gzvernon said:
what are some thoughts on the best weapon for a Act 2 merc?
Would it be a war pike or a lower damage higher speed weapon. I wanted to make "Doom" Runeword & dont want to waste my runes if I would find a better one later on that would suck.
cheers
act 2 mercs have a lot of choice for weapons. it depends on how you want them to supplement you
here are some top choices
1. kelpie snare
2. bonehew
3. reaper's toll
4. woestave
5. hone sundan
6. arioc's needle
short breakdown
1. kelpie snare's 75% slow target is awesome for single dangerous targets like champion frenzytaurs, act bosses, etc. it also has a large life bonus and huge fire resist.
2. bonehew has some of the highest damage in the game. an ethereal bonehew has a max damage of around 900 and it swings fast too. putting amn runes in the two open sockets gives your merc a much better chance when in a crowd.
3. reapers toll is great crowd control because it casts decrepify on striking, which can be good or bad depending on if you have already implemented a curse into your equipment, such as chance to cast life tap or amp, and thus you dont want the decrep overwriting your curse. the ignore defense mod means the curse will be on most of the time. night life steal too.
4. woestave has a ton of good mods but low damage. 50% open wounds, 50% slow target, freeze target, blind target. holy cow! socket with a nef rune for knock back, and your merc will strike people and blind/freeze/slow them, and leave them basically nullified until you feel like hitting them. blind/freeze dont work on boss monsters so keep that in mind.
5. hone sundan is probably the best choice for raw damage output. an ethereal hone sundan doesnt have nearly as much damage as bonehew even when upgraded to elite, but it has 45% crushing blow which is awesome. 3 open sockets mean you can either make it really fast or add a ton of leech.
6. ariocs needle is much harder to find than the previous 5 options. it is also probably not as good of a merc choice for most things, because it has no "scalable" mods (slow/freeze/blind). it has very good damage and speed, but it can also have up to +4 to all skills. in my opinion, a might merc would benefit greatly from ariocs more than any oher merc type. +4 to skills = +40% weapon damage, even as mercs begin to reach level 70-80 and their aura level stops increasing. using ariocs you can squeeze out addition damage a the top end. due to the rarity of this though, adn the fact that the skill bonus is a range of +2-4, this is a pretty unlikely fit.
