Best Merc for Frenzy Barb

Trying to find out what is the best merc setup for a

Frenzy barb.

Might Merc with Pride?
Bowa with Faith? (probably not because I don't need THAT much IAS)
Baba Merc with LW and Hustle - that way I could do two berserker Axes Grief or even LW (with IAS jewel in Guillaume)

something entirely different?

my contrarian barb merc:

act 5

Frenzy merc with full sazabi and Hustle in an ethereal

Mythical Sword

i don't use Enigma for my barbs and nothing else keeps up

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I like act 5

Frenzy merc with dual Last Wish and Hustle armor.

A cheaper option is act 2 merc with Might/Pride and Hustle armor.

I really recommend Hustle armor because at the speed you'll be running any merc will have a hard time catching up with you (unless you use Enigma, which I find "meh" on a

Frenzy barb).

I tried Act 1 merc with Faith but she lagged behind all the time and the

Fanaticism aura range just wasn't good enough.

krathkor wrote: 11 months ago

nothing else keeps up

A very real problem if you're not bringing

Teleport.
Though on higher player counts,

Frenzy barbs tend to still go slow enough for a(n A2) merc to catch up. Even more so on phys immunes.

Personally, I rather like A2 might + reaper's on mine for exactly those situations. 98% of the time (ish), he tends to stay in aura range (thanks to teleporting back over quickly enough) but he generally doesn't attack much, if at all. On lower player counts at least. You also don't need him to because at that point, your damage per swing isn't holding you back, the fact that you're single-target is. Pride or procs don't help that, sadly. And added merc dmg alone won't really make up for that as that's also just added single target (so...1.25 target I guess, if he picks a different one for his [significantly lower] dmg).

For those times where you do get stuck though (primarily higher count phys immunes), the decrep proc makes a world of a difference. Plus you do notice the difference on bosses and the like in particular, seeing how they bring enough life to actually take more than 1-2 swings.

Fun fact:
Gearing A2 merc for run speed actually made things significantly worse for me because he still runs way too slow to ever keep up with

Frenzy run speed but he runs fast enough to not fall behind as much and hence

Teleport back over to you far less frequently, resulting in still little to no attacks but also little to no aura uptime on top...bad juju.

Does dual LW stack on merc and you end up with a lvl 34 might?

Would mean I play dual Grief and he plays dual LW?

Pride and Might Merc should be higher percentage damage or rather not?

griefPB+lawbringerPB on the barb with might+Pride merc is my favourite setup for a walking\running frenzybarb

xigua wrote: 11 months ago

Does dual LW stack on merc and you end up with a lvl 34 might?
Pride and Might Merc should be highter percentage damage or rather not?

A let's say lvl 90 merc runs lvl 18 might I believe it was which adds 210%.
Pride with a 16-20 conc adds another 285 to 345% for 495 to 555% total.

LW does stack to lvl 34 which adds 370% so significantly less than even a min roll Pride.
Though the merc himself would do way more dmg than a Pride one since Pride is a horrid weapon to be attacking with, sadly.

(Either way, LW kinda sucks ^^)

yea - i know, i know - and maybe pushing it a little in terms of price. That's what I was thinking with Pride - weird runeword. Found a

Eth

Thresher I almost used for Pride - seems like a waste. If I run LW and he runs 2 LW his 34 will count, right?

Aye, higher aura wins. Why on earth would you do that though?! That'd just make your LW even worse than LW already is to begin with.

highly theoretical - I don't have THAT many

Jah to waste - nonetheless right now my main concern is running like an uncontrolled dumbo into a pile of mobs, getting stuck, and dieing - still trying to figure out how to prevent that

You..shouldn't be dying anyways, given decent gear (which is far cheaper than 3x LW).

Given, if you get surrounded by phys immunes, it may take you a while to get back out (or you just

Leap..or have a pt in ww..or whatever) but even then,

Frenzy dmg + sunder throughput while low is still enough to leech sufficient life. Plus that'd be exactly the kind of situation I'd like an A2 reaper's merc for as that'll clear up said surrounding pack in no time.

I got a terrible LW roll by the way but it is fun playing with it - as soon as

Fade procs or

Life Tap it's like day and night

On lower players count you may consider something like Faith Act 1 Fire or even cold Act 3, both help with cc tremendously (yes Act 3, who would imagine eh?), since fire dmg for

Exploding Arrow stack differently and AoE freeze in combination with already significantly faster character can do miracles for you (it's also different dmg type than phy).

If you don't run a physical sunder yourself then Act 2 with Reaper's is a must (now what differs here from other suggestions is I would say definitely tryout

Blessed Aim Act 2 Merc on levels <87). The problem with

Decrepify proc is it's not constant, some people find it very annoying to re-cast when needed (in tough situations), I personally never had problems with it, but then again I'm playing the game way slower.

Frenzy Barb doesn't need Enigma (IMHO) at all, he runs pretty fast on his own while slaying everything in his path for the pure joy.

