MF SORC - What MERC (ASAP)

[xKurupT]

im building a mf sorc... she is a blizz sorc and lvl 50 in a2 nm.... what merc should i get... im going to mainly do meph and pindle runs...\

when you recommend a merc can you say what difficulty/act/type of merc i should get...

im guessing ill need a tank so i surpose a a2 merc would be the choice.. but im not sure what type....

thanx in advance

[xanth]

from what i know, barb mercs have the most hp but a2 might mercs can kill the best...iono much abt them though

[Acres]

from what I've seen, the act 2 mercs are pretty good at holding meph still, the only problem being the he either ends up getting frozen or not having enough leech to survive until meph is dead.......oh the gold

if you can afford to, an act 2 might merc works pretty well overall, especially if you can equip him with a vamp and something like a dual-amned bonehew....just my suggestion

[Miladys-Knight]

At the level you are there really are 2 choices depending on your play style.

Spear merc with Holy freeze. At your current level, cheap gear that works well is, Tal's Mask, Duriel's shell, triple amn Hone Sundan. I always use Duriels shell early for 2 reasons its fairly easy to get and your merc won't turn into ice cubes in one hit if he gets frozen. Later when your merc is around level 80+ you can switch to a 2 Amn bonehew.

Barb merc - Tal's mask, Duriel's shell, Honor runeword executioners sword. Later when he can use it an Honor colosus blade or what I used for a long time was an Amned Doombringer. That sword gives your merc + to max life and casts weakness often enough that he takes a lot less damage.

The difference between the 2 mercs that I have noticed... The barb is a bit tougher and is more aggressive charging targets directly and immediately.

The spear merc is a bit lazy and mine has on occasion even walked away from the monsters leaving me to take the hits. Holy freeze is however excellent for slowing the monsters (crowd control) if you can get him pointed the direction you want him to go.

[cockyjw]

I don't use runes or runewords much but AMNing up a weapon is a great idea. I'm just starting the new season (well 3 days and 83 levels ago) and I think this will help the little guy stay alive more :-) Thanks for the tip!

[xKurupT]

thanx heaps.. right now im using a holy freeze merc... might change to a barb merc once i reach hell act 5....

[Pier]

Here is my opinion.

If you are only gonna do Meph and Pindle, use and Act2 Defiance Merc (hire in Normal!!!), and equip him with Reaper's Troll, Gaze/Tal's mask, and either up'ed shaft, Duriels shell, or a Stone armor.

Your Blizzard + Decrep from Reaper's troll combined with high defence keep him alive.

One cannot leach of Meph hell; so Guilam's face could even give that extra CB instead of Gaze!!

Grr pIER

[KaUgA]

IMO, a merc is useless if all you are doing is MF'ing. I have an awesome merc and I feel a merc is required don't get me wrong, but when I'm mf'ing I don't even want my merc. You want to know why? Well as a Fire Sorc I use the moat trick or have another plan of attack which gets Meph stuck behind a corner in the stairs. When my merc comes down to durance with me he usually A)Gets killed no matter what or B) brings all the monsters I wanted to evade by teleporting to meph. So I either have to kill meph by myself cause the merc died, or I have to fight like 10 ghoul lords and the occasional unique council.
For Pit runs I swear by my merc. He kills the Fire Immunes (There are a ton).
For Rushing I swear by my merc. See above.
For MF'ing Meph mercs are sucky sucky sucky. He costs me gold and/or experience points cause I die.
For Pindle mercs I kind of like my merc. He may die at times but he takes the heat off of me.

[Myrakh-2]

The spear merc is a bit lazy and mine has on occasion even walked away from the monsters leaving me to take the hits.

They like to do that :-) I'm playing Skelemancers, mostly, and I need the merc to provide the first few corpses after joining a game.

At times, the merc would just walk up to the monsters, look at them, then turn around and walk back to the wp :-) On other occasions, he would just decide that he doesn't want to follow me, so he keeps standing near the wp.

[KTang]

I plan to use a Grandfather on my barb merc (CLvl 81) over Honor and Doombringer, if I had the choice I would go Doombringer but its early ladder and I see more GFs than Dooms..

I tend to favour the barb mercs, they will level faster as the decent auras start in NM (Might/HF) and I don't have the patience to level them.

Barb Mercs are better in the way that they run at the target rather then those chicken spears.

A Barb merc will have more life then a Spear-OFFENSIVE, more damage (base), more res, more ar. The only thing it beats the Barb merc is Def & Dex so it should last longer - but a Barb merc has about 200~ life more. These are all base stats of course, if you have super pumped items, I'm not sure who the winner is.
A barb merc can use 20% max life from the Doombringer while a Spear Merc can achieve quite a ton of damage from Bonehew's bone spears and not to mention its insane damage and sockets which can be filled with amns for great leech.
A spear merc has the Might aura, with the aura the base damage goes higher, but if it was holy freeze the damage would not raise, yet the people around would be slower but if you were a cold sorc, I don't think this would matter. I use a glacial spike/ice blast on my left hand button to freeze everything around me while I blizzard.

The merc would only be for Hell Meph, with such high res, it can tank quite well. It rushes in too taking Meph off me. I'll load him up with:
GF (Trying to afford it atm -.-), Guilliames Face (Might IAS jewel it..) & Duriels Shell (Gladiators bane later as the duriels shiell is only for CBF).

The choice is yours, but if you ask me, the winner has to be the Barb merc. Its a matter of opinion :)

KT