Equipment ideas specific for the Act 3 Merc

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Just going through all the equipment options in detail for these mercs and trying to determine the BiS gear for them… Some ideas for to fill gaps in this merc’s gear:

  • A sword runeword with at least 50% FCR would be needed to allow the A3 Merc to hit the 138% breakpoint (65% would be more ideal for a bit of gear flexibility).
  • FCR in general is important to A3 Merc but you’d break the game if you added FCR to anything else… So maybe just a sword “stat-stick” with lots of FCR? Or just lower the A3 Merc’s max breakpoint to 120%?
  • I think life-leech doesn’t work on the A3 Merc? So a runeword with big “life after kill” or “replenish life” would suit this merc well.
  • Dex and Str are problems for this merc, so something with boosts to these stats could be good…
  • Because this merc naturally has such high resistances +all res is not very useful, so if you made a runeword for this merc, the lack of resistances would make it much less usable on player characters (could use this as a way to balance a new runeword).
  • On a similar note, “+% to maximum resistance” is extremely good on these mercs - possibly a good mod to include…
  • There are very few equipment options that an A3 merc can feasibly use that give an aura. Lawbringer (sanctuary), Phoenix (redemption), Dragon (holy fire), Dream (holy shock), Flickering Flame (resist fire), Bramble (thorns), Plague (cleansing), Last Wish (might) are the only options I see that can work. Not many of these are useful to the player (except sanctuary/resist fire/thorns/cleansing/might)… Are these options good enough to compete versus Act 2 mercs, or do we need more options for auras in swords?
  • Act 3 mercs gain no value from any gear with “% chance to cast on striking”, gear that has “% chance to cast when struck” is best.
  • Act 3 mercs probably need access to more gear with “% chance to cast when struck”. To compete with Act 2 mercs, the probably need gear that can proc:
    – Decrepify when struck
    – Amp damage could be nice since A3 merc can’t us Brand?
    – Actually not as many skills as I thought, still worth thinking about…
  • I don’t see any good elemental absorb gear the A3 merc can use? Don’t know I didn’t think about this in detail. Could be nice to have.

Alright, I’m running out of ideas, but those are my observations - I feel like A3 merc needs some sexy gear to spice them up a bit more…

Not seeing many gear options on an A3 merc that beat a vanilla set-up like double spirit, FCR circlet (or Nightwings/Griffon’s/Flickering Flame), and either Ormus Robes or Vipermagi.

Maybe that’s enough options? But I just feel like Act 2 merc options are better overall still…

95% of A3 mercs will probably be geared with that set-up

Edit: on a different note, it looks to me like Plague was created as a possibly great option for the Act 3 merc? If it was, I’m just not sure whether it’s that good an option on that merc? Something to think about…

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Reggarding the casting equimpent, the easiest way would be to add daggers for Act 3 Mercs, so they can use Wizardspike or Spectral Shard for that 50% FCR, with a possibility to socket the Dagger with something useful (like Rainbow Facet Jewel for example …) …

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I agree on Your opinion that chance to cast “X” When struck is the only viable option to proc various skills… while dev’s are at it why not introducing a new brand of rainbow facets with the “100% chance to proc X when struck” i mean we have the when die and when lvlup 100% options, but something of higher efficiency besides the +/-5% damage& resist modificators the Rainbow Facets could provide… something like “100% chance to cast lvl xx static charge when struck” or “100% chance to cast lvl xx frozen orb when struck” or 100% chance to cast lvl xx hydra/armageddon" etc ( hard to come up with alternative poison spell besides carrion vain which would get 1shot anyways even on high lvl as the other poison options require a corpse or a dagger (as venom and poison nova were already used up on other poison facets).

The Lightning Cold and fire when struck facets could provide viable alternative to immunities problem the merc faces right now, as a decent chance to proc high level skill of other elements would cause the merc to stop beeing element locked behind one immunity, and potentially circumvent lack of lower resist or conviction aura. So 100% chance when struck rainbow facets could potentially take down 2 birds with one stone help player characters circumvent immunities beyond conviction/infinity and a3 mercs at the same time.

The only three other major problems the merc is facing are low elemental damage, squishiness, and lack of sustain.

Now I alrady toyed with this while doing mini mods, and simply by creating new passive spells in spells.txt and adding them to the a3 merc in hirelings.txt
there’s no need to flash around theese as visible in the icon UI as all of their contents is visible in the advanced tab when clicking on the arrow icon on the side…
there are four total spells to be adeded to spells.txt and two to each a3 merc.

preserving the elemental fantasy each one would get a mastery to his own element increasing when they level up (numbers to be tweaked not to be meh or op) this would further prevent the need of scaling spell damage which also influences player spell damage… so no more facet stacking for the + given element damage and - resistances to elements towards enemies purpose. simply move the bonuses to passive mastery…

As for sustain i also thought about fantasy, and made a passive with graphic overlay of energy shield ( no energy shield bonus as mercs don’t have mana, only visual effect since a3 merc look similar to diablo 1 sorcerer and they used mana shield) insted of mana shield however they would gain physical resistances(engine can handle up to 155%), and absorbtion% from: fire, cold, lightning, and magic, (up to 63%) ( no poison absorb though, as it didn’t fit since the table provide only 5 effects for a given passive, beats me why, since auras can have up to 6, anyways no poison absorb could even fit the lore fantasy).

this plus double spirit and quckly conjured when struck rainbow facets (thanks to hero editor’s kindness) and i did a quick test on act2 hell to test how the merc behaves… and the survivability is good ( the merc requires a potions only ocasionally instead of spoonfeeding them,), and the multiple elemet strategy turned out to be effeective not only for the player classes, but for the a3 merc as well, i went with 100% to cast level 44 static field when struck ( level number from between the die and lvl-up skill level facets of the same element as sort of an avarage) 100% to cast level 40 frozen orb when struck (agin average skill lvl from previous facets of the same element) and 100% chance to cast lvl 30 armageddon ( i know not a sorceress skill, but sorc has like hydra left and lvl 30 hydra not only does meh damage but stacks causing whole lot of mess on the screen, on the other hand armageddon does some physical damage just in case of a tripple immune,and other class elemental skill is not something uncommon there are poison facets with skil from necro and asa, so there).

In the end the a3 merc came out in a decent spot, able to tackle content, and also doesn’t die that often anymore, but not to a point of “hire&forget” pun inteded :slight_smile:

So I’m kind of hoping devs will go in this drection instad of providing conviction aura to a3 merc.
As of current state it’s like dev’s say we don’t need to buff a3 merc you need to gear him properly… yeah yeah… just give us viable options to gear him, because as of now there aren’t any…

Oops sorry for the wall of text…