I still think that the act 3 and act 5 merc need further buffs to make them more viable over the act 2 and 1 mercs. A bump in stats and and the abilities you can choose from would be neat. Also.
I know this is heresy, but, I want our mercs to have 3 more slots. 1 Grand Charm Slot. 1 Large Charm Slot. and 1 Small Charm Slot.
Yeah I wish act3 casts curse and act5 casts battle order.
Act 3 merc suffers so much in the early and mid game because he doesn’t get crushing blow, or open wounds, or many auras until late game runewords where most people are going to use infinity for elemental damage users or reapers toll for physical damage dealers.
The fire merc is actually quite good for giving attack rating and elemental damage to your physical hits but its still not good enough when act 2 merc has might aura.
Personally I’d stick to one charm slot 3x1 inventory for either 1x grand charm or 1x large+ 1x small charm or 3x small charms this way you could give him: either sunder charm, gheed’s fortune ( if building max MF barb + maxMF merc killer), annihilus + preferably torch ( no need to set equiv class for all mercs act 2 and act 3 would fare better with sunder charms, and act1 and 5 already have equivalent class set).
basically If someone haven’t seen my ultimate act 3 merc a’la jack of all trades setup:
ht tps://maxroll . gg/d2/d2planner/2i01064s
I can’t really understand what you were going for with this merc. Are you aware that Act3 mercs can’t block? It doesn’t seem to have anything to assist the player outside of it’s basic enchant, and more plus skills would give you more attack rating.
If you swapped the Stormshield for Phoenix, then it would give him more negative enemy fire resistance, and a redemption aura to keep him alive.
For the sword, you could use plague for +2 skills, cleansing aura, and lower resist when struck. Alternatively, you could use Last Wish, which would give him a fade proc, and a might aura for you.
Flickering Flame would give him more damage, more negative enemy fire resistance, and sure up fire resistance for both of you.
For the armor I would probably go with an enchant ormus, socketed with a fal rune to give enough strength for the shield. Or you could go crazy with an enigma for +2 skills, 45frw, strength for the sheild, life after kill for survival, and magic find in case he actually does kill something. 
Id like it if they either:
Or
It kind of locks any builds requiring mec auras/abilities to have teleport.
You probably haven’t tested this setup, so don’t speak out…
the most common aproch to A3 merc is stupid. ppl can’t seem to understand that giving the A3 merc flat skill bump achives nothing. the damage is still meh and only thing you get is that stupid enchant buff, which is pretty unreliable and inconsistent, as sometimes he casts it almost instantly, and sometimes he just dies before enchanting while using the standard spirit/ormus robes +X skills bullsh1t.
He may not be able to block, (although I’m not quite sure about that anymore) but this shield forks out the needed +30STR 35%DR massive armor and a decent cold and lightning resists which add to guardian angel’s torso that boosts the max res to cap out at 90%.
The 35%DR; 90%@rez; massive armor class post-buff; huge life pool and 75% poison length reduction from diadem, cause he can stand in almost anything except succubi army with AC-reducing curse. the Rainbow faceets in diadm and in the sword make him at least semi viale as a damage dealer, on the contrary to your +skills aproch. So next time before you laugh, try to shut up and do a playtest first.
Previously it was next to impossible to keep him alive without enigma, now he can survive without warping around at least while playing buffed by a barb’s BO and Shout at decent skill levels.
as for the other guy
a3 merc lacks mobility give him decent amount of FRW and pray for correct AI to be chosen from the list of a3 merc’s AI types, and he’ll keep up while you run too…
it’s just a matter of the ai picking running instead of walking and a hefty 30%FRW affix for the merc, this plus tankiness also fix constant kiting for that same AI type.
the AI changes each time you start the game up, not everytime you enter from the lobby into sanctuary. and Yes most of the AI types suck, but it’s not that impossibe for act 3 fire merc to be viable beyond enchant buff.
dont you have a modding background? pretty sure you seemed to have some knowledge when we talked in another thread. the enchant has a 25% of being cast when the merc decides what skill to use when approaching an enemy. Think they still use the STATES_ command with that one, meaning the hireling will not reenchant as long as its still active on you. i mean you could bump the enchant% to a value close to 100%, sothat once you engage an enemy first thing he does is to enchant the whole party (which could also take a while with a summon necro)
Nothing in my post was hostile, so I would expect civility in return. I merely asked what the motivation for that setup was, and then suggested potential options providing different benefits depending on need.
