I'll start..
BiS merc gear for end game farming is not Andarial's/Fortitude or Andarial's/Treachery or Andaria's/COH. It is Cure / Gladiator's Bane.
Cure
1) In D2R, your merc's main job is to be a walking aura farm, not to kill things. Gives you a very useful aura for all characters, not just ES Nova sorc. However, based on my experience it also IMPROVES THE MERC'S SURVIVABILITY vs. Andarial's or leach helms. The benefit of leach is more than offset by not having cursed Amplify Damage DOUBLING the merc's damage taken pretty much non stop, as well as the reduced poison duration. And of course it very much improves your own survivability as well.
When you fly around with TP killing boss packs every couple seconds and the Amplify Damage curse lasts for ~1 minute, without Cleansing you are cursed nearly all the time. Cleansing I believe reduces curse duration much more than the stated 39% reduction due to how the game applies it. I haven't timed it, but in practice it seems to reduce it to 7-10 seconds.
Note - the formula for Amplify Damage duration from monsters in hell is 5 + (3*slvl), where slvl = mlvl/5 + 1. So for a level 90 monster it is 5+(3*(90/5+1)) or 62 seconds.
Gladiator's Bane
2) Perhaps the more controversial take. Gladiator's Bane lacks all the things you typically look for in a merc armor - Life Leach, Resistances, Percent Damage Reduction, IAS, Increased Damage. But in my experience, it is "best by test". Maybe it's the 30% faster hit recovery, or maybe it's the cannot be frozen, or maybe it is the 50% poison duration reduction, or maybe it is the 20 integer magic damage reduction, or maybe it is the 20 integer physical damage reduction, or maybe it's the insanely high defense - but I find when my merc wears this, he stays healthy better than with the other options. If you want to max out resistance, you can do so with an Um rune or jewel in a socket, but I haven't found that to be necessary for most uses. Relatedly, integer physical and magic reduction are extremely underrated, they effectively provide an average pct damage reduction of around 20-25% in hell against your typical enemy.
Combined, these options have zero leach, but when your character is high level and kills things fast, the merch barely has time to leach. And if you watch it, Merc regen is somehow amazingly fast even without Prayer, the leach is simply not necessary.
CHANGE MY MIND:
( (
) )
........
|------|]
\------/
`----'
(please excuse bad ascii art due to spaces being filtered out)
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Description
I'll start..
BiS merc gear for end game farming is not Andarial's/Fortitude or Andarial's/Treachery or Andaria's/COH. It is Cure / Gladiator's Bane.
Cure
1) In D2R, your merc's main job is to be a walking aura farm, not to kill things. Gives you a very useful aura for all characters, not just ES Nova sorc. However, based on my experience it also IMPROVES THE MERC'S SURVIVABILITY vs. Andarial's or leach helms. The benefit of leach is more than offset by not having cursed Amplify Damage DOUBLING the merc's damage taken pretty much non stop, as well as the reduced poison duration. And of course it very much improves your own survivability as well.
When you fly around with TP killing boss packs every couple seconds and the Amplify Damage curse lasts for ~1 minute, without Cleansing you are cursed nearly all the time. Cleansing I believe reduces curse duration much more than the stated 39% reduction due to how the game applies it. I haven't timed it, but in practice it seems to reduce it to 7-10 seconds.
Note - the formula for Amplify Damage duration from monsters in hell is 5 + (3*slvl), where slvl = mlvl/5 + 1. So for a level 90 monster it is 5+(3*(90/5+1)) or 62 seconds.
