I grinded my equipment for my Wind Dudu up nicly there days and it is at a point that I want to start to be serious about my merc's euipment.
I have two questions concerning my Wind Dudu's merc:
1) What merc to choose?
2) What equipment should I choose?
concerning 1)
At the moment i have an act 2 merc with Holy Freeze aura for crowd control. Since my merc wasn't always by my side, because i did not own a Enigma that was a good combo, but with tele-stomp Holy Freeze seems to be redundant. In your opinion is a merc with might aura an alternativ?
concerning 2)
I think that the weapon of choice for the merc would be The Reaper's Toll. But what Helm/Armour combo should I choose? Andy+Forty or GuilFace+Treachery? Is the crushing blow with guilface in addition with thew superior attack speed better than andy+forty? I cannot decide. Perhaps you can make a point on what to choose?
Thanks in advance for the help and all have a nice christmas.
I grinded my equipment for my Wind Dudu up nicly there days and it is at a point that I want to start to be serious about my merc's euipment.
I have two questions concerning my Wind Dudu's merc:
1) What merc to choose?
2) What equipment should I choose?
concerning 1)
At the moment i have an act 2 merc with Holy Freeze aura for crowd control. Since my merc wasn't always by my side, because i did not own a Enigma that was a good combo, but with tele-stomp Holy Freeze seems to be redundant. In your opinion is a merc with might aura an alternativ?
concerning 2)
I think that the weapon of choice for the merc would be The Reaper's Toll. But what Helm/Armour combo should I choose? Andy+Forty or GuilFace+Treachery? Is the crushing blow with guilface in addition with thew superior attack speed better than andy+forty? I cannot decide. Perhaps you can make a point on what to choose?
Thanks in advance for the help and all have a nice christmas.
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i use def merc with Insight since i have freeze aura from Doom.
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brgljez wrote: 2 years ago
i use def merc with Insight since i have freeze aura from Doom.
That would be nice too, but i think that for a Wind Dudu Heart of the Oak is the best weapon, so i cannot take Doom. :O
For my trades I expect Lem as lowest rune. Otherwise please offer Perfect Gems.
Feel free to make an offer. All prices are negotiable, but BIN (Buy It Now) always wins!
TZ: UTC+1
Please don't PM me or add me on BNet without a comment on a trade posting.
brgljez wrote: 2 years ago
i use def merc with Insight since i have freeze aura from Doom.
That would be nice too, but i think that for a Wind Dudu Heart of the Oak is the best weapon, so i cannot take Doom. :O
of course. srry for disturbing u.
...ladder also
if online, contact me via bn chat for fast trade or negotiations after placing reply here.
If u need help with SCNL "Socket" quest, ubers or waypoints, feel free to contact me. Will gladly help.
brgljez wrote: 2 years ago
i use def merc with Insight since i have freeze aura from Doom.
That would be nice too, but i think that for a Wind Dudu Heart of the Oak is the best weapon, so i cannot take Doom. :O
of course. srry for disturbing u.
Nope sry that shouldnt mean I do not appreciate your answer, but I want to discuss the options, or why are you thinking that Doom would be a better weapon pick?
For my trades I expect Lem as lowest rune. Otherwise please offer Perfect Gems.
Feel free to make an offer. All prices are negotiable, but BIN (Buy It Now) always wins!
TZ: UTC+1
Please don't PM me or add me on BNet without a comment on a trade posting.
The idea behind Doom for a Wind druid is to have your Hurricane benefit from the massive -cold res which generally far outweighs the 1 extra skill from Heart of the Oak.
At the same time, Tornado damage typically outweighs Hurricane if you're not in the middle of larger mob groups on a regular basis and that dmg also loses a skill point (and a cast frame, more often than not).
As a result, depending on your target areas and preferred playstyle, Doom is or is not a preferred choice over hoto.
Plus you get Holy Freeze while keeping a might merc so his dmg goes up without you losing the defensive bonus that aura provides. Though that's the lesser aspect of it.
Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago
The idea behind Doom for a Wind druid is to have your Hurricane benefit from the massive -cold res which generally far outweighs the 1 extra skill from Heart of the Oak.
At the same time, Tornado damage typically outweighs Hurricane if you're not in the middle of larger mob groups on a regular basis and that dmg also loses a skill point (and a cast frame, more often than not).
As a result, depending on your target areas and preferred playstyle, Doom is or is not a preferred choice over hoto.
Plus you get Holy Freeze while keeping a might merc so his dmg goes up without you losing the defensive bonus that aura provides. Though that's the lesser aspect of it.
