Please give the Lightning Iron Wolf something better than Charged Bolt. The primary skill should be Lightning, the second skill should be Static Field, and the third should be either Chain Lit, Nova, or even Thunderstorm. I really don’t care which, any one of them would be fine.
The Fire and Cold Wolves have better utility thanks to Enchant, cold slowing, and Chilling Armor, so it stands to reason the Lit Wolf needs to be the most damaging to ever be worth taking (and by a decent amount too, in my opinion). Charged Bolt simply doesn’t do enough damage, even IF all the CBs are landing on packs or single monsters. The damage is simply not there, and the Wolf spends most of his time filling the screen with useless white bloom.
All 3 are still trash even with the buffs d2r has had… for ssf, you lose a ton of damage and a nice meatshield going from a2 merc to a3 in any difficulty and the difference is only more evident with end game gear. You would think a1/a3 mercs should naturally do much more damage than a2/a5 mercs being that they are ranged, no LL in the case of a3 merc and thus less capable of taking hits but they are just worse across the board… devs need to play the game to understand…
Charged Bolt (and all other level 1 sorceress spells, but this is the worst offender) scales extremely poorly at high level. This means that no matter how much levels the mercenary has in that skill, Lightning will still scale better. This could possibly be salvaged by improving higher level charged bolt damage and increasing the mercenary’s Charged Bold skill level (while slightly lowering Lightning’s skill level in order to compensate the extra synergy).
Follower AI is really bad at the moment. If you made a few improvements, you could replace Charged Bolt with Teleport, and have the mercenary avoid targeting monsters immune to its element, and switch between Lightning for normal ennemies and Teleport within half of Static Field range and spam that spell when champion/elite/superunique ennemies are available and the mercenary is at a high health level.
Not true. The Fire Wolf can provide a level 30+ Enchant, which is amazing AR boost for certain characters, and of course he can deal with phys immunes. Cold of course provides chilling and very high defense. Also, the Wolf can wield a sword and shield which the A2 and Rogue can’t, which allows you to kit them with certain auras from high end gear that they can’t have, like for example Azurewrath for Sanctuary, and you can keep them alive better than a Barb in many situations since they don’t rush into packs.
You can theory craft mercs for the next 20 years, but there is only 1 meta endgame merc for both casters and melee alike: Act 2 nightmare merc equipped with Andies, CoH and Infinity. That gives him and all melee characters an added 300% ED, -85% max resistances and -83% defence. Adding Demon Limb to the mix gives both the melee character and the Act 2 merc an added 220% AR and 120% ED.
Leaving aside the numerous issues with that, if you’re attempting to settle this just by pointing to endgame optimization then why not remove everything from the game that doesn’t have endgame or BIS value? If you’re not in favor of that, are you saying anything with this comment, or just trying to flex? The Iron Wolf is in the game, and it can be improved. They already made improvements to it with D2R 2.4, so obviously Blizz has an interest in making them more viable and fun.
By all means, share your issues. I’d like to hear what you have to say.
You’re the one who brought up optimization in the first place
Which is an oddly funny statement. And…
Which would require either an Enigma or CoH, either a Shako, Andies, or Delirium, a HotO and a Spirit shield - BiS
That’s a red herring. With that mindset everything would be reduced to normal white gear, but then you’d complain that they are BiS because cracked gear exists.
It cannot be improved in anyway to make it remotely close to being as effective as the act 2 merc. It doesn’t even come close to being more effective than an normal act 2 combat merc with Treachery, Crown of Thieves and Insight. Not even remotely closes as an act 2 might merc with Fortitude, a crafted blood helm and Reapers.
But yeah, lets hear your opinion on my erroneous understandings of the effectiveness of that Act 2 merc.
I think Raven is trying to say that it’s silly to not bother talking about improving A3 mercs because A2 mercs are better. That is silly. That is the EXACT reason to talk about trying to improve A3 Mercs. That’s like saying we shouldn’t bother trying to improve Barbs because Sorcs are better.
My metas are my own, I theory crafted them into existence, and they are relatively different than the popular metas. What I’m saying is “theory craft till you get something that works”, but it’s silly to include any theory crafting that will lead to an Iron Wolf being practical or as good or better than any of the other merc classes.
Further, comparing the barb and the sorc is silly, and only silly people would request the barb be adjusted to keep up with the sorc clear speed. That said, the whirlwind barb is broken, that’s because Blizzard listened to silly people that didn’t know how to build nor play the whirlwind barb, which lead to Blizzard making charcter breaking changes.
Just skip his messages. As long as he’s not trying to be constructive, there’s no use in arguing with him, he’s just going to try to shoot down any attempt of improving the mercenary.
Honestly, while spark is definitely subpar, what the mercenary (and his cold/fire colleagues) really needs is a rework of the AI. Get them to ignore monsters immune to their element, and get the lightning iron wolf to move into static field range to spam it against elites, and you’ll have a group of pretty decent mercenaries.
PS : That doesn’t mean Spark can’t also be replaced, just that replacing it with a higher damage skill is just going to move the issue to another skill.
Thanks for the update, Einstein, maybe tell that to OP, they brought up the 2 ber or 1 ber + 1 jah build first. And Noob, at no time is an Iron Wolf better than an act 2 merc.
