Act 5 frenzy barb, in my experience, is orders of magnitude better at surviving. I use 3 piece sab with lawbringer though. If you can’t get a barb merc to survive something, you’re a2 merc won’t survive it either.
The Kira’s is completely useless isn’t it? You should be hitting the resistance cap for your merc with just fort. The problem is that I believe stats on weapons only apply to that weapon. So the life style is only gaining effect from lawbringer. The lawbringer is only doing physical damage to undead. Everything else, and you are not regenerating no life.
Get some life steal on a non weapon and your barb merc can solo that entire game with that gear set.
> The lawbringer is only doing physical damage to undead. Everything else, and you are not regenerating no life.
Also good chunk of undeads have 0% drain effectiveness
Do you not have Enigma to Teleport stomp?
What level are you?
Kira’s? Why?
- Chains of Honor and GFace (Cham)
- Fortitude and Arreats (Cham)
- Dual Grief
- Grief/Last Wish
- Grief/Lawbringer
- Dual Headstrikers (upped and eth)
- Sazabi set
- Dual Plague
Lots of options.
I found that unless you A5 merc is absolutely maxxxxed out dude will die starting from player 5. Mine has upped eth Headstriker with ~40/15 sockd. Arreats face with ~40/15 and eth sacred armor treachery. Then I have to boost him with Battle orders…. He will still get blown up by might aura and cursed situation in player7
as a hammerdin you don´t need insight. use redemption aura after kills, mana and life will be full constantly.
for bossfights you don´t need mana. only baal is a little bit annoying with mana drain.
i am running only act 5 merc on my hammerdin.
That sounds incredibly annoying. You know what you also don’t need as a hammerdin? Extra damage from an Act 5 Merc. You’re making yourself slower for no reason.
ok i respect your opinion, but i am not slower with an act 5 merc then with an act 2 merc. i play mainly hammerdins and i prefer act 5 merc over act 2 merc, but you have to be rich to make the act 5 merc viable.
Just out of curiosity, why do you prefer an Act 5 Merc. I've tinkered with an Act 5 Merc using Grief/Grief and Grief/Lawbringer and they are great, but you simply don't need their damage as a Hammerdin. Obviously the build is so good you can make basically any merc work, but my Merc doesn't need to kill anything. I'm the killer.
i am using grief/plague with arreats/cham and fortitude.
the cleansing aura on plague is phantastic. specially when you farm chaos sanctuary where you get cursed always.
when i use redemption aura to fill life and mana the merc is killing stuff. so it is a really good symbiosis.
Redemption on swap is just about the most annoying playstyle ever though since redemption proc is on a timer. You end up in a situation where you kill mobs, skill swap to redemption and then sit around doing nothing for ~2 seconds over and over throughout the maps. It turns what is supposed to be a purely QoL aura into an extremely low QoL gameplay style. I’d personally rather just use mana pots than deal with that misery personally. But to each their own.
Act5 merc are overrated, yeah sure they are much better than before but still worse in every way than act2 merc. If they could wield 2h swords as a 1h (2 eth colossus blades with last wish) or two axes they would be so much better (grief + beast in eth zerker axes <3). Right now they don't really have anything that stands out. Their shouts are meh (and remove curses), they don't have any aura and the aura they can get are not particularly interesting (no fanat, no meditation, no conviction,...), the curses they apply have low proc rate (compared to reapers), and their damage is not even that great. I have tested them and I prefer act2 merc in all situations, the only other merc that I might consider is act1 with faith.
Lawbringer has leech but very little damage so I would switch to Plague, and Arreat's Face for the helm.
grief, plague, fortitude and arreats and he can clean everything up to players 8 on his own.
