Act 3 Merc Enchant Cast

PTR Feedback
1

Can we get more clarification on the cast itself when casting on minions and other players. Is it a one cast on all targets in range or is it cast once per target?

If it’s cast once per target, I’ve been waiting for his cast in cows, have in the last 10 minutes seen it cast once. None of my minions currently have a glowing weapon that enchant usually gives.

Can we get a better way to verify that it is actually on all minions?

I have seen fire damage being done by minions, but cannot tell if it’s coming from a lucky few that were enchanted or from all.

2

im just guessing here, but i think it works similar to auras. when attack it has a chance of chosing enchant, just like with fireball or firebolt

3

The caster will use it one at a time on the player, himself, and minions, but his use is sporadic. He’ll only enchant during combat and has a habit of standing in the back doing nothing.

The might mercenary is the best choice if you’re using minions. My minions’ damage dropped off a cliff without my Act 2 friend, and my meeting with flame immune creatures was another sobering experience. That alone made me return Haseem to his mistress.

I hope this helped.

4

just lookedit up on the files, his cast chance is 30/120 on attack. so when he would attack he has a 25% chance to pick enchant instead of fireball (50%) and firebolt(25%)

2 Likes
5

I have tested this. The merc will only enchant during combat. It takes about 2-3 minutes worth of fighting to enchant everything with the merc if I am using a necro with all my minions out.
It would be great if the merc casted enchant without having to fight.

5 Likes
6

Hoping to hell this gets changed, was really hoping for it to be a viable change for necros.

7

It will never beat a might merc as when you add fire damage amp will not effect it. Might ups the physical damage of the skellys and amp takes it even further.

I took Hazim out and it took quite a while to get him to enchant me. He does need to use it out of combat, I wonder if that is an option.

2 Likes
9

I think an out of combat cast would be huge, and while I agree, I don’t see it surpassing the might boost with amp, I wanna try a lower resist with fire golem and enchant on melee and the boosted mages for the giggles.

10

I took Hazim out and it took quite a while to get him to enchant me. He does need to use it out of combat, I wonder if that is an option.

as far as i know its not. but here is an interessting article about the mechanics used for such cases, like frozen armor, etc. Warcry uses some of these described mecchanics atm (thats why he casts it so rarely, enchant also uses some):

Generally a very high chance should be put for
Auras (Defiance, Concentration), Warcries (Shout, Howl), Shielding
(Bone Armor, Cyclone Armor, Sorc’s Ice Armors), certain magicks (TS,
Armageddon, Hurricane - tho Armageddon and Hurricane can get messy if
they are spammed). This is so that the hireling will cast it
immediately upon sighting an enemy to protect himself, or provide the
necessary bonuses.

Usually (and also in the original hireling.txt) a
value of 1000 is used. However if you give a very high chance, it’ll
mean that they will continuous keep casting the skill. There is a way
around that:

With reference to States.txt, there is a list of
STATES, like STATE_FROZENARMOR or STATE_SHOUT, STATE_CONCENTRATION,
STATE_ARMAGEDDON. These values can be put in skills.txt under the 3rd
last column - caster state. It is recommended to put all those that you
think you may use, and some of those that you may or may not use in. It
has no other side effects, but has good uses for hirelings.

Now what happens is that after the hireling has
cast his Hurricane, the game will keep track and put STATE_HURRICANE as
long as the skill is active. When the hireling is deciding the
Chance/Probability to use a skill, Hurricane is no longer considered,
and so the skill will not be chosen again, until the Hurricane is
finished, and the STATE_HURRICANE is removed. After that the game can
consider activating Hurricane again.

i dont know if enchant uses the state mechanic, i havent seen him recast it on me too often (while im still enchanted). if he does use it, a solution could be to just ramp the cast % up like frozen armor. then he would enchant the whole team upon seeing an enemy (though that could be annoying in a players 8 game with suummon necros… he wouldnt engange in combat for minutes)
also, the a2 mercs could use higher values for their auras, its at something like 5% or so now. seems like a no downside thing to me, if they’d cast it immediately when entering combat. the enchants are at something like 25% atm.
with clever workarounds we could even prevent the act 5 merc from overwriting our curses with the states thing. Example:
imagine a3 cold has frozen armor and we want him to learn chilling armor after a leveling up. we put state frozen armor and state chilling armor in the spells, sothat when he casts either frozen armor or chilling armor, he wouldnt recast the spell itself or the other spell while it is active. you could do the same for battle cry. But not for state battle cry, but for state lower resist, state decripify, state amplify damage, state life tap. you put state battle cry in each of those curses, sothat he would stop casting battle cry if one of these curses were cast but still recast it when there is no curse but battle cry on enemies. let me know if i have made a logic mistake there.