help with merc armor

[bioshocker]

help with merc armor

well, i got a question on the act2 merc armor for summonmancer; fort or bramble. fort offers dmg to merc,great resists and more def.on the other hand,bramble gives thorns to all the summons,but worser resists and crappy leech(13 after kill).so is it better to just stack another aura or stack merc with more dmg/res/def?

 

[jhtvman]

Re: help with merc armor

Thorns is useless on Hell difficulty. Go with Fort.

 

[MichelRPG]

Re: help with merc armor

even if you combine thorns with Iron Maiden it's still a pretty crappy damage dealer. After 1.10 any damage returners just suck, plain and simple.

 

[Meanstreak]

Re: help with merc armor

Yeah the only time thorns even deserves a second thought is if you stack the aura on an act one rogue with the bramble armor and Edge bow, since she stays back and hardly dies. even then though the damage returns aren't that great and you wasted your merc slot with an act 2 merc who could have added several auras to your arsenal.

 

[Yogirat]

Re: help with merc armor

thorns plus amp works in Hell. :yes: I use a rogue merc.

 

[shuy]

Re: help with merc armor

Go with CoH. Str bonus+ skill + demon and undead enchanced damage is almost equal to 300 damage from Forti. You get more resistances, LL and DR. Only def is lower.

 

[lumpor]

Re: help with merc armor

as long as the merc is leeching he won't die anyway, better to have the first corpse drop faster-

 

[tetracycloide]

Re: help with merc armor

Go with CoH. Str bonus+ skill + demon and undead enchanced damage is almost equal to 300 damage from Forti. You get more resistances, LL and DR. Only def is lower.

I would second the suggestion for CoH but would be remiss if I failed to point out that the demon and undead enhanced damage does not work on mercs. still, higher resistances, LL, and DR offers much greater survivability than fort's def, which is highly overrated on a merc. the str and skill bonuses almost make up for the loss in ED and since it's aura based ED it helps the army out more.

 

[MichelRPG]

Re: help with merc armor

%ED vs demons/undead doesnt work on mercs?


Wow... even after so many years I keep learning new D2 facts

 

[Metathrom]

Re: help with merc armor

CoH is probably the best you'll ever get: combine with a Guillaume's Face and you'll have a setup with IAS, CB, DS, 2+ Skills and heavy resists.

Other than it, Duress is also pretty good for the CB; and Treachery for the IAS and Fade.

Fort is overrated, it's better to give the merc something to help him deal Crushing Blow hits, since bosses tend to be sorta hard for (Summoner) necros.

 

[lumpor]

Re: help with merc armor

ed vs demons/undead doesn't work on mercs?

****, I made my coh in vain for my gf barb farming the council... ugh!

 

[tetracycloide]

Re: help with merc armor

i'd say the council is one of the areas in the vanilla game where a merc needs CoH the most though. the council member damage is bugged vs. mercs to deal extra damage and CoH really helps to survive it. if your barb does any of the actual fighting the +skills will help him more than fort will too.

 

[MichelRPG]

Re: help with merc armor

the council member damage is bugged vs. mercs to deal extra damage and CoH really helps to survive it. if your barb does any of the actual fighting the +skills will help him more than fort will too.

I thought this was only applied to the Hydra they summon, and not the rest of the damage they deal?

 

[Mikey Two Guns]

Re: help with merc armor

tetracycloide caused me to realize recently that CoH, Guilliames Face, and Infinity on an Act 2 Might merc is possibly the best skelemancer merc setup out there. At first, I thought that Fortitude is the best armor for a merc, but I now realize that Infinity + Guilliames + Fortitude does not give the life leech that a merc needs.

I guess I am better off saving that future Fortitude for a non-eth armor for my Zealot, hehe.

 

[lumpor]

Re: help with merc armor

i'd say the council is one of the areas in the vanilla game where a merc needs CoH the most though. the council member damage is bugged vs. mercs to deal extra damage and CoH really helps to survive it. if your barb does any of the actual fighting the +skills will help him more than fort will too.

Nah, survival was no issue, since my merc had treachery before I got coh and he survived fine then

 

[tetracycloide]

Re: help with merc armor

I thought this was only applied to the Hydra they summon, and not the rest of the damage they deal?

yeah it's the hydra damage which is where high resists and life leech come into play. DR helps too though since it's really just a high damage area for the merc and while the bugged part is fire damage that doesn't mean that taking less physical damage doesn't help.

RE:lumpor

treachery would work with the fade on it proced and LL from another source, especially with the IAS and FHR. i'd be suprised if you never had a merc get two or three shot by a hydra in that setup without the fade pre proced though.when i was running fort instead of CoH that occurance was not uncommon and it's got higher resists without the fade proc.

still, i'm not saying nothing works other than CoH i'm just saying CoH with infinity and G-face is the best all around combination i've found. i was using fort for a while when not in tristram then switching to CoH for meph and i eventually got tired of it and left the CoH on and began to notice my merc dying considerably less often. can you get LL and skills from another source? sure, but you also want CB and FHR somewhere in there and it was better, in my experience, to get CN and FHR from the helm and the LL and skills on the armor than vice versa.

let's face it though, even uber tristram doesn't require a specific piece of gear as a summoner. no, not even enigma. so there is no end-all-be-all for any slot. i just go with what makes my life easier and the merc requires less attention with CoH/G-Face/Infinity than any other setup i've used.