Act 5 Frenzy Merc with Single Weapon

I've seen on various sites that, if only one weapon is equipped on the act 5 Frenzy merc, the damages will be calculated as if both hands were equipped with the same weapon. In the meanwhile, I've also seen on various sites that the bug was fixed and the damage on the empty hand will not be calculated with the single weapon that's equipped on the other hand. I'm having difficulty finding an authoritative answer to whether I can equip the merc with only one weapon and benefit from the bug.

Note that I'm not talking about stacking auras and stuff. It's just about the physical damage on the empty hand.

Thanks.

I'm farily certain that that was 2 separate things you are talking about.

First is act 5 mercenary dual wielding a single weapon which still, to my knowledge, acts like he is dual-wielding it as long as one hand is empty.
Second is Whirlwind barbarian with one Grief in mainhand and a broken weapon in off-hand. The WW would act like you wielded 2 of the same griefs (or any other weapon) in both hands. That was fixed. Not sure, if it applied to Frenzy as well at the time.

EDIT: I stand corrected. My knowledge is limited.

It has nothing to do with Whirlwind. It's about the Frenzy merc.

The sources that led to my question include:
* https://www.utplay.com/news/2423--d2r-2 ... n-diablo-2
* https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t ... /122287/58
* forums/act-5-frenzy-merc-equipped-with- ... 78063.html
*
and a few other pages.

All your sources say the same what I did:

You only need one weapon equipped and your merc will swing with it for each Frenzy attack just as he would had he been wielding two of the same weapon. It works but, objectively, you want 2 different weapons for auras (e.g. Plague+Lawbringer) or double trigger chances (e.g. 2x Plague) or stacking auras (2x Last Wish) unless you need the merc to be just a dumb beatstick, emphasis on dumb.

No idea why the video says "they fixed this 1 weapon bug" but you can see in the navigation bar a segment named "you don't need 2 of the same weapon" which answers your question.

EDIT: The uploader of the video added a comment 10 months ago, visible only from youtube site, that it no longer works.

In the second link, the user named DizzyDwarf said

The duplicate weapon bug was patched quite soon after that video was made. You need two weapons now.

At the beginning of the video (the fourth link), the Damage is shown with the same value when only one weapon is equipped. This is not the case in the current version of D2R. It suggests that the video was made from an older version of D2R. The title also suggests the was fixed. This is why it confuses me. My speculation is that the video maker simply modified the title and description of the video. As far as I know, you can't update a published video on YouTube. In order to keep the number of views of a published video, some people choose to upload a new video while keeping the old one.

I ran a test myself with The Secret Cow Level. I let the merc do all the job, except when he needed help, which rarely happened. The first time was with both weapons. It took about 35 minutes. The second time was with the slightly weaker weapon removed. It took about 50 minutes. At this point, it can't be certain, but I'm leaning towards the possibility that the bug has been fixed.

The empirical data are always the best data. ^_^

If you ran a cow level in twice the time (and it's not attack rating problem because act5 has a terrible ar) then you probably confirmed for yourself, and me as well, it no longer works. Thank you, learn something new every day. Clicked the video on youtube and it has a disclaimer in a pinned comment from the uploader that it was fixed. Seems reasonable to assume it was.

Ran a quick test here to look into this.

A5 Fury merc running either 1 or 2 perfect Griefs and otherwise stacking ED to make damage differences more visible.

With 2 Griefs, as expected, you see normal relatively strong hits along with the occasional massive hit (crits).

With 1 Grief, if the bug still exists, you would expect to see the exact same.

With 1 Grief actually observed however, there was now a 3rd type of hit (actual hit, not Venom ticks) which was comparatively tiny in contrast to the normal Grief hits. Assuming the bug is indeed fixed, this would make perfect sense as you'd then expect the off-hand hits to be swinging with no weapon and hence comparatively pathetic damage.

Equipping the 2nd Grief again then, as expected, resulted in my no longer observing these tiny hits.

Take that with a grain of salt as it was just a quick, likely statistically rather insignificant test but based on that, it does indeed seem to be fixed.