Oh I never knew this. Thanks a lot!
For my trades I expect Lem as lowest rune. Otherwise please offer Perfect Gems.
Feel free to make an offer. All prices are negotiable, but BIN (Buy It Now) always wins!
TZ: UTC+1
Please don't PM me or add me on BNet without a comment on a trade posting.
I'd argue that The Reaper's Toll is used for the physical resistance negation, synergizing well with Tornado physical damage, not crowd control. Reaper's only has a chance to proc Decrepify. For weaker enemies, Nados and Hurricane will chew them up before it has a chance to proc. For stronger enemies, you'd want them held down while waiting for a proc. Or just frozen while you skip them. In this case, I'd say OP's original Holy Freeze Mercenary direction is a good one.
As for the overall topic, I'm not a huge druid player, but on my Wind Druid, the physical damage and reach of Tornado is significant enough that I don't feel like my merc contributes much in situations where physical damage itself is sufficient for the cause. It's only vs physical immunes that he does any work at all, and that by triggering Decrepify. To that end, I actually run an Act 5 Merc with double Lawbringer. I am not comfortable with Wind Druid math enough to recommend this as an alternative to the OP's original question. However, this experience pushes me to consider the Treachery variant of the build for the IAS to increase total Decrepify procs rather than Fortitude for actual damage.
I'd argue that The Reaper's Toll is used for the physical resistance negation, synergizing well with Tornado physical damage, not crowd control. Reaper's only has a chance to proc Decrepify. For weaker enemies, Nados and Hurricane will chew them up before it has a chance to proc. For stronger enemies, you'd want them held down while waiting for a proc. Or just frozen while you skip them. In this case, I'd say OP's original Holy Freeze Mercenary direction is a good one.
As for the overall topic, I'm not a huge druid player, but on my Wind Druid, the physical damage and reach of Tornado is significant enough that I don't feel like my merc contributes much in situations where physical damage itself is sufficient for the cause. It's only vs physical immunes that he does any work at all, and that by triggering Decrepify. To that end, I actually run an Act 5 Merc with double Lawbringer. I am not comfortable with Wind Druid math enough to recommend this as an alternative to the OP's original question. However, this experience pushes me to consider the Treachery variant of the build for the IAS to increase total Decrepify procs rather than Fortitude for actual damage.
Thanks for the long answer. I'm greatful for your perspective.
"However, this experience pushes me to consider the Treachery variant of the build for the IAS to increase total Decrepify procs rather than Fortitude for actual damage."
This is exactly the problem I'm thinking about. Moreover if you add the chance of crushing blow, which comes from GuilFace, it would be great. On the other hand Treachery does not have resis. Forty have more overall damage and resis, which the Treachery setup lacks, but less attack speed.
Forty is better better paired with andy for the little extra attack speed, I think. But what should I choose, since both are expensiv, if I want a ias/all resis jewel for GuilFace to compenate for the missing resis of Treachery.
For my trades I expect Lem as lowest rune. Otherwise please offer Perfect Gems.
Feel free to make an offer. All prices are negotiable, but BIN (Buy It Now) always wins!
TZ: UTC+1
Please don't PM me or add me on BNet without a comment on a trade posting.
Looking at the final options, you can push all proccing mercs to 9 frames with decrep or amp proc weapons. A5 mercs will hit twice in that time, A1 will hit once and A2 will vary, due to the difference in attacks. Do note that A5 Bash will have to give up anti-freeze to hit 9 frames. With it, he'll Cap at 10 frames.
Sorting that all out, you get an averaged:
The 95% refers to the number of full strikes and as a result frames or seconds needed to statistically reach a 95% or higher chance of having the proc go off at least once.
An A2 reaper's toll merc gives you the highest proc chance over time while also giving you the highest per swing proc chance overall. So if you want decrep and a merc that actually does solid dmg himself, A2 reaper's is your best bet.
A1 Wrath is already the worst option for decrep over time but is actually even worse in reality (especially for a telestomping build) because A1 mercs tend to spend more time just running away and because Wrath also comes with a Life Tap proc that can overwrite your decrep again.
Do note however that amplify will give you more of a dmg boost than decrep does. As a result, there's two options to at least point out:
A5 Bash merc with vile husk (included in the table above).
And an A1 merc with Brand.
The Brand variant actually comes with a solid proc chance and amp over decrep BUT unlike the others, it isn't on striking but on being struck so you basically need to telestomp your A1 merc into packs to get her hit.
