Weapon(s) for the new act 5 merc

[insidious-1502]

@KillerProc-1122

In my experience, the Decrepify from Lawbringer takes precedence over Taunt. For instance, I have my zealot’s act 5 merc equipped with Lawbringer and Unbending Will which has something like a 18% chance to level such and such Taunt. However, if he taunt gets cast first and then decrepify, the decrepify will overrule the taunt and subsequent taunt casts don’t take effect.

If decrepify is cast first then Taunt just doesn’t proc.

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.

@Indian-2161

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.

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?