The new act 5 dual wield frenzy mercenary looks strong on paper. It is pretty useful for speed farming however the Taunt ability is a deathwish for ubers. The Taunt from Act 5 mercenary causes him to attract all of the damage from uber bosses + minions and get 1 shot. Despite equipping heavily defensive gear, the merc still got 1 shot fairly easy. I would suggest removing the taunt ability and replacing it with Natural Resistances instead.
So, in summary:
Strengths:
-Good for speed farming and clearing hell monsters, farm areas. Frenzy with Grief main hand is especially useful for this.
-Higher survivability in general (except for ubers)
-Fade proc from last wish helps with resistances
-Can use Last Wish on off hand and provide Level 17 Might Aura
-Nice aggressive AI combined with Frenzy
-Can work better with melee characters
Weaknesses:
-Life Tap from Last Wish may override Amp Damage or other useful effects (especially for necro)
-Taunt overrides Amp Damage and other useful effects (especially for necro)
-Taunt causes all ubers and adds to focus on the merc. Becomes a deathwish instead
-Relies on Last Wish runeword which is very expensive
-Lesser damage
-Offhand weapons do not grant crushing blow, ias, etc.
Minor edit: Would love to see the Act 5 Dual Wield Merc being able to dual wield all weapons. Right now he can dual wield only 1h swords. Would love to equip him with Beast + Last Wish for testing purposes
Here are my uber runs using the new Act 5 mercenary:
I disagree with removing taunt. I think taunt is excellent (has issues) but is incredibly helpful for LOT of backline classes and is fantastic without godly gear. He’s incredibly tanky as is - so natural resistance would just be overkill.
He doesn’t have to be the “optimal” uber farming merc - maybe pick another one?
Don’t worry I’m already happy with my Act 2 Mercenary anyway.
Act 5 Merc is not incredibly tanky as is. Is he tankier than the Act 2 Merc? Sure. Does he have the same attack range as the Act 2 Merc? No. He requires good gear. Taunt can and will override Life Tap or Amp Damage curses and those are super valuable especially for some melee characters.
Removing Taunt was my suggestion and I respect your opinion. They probably won’t remove taunt anyway. This might limit Act 5 merc to playing regular content. He will generally fall short vs Act 2 Mercenary. Which kind of makes this buff fail, since Act 2 wins in Ubers (not for every class, Act 5 might be better for some classes).
I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about here. You put multiple high end items and got less results than I have with less.
Taunt does not work on: Elite of boss packs, champions, super uniques, Act bosses and Uber bosses. The 1shot I believe you’re referring to is Mephistos Charged Bolt, he got hit by all of them at the same time with most likely less than 75% resist. It hits like an absolute truck even if an “unit” has 75% light resist. Generally when going for Ubers, you want to put Chains of Honor on the merc. The damage to demons makes him lifeleech more but not as much as fortitude, it has lifeleech on the runeword to help counter the damage difference, 65allres to overstack and 8% DR. Uber Mephisto also has 0 drain effectiveness which should be considered as well. Life Tap’ing Uber Mephisto might be worth more than Amplify Damage if you want the merc to survive him. Could also possibly save your revived Urdars that has the Crushing Blow.
I disagree. I managed to get my merc to clear p8 SOLO with items worth less than an Um. Another setup was less than an Ist. A couple was in the range of like 3-5 Ists and then I tried some multiple high rune ones.
Agreed. Taunt can be incredibly good or worse depending on situation. The Frenzy merc as you say is incredibly tanky and Natural Resistance would make him absurd. Another thing we can think about here is that Frenzy merc could be used as a stepping stone merc, early progression or something like that until you can get Infinity for your Act 2 merc or whatever. It’s absolutely amazing in my opinion. We have another viable merc if not anything else.
Requires good gear? No. Overwriting curses, that’s a thing I can agree on. However, since I stated earlier what Taunt works on, if you focus on the elite of the pack for whatever proc (let’s say Amp), the elite will have the full duration of Amp while he tanks the minions for you. Essentially “cleave” off of the high value target.
I know all of this. Uber bosses in general tend to focus on the merc regardless of taunt. In addition to this Taunt simply attracts all other minions on ubers as well. The merc got 1 shot multiple times also with CoH equipped btw (in addition to Duress and Fortitude). This was highlighted in the vid. Also, taunt doesn’t work on bosses but it does work on adds on ubers therefore it still causes the merc to take a lot of unnecessary damage. Taunt can also override Life Tap on adds which may further cause survivability issues for the merc.