The only thing is finickiness on the

Frenzy mechanics, sometimes it seems like game doesn't want to load properly all the clicks and you need to spam att button a lot (which I don't like to do -- I'm old school "hold down the LMB for continuous fight and use <SHIFT> when surrounded" type). Dunno if it's the servers or game just skips a frame here and there but I found quite annoying the mechanics of

Frenzy most of the time (it's like targeting doesn't work properly when you are sped up). This doesn't produce all negative effect however, as much as I noticed -- this also makes you kinda invulnerable to dolls in particular since you are basically moving a lot and quite quick and game can't "load" all the proper hit frames and true positions; you can often find yourself killing a

Bone Fetish without taking any dmg in the process which is very weird experience (it feels like you move away from the radius of their body explosion while they are exploding which doesn't catch you)!

Ofc all of that is alternative if you don't want to spend absolute fortune to make more than 1 LW.

Sidenote: Might act2 + Pride would be amazing from %ED perspective but is not usable for a

Find Item barbarian as Pride has

Cham in it and foks your horks twice over.

I'm running double LW for the reason above, and that lvl 34 aura on demand, rather than theoretical lvl 19-21 might aura from A2 with a theoretical

Decrepify on top, though that one is still a valid option.

Running strictly in

Travincal where A2 would just get into action trying to turn on his aura while I am deep in killing zone already. So, as you can see, my case is VERY specific and quite niche. LW is not great and absolutely not worth the price. It's best use is to make a non-smiter paladin into a 100 %CB smiter with no skill investment.

TheDoo wrote: 11 months ago

...
The only thing is finickiness on the

Frenzy mechanics, sometimes it seems like game doesn't want to load properly all the clicks and you need to spam att button a lot (which I don't like to do -- I'm old school "hold down the LMB for continuous fight and use <SHIFT> when surrounded" type).
...

Might I wager a guess and say that you're indeed trying to hold down your LMB specifically?

I've been raging at that issue (and subsequently refusing to run

Frenzy barbs at all) for quite a while until I figured out that D2:R apparently simply broke

Frenzy controls on LMB. You constantly drop target. You get stuck standing still all the time with nothing happening. So on and so forth.
Weirdly enough though, there's a very simple fix to all of that because they only broke it specifically for LMB, not for

Frenzy/holding in general. So if you simply use RMB instead, you can go right back to "hold button for entire run, nothing to worry about" as the auto-targeting works just fine then. It'll have you running as it should, up until you get close to a mob and your cursor is at least roughly in the direction of that mob in which case it'll automatically pick it up as a target and tear through it. No shift needed. As it should be.
RMB = win.
LMB = broken AF.

Accidentally noticed that when I moved

Frenzy to RMB on some weird multi-skill experimental build which I otherwise probably never would have done. Ever since then..barb is back to

Frenzy because it finally works again. Easiest fix ever, once you actually know about it.

Schnorki wrote: 11 months ago

RMB = win.
LMB = broken AF.

Accidentally noticed that when I moved

Frenzy to RMB on some weird multi-skill experimental build which I otherwise probably never would have done. Ever since then..barb is back to

Frenzy because it finally works again. Easiest fix ever, once you actually know about it.

Hell yeah, my

Frenzy barb has

Berserk on LMB for the phys immunes. One point wonder and RMB

Frenzy FTW. I think I switched to RMB when it kept swapping to normal attack from

Frenzy upon entering a game. Think it was because my hard points in stats weren't enough to hold both weapons and that made

Frenzy unusuable for that particular split-second upon loading -> Game decided my LMB is now a normal attack. LMB for attacks and movement just doesn't work the way RMB does.

The same happens on 3-trang necro with

Fireball on LMB (don't want to bash with

Death's Web), it keeps "unloading" every time and switches to normal attack. Or maybe it does it upon swap to CtA where you get somehow different

Fireball from 2-piece set for a moment. Not sure now.

I can confirm: Hustle / Lawbringer is awesome - only issue is that the little guys is squishy~ not sure if a Fortitude will help (?)
When I do Chaos sanctum he can keep up fine.

Fortitude = win.
That is all.

Reapers Toll merc for physical immunes unless your happy using Beserk, in which case I enjoy using a3

Enchant Merc personally. Nothing else keeps up anyways and your damage is fine without the aura.

Schnorki wrote: 11 months ago

RMB = win.
LMB = broken AF.

Accidentally noticed that when I moved

Frenzy to RMB on some weird multi-skill experimental build which I otherwise probably never would have done. Ever since then..barb is back to

Frenzy because it finally works again. Easiest fix ever, once you actually know about it.

Hehe didn't think of that... Silly, silly me! Thanks Schnorki! On the other hand I'm glad I'm not completely and utterly crazy xd
I kinda just accepted it being like that and continue missing and standing a lot, making it absolutely counter-productive like it's some part of it's shtick. Well now, this will change things significantly!