My A5 merc is now 91 and on his way to his way to 92 and I am getting rather fond of having him around during boss battles, so I am wondering how to gear him up on a (relatively) limited budget. What would be very cool is to make it so that he can survive the journey down to Nightmare Nihlathak so that I can get a few spiffy runes. My Rabies Druid can take down Nihla pretty straight forward, but clearing out the room around him can be very tedious and having my merc around would really help for that. Also would be neat if he could tank hell sub-bosses.

Here is what he is using now:

Helm varies between Steelshade, VampireGaze and Crown of Thieves.
Armor is Levithon (until my paladin steals it away )
rings/amulet = full elemental set
belt/gloves = orphans call set items
shield = medusas (this one has to stay for %ctc LowerResist) with moonstone diamond in it.
weapon = eth Frostwind

I am rather sold on the eth Frostwind because it has 20% slow enemy which stacks with the 25% from Medusas and makes my merc really handy for boss battles, but I am up for changing anything else on him.

I would also like to hear what sort of things you do during boss fights to help keep your merc alive, I think this would make a great addition to the mercenaries page on blue.arimyth.com and am looking for good input.

Thanks!

*note* I got a combat merc rather than a shapeshifter merc to avoid rabies/rabies conflicts.

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People who live in cinder block houses can throw whatever they want.

Should try string of ears for belt instead for the %dr and ll. Gloves either bloodcrafts, steelrends or maybe ghoulhide for an additional 10% slow. Armor I'd say glassglare for sure, hard to beat that one.

Nos Coil for additional sorbs or as utter says string for high phys bosses. Blood craft gloves with res and decent life for sure. go with glassglare and make gaze your main helm to keep his Dr% nice and high, then switch stuff around as you need. steelshade noscoil combo for things like ardual/guardian, string and vamp gaze for heavy phys damage bosses (amon etc).

What did you put in the frostwind? uber skull or similar to help him leech and live longer. nice rare boots with tripple res will be needed in hell in order to keep his res maxed iirc. I personaly would have gone with an a2 might merc with a faith eth ghost glaive + medusas, that wuld have helped your melee damage and your summons. The only reason I would have taken a5 would be for the shapeshift bonus (extra damage/leech and life) but as he is combat he gains very little. You would also have added converts to help in the heavy areas and to tank things like hell sarina easier. Shame the rabies on ss mercs fuck stuff up for the build. Shapeshift mercs usualy have no trouble tanking sub bosses as they have alot more leeching ability and more life. I guess combat mercs are alot weaker, that current setup would be more than enough on a ss merc imo.

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Good call on String, should probably try my hand at moonstone crafting some gloves and hope for a good role. I will lose the nice 8% leech and +100 life from orphan's, but hopefully can end up better with a 8% leech and +150 life set of gloves. That would bring my leech up to 16% and also add some %dmg resist.

I was wondering about Immortal Flesh though - I might be able to get one of those from a trade and the 10% increased max life really adds quite a bit. I wonder how the extra 300-400 life would compare to 16% dmg reduction? It has a nice 10% life leech too which is always good.

Will have to see if I can track down a Glassglare. I am now in A5, so hopefully running through the act with decent magic find will drum up some items like that.

I haven't socketted the Frostwind yet, but I am thinking a skull for the leech.

I didn't go with an A2 merc because I don't have the runes for fancy runewords like Faith. The assortment of unique jav weapons doesn't seem as interesting as the items for an A5 merc.

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People who live in cinder block houses can throw whatever they want.

The effective life "added" by damage reduction depends on what %Reduction you started with.

Here's the effective life added at some levels of 10% dmg reduced:
10% reduced = +11% Life
20% reduced = +25% Life
30% reduced = +43% Life
40% reduced = +67% Life
50% reduced = +100% Life

Since Vampgaze and Glassglare get you to at least 30%, then going from 30% to 46% via SoEars will move you from +43% Life to +85% Life. Since this form of +Life% is multiplicative with the +%Life mod from things like BattleOrders or Lycanthropy, it would be really hard to imagine how the +10% life from ImmortalFlesh could be better than 16%dmgReduced. In other words, +Life% mod only affects base life, while the +%Life of dmg reduction affects post-buff life.

interesting concept brevan - how are you generating those numbers? Are they taking elemental damage in to consideration?

