Act 3 mercs still bad 2.4

So with the New of the upcoming ptr they introduced a pile of great changes, however act 3 mercs are still shaping up to be bottom of the barrel.

While redemption aura would be a nice boost to survivability on the mercs it seems to be coming at the cost of firebolt which means less synergy damage for fireball, which was already pretty sub par to begin with.

I feel like these mercs need more than the standard 3 skill slots, they need more synergies and ideally masteries for their respective elements. Especially cold and lightning since they have 3 damage synergies to max insread of fire’s 2. Not only would this boost their dps, (when compared to an act 2 merc doing 20k dps it’s laughable) it would also open up synergies for dream/dragon/hoj.

Realistically numbers should range from 5-6k fire, 1-12k light and 3k ice to be viable in high end gear if they include their masteries. Even at that point they would probably still pale in comparison to the other mercs. Chain lightning would also be a better alternative to charged bolt on the merc.

Anyway, please continue to look into the act 3 merc, since the announcement they would be getting rebalanced I’ve desperately wanted to use one!

9 Likes

I agree, but I’m willing to try it out in PTR before I give the 100% to this. The damage ranges you list I tend to agree with. They need masteries.

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The A3 Mercs need masteries.

Edit - Redemption Aura was deleted from the FAQ, I guess he doesn’t get Redemption.

3 Likes

yeah me too. i mean their basic idea is to turn fire into a statbonus (ar and hp+ mana regen), cold to crowd control and lightning to aoe damage. all things that melees need.

lightning damage is just subpar, since masteries are much stronger for lightning than any other (+12% per lvl, instead of fire’s +7%) lightning only makes it to something like 1-4k dmg. lightning bolt is useless dmg wise, chain lightning would also give synergies and have a much better aoe effect (since the merc has generally a problem with aiming/putting out spells quickly)

fire without synergy will be pretty much useless dmg wise. even if his endlevel is ramped up by 50 levels, it still would be under 2k.

im generally not a fan of giving a sorc character auras.

im excited for the a5 barb though. they brought a dual wielding now, i wonder if they mean dual wielding 1h swords or others too.

thank goodness. no synergy would have been his death

Well at least they still seem to be actively looking at it.

yeah. could be that there is a reason why they don’t give them a 4th skill, like because of the ui only supports displaying 3 or so. i really wonder what it is :thinking: or maybe to prevent dual dream or so

Redemption aura would kinda suck for someone that just wants an enchant slave and needs to hork bodies.
Enchant slave sucks anyway, unless they make it so that the ai casts enchant on any nearby allies when you are on town, it would be great for having an extra afk player for higher player count.

I wory that masteries would be broken on mercs… Just thinkinng an auradin, with an A3 merc also kitted out with HoJ+Dragon+double Dream with mastery would be crazy… I’m sure it would break something…

What do you mean by this? Are Act 3 mercs getting redemption aura in the next patch? This would be awesome…

Phoenix shield is an okay option on the fire A3 merc, but less functional on the light/cold versions… so redemption would be very welcome…

The bonus would still be less than what a paladin can get from synergies. It would be good but not broken considering it would require they lose out on skills. They have no aura support so I would just see it as a positive option.

It’s not like it would get to level 45 like a normal light sorc.

I’ll say it again here also. If A1 merc can recive bonuses from +to ama skills, and A5 merc can recive bonuses from +to barb skills, than A3 merc should recive bonuses from +to sorc skills.

3 Likes

im not sure if that would be a good idea. im looking at giving a fire a3 merc trang oul’s armor and helmet + double spirit as budget option. if i didnt make a mistake the +18 to fireball should apply to him, since he has the spell, but it shouldnt limit the +18 to +3 because he doesnt count as sorc. i havent tested it yet, but it would be a budget option for damage. i calculated 3 gear setups here, the trang oul comes out quite well:

I don’t think our ideas would make eachothers un-viable. I don’t see any colision here.

if he gets bonus from +sorc skill he must count as such. if he counts as sorc, he doesnt get the +18 fireball, but only +3. similar as the barb only gets +3 from cta.

Ok. I understand it now.

1 Like

It was only in the patch notes for a short amount of time then it was pulled.

We need a better runewords or gear selection for these mercs. Without the gear to equip to them they will never be good, they are casters so weapon damage does not matter, attack speed does not matter. They have no synergy bonuses were casters get many of their damage buffs. If we could some how give them even low level elemental mastery skills through gear, this would be huge improvement.

The only other thing I think of while keeping them unique and not giving them auras, is give each of them a different curse, like fire with a lifetap curse. Lightning with decrepify, Cold with dim vision.

I think Iron Wolves need a bit more strength to be able to equip Monarch for Sprit Shield. So he won’t be stuck with Viper Magi to hit 86 FCR break point.

I think right now he is only viable with Fohdin. Since Conviction 25 and Healing from Holy Bolt works wonder for him.

  • Weapon: Spirit CS
  • Shield: Eth Spirit Monarch or Eth Lidless + 5/5 jewel
  • Up eth Viper + 5/5 jewel
  • Griffon or Artisan Circlet of Magnus (20% FRC + 3x 5/5 jewels)

Reach 86 FCR (10 Frames ~ 200 FCR sorc)

1 Like

Act 3 mercs need

  1. more skill points per level in all their skills (since they barely get synergy, they should cap near lvl 90 for their skills to do even remotely comparable dmg; it may sound excessive but I’ve modded a bunch of versions of this and that’s the only way to make them do dmg.)
  2. 6 skills instead of 3. That would make them unique. They should have 2 main dmg skills from their element, 2 utility skills, the mastery skill for their element, and 1 skill from an off element.

did you try to mod that into your modde version? i still have the suspecion that there is a reason why they havent put in more than 3 skills for him. i know there are like 6 slots i hirelings.txt. but maybe there ui is porblematic or there is some other reason why they restrict it to 3 skills only. even 1 more synergy which they wouldnt use (0% chance of casting in hirelings.txt) would go miles for them. lightning only makes it to 1-4k (2k average dmg), fire 5k-6k and ice was at something like 1.5k or so