If you spend most of your time in larger packs, that should work out fairly well. If you're looking at bosses though, it is probably a bit of a crap option because the odds of a boss proccing it off the first hit (meaning they need to also even cause a real hit) aren't all too high and the A1 AI will have her running away pretty much immediately, most of the time. Personally, I'd really only consider that as an option if I wanted my druid to just chain farm cows and basically nothing else.
Just for fun, below is the actual, averaged real-time breakdown of the first second odds to have gotten at least 1 proc. Basically, reaper's loses to double Lawbringer in frames 5, 9, 10 and 11 because LB will have gotten an extra swing and higher overall odds in those frames. At literally any other point in time (and for Infinity thereafter) though, 9-frame reaper's wins.
Disclaimer to the above:
The actual specific frame shifts, depending on the attack used and action frame. That's too nerdy and annoying to chart out even for me though. The Principle and Pattern holds either way, the starting points merely shift by up to a handful of frames. The same applies to the frames/95% further above. Also, all of the odds shift slightly due to differences in AR and hence hit chance. Also too annoying (read: nearly impossible) to chart out as it equally varies with your target mobs but from my personal experience, A5 mercs suck at actually landing hits (despite their AR numbers actually suggesting otherwise - I'm like 99% sure they're flat out bugged), pushing A2 reaper's even further ahead.
Just for reference:
You get a 9 frame reaper's merc at 89 or higher IAS. So Treachery + ed/ias reaper + ias/whatever Andariel's or you can shift things around a bit and for example forego Treachery for a 4-sock 60 ias armor to free up one socket for an anti-freeze Cham.
Edit:
For clarity's sake, the first second/over time breakdowns are averaged and would apply (statistically) on new packs if you move straight from one to the next. It wouldn't quite look like that on first packs or with noticeable breaks in between because your merc would "recover" and start over at 0 frame progression. So the averaged frames per attack wouldn't apply and he would have a 0% chance up until his first action frame. But if you move on and just chain packs as one would when worrying about that level of a time/frame difference, the above holds as averaged results.
None of the above accounts for AI gaps or any averaged interruptions from walk time or the like.
Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago
Did some math for you cuz..why the hell not? :p
Looking at the final options, you can push all proccing mercs to 9 frames with decrep or amp proc weapons. A5 mercs will hit twice in that time, A1 will hit once and A2 will vary, due to the difference in attacks. Do note that A5 Bash will have to give up anti-freeze to hit 9 frames. With it, he'll Cap at 10 frames.
Sorting that all out, you get an averaged:
image.png
The 95% refers to the number of full strikes and as a result frames or seconds needed to statistically reach a 95% or higher chance of having the proc go off at least once.
An A2 reaper's toll merc gives you the highest proc chance over time while also giving you the highest per swing proc chance overall. So if you want decrep and a merc that actually does solid dmg himself, A2 reaper's is your best bet.
A1 Wrath is already the worst option for decrep over time but is actually even worse in reality (especially for a telestomping build) because A1 mercs tend to spend more time just running away and because Wrath also comes with a Life Tap proc that can overwrite your decrep again.
Do note however that amplify will give you more of a dmg boost than decrep does. As a result, there's two options to at least point out:
A5 Bash merc with vile husk (included in the table above).
And an A1 merc with Brand.
The Brand variant actually comes with a solid proc chance and amp over decrep BUT unlike the others, it isn't on striking but on being struck so you basically need to telestomp your A1 merc into packs to get her hit.
If you spend most of your time in larger packs, that should work out fairly well. If you're looking at bosses though, it is probably a bit of a crap option because the odds of a boss proccing it off the first hit (meaning they need to also even cause a real hit) aren't all too high and the A1 AI will have her running away pretty much immediately, most of the time. Personally, I'd really only consider that as an option if I wanted my druid to just chain farm cows and basically nothing else.
Just for fun, below is the actual, averaged real-time breakdown of the first second odds to have gotten at least 1 proc. Basically, reaper's loses to double Lawbringer in frames 5, 9, 10 and 11 because LB will have gotten an extra swing and higher overall odds in those frames. At literally any other point in time (and for Infinity thereafter) though, 9-frame reaper's wins.
image.png
Disclaimer to the above:
The actual specific frame shifts, depending on the attack used and action frame. That's too nerdy and annoying to chart out even for me though. The Principle and Pattern holds either way, the starting points merely shift by up to a handful of frames. The same applies to the frames/95% further above. Also, all of the odds shift slightly due to differences in AR and hence hit chance. Also too annoying (read: nearly impossible) to chart out as it equally varies with your target mobs but from my personal experience, A5 mercs suck at actually landing hits (despite their AR numbers actually suggesting otherwise - I'm like 99% sure they're flat out bugged), pushing A2 reaper's even further ahead.
