merc question

[sunshine]

merc question

I know that it's better to buy a merc at the lowest possible difficulty and lvl him up, but I was wondering just how much better is this?

I've got an act 1 fire rogue merc that's the same lvl as my hcl nec (93). With an upgraded goldstrike, rattlecage, and guillame's face, she seems ok. With this setup she does 236-847 damage. Because she's a rogue merc she hardly ever dies so I'm not really concerned about her 47 resists to all or her 1557 life.

I was wondering how much more damage she would do if I had bought her in normal.

 

[moi]

I don't have any numbers next to me, but rephrase it this way: what do you have to gain by NOT hiring the merc in normal and taking it up with you? You seem to imply that there's some sort of tradeoff and you're trying to decide whether or not the increased stats of the normal difficulty hireling are worth it, but there isnt. Just hire her when you play through act 1 normal; she will have a little trouble keeping up at first, all mercs below lvl 20 or so do level a bit slowly relative to you, but with only minor tending she can stay not too far behind you, and by the time you get to nightmare you're set - she'll have no problem keeping up with you for the rest of the game.

 

[sunshine]

Hmm... that's sort of what I wanted to know: numbers. The only chart I saw listed a lvl 93 merc hired at normal as doing 52-54 damage. The same lvl merc hired in hell will do 50-52. Mind you, this chart is probably dated pre 1.10.

Now, if it's only a 2 pt difference, why is everyone so keen on hiring mercs as early as possible?

 

[moi]

From the amazon basin:

Act 1 hell fire lvl 93: 1559 hp / 1269 def / 142 str / 215 dex / 3009 AR / 42 - 44 dmg / 147 res-alll / lvl 28 inner sight / lvl 28 fire arrow
Act 1 normal fire lvl 93: 1680hp / 1372 def / 148 str / 225 dex / 3211 AR / 44 - 46 dmg / 153 res-all / lvl 30 inner sight / lvl 30 fire arrow

As far as damage goes, the 42-44 or 44-46 will be added to the weapon damage and then multiplied by dex bonus, so no big difference there.
This chart evidently has small rounding errors in certain places if you are correctly reporting your merc as only having 1557 life, but nothing major I'd guess.
The life, stats, and resists are more of a consideration between the difficulties than the damage.
But as I said before, why not hire the merc early? It's not that people are extremely keen on hiring the merc as early as possible, it's that there's no benefit to not hiring early and hiring late instead.

 

[sunshine]

I'm curious as to how damage is cacluated. I mean what does 42-44 or 52-54 refer to (from various available charts)? At lvl 93 a naked act 1 merc does at least 100 damage (125? 135?.)

I've decided to ditch the old hell-hired merc and hire the same merc from normal difficulty. At level 93, I'll post her damage..... and effectively answer my own question in this thread.

 

[Ruvanal]

I'm curious as to how damage is cacluated. I mean what does 42-44 or 52-54 refer to (from various available charts)? At lvl 93 a naked act 1 merc does at least 100 damage (125? 135?.)

As moi pointed out the damage that you see listed like 42-44 is treated by the game as +42 min damage and +44 max damage. If you take a mercs weapon away, they will only end up doing a 1-2 base damage since they will have nothing the add the min/max damage onto. This is easily tested by turning a high level merc loose in act 1 normal without a weapon and watching how many hits it takes them to kill some of the monsters.

Also do not count of the information that is displayed for their damage on the merc screen as being very acurate. There are known problems with the way the client side of the game generates the damge values to display in many cases (a few of damage modifiers are displayed as effecting either the wrong part of the damage calcualtion or not even showing their effect at all).

 

[d2isnotanrpg]

Just as an opinion from experience, I don't suggest rehiring. L93 is wayyyyy too high to level a merc up from L7 (the highest I've seen rogues available at). And despite what one person said, I find it a PITA to level a merc up in normal diff. I have to resort to making repeated new games and let her slaughter things in the cold plains/etc while I don't kill any, just to get her from 6-9. This taking hours. Expanding upon that and going from 7 to 93, I would just live with the hell rogue, it would be WAY too much effort for little gain.

Unless there's some well-kept-from-me secret, I've always hired my permanent mercs from nightmare or hell (nm only if I want a Greiz merc). Two more levels of defiance (fire arrow), or 120 hit points isn't worth an eternity of tedious merc leveling.

IMHO.

 

[sunshine]

Hmm... You're probably right, d2isnotanrpg. Immediately after dumping my hell merc and buying a new normal merc, I regretted it. Not only the lvling bit (she's 60 now and doing hell pit runs now), but also the guilt. After running so long with the hell merc, I guess i sorta got attached to her. She held her own and then some in battles and this is the way I reward her: I ditch her for a younger woman. Eeevil.

 

[moi]

well, having gone from 7 to 60, you've got the hard part covered already, best of luck on your new mercenary

 

[sunshine]

Ok, so I finally lvled the new merc back to lvl 93... and the results?

She does 250-880 (listed with upped goldstrike) compared to 236-847, with 1680 life compared to 1557. (Of course, as noted, the listed stats on the merc screen may be bugged.)

If I had to do it again, I definitely wouldn't. I'm not sure about the other mercs but for act1 rogue mercs, I don't think it makes a difference whether you hire them in normal, nightmare, or hell.

I sorta had an inkling that this was so, but my perverse compulsion to see this through couldn't easily be quelled. Damn diablo!

 

[d2isnotanrpg]

Bravo, I say, Bravo! I tell you, I couldn't level a rogue merc from normal that high. I think the highest you can hire them at is L7. I've tried a few times to get a rogue merc for various characters, and ultimately gave up on all of them. I would take an hour to gain half a level, trying EVERY area possible to find the best possible XP/kill.

You can now know you're one of the few with a norm diff merc, at least By the way, to see the differences in other mercs from their hell counterparts, the Amazon Basin has a full listing of merc stats at all levels/difficulties in their Technical Discussion sticky's. Don't think I can link to it.

 

[Charlie]

Even at lv93 you can lvl her quick in hell (as long as she doesn't die)