act 1, 3 and 4 mercs

regarding merc act2 vs act5.

I will always say that act5 is better.

I have recently changed my spearzon. I was wielding Infinity and had act5 merc.

Now I put Infinity on my act2 merc. My first idea was for him to use

Mancatcher so I can take that Infinity vs ubers. But his dmg was really low and he was dying all the time. So I got upset and made him 3rd Infinity this ladder and in

Eth GPA and almost perfect roll he cannot have just better weapon. What used to be his max dmg is now min dmg and he survives and kills more. I still have the feeling that my Emilio is drunker and addictive on full rejuvs. So I have to baby sit him all the time. With Enigma he is where he is suppose to be.

But there are always buts.

What I really dont like about act2 merc is his movement speed. Especially in

Chaos Sanctuary. He is always somewhere else so all those wraiths (or whatever is their name) they always target me with thier mana drain attacks and I drink mana potions like crazy ( plus the fact I use

Thunderstroke which has higher IAS than my previous

Spear infi - so I do more hits and it needs more mana). With act 5 merc he was taking way more dmg from those wraiths so less mana drain for me.

Also with act5 merc I knew that in any battle I could just leave PC and I knew he would tank all the dmg so noone would get to me. And also killing them in the process. I was a bit worry about his hydratation because he never drinks. With act2 I dont think he can do that. Maybe its because of mutual trust. I dunno.

My merc gear:
act5: arreat, Fortitude 2,3k, dual Plague in

Eth Myth swords +/-300ed on both

act2: andy with

Cham, Fortitude 2,2k and almost perfect Infinity in GPA.

Regarding my experiences with act1 merc when I was playing bowa last season.
Fana reach was sooo small that I would wear Faith with act2 Pride merc any day in a year, rather than

Windforce + act1 Faith merc.

Act 1 merc barely died, but it was because she was always out of fight. When she was attacking she was hitting really hard. But in most of the fights she was just afk.

Also what I have noticed is fact that if ur clear speed is really high then ur merc has less time to do what he is doing best - dying.

TL:DR
When u have act5 merc you dont need to worry about him, he kils everything and except few rare combinations he never goes down. And with clear conscience I cant say the same about Emilio.

PS: if u think i have bad gear for Emilio let me know how I can improve it, because I have no clue. Instead of perfect

Sacred Armor base for Fortitude or perfect

Eth andy I dont see anything better.

Hey flash, don’t know what level your act 2 merc is, but my set-up only dies rarely in Chaos on players 8 against the fire breathing demon seal-boss. His gear is:
Andy’s - non

Eth with a 15ias +17 fire res (at level 90ish this and fort still lets him get to 75 fire res)
Infinity in

Eth

Mancatcher with anti-perfect enhanced damage (that was a disappointing roll)
Fort in non-

Eth

Wyrmhide with 1.35 life / level

I’m offline so I can’t afford to throw chams in helms, but I feel like the combination of life leach and attack speed is critical in keeping the merc’s alive. There’s not too many sources of freezing in Chaos.

The Infinity guy is good for nearly any character but if your a physical damage build, swap it out with a reapers toll, which has its own life leach, so you just need ias and res on the other gear, so there’s lots of options & combos

For the Infinity set-up you could probably go with the holy freez merc, which will slow down all enemies, even the cold immunes. For the reapers toll set up might is probably your best bet

I get it with the act 2 merc’s movement speed, a source of teleporting is definitely beneficial. Purely by foot speed act 5 merc wins for sure.

I'll never understand why everyone is so dead set on andy's for a merc (I know the argument, I just don't agree with it).

But using a

Cham'd andy's at that and foregoing the otherwise normal ias/fire res jewel means even a lvl 98 A2 merc with a perfect-res Fortitude won't be anywhere near capped on fire res.

Pretty obvious why your merc dies at that point.

True,

Crown of theives,

Natalya’s

Helm, vamp gaize, even Keira’s are all good and only need a socket. Then there’s always coa and

Giant Skull which are fun too, I’ve even thrown an

Eth

Shako on one of mine

I’m not above using a

Perfect Skull!

As far as I know Andy is the only option for both IAS, Leech and good def.

With the standard setups for weapons and armors (Infinity / Insight and Fortitude / Treachery) you need leech from the

Helm and IAS is great too to hit a little more often then leech a little more.

