quick question on merc weap

[Luckymofo]

quick question on merc weap

My summoner/poison necro's merc uses blackthorn and dury shell. He can use bonehew and arioc, but since blackthorn gives phm and slow, the phm on bonehew is useless. Arioc(amned) has 4 skills, ds, and itd. I think Arioc is better in general for MY necro's merc. What do you think?

 

[Wambat]

The biggest contribution your might merc is making is his might aura, if you can increase that by 4slvl you have done the equivalent of raising your merc's level by 16 since his aura gains a level every four levels your merc gains. Go with +skills every time.

 

[Luckymofo]

Thanks for the quick reply.

*locks thread*

 

[Necrochild313]

I would suggest stocking up your merc on crushing blow. This will speed your ability to deal with high life monsters in hell alot better than a bit more % ed to your skellies.

My merc's setup is

Guilliams Face (35% CB)
Duress (15% CB)
Hone Sundan (45%)

That adds up to 95%, the cap for crushing blow. He uses the skill jab, which swings three times an attack, so for each swing he has a chance to lower

Normal Monster hit with a melee weapon: 1/4 life
Boss/Champion Monster hit with a melee weapon: 1/8 life

3 times. This effect is utterly devastating.

With this setup my merc allows me to solo hell baal runs in duel games with 8 players. He takes bosses down to nil in seconds, and can devastate Lister and his pals (with some help from skellies and decrep to keep him safe of course )

My hone sundan is ethereal and upgraded, but the actual damage doesn't effect as much as the CB itself does, so a non-upped/eth one would work just about as good.

 

[Wambat]

Necrochild313 is certainly correct with respect to CB making your Merc more effective. However, for the majority of the time your skellies will be doing most of the killing, so you may want to use your +4 skills polearm when fighting normal monsters, and switch-off to a CB polearm when coming up against a boss, or a particularly stubborn unique/champion. I wouldn't switch more than one item, so it's up to you to decide if you want to keep CB or +skill armor and helm. As Necrochild313 said, your merc attacks 3 times in a row, so it doesn't take too much CB to dramatically speed up the process against bosses.

 

[Mad Mantis]

MHe can use bonehew and arioc, but since blackthorn gives phm and slow, the phm on bonehew is useless.

PMH on a Merc is useless. It doesn’t work.

 

[Rianna]

As far as I can make out it takes +3 to skills before the might aura gains a level.

Easy to verify. If you place a shako on merec damage stays same (slight increase). Add skullders damage goes up quite a bit.

With out a doubt Bramble Aura Thorns will make a huge difference to the killing power of your merc and minions.


Try to get one with +17 and above aura.

 

[Luckymofo]

PMH on a Merc is useless. It doesn’t work.

34567890

 

[Wambat]

As far as I can make out it takes +3 to skills before the might aura gains a level.

Easy to verify. If you place a shako on merec damage stays same (slight increase). Add skullders damage goes up quite a bit.

With out a doubt Bramble Aura Thorns will make a huge difference to the killing power of your merc and minions.


Try to get one with +17 and above aura.

I would check that again. +2 to skill on your merc means just that. Be sure you were not just looking at your merc's damage before and after his aura was activated. look at your own damage to be sure that it is the effects of the aura that you are measuring. IIRC might increases by a set number every level, there should be no great variation in the increase of ED it gives from one level to the next.

 

[Necrochild313]

I would check that again. +2 to skill on your merc means just that. Be sure you were not just looking at your merc's damage before and after his aura was activated. look at your own damage to be sure that it is the effects of the aura that you are measuring. IIRC might increases by a set number every level, there should be no great variation in the increase of ED it gives from one level to the next.

That is quite possible, as it would effect the level of the merc's "Jab" skill. He should check it again.

 

[Myrakh-2]

+skills affect all the merc skills. A2 mercs have two of them --- Jab and their aura.

Might increases by 10% ed per level:
Might ed %: (slvl+3)*10

A might merc increases his aura level every 4 character levels:
Might level: (clvl-15)/4
Truncated as usual and it won't get negative

I would assume the other A2 mercs use a similar formula for their auras.

+skills adds to skill levels, NOT to clvl. Works exactly like for players.

A +4 Ariocs therefore adds 40% ed to your skellies. Quite useful.

 

[RTB]

That adds up to 95%, the cap for crushing blow. He uses the skill jab, which swings three times an attack, so for each swing he has a chance to lower

Two errors:
CB is not capped at 95%.
The act 2 merc's Jab hits twice per attack.

 

[Wambat]

Two errors:
CB is not capped at 95%.
The act 2 merc's Jab hits twice per attack.

This is not the first place I have seen reference to the 95% CB cap. Can you shew a link to the source of your information?

 

[Necrochild313]

Two errors:
CB is not capped at 95%.
The act 2 merc's Jab hits twice per attack.

This is not the first place I have seen reference to the 95% CB cap. Can you shew a link to the source of your information?

I'd like to see it too

 

[RTB]

This is not the first place I have seen reference to the 95% CB cap. Can you shew a link to the source of your information?

That's because it is a very common misconception. Other variants include a supposed 95% cap on DS and OW too.

Jarulf is my source, and I don't doubt he posted a correction a number of times on dii.net. I really can't interested to search for one of those posts myself.

 

[Wambat]

That's because it is a very common misconception. Other variants include a supposed 95% cap on DS and OW too.

Jarulf is my source, and I don't doubt he posted a correction a number of times on dii.net. I really can't interested to search for one of those posts myself.

This makes sense, since you can see items; well one that I can think of; with 100% DS. Wouldn't make sense if an item exceeded the cap. That CB would follow the same rules is a logical conclusion.

I would like to know, if you remember, did Jarulf get his information from code, or Blizzard, or from game play observation? I can't imagine how you could tell the difference between 95% and 100% just from game play.

If his information is based on the logical extrapolation above, I would still have reservations. We are, after all, dealing with Blizzard here: Logic does not always apply.

 

[Mad Mantis]

I would like to know, if you remember, did Jarulf get his information from code, or Blizzard, or from game play observation?

Jarulf got it from the code.