I was playing around with using an A5 for my bliz sorc’s merc, giving him my frenzy barb’s gear: 2 griefs + fortitude. The idea is to move fast and kill immunes quickly. It works.
Suppose a bowazon tries an A5 frenzy merc, equipped with not one, but two, lawbringers? Such a merc could spam decrepify through cow packs or whatever else. Would it be worth giving up might aura? Decrepify will double your net damage, but how often will it be on the mobs, if the merc is lagging behind you and generally acting like a dufus half the time?
Has anyone tried on the PTR? I might go ahead and make a second lawbringer and give it a go.
You’re not just giving up a might aura, you’re also giving up the use of the Pride runeword, which together they add about 600% ed and account for about 1/3 of your total damage.
Not sure if the Sanctuary aura was tweaked to work vs demons as well, it doesn’t say in the patch notes, so the setup will do well vs undead but not vs anything that’s hugely tanky.
Yes I’m aware of Pride. Having all three auras is your highest dps. Right now I have WF and enough runes for Faith, but not enough for Pride. Current plan is to put Faith on an A1 merc, probably the exploding arrow type as I’m farming cows. Then later make a Pride and go back to A2.
I’m just exploring the option of A5. I have little doubt that if the A5 merc was actually aggressive, it would be better than might/pride as it lowers PDR by 50 and hence doubles net damage. The problem is it won’t be aggressive enough, I suspect. Then again, you don’t always get the auras either because of weird merc AI.
AFAIK Sanctuary aura is just being fixed so that the damage buff against undead actually works. Haven’t heard of it being applied to demons.
That’s true, but decrep will only apply to targets that your merc is swinging at and closely near by (decrep always has a 4 yard radius), where as might + pride is always active, even before your merc starts swinging. That’s true that might needs something to trigger it at the start of the game, I hope this is something that gets patched to make it instant.
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Right, it was a limited radius, but it’s a lot better than the amp proc from Atma’s. Cows are packed close in, so a lot will get decrepped.
I hadn’t even thought about the delay on auras. I was just thinking about how the merc wanders off in weird places, and also that it is sometimes necessary to stand way back from the packs because that is how multishot can hit a bunch of mob packs all at once. This sometimes puts you outside the auras.
But in the end, you’re probably right. I’m just trying to think outside the box.
Dual lawbringer is definitely a good budget option though and with the 2.4 synergies this is overall more viable. Will probably do some actual tests of this 
Your mentioning Sanctuary Aura has me thinking that cows may not be the best experiment. I may try some CS clears, where 2 of the 3 mob types are UD. Having decrep + SA would triple your damage. Would be amazing there.
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It should be pretty good in Chaos, basically kill everything except the Venom Lords, then your merc decreps Venom Lords and Diablo for the easier kill.
Well, it’s a good thing I haven’t given up cows just yet. You really have to watch when you use multishot to make sure you pick up all the loot from the mobs you kill off screen. Was finishing up my 100 cows runs on the Zon, and I had a feeling I missed a cow pack in one of those wide open areas, so I go there, and there’s no cows, but there’s a Jah sitting there on the ground. I had almost decided it wasn’t worth checking.
First one of those I ever got. Damn cows has been good to me for HR’s for a long time now.
PS: made Faith this morning. Now had plenty of runes left over to buy the +gmb base. Rolled +2 skills, 14 fana aura. Put it on an A1 merc, keeping WF on the Zon. I wasn’t anticipating this much DPS increase when all I did was swap auras. But I got 2 breakpoints from ias on the aura. It’s nuts. Also, there seems to be a skeleton travelling along with me now.
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I tested the A5 dual Lawbringer merc on Physical Bowazon.
It’s a nice option due to decrepify, mainly at the hightest Player setting, but the fact is merc’s procs are really inconsistent without teleport.
The guy walking around and in most cases approach the enemies after I already kill them or so.
It’s still good against bosses, but not so good for normal PvE farming.
I think A2 merc auras remain the best option for build that don’t use teleport.
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