Travincal/Council Members - Tip for Merc survive Hydra

Hi

The

Hydra from the Council Members melt my Mercenary (even at 75 resist and having life steal).

Travincal and Durance of Hate L3 are the only places were my Mercenary die on my regular farms (if I don't kill Council Members fast enough).

I read some time ago - don't have the link anymore - that there is a bug where Mercenaries take a lot of extra damage from

Hydra (somebody said that it is a side effect from a fix to reduce the

Hydra damage on PvP) and it seems to be true as I can stand still in front of the same Hydras that killed my Merc without having to worry (and I'm don't have absorb or any extra fire defense...)

Are there any tips (or equipment) that I can use to increase the Mercenary survival against the Council Members?
(something different from "kill Council Members faster" )

I thought about trying a

Guardian Angel, but would need to pre-buff

Fade (via Treachery - which may take some time on each run) or add a jewel (which would make me spend a

Larzuk quest) and I don't know if would be enough...

fredkid wrote: 5 months ago

Hi

The

Hydra from the Council Members melt my Mercenary (even at 75 resist and having life steal).

Travincal and Durance of Hate L3 are the only places were my Mercenary die on my regular farms (if I don't kill Council Members fast enough).

I read some time ago - don't have the link anymore - that there is a bug where Mercenaries take a lot of extra damage from

Hydra (somebody said that it is a side effect from a fix to reduce the

Hydra damage on PvP) and it seems to be true as I can stand still in front of the same Hydras that killed my Merc without having to worry (and I'm don't have absorb or any extra fire defense...)

Are there any tips (or equipment) that I can use to increase the Mercenary survival against the Council Members?
(something different from "kill Council Members faster" )

I thought about trying a

Guardian Angel, but would need to pre-buff

Fade (via Treachery - which may take some time on each run) or add a jewel (which would make me spend a

Larzuk quest) and I don't know if would be enough...

I dont know if it's related, but those fireballs from sirens in Act5 also melt my mercs very often.
In order to reduce this, i usually put a

Vampire Gaze on him.

Guardian Angel +

Kira's Guardian work wonders together for a merc vs council. You *can* socket both if you want, but just base, a decent roll of Kira's should do the trick.

Full rejuves... and I dont know what you are playing but reaper's toll.

Winterkill wrote: 5 months ago

Guardian Angel +

Kira's Guardian work wonders together for a merc vs council. You *can* socket both if you want, but just base, a decent roll of Kira's should do the trick.

this is Nice approach but you still missing LL on merc, if weapon don't provide it

GA plus e.g.

Tal Rasha

Mask

Um'ed do the work
I need go check what my barb's merc is holding, bu i have for sure GA and maxed res

I tend to run e. gaze (

Cham) + e. fort (archon or lacquered, depending) + a solid weapon (Insight, Infinity, reaper, ... depends on class) on all my mercs and none of them have a problem with trav hydras. Or really anything else usually.

Quite the opposite actually. A well-geared merc is so strong vs. council that when I actively want to kill him, I have to make sure to

Teleport him behind the extra wall so he can't reach anyone while the hydras widdle him down or he'll leech and clear the place too quickly to be at risk.

Guardian Angel plus

Crown of Thieves is the cheap and easy solution, if you need life leech on the

Helm

i used

Crown of Thieves before i changed to Cure , my merc seems to survive much easier with

Crown of Thieves than andariels anywhere.

My Mercs uses Insight (elite) +

Vampire Gaze / Bulwark + Duress / Treachery (in this case I confirm that

Fade is triggered before fight Council)

With my Lightning Sorceress and Fury Druid it dies frequently (and I finish the Council by myself), because of that I end up skipping

Travincal on my farms for a time...
With my necro summoner, it normally survive (but in this case there is a lot of other things for the

Hydra hit...).

CoH as armor.
You want you merc has over capped res in case of

Conviction.

Council Member are all demon and 8LL allows you to use

Helm without LL.

I find

Crown of Thieves + Gladiator's Bane effective although it still have hard time vs

Conviction

Very expensive, but my favorite merc setup is A5

Frenzy using GFace (chammed) + Chains of Honor + Grief + Last Wish. He can clear council by himself pretty quick, so long as no physical immunes.

A2 with GFace + CoH + Insight / Ariocs Needle / Infinity is also good but I prefer A5 due to being able to have Last Wish (for LifeTap).

No vamp gaze or fort for me due to cold damage (every hork counts!)

My rogue merc is pretty survivable wearing a non-

Eth Andy's

Mask, an

Eth Prudence armor and a Mist GM bow. Of course, running around with a

Frenzy barb helps.

fredkid wrote: 5 months ago

Hi

The

Hydra from the Council Members melt my Mercenary (even at 75 resist and having life steal).

Travincal and Durance of Hate L3 are the only places were my Mercenary die on my regular farms (if I don't kill Council Members fast enough).

I read some time ago - don't have the link anymore - that there is a bug where Mercenaries take a lot of extra damage from

Hydra (somebody said that it is a side effect from a fix to reduce the

Hydra damage on PvP) and it seems to be true as I can stand still in front of the same Hydras that killed my Merc without having to worry (and I'm don't have absorb or any extra fire defense...)

