Is merc survivability level dependant too or is it my hallucination? My merc almost never survives CS when I farmed using hammerdin but ever since he got to level 85-86ish, I belive, he can now survive all my farm rotation, tower, arcane sanc, hell meph(sometimes he dies to council if I’m slow in teleing away from the hydras), CS, nihlathak as well as hell baal.
I only gave him a budget ethereal treachery, eth cv insight and Andy’s visage but apparently, his survivability only start getting better after 85-86ish.
Mercy get more stats/resists with each level. Levels play into chance-to-hit calculations + your merc has life steal from Andy’s, great attack speed for more life steal, and fade gives more res + curse duration reduction
yeah but he was already wearing it at level 83 but died almost every single time as far as I can remember. Somehow, at 85 onwards now at 88, he literally stopped dying, strange and my playstyle is still the same xD
I don’t know the calculations, but levels are factored into chance to hit. So it could be something like, doing chaos at 84 you have 50% chance to get hit by melee, at 85+ its reduced to 20%
(Numbers are all made up)
i’m not sure what the math is, but after a certain point your merc’s stats will simply scale high enough that he becomes way tougher. what’s probably happened is his stats have grown to the point where he’s doing enough damage to recover his health lost through life-leech from his own attacks
sounds pretty interesting but I can’t seem to google any specific info on this portion…
It’s not just you, I also had this same feeling. My amazon turned lvl85 2-3 days ago and since then after my merc became lvl85 as well he just survives a lot more with the same gear than before. I guess it is because now he is within a certain lvl range where some additional damage is just not applied on him, but that is just a hard guess. You dont get that much xp for killing mobs that are something like 10 or 15 lvl above you (I dont remember the exact numbers), so I guess there is something like this for damage taken as well.
Yes most mercs are melee and their ‘to hit’ ratio is level dependent. Many people will also not notice when they start out leveling their mercs, at times you might end up 5-10 levels over your merc, especially if you let him die regularly.
Keep your merc at your level and he will do much better.
I’m pretty sure there are some mechanics on the merc’s magical level that grants him the survivability boost. Someone mentioned it in other forums too 14 years ago but not actual numbers were given… hahaha
I think
Monsters merc’s and players have levels. Eventually you will out level the mobs and need less defence etc (because they miss more)
Could be bro science though I have no definitive proof of that
yeah magically, he starts surviving everything now… I love my merc now. I had to kept ressing him to let him level previously and prob played extra cautious but that doesn’t really help either.
THIS. i noticed the same thing.
Yup! Level makes a huge difference to chance to hit and chance to be hit.
i can’t find merc that can live through hell cows, if they have amp damage debuff and 10+cows beating them usually with some type of damage buff aura will take them down
mine can survive anywhere now but obviously i’m not referring to letting him tank and kill alone. I still have to dish out the dps to kill stuffs and he survives fine. My blizz sorc’s merc is doing ok in hell cow too cuz they die fast under blizzard anyways.
Mine has moments he can face tank just fine, other times he just drops dead when something looks at him wrong. He’s 84 I think, life steal on helm and chest with Insight on his weapon. I let him solo Hell Diablo the other day, then on another run he just falls over on trash leading up to Diablo.
I think he’s moody.
some tips on building merc.
- get weapon with high damage and lifesteal. lifesteal is crap without high damage. also make sure that weapon is highest possible damage. 5 socket thresher or better yet eth thresher can be gotten early to make obedience rune word which is fairl cheap or honor rune word which is very cheap.
- plate and helm should be elite grade and preferably eth. eth armor does not degrade on a merc. imagine that.
- make sure all res are 75. nice to find guardian angel for merc which raises res cap to 90.
4 make sure your merc is one level below you. if he/she keeps dying and you are dragging it through the game it could be very low level. in that case take your gear off of old merc and delete. then buy one from the mercenary salesman in town as close to your level as possible.
- strongly consider taking the merc in act 2 with defiance aura. at high levels his aura will boost both you and his defense rating by 4x.