Act 1 Rogue damage oddity

rdjeke

New member
Act 1 Rogue damage oddity

Today I made a new barbarian and decided to stick with a rogue mercenary (she had a cute name. Sue me :P). Along the way I found a few +max dam jewels that were nothing special, so I decided to stick them in an armor and put them on my girl (she also likes shiny stuff). And I noticed she suddenly started to kill stuff faster than the hulking brute hiring her. So, I decided to put things to a test - muled in a few more jewels and bought a socketed cap. Here there be numbers...

damage without a weapon: 11-14
damage without a weapon and a gemmed body armor (+12 max dam total): 11-37
damage with no weapon, +12 maxdam armor and +18 maxdam helmet: 11-70

when one adds a weapon in equation, things get mad

damage with a plain 3-23 dam long war bow: 16-57
damage with a bow and a gemmed body armor (+12 max dam total): 16-101 (!)
damage with the bow, +12 maxdam armor and +18 maxdam helmet: 16-162 (!!)

So, I decided to play with the weapon itself - added 2 ith runes (+9 max dam each)

damage with IthIth bow: 16-90 :shocked:
bow + armor: 16-135 :yikes:
bow + armor + helm: 16-201 :greedy:

So, +48 max dam turns to uh... 146 damage bonus. At level 23. And to think I always used to stick gems in merc weapons...

Now, my barb with 80 str wearing the +max dam stuff gets about half the damage bonus. With a plain war sword, adding +30 max dam, he goes from 20-51 to 20-114. Rogue has 85 dex and from the damage calculation formulas I found the bonuses they get should be quite close. I guess the damage calculation for mercenaries is just a leeeetle bit different. I don't have the gear to test the +min dam side of the story, nor the +%dam clothing besides weapon, but I DO have some four socket armors, Jeweller's Crowns of the Mammoth and other various mammals, and I saved every Jewel of Carnage I found. In a few levels Basanti will be a true killer...

I also need to test this outfit on a melee mercenary, but before that I wanted to ask the people here - is there a damage formula for the mercenaries available that explains this? Is this common knowledge?
 
I've noticed the same thing. I usually put +damage jewels in my merc's armor, too. (I save the helm for poison resist/25% poison length). But I still fill her Bow with gems/runes for elemental/poison damage damage and/or +damage to undead and/or -% target defence.

I've found that without the added damage jeweled armor, the merc just can't keep up with most of my characters when it comes to leveling (not so important now with 1.11 when we can just hire a new merc of a higher level).

Jude
 
Noticed something else about Merc damage: Might seems to give a really big bonus (to my Rogue, anyway), much more than the % she should be getting from it.

Jude
 
that's exactly the thing I noticed - she's practically tripling the damage from the +ed gear I gave her, at a rather low level. I wonder how much the damage bonus she gets grows with the level. Sadly, she's the only rogue merc I'm employing at the moment so no way to test it
 
Back
Top