Gladiator's Bane
2) Perhaps the more controversial take. Gladiator's Bane lacks all the things you typically look for in a merc armor - Life Leach, Resistances, Percent Damage Reduction, IAS, Increased Damage. But in my experience, it is "best by test". Maybe it's the 30% faster hit recovery, or maybe it's the cannot be frozen, or maybe it is the 50% poison duration reduction, or maybe it is the 20 integer magic damage reduction, or maybe it is the 20 integer physical damage reduction, or maybe it's the insanely high defense - but I find when my merc wears this, he stays healthy better than with the other options. If you want to max out resistance, you can do so with an Um rune or jewel in a socket, but I haven't found that to be necessary for most uses. Relatedly, integer physical and magic reduction are extremely underrated, they effectively provide an average pct damage reduction of around 20-25% in hell against your typical enemy.
Combined, these options have zero leach, but when your character is high level and kills things fast, the merch barely has time to leach. And if you watch it, Merc regen is somehow amazingly fast even without Prayer, the leach is simply not necessary.
CHANGE MY MIND:
( (
) )
........
|------|]
\------/
`----'
(please excuse bad ascii art due to spaces being filtered out)
Description by BiS merc gear for end game farming is not Andarial's/Fortitude or Andarial's/Treachery or Andaria's/COH. It is Cure / Gladiator's Bane.
Cure
1) In D2R, your merc's main job is to be a walking aura farm, not to kill things. Gives you a very useful aura for all characters, not just ES Nova sorc. However, based on my experience it also IMPROVES THE MERC'S SURVIVABILITY vs. Andarial's or leach helms. The benefit of leach is more than offset by not having cursed Amplify Damage DOUBLING the merc's damage taken pretty much non stop, as well as the reduced poison duration. And of course it very much improves your own survivability as well.
When you fly around with TP killing boss packs every couple seconds and the Amplify Damage curse lasts for ~1 minute, without Cleansing you are cursed nearly all the time. Cleansing I believe reduces curse duration much more than the stated 39% reduction due to how the game applies it. I haven't timed it, but in practice it seems to reduce it to 7-10 seconds.
Note - the formula for Amplify Damage duration from monsters in hell is 5 + (3*slvl), where slvl = mlvl/5 + 1. So for a level 90 monster it is 5+(3*(90/5+1)) or 62 seconds.
Gladiator's Bane
2) Perhaps the more controversial take. Gladiator's Bane lacks all the things you typically look for in a merc armor - Life Leach, Resistances, Percent Damage Reduction, IAS, Increased Damage. But in my experience, it is "best by test". Maybe it's the 30% faster hit recovery, or maybe it's the cannot be frozen, or maybe it is the 50% poison duration reduction, or maybe it is the 20 integer magic damage reduction, or maybe it is the 20 integer physical damage reduction, or maybe it's the insanely high defense - but I find when my merc wears this, he stays healthy better than with the other options. If you want to max out resistance, you can do so with an Um rune or jewel in a socket, but I haven't found that to be necessary for most uses. Relatedly, integer physical and magic reduction are extremely underrated, they effectively provide an average pct damage reduction of around 20-25% in hell against your typical enemy.
Combined, these options have zero leach, but when your character is high level and kills things fast, the merch barely has time to leach. And if you watch it, Merc regen is somehow amazingly fast even without Prayer, the leach is simply not necessary.
CHANGE MY MIND:
( (
) )
........
|------|]
\------/
`----'
(please excuse bad ascii art due to spaces being filtered out)
varangium
Can be used to make Runewords:
Is this a blanket statement? Are you saying BiS gear for any merc supporting any farming build is Cure + Gladiator's bane?
If so, buckle up buttercup.
Will buy any 3 minor keys for an Ist - message me.
My free items are for players who play on xbox only and are intended for new players or ones who can't afford much. Its sad I even need to stipulate this ...
My free items are for players who play on xbox only and are intended for new players or ones who can't afford much. Its sad I even need to stipulate this ...
Any merc contribution is incredibly negligible, and Gladiator's Bane is better versus Uber Diablo Firestorm and Uber Lilith Poison Nova, which do small integer damage across huge collision amounts.
But in fairness, yes if you are powerful enough, it almost doesn't matter what your merc wears against most enemies, if it is not contributing an aura.
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