Didn’t know about that bug, so didn’t look for it at all.
Bloody hell, i hope so.
It does. Because it’s not a bug.
Upped eth Headstriker is the best weapon for the act five merc. Lawbringer is a nice second weapon if you want the decreptify. One handed weapons are better than two handed weapons for all act five mercs.
So single eth headstriker is the same as dual eth headstrikers?
noneed to get 2 then?
Yupp. It buplicates the weapon stats, except auras.
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Wait…
So say you have an Unbending Will, would equipping the weapon alone result in +6 Combat Skills instead of +3?
No. Ok, so it’s actually pretty complicated. No auras no +to skills duplicate. And there are some more stats that won’t. I don’t have time to get into details. But search for MacroBioBoi’s Act 5 Frenzy mercenary testing. He covers everything.
Thanks for the suggestion. But honestly, I think just equipping two weapons gets you more bang for your buck except for rare occasions.
Yes eventualy you’ll need that. Heres the video btw.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRFy1FCPWhQ
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Not a good combo since your curses (decrepify and life tap) each cancel the other.
They work great together both life tap and decrep are good either are fine both make you not die
The man in that YouTube video claims ONE HIGH DAMAGE SWORD IS BETTER THAN A HIGH AND LOW DAMAGE SWORD FOR THE FRENZY MERCENARY?!
He says if you have 2 grief swords equipped the lower damage sword will nerf your damage- he claims you do more damage with just the higher damage sword equipped!? That is counterproductive and the dumbest bug I ever heard of if it is true.
It’s because when they have one weapon equiped, it is copyed to the other hand. Like flat dmg and ED(i think). But if they have two weapons with different dmg, it avarages out, so dmg will be lower, than two with the same amount of dmg.
It’s only good to use two different weapons, if you want to benefit from more on hit skills to proc, and have higher item auras.
So if dmg is all you care about then yes, one high dmg weapon is enough.
Interesting and makes sense. I honestly never even tried to equip only 1 weapon on an Act V Frenzy merc, but since Mercs can fight without any items, it makes sense they’d have that be an option, I suppose.
My Fant Zealot Act V merc has headstriker and full Sazabi’s. I’ll have to experiment with what the damage does dropping Headstriker. Big loss to DS, but that was only active when the Headstriker hit anyway. Sazabi Cryptic sword has more max damage at his level, but less min, so the averaging may even work out in my favor in this instance.
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I know this quote is from a while back but the thread got bumped so I was just reading it. Not sure if something changed, but I was questing with my Act V merc last night and he finally got high enough dex to wear the LB PB I had on switch, and with this thread fresh in my mind, I was paying close attention. There were definitely situations where I saw Taunt overwriting Decrepify. Overall it wasn’t a big issue since things were still dying quickly (with Sabazi and LB-PB and me with Oath/Fant damage output is pretty good for where we were in P1) but I could see it being frustrating in a harder fight, or if decrep is breaking PI then it gets over-written, which is something I think I saw once or twice also.
I also looked at this. I didn’t do any actual testing, though, but the character sheet damage was definitely less when I removed head striker and left my frenzy merc with just Sabazi set. The hand that the Sabazi sword was in didn’t change, but the head striker hand dropped down (to whatever base damage he would have w/o weapons? - I should have removed both to “test” that).
That said, the character sheet from mercs has been pretty buggy since D2R release so my observations without actual testing are probably not very conclusive. I guess the title of the video is that they fixed it, so maybe that is expected after all now?
The duplicate weapon bug was patched quite soon after that video was made. You need two weapons now.
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Eth Headstrikers work great, had one on my merc last Ladder, don’t think it has some special calculation error though, it just has a decent damage and always deals critical damage.
There was something (think a bug or something) with equipping only 1 weapon and it would count as 2 of the same weapons, but as far as I know that’s fixed.
No, items worn by merc’s don’t lose duration so no need for that.
Phase Blades don’t drop ethereal, you could get a unique or rare ethereal phase blade by upgrading an ethereal dimensional blade in the cube.
It cannot use 2 handed weapons in one hand.
No, BotD can only be made in 6 os weapons, the only 6 os weapons the Act 5 frenzy merc can wear are Phase Blase (or non-elite versions) and Phase Blades don’t drop Ethereal so no point in making a BotD.
I like an Ethereal Headstriker, and depending on your needs Lawbringer, Sazabi’s set, Eth Hexfire when doing Travincal with Horker or many other options 
Just try equipping the merc in the calc I link below, pretty easy to see what would be good for your build.
htt ps://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/
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I really wish they would let Barb mercs DW 2H swords and/or use 1H axes like player barb can, to alleviate some of the issues you mention.
Any of the high ED% RW are basically a waste in Barb Merc since PB damage is so low and can’t be eth.
The artwork is already there for the Bloody Foothills Barb NPCs that use both sword and axe, but I’m sure there’s a lot of balancing issues to consider if you open up axe RW (although some would be helpful to continue to put him on equal footing with other mercs, although he’s in a better place than Act 3 and likely Act 1 now)
Depending on what you need from your merc it can be the best of the best.
He can be really tanky and a pretty good source of damage, aswell as your source of Crushing Blow, if well equipped he can take on übers by himself.
I think act 2 only wins because of the ability to use those sought after aura runewords (mostly ofcourse infinity).
For balance issues I would limit it to swords, however add the 2h swords, while I would love to see it wield axes I think it will tip it to much towards to strong because of Beast and Doom, getting a wrecking machine that grants Fana and CC from Holy Freeze feels like going over the top.
Then again the most advantage would be on the melee and ranged characters and those are weaker than casters and already make use of the Lawbringer option anyway, but still this way the build itself would wreck more.
Would love to see an Act 5 Double Throw Barb as merc though, allowing all weapons that can be thrown (or axes which it should use in my opinion).
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