Overall, speaking strictly for Ubers Act 5 merc is definitely not for necro. It can be good for some melee classes.
Life Tap affects the Drain Value which then makes it possible to return life from hitting the target. I am not trying to survive vs Ubers. I tested the Act 5 Merc for uber speedruns vs Act 2. Clearing ubers and speedrunning ubers are 2 different things. Therefore Amp Damage is crucial.
Clearing P8 and speedfarming P8 are not the same thing.How long did it take you to clear? What was your setup? You did not specify any details in regards to your claim. Would like to know if your clear speed was as high as GG gear or not.
It can be replaced with the new “Blade Mastery” for more single target damage or “Natural Resistances” for making it tankier for ubers.
If you already know all of what I said, then why did you write in a way that suggests that he can Taunt bosses? I did see the 1shot(s) on the merc. The question from me is, did the merc have 300% light res? Even if the merc did actually have 300% light res, he’s still very likely to die in Ubers, whether it’s Act 2 or Act 5. From my overall testing, I’d agree that Act 5 frenzy probably isn’t the way to go for Summonmancer or maybe Necromancer in general.
Fair enough, you’re not trying to survive Ubers, you’re doing speedruns. When I do Ubers, I’m just assuming that my merc will die somewhere. If he survives, I’ll go buy some champaign.
Certain areas was clearly faster than others, but I’m not gonna share the details of this, atleast until the patch is out. You can call BS on it if you’d like, I wouldn’t blame you. However, I’ll give you a clue: there’s something in the patch notes regarding this. As for kill speed per mob as he was running around was about ~0.5-1.5sec each, elites being between 3-6 depending if it’s Stone skin or not. That’s the “less than an Um” version and for that value, I’d say he’s pretty effin’ great in p8.
I think my wording there creates confusion. My intention was to say that bosses generally target merc regardless of Taunt, and Taunt adds another layer of difficulty when the Merc also starts attracting the uber adds as well. Hope this clarifies.
I will not call BS. That’s your choice and I respect it.
The biggest problem is that the merc can’t wield Bul-Kathos’ Children. 2h swords should be wieldable only in their 1h capacity, so only along with other weapons. That is only fair.
This is better, I appreciate this comment, thank you. It sounded a different way that is false and could possibly create confusion for people that doesn’t know. I don’t like false information, I don’t like false information being spread no matter what it’s regarding, that’s why I jumped on it.
I appreciate it. I’m sure you can figure it out though if you look hard enough
Now this is an aura bot for Necromancer!
Copy-pasting from another Act 5 Barb topic where I posted:
When I think about a Barb, the fantasy of a Barb, I can see swords, axes and maces (including flails for clarification). I think there’s more interesting maces rather than axes, atleast when it comes to uniques and more interesting axes when it comes to runewords. I would like to see both Barbs being able to equip these 3 types of weapons. Not that it is part of this particular topic, but Act 1 Rogue should be able to equip Crossbows as well and Act 3 needs some weapon pool added. Stuff being suggested has been like Sorc orbs and staves. I atleast agree with Sorc orbs, not sure about staves.
I think it’s fair though that the Frenzy merc can only use 1-handers and Bash merc can use either 1-hander or 2-hander, but the 1-hander damage is doubled to compensate. It differentiates them from each other further.
100% Also the crushing blow and open wounds on Beast would make it a really nice Main Hand choice for bosses + ubers. I would still take Last Wish for off hand. This way the Merc now provides fanaticism + might by himself. Since we are going super expensive we can use Iron Golem for Infinity. This leaves necro main hand available for anything at this point. Possibilities include Hoto (probably hit 125 FCR, +3 skills , +all res), rare wands that can go crazy, pretty much anything that can push it to the limit.
Funny thing is, Act 5 with Beast + Last Wish would also be top pick for many more melee characters as well. They can get fanaticism+might at the same time which means they can drop Act 2 merc who used to provide Might + Concentration (Pride) or + Conviction (Infinity). While I think infinity is still super strong, I believe fanaticism would be the top pick regardless.