The issue with Andy is that you need to offset Fres issue by a jewel, preventing to use

Cham.

Depending on your main char, it's an issue or not. My necro TPs so getting frozen is not too much of an issue so I went for fire res (and max damage, could not afford the crazy IAS / FRes price), but if your main does not TP the lack of CBF can be painful. Perhaps indeed VGaze is more adapted to such cases.

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

I'll never understand why everyone is so dead set on andy's for a merc (I know the argument, I just don't agree with it).

But using a

Cham'd andy's at that and foregoing the otherwise normal ias/fire res jewel means even a lvl 98 A2 merc with a perfect-res Fortitude won't be anywhere near capped on fire res.

Pretty obvious why your merc dies at that point.

hmm so u think he is dying because of missing 22fire res? I need to check against what monsters he goes down if they do fire dmg. I will give it a try to use normal andy with

Ral.

anyway last his dead was @p8 TPing into pack of monsters. I mean I have spearzon, I cleared it with like 1-2charged strike. And he still died instantly. I would not saying anything if it took me like 10second, but he died super quickly.

The Flash wrote: 1 year ago

Regarding my experiences with act1 merc when I was playing bowa last season.
Fana reach was sooo small that I would wear Faith with act2 Pride merc any day in a year, rather than

Windforce + act1 Faith merc.

Act 1 merc barely died, but it was because she was always out of fight. When she was attacking she was hitting really hard. But in most of the fights she was just afk.

As a spearzon, you can wear Enigma to reposition Act 1 merc.

The Flash wrote: 1 year ago

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

I'll never understand why everyone is so dead set on andy's for a merc (I know the argument, I just don't agree with it).

But using a

Cham'd andy's at that and foregoing the otherwise normal ias/fire res jewel means even a lvl 98 A2 merc with a perfect-res Fortitude won't be anywhere near capped on fire res.

Pretty obvious why your merc dies at that point.

hmm so u think he is dying because of missing 22fire res? I need to check against what monsters he goes down if they do fire dmg. I will give it a try to use normal andy with

Ral.

anyway last his dead was @p8 TPing into pack of monsters. I mean I have spearzon, I cleared it with like 1-2charged strike. And he still died instantly. I would not saying anything if it took me like 10second, but he died super quickly.

More often than not, fire (especially hydras) is the single most dangerous thing for a merc. If not the only actually dangerous thing (given high-end gear).

Well, fire and

Teleport-abuse keeping him off his targets (i.e. preventing him from ever leeching) while he still gets nuked by ranged.

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

More often than not, fire (especially hydras) is the single most dangerous thing for a merc. If not the only actually dangerous thing (given high-end gear).

Well, fire and

Teleport-abuse keeping him off his targets (i.e. preventing him from ever leeching) while he still gets nuked by ranged.

I hope I am not spamming here. But I think I am not the only one with this frustration.

I just tried CoH + vamp gaze on p3. He was buffed by my barb friend - 4,5k life.

When I entered CS he dies to 5death knights + 1 Death mage. Just to be sure I wasnt dreaming about act5 merc. I tried in same game same difficulty and he cleared it all. Yeah vs infector I helped him a bit. As you can see in the picture below, he wasnt even buffed by BO. No drinking needed. This I would love to take as base element what merc can do. Dual Plague, Fortitude, vamp gaze (or arreat or andy that doesnt matter much). I read on reddit that IAS is everything and

Holy Freeze. So my next run was Treachery + andy to get to 4,17attacks per second via

Jab (63 IAS breakpoint for GPA)
and he died to 3rd pack of monsters (with BO buff).

Whats the best gear? Whats the best type of act2 merc? I read something about leveling merc from normal is better than to buy him in hell diff?

mockingbirdreal wrote: 1 year ago

As a spearzon, you can wear Enigma to reposition Act 1 merc.

well if I do that, then I would go act5 merc. I have done some theory crafting on maxroll.gg and it turns out that if merc wears Infinity and i

Javelin (

Thunderstroke) I do more dmg. And after some time playing with this i think its true. Also 6/40javelins do at least according to maxroll.gg even 100k dps more.

