Have you tried Act 2 Merc with Delirium with ranged build?

Hi

I have some characters (mainly

Lightning Fury Amazon and Lightning/

Chain Lightning Sorceress) where Act 2 Merc is not much needed for his damage, he is there for his auras (Infinity's

Conviction and Might /

Holy Freeze) and as a "

Decoy" ()

So I'm thinking in try the Merc with Delirium + a life steal armor (ultimately Chains of Honor, but initially something cheaper that I already have as

Skin of the Flayed One) instead of the standard

Andariel's Visage + Fortitude.
The ideia is to get extra crowd control in areas with pesky long ranged monsters (yes Gloam and

Succubus we are talking about you)

As I don't have a Delirium yet... so I would like some advises/tips/warnings before creating one

In special, my concerns are:
- if Merc will not die frequently (with less life steal - not only the base life steal is lower, but he will deal less damage), way less defense, and lack of full resists (until I made a Chains of Honor)
- if

Confuse will proc enough to be useful, as many times I kill most of the mob before he reach them...

I think it's way more efficient with A1 merc, indeed, she'll proc

Confuse pretty much everywhere on screen when you have a good mob density.

Trying her (A1 cold) is cheap, just start with Edge + Delirium in any 3 os

Helm (if possible an

Eth elite) + Treachery, she is already decent. I use her with my trapsin.

Necrarch wrote: 7 months ago

I think it's way more efficient with A1 merc, indeed, she'll proc

Confuse pretty much everywhere on screen when you have a good mob density.

Trying her (A1 cold) is cheap, just start with Edge + Delirium in any 3 os

Helm (if possible an

Eth elite) + Treachery, she is already decent. I use her with my trapsin.

From the "

Confuse proc" perspective yes (and just by the fact that she is ranged both my concerns do not apply to her)

But I will lose

Conviction ... don't want that ... that's why I want to try Delirium on Act 2 Merc.

(but may try Act 1 with Delirium just for fun a little )

Something to keep in mind is that monsters that die while confused don't grant any experience, so besides champs/uniques or any other boss monsters that can't be confused you'll be missing out on a lot of experience.

https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php/Confuse

Gain experience from monsters killed by confused monsters, but not from those killed while confused.

DarkMaster wrote: 7 months ago

Something to keep in mind is that monsters that die while confused don't grant any experience, so besides champs/uniques or any other boss monsters that can't be confused you'll be missing out on a lot of experience.

https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php/Confuse

Gain experience from monsters killed by confused monsters, but not from those killed while confused.

So... no Delirium on "XP focused" runs

DarkMaster wrote: 7 months ago

Something to keep in mind is that monsters that die while confused don't grant any experience, so besides champs/uniques or any other boss monsters that can't be confused you'll be missing out on a lot of experience.

https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php/Confuse

Gain experience from monsters killed by confused monsters, but not from those killed while confused.

Is this is still true on current patch?

Seems like a big disadvantage (as the

Confuse 18 reach almost full screen...)

Cannot open
https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php/Confuse
...

But none of those

skills/confuse-t4032.html

https://maxroll.gg/d2/resources/experience

https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Confuse

Say anything about cofused moster not give experience when you kill them (just that you gain XP when confused kill another monster)

fredkid wrote: 7 months ago

Cannot open
https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php/Confuse

Gain experience from monsters killed by confused monsters, but not from those killed while confused.

(Unless it was changed in D2R, since Amazon Basin is outdated.)

DarkMaster wrote: 7 months ago

Something to keep in mind is that monsters that die while confused don't grant any experience, so besides champs/uniques or any other boss monsters that can't be confused you'll be missing out on a lot of experience.

https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php/Confuse

Gain experience from monsters killed by confused monsters, but not from those killed while confused.

I made a test with my Necromancer today: confused monster give you XP normally when you (or your Merc/Minions) kill them.

Create my Delirium and I'm testing it on the Act 2 Merc (with

Skin of the Flayed One) with my Lightning/

Chain Lightning Sorceress

Merc seems to have no problem in surviving with the new setup

It is still too soon to tell how much the

Confuse trigger is really helping... (as I expected, against small/mid groups I end up killing almost everyone before he has a chance to trigger...)

But man... it is way cool when the trigger happens and monsters start to fight between themselves and forget about us

fredkid wrote: 6 months ago

DarkMaster wrote: 7 months ago

Something to keep in mind is that monsters that die while confused don't grant any experience, so besides champs/uniques or any other boss monsters that can't be confused you'll be missing out on a lot of experience.

https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php/Confuse

Gain experience from monsters killed by confused monsters, but not from those killed while confused.

I made a test with my Necromancer today: confused monster give you XP normally when you (or your Merc/Minions) kill them.

Interesting, I just tested it with a necromancer in 1.13c and I gained experience from killing confused monsters there too. Guess AB is indeed outdated in this case even for D2 LoD.

The weird thing is that I took it as gospel because 1. AB is almost always correct and 2. when I was playing the 1.10a beta a few years ago to get the OP beta runewords I was using a beta Delirium (33% CtC level 18

Confuse on striking) and I wasn't getting any experience from killing confused monsters, so I wrongly assumed that's how it remained in later versions which is clearly false. :p

Good on you for testing, I've learned something new.

Is there an armor that helps with crowd control?
(The armors with Life Leech have no crowd control affix...)

fredkid wrote: 6 months ago

Is there an armor that helps with crowd control?
(The armors with Life Leech have no crowd control affix...)

Anyone else read that and immediately think back a couple decades, to the cheesy glory days of the

Iceblink ww barb?

Rattlecage

Iceblink
Peace (kind of...if you count SM)
Myth
Fortitude
Gloom

None I'd ever use, except of course for Fortitude but that's for the glory that is Fortitude, certainly not the tiny CC effect of the armor proc

Ice Bolt v range.

Then again, I'm biased anyways..why

Sacrifice performance for CC if you can just go for performance and not need CC?

Schnorki wrote: 6 months ago

Then again, I'm biased anyways..why

Sacrifice performance for CC if you can just go for performance and not need CC?

With some of my builds, Merc direct damage is not very relevant...
So I'm testing other options instead of the "standard"

Andariel's Visage + Fortitude
Just for fun

I'm using for a few days Ac2 merc with
Infinity + Delirium + Gloom

And I'm liking a lot the result when I'm farming areas with many ranged attack monster (like Worldstone Keep,

Throne of Destruction,

Flayer Jungle,

Great Marsh, the open areas of Act 5/Act 4, etc...)
As I'm trying to reach L95 with my Sorceress, I prefer a little extra survivability then the extra single target damage from the "standard" Merc set (Infinity +

Andariel's Visage + Fortitude).
(and even without life leach Merc is having no problem in surviving)