New PVM Pally build - The Squire
This guide was written some time ago for the hardcore community and had quite positive feedback. For some reason it doesn’t exist anymore and I thought I could post it again here in the paly forums, where it also belongs.
Before you go on, I wanted to add that I’ve been experimenting with items and skills for some time so I decided to extend the reach of the guide (originally thought for poor hardcore players) to softcore and ppl with wealth looking for fresh playing experiences. However, I decided to add the update as a new section at the end of the guide to keep the essence of it. Whenever there are important updates to the section you’re reading, I’ll let you know. I hope you enjoy it.
Intro
Ok, people, first of all I’d like to warn you that I’m not a native English speaker so I really am sorry if you find lots of mistakes and odd expressions in this guide. That said, read on!
Reference
HC- hardcore
Tppked- Town portal player kill
HB- Holy bolt
FOH- fists of the heavens
AR- Attack rating
FHR- Fast hit recovery
FCR- Fast cast rate
IM- Iron Maiden
MF- Magic find
OW- Open wounds
CB – Crushing blow
How many of us wanted to start the HC experience and found that we are just too poor to make anything different from a summoner or a trapasin? Take heed my brothers, for even the poorest and most miserable of you have a chance on this build. Just when you thought every possible Paladin build had been tried, I bring to you…
The Squire
The story as how I came across the idea of this build is long and you probably don’t want to read it, so I’ll make it short: I figured out that something fun to play in Hardcore would be the very well known cleric build by MadOnion (healer/undead killer), as saving lives would be a lot more appreciated. Sadly, I found that HC pubs are pretty much unplayable nowadays as my cleric was tppked twice and there’s not much real teamplay going on. You just can’t trust anyone. So I thought about soloing… why not adapt the build for single playing? would it work?
What is a Squire? During the middle ages, a squire’s responsibility was to take care of his lord in any way that he could, and aid him during battle. He would carry his weapons and shields and always stand by his side.
In that same way, a Squire Paladin is a supporter. He’ll not fight his enemies directly, but only through his hireling, whom he shall strengthen and heal to make him virtually invincible.
Yes, as you are thinking, this is not a power build. But believe me when I say… it is really fun and absolutely viable even with the most awful gear.
Skills (Check updates!) As soon as you read these ones, you’ll see the skill setup is almost the same as the cleric, but the playing experience is different. (I’ll cover that up in the strategy section). Something good about this build is that you don’t need to achieve high levels to make it work.
BASIC
20 Holy bolt
20 Prayer
20 Concentration
1 cleansing
1+ Meditation
1 to prereq
OPTIONAL
1->20 – Fists of the heavens
And / or
1->20 – Blessed hammers
This is how skills work:
Holy bolt: this is your main skill. You will be casting these things all the time, for healing as well as undead killing. Something to bear in mind is that undead monsters are physical resistant, and in hell most PI monsters are actually, undead. That means that you can **** with ease almost every monster your hireling would have problems killing (Oblivion nights casting IM, packs of ghosts, gloams and such baddies). That’s why this build should work very well all the way.
Prayer: very important healing synergy for HB, this is where you’ll pour your first skill points. You won’t be using this one directly, because it’ll dry your mana relatively quick, and that’s something you can’t afford when healing. However, by the time you have 10+ points here, and cleansing or meditation, the passive bonus from prayer will give you a very useful tool to get free life regeneration for you and your hireling in defensive situations.
Concentration: this is the main difference from the cleric. This aura gives the biggest damage bonus to allies. The 20% chance of uninterrupted attack is VERY useful for a hireling that will be surrounded by lots of monsters and taking heavy hits from every direction. If you feel like going for speed and AR instead of damage, max Fanat, but I’d rather stick to this one.
Cleansing: as soon as you get to lvl 12, put your point here and marvel on the free regeneration from prayer. In the first acts you’ll hardly need to drink a potion even when taking part of the fight yourself. (later on you WILL stay out of it).You’ll also use it to take curses like Amp damage or IM away from you and your hireling.
Meditation: This skill grants mana regeneration that helps quite a lot when the heavy-healing takes place (Boss fights). It also regenerates life as fast as prayer would, but free of charge. I found one point is enough here, more would only add mana regeneration and you’d rather put that point somewhere else.
