Act 2 Merc w/ Pride Equipment

Hi

I'm thinking in use Act 2 Mer (Might) with Pride with my Strafezon.

On guides are generally recommended

Vampire Gaze +

Shaftstop for the rest of equipment, instead of the typical

Andariel's Visage + Fortitude, to increase his survivability as Pride does very low damage...

I was thinking in trying

Andariel's Visage + Chains of Honor instead, for the +4 to all skill (as more 4 levels of Might is like an extra Ruby Jewel for my char )
Have any of you tried something like that?
May It work or Merc will die to frequently without the extra % dr?

I use

Andariel's Visage and Treachery on the merc. I never cared to get better armor for him because I didn't think it made that much of a difference for what his role in the party is. Now that I can easily afford a better armor for him, my character is 99 and it really, really doesn't matter to me anymore.

When Treachery procs

Fade and he gains the resists and physical damage reduction, there isn't a huge difference between any of the armor options for him, so it comes down to utility because he's really just an aura bot. Before

Fade kicks in though, he is very vulnerable to

Council Member hydras. That only matters when playing solo though, and considering how you're not supposed to be taking hits as a bowazon, I'll sometimes feed him a full rejuv since I typically won't use them.

One nice thing about Treachery is that the 45% IAS plus 20% from

Andariel's Visage combined with 33% from level 15

Fanaticism gets him down to an 8/2

Jab, which is 6.25 hits per second. If nothing else, it allows him to constantly proc Hit Blinds Target.

At level 98, his

Jab DPS is as follows with a level 20

Concentration ethereal Pride

Giant Thresher and

Andariel's Visage:
Fortitude: 18.2K
Treachery: 16.5K
Chains of Honor: 15.2K

However, I don't care very much what his DPS is, because that's my job. In addition to approximately doubling his life steal, another thing I like about Chains of Honor which I never thought of before is that it raises his Might from level 23 to 25. That two-level difference only increases my

Strafe DPS by 338 though. If I go with Treachery/Fortitude and drop

Andariel's Visage for

Vampire Gaze, my DPS decreases by 338 with Might dropping down to level 21. A 676 DPS swing isn't nothing, but it's also not an easily noticeable difference.

Giving him the

Vampire Gaze and

Shaftstop combo never crossed my mind, but I haven't felt like I missed out on him being more tanky because he's hiding in the back most of the time while the

Valkyrie and

Decoy are actually keeping the monsters away. 79% FRW and Harmony on switch means I'm not waiting for his cowardly ass anyway. His only essential combat duty is to activate Might, and even with Treachery before

Fade procs, he can absorb a

Hydra or three before the light turns on upstairs.

I think it sounds like a solid idea. He gets up to 18% leech, overcapped res, some DR, safety from freeze and blind. Undead and unleechable targets could be an issue maybe

Another part of the merc survival equation is your character's damage. If you are killing monsters quickly or at least keeping them in hit recovery, that's a big survival bonus for your merc

I prefer

The Reaper's Toll over Pride in most cases.

When playing solo, I don't need the extra damage of

Concentration, because my damage is through the roof anyway.

When playing split mf games online, I have a hard time killing bosses/physical immunes and Pride sucks ass in keeping the merc alive versus

Baal or Diablo whatever armor or helmet he is geared with.

I am using

Atma's Amulet, but it is not enough to safely break all immunes reliably. Wraiths can be a pain.

Pride is great for doing real party games like a Baalwalk, when I have other players with me.

All in all, I prefer my frostzon/strafezon hybrid build, because she can kill ANYTHING in a solo game. Using an act 1 rogue merc (Hustle/Mist/Flickering Flame) for style and additional fire damage. So I have

Strafe,

Freezing Arrow and

Exploding Arrow from my merc, all with 100%

Pierce. Nothing can hold up against this. If I want more safety (for Nilhatak for example) I simply swap the FF for a Delirium.

I finished Hell this week and I had done some TZ runs (Merc is using Pride + Chains of Honor +

Harlequin Crest)

On non-boss runs Merc is surviving with no problem (even

Travincal).
But he is dying with some frequency against Diablo,

Baal and last

Baal's wave (if they spawned around him...)
(can finish the fight without him... but spend 50K each other run is not that cool...)

