What are people’s thoughts on this mercenary at the moment? The frenzy merc seems to deal a ton of damage and move super fast and kill things! I’ve seen videos where he can solo some of the organ ubers himself! He’s notably incredible on a zeal paladin (level 30+ fantasm).
I DO want a meta-shift in the mercenary choices and do want him to be better at “dealing damage” than the act 2 mercenary (which provides aura support). Is he too strong? Any suggestions on how to adjust him?
nah, more like not strong enough…as for Last Wish(the 70% Crushing blow on it) is what slam the ubers mostly…but it cost a fortune in runes to make
nonetheless the merc killing speed is not comparable to smiter//kicker
edit: performance wise he’s still bellow Act 2 merc slightly…he’s missing a little bump to be on par with A2 Merc(aka able to equip axes)
Yeah, all these streamers testing builds with 19 high runes of gear and an inventory full of charms are really out of touch with how people actually play the game.
So you think the A5 merc is fine how he is without changes?
I think the Frenzy barb is great the way he is now. If anything I’d say we should start looking into the Bash barb and all Act 3 mercs
I think the Frenzy barb is fine. It’s a breath of fresh air change from the default go to Act 2 merc. People are still going to use A2 mercs for their auras anyway.
It’s funny watching him zip around with frenzy stacks. 
He paired nicely with my Bowazon, he kept the monsters off of her while she drilled them with arrows.
It’s in a good spot, don’t touch it. Start looking at A3 merc to be better.
I used Frenzy barb on my throwbarb playthrough. He is amazing tank. I swapped to Holy freeze Act 2 merc, but I noticed he die more often than Frenzy merc. So I hired Frenzy afterwards and I like how he tanks everything.
Here we can see an example of better “AI” so to speak. He quickly targets monsters. Other mercs/druid summons walk around like idiots.
Oh yeah, he was tanking well with Duriels Shell and Andy’s helm. Even before I made him a Grief, he was doing ok damage with garbage vendor placeholder swords. His taunt ability worked wonders to keep the packs off of my glass cannon Bowazon.
He even held his own going toe to toe vs Moon Lords in the Worldstone keep. 
A5 merc is as strong as A2 merc. The watershed is the Faster Run Walk that Frenzy provides making it kill stuff and goingo to next mega fast. Best for speed clear.
About Ubers the A2 Merc is Stromger due to its longer range making it not the prior target for the boss that ll hit summons first most of the time.
I’m afraid he’s still outright inferior to the Act2 merc.
For elemental-based player builds, you want Infinity for the huge damage boost and immunity breaking. The Frenzy merc can’t wield Infinity. One of the new runewords sort of kind of comes close with Lower Resist when struck, but he’s not guaranteed to get hit when you need him to. Infinity is so much more reliable.
For physical-based player builds, you want both the Might aura from the the Act2 merc and Reaper’s Toll for a large damage boost and immunity breaking. At first glance, it sounds like the Frenzy merc should be able to replicate this with Last Wish + Lawbringer. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work in practice. He’s got 3 other curse effects besides Decrepify, and he thrashes back and forth between them so much that Decrepify has very little uptime. This makes non-undead phys immunes obnoxiously hard to kill. The consistency of Reaper’s Toll is preferable.
It’s a shame, because this merc gets so close to actually being a viable alternative to the age-old Act2 merc, but then he falls short.
I agree. The act 5 merc was meant to be tankier than the others and yes the summon druids wolves move more like turtles. Besides all these streamers and youtubers showing of their 20 hr last wish mercs is not really how most people is going to play anyway. They might end up killing the dream of the act 5 merc instead
I played the frenzy barb merc as well… He felt quite strong… I think he is in a good spot, ideally he should be a little weak still, and once ladder season is over, community can give better feedback 
He is a legit immune killer for a cold or fire sorc. You can even support him with enchant and usual static. Gear is 1x oath cryptic sword+guilli+a weapon with lifeleech + duriel’s shell.
i personally think he is a bit too strong. but adjusting him is hard. the thing that makes him so strong is the attack speed + walk speed bonus from frenzy (makes him much more efficient in seeking out enemies, life leeching makes him almost invincible with his amount of life and crushing blow is better on fast attacking) and you cannot really adjust that without nerfing it significantly. at lvl 84 he had a lvl 13 frenzy. it also got synergies from taunt (lvl 17) and his iron skin is lvl 16: you would need something like a flat lvl 1-3 in frenzy to not be so op, but that would mean that all skills he gets by leveling are synergies, which would be VERY lame. taking away the taunt synergy would be an option too, lvl 17 taunt gives +126% dmg at level 84. but i dont really think the damage is what makes him so op. dunno, this is a tough one.
Budget Sazabi Set act 5 merc at countess
Budget Sazabi Set act 5 merc taking care of Baal wave 2 at p1
I’ll do the p8 tests tonight and will upload it here.
Did someone tested this Merc with 1 or 2 “Fury” weapons (Eth Cryptic Swords), do +5/+10 to Frenzy improves him a lot ? The Life leech , IAS,OW and Deadly strike should help, but it is expensive option anyway …
|Fury|3 Socket Melee Weapons|
Jah + Gul + Eth|
+209% Enhanced Damage
40% Increased Attack Speed
Prevent Monster Heal
66% Chance Of Open Wounds
33% Deadly Strike
Ignore Target’s Defense
-25% Target Defense
20% Bonus To Attack Rating
6% Life Stolen Per Hit
+5 To Frenzy (Barbarian Only)
isnt that limited to +3 now, since he counts as barbarian? like cta and bo with barbarians
It was funny to watch sorc giving BO to barbarian haha.
The most useless melee runeword could become useful on this merc. I’d rather equip him with etheral cryptic sword kingslayer runeword. You could give him andy and duriel’s shell then. Even more budget and very effective would be complete sazabi’s tribute with kingslayer or eth oath cryptic sword.