Are there any tips (or equipment) that I can use to increase the Mercenary survival against the Council Members?
(something different from "kill Council Members faster" )

I thought about trying a

Guardian Angel, but would need to pre-buff

Fade (via Treachery - which may take some time on each run) or add a jewel (which would make me spend a

Larzuk quest) and I don't know if would be enough...

Cheapest and easiest way to fix this is Temper

fredkid wrote: 5 months ago

Hi

The

Hydra from the Council Members melt my Mercenary (even at 75 resist and having life steal).

Travincal and Durance of Hate L3 are the only places were my Mercenary die on my regular farms (if I don't kill Council Members fast enough).

I thought about trying a

Guardian Angel, but would need to pre-buff

Fade (via Treachery - which may take some time on each run) or add a jewel (which would make me spend a

Larzuk quest) and I don't know if would be enough...

The problem with mercs is they're linear in function. When you move your char into an enclosed area they attempt to follow by trying to walk through the walls while trapped on the outside. In Tranvicanal this is merc kryptonite. I keep my merc alive by insuring they have a good amount of LL. I've also observed that an act2 merc does better when they've proc'ed their Mite Aura. If you have an Enigma then you can reset your merc with a quick

Teleport, but if not then a quick dash into the entrance to the Durance of Hate will pull him out of danger, and give him a moment to regenerate. The issue here of course is that you have to exit the Durance to get back to Tranvical.

It might help if you describe your build because my above solution works for my Stravezon, which is also my most efficient Tranvical farmer.

Zero187 wrote: 5 months ago

Very expensive, but my favorite merc setup is A5

Frenzy using GFace (chammed) + Chains of Honor + Grief + Last Wish. He can clear council by himself pretty quick, so long as no physical immunes.

A2 with GFace + CoH + Insight / Ariocs Needle / Infinity is also good but I prefer A5 due to being able to have Last Wish (for LifeTap).

No vamp gaze or fort for me due to cold damage (every hork counts!)

I'm in the process of making a horker, just levelling him now so he is pure

Frenzy with an Act2 Merc. But when I respec him I was thinking about an A5 merc for him but was wondering how to equip him. Thank you for saving me the ask!

Zero187 wrote: 5 months ago

Very expensive, but my favorite merc setup is A5

Frenzy using GFace (chammed) + Chains of Honor + Grief + Last Wish. He can clear council by himself pretty quick, so long as no physical immunes.

A2 with GFace + CoH + Insight / Ariocs Needle / Infinity is also good but I prefer A5 due to being able to have Last Wish (for LifeTap).

No vamp gaze or fort for me due to cold damage (every hork counts!)

Just rolled my first Last Wish. 365/69. I'm happy with those numbers!

Knappogue wrote: 5 months ago

Zero187 wrote: 5 months ago

Very expensive, but my favorite merc setup is A5

Frenzy using GFace (chammed) + Chains of Honor + Grief + Last Wish. He can clear council by himself pretty quick, so long as no physical immunes.

A2 with GFace + CoH + Insight / Ariocs Needle / Infinity is also good but I prefer A5 due to being able to have Last Wish (for LifeTap).

No vamp gaze or fort for me due to cold damage (every hork counts!)

Just rolled my first Last Wish. 365/69. I'm happy with those numbers!

Grats! I think that beats my two rolls so far (377/62 and 372/63). Seen two buddies of mine roll 389/70 and 390/69 a while back though.. Still drooling over those! Maybe now that Jahs are so much easier to get on NL, I might try for a better one.

Zero187 wrote: 5 months ago

Very expensive, but my favorite merc setup is A5

Frenzy using GFace (chammed) + Chains of Honor + Grief + Last Wish. He can clear council by himself pretty quick, so long as no physical immunes.

A2 with GFace + CoH + Insight / Ariocs Needle / Infinity is also good but I prefer A5 due to being able to have Last Wish (for LifeTap).

No vamp gaze or fort for me due to cold damage (every hork counts!)

I've been researching my horker build a lot. Like way more than any other build so far and there doesn't seem to be a general consensus on the build. I'd like him to do double duty as a gold find barb too. Got any advice on the horker/GF build?

Knappogue wrote: 5 months ago

I've been researching my horker build a lot. Like way more than any other build so far and there doesn't seem to be a general consensus on the build. I'd like him to do double duty as a gold find barb too. Got any advice on the horker/GF build?

Sure, I just put together a quick build overview of my current favorite GF/MF horker build:

Berserk/WW hybrid (20 points

Berserk / 1 point WW). I only used dual ali baba for that vid and let merc do most of the dmg, but you could switch to Grief + Ali Baba and kill a lot quicker if you wanted. Usually get around 200-300k gold per run on P1.

Lots of different variations, and always looking for advice myself!

EDIT: And here's a vid using Grief + Ali Baba just to show how fast you can kill:



But I enjoy the Dual Ali Baba more, as it's actually challenging and gives slightly better drops per run. I have to find a balance between fun and efficiency sometimes, and the super fast Grief kills can get boring for me.