Best merc & setup for an IK barb?

[Gen_Hannibal]

Best merc & setup for an IK barb?

OK since I got such nice responses from the last article I wrote I figured why not do another one? But for this one I want your opinion too. What do you think is the best merc/setup for an IK barb's merc? (If you think that the specific type of barb {i.e ww, conc, berzerk} is important to the type of merc/setup you've listed then tell us what type also.)

 

[cephas]

OK since I got such nice responses from the last article I wrote I figured why not do another one? But for this one I want your opinion too. What do you think is the best merc/setup for an IK barb's merc? (If you think that the specific type of barb {i.e ww, conc, berzerk} is important to the type of merc/setup you've listed then tell us what type also.)

I think either the might or holy freeze merc. Those are mercs I have on my other barbs. However, I have the prayer (I think, faster healing) merc, accompanying my ik. I chose him because he was the highest level merc I could hire way back then. :xmad:

BTW, your wife not regained control of the PC yet? Bwahahahahaha.... ok just joiking. If she's reading this, not to worry. The woman on my tar is my gf... not me.... bwahahahahaha

Cheers

 

[Xalit]

A word, first. The following discussion would apply equally to a non-IK barb that used any of the traditional combat skills (... as I have no experience of a throw barb, a double throw barb, or a singer).

The "best" setup if there was just one, would be ridiculously expensive to make - and not practical for most players. But there are some very good, very affordable merc setups available. One such setup, (everything costs Pul or less, I believe).

Might merc:
Vampire Gaze (high LL preferred)
Shaftstop
Reapers Toll

Capable of soloing hell ancients. Some comments about it...

1. High survivability when there is any chance to leech and the elemental attacks aren't overwhelming. It isn't a merc to take to Travincal. This merc will not die too much (or ever!) if you take some notice of him. I spend a lot of time running the pit, and he absolutely never dies down there.

2. Huge damage. His might aura is more useful to him than to you. It means a lot of extra leech for him, but more like a little extra for you. However its the following fact that really makes the damage huge...

3. He is a walking talking curse. And decrepify is absolutely the best curse for barbs 99.9% of the time. It doesn't kill *quite* so fast as amp, but it completely nullifies the offensive capabilities of most critters suffering it (hence capable of soloing hell ancients). Decrep removes a lot of physical immunities too. Once the melee starts expect to wait one good jab for decrep to kick in and expect it to finally cease when the last enemy falls.

A BotD merc probably kills better of his own accord (faster weapon, higher damage!), but the decrep massively increases your killing power, which is a far better/faster way to rack up kills.

4. As much as you can, upgrade and get ethereal versions of these pieces of equipment. I've never had the chance to see what difference an eth reapers toll would make, but I expect it would be quite noticable.

5. 3 sockets to fill. I don't know the bp's for reapers toll, so I don't know if shael or an ias jewel would be of much/any use. But an Amn never hurts.

As for the armour and helm, at least one of them needs to be used to make up resistances. Um is expensive, but other runes can do a single res (think fire or lightning), and that might be more useful (cold and poison barely matter, imho). Also think about using jewels. Otherwise so-called junk jewels might be a very effective way to socket in some extra reses, and perhaps other nice mods.

Really, the only *key* piece of equipment in this setup is the Reapers Toll. I'm probably going to try removing the shaftstop and trying one of the runeword armours that offers some resistances on one of my Reapers Toll mercs. Remember with this setup that its not worth anything if the decrep is constantly over cursed (so don't use saracens chance, for example).

If cost was no object, I'd probably want to try something like:

Ethereal CoH / Eth Reapers Toll (Amn) / and some hat.

That new runeword hat with holy shock would be interesting. A very nice place to pick up ~500 lightning damage per hit. Even Andy's Visage would be nice for the skills and leech (just as long as fire res doesn't kill him). He might also appreciate a CoA with a couple of shaels in when he's being ping-ponged by Pindles minions or snakes!

Cheers.