Now here comes a choice:
Fists of the heavens / Blessed Hammer: These skills are the undead damage synergy for Holy bolt, but you will have to choose which one to max first. FOH is good for undead packs like the ones you’ll find in tombs, and the bolts will also heal your hireling. You will be maxing HB Anyway, so the bolt damage from FOH will get to its maximum. The lightning damage won’t get far without synergies nor conviction, but still will help against some monsters, bosses or as a strategic tool to draw monsters to you. (see strat section).
Hammers, in the other hand, can give you a secondary attack to help your hireling with crowd control when surrounded by small, annoying non-undead monsters like carvers and fetishes. Remember you will be maxing concentration anyway, so you’d get some damage here. And, your equipment will tend to help too… as I’ll explain later on, you will be going after FCR and +skills if possible.
¿What to choose? If you want to play safe and act like a real squire, then FOH is the way to go. You won’t have a Holy shield to support you when standing still and casting hammers, and your damage won’t be that great w/o the synergies.
STATS
Strength As little as possible. I recommend being very frugal with this. The guy on the heavy equipment will be your hireling, not you.
Dexterity: Enough for max block. w/o holy shield you might need some more than the average pally.
Life: All you can spare
Energy: nothing here…. You hear me? NOTHING!
HIRELING (Check Updates!)
Well.. never was this choice more important. That’s what this build is all about.
Act 1 Rogue. They can cause some nice damage with conc, but you can’t have her running away from rushing packs, you really need a tank.
Act 2 Auramerc: As you might have guessed, this is the one. You can experiment yourself with the auras you think are better, but once you get to nightmare you’ll have to choose between Holy freeze or might. Might and Concentration will stack, and the damage goes up like crazy. However, Holy freeze grants a decent crowd control, and that’s something you’ll need a lot. Slowing them is like speeding him up.
Act3 Ironwolves: I thought about a whole new variant for this build based on this merc: the Elemental squire. Instead of concentration, max conviction. You can try that if you wish, but I’m too afraid of immunes to do it.
Act5 Barbarian: I tried barbs and they don’t seem to work that good. There’s nothing special about them except for their higher life. They also seem slow to me, don’t grant any crowd control and swords don’t get the high damage polearn class weapons do.
EQUIPMENT (Check updates!)
I won’t list particular items here, for this build is specially thought for the poor and miserable like me. However I’ll tell you what you should aim for.
FCR. An additional 10% fcr can mean the difference between your merc’s life and death.
Resists. You won’t get into the fight, but elemental crossfire always happens. Get decent resists or you won’t make it in nightmare/hell. Keep your eyes open for a 3 os shield and use the Ral-ort-tal in act 5 to make an Ancients Pledge.
+Skills. Not easy to get, but some low items grant it. Gamble for circlets, never leave an unid ammy on the ground, and trade for sigons shield.
You can easily get both + skills and fcr buying a +2 to HB +10% FCR scepter from an npc. I’ve been using one of those from act 2 norm till now.
Your Hirelings equipment.
This is a whole new thing. Your hireling’s equipment should vary according to the situation you get him in, however there are some things that are always welcome:
DAMAGE. Get the highest damage polearn you can get. (use Charsi’s imbue)
Speed. I found sometimes a faster attack is better, even if the damage is not the best. Best thing to do is to have two weapons for switch: One slower with high damage for single big monsters and one faster for crowds and switch it dropping it directly on his picture (you are a squire, remember? You carry his weapons)
Fast hit recovery. He’ll need as much of it as possible. If not, you risk him getting into serious stunlock, and healing doesn’t help there.
Chance of finding magic item. ¿what? Yes.. this is not vital, but the MF on your hireling stacks with your own, As long as he makes the killing blow (which will be happening all the time) so if you feel like it, you can mf quite a lot with this build.
This is not a fact…. But I think that unique polearns class weapons seem to drop all the time. Many of them have “slow targets by x%”. I got Kelpie Snare Fuscina from a chest and the 75% slow + holy freeze makes monsters he hits almost completely frozen.
STRATEGY. (Check Updates!)
