Only 1-H Sword that can roll 5-6 Sockets is the Phase Blade. As a result Death, BotD or anything that takes 5-6 runes with a strong Enhanced Damage modifier or is Indestructible is wasted on a Phase Blade. That’s why I’d like to see 2-H Swords added to the Frenzy Mercenaries arsenal as that would open up not only Colossus Swords and Colossus Blades(which would be Ethereal) but more runeword options(like Death, BotD, Destruction and Eternity). Last Wish could also be utilized on an Ethereal base, taking advantage of its 330-375 ED modifier and making dual LW Mercenary way stronger.
I’d love to see following runewords added to Sword bases:
Doom
Famine
Harmony
Ice
Infinity
I thought about adding Beast to this list but I feel that if you want Fanaticism to wield it yourself or go with Act 1 Faith Mercenary. I mean she’ll need something to remain relevant. Ditto when it comes to Pride since she now has Mist. Doom would honestly be godly on an Act 5 Barb that I literally am drooling just over the thought of dual-wielding them on a Frenzy variant. Famine would nice to have to give the Frenzy Barbarian some Elemental/Magic Damage. Harmony was added because frankly Vigor aura is under-utilized. Maybe if it were more accessible, then Teleport wouldn’t be as needed as it is now. Ice was purely with Act 3 Mercenary in mind, although an Act 5 Barb could use it for the higher Holy Freeze and Frost Nova proc.
Finally there is Infinity and honestly I’m torn on whether to add it to Sword bases. It would certainly help Act 3 Mercenaries immensely but would also make Act 5 a force to be reckoned with since they’d be able to add that 35% FRW to their incredible mobility to begin with, the Chain Lightning on kill and 40% Crushing Blow on top of it. It’d also allow any caster to wield it with a Shield, something they’d have to sacrifice which in the PvP realm is huge(and I’m always sensitive to altering things on PvP).
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