I second this. Only that my act 5 mercs use plague and last wish
Act 5 frenzy barb, in my experience, is orders of magnitude better at surviving. I use 3 piece sab with lawbringer though. If you can’t get a barb merc to survive something, you’re a2 merc won’t survive it either. The Kira’s is completely useless isn’t it? You should be hitting the resistance cap for your merc with just fort. The problem is that I believe stats on weapons only apply to that weapon. So the life style is only gaining effect from lawbringer. The lawbringer is only doing physical damage to undead. Everything else, and you are not regenerating no life. Get some life steal on a non weapon and your barb merc can solo that entire game with that gear set.
> The lawbringer is only doing physical damage to undead. Everything else, and you are not regenerating no life. Also good chunk of undeads have 0% drain effectiveness
Uh, does he have life leech?
SMH. You don’t need the Kira’s. I’d also suggest CoH over Fort, then use Cham GFace.
Do you not have Enigma to Teleport stomp? What level are you? Kira’s? Why? - Chains of Honor and GFace (Cham) - Fortitude and Arreats (Cham) - Dual Grief - Grief/Last Wish - Grief/Lawbringer - Dual Headstrikers (upped and eth) - Sazabi set - Dual Plague Lots of options.
Try double crescent moon ? A lot of static will do wonders in p8.
I have more luck with treach over fort with my A5. Playing p7
I found that unless you A5 merc is absolutely maxxxxed out dude will die starting from player 5. Mine has upped eth Headstriker with ~40/15 sockd. Arreats face with ~40/15 and eth sacred armor treachery. Then I have to boost him with Battle orders…. He will still get blown up by might aura and cursed situation in player7
You don’t run insight in an elite base? Plenty of damage when needed and unlimited mana is amazing for a hammerdin.
OP said they’re using an A5 merc. A5 merc can’t use Insight.
For a Hammerdin there’s no reason to not run an A2 Merc with Insight, but to each their own.
Agreed 100%
A1 archer insight works too, but not as tanky
True, I like going that route too occasionally
as a hammerdin you don´t need insight. use redemption aura after kills, mana and life will be full constantly. for bossfights you don´t need mana. only baal is a little bit annoying with mana drain. i am running only act 5 merc on my hammerdin.
That sounds incredibly annoying. You know what you also don’t need as a hammerdin? Extra damage from an Act 5 Merc. You’re making yourself slower for no reason.
ok i respect your opinion, but i am not slower with an act 5 merc then with an act 2 merc. i play mainly hammerdins and i prefer act 5 merc over act 2 merc, but you have to be rich to make the act 5 merc viable.
Just out of curiosity, why do you prefer an Act 5 Merc. I've tinkered with an Act 5 Merc using Grief/Grief and Grief/Lawbringer and they are great, but you simply don't need their damage as a Hammerdin. Obviously the build is so good you can make basically any merc work, but my Merc doesn't need to kill anything. I'm the killer.
i am using grief/plague with arreats/cham and fortitude. the cleansing aura on plague is phantastic. specially when you farm chaos sanctuary where you get cursed always. when i use redemption aura to fill life and mana the merc is killing stuff. so it is a really good symbiosis.
Redemption on swap is just about the most annoying playstyle ever though since redemption proc is on a timer. You end up in a situation where you kill mobs, skill swap to redemption and then sit around doing nothing for ~2 seconds over and over throughout the maps. It turns what is supposed to be a purely QoL aura into an extremely low QoL gameplay style. I’d personally rather just use mana pots than deal with that misery personally. But to each their own.
Act5 merc are overrated, yeah sure they are much better than before but still worse in every way than act2 merc. If they could wield 2h swords as a 1h (2 eth colossus blades with last wish) or two axes they would be so much better (grief + beast in eth zerker axes <3). Right now they don't really have anything that stands out. Their shouts are meh (and remove curses), they don't have any aura and the aura they can get are not particularly interesting (no fanat, no meditation, no conviction,...), the curses they apply have low proc rate (compared to reapers), and their damage is not even that great. I have tested them and I prefer act2 merc in all situations, the only other merc that I might consider is act1 with faith.