably be a killer combo. I do have a spare

Sur sitting in my stash, but I’d still need to find a

Lo, and if I found that I’d probably make a Fortitude first, wa-wa

Don't. Without synergies +

Conviction, your Dragon armor + Flickering Flame deal very low damage.

Well one of the primarily uses will be for my necro, so no worries on

Conviction, also the main effect from Flickering Flame and Dragon i was thinking is the added fire damage to the merc, which if balanced out with the physical from the necro and Ice from a potential Bowazon I thought would be ok...?

Also found a +3

Matriarchal Bow at the Moo-moo farm, rolled it in the cube for an impressive 2 open sockets ... inspiring

According to maxroll mercs can provide up to 2 auras. Stacking more auras leads to the deactivation of one of them. So Faith, Flickering Flame and Dragon is a bad idea.

K, good to know, looks like Treachery is the winner

Also don’t know about Delirium for a necro because

Confuse may take away from amp damage.

I rolled a +3

Grand Matron Bow: 5 sockets...the grind is real

A bit off topic, but looking for that

Matriarchal Bow, from silospen it looks like basically any archer in act 1 hell has the best odds of dropping them, way better than cows it seems. Can anyone confirm this with their experience?

Why use merc Act 1 for your necro ?
People use usually Act 2 Might aura.

mockingbirdreal wrote: 2 years ago

Why use merc Act 1 for your necro ?
People use usually Act 2 Might aura.

That’s a good question, the problem with raised skeletons is their attack rating is ... well... hot garbage.

The best ways to make them more effective is to increase their attack rating, attack speed and movement speed. The act 2

Blessed Aim merc gives them like +300% attack rating which increases their chance to hit (although it’s still lowish). Their attack speed is nerfed because they are restricted to attacking every 30ish frames, so increasing their attack speed-which reduces their actual attack speed and the frames between attacks is really handy. And increasing their movement speed really helps, this reduces how long it takes them to get from one target to another (Harmony is awesome for this, but telestomping works too).

So if you want to improve your Skellys the priority should be to first off try and increase attack speed, second movement speed and last increase their damage (assuming you have max Skellies possible).

The act 2 might merc is best suited to buff chars or summons who already hit often, like player characters, the merc themselves and Valkyries.

The fanatism aura is a good balance of attack speed, attack rating and damage, plus its good for other characters such as my barbs, Amazon’s, etc. So it’s an economical rune word for us offline players, all things considered.

Hope that makes sense, and sorry I don’t have the references to back it up, but it’s out there!