Merc for Ubers

Hi all. I was planning on respeccing my Hammerdin to a Smiter (level 90). I know the advice is always "mercs die in

Uber Tristram so don't bother", but I was wondering if there's a way to Uber-proof a merc.

So these are the 2 options I came up with:
Act 2 Might merc
Obedience

Kira's Guardian

Guardian Angel

Act 1 Cold merc
Mist

Kira's Guardian

Guardian Angel

For the act 2 merc's resistances, a lvl 90 merc has 157 plus 30 from perfect Obedience, 68 from almost perfect kira's and 60 from pre-buff Treachery lvl 15

Fade. Then subtract 100% from hell and 125% from

Über Mephisto and it caps the 90 all res. Is this overkill? I thought about a build that caps on 75% all res, with

Crown of Ages and Chains of Honor that would allow a Reaper's Toll, but then again, decrep overrides

Life Tap. So maybe a Pride? eBOTD?

For the act 1 merc's we get 149 base, plus 40 from Mist, 66 from a slightly worse kira's and 60 from

Fade. Minus 225 we get exactly 90 all res. We lose the Might aura, but gain lvl 12

Concentration.

Any thoughts on these builds? Is the unkillable merc possible? Maybe there's a better combination of items, let me know your ideas.

From my personal experience there is no guaranteed outcome for a given bout in

Uber Tristram as far as hireling's survivability is concerned. To assist my

Frenzy barbarian I use an act 1 merc equipped with a Mist grand matron, ethereal Fortitude and an ethereal

Andariel's

Mask. In one run yesterday I didn't have to use a single

Full Rejuvenation Potion on either the barb or the hireling to complete it. On the second run she died within seconds. During two more runs today she kept dying very quickly. It squarely depends on how "smart" the hireling is to avoid being hit. The probability of it is next to nil.

Tend to agree with Bigbikefan on the random aspect, but depends against whom.

The main issue for the merc is

Mephisto with his

Conviction, but I don't bother changing his stuff just for that fight. Usually he dies, but if Meph targets me or my minions, he can live. Usually I circle around to be on the opposite side of my merc so that if I am targeted, he is not, and if he is, at least it does not hit me.

After Meph, that's a more classical fights with tons of DPS on the other side : enough full rejuvs can do the work. And after all it's only 50k gold to

Revive them...

As for the type, my A2 usually dies against Meph but survives the others if I hit Ctrl+V (V is my full rejuv

Key) quick enough.

A1 dies if she is targeted but quite often she is not, and as she wears Delirium (the famous Manic Pixie Dreamgirl build!) she can be a tremendous help confusing all other monsters around. But if one of the 3 brothers decides that she shall die... she does no matter what I do.

As for changing stuff just to help survivability, I am not a big fan : if changing his stuff prevents him from doing what he is supposed to do (A1 : cast

Confuse all around, A2 : Mana refill, Might and bring his DPS), he can die, I won't care too much.

Generally speaking, most of a merc's survivability stems from dmg + leech, combined with typically (at least very close to) capped resistances across the board.

Ubers (considering all of it) mess with that in 3 distinct ways:
1) Lack of resistances: Uber meph wrecks your merc's resistances hard..much like he does your own
2) No leech due to lack of dmg: There's a fair few phys immune adds to be found along the way
3) Little to no life leech otherwise: due to a bunch of undead and low drain effectiveness

Now, in order to address those..
#3 is actually an easy fix since you as a smiter will bring

Life Tap, eliminating that problem entirely. The only thing you then still need to do here is make sure your merc stays at least somewhere within the general area so he attacks life tapped targets and not some random uncursed stuff at the Edge of your screen. With A2 mercs, that tends not to be a problem. A1 mercs do whatever they want anyways (and suck in general imo, if you don't desperately need Faith) so...mweh...

#1 is also a relatively easy fix. Sure, you could gear your merc to passively "out-res" meph but if you do so, he'll be geared entirely to live through meph, inherently making him (FAR) worse at everything else. Keep in mind that you yourself also need to counter meph's aura. The single easiest way to do that imo is to simply get a point (or simply your leftover pts, of which a smiter has a fair few) in

Salvation. That'll usually easily keep you fully capped against meph and it'll typically keep your merc close enough to the same (or still fully capped, depending on exact gear) as well. At the same time, you get to (both) stay geared for performance, rather than for meph, meaning you lose 0 performance anywhere else as you simply switch back to fana as soon as meph is dead. You can still easily gear a smiter to stay at max attack speed even without fana and CB doesn't need fana for dmg purposes so even on meph, with

Salvation on, you still annihilate him in no time as well.

#2 is probably the hardest of the three to deal with as it requires babysitting on phys immunes and potentially a reposition of your merc if you take too long (thanks to sunders sadly not working for your merc). On the plus side, the PIs themselves tend to not be too challenging so even if your merc is at the Edge of the screen fighting those, you tend to have a ton of time before it becomes any sort of issue. The real issue here is if your merc is next to

Baal,

Baal suckerpunches your merc instead of you and your merc is busy ignoring

Baal's assault but instead going for the stupid PI that's next to both of them. In that case, either kill

Baal (or the PI) quick enough to where you save your merc in time or suck it up and reposition. The latter is annoying when fully dmg geared but no problem at all if you're an Enigma smiter. Though either way, this doesn't happen all too often so you don't reeaaaaaally have to worry about it with a geared merc.

