Act 3 Merc Overhaul

General Discussion
1

I feel like the Act 3 merc needs some work to be more viable/useful.

Here is my proposal.

Overall: Allow them to use paladin shields.

Normal Mercs

Fire: Fireball, Meteor, Fire Mastery

Lightning: Charged Bolt, Lightning, Lightning Mastery

Cold: Ice Blast, Blizzard, Cold Mastery

Nightmare Mercs

Bone: Teeth, Bone Spirit, Amplify Damage

Poison: Poison Explosion, Poison Nova, Lower Resist

Holy: Holy Bolt, Fist of Heavens, Heal (Target heal with small AoE)

Hell Mercs

Fire: Merc Enchant, Hydra, Fire Mastery

Note: Merc Enchant has a small AoE

Lightning: Static Field, Nova, Thunderstorm

Cold: Chilling Armor, Frozen Orb, Cold Mastery

Other possibilities:

Attack Merc: Blessed Shield, Smite, Charge

I think this would make a viable Act 3 merc more viable.

Thanks for reading,
Floopay

2 Likes
2

Conviction, zeal.
Concentation, hammers.
Salvation, holy bolt.

Paladin shields.

That would be useful.

Then go buff the rogues and act 5 guys, again.

3

I think some sort of enhancement to the act 3 mercenaries would be nice. However, I don’t agree with paladin shields. They are a sorcerer type class. If they had a respective elemental mastery become available, could use sorceress orbs and benefit from + sorc skills, that would be a big buff.

Would be cool if there was an act 4 mercenary though…

1 Like
4

Act 3 is the only class to utilize Shields. Therefore allowing them to use Paladin Shields(despite them not being Paladins) wouldn’t be a bad idea given it’d allow for Spirit on something other than a Monarch(thereby permitting it to be equipped much earlier due to lower Strength requirement) and can benefit from the 45 All Resist automod(which would be quite handy no?).

I’m also intrigued by the Magic variant(Holy Bolt + FoH) with perhaps Sanctuary aura but then that’d make them all but worthless against Animal/Beast(particularly Act 2 Beetles). The Attack Merc doesn’t make sense since Blessed Shield doesn’t exist(you mean Holy Shield?) and they rarely ever melee attack since they’re casters.

5

Use a normal act 3 cold merc with Stealth armor, 20fcr circlet, Spirit sword and shield in the hell Throne Room. Cake walk.

6

Mellee act 3 is possible, by simple modding, his ai would be a bit wonky as he would kite a lot, however making him use other skills and or his sword attack more often is just a matter of numbers tweaking in hirelings.txt
His default chance to use equipped weapon is only 5% ,other mercs have this at 10% and it’s not 5% of 100% as act 3 merc has a total chcance to use skills a lot higher than 100% as each casted skill has a lot higher chcance than default swing cold armor for merc has 1000% for example. On the other hand act 2 merc has 10% chance for default attack 60% for jab and 10% chance to activate aura, so in total default chcance is higher than 10%. Simply change a3 merc skillset, tweak the numbers and he’ll start swinging his sword.
On the other hand damage is not everything a3 merc needs, he’s squishy as hell and lacks stats.

His res are botched beeing capped at 75% so he all but requires guardian angel chest armor now.
He also got botched when blizz north figured out that him blocking with shield consumes shield’s durability. So they scrapped his ability to block, totally botching the class.

What the merc needs:
First uncap his resistances or give him a higher cap 85-90 seemes fine.
Secondly enable his blockchance even with no shield (as only then shield will not lose dura)
Shield would still contribute to his block chance and block speed. But a bonus to block chance in monstats.txt would be welcome. Also since shield’s block chance is dependant on dex he needs a bare minimum of +60 to dex on his final level. Right now he has 152 str and 123 dex on 98 lvl. Even in friggin diablo 1 (in any rpg actually)
No sorceror has higher max str than max dex
So 152 str and 183 dex is the way to go, otherwise his block chance sux (he’ll require around 201 dex to have matched the shield’s block chance so still ~20 to go) otherwise it’s runeword “chicken” kokokokoko sword XD a runeword that truly describes the class right now.
And give them two extra skills a passive with resistances piercing (immunity included) but only to their specialisation element so fire gets fire pierce lightning ligtning pierce and cold cold pierce.

The second skill would be a casted skill that is casted only outside of town a missing boost to resistances (possibly res cap raise goes here too)
Bonus to physical damage resistance magic resistance, with manashield/energyshield overlay, to sort of mimick that d1 feeling of a sorceror with manashield (he has no mana though so it would need to be resistances only no immunities).
No need to specify all this in skill icons, skills can display stats in merc extras window so why not do that.

Other than that is simply means of bumping skill damage and cast rate. For the second one perhaps try to lower his fcr breapoints. 138 seemes unachivable even with best gear out there. (120/125fcr is max he can get). Not to mention his final 200fcr breakpoint duh…

As a general rule of thumb i’d allow passives granted from equivalent class skills to work for all mercs. No matter if it’s iron skin, natural resistance, sword mastery etc, for act5 mercs or any of the elemental masteries for the sorceress for act3 merc, and while you’re at it yeah bring elemental masteries back to ormus robes as rolls.
I know the robes themselves have a bonus but 3x lightning mastery >>> max to lightning skill damage% from ormus. Same goes for fire, and cold a3 merc was never about damage anyways…
However the more -enemy cold resistance% the merc gets the better, especially that literally 1/3 of the monsters is immune to cold, and even if the merc could pierce that immunity (and they are ones of the highest) they would still do no damage.

7

I still feel this is the solution to the Act 3 Merc and stand by this post.

Thanks for reading,
Floopay

8

If there will be a 2.8 patch, I hope Act 3 mercs get a buff. they really need it. Please blizzard, their numbers are still inferior to every other merc, to a point where it is still not viable to use him.

9

There sbould be runeword for shield so act3 merc can use

10

Continuing to bump this post until Act 3 Merc gets some love.

Thanks for reading,
Floopay

11

I don’t know what paladin shields adds to them. The point of all mercs is the extra aura they provide. Act 1 mercs can bring fanat and now concentration. Act 2 mercs bring freeze, prayer, might and can bring convic, concentration, meditation, and I’m sure I’m forgetting something.

You get the idea. There aren’t many aura for act 3 mercs to provide. They have cleansing now, every merc can bring resist fire now with flickering flame. A phoenix shield could bring redemption. They’re not very substantial merc auras.

I think convic and concentration are good ideas. Salvation seems too strong. Even at rank 1 it’s 60 to fire/cold/lit res. Rank 5 is 85 just for your merc existing. That’s a little bananas and too universally useful. Vigor would be a good 3rd option.

12

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Hahaha « rank » hahaha

13

Yes, mercenary auras have ranks.

14

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Hahaha « rank » hahaha