Here’s where the fun starts. If you thought this build was just clicking on the fighting guy and casting HB till he kills them all, you’re wrong. You’ll need to keep your eyes open to be safe yourself, know how to position your char and switch auras in a clever way, as well as killing the undead.
During the first levels, all through normal difficulty, you’ll be using a Blessed aim Merc. A good choice is to have a defensive setup with meditation on your right and HB on your left and for switch concentration and a throwing weapon. You’ll get the AR from him and damage from yourself. And when he gets injured, just switch and heal him.
Later on, your damage won’t be enough and he’ll need full attention. Then you’ll have concentration and HB to keep healing and damage up. Whenever you get damaged, cursed, or your mana drops, change to cleansing/ meditation till you’re ok.
Crowd control
Get him a fast weapon and avoid getting surrounded yourself. You’ll find that some annoying creatures tend to follow you and ignore your merc (luckily, most won’t). In that case, just run (or walk if they are slow) in circles around your merc and let him blow them to bits one by one. This is why you need max block. Remember that crowd control is only a problem with non-undead monsters and maybe not even there, if you chose hammers.
On heavens name… Don’t run! Don’t get suicidal running into unexplored areas. Your hireling can be invincible as long as you heal him, but if you get into some serious chaotic situation where he is getting surrounded and you are getting chased, while champion archers shoot volleys at you… then you won’t be able to stand still healing, he will die and you’ll end up running to town and loosing money.
The basic method is: scout ahead, let your merc follow you and as soon as a pack of monster attack, retreat and lead them to him. 9 times out of 10 they will forget about you. If you want to bring a particular monster to him, and not the whole pack, cast FOH on it and retreat, that’s what you should do on the minions of destruction to avoid him getting into stunlock.
BOSSES (Check updates!). This is indeed the hardest point of this build. For those of you who don’t already know it… the damage from hirelings on bosses is 50% in norm, 35% in NM and 25% in hell. But the worst part is… that hirelings get an 1000% extra damage from end act bosses. That’s right. TEN times more.
But don’t panic. When I said that as long as you heal him, he was invincible I meant it. Blizzard folks definitely wanted mercs out of the question in end act bosses, but we won’t let that happen. The good thing is that all end act bosses will try to finish of your merc before attacking you, so you will be safe most of the time.
Specifically: In most end act duels you’ll put to test your full healing capabilities. It’s pretty scary watching your mercs health drop to half in one hit and then back to full as you heal him. But keep your aim steady and he will stay alive.
Andy: Difficulty - low
Buy for your merc poison length reduce/resist items and make sure you draw Andy away from the surrounding monsters, so he can take her on alone. Remember Andy’s nova will go through him and hit you too, so have some black potions in handy.
Duriel Difficulty- low
All melee bosses are quite easy. The only problem with Duriel is that he’ll slow your merc and that will make this duel take some time. The knockback effect will make it hard for you to aim your healing so you should let Duriel corner your merc against a wall, where he will be able to retaliate faster. Fast hit recovery and cold resists help too.
Mephisto Difficulty – Medium / low
Meph is an elemental attacker, and your merc should have some overall decent resists when facing him. Meph tends to move fast and once in a while he will try to shoot at you with his cold orb, but once your merc engages him he will stay put. The hardest part of meph is probably getting to him through that damn room full of champions. Clean at least one side of the room and draw Meph away from his starting point, where columns or other obstacles can stand in your Hb’s way. In Nightmare/hell you could use having 1 point in salvation for the massive elemental damages of this room and some other situations.
Diablo Difficulty – High
You’ll hate big-D. You’ll feel like crying when you see your merc die in a millisecond incinerated with the lightning stream. The way to go here is: Get your merc FULL lightning resists, and yourself full Fire (you WILL get hit by fire nova). Don’t try to lead your merc to him, because he will get in walk-position as soon as he sees Diablo. Diablo will launch his lightning; you won’t be able to heal your moving merc and its gg for him. Lead him to you, instead. Stay in a safe distance and don’t let your merc walk to him. Take the fire novas like a man, and sooner or later, Diablo will charge at you to get melee. When that happens, your merc will be able to close in really fast and safe and you just retreat to start the mad healing. Now… be clever and form a triangle between Diablo, your merc and yourself so that when he casts the lightning you don’t get caught within the stream. Once you get to this position, it’s over for Big D. Just make sure you have some mana potions and rejuvs for yourself in case your life drops. Bear in mind that you’ll need at least 11+ skill points in HB and 10+ in prayer to keep your merc alive here in normal and full healing for the rest.