I will give

Vampire Gaze a try to see it if makes any notable difference

I think what you need to do it separate the type of damage he's receiving and make the adjustments on that.

Shaftstop and

Vampire Gaze mostly reduce Physical so keep that in mind.

Chains of Honor (COH) makes sense and is a tasty piece of equipment for the Merc.

I would consider changing the

Helm to

Kira's Guardian to boost that Res, and

Guardian Angel to push their Res caps up to 90%. Preferably an Ethereal base also, which reduces the Strength attribute required to equip.

You would then have 2 open Sockets on these pieces, and I would consider an IAS Jewel in the

Helm or an

Um rune in the Armor which would allow more swap flexibility on the

Helm in safer fights where Max Res is not required and a higher damage option may be preferred.

Happy hunting!

The problem with

Kira's Guardian +

Guardian Angel is that Merc will have no ll (life leech)

Buy may work with another Helm with enough resistances and ll (in a first look only

Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest or a Rare

Circlet... )
(At L83 Merc has 150 resist, with 2

Um he still need more 10 to reach 190... But at level 93 just 2

Um are enough... So at that point, in theory, can use any helm with a

Um )

D369 wrote: 1 day ago

I think what you need to do it separate the type of damage he's receiving and make the adjustments on that.

Shaftstop and

Vampire Gaze mostly reduce Physical so keep that in mind.

Chains of Honor (COH) makes sense and is a tasty piece of equipment for the Merc.

I would consider changing the

Helm to

Kira's Guardian to boost that Res, and

Guardian Angel to push their Res caps up to 90%. Preferably an Ethereal base also, which reduces the Strength attribute required to equip.

You would then have 2 open Sockets on these pieces, and I would consider an IAS Jewel in the

Helm or an

Um rune in the Armor which would allow more swap flexibility on the

Helm in safer fights where Max Res is not required and a higher damage option may be preferred.

Happy hunting!

Two things:

Firstly: when you have a setup that allows the user (Merc) to basically ignore the elemental damage coming in - he does not need life leech at all (potions are available). He just needs to survive to give you the aura - and you kill closest enemies first.

Secondly: This setup is mostly for high level enemies such as bosses and Ubers where any pathetic life leech they have does nothing to keep him alive and high res caps is the only way to do it. In Trav it literally takes seconds to clear and a Merc is getting in one or two shots if he's fast enough to walk over to the mobs before you murder them. Survival for Aura is the

Key - as they can't do any damage or provide Auras if they're dead.

Soo many of us have run this setup, so take it for a spin before you get too deep into balancing everything in theory. Obviously if you can get an

Um into the Armor and you have a decent res

Helm you can bypass Kiras. See how you go

Also if you want to take it to the next level you can equip Fortitude and proc

Chilling Armor before putting the

Guardian Angel on

fredkid wrote: 16 hours ago

The problem with

Kira's Guardian +

Guardian Angel is that Merc will have no ll (life leech)

Buy may work with another Helm with enough resistances and ll (in a first look only

Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest or a Rare

Circlet... )
(At L83 Merc has 150 resist, with 2

Um he still need more 10 to reach 190... But at level 93 just 2

Um are enough... So at that point, in theory, can use any helm with a

Um )

D369 wrote: 1 day ago

I think what you need to do it separate the type of damage he's receiving and make the adjustments on that.

Shaftstop and

Vampire Gaze mostly reduce Physical so keep that in mind.

Chains of Honor (COH) makes sense and is a tasty piece of equipment for the Merc.

I would consider changing the

Helm to

Kira's Guardian to boost that Res, and

Guardian Angel to push their Res caps up to 90%. Preferably an Ethereal base also, which reduces the Strength attribute required to equip.

You would then have 2 open Sockets on these pieces, and I would consider an IAS Jewel in the

Helm or an

Um rune in the Armor which would allow more swap flexibility on the

Helm in safer fights where Max Res is not required and a higher damage option may be preferred.

Happy hunting!