I tried Delirium + CoH on him (

Holy Freeze). One friend left so only p2, but with 5x deaths he cleared entire area and without drinking he killed dia (last 30% of dia life he was attacking me).

Imho this seems to be strongest. Will test it @ p8.

The Flash wrote: 1 year ago

well if I do that, then I would go act5 merc. I have done some theory crafting on maxroll.gg and it turns out that if merc wears Infinity and i

Javelin (

Thunderstroke) I do more dmg. And after some time playing with this i think its true. Also 6/40javelins do at least according to maxroll.gg even 100k dps more.

How Act 5 Merc is the best ?
How an Infinity merc +

Thunderstroke is better than self use Infinity

Spear against sundered lightning monster ?

mockingbirdreal wrote: 1 year ago

How Act 5 Merc is the best ?

well he aint dying and I dont really have to babysit him. Merc 2 dies way more often (Delirium + coh is better).

mockingbirdreal wrote: 1 year ago

How an Infinity merc +

Thunderstroke is better than self use Infinity

Spear against sundered lightning monster ?

Well I had Infinity in +3spear (-45only). I was able to do 2,5attack per second. And in all my builds I wanna have max resists especially if I am melee without shield. So Kira

Helm with 15IAS was

Helm I used + Hustle (

Charged Strike lvl 40).

Now I have tstroke (= -15) and griffon (= -19) Enigma and arach, but I hit way faster - 50IAS to get 3,12 attacks per second,

Charged Strike is lvl 45 (+1bolt).
Difference in -enemy light resists is 95-15-19-Infinity vs 95-45-Infinity.
Amazon is OP either way so even if u remove few % of enemy light res. Its still OP. Even if merc goes down so I have no Infinity I still clear everything without any issues, its a bit slower yeah, but no problems.

Regarding dmg I have theory crafted on maxroll.gg several setups
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/#m201065c simulated dmg is vs TZ p8

Baal via

Charged Strike. My original java build had 211k dps. Now I am at 351k, while Faith + Infinity in +3spear is at 328k. "Best build" I came up with is 6/40javs with jmod coh with 565k DPS. (all the gear is recently bit changed so it does not reflect its full potential).

I understand that those numbers can be missleading and doesnt have to be truth, but it should at least reflect truth a bit.
Anyway my opinion about spearzon aka "not throwing javazon" can my build be better optimized? Hell yeah it can ! But is it really needed to have more dmg? Absolutely not. Even half dmg would still clear everything @p8.

Spears are super slow weapon compare to javelins.

If you wanna continue with this conversation - not related to merc, to this thread. I can make new thread or we can go private msgs. I am always open to other ideas and perspective on everything I already made 3x infinities this season just to make this spearzon work now I borrowed CoH for merc from a friend. So now I have to find something which I can sell for

Ber to get him my own CoH.

The Flash wrote: 1 year ago

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

More often than not, fire (especially hydras) is the single most dangerous thing for a merc. If not the only actually dangerous thing (given high-end gear).

Well, fire and

Teleport-abuse keeping him off his targets (i.e. preventing him from ever leeching) while he still gets nuked by ranged.

I hope I am not spamming here. But I think I am not the only one with this frustration.

I just tried CoH + vamp gaze on p3. He was buffed by my barb friend - 4,5k life.

When I entered CS he dies to 5death knights + 1 Death mage. Just to be sure I wasnt dreaming about act5 merc. I tried in same game same difficulty and he cleared it all. Yeah vs infector I helped him a bit. As you can see in the picture below, he wasnt even buffed by BO. No drinking needed. This I would love to take as base element what merc can do. Dual Plague, Fortitude, vamp gaze (or arreat or andy that doesnt matter much).
obrazek.png

I read on reddit that IAS is everything and

Holy Freeze. So my next run was Treachery + andy to get to 4,17attacks per second via

Jab (63 IAS breakpoint for GPA)
and he died to 3rd pack of monsters (with BO buff).

Whats the best gear? Whats the best type of act2 merc? I read something about leveling merc from normal is better than to buy him in hell diff?

Deviating a tad from the original "non-A2" point of the topic but I'd say it is in line enough with the overall evolved discussion to not be spamming.