Ancients- Difficulty – Low
I was terrified when first fighting the ancients, but they where a piece of cake. Misteriously, they all attacked my merc and that made things really easy for me. Use the environment wisely to avoid getting hit by the thrower if he decides to swing at you. And make sure you have a clear line for constant healing.
Baal- Difficulty – Medium
Baal is not half as hard as he is annoying. But before we get to him, you’ll need to take care of his minions. Just draw them away from Baal so that he can’t curse your merc. The minions of destruction can be especially hard because of the stunning effect so dress him up with FHR items and try to take them on 1 by 1 or in small groups.
Baal is a pain in the butt mainly because he’ll burn your mana if you get close, and duplicate himself. If that happens go back to town and re-enter till the clone disappears. Be ready for a long, long battle, as the lord of destruction has plenty of hit points.
Conclusions (Check updates!)
To be honest, my char (lvl 52 Theone_Squire) is still in nightmare fighting his way through act V to meet the mighty Diablo for the second time. I’m not positive as how this build will work in hell, and wasn’t going to write this guide till I got there. However my squire is doing very well and the only thing that gets worse in hell is the damage output of your merc on end act bosses. That will only make duels take longer but you’ll succeed sooner or later. I preferred as well to share this with you now so you can start trying it and then give me some feedback.
Last thing: This is a build thought originally for HardCore singleplaying poor people. But if you are rich, you can have fun building a real GODLY rune based merc, and you can also support perfectly well melee friends if you can get into safe teamplay games.
This guide was written some time ago for the hardcore community and had quite positive feedback. For some reason it doesn’t exist anymore and I thought I could post it again here in the paly forums, where it also belongs.
Before you go on, I wanted to add that I’ve been experimenting with items and skills for some time so I decided to extend the reach of the guide (originally thought for poor hardcore players) to softcore and ppl with wealth looking for fresh playing experiences. However, I decided to add the update as a new section at the end of the guide to keep the essence of it. Whenever there are important updates to the section you’re reading, I’ll let you know. I hope you enjoy it.
Intro
Ok, people, first of all I’d like to warn you that I’m not a native English speaker so I really am sorry if you find lots of mistakes and odd expressions in this guide. That said, read on!
Reference
HC- hardcore
Tppked- Town portal player kill
HB- Holy bolt
FOH- fists of the heavens
AR- Attack rating
FHR- Fast hit recovery
FCR- Fast cast rate
IM- Iron Maiden
MF- Magic find
OW- Open wounds
CB – Crushing blow
How many of us wanted to start the HC experience and found that we are just too poor to make anything different from a summoner or a trapasin? Take heed my brothers, for even the poorest and most miserable of you have a chance on this build. Just when you thought every possible Paladin build had been tried, I bring to you…
The Squire
The story as how I came across the idea of this build is long and you probably don’t want to read it, so I’ll make it short: I figured out that something fun to play in Hardcore would be the very well known cleric build by MadOnion (healer/undead killer), as saving lives would be a lot more appreciated. Sadly, I found that HC pubs are pretty much unplayable nowadays as my cleric was tppked twice and there’s not much real teamplay going on. You just can’t trust anyone. So I thought about soloing… why not adapt the build for single playing? would it work?
What is a Squire? During the middle ages, a squire’s responsibility was to take care of his lord in any way that he could, and aid him during battle. He would carry his weapons and shields and always stand by his side.
In that same way, a Squire Paladin is a supporter. He’ll not fight his enemies directly, but only through his hireling, whom he shall strengthen and heal to make him virtually invincible.
Yes, as you are thinking, this is not a power build. But believe me when I say… it is really fun and absolutely viable even with the most awful gear.
