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: 1 day 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: 1 day 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: 1 day 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 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 this one clearly qualifies, because he wasn't letting Andy get away with anything.

mhlg wrote: 18 hours ago

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 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 this one clearly qualifies, because he wasn't letting Andy get away with anything.

My guess on this:
1) You had at least 40% crushing blow through Infinity on merc (well not a guess I can see the aura).

Andariel went down surprisingly quick.
2) you were standing next to the merc, and so absorbed the physical melee attacks from

Andariel who likely targeted you instead of the merc. Her melee attack does 170 average vs. you, but would do 340 @2x to the merc.

But part of this goes back to having a good offense, your merc took her down quickly. Since mercs take double damage vs bosses, if the offense is not good, it's tough for merc defense to save the day, especially if the merc is acting as the meat shield.

@ceving still hasn't indicated what type of character he is. I'm guessing a poison necro as:
a) He is probably attacking at non melee distance, causing the merc to take the 2x hits, so not a melee build
b) a fire sorc would destroy

Andariel quickly, not fire. Same with fire druid.
c) a cold sorc would have built in negative res and so would probably take her down ok.
d) a hammerdin would take her down fast, not a hammerdin.
e) could be a lightning sorc, but I would think he would go an act 2 build to get Insight if he was any kind of sorc.
f) could be a physical bowazon, but he would likely go for a might merc if that was the case
g) That leaves necro. A summoner necro, he would likely go a might merc as well. So by process of elimination, poison necro. They are also notoriously bad against bosses and @ceving might be under the impression the negative poison res on Plague on merc helps his necro poison damage (it doesn't).

I'm thinking for boss fights, he should probably max merc crushing blow. If act 5 merc, guillames (35%) + Duress or

Rattlecage (15% or 25%), and presumably a weapon with CB. I'm assuming Last Wish is out of budget.

Better might be an act 2 merc, as they don't have AR issues like act 5 merc, and then go

Eth hone sudan

Yari (45% CB), guillames (35%) and Duress (15%) for 95% CB.

I'm just guessing based on his setup though.

varangium wrote: 15 hours ago

@ceving still hasn't indicated what type of character he is.

It is a HC sorc level 83 with safety gear (

Kira's Guardian,

Stormshield). 20

Telekinesis, 20

Energy Shield, 20

Chain Lightning, 20

Lightning Mastery. She can not kill Andy on her own and needs the merc as a tank, for

Lower Resist and for

Cleansing. So the question is still: which merc can be geared in a way that he survives Andy. I tried also Act 2 with

The Reaper's Toll but also without success.

Maybe an

Iron Golem made out of

Kelpie Snare together with Act 2 merc using

The Reaper's Toll and

Blackhorn's Face?

By the way: I have the same problem with

Mephisto.

FlammHammer wrote: 23 hours ago

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

I tried

Life Tap from

Marrowwalk, but the stupid barb uses his own idiot spell.

ceving wrote: 4 hours ago

FlammHammer wrote: 23 hours ago

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

I tried

Life Tap from

Marrowwalk, but the stupid barb uses his own idiot spell.

Oh yeah that barb debuff

Shout overwrites lifetap. What a pain!

ceving wrote: 4 hours ago

varangium wrote: 15 hours ago

@ceving still hasn't indicated what type of character he is.

It is a HC sorc level 83 with safety gear (

Kira's Guardian,

Stormshield). 20

Telekinesis, 20

Energy Shield, 20

Chain Lightning, 20

Lightning Mastery. She can not kill Andy on her own and needs the merc as a tank, for

Lower Resist and for

Cleansing. So the question is still: which merc can be geared in a way that he survives Andy. I tried also Act 2 with

The Reaper's Toll but also without success.

Maybe an

Iron Golem made out of

Kelpie Snare together with Act 2 merc using

The Reaper's Toll and

Blackhorn's Face?

By the way: I have the same problem with

Mephisto.

Interesting. Well, I haven't dared to play hardcore before, so my opinion may be shortsighted - but..

1) You don't have any of the

Chain Lightning synergies, which means your damage is weak. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense, or at least a better balance.

2) You are investing a lot of gear in resistances and damage reduction percent, but at max ES level these don't matter a ton unless your shield has gone down. Granted, maybe it saves your life in that situation, depending on how you split your life vs. mana, but by going both options it feels like you are making your character weaker versus just committing to either ES and integer magic+damagereduction+poison res or no ES and resistances + percent damage reduction. Also,

Energy Shield has cost you points that could have gone into getting the CL synergies. In general ES pairs better with

Nova, since it has 1 synergy, than with CL or L which have multiple synergies. Also, if you are running ES you really want an act 2 merc for Insight (unless you have him use Infinity, but also act 2).

3) Assuming Infinity is not an option, you probably want to run

Crescent Moon against Andy, and perhaps in general. The -35 lightning res will double your damage against a 66% lightning res enemy like

Andariel.

All that said.. after a bit of testing, I believe the

Key to your merc not dying is either higher damage by getting the CL synergies and using lightning against her as a direct attack OR you have to take the punches yourself by being close to her, as in the posted video (which in HC you probably don't want to do). I tested an act 2 merc setup with reaper's toll, gladiator's bane, and andarial's visage - didn't work without potions or running away to heal until I tried standing close to her so she hit me and not the merc. Once I did that, it worked just fine. The merc takes 2x damage vs. bosses, and your ES provides a 25% DR so it is close to 3x damage versus you for physical damage.

*Note I intentionally tested with no

Battle Orders to provide a comparable assuming you don't have CTA. My sorc had about 500 life / 2200 mana and

Energy Shield and the merc had about 1800 life. With

Battle Orders, my life/mana would have been about 800/3800. I used

Frostburn for additional safety and higher mana, sacrificing the 105 break point that I have with

Magefist.

varangium wrote: 59 minutes ago

You don't have any of the

Chain Lightning synergies, which means your damage is weak. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense, or at least a better balance.

The main focus of the build is: accidentally teleporting into an extra strong cursed champion pack of dolls with might aura without dying.

The consequence is: she is weak, way too weak to kill anything. I know. I also know how to be stronger. On SC I have a fire sorc: one

Meteor and three fireballs and Andy is down. But that sorc is stuck at level 96. She will never reach 97, because she dies too often while teleporting. Obviously this is no option for HC.

The question is: is it still possible to master the game with a merc, which does not die? Or are mercs in general too weak to survive a boss?

I also tried

• Act 5 with full Sazabi
• Act 2 with Cure, Insight and
  Prayer

But they all die.