Merc only run, is it possible? [share your experience]

Yeah i'm piqued for sure. Honestly i always thought there was just the

Glacial Spike Act III hireling. The

Fireball +

Enchant is pretty cool, I could see some interesting hybrid sorc builds making use of a high level

Enchant they don't have to stack for.

Ormus' Robes is pretty solid, along with Flickering Flame. Weapon choice opens up options like Spirit will likely be standard, but also Plague and Silence. Silence being the least valuable for it's cost, but still an overlooked item IMO, IAS/Skills/MF/etc.

If you want to use a Spirit you'll need to socket an item w/ strength and be like 90+ though. or replace an item with something that gives strength, even if

Eth it's still like 80+ before you'll equip w/o like an andy's.

Damn or if it prios

Enchant you could make an act III hireling

Enchant merc to power level friends/randoms. lol That's kind of cool thought early ladder.

This is probably the most you can pump from fire, if you go for DPS. I went with higher

Enchant total instead.
Silence would be cool, if it had any FCR on it. There's nothing Silence can do that Spirit already provides. Plague sounds ok on paper but the act3 merc AI is shuffle around, backtrack here and there, usually behind you. On struck trigger would be quite rare.
Ethereal

Monarch can be worn at lvl 92 merc. Up until then you'd use

Lidless Wall or something, if you really wanted to play with act3.

Too bad it remains fire though.
Or rather...too bad sunders don't work for mercs. :/

I do kinda wish they had
a) made sunders work for mercs
b) made at least Insight work in swords
c) upgraded the A3 AI so that lightning actually uses static for the first casts reliably, while it still does something, rather than spamming pointless no-dmg charged

Bolts

Then those mercs might actually be useful.
But until then (i.e. after pigs took flight and hell froze over), they remain nothing but an Edge-case gimmick. Sad as it is.

Speaking of sunders, i do wish hirelings had a slot to hold one or sunder jewels. It'd also be cool to see +skill item's like Passion add that

Zeal as an ability they could use. Call To Arms on an act V merc would be pretty cool and add some variety to it with + skills like IK

Helm, etc.

Along with possibly making Act I and Act III mercs some interesting variety.

When they added the

Frenzy barb they could have tweaked both the Act I and III mercs code a bit, woulda been nice.

I think they did improve A1 at the same time, by allowing Amazon only stuff (including + skills for Bow)

Shouldn't the most braindead solo merc build be

Frenzy act5 merc with an

Enchant sorceress behind his back? That has to kill anything in seconds with 100+k dps. Well except for unbreakable fire+physical immunes.

You'd just be wielding Infinity to break some, + theoretically can swap his offhand from

Headstriker to Plague for

Lilith and whatnot. Maxroll says 10 seconds to kill her this way, and she is the merc destroyer.

Queegon wrote: 3 months ago

Shouldn't the most braindead solo merc build be

Frenzy act5 merc with an

Enchant sorceress behind his back? That has to kill anything in seconds with 100+k dps. Well except for unbreakable fire+physical immunes.

You'd just be wielding Infinity to break some, + theoretically can swap his offhand from

Headstriker to Plague for

Lilith and whatnot. Maxroll says 10 seconds to kill her this way, and she is the merc destroyer.

If you kind of actually focus on that (130k+ base dps)..maxrolls down to <2 secs for diablo, <4 secs for

Baal. <7 for

Lilith.
Interesting.

For the unbreakable roadblocks that do cross your path (which are never bosses), you'd still be left with ~16-17k physical dps which is a fair chunk.

Merely uber dia stands out with almost 33 seconds. Eww..

Imagine if we also had a

Wand with amp dmg charges on top of all that...

TheDoo wrote: 3 months ago

Imagine if we also had a

Wand with amp dmg charges on top of all that...

The Gavel Of Pain

Schnorki wrote: 3 months ago

TheDoo wrote: 3 months ago

Imagine if we also had a

Wand with amp dmg charges on top of all that...

The Gavel Of Pain

Yeah apart from Gavel, it is only 3 after all and it's pain in the backside to const. repair it... xd
On the other hand... Does anything has

Decrepify charges (can't remember)? Actually I just remembered

Spellsteel (one of my very first favorite things in D2R)!
Edit:

Decrepify can break immunities as well, right? Riiiight...? o_O

It can.

And since base phys is always a flat 100 with Stone skin adding a full 50 (making them unbreakable for both), it actually breaks just as much as amp does in terms of base-immunes.
(high res base + Stone skin leads to differing results though)

Radius and such make it a pain by comparison though.

Another little quick question:
Does -speed from

Decrepify counts/works exactly the same as "slow target by %" but differ from chilling effect?
Also does "slow target by %" works only on hit?

Decrep, slow, chill and

Holy Freeze all reduce attack rate and movement speed and are in fact simply added together when more than 1 of them applies (up to a

Cap).

But yeah, slow target is for attacks. With exceptions applying, as is normal for anything d2.

See also
Decrep: https://d2.lc/AB/wiki/index537c.html
H.Freeze: https://d2.lc/AB/wiki/indexcad3.html
Cold: https://d2.lc/AB/wiki/indexed78.html
Slow: https://d2.lc/AB/wiki/indexeb60.html

Schnorki wrote: 3 months ago

Decrep, slow, chill and

Holy Freeze all reduce attack rate and movement speed and are in fact simply added together when more than 1 of them applies (up to a

Cap).

But yeah, slow target is for attacks. With exceptions applying, as is normal for anything d2.

Thank you mate! Soooo, theoretically, you could be a Sorc (I know this doesn't actually follow the rules of 'Merc only run' BUT indulge me) casting lvl 1

Glacial Spike to basically do min. dmg but still freeze enemies, having for example an Ice bow or Doom for

Holy Freeze (or even better have Act 2 Merc with Doom) and

Spellsteel on swap for

Decrepify and your Merc is for example Act 5

Frenzy with +slow target by gear, everything stacked should be able to keep enemies at max slow

Cap of 50-85%, correct?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So basically for max -speed your options are:

Sorc spamming GS (which is kinda bending/breaking the rules for this run) +

Spellsteel (Decrep charges) + Merc with +slow target gear

Class?? + Act 1 Merc with Ice +

Spellsteel swap
Class?? + Act 2 Merc with Doom +

Spellsteel on character swap/inventory swap
Class?? + Act 5 Merc (

Frenzy) with double Death for GS proc? (alt. Death + Eternity?) + Decrep from

Spellsteel (but then you don't actually have

Holy Freeze)

Is

Blackhorn's Face basically a single armor piece (so not weapon) that has slow effect?

You also have Cleglaw's gloves

I know (hope ^^) this is purely theoretical...but do you really want to deal with charges for an entire merc playthrough?

If you're going for full slow, just run a necro with

Clay Golem + decrep. At least that way you can spam it and anything that hits/gets hit by the golem is basically f'd. Slows most bosses to the point of their animations breaking and them not doing anything anymore as a result.
(If you're rule-bending enough to allow for cold skills, clay would be fine, too)

Plus that way you can actually pull it off before the mid 60s for Ice/Doom.
If you got that far, you're about done anyways.

Schnorki wrote: 3 months ago

I know (hope ^^) this is purely theoretical...but do you really want to deal with charges for an entire merc playthrough?

Hehe no, I also think shenanigans with charges would be too much even for me (who likes to visit town often)... But yes,

Schnorki wrote: 3 months ago

"Slows most bosses to the point of their animations breaking and them not doing anything anymore as a result."

is something what I was looking for.

Anyway, it was just a small digression from the actual post. I'm still eager to read you people's suggestions, experiences, ideas and whatnot!