Skills (Check updates!) As soon as you read these ones, you’ll see the skill setup is almost the same as the cleric, but the playing experience is different. (I’ll cover that up in the strategy section). Something good about this build is that you don’t need to achieve high levels to make it work.
BASIC
20 Holy bolt
20 Prayer
20 Concentration
1 cleansing
1+ Meditation
1 to prereq
OPTIONAL
1->20 – Fists of the heavens
And / or
1->20 – Blessed hammers
This is how skills work:
Holy bolt: this is your main skill. You will be casting these things all the time, for healing as well as undead killing. Something to bear in mind is that undead monsters are physical resistant, and in hell most PI monsters are actually, undead. That means that you can **** with ease almost every monster your hireling would have problems killing (Oblivion nights casting IM, packs of ghosts, gloams and such baddies). That’s why this build should work very well all the way.
Prayer: very important healing synergy for HB, this is where you’ll pour your first skill points. You won’t be using this one directly, because it’ll dry your mana relatively quick, and that’s something you can’t afford when healing. However, by the time you have 10+ points here, and cleansing or meditation, the passive bonus from prayer will give you a very useful tool to get free life regeneration for you and your hireling in defensive situations.
Concentration: this is the main difference from the cleric. This aura gives the biggest damage bonus to allies. The 20% chance of uninterrupted attack is VERY useful for a hireling that will be surrounded by lots of monsters and taking heavy hits from every direction. If you feel like going for speed and AR instead of damage, max Fanat, but I’d rather stick to this one.
Cleansing: as soon as you get to lvl 12, put your point here and marvel on the free regeneration from prayer. In the first acts you’ll hardly need to drink a potion even when taking part of the fight yourself. (later on you WILL stay out of it).You’ll also use it to take curses like Amp damage or IM away from you and your hireling.
Meditation: This skill grants mana regeneration that helps quite a lot when the heavy-healing takes place (Boss fights). It also regenerates life as fast as prayer would, but free of charge. I found one point is enough here, more would only add mana regeneration and you’d rather put that point somewhere else.
Now here comes a choice:
Fists of the heavens / Blessed Hammer: These skills are the undead damage synergy for Holy bolt, but you will have to choose which one to max first. FOH is good for undead packs like the ones you’ll find in tombs, and the bolts will also heal your hireling. You will be maxing HB Anyway, so the bolt damage from FOH will get to its maximum. The lightning damage won’t get far without synergies nor conviction, but still will help against some monsters, bosses or as a strategic tool to draw monsters to you. (see strat section).
Hammers, in the other hand, can give you a secondary attack to help your hireling with crowd control when surrounded by small, annoying non-undead monsters like carvers and fetishes. Remember you will be maxing concentration anyway, so you’d get some damage here. And, your equipment will tend to help too… as I’ll explain later on, you will be going after FCR and +skills if possible.
¿What to choose? If you want to play safe and act like a real squire, then FOH is the way to go. You won’t have a Holy shield to support you when standing still and casting hammers, and your damage won’t be that great w/o the synergies.
STATS
Strength As little as possible. I recommend being very frugal with this. The guy on the heavy equipment will be your hireling, not you.
Dexterity: Enough for max block. w/o holy shield you might need some more than the average pally.
Life: All you can spare
Energy: nothing here…. You hear me? NOTHING!
HIRELING (Check Updates!)
Well.. never was this choice more important. That’s what this build is all about.
Act 1 Rogue. They can cause some nice damage with conc, but you can’t have her running away from rushing packs, you really need a tank.
Act 2 Auramerc: As you might have guessed, this is the one. You can experiment yourself with the auras you think are better, but once you get to nightmare you’ll have to choose between Holy freeze or might. Might and Concentration will stack, and the damage goes up like crazy. However, Holy freeze grants a decent crowd control, and that’s something you’ll need a lot. Slowing them is like speeding him up.
Act3 Ironwolves: I thought about a whole new variant for this build based on this merc: the Elemental squire. Instead of concentration, max conviction. You can try that if you wish, but I’m too afraid of immunes to do it.
Act5 Barbarian: I tried barbs and they don’t seem to work that good. There’s nothing special about them except for their higher life. They also seem slow to me, don’t grant any crowd control and swords don’t get the high damage polearn class weapons do.