Just for reference:
You get a 9 frame reaper's merc at 89 or higher IAS. So Treachery + ed/ias reaper + ias/whatever Andariel's or you can shift things around a bit and for example forego Treachery for a 4-sock 60 ias armor to free up one socket for an anti-freeze Cham.
Edit:
For clarity's sake, the first second/over time breakdowns are averaged and would apply (statistically) on new packs if you move straight from one to the next. It wouldn't quite look like that on first packs or with noticeable breaks in between because your merc would "recover" and start over at 0 frame progression. So the averaged frames per attack wouldn't apply and he would have a 0% chance up until his first action frame. But if you move on and just chain packs as one would when worrying about that level of a time/frame difference, the above holds as averaged results.
None of the above accounts for AI gaps or any averaged interruptions from walk time or the like.
Wow I'm overwhelmed. Thanks a lot.
For my trades I expect Lem as lowest rune. Otherwise please offer Perfect Gems.
Feel free to make an offer. All prices are negotiable, but BIN (Buy It Now) always wins!
TZ: UTC+1
Please don't PM me or add me on BNet without a comment on a trade posting.
Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago
Did some math for you cuz..why the hell not? :p
Fascinating results! Thanks Schnorki! So, as suspected, the A2 merc is the best. I've wondered since this thread started about the about uptime on the respective Decrepify procs, since Reaper's level 1 only lasts 4 seconds and Lawbringer's level 15 lasts for 14, but looking at your math, we'd expect both of them to be able to maintain uptime on targets that live long enough to get to the 4 second mark. At which point, the higher chance of an early proc matters more, especially with telestomping. Cool stuff!
Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago
Did some math for you cuz..why the hell not? :p
Fascinating results! Thanks Schnorki! So, as suspected, the A2 merc is the best. I've wondered since this thread started about the about uptime on the respective Decrepify procs, since Reaper's level 1 only lasts 4 seconds and Lawbringer's level 15 lasts for 14, but looking at your math, we'd expect both of them to be able to maintain uptime on targets that live long enough to get to the 4 second mark. At which point, the higher chance of an early proc matters more, especially with telestomping. Cool stuff!
Aye, the odds of actually having decrep drop off are fairly low. Plus you don't typically take more than 4 seconds to kill something that isn't a boss once somewhat geared.
For real-world reference, my druid (albeit a summoner) has his merc not even optimized for pure proc speed and it pretty much never drops off, so long as he's actually attacking.
The true "fun" piece though is that you can set up the A2 version of a proc-puppet without really losing much, if not even gaining across the board.
If you gear him properly, he will have anti-freeze. He will have more hit rec than any "normal" loadout. He will hit the 9 frames across the board for max proc speed. He will still have capped res. And just for good measure he will kind of rule the DPS comparisons* as well:
A5 dbl Lawbringer mercs can't even come close (like..literally half, if that) unless you're attacking an undead target. We all know A1 dps is an utter joke anyways. Comparing to "traditional" A2 loadouts (fort, Andariel's, ..) the fort/anda version falls short when using anti-freeze, barely pulls ahead when using the usual ias/res jewel (at the cost of losing anti-freeze though) and pulls ahead a liiiittle further (<10% total still) with ias/ed, then at the cost of both, anti-freeze and capped fire res. A5 vile husk Bash at 9 frames actually does compete with them in merc dmg but that, too comes without anti-freeze so I for one would still disqualify it. The 10 frame version isn't too far behind and does have anti-freeze but I for one would still vote against that, due to the crap proc chance on husk. So ultimately...A2 speed reaper still wins.
*Disclaimer: Basing raw dmg numbers as a base off a quick maxroll check so if the comparison is off, blame them
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The Principle and Pattern holds either way, the starting points merely shift by up to a handful of frames. The same applies to the frames/95% further above. Also, all of the odds shift slightly due to differences in AR and hence hit chance. Also too annoying (read: nearly impossible) to chart out as it equally varies with your target mobs but from my personal experience, A5 mercs suck at actually landing hits (despite their AR numbers actually suggesting otherwise - I'm like 99% sure they're flat out bugged), pushing A2 reaper's even further ahead.
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