For a ranged char, If you char is capable of killing enemies before the merc engages them, is better to benefit from

Concentration aura and might aura. What is the gear of your strafezon now?

https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/cb3z80z5

Alexandre_Souza wrote: 12 hours ago

For a ranged char, If you char is capable of killing enemies before the merc engages them, is better to benefit from

Concentration aura and might aura. What is the gear of your strafezon now?

fredkid wrote: 12 hours ago

https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/cb3z80z5

Alexandre_Souza wrote: 12 hours ago

For a ranged char, If you char is capable of killing enemies before the merc engages them, is better to benefit from

Concentration aura and might aura. What is the gear of your strafezon now?

Interesting, if you change Enigma to Fortitude, the damage will have a great increase. And you have a source of knockback. Thus, exist a possibility in case of using Fortitude, you strafezon will be so strong that won'h have time to your merc engage the enemy.If you permit a suggestion, as you're using

Atma scarab, unless you are farming places that has plenty of physical immunes, the sunder is not much necessary,

Amplify Damage is enough to break immunity.

For now, for quality of life reasons, I prefer have access to

Teleport (plus the extra mf and frw)
(Fortitute would enable me to replace some resist charms for Sharp Grand Charms or fine small charms too )

Alexandre_Souza wrote: 12 hours ago

Interesting, if you change Enigma to Fortitude, the damage will have a great increase.

For quality of life reason too, I try to keep a "farm anywhere build"
And with

Bone Break, the "breakble" immunes receive 100% of

Amplify Damage reduction (against just 1/5 without it)

Alexandre_Souza wrote: 12 hours ago

If you permit a suggestion, as you're using

Atma scarab, unless you are farming places that has plenty of physical immunes, the sunder is not much necessary,

Amplify Damage is enough to break immunity.

fredkid wrote: 12 hours ago

And with

Bone Break, the "breakble" immunes receive 100% of

Amplify Damage reduction (against just 1/5 without it)

Are you sure about this?

I thought that

Amplify Damage also only works at 1/5 when used on sunder-broken immunes, as it is one of the "other sources":

"All other sources of lowered resist, including

Conviction,

Lower Resist, and

Cold Mastery, are then applied at 1/5th effectiveness" (https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Sunder_(Diablo_II))

Yes this curses work on full effect : forums/bone-break-and-merc-s-decrep-t1291645.html

I remembered that discussion, and believed on it (that's why I post that previous comment)

But I made a test on
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/

And there,

Amplify Damage works at 1/5 even with

Bone Break
At the same time, maxroll is known for not being 100% correctly over everything (ex:

Strafe and

Whirlwind breakpoints are not correctly there...)

So... I'm a little confused now

The test I made:

1 point in

Smite (so no hit check)
0 points in attributes

Vortex Shield

Damage x Dummy (Physical Resistance: 0): 10–178

Damage x Specter, no

Bone Break, no

Amplify Damage (Physical Resistance: 100): 0

Damage x Specter, with

Bone Break, no

Amplify Damage (Physical Resistance: 95 - infered from damage): 1-9

Damage x Specter, no

Bone Break, with

Amplify Damage (Physical Resistance: 80 - infered from damage): 2-36

Damage x Specter, with

Bone Break, with

Amplify Damage (Physical Resistance: 75 - infered from damage): 3-45

Finxter wrote: 7 hours ago

Yes this curses work on full effect : forums/bone-break-and-merc-s-decrep-t1291645.html

Yes,

Amplify Damage and

Decrepify work at full effect on sundered enemies. Originally, in the Public Test Realm when sunder charms where being beta tested by players, all resistance lowering effects worked at full effect. Blizzard hotfixed this specifically for

Conviction and

Lower Resist when the patch went live for ladder season 2 so that those two curses would only work at 1/5 effect vs sundered enemies. Then for ladder season 3, they patched

Cold Mastery to also work at 1/5 effect vs sundered enemies. They mentioned these skills specifically, and nowhere did they ever mention that they also changed

Amplify Damage or

Decrepify.

Patch 2.5 (for ladder season 2) patch notes:
https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/article ... ded#Charms

You can see changes & hotfixes made after initial Public Test Realm feedback marked in red. Specifically:
Patch 2.6 (for ladder season 3) patch notes:
https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/article ... -concluded
Note that the developer's note specifically mentions that they wanted to bring

Cold Mastery in line with other elemental resistance reducing effects.

(also, curiously, in patch 2.5 they specifically said they didn't want to make this particular change for

Cold Mastery, they thought

Cold Mastery was fine as it was working at full effect)