EQUIPMENT (Check updates!)
I won’t list particular items here, for this build is specially thought for the poor and miserable like me. However I’ll tell you what you should aim for.
FCR. An additional 10% fcr can mean the difference between your merc’s life and death.
Resists. You won’t get into the fight, but elemental crossfire always happens. Get decent resists or you won’t make it in nightmare/hell. Keep your eyes open for a 3 os shield and use the Ral-ort-tal in act 5 to make an Ancients Pledge.
+Skills. Not easy to get, but some low items grant it. Gamble for circlets, never leave an unid ammy on the ground, and trade for sigons shield.
You can easily get both + skills and fcr buying a +2 to HB +10% FCR scepter from an npc. I’ve been using one of those from act 2 norm till now.
Your Hirelings equipment.
This is a whole new thing. Your hireling’s equipment should vary according to the situation you get him in, however there are some things that are always welcome:
DAMAGE. Get the highest damage polearn you can get. (use Charsi’s imbue)
Speed. I found sometimes a faster attack is better, even if the damage is not the best. Best thing to do is to have two weapons for switch: One slower with high damage for single big monsters and one faster for crowds and switch it dropping it directly on his picture (you are a squire, remember? You carry his weapons)
Fast hit recovery. He’ll need as much of it as possible. If not, you risk him getting into serious stunlock, and healing doesn’t help there.
Chance of finding magic item. ¿what? Yes.. this is not vital, but the MF on your hireling stacks with your own, As long as he makes the killing blow (which will be happening all the time) so if you feel like it, you can mf quite a lot with this build.
This is not a fact…. But I think that unique polearns class weapons seem to drop all the time. Many of them have “slow targets by x%”. I got Kelpie Snare Fuscina from a chest and the 75% slow + holy freeze makes monsters he hits almost completely frozen.
STRATEGY. (Check Updates!)
Here’s where the fun starts. If you thought this build was just clicking on the fighting guy and casting HB till he kills them all, you’re wrong. You’ll need to keep your eyes open to be safe yourself, know how to position your char and switch auras in a clever way, as well as killing the undead.
During the first levels, all through normal difficulty, you’ll be using a Blessed aim Merc. A good choice is to have a defensive setup with meditation on your right and HB on your left and for switch concentration and a throwing weapon. You’ll get the AR from him and damage from yourself. And when he gets injured, just switch and heal him.
Later on, your damage won’t be enough and he’ll need full attention. Then you’ll have concentration and HB to keep healing and damage up. Whenever you get damaged, cursed, or your mana drops, change to cleansing/ meditation till you’re ok.
Crowd control
Get him a fast weapon and avoid getting surrounded yourself. You’ll find that some annoying creatures tend to follow you and ignore your merc (luckily, most won’t). In that case, just run (or walk if they are slow) in circles around your merc and let him blow them to bits one by one. This is why you need max block. Remember that crowd control is only a problem with non-undead monsters and maybe not even there, if you chose hammers.
On heavens name… Don’t run! Don’t get suicidal running into unexplored areas. Your hireling can be invincible as long as you heal him, but if you get into some serious chaotic situation where he is getting surrounded and you are getting chased, while champion archers shoot volleys at you… then you won’t be able to stand still healing, he will die and you’ll end up running to town and loosing money.
The basic method is: scout ahead, let your merc follow you and as soon as a pack of monster attack, retreat and lead them to him. 9 times out of 10 they will forget about you. If you want to bring a particular monster to him, and not the whole pack, cast FOH on it and retreat, that’s what you should do on the minions of destruction to avoid him getting into stunlock.
BOSSES (Check updates!). This is indeed the hardest point of this build. For those of you who don’t already know it… the damage from hirelings on bosses is 50% in norm, 35% in NM and 25% in hell. But the worst part is… that hirelings get an 1000% extra damage from end act bosses. That’s right. TEN times more.
But don’t panic. When I said that as long as you heal him, he was invincible I meant it. Blizzard folks definitely wanted mercs out of the question in end act bosses, but we won’t let that happen. The good thing is that all end act bosses will try to finish of your merc before attacking you, so you will be safe most of the time.