 

[Gen_Hannibal]

My dream merc

OK this is where price is no object, so most people won't be doing this but I think it would be a BLAST to have. A frost merc equipped with (all eth) delerium/pride/fortitude. The frost aura slows down the enemies. The delerium gives off the confusion curse (which is absolutely INVALUABLE when doing cow runs), not to mention that the concentration aura from pride would carry over to everyone who was under the confusion curse. And with the fortitude armor on he'd have almost no chance of being hit AND it would up his damage another 300%! Now I said a frost merc rather than a might merc because, quite simply, why use might when you can use concentrate and get a higher damage boost? The only drawback to this would be the fact that your merc would have zero life leech, BUT between fortitude and pride he'd get +15 to replenish life, so on the rare occassions when he would get hit, I think that this would take care of any damage he'd take.

Another reason why I think this build would be great, I got 2 outta 4 right now. The frost merc and the delerium (which also adds a tiny little chink in the armor: mercs wearing delerium SOMETIMES fubar the game, when your merc turns into the stygian doll diablo sometimes just doesn't know how to process the information and shuts down the game with some number error. It happens maybe once a week on average with me. If anybody else has a problem with this then please let me know.). In the meantime I guess I'll just have to make do with the eth amn'd/361% ed bonehew and +2 um'd valor armor. But if anybody wants to be REALLY nice and just let me have/borrow their pride/fortitude I'd be happy to try them out. Hey a guy can dream huh? :lol:

I do have a question though, if anybody knows the answer to this I'd appreciate it: would the +2 to all skills from delerium make the level 18 concentration aura become a level 20 aura?

 

[Halciet]

Even Andy's Visage would be nice for the skills and leech (just as long as fire res doesn't kill him)..

Andy's Visage is more or less the best merc helm you can get, period. +2 skills, 20% ias, life leech, poison resist (merc's worst enemy), and huge defense. All you need to do is Ral it to negate the fire penalty

Other than that, preferable weapons would be an eth Doom Cryptic (dual auras, +2 skills to boost main aura and jab, high damage) or Reaper's Toll.

As always, for any barbarian other than a singer, a might merc would be preferable.

-Hal

 

[[exile]]

Yes, +skills does give bonuses to merc aura levels.

You should also consider putting an ethereal 'Infinity' (or whatever the Conviction aura runeword is) to combine with the Holy Shock helm, just for the hell of it. It also helps your elemental damage a lot, especially since the maul deals so much elemental damage...

 

[Gen_Hannibal]

Yes, +skills does give bonuses to merc aura levels.

You should also consider putting an ethereal 'Infinity' (or whatever the Conviction aura runeword is) to combine with the Holy Shock helm, just for the hell of it. It also helps your elemental damage a lot, especially since the maul deals so much elemental damage...

I know that it helps on the merc aura levels but what I'm NOT so sure about is wether it would help with the aura since it's just coming from another piece of equipment? Like the frost aura he uses, THAT I know it adds the +2 skills to, but it's the concentration aura from the pride that I'm wondering about.

And halciet... I'm curious, what do you think of my merc build?

 

[[exile]]

If you're asking about whether or not auras can stack, then yes. It's similar to having a bunch of Paladins using various party-oriented auras together.

 

[Gen_Hannibal]

Nooo exile... see I know that on an item that gives you a skill through charges (i.e lvl 5 life tap 97/97 charges) doesn't benefit from + to all skills items. But since pride just gives you the aura period, would a + to all skills item (such as delerium) add on to the level of pride's aura, level 18 concentration? THAT'S what I'm wondering, not the aura of the merc himself.

 

[[exile]]

Oh! Sorry, but nope. The bonus aura is at a preset level when the item is generated -- nothing can change that level. It's weird because it's an item-granted aura; had it been an OSkill, THEN it would benefit from +skills.

 

[Gen_Hannibal]

Which one are you sorry about? That you didn't understand me, or that it wouldn't add to the skill? Both, right? :xtongue: But thanks for the info, maybe I will go and take another peek at that that new helm runeword. That - to defense and to all resists would sure help out a lot, just not sure if it would be better than having a whole group of monsters beating the crap out of each other instead of coming after me and my merc. But even if it DOESN'T add to the concentration aura it STILL does more dmg than a might aura would do unless maybe you managed to come up with all 3 pieces of equipment adding +2 to skills each.

