best weapon for act 2 merc??

best weapon for act 2 merc??

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.

 

i found a perfect etheral Arioc's last night 171-587 +4 skills 230% ed

 

I have to say i equip all my act2 mercs the same as its fairly cheap and effective:

Tal's Mask - Life / LL / Res / Cheap / non ugly on a merc / socketed with ED jewel
Shaftstop - +life / damage reduction / socketed with ED jewel and upgraded if u can.
Reapers Toll - choose LL over ED and socket with ED jewel.

Usually i spend more on the 3 jewels than the rest of the gear, ~35 ED with 2nd useful mod. If i am feeling poor or ED jewels are in short supply, whack an AMN in the Reapers for more LL.

That way they have additional resist's, some nice +life, ~25LL, decent damage and decrep to top it off

 

Well "Doom" runeword is really nice. People tend to make it in Ethereal Cryptic Axe. And ofc put that on a merc other than HF

 

none of this is what i was talking about ,

iwanted to make the runeword "Doom" & wanted to know what kind of weapon to socket it in for a merc, which is the best of fastest & strongest weapons for a Act 2 merc,

i.e.
war pike (33-178 dam) base speed 20
crytic axe (33-150) base speed 10

the axe has better speed over the pike which makes it more appealing, plus it has lower reqs than war pike does,only thing warpike has is more max dam by 28. Seems to me the crptic axe would be the best choice.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

p.s. sorry brez that reply wasnt up when i wrote this,thx.

just need a etheral 5 socket cryptic axe now,hehe.

( i picked Doom because i heard it is the best act 2 merc weapon out there)

sorry that last reply was

 

I'm a big fan of Act 2 might mercs with Reaper's toll, shaft and rockstopper becuase:

1) it's cheap
2) i'm poor
3) my melee characters cast life tap a LOT (zealot, kicker asn)
4) the constant interchange of life tap and decrepify boots my damage, the mercs damage and leeches back our life.

 

please dont waste godly runes on a merc... ony characters that mercs are implemental is summon necs and MF sorcs... you dont need godly merc weapons for them to be good at PVM.

><
please dont use godly runes for a merc that is used for PVM.


stef

 

uhh Stef, ???? Mercs are implemental on everything.

Personally, I think it all comes down to what you look for in your merc. If you want outright damage, doom is not the way to go. If you are using your merc for thorns or defiance or the like, an ariocs needle with +4 skills, and a helm with +2 skills would really help out. If you are looking for holy freeze on a merc and have access to a doom, a defiance freeze merc might be what you want. In that case cryptic axe is the definate choice. an Ethereal one at that.


An interesting though would be a merc with doom for holy freeze, Bramble for thorns, and an andy's visage for the +2 to all skills and life leech. These all on a might merc or defiance(for casters) would make the ultimate mercenary possible.

Raven-Hood

 

When you talk about "the best", nothing comes even close to an etheral Tomb Reaver with 3 sockets. It has 10% killed monster reanimated, in case you do not know.

 

heard that reanimate feature sucks becuase monsters dont last that long.

 

my etheral 237% reaper owns, hits about 696 dmg, 13% LL, 33% deadly strike, -req, and a whole lotta other goodies, i shaeled it, is that a good or bad idea?

 

i would say get the cryptic axe......
.....its cheaper.

mercs at 80+lvl rarely die with nice setup like yours. And they kill reasonably fast. no point spending extra for the super-rare eth war pike.

i would choose eth thresher tho....cuz i already have one.

 

Woestave is innefective in Hell. You really do need something with more damage.

Been there, done that, and that's with a Merc whose level is the exact same as mine.

 

If it's Defi., then the best weapon for him is polearm with Doom runeword.

If it's holy freeze AND you are a hammerdin, then you can try Eth bonehew. Hammerdin's concentration can boost your merc to over 10k dmg.

 

Um since the runeword calls for a polearm and not a spear... a war pike would be a waste because it would not be the runeword.. it would be a gemmed war pike with sucky mods compared to the easily accessible uniques out there.. i.e. read above

the best weapon would be an ethereal thresher.. same avg dmg as giant thresher and better accessibility with higher max dmg..

 

true

the reanimate as returned mod is a cheesey useless mod like the breath of the dying poison novas. the mod is there to correlate the function of the weapon to its name

reanimate makes a returned skeleton. it lasts for 60 seconds and does not share party skills. it will not teleport to catch up to you. you would ahve to kill at an amazing rate to have more than 2 or 3 on the screen at once, and they dont even do anything. its a throwaway feature.

 

mines wearing Gaze and shaftstop and weap is reaper toll . hes lvl 87 and does great in tanking for my sorc.

 

Does anyone think having "Cannot Be Frozen" on a merc is vital to their survival being on a Paladin who only does Hell Baal runs?

If so, either Kira's or Duriel's should always be an option. Eth Bonehew is probably the best too.

 

But it does keep a creature from being reanimated by something else. Ok, it messes with your redemption, but, still...