A3 Mercenary

Hi, I build a

Double Throw barb and hire an A3 fire merc for it.
The purpose its to benefit of its

Enchant skill.
I gear him with the helmelt Flickering Flame.
Looking for a

Ormus Robe. A Spirit Shield and Sword.

Does anyone build this merc. Its a softcore chara, and for now its helpfull.

My question is, does anybody use this merc at high level ? And if its geared up does it effevtive.

At my point. I use the charm to break fire immunities cause Flickering Flame negate the malus to fire resist.

Just trying to give a chance to the A3 merc, and for now thats working.

I Will try to go uber with this Barb, and tell you if thats working.

Take care, and have fun.

Quick note: if you need

Enchant, you can use

Demon Limb on swap.

Or Obedience (if you don't want to deal with charges or you don't do trades as in this case Obedience is easy to make than hope to drop a

Demon Limb...)

Nekeyby wrote: 3 days ago

Quick note: if you need

Enchant, you can use

Demon Limb on swap.

Sure, but

Fireball can help to clear pack of mob. As I say, I Will try to see what that merc can done. Obviousely is not meta.
But I love to see this litle Guy throw

Fireball, behind me.

Cleo wrote: 3 days ago

Hi, I build a

Double Throw barb and hire an A3 fire merc for it.
The purpose its to benefit of its

Enchant skill.
I gear him with the helmelt Flickering Flame.
Looking for a

Ormus Robe. A Spirit Shield and Sword.

Does anyone build this merc. Its a softcore chara, and for now its helpfull.

My question is, does anybody use this merc at high level ? And if its geared up does it effevtive.

At my point. I use the charm to break fire immunities cause Flickering Flame negate the malus to fire resist.

Just trying to give a chance to the A3 merc, and for now thats working.

I Will try to go uber with this Barb, and tell you if thats working.

Take care, and have fun.

All mercs are effective and can kill stuff on players 1. The fire Ironwolf is useful if you need a higher attack rating and want some additional fire damage from behind the lines. His

Enchant damage boost will not be very high! It's around 300 damage on level 90+, depending on his gear.

Be aware that your sunder charm does NOT work for your mercs' damage! He's totally toothless versus fire immunes!

To be honest, Ironwolves are the weakest hirelings. But if you want to use one, and have a strategy to complement him with your build, go for it!

I am using one on my Poisonmancer, just for fun.

Plague is a very good weapon for him, spending a high

Cleansing aura, +1-2 skill levels for his spells and the

Lower Resist proc gives a nice damage boost.

Unless you are using the Merc for fun, just don't. There’s no point in using the Act 3 merc over any other merc because he offers almost nothing that others don’t do FAR better. His elemental damage is weak and doesn't scale well. His lack of crowd control, tankiness, or support skills makes him nearly useless in tougher fights. Act 2 mercs provide powerful auras and can tank, Act 1 mercs can be solid ranged support, and Act 5 mercs dish out heavy melee damage and survive well. In comparison, the Act 3 merc just can’t compete.

If you want

Enchant, just use

Demon Limb or

Lava Gout.

Enchant from

Demon Limb lasts over 11 minutes so you don't need to worry about it very much. You don't even need it on swap, just keep it in your in your cube. Or even your stash.

If you use

Lava Gout you can use as your main gloves. They are very underrated, but very good.

Enchant on these lasts for 6 minutes so you'll never run out before it's cast again.

fredkid wrote: 3 days ago

Or Obedience (if you don't want to deal with charges or you don't do trades as in this case Obedience is easy to make than hope to drop a

Demon Limb...)

Nekeyby wrote: 3 days ago

Quick note: if you need

Enchant, you can use

Demon Limb on swap.

I don't think Obedience would work for OP since it can't be built in anything an A3 Merc can use, and his build is

Double Throw Barb.

Obedience is for pre-buff

Enchant (as with

Demon Limb)
But as it has a kill trigger (and you have to do the kill with an attack) so you can't use in town....
In my case, my Fury Druid use on swap.

You can put on cube/inventory buy in this case I would consider only for ubers

Knappogue wrote: 3 days ago

fredkid wrote: 3 days ago

Or Obedience (if you don't want to deal with charges or you don't do trades as in this case Obedience is easy to make than hope to drop a

Demon Limb...)

Nekeyby wrote: 3 days ago

Quick note: if you need

Enchant, you can use

Demon Limb on swap.

I don't think Obedience would work for OP since it can't be built in anything an A3 Merc can use, and his build is

Double Throw Barb.

fredkid wrote: 3 days ago

Obedience is for pre-buff

Enchant (as with

Demon Limb)
But as it has a kill trigger (and you have to do the kill with an attack) so you can't use in town....
In my case, my Fury Druid use on swap.

You can put on cube/inventory buy in this case I would consider only for ubers

Knappogue wrote: 3 days ago

fredkid wrote: 3 days ago

Or Obedience (if you don't want to deal with charges or you don't do trades as in this case Obedience is easy to make than hope to drop a

Demon Limb...)

I don't think Obedience would work for OP since it can't be built in anything an A3 Merc can use, and his build is

Double Throw Barb.