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People who live in cinder block houses can throw whatever they want.

i think that raw survival numbers arent the only things to look at. for example, look at worldstone granite unique colossus girdle: it has a ctc shock wave when struck. now i havent tried shock wave in this mod, but if it still has a stun effect, this would be very big in merc survivability. 2 things that some people may not know are that mercs do not block and mercs (at least i think its hardcoded) cannot resist stun, both of which are big killers for their survivability. a measure like an aoe shock wave stun helps them to recuperate, especially when they face a couple of foes at once who are constantly sending the merc into stun or fhr.

as for dr%, i dont think that calculation takes elemental damage into consideration. however, as you see from brevan's numbers, DR% gets increased returns. its always wise to max out DR% on a merc i think. Id rather see a skull than a diamond in the medusa shield, that way you may have a chance to alleviate some other sources of dr% and instead turn to sorb%, life leech, resists where they are offered in bigger bundles.

I'm not considering elemental damage, since %dmgReduced only affects physical. The "effective gain in life" works just as well for elemental resistances, but it goes up to 75% (effectively +300%Life) instead of 50% (effectively +100%Life).

Numbers generated using:
Life% = 100/(1-%Res)
%Res is the resistance you have to some element, capped at 0.50 for phys and 0.75 for elemental.
Life% is the life you appear to have when facing damage related to the resistance being considered.

Example,
%Res = 30% physical resistance
Life% = 100/(1-0.30) = 100/.7 = 143
This is +43% Effective Life.

The formula is found by using algebra with the damage formula:
LifeLost = MonsterDamage * PlayerResistance
LifeLost / PlayerResistance = MonsterDamage (needed remove 100HP in my formula)

I agree with all of the points made in Muleofal's post. However, the effective life comparison I'm using is mainly to highlight the benefits of someting like resistances vs absorbs. If helps highlight what idea (10% life vs 16% dmgReduced) gives the biggest bang for the buck. If we could figure out the effective life of SWave (or Conversion, Blocking, EnergyShield, Defence, etc), that would be a great way to compare it with the other mods out there. To highlight the benefit of capping DmgResistance, consider that in my earlier numbers (46% reduced using 30% + SoEars), just getting another 4% dmgReduced would effectively add 15% life.

With regard to SWave the effective life is the amount of HP saved by preventing monsters from attacking, so this goes up with stun duration, monster strength, and monster frequency of attacks. That makes it really great against stronger trash. However, many critters (most by end A5) are boss-flagged, so cannot be stunned.

Thanks a bunch for the post Brevan, that made it very clear. I really like the elegance of that concept and appreciate you sharing it with me.

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People who live in cinder block houses can throw whatever they want.

I first heard of that concept in the world of MMO's.

And actually, there are 2 schools of thought:

1. time to live
2. effective health

Effective health was explained previously.

Time to live concept represents the amount of time you can stay alive, while getting x dmg/second, and having no pots on hand.
Things like %dmg reduced and +life would increase it (similarly with "effective heath").

Where "time to live" tries to be better than "effective health" is when taking into account mob ctc abilityes (counter, ctc IM...). In theory, you would reach a point where faster wep means lower time to live.

Take for instance the paladin, lower life than the established "tank" classes, but high block %. And let's consider a phys attack boss.
He operates mostly under the "Time to live" philosophy, since he would only take 1 out of every 4 hits. But he would benefit from having higher life, since there could be a string of non blocks. However if he did that, the benefit from increasing his effective health may come at the expense of time to live (i.e lower block %)

In a real game it would lead to consuming more pots/fight, but being able to take more hits vs consuming low amount of pots/fight, but having troubles at taking multiple hits.