Anyone have an idea?

You're a multishot zon right, not Jab?

A maxed Valk or Decoy (I prefer Decoy) is a decent tank, and your build usually keeps enemies at the edge of the screen, so I'd recommend a multishot rogue. Get her a bow with lvl5 Amp on strike, so that you can use a stronger bow yourself (keep a lvl 1 Amp charges wand on switch for whne the rogue dies). A Rogue is the only merc that can stay away from the fight, like yourself, and proc Amp on the enemy.

If you'd really like an elemental merc to kill phys immunes (rather than break the immunity), then I guess A3 cold or A3 lit. A3 Fire don't use spells that synergize, and A3 bone don't have a Mastery to deal damage late game.

Melee mercs might be able to tank for you, and of course will do well with a Valk to help spread the tanking, but I don't think they'd do much for you aside from that. If you keep the enemies away from you, then your merc might not go into battle often enough to proc Amp in melee.

a2 might merc with faith.

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Basically the same question as first post, but this time regarding a fire zon.

I was thinking of A3 fire merc for the holy fire aura mini conv thingy, while the decoy/valk would do the bulk of the trash tanking.

But later on was thinking about using medusa's shield for the ctc LR when struck..and the A3 merc doesn't get much into the fight; thus making a A2 one better at the LR job.

Hmm, maybe use A3 norm one until i can grab a Medusa's shield, then switch to A2 one from nm...

Thoughts?

theres 2 options i would say. you can go a2 merc with medusas and faith, or you can use an act 5 merc with medusas and Hand of Justice weapon for holy fire aura + lower res. If you decide to take that route I would recomend a wolf merc as I always found they tank bosses alot better since they get massive life leech. The bears damage gets pretty insane but as a pure meat shield I would say wolf. you get the added bonus of war cry on the nm mercs to stun mobs for you and take the heat off him, though this means he will take less hits and wont proc lr.

Load him up with dr% equip, ele set for absorbs and res, glassglare armour for res and sorbs and you will have an amazing tank. Sfter considering I would get a norm one and stick with that to proc lr more often.

Another point with the act 5 merc is they are alot more agressive and will stay in the fray attacking untill everything is dead. Sometimes act 2 mercs will wander around aimlesly doing nothing and that can be a problem when you want to keep stuff still.

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Hmm, interesting choice.
other way to do it would be to get a infinity rw on a a2 one, but that would mean no shield on the merc.

A5 one from normal diff it is.

yeh infinity on an a2 merc is nice too. iirc its -41 res on infinitys conviction but as you say then you lose the shield slot that could have a skull or diamond etc in it as well as proc lower res. theres a fantastic radius on the holy fire too so if something creeps up behind you while the merc is tanking infront, the aura should lower the group flanking you too making them easier to dispatch.

I've always been a fan of the holy aura on equip runewords on tank mercs. Having dream on an a2 prayer merc with insight weapon for a light sorc gives you the extra bonus of massive mana regen to help energy shield and you also get the holy aura from the helm. confuse is a handy curse for soloing too and it gets proc'd often enough. Im geting off topic lol.

Holy auras will break the basic immune mobs up untill act 4 hell (some uniques before this are still unbreakable). Once you get to act 4 hell you will need either infinity or lr + holy aura to break the basic immunes. the merc should be able to take down the unbreakables easily alone and the elemental set will help him deal with phys/fire dual immunes.

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About the unbreakable Fire immunes in hell A4+, provided the merc can tank'em, i have a plan

put 1 pt in strafe, have andariel's visage+szark strink on switch for osskill lvl 40+ venom
.Will use multishot on weak little mobs and strafe on the bigger guys. The phys dmg+poison should work to my favor, merc will be smacking away happily too and proc LR, further improving the poison effect. I'm quite sure it will take ages to kill stuff, but it should be possible (note to self: invest in a prevent monster heal effect).
Phys/fire imunes should be rare, and venom+magic arrow +merc LR should help

Vs bosses (Chimera, Diablo...) that will be dangerous, due to strafe lock and boss counters, and 1 pt magic arrow+guided arrow will be used instead to tickle boss.

if you load your merc up with absorbs and dr% and get him some extra life leech on his gear he should last the duration against all bosses except phys immunes and the act end bosses. andys helm for venom is a nice choice, if you wanna go that route you could keep a poison buff setup in the cube with you. poison craft boots, bramble, 2 soj's, saracens/maras amu, etc etc. with enough + skills you will get a huge huge duration. Around 10 mins duration isn't to much trouble. just recast venom every 10 mins or whatever and keep it on you at all times. since your merc will be providing lower res it`ll be even better. sink a poison facet in andys helm, and you may want to use pestilance in a wand on switch with lidless with a gul in to prebuff venom. with that you can have level 41 venom, just switch to topaz craft boots and bramble when you cast then switch to your regular equip. (level 41 before anni/hell sammy charm/battle command)

That could work really nicely imo since there will be lower res going off and it will help on bosses for sure. I`ll probs add some venom in with my up and coming phys bowa (was gonna use the sin armour rw on her at 43 anyway) as at the very least it'll help you rip through areas at greater speed.

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