I never thought of prebuffing with Obedience. Might be a bit annoying though since it takes up more space than

Demon Limb and you need to kill stuff with it rather than just casting it

A3 Merc is great for leveling thru Normal and he falls off significantly in Nightmare but can still be of some use. After you go to Hell guys before me pretty much summed it up. However, if IRC someone here is using a very high lvl of Fire A3 Merc and let me fetch the gentleman for you, need to find the post so I can tag him properly...

But yes, Obedience doesn't work with A3 Merc AND also requires enemies to be killed with it directly and not via "magic" which A3 Merc is using exclusively.


There is this old post of Nate and his experience(s):
forums/act-3-fire-merc-actually-amazing-t1013134.html
But there is also this post where @Queegon is explaining that he is using the Fire A3 Merc somewhere in the middle of the first page.
forums/merc-only-run-is-it-possible-t1459859.html

Druids cannot use Call To Arms buff while transformed... So you have a free swap

In the case of my Fury Druid, Obedience was my initial "serious" weapon until i got an eth Death. And at that moment, I realized that I could keep Obedience on swap to trigger

Enchant from time to time (the Fury Druid still hits hard with an elite non-eth Obedience, so get the kill trigger is easy )

Knappogue wrote: 3 days ago

fredkid wrote: 3 days ago

Obedience is for pre-buff

Enchant (as with

Demon Limb)
But as it has a kill trigger (and you have to do the kill with an attack) so you can't use in town....
In my case, my Fury Druid use on swap.

You can put on cube/inventory buy in this case I would consider only for ubers

Knappogue wrote: 3 days ago

I don't think Obedience would work for OP since it can't be built in anything an A3 Merc can use, and his build is

Double Throw Barb.

I never thought of prebuffing with Obedience. Might be a bit annoying though since it takes up more space than

Demon Limb and you need to kill stuff with it rather than just casting it

fredkid wrote: 3 days ago

Druids cannot use Call To Arms buff while transformed... So you have a free swap

In the case of my Fury Druid, Obedience was my initial "serious" weapon until i got an eth Death. And at that moment, I realized that I could keep Obedience on swap to trigger

Enchant from time to time (the Fury Druid still hits hard with an elite non-eth Obedience, so get the kill trigger is easy )

I use

Lava Gout on my Fury druid as well as CTA on swap. I just un-transform when I use CTA.
I always run with every inventory square used up so all I have is my cube as space. Putting an 8-square item in my cube is just not something I stomach
I also get that not every one will want to untransform every couple of minutes

Thanks, I thinking about giving him Dragon to add fire damage. I think thunder charms work for merc. Thanks for the info.

By the way with with

Frenzy barb I swap to

Demon Limb and a Spirit sword to buff him before going battle

For me un-transform is annoying and need the extra 5% ias from

Immortal King's Forge on my current build

Knappogue wrote: 3 days ago

fredkid wrote: 3 days ago

Druids cannot use Call To Arms buff while transformed... So you have a free swap

In the case of my Fury Druid, Obedience was my initial "serious" weapon until i got an eth Death. And at that moment, I realized that I could keep Obedience on swap to trigger

Enchant from time to time (the Fury Druid still hits hard with an elite non-eth Obedience, so get the kill trigger is easy )

I use

Lava Gout on my Fury druid as well as CTA on swap. I just un-transform when I use CTA.
I always run with every inventory square used up so all I have is my cube as space. Putting an 8-square item in my cube is just not something I stomach

Charms do not work for Merc.

Cleo wrote: 3 days ago

I think thunder charms work for merc.

fredkid wrote: 3 days ago

For me un-transform is annoying and need the extra 5% ias from

Immortal King's Forge on my current build

Knappogue wrote: 3 days ago

fredkid wrote: 3 days ago

Druids cannot use Call To Arms buff while transformed... So you have a free swap

In the case of my Fury Druid, Obedience was my initial "serious" weapon until i got an eth Death. And at that moment, I realized that I could keep Obedience on swap to trigger

Enchant from time to time (the Fury Druid still hits hard with an elite non-eth Obedience, so get the kill trigger is easy )

I use

Lava Gout on my Fury druid as well as CTA on swap. I just un-transform when I use CTA.
I always run with every inventory square used up so all I have is my cube as space. Putting an 8-square item in my cube is just not something I stomach

I totally get it dude. That's one of the reasons why this game is so great. You can adjust almost any build to fit your own play style

At least we all agree that

Enchant is a must have for chara who need atack rating.

Building a Soso with

Enchant and Dragon maybe could be cool.

Cleo wrote: 3 days ago

Thanks, I thinking about giving him Dragon to add fire damage. I think thunder charms work for merc. Thanks for the info.

Nope, Sunders (if you thought on them) DO NOT work for Merc. They only work for your summons and traps.

In the case of summons you need to have the sunder charm in your inventory when you summon them (the sunder effect is is "snapshotted").
Not sure, but I guess that it is true for traps too

OBS: the resistance penalty however is not applied to your minions.

TheDoo wrote: 3 days ago

Cleo wrote: 3 days ago

Thanks, I thinking about giving him Dragon to add fire damage. I think thunder charms work for merc. Thanks for the info.

Nope, Sunders (if you thought on them) DO NOT work for Merc. They only work for your summons and traps.

Thanks, thats mean that work exactly like item who have

Lower Resist like the Rainbow facet