Which merc survives Andariel?

I have a barb with Grief, Plague,

Arreat's Face and

Duriel's Shell. He dies instantly.

Andarial or

Lilith?

If Andarial, presumably the issue is poison resistance, depending on your merc's level and poison res. You could use

Venom Ward when fighting andarial.

You can use antidote potions too, to stop poison and give +10 max poison res and +50 poison res. Probably easier than swapping out armor.

A merc belonging to a Fire Sorc who 4-5-shots her before the merc gets there :]

Maybe Fortitude could help by boosting his defense. Or alternatively something like

The Gladiator's Bane for damage reduction. But I'm just speculating.

varangium wrote: 7 hours ago

Andarial or

Lilith?

If Andarial, presumably the issue is poison resistance, depending on your merc's level and poison res. You could use

Venom Ward when fighting andarial.

You can use antidote potions too, to stop poison and give +10 max poison res and +50 poison res. Probably easier than swapping out armor.

Only

Andariel

I am not sure if poison is the main problem. The barb has 75 all res and the Plague sword has level 15

Cleansing.

What's the IAS on Grief ? What's LL from

Arreat's Face ?

You want a 10 FPA

Frenzy animation to leech, which is max for A5 merc.
For 10 FPA, you need Grief with following speed :
- 34 IAS with a lvl 22

Frenzy
- 37 IAS with lvl 20

Frenzy

A A5 with

Arreat's Face has lvl 21

Frenzy. So lvl 21 + 1 from BO gives you lvl 22.

That's my A5 sorc setup with a Fortitude instead of

Duriel's Shell and it rocks.

Another solution is an

Antidote Potion on him =)

Andariel's Visage will help with boosting max PR and the 10% lifesteal will allow him to leech enough to stay alive... also, feed the merc antidote potions before the fight for an extra PR boost.

Hit her with a

Life Tap

Wand/

Dagger and the merc will stay alive for sure. You can get these weapons with

Life Tap charges off vendors very quickly

ceving wrote: 7 hours ago

I have a barb with Grief, Plague,

Arreat's Face and

Duriel's Shell. He dies instantly.

What level is your merc? Gear seems fine for surviving

Andariel...
If your merc is a fairly low level (high 60's to low 70's) that is usually an overlooked issue. Leveling them to mid 80's tends to make more of a difference than gear changes.

ceving wrote: 7 hours ago

I have a barb with Grief, Plague,

Arreat's Face and

Duriel's Shell. He dies instantly.

What character are you, and how long does it take you to kill

Andariel?

The easiest solution might be to up your offensive power so that she dies quickly. For most of my characters, she just dies in a second or two - so honestly I'm not even sure if she is hitting my merc hard or not.

The other option is going a different merc type. The issue may be her poison spray physical damage component. I can't find a reliable online source of how much damage it does, but

Lilith's does about 40-45 physical damage PER collision, but the catch is there are tons of collisions. And the other catch is mercs take 2x damage from bosses, so that is 80-90. If 30 collisions occur from a spray, bam a huge portion of merc health is gone, not to mention the poison component and other attacks.

You can counter this with an act 2 merc and gladiator's bane. Give the merc reaper's toll, and he will cast

Decrepify, which reduces physical damage by 50%. This takes you back to 40-45. Give him Gladiator's bane socketed with a

Sol, which gives you up to 27 DR. Now you are down to 13-18 from the original 80-90, or an 82% reduction in damage. You can take it further with

Sol(s) in your

Helm if need be. I have used this trick against

Lilith. I'm not sure if it is needed vs.

Andariel because I just kill her quickly.

But again, all this shouldn't be necessary - just kill

Andariel quickly.

Update - according to Amazon Basin, the physical damage on her poison spray is the same as

Lilith's, 42-45 per pixel collision.

Note that

Lilith is known for f---ing up players and mercs fast.

Lilith does also have 3x the main melee attack damage, but so do all the mini ubers.

The other main Andy/

Lilith difference is higher resistance on

Lilith, 10x the HP, and faster health regen same as all ubers.

The

Key (if you don't go the integer reduction trick) is to kill Andy quickly, otherwise your experience is like killing

Lilith, which is dangerous.

She has 60k HP, but 66% resistance against all but magic (0) and fire (minus 50). For light/pois/cold/physical, without minus enemy res she has the equivalent of 180k HP.

So you may be struggling because of some combination of low damage and little minus enemy res on your main damage skill, which then allows her ultra damaging poison spray + bolt attacks to take your merc down fast.

You need higher attack damage + minus enemy res.

On the last holiday special Blizzard ran I decided to test damage on the level 100

Meteor on Death by employing it against Hell level

Andariel. I made my way to Cat level 4, opened a portal, and stripped my Paladin of all his protective gear, made my way to

Andariel, and stood there passively waiting for her to kill me and set off a level 100

Meteor storm. You asked which merc survives

Andariel? I would say that this one clearly qualifies because he wasn't letting Andy get away with anything.