I have a treachery and insight on my merc and i forgot which helm but it’s not a big deal. It’s an act 2 nightmare merc. I’m doing everything i’m supposed to i think but I swear my merc dies so often it’s pathetic. I shouldn’t have to give him potions every 5 seconds to keep him alive in hell? I don’t remember that from playing the game before? Could merc’s be buffed a little or maybe have a potion belt or something? I’m sick of running them at this point as they cost close to 50k to revive and i’m running out of money in my stash.
1 Like
There can be many reasons why your merc dies, Resistance, armor value and damage/Life leech combo.
Tested Trechery vs Fortitude and its not even close, so if you want your merc to live easy make him a Fortitude in an eth 4s armor.
Not only does it provide him with resistance, but the damage increase is massive and it allows him to leech much of the HP he would loose.
you need life leech on your merc, use tal helm for example, has @res + ll
Also remember that every tick based skill is broken at the moment. So Poison skills does physical damage. Firewall does double or triple damage, and especially chain-lightning is messed up.
I hold my merc alive mostly by bugging him as you would formerly do with a low lvl merc even if he’s lv85. It’s sad that you’re forced to do this but there’re so many new bugs in this game right now that you have to do whatever necessary.
Btw. nothing can stop him from dieing from chain-lightning in act3, its just to much damage. I’ve got 1300 life, all resis on 75% and 20 lightning absorb and got one shotted most of the time.
use more mana potions and get a reapers toll. he’ll attack fast with a lot of life leech and if you can make a ruby craft in a helm, he will be much stronger.
I know this response is one week later but I thought I want to give my input.
Treachery has to have Fade up from combat on easier targets somewhere before you go into deadlier farming zones or monsters. And yes some people enjoy the merc trick. However, this part will entice complacency in how you play to protect the mercenary, whether it be re-positioning mercenary, or helping with crowd control skills if it fits your class which currently unsure unless your portrait says assassin.
Depending on the class you play, if you’re a sorceress, you have utility like Telekenesis to help the mercenary out. If you’re an assassin, you have mindblast to help the mercenary out. And even Shadow Warrior/Master, could be something to add into the decoying. If you’re a Necromancer, then Clay Golem + scanning ahead with Decrepify first before the Amp+CE 110% gameplay style should help you situate better before doing the mass explosion since your mercenary needs just that bit of time to kill one monster first for you to CE.
For mercenary helmets: you would prefer to have at least some form of Life Leech for him, whether it be starter setup like Wormskull or Undead Crown, Tal Rasha Set Death Mask is over-arching decent, there’s Stealskull Casque or Crown of Thieves as well for even more specific gameplay, then there’s Vampire Gaze and/or Andariel’s Visage. Gaze vs Andariels Visage depends on whether you always kill much faster than the mercenary can swing because then the mercenary will “have to keep switching targets after he spent all that time walking up to each target” and before he can swing, the target is now dead rinse and repeat scenario per density cluster.
1 Like