Beyond those 3, the only real thing is that going through ubers has you facing some sources of (significantly) higher dmg than you do in other places. Most of those don't matter much as they're still easily out-leeched by

Life Tap and such. The only one that still has a legit chance of simply annihilating your merc no matter what is

Andariel herself as she just hits like a truck. Especially if you forget to clear the amp from her adds beforehand or your merc just charges at her with it still on.

Personally, I gear my smiter's merc much like any other (A2, fort, aura and weapon based on smiter's own preference for support) and he generally has no troubles living through

Tristram (uber or normal for that matter).

Dromar186 wrote: 4 weeks ago

Hi all. I was planning on respeccing my Hammerdin to a Smiter (level 90). I know the advice is always "mercs die in

Uber Tristram so don't bother", but I was wondering if there's a way to Uber-proof a merc.

So these are the 2 options I came up with:
Act 2 Might merc
Obedience

Kira's Guardian

Guardian Angel

Act 1 Cold merc
Mist

Kira's Guardian

Guardian Angel

For the act 2 merc's resistances, a lvl 90 merc has 157 plus 30 from perfect Obedience, 68 from almost perfect kira's and 60 from pre-buff Treachery lvl 15

Fade. Then subtract 100% from hell and 125% from

Über Mephisto and it caps the 90 all res. Is this overkill? I thought about a build that caps on 75% all res, with

Crown of Ages and Chains of Honor that would allow a Reaper's Toll, but then again, decrep overrides

Life Tap. So maybe a Pride? eBOTD?

For the act 1 merc's we get 149 base, plus 40 from Mist, 66 from a slightly worse kira's and 60 from

Fade. Minus 225 we get exactly 90 all res. We lose the Might aura, but gain lvl 12

Concentration.

Any thoughts on these builds? Is the unkillable merc possible? Maybe there's a better combination of items, let me know your ideas.

Only

Mephisto kills my act2 merc, but if I can pipe him potion before he goes then he will generally make it. He survives

Mephisto about 33.33% of the time, then he's good for both ubers

Baal and Diablo and their minions right to the end.

Schnorki for the right answers ! (Except he meant

Lilith)

Or you can use Act 5 Merc as he is mega tanky and with

Life Tap + his

Frenzy available I really can't see how he can die fast (well if ignore the bs infamous one-hit from

Mephisto which sometimes happen).

What I gathered from comments on this forum is that many people don't even bother healing Mercs with pots which I find very, very odd. I usually spend way more pots on Mercs than on myself (even more so I don't really run Ubers, did them several times but that's it) just speaking in general.

Necrarch wrote: 3 weeks ago

Schnorki for the right answers ! (Except he meant

Lilith)

She will always be uber

Andariel to me.

TheDoo wrote: 3 weeks ago

Or you can use Act 5 Merc as he is mega tanky and with

Life Tap + his

Frenzy available I really can't see how he can die fast (well if ignore the bs infamous one-hit from

Mephisto which sometimes happen).

What I gathered from comments on this forum is that many people don't even bother healing Mercs with pots which I find very, very odd. I usually spend way more pots on Mercs than on myself (even more so I don't really run Ubers, did them several times but that's it) just speaking in general.

i definitely have my merc drinking more than myself his full rejuvs !

The Act 5

Frenzy Merc is indeed tanky, and more-so if you equip him Sazabi's Set and a Lawbringer. Although the damage is somewhat meh, the 27% extra life, 15% lifesteal, 16% PDR, and 30% all-rez make him ridiculously tough. The Lawbringer's Santuary aura keeps all the Uber's summons off of the both of you. The only issue is

Decrepify overwriting

Life Tap, but overall, I find it a good trade-off for having to drink a few potions.

This Merc also provides excellent QOL in general play, as the 40% FRW helps him keep up. There is nothing like him scattering a Gloam pack, so you have time to get in there and thin them out.

Vaprrs wrote: 3 weeks ago

The Act 5

Frenzy Merc is indeed tanky, and more-so if you equip him Sazabi's Set and a Lawbringer. Although the damage is somewhat meh, the 27% extra life, 15% lifesteal, 16% PDR, and 30% all-rez make him ridiculously tough. The Lawbringer's Santuary aura keeps all the Uber's summons off of the both of you. The only issue is

Decrepify overwriting

Life Tap, but overall, I find it a good trade-off for having to drink a few potions.

This Merc also provides excellent QOL in general play, as the 40% FRW helps him keep up. There is nothing like him scattering a Gloam pack, so you have time to get in there and thin them out.

Yeah, I'd also give the Act 5 Merc a shoutout for a candidate to survive Ubertristram. Act 5 is naturally very tanky, and has the fast attack-speed which lets it get the most from

Life Tap.
-Also, if you use

Azurewrath instead of Lawbringer you can get the

Sanctuary Aura without the issue of

Decrepify overwriting

Life Tap.

Sazabi’s is a nice budget-option imo, but there are better options. For gear I’d suggest Chains of Honor and a

Cham’ed

Arreat's Face to overstack the resistance against Meph’s

Conviction aura.

The interesting question is what to pick as the second weapon. That seems a lot less clear to me.

Azurewrath has enough attack-speed to be used in main-hand so there are a lot of options for the second weapon:
- Grief /

Headstriker for top damage.
- Crescent Moon for the static proc.
- Death for Crushing blow and Deadly strike.

Death is probably my favorite candidate here.