CoH is a step back from fort I would say. You lose significant ED, you lose the bonus life, you lose massive defense (base + armor proc), ... you do gain res that doesn't matter unless your merc is hit by LR or Conv as fort already has him capped and you do gain some phys red and a bit of extra leech but all in all, that does not make up for what you lose imo.

IAS is most certainly not "everything". IAS is what you want to focus on if you build your merc around procs/crushing blow. Not for survivability. That comes from avg. base damage being pushed as high as you can (in addition to actual defensive stats, obviously). Given, IAS does improve that with each breakpoint but nowhere near as much as Fortitude would instead. Not to mention the def and whatnot on Treachery are just abysmal. The

Fade proc is nice, yes, but in and by itself not worth the tradeoff.

The leveling from normal part used to be true but that was patched a while ago so they're now all on equal footing and you can just buy your merc on hell or wherever.

Best gear is relative. I for one would say that Fortitude should be a given for nearly every A2 merc. There are some exceptions but those would be rare and for very specific reasons (e.g. CoH on a horker's support merc instead to avoid the cold armor proc on fort costing you corpses). For the helmet, you have multiple valid choices (andy, gaze, CoT, ...). And the weapon and aura are both dictated by what your own build needs/wants, more so than what would make the merc the best he could be if by himself.

Holy Freeze obviously makes him a Beast of a tank, simply because the aura massively reduces incoming damage all around him.
Might and

Blessed Aim make him a better tank due to buffing his average damage and hence his leech.

Defiance makes him a better tank due to reducing the odds of him being hit to begin with.

Prayer offers a minor regen bonus but that tends to not be too big of a deal mid-combat. Still perfectly fine as a tank but not as much as the above.

Thorns would be the worst tank of them all as the only survivability bonus you get from that is a very indirect one as the

Thorns dmg means his attackers will die a wee bit sooner, lowering the duration for which he needs to be able to tank them.

Personally, I use A2 mercs across the board and 3 of the 6 auras throughout my characters (freeze, might and

Prayer) with different weapon options (dictated by my own builds, not the merc) and they all work perfectly fine in 99.99% of all situations. Hell, even my pally's merc tends to easily survive his full uber runs and short of leashing him into

Hydra packs with nothing to leech on, that's probably the worst you can do to a merc.

So you all know about the Kira’s guardian and

Guardian Angel combo? Basically makes the merc immune to elemental damage.

But Yea if there’s a Death mage that shoots the magic damage projectile, that can’t be resisted, monsters can roll critical in their damage and sometimes if they are a minon or elite they get crazy mods (ever faced fanata spectral strike Stone skinned enemy? Might as well just quit the game at that point).

My point is all merc’s can die, and each one is a balance of compromise. Act 2’s deal great single point damage and can give you an extra aura, but they’re a bit squishy. Act 5s can face tank almost anything, which is useful, but that’s about it. Act 1 is sorta a hybrid, can give you aura, can deal damage, can not be killed, but never they best at any. Act 3 mercs are pets, you can keep them around, but it’s because you like them, not because they really add objective value.

Or at least that’s my take on it - after a couple beers

The Flash wrote: 1 year ago

Regarding dmg I have theory crafted on maxroll.gg several setups
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/#m201065c simulated dmg is vs TZ p8

Baal via

Charged Strike. My original java build had 211k dps. Now I am at 351k, while Faith + Infinity in +3spear is at 328k. "Best build" I came up with is 6/40javs with jmod coh with 565k DPS. (all the gear is recently bit changed so it does not reflect its full potential).

I changed target monster to Cow King because he is Lightning Immune.
Tstroke 415k is now 148k
Griffon + Faith 328k is now 152k. A perfect -55 Infinity gives 169k

Right now on ladder I'm using a Mosaic assassin with an A5 merc wearing double Unbending Will, Hustle, and vamp, as a budget tank to make it safer those first 5 seconds I build charges. After that everything melts so fast that it doesn't matter what merc I use until I can make an Infinity (and even then I clear so fast I don't think it will make much difference so it's my last priority)

Also for my Blizz sorc I use an A1 merc with Insght. That way she stays put wherever I

Teleport to and doesn't die. Might swap to Infinity since last patch but I doubt it.

My uberdin has a an A5 merc with double Grief and Fortitude I borrow from my barb when I get enough keys, just so he helps me clear the mini Uber dungeons. My own

Fanaticism aura really helps