From what I can make out, you don’t seem to care about his enchanting or his damage, and he doesn’t have any auras to buff you, so you just want him to survive and nothing else?
The plus to skills, which I wasn’t overly focused on, was about increasing the attack rating on his enchant. The damage on the enchant is not really important, which is why I was suggesting more skills instead of facets, so that you could get more attack rating. From your first post, I thought your reason for using the Act3 merc was for the enchant.
Again, like you, I don’t consider his damage worth much. As such, for swords I was looking for something to improve your damage (might aura), or provide safety (cleansing aura). The cleansing aura would also protect him from curses and poison. A faceted sword does nothing for you; it only adds to his very limited damage.
The Phoenix shield was more about survival than fire damage. His damage is a side benefit, but the redemption aura restores his life. Act3 mercs don’t have life steal, so this is a way restore his life. It does rely on you killing things, so if you’re not well geared, then I see why you would want more DR. If we’re talking about builds worth several high runes, I would have thought your damage was high enough to use this setup. You could combine it with Shaftstop to keep the DR if required.
Flickering flame was about providing fire resistance to both of you. Again looking for something to benefit the player. It also has the side benefits of skills for attack rating, and negative enemy fire resistances - which you seemed to want from your facet sword.
These were my ideas to provide more utility from the Act3 merc. If you just want a merc to survive, I had a budget Act5 merc with lawbringer and Sezabi’s set that only ever died to ubers.
Simply change the aura’s attributes from enchant to it:
benefit all party targets just as if it were Battle Orders it would help too much.
implementing a teleport with a 1 minute cooldown for the acts 1 and 3 merc to go to the player would help a lot.
Reviewing the damage would be considerable
With the Sunders charms unfortunately there is another elemental damage to deal with the immunities of hell is lost. It makes little sense for the fire enchantment it gives to summoner build mobs and the lack of a damage boosting aura for mobs makes it an inferior choice.
Act 3 Merc will never be good unless they improve its AI. It could deal 999999 damage and it would still be useless.
Sorry to be rough around the edges but I got the initial picture as if You were mocking me by your initial post ( especially that “XD” smiley at the end.
@Dwarf & Milox
I do have modding background and those 25% are for a total of % greater than 100% so those 25% actually are far less than 1/4 chance.
And I mean damage is meh when he’s naked, It’s medicore when he’s equipped.
he actually deals decent damage to non fire resistant monsters. it’s the fire immunes that pose a problem. with infinity on my barb and a plague proc from the swap ( agin not planning to use this, the build was just for the puropse of testing the build…I’ts ofcourse hero edited on single player for the test purposes. The general idea was how “more or less” fire merc would behave when having a sunder power ( as that’s what he’s lacking according to me) up to 129% mob fire resistance it’s okish, but beyond mobs just tend to stay immune).
i mean 2-3 shots to kill for a players 1 on a non resistant mob, is not that bad is it.
agin those 10-20 shots he requies to kill one travincal council member is a bit too much i agree, but it’s mostly due to the council overheal themselves and merc constantly switching targets ( the immunity taken down with plague proc + infinity).
@ rest
the healing amount isn’t a mandatory thing if you know the formula to life regen. it far more benefits the merc to have his life boosted to 4.5k a regen boost from ~45 to around ~115 ( data from maxroll planner) than measly 30 regen which after beeing processed by the regen formulae gives very little.
the key issues of the build were taken care of by +2x7%FHR on the jools and diadem with FRW30% to help with a lot of things but especially to keep up withth the player and reduce kiting time significantly and at the same time increase time engaging mobs. FCR+20% it’s not much but it is as much as can be squeezed in this build. 75%PLR is the key to survivability, as merc acts like mobs when he’s poisoned his healing ability is heavily diminished, and when his regen is low he actually would die too often without PLR. on hell there is a -200% modifier to PLR which means poison lasts twice as long by default on hell. PLR is applied multiplicatively instead of additively and hence +75%PLR on a -200% debuff actually yealds +50%PLR so poison has half the time of effect, and any additional source has heavy diminishing returns and it’ll never reach 100% no matter what.
