Odds of life leech armor in vendors' sales - Please help?

General Discussion
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My A2 HF merc is becoming increasingly vulnerable (Zealot and merc are both lvl 73, in NM A5, offline, /players8). And I wanna up both his life leech and damage.

I wanted to put Insight on him. I don’t really need Meditation, but it looks like the best rw for him anyway.
But I’d lose the 4% leech from his weapon, leaving him only with his helm’s 3%.

So, I’m trying to get him a decent armor with good life leech + Insight, before continuing with Nihlathak’s levels.
Right now, his armor has a great def (466) but nothing else.

Since I don’t have the runes for that (on armor or helm), and armor gambling is expensive…

I was hoping I could keep refreshing Anya’s and Larzuk’s sales until I run into the right armor.

But it seems it just doesn’t happen. In general, life leech is rare to find in magical armors I think. Maybe even impossible, I don’t know.

Am I wasting my time here? Any suggestions that aren’t like farming around like crazy or so? Thanks!

EDIT: How about replenish life? Does it work better for mercs, or is it just as useless as usual? Mercs already have substantial, built-in replenish life. Maybe that means the affix would be proportionally better, and boost their regen a good deal?

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I dont think armor can roll lifesteal. only core stats and hit recoery, but not life leech.

I’d focus on hard life and res. higher his life, the less he gets put into hit recovery mode, thus more he hits for lifesteal.

But remember, insight can go for high dmg on eth polearm, and more physical dmg=more leech. So it might be an overall upgrade to get rid of that 4% in favor of much more physical dmg.

Plus it gives +2 critical strike, which is like 30-40% double dmg. so it would hit for life stealX2 every 2 hits, if that makes sense.

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unique armors with life leach: greyform, boneflesh and skin of the flayed one.
I would suggest you google: arreat summit. that website will answer all your questions

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you cannot get life leach on any other armor beside unique armors. FYI. you can get life leach on magic circlet, tiaras and diadems. thats it

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Ok. Yeah, I’ve seen plenty of different affixes on armor but I think I’ve only seen most of the “non-armor-related” ones in rares/sets/uniques. And I’m not gonna get anything better than magicals from vendors’ sales.

I often forget that about hp vs. stun or similar. He currently has 1317 hp. How much would be a decent addition to that? 'Cos I don’t see how I could significantly boost that.

I COULD give him my Paladin’s main armor (219 def Lionheart), and make a Smoke for myself. I was planning on making a Smoke anyway, for the Weaken charges and other things.

Best base I have for that Smoke rw is a def 257. I was hoping to run into a better base armor before doing that, clearing Nihlathak’s levels in NM right now. After all, getting that Lum has been so rare… And I’ve been seeing 300-450 def armor drops for a while now, just none of them socketed or with the right amount of sockets :-/

My Zealot has 1100 hp. He loses about 100 of that, by abandoning Lionheart. Merc only gains 50.
Merc also loses like 250 def, dropping from 1470. But gains a 30-50 physical dam.

Sounds good to give him Lionheart to some extent, but that big drop in def worries me. Looks like he’d get hit significantly more often…

About res, he’s capped. All 75. And it says all his totals are high enough, that he’ll remain fully capped even with Hell’s penalties. Even without +res gear. So, no need to worry there.

Considering the merc’s current weapon doesn’t have anything special regarding physical dam, changing to an Insight non-eth 30-70 Grim Scythe right now (my only current option with 4 sockets)… His physical dam would be so much greater.

So, I’m guessing his helm 3% leech would be way bigger, than my current 7%. Right?

Makes sense.

So, my concerns right now:

  1. Lionheart’s def drawback for merc.
  2. Base for Smoke for Zealot is not that good.
  3. Base for Insight is mediocre.

At least Insight is not that hard to make, rune-wise. But Smoke seems to be tough, for me at least. All runs past Shael have been very very rare thus far. Best have been Ko. And that’s even with always upgrading when I get 4 of any. So I always have as much variety as luck permits.

I’ve been farming Pindleskin for better bases for a while now, but nothing thus far. It’s a lvl 63 area with him being 66. It shouldn’t be so difficult, I think. I’ve also been hoping for a better base to change my current Spirit shield. But same. Nothing decent.

I sometimes get Google results from that website, but rarely. I’ll go into it to make the searches from now on, as an option. But I doubt its own search engine is better than Google’s. It’s something, one way or another. Thanks!