question about ias breakpoints on merc

[Gdock5]

just recently, i finally found my merc Hone Sundan. I was amazed of how much crushing blow makes a difference against nm meph. I was planning to put in 3 amns in the bad boy, but then i was told that maybe i should put some shaels in it to reach a breakpoint. How many shaels would i need in it to reach a breakpoint?

Thanx for the help

[WingBlade]

just recently, i finally found my merc Hone Sundan. I was amazed of how much crushing blow makes a difference against nm meph. I was planning to put in 3 amns in the bad boy, but then i was told that maybe i should put some shaels in it to reach a breakpoint. How many shaels would i need in it to reach a breakpoint?

Thanx for the help
On the Hone Sudan I have - this is the rune setup... SHAEL + SHAEL + AMN. And it does the job quite well.

[Mr.Bogohossian]

http://diablo2.ingame.de/tips/calcs/weaponspeed.php?lang=english

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[tooie1]

As a precaution, the DII.net act 2 merc ias tables are screwy, use the calculator.

Character Mercenary - Act 2
Weapon Yari / Yari
Skill Jab
IAS Frames per attack Attacks per second
0 % 8 3.1
9 % 7.5 3.3
20 % 7 3.5
37 % 6.5 3.8
65 % 6 4.1
105 % 5.5 4.5
200 % 5 5


The 2 shaels/amn is the way to go, if your merc can never get a hit in because he is too slow (8 fps is slow), it doesn't matter how much leach he has.

Zappa did some extensive personal testing and will tell you the same thing.

[doubleOObubble]

What they said. Speed >> leech as long as you have some leech, as speed does not only mean more hits in the linearly fashion. There are thresholds for the merc's attacks. In many cases it's hit or never hit, even if the attack speed only differs by half a frame :)

And there is no point going for three SHEALs because, as the tables say, you won't reach the next BP anyway. I say this as a disclaimer for what I said above, as someone might think "Well, if speed is king I'd use only SHEALs because I do have leech in my gaze/Cot/Tal's/...".

So go whith whatever you feel best. The most generally efficient setup would be SHEAL-SHEAL-AMN I think.

[ZappaFan]

Yup, been there, done that, got the t-shirt. As Mr. OO refers to, the really big benefit of the increased speed is your merc is getting stunned/interrupted a lot less, and is landing more blows as a result - in addition to the fact that he's simply hitting faster. The final result is actually improved leeching.