Once agin
damage wise he’s not that terrible when properly equipped, it’s just his other general stats and a poopy AI most of the time make him look terribly bad. however if stars align he’s decent damage wise. Not superb like an act 2 or act5 merc with proper gear, but still vabl’ish. I once equipped him full facets on sword, armor, shield and diadem ( a total of +/-85% from the facets and despite him being soft as a wet noodle he could sting quite nice. but in normal playthrough not everyone is going to have an enigma to babysit him, and the infiity and plague could easily by offset by the devs with large charm slot/ or native sunder power. fire merc woudn’t require anything else to be viable. cold and lightning would still need a damage bump. They all need their ai to be fixed and not to switch on game start. Generally wise their toughness is ok with uped eth guardian angel, stormshield,6xos facet weapon, circlet/diadem of my proposal + BO and Shout buff, they are quite fine. and Fire variant even does meaningfull damage i mean 5-6k is not ideal but it’s not nothing either. unfotuneatly I don’t have a gaming rig strong enaugh to record my play session to proove my claim, however I already did the tests, and I’m telling you the results. Also I provded a Link to the planner with my build so that you could test it yoursleves.
It’s far from perfect i know but still it has to be the most viable build out there to utilize the a3 merc beyond keeping him as a trash companion for the enchant buff only.
90% @Rez + other toughness buffs make him stand ground for quite a while, and most of the time he doesn’t even require a potion, and damage wise only resist mobs pose a problem on p1. however on higher player count he does tend to fall from glory. but i usually plan my builds to play online solo anyways…
Sorry for the wall of text…
Monster AI is even better
?
thirty characters 303030303
more gear? yeah, people have been asking to let mercs use gloves, belts, boots, a ring and an ammy
the problem with that is that they already have a good amount of allres so a small nerf to their natural res to balance things would be necessary imo
the same goes for the charms idea, which isnt a bad one but it would require further balancing
well actually I’m more n favor of giving act 3 merc sunder power natively more than actually relying on item slots…
and i do mean full sunder power with fire res penalty as well… all as a native built in property starting from higher levels… i don’t think it’s that op to suddenly change anything… I assume You do agree that a3 mercs fall behind… right? then why not make something a3 merc only. sunder power would fit right in, and actually enable theese mercs to be somewhat viable with the right build…
more gear slots like rings belts boots etc are not nessecary I agree, however something should be done to make a3 merc on par with the others and not just Oh look we gave a3 merc utility skill to utilize so now he provides you with bonus while all his other stats & skills stil suck
really hate to be that guy, especially since it does not contribute to the topic very much, but i also have to be accurate. in hirelings.txt the value for firebolt is 30, fireball 60, enchant 30, default 10 (though i dont think he uses that unless he does not have skills available because of the minimum level).
firebolt chance: 30/120 =25%
fireball chance: 60/120 =50%
enchant chance: 30/120: 25%
they also changed the chance per level to 0 back in 2.4, so those do not change as they level. dont think i missed something here, its pretty straight forward.
Thanks for the reply. I had tried to put in a standard smiley to be friendly, but all of them have open mouths on this forum so I can see how it might look mocking. I’ve done some experimenting with the Act3 merc before, but I might do a bit more with these thoughts in mind.
i’am in favor of rings but not gear//charm on them
and also with restriction on these rings
these rings woud have to be lvl 93 merc requirement and i envision Ravenfrost and Dwarf Star to be ugradable to create special merc rings(so that they can’t wear the same rings as players…1 to make merc immune to Freeze effects as well as 1 to enable merc to survive Hydras at Travincal
i suggested this in my wish list for Ravenfrost
New Cube Recipe for Merc Ring strictly(all of these items are cold resist related(or
color matching in essence case)
Ravenfrost + Cham Rune + Blue Essence + Thul rune + Ohm rune + P-Sapphire +
25-30% Cold Resist Jewel + +3 Cold Skill amulet
Ravenfrost upgrade to Raven Nebula
Raven Nebula(MERCENARY ONLY RING)(lvl 93 Requirement)
+400-500 Attack Rating(up from 150-250)
Add 50-130 Cold Damage
Cannot Be Frozen
Immune to Holy Freeze effects(can’t be slowed by holy freeze)
+30-40 Dexterity
+100 Mana
Cold Absorb 25%(up from 20%)
20% chance to release a lvl 40 ice blast upon being struck
although…i’am still reluctant on 2 rings slots
now…in regard to A1, A3 and A5 Mercs…A5 is almost in the perf spot to compete with A2 merc…A1 Merc could use Strafe/Multishot and a more aggresive AI…A3 Merc need masteries and a greater boost to skills levels(like around lvl 60-70 since they dont have Synergies)
I kinda wish they would add full gear slots for mercs solely because of Sets. I’d like to be able to utilize more Set items and full Sets on mercs.