Specifically: In most end act duels you’ll put to test your full healing capabilities. It’s pretty scary watching your mercs health drop to half in one hit and then back to full as you heal him. But keep your aim steady and he will stay alive.
Andy: Difficulty - low
Buy for your merc poison length reduce/resist items and make sure you draw Andy away from the surrounding monsters, so he can take her on alone. Remember Andy’s nova will go through him and hit you too, so have some black potions in handy.
Duriel Difficulty- low
All melee bosses are quite easy. The only problem with Duriel is that he’ll slow your merc and that will make this duel take some time. The knockback effect will make it hard for you to aim your healing so you should let Duriel corner your merc against a wall, where he will be able to retaliate faster. Fast hit recovery and cold resists help too.
Mephisto Difficulty – Medium / low
Meph is an elemental attacker, and your merc should have some overall decent resists when facing him. Meph tends to move fast and once in a while he will try to shoot at you with his cold orb, but once your merc engages him he will stay put. The hardest part of meph is probably getting to him through that damn room full of champions. Clean at least one side of the room and draw Meph away from his starting point, where columns or other obstacles can stand in your Hb’s way. In Nightmare/hell you could use having 1 point in salvation for the massive elemental damages of this room and some other situations.
Diablo Difficulty – High
You’ll hate big-D. You’ll feel like crying when you see your merc die in a millisecond incinerated with the lightning stream. The way to go here is: Get your merc FULL lightning resists, and yourself full Fire (you WILL get hit by fire nova). Don’t try to lead your merc to him, because he will get in walk-position as soon as he sees Diablo. Diablo will launch his lightning; you won’t be able to heal your moving merc and its gg for him. Lead him to you, instead. Stay in a safe distance and don’t let your merc walk to him. Take the fire novas like a man, and sooner or later, Diablo will charge at you to get melee. When that happens, your merc will be able to close in really fast and safe and you just retreat to start the mad healing. Now… be clever and form a triangle between Diablo, your merc and yourself so that when he casts the lightning you don’t get caught within the stream. Once you get to this position, it’s over for Big D. Just make sure you have some mana potions and rejuvs for yourself in case your life drops. Bear in mind that you’ll need at least 11+ skill points in HB and 10+ in prayer to keep your merc alive here in normal and full healing for the rest.
Ancients- Difficulty – Low
I was terrified when first fighting the ancients, but they where a piece of cake. Misteriously, they all attacked my merc and that made things really easy for me. Use the environment wisely to avoid getting hit by the thrower if he decides to swing at you. And make sure you have a clear line for constant healing.
Baal- Difficulty – Medium
Baal is not half as hard as he is annoying. But before we get to him, you’ll need to take care of his minions. Just draw them away from Baal so that he can’t curse your merc. The minions of destruction can be especially hard because of the stunning effect so dress him up with FHR items and try to take them on 1 by 1 or in small groups.
Baal is a pain in the butt mainly because he’ll burn your mana if you get close, and duplicate himself. If that happens go back to town and re-enter till the clone disappears. Be ready for a long, long battle, as the lord of destruction has plenty of hit points.
Conclusions (Check updates!)
To be honest, my char (lvl 52 Theone_Squire) is still in nightmare fighting his way through act V to meet the mighty Diablo for the second time. I’m not positive as how this build will work in hell, and wasn’t going to write this guide till I got there. However my squire is doing very well and the only thing that gets worse in hell is the damage output of your merc on end act bosses. That will only make duels take longer but you’ll succeed sooner or later. I preferred as well to share this with you now so you can start trying it and then give me some feedback.
Last thing: This is a build thought originally for HardCore singleplaying poor people. But if you are rich, you can have fun building a real GODLY rune based merc, and you can also support perfectly well melee friends if you can get into safe teamplay games.
. You do conc I do thorns, all that crap, anyways, very well thought through, I would give it 5 starts but i'm not a Pal so I can't 
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He was at lvl 86 in Hell (plains of dispair). I was casting HB during an extense lag freeze, and by the time the game catches up I find myself dead by a pack of gloams with conviction that came out of nowhere. I lost all my valuable hardcore items so I think I’m out of it at least for a while.