Now, speaking of infinity, it can now be inserted in spears and it works. Barbarians can also use spears. Since we discuss the possibilities of Barbs dual wielding all 1h weapons, spears should be included. The Barbarian class has Spear Mastery so I don’t understand why can’t Act 5 merc use all 1h weapons. That would open the door Infinity spear + and/or Last Wish Phaseblade + and/or Beast Axe Act 5 merc which would be bonkers, and would probably overtake Act 2 Merc.
Why not go all in with this one? People would go crazy with this change (mostly in a good way).
For Necro, I would definitely put Beast in mainhand as well, if I were a melee with open wounds myself, I’d swap them around. There’s alot of different merc setups now with different buffs, Fanaticism, Concentration and Meditation is possible to get from Act 1 Rogue together with her Inner Sight to give -flatdefense which we shouldn’t underestimate. Depending on monster, it can do between 50-100%+ of Convictions -%defense. Act 2 auras together with Conviction, Meditation and Concentration. Hopefully I haven’t forgotten something. If they add axes to Act 5, then we can get Fanaticism there as well together with some other ones and various curses.
Infinity can be made in spears, yes, but as far as I’m aware, those spears are all 2-handers? I don’t feel like adding the option to get Conviction from the Frenzy merc would be a good thing. Having something that you can only get from one merc can be good, to make people use different mercs. Slight exaggeration here: If all mercs can use/provide everything, there will be 1 merc that is always used, just like it is now. However, I wouldn’t mind if the Bash Barb could have Infinity to make that one more attractive now.
Regular common sellswords aren’t supposed and shouldn’t be able to withstand the fury of Uber Tristram Bosses.
Stop the power creeping already, what do you want, you cat to kill Uber Mephisto? Come on now.
Enabling them to wear other types of weapons except swords (axes for example) would be great though. Axes are underused.
I disagree with allowing the act5 merc to use all weapons. It’s already super strong as it is now. It doesnt need more power.
I think the barb should not be able to use beast and last whish. It would make it way too strong.
I honnestly think a better solution would be to nerf conviction by lowering/removing the -ennemy defense. It already reduces the elemental resistance and can break immunities.
You are correct. I think I confused the patch note when I read spears and Amazon Spears and somehow thought of Barbarians dual wielding JAVELINS (+3 Warcry ones) and that somehow registered as a spear. I just checked it. Just a note, not specifically for spears/javelins, any weapon that could be wielded as a 1h should and/or could be dual wielded though.
While what you are saying is true for some classes, there are classes who provide buffs or certain level of protection to their mercs. An example would be the Summon Necromancer. The Act 2 Mercenary is one of the main sources of damage and power for the Summon Necromancer. The skeletons only offer moderate to low damage however they are a great protection since they get in between the uber boss and the merc and cause the merc to attack from max distance while getting agro from the uber boss. Essentially, there are builds/specs which make mercenaries much more powerful so they are no longer common sellswords.
Exactly, and this would serve opening up so many possibilities for all classes.
Act 5 Merc is definitely viable, but he’s not super strong in all content. I will not repeat myself but while he’s really strong is speed farming, he’s not so great for ubers (for some classes, he can still be great also for ubers when combined with specific classes). Allowing all weapons to wield is a suggestion.
In the event where Act 5 merc stays limited to use only 1 handed swords, I can guarantee you people will be expecting new runewords/new runeword bases. The moment Blizzard decides that Beast can now be made on 1 handed swords, what do you think will happen? There goes your reasoning (I don’t say this in an offensive way). The danger still lurks.
I don’t like nerfs. Especially when people invest so much of their time or resources -cough- into the game. Conviction -enemy defense doesn’t even apply to bosses. Why would you nerf it?
Any 2 hander that can also be wielded 1 hand should be included anyway imho.
Yoy seem to think moderate changes are impossible. If you are right about these new runeword/new runeword bases, then we should probably just cancel the new act5 merc… because because we are on the edge of a massive power creep…
I dont like nerfs too, but I’d rather see 1 item nerfed than a massive power creep.
do you even realize that Last Wish cost 3 Jah,1 Ber,1 Sur ??? 5 frigging super HR…and for that cost it should be rewarding…thats twice infinity cost to make…and for such a cost…bits of extra power is entirely ok
how many players do you think is even gonna roll with that ? try counting % on your fingers