And halciet, I'm not sure if the -to cold resists, 45% ias, and 25% chance of open wounds would make up for the difference in damage you'd be doing with the build you suggested over mine, but it's definitely something to look into, especially since both doom and pride are both fairly close in rune price. But you might really want to try out that delerium on your merc. Best investment I've EVER made with an ist.

 

[Xalit]

Hal wrote:

Andy's Visage is more or less the best merc helm you can get, period. +2 skills, 20% ias, life leech, poison resist (merc's worst enemy), and huge defense. All you need to do is Ral it to negate the fire penalty

I have one sitting about on a mule. Maybe when I make a character who doesn't run Trav as a matter of course (or find som uber armour with a lot of fire res) I'll give it a try. Shame there's no damage reduction (see, the more I think about it, the more I need CoH to accompany Andy's Visage, so I can socket the hat with Ber. Unfortunately this is rather expensive!).

For a pit runner I can see Andy's Visage being extremely potent (except cursed + high damage archer uinque packs).

Cheers

 

[combatman]

Well i have just finished building up my merc with the folowing equipment:
perfect gaze cham, 16060life duped armor,DOOM criptic axe,,

I cant tell that it rocks,, with might aura he does something like 6.6k dmg,, freez aura, all res5x,, the only thing that is missing is higher life leech, but well,,, he dies every 10th baalrun so its not a big problem.

I am wondering if the -5x cold res. on doom helps if i am a sors with the same eqquipped merc, or is just useles to my orb dmg?

 

[Halciet]

Hanni,

It would take some testing to see how it panned out; if a Holy Freeze merc with pride did more damage than a might merc with Doom, then there'd be no question as to which was better - Pride would win out. In that instance, you might even consider something like Might with Pride for the massive damage you'd get out of it. The only thing I worry about is the lack of onboard ed with Pride; I dunno if the extra 45% damage from the aura to you would be worth giving up the merc kill/leech speeds. A high-level might merc with Andy's/Delirium and Doom is going to have a level 24 aura, which comes to 270% ed. The holy-freeze merc with Pride is going to provide 315%, but the on-board damage of the weapon is going to suck without an ED modifier, and the swing speed will be relatively slow.

As for the rest of the gear - I'd still probably take Andy's over anything else. Leech is massively important for mercs. Even with high defense, confusion, and holy freeze, he's going to get hit a good amount, so unless you plan on using a Life Tap wand on every group or you're looking to help him develop a drinking habit from all the potions he's going to be throwing back, you'll want a bit of leech :lol: The delerium CtC is really great; I used it a lot during the beta. In the long run, however, I found it just wasn't worth the trouble.

I'd concur that fortitude would be pretty much the best armor you could get for him now

Someone would have to test your set-up to see how well it fared in the survivability department. I can see the benefits of pride on holy freeze if you're just concerned with merc aura's and not the merc himself, so it's something to consider.

-Hal

 

[Gen_Hannibal]

Yeah I'm thinking you might be right about that andy's helm, halciet. BUT the 20% ias if I used that would help out on the slow swing speed, especially if I just threw an ias jewel into the helm too, instead of the ral since the fortitude adds 25 - 30 for all resists. Or I could just get lucky and find one with 15% ias AND fire resists. But I would almost HAVE to find an etheral cryptic axe (or something around that area balancing the swing speed with the dmg output just so that the 9% from my andy's helm would be draining back enough dmg. But that coupled with the +15 to life replenish SHOULD be enough to keep him alive, don't you think?) Thanks for the input. :thumbsup:

And just for the record... the reason why I keep going on about the frost merc is that my barb does almost 4-6k of dmg right now so I'm afraid that I've come to rely on my frost merc to slow monsters down quite a bit, but who knows... with another +320% ed from pride I might just be looking at 1 shot kills so frost might not be such a big deal then. I just shudder at the thought of trying to get a new merc ALL the way up to where my current one is now.