Can your merc solo hell? Post their build here!

So after you do a good mf farming session, you’re probably like me:

got a stash full of gear, only some of it actually good, you’re sick of doing the same run hundreds of times, even sick of your build & character, and you’ve forgotten how tedious it is to grind to level 27 and gather Kalim’s body parts.

Now you’re ready to convert your gem mule into an actual character (everyone had a gem mule at some point, don’t lie and don’t judge!), but what to choose?

I’ve always been interested in builds where the player doesn’t actively kill stuff (but not you trap assassins, you don’t count).

So what’s your favourite way to empower your merc to win the game for you? And how do you do it?

Do you

Enchant?
Do you emit an aura of

Concentration?
Do you

Lower Resist?
Do you

Shout

Battle Orders?
Or are you one of the other classes that use

Demon Limb, Call To Arms and other charges?

Do they wear anything unexpected?

How does your build compliment them?

I wanna try a build like this but I legitimately don’t know which way to go… is anyone truly “best” at becoming the merc’s merc?

Thx for all recommendations! And stories

I think a

Prayer Act2 merc with Insight and Cure wearing

Guardian Angel, having either a Treachery prebuff or providing

Salvation as a paladin is nigh unkillable.
Might take time but eventually he should be able to solo all act bosses.

I even think that's the perfect (practical) fit for a super cheap fhodin CS farmer, because

Conviction is superfluous for that.

May prefer

Skin of the Flayed One for the Armor over

Guardian Angel for more leech.

A5 full Sazabi seems very strong too.

Teebling wrote: 1 year ago

Manic pixie dream girl Act I merc is the most interesting hireling build I've seen posted so far.

I use her with my trapsin, she is just incredible. Not an enemy that comes nearby, but less for pure damage than complete crowd control.

So I finally found an

Eth reapers toll, figured I’ll give Emilio that (

Shael’d) with fort and Andy’s visage (

Ruby jewel of ferver), and I’d be a pally, with max

Concentration, holding a Beast and Exile, wearing a Cure, maybe a Bramble, but probably Enigma to reposition him - being that powerful he just might not care about the monsters.

I imagine he’d be able to handle pretty much anything

I really want to try a build that revolves around act 3 merc, but that means it has to be a paladin or necro...

But I think even with an okay gear, a lightning merc with a paladin running maxed

Conviction could do all the work, as long as he's not getting hit too often.
And a lightning merc with griffon's and Crescent Moon could probably clear p1 in ... okay-ish time? Not sure about that one though.

I'm only playing casually, so I don't think I will ever be able to try a fully geared act 3 merc, but I would be interested in seeing the results, if anyone wants to try it

I have a hard time believing that any merc tan truly solo hell. (but I'd love to see tha run)
My merc gets body slammed by succubi or the councel in less than half a second with active

Fade and >4k life.

never tried this but:
triple

Eth fort

Frenzy merc-
6000+ def, 60% ctc chillin armour, 40% deadly strike, 650 ave dam per sword
player-warcry barb w. demonlimb and lifetap

Wand on switch

krathkor wrote: 1 year ago

never tried this but:
triple

Eth fort

Frenzy merc-
6000+ def, 60% ctc chillin armour, 40% deadly strike, 650 ave dam per sword
player-warcry barb w. demonlimb and lifetap

Wand on switch

Actually, the def on weap versions would stack multiplicatively with the armor one so you should be able to pump him not just to 6k+ but to something like 35k+ defense before chilling. Though that same def would then be additive with chilling making that bonus a bit smaller, probably resulting in somewhere right around 45 to 50k defense, given solid armors (sacred, upped headpiece).

The deadly would be at 20% though. Each weapon only gets its own bonus, they don't just add together.

Either way, interesting idea..may have to play around with that.

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

krathkor wrote: 1 year ago

never tried this but:
triple

Eth fort

Frenzy merc-
6000+ def, 60% ctc chillin armour, 40% deadly strike, 650 ave dam per sword
player-warcry barb w. demonlimb and lifetap

Wand on switch

Actually, the def on weap versions would stack multiplicatively with the armor one so you should be able to pump him not just to 6k+ but to something like 35k+ defense before chilling. Though that same def would then be additive with chilling making that bonus a bit smaller, probably resulting in somewhere right around 45 to 50k defense, given solid armors (sacred, upped headpiece).

The deadly would be at 20% though. Each weapon only gets its own bonus, they don't just add together.

Either way, interesting idea..may have to play around with that.

forgot about the hat, andy's w. jewel !

Or..you know..go with a barb, add

Shout for even more def..sheesh
Beast + LW on the barb to hit max attack speed and bump the dmg a bit. He doesn't die. Like..he just doesn't (short of tanking ubers but even then it takes a while). Res is massively overcapped with tri-fort which is kinda nice because even lower res doesn't matter to him anymore.

The damage is ok albeit nothing stellar. Not necessarily something you wanna watch solo as it does take quite a while, even on P1.

The one problem (other than complete failure on phys immunes of course) is that the chance to flee on Fortitude weapons makes everything run off before he can really kill it. That does get a tad annoying to say the least.

Nate wrote: 1 year ago

So I finally found an

Eth reapers toll, figured I’ll give Emilio that (

Shael’d) with fort and Andy’s visage (

Ruby jewel of ferver), and I’d be a pally, with max

Concentration, holding a Beast and Exile, wearing a Cure, maybe a Bramble, but probably Enigma to reposition him - being that powerful he just might not care about the monsters.

I imagine he’d be able to handle pretty much anything

That's very similar to my chosen A2 merc build (Reapers, Andariels, Fort, but with level 34 Fanat.

So I did some testing in my hammerdin, the act 2 might merc,

Eth reapers, fort, Andy’s, Beast, Exile, Cure and

Concentration does make the merc a killing machine, even on p7 and the p7

Terror zones I tried. His res are all maxed and beyond and he hits for 2-11k, which is pretty sweet.

There were 3 issues I found though:

1. He gets bogged down when there’s lots of enemies that also

Revive, this one I solve by telestomping the one that revives them all.
2. The player’s survivability goes way down with these gear pieces, now you could probably make this up with charms, I haven’t fully optimized the build yet, but I did die a few times due to low fire res in the

Chaos Sanctuary.
3. While he 1-shots normal monsters and even elites, against act bosses he lacks punch, this I’m sure could be overcome with an up’d gface or appropriately socketed

Giant Skull or coa.

Otherwise it’s a solid mf set-up - just stack mf everywhere you can on the pally, you don’t need any other than res (maybe a bit of fcr, but you don’t need to tell very much)