I strongly urge the developers to consider a few more changes to Act 3 Iron Wolf as shown below as they are still struggling to be viable…
may this come true…
However perhaps unbelivable, their AI is quite fine… it’s frw, fcr, dmg, toughness, and sustain they are missing…
try to give one of them a 30frw circlet ( provided they don’t instantly die) they will manage quite fine regarding attack/kiting time. it’s due to them moving slower than most mobs that they constantly kite, since when they do kite the mob is right behind them, and the AI tel sthem to kite agin once at the destination point. If they kite faster, they spend some time actully engaging mobs. the problem with their gearing is you can’t do everything at once, they can’t cast fast be tough, and hit hard at the same time due to there beeing no proper gear for that, so some things would probably be superseeded by passive buffs…
In other topic i wrote in this subforum, i actually proposed to give them damage boost in form of sundering power. and proposed a new helmet runeword to deal with poison, amp damage curse, life regen, a bit of physical dr%, fcr,frw and a rainbow facet substitute. The rest would be 6os sword with rainbow facets, eth uped guardian angel soxed with rar jool (-15 req/10@res/30FireRes/7fhr) and a stormshield with sox rar jool (-15req/10@res/30PsnRes/7fhr). all this plus the proposed runeword creates a very good tank, the only matter would be to up his damage a bit more especially for cold variant.
when wearing guardian angel and stormshield the way i described, the only things that actually kill him are amp damage prolonged poison exposure, and pure magic damage. the first two could be improoved by giving him a high lvl cleansing aura. magic dmg would have to stay dangerous, as a magic resist% helm would be op, the rest of his res would be capped at 90% and sit at 50% reduced physical dmg, however this way he does not deal any significant damage.
although as i said AI is fine it just need faster run and walk speeds ( also tested this in a private sp mod i made around them)
If nothing else, this is what they need. The A3 Mecs are vastly underpowered, they need far more basic skill adjustments and masteries to be worthwhile. I’d be totally fine with just adding masteries and nothing else…
masteries and sunder power, each apropriate to their given specialization ( i mean lore wise it’s not that stupid either)
Agreed, if the devs just added masteries to Act 3 mercs, that would atleast be a good start.
Masteries aren’t a bad start, however it’s their inability to do any damage to like 1/3 of the monsters igame that are immune to their element is the issue here.
If their damage is beefed and immunity problem solved we still have to deal with their other problems fcr,frw, toughness, sustain, hell’s poison length issue, and self cursed state uptime. this on top of fitting as much facets as on them as one can, to increase the damage on sundered mobs. this is already a lot to fit in four item slots to begin with, not to mention, that as is now we have to fit damage and LR curse on top of that ( and the effect isn’t guaranteed in fire and cold cases).
For fire skill merc they should add enchant.
For cold skill merc they should add frost armor.
For light skill merc they should add static field.
That is it.
I agree with those, but it won’t be enough to make Iron Wolves viable. For survivability, they should be able to block with equipped shield and they really need mastery to make their damage more competitive.
as for the dude suggesting enchant frost armor and static field, he should wake up it’s already implemented…
as for Charles…
letting them block with their shield is not the way trust me, i’ve already tried…
the problem with this aproach is that shield’s durability on a3 merc gets eaten this way, since you most likely want to equip him with an etheral, it’s a no go…
I’ve also tried overriding the shield block in similar manner that boss monsters block damage ( without a shield and seting a set in stone block chance. even at 75% block chance set to block natively, elemental damage, poison damage and amp damage curses kill him almost instantly. even with 75% block chance while in a tough melee fight he gets eaten pretty fast due to not getting his life back fast enaugh… poison damage is the main culprit here, since merc is like mobs, when poisoned he can’t heal.
in order to stay alive he needs all res capped at 90% 50% damageresistance, beefed up life regen, and also cleansing aura or something similar, to reduce poison and amp damage uptime on him, the problem is as you’ve noticed he needs mastery and sunder power, because player can’t provide damage and defensive stats both at the same time via 4 item slots in enaugh amount for it to be viable.
This should be a non-issue as merc equipment doesn’t lose durability.
Kek…
I know it is not loosing durability… however if you set a3 merc to use shield to block the shield will begin to loose durability… tested & noticed that myself…
I assume a3 merc was sepose to block with shield initially, however original devs must’ve noticed this little engine booger, and as a mop up fix, they settled on a3 merc not using his shield to block, screwing over the class completely in the process…
I’m sorry if i haven’t spoken out clearly enaugh in my previous post, so that You’d assume it’s not a problem. I have no idea how to state this more clearly…
mercs don’t loose durablity on items, however when a3 merc is set via game files to use his shield to block, that shield is going to start loosing durability relative to how many usage the shield saw on the battlefield in iron wolf’s off-hand.
i did various modding / debuging tests regarding a3 merc one of them was equipping hero edited etheral medusa’s gaze, that i specifically set to full durability, and edited the files so that merc could use shield blocking after a while playing with my merc alongside me, i noticed a spike in him soaking up damage, and the shieldblock sound from my merc has gone… it turned out medusa’s gaze reached 0 durabiliy, so it is true.
Normally merc doesn’t loose durability, but a shield on him does when merc is set to block with it
Make it possible for Act3 Iron Wolf to equip AXE.
“Beast” would improve the position of him.
I would rather give that to Act V merc and is more fitting that barbarians can wield axes.
9+9 = Lv18 FATA is too imba.
That’s why I don’t support ActV merc to use Axe
Act 3 merc using axes doesn’t fit the fantasy.
add 10-15% more strength sothat he can actually use spirit shield a bit earlier than lvl 93 or whatever it was.
but agreed, mastery is probably the most important of them all.
So don’t flails fit casters, yet every caster uses HotO in a flail…
That’s a good idea, I’ve always felt he had too low strength to equip shields and needed to pump some iron.
nah… i’d be rather equipping my a3 merc with a stormshield or eth jewlerer’s monarch of simplicity with rainbow facets (100 str req for the eth of simplicity (-30% req) one), stormshield on the other hand would go with rar jool with one of the affixes -15%req for a total of 133 str req that’s lvl 82 on a3 merc it can even go down to 72 if you smuggle ~+18 str to him somehow. 72lvl is the lvl req for stormshield as far as i remember. this can’t be lowered…
Act 3 needs a small bump in STR.