My Moron is a Moron

[obiwansbane]

...he wont proc his damn aura... i get an nm act2 offensive, so he should come with might.. ive seen his aura once... other than that its never on :cry: how do i make him always have his aura on?

[JME]

Unfortunately, you can't.

The game treats his aura as an attack and as such your merc has to decide to use that "attack" to trigger. Usually, walking him around, leading him into harms way, and letting him beat up and get beat up on works. He eventually gets the idea to use it. Sometimes it's near immediate but sometimes it takes a while.

[BobTheWarrior]

If I understand correctly, you can equip him with a very fast attacking weapon, walk him out into the blood moor to get beat on by Carvers until he activates the aura, then switch weapons and go about your business. Once his aura activates, it'll be on until 1) he dies 2) you save and exit.

The more chances he has to "choose" to attack, the more likely he is to activate the aura, hence the fast attack weapon.

Or so I've heard. Never tried it myself.

[obiwansbane]

okay thnx guys

[JME]

If I understand correctly, you can equip him with a very fast attacking weapon, walk him out into the blood moor to get beat on by Carvers until he activates the aura, then switch weapons and go about your business. Once his aura activates, it'll be on until 1) he dies 2) you save and exit.

The more chances he has to "choose" to attack, the more likely he is to activate the aura, hence the fast attack weapon.

Or so I've heard. Never tried it myself.

I honestly don't think that has anything to do with it because it isn't a chance to activate on strike or on attack but a separate "attack" altogether. I could be wrong....but I doubt it.

[EternalTraveler]

I honestly don't think that has anything to do with it because it isn't a chance to activate on strike or on attack but a separate "attack" altogether. I could be wrong....but I doubt it.

No, attacking faster does mean the merc will trigger his aura more often, see this thread, they explain it far better than I can do:

http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=481708

[krischan]

The more "decisions" he has to make, the quicker the aura will probably activate, so teleporting around might help, if possible.

[Darkflight]

The more "decisions" he has to make, the quicker the aura will probably activate, so teleporting around might help, if possible.

I think this is true. The mercenary do a certain amount of actions every second, like attack, activate aura or wander around aimlessly. If you force him to make actions by teleporting around monsters he will eventually activate it.

My level 93 Holy Freeze mercenary has no problems activating his aura. He even starts it on half my Pindleruns, even though I use like 3 seconds to kill him.

[JME]

No, attacking faster does mean the merc will trigger his aura more often, see this thread, they explain it far better than I can do:

http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=481708

Thanks, but I didn't really need an explanation. As my post pointed out, we agree that weapon speed has nothing to do with it.:grin:

Perhaps I should have left off that last line. I think it made me sound more unsure than I wanted to.:scratch:

As Orphan's sig say: "95% of the time I'm right, so why worry about the other 2%? " :wink3:...I love that quote.

[krischan]

If a merc is quicker, e.g. from FRW or IAS, he will be done quicker with what he wants to do (either running from A to B or killing a monster), so he will make a new "decision" at an earlier time which speeds up aura activation. That's only an indirect speed effect, of course.