Fishy merc weapon

[HuggaBear]

No I'm not a newb, sit down.

My merc currently uses a pride, after much investigation and a good bit of trading I successfully nailed a lvl 20 aura'd one, perfecto. With an insight golem and myself holding a beast (it fits my playstyle better than an AoKL (which imo is just dangerous thanks to the ctc bone prison, though less so with eni, it's still bloody annoying) or HoTo) my skellies and merc are quite the killers, fine, perfect, cool.

One problem, one very, very big problem, I made the incredibly noobish mistake of underanalysing the runewords, resulting in the rather unfortunate arisal of a cham rune in my pride...frozen monsters means slower minion gathering, but that's negligible compared to the lack of corpses for CE. My summonmancer is my MFer of choice (so very much safer than most and can hold ridiculous MF gear with next to no loss of kill speed) and this is slowing me down way too much for my liking. I like corpses, I like blowing them up.

So, my question is: What should I use instead?

I can trade for pretty much anything, could probably get an eth BotD if I tried...so no limits no nothing, best merc weapon. I don't NEED an aura with it, to be honest it was nice but since my necro is pretty much an MF'er for funding my other builds he doesn't party much and so it's just for the skellies which frankly don't need help.

He wears the standard: fort and andy's...

eta: maybe making a beast IG, giving insight to my merc (I like the aura, makes things easier) then using a hoto myself? The increased fcr could be useful...
Problem is beast with an IG scares me :(






tl;dr best act 2 merc weapon for a summonmancer, no restraints except this: no freeze.

[mii_the_people]

How about infinity? Though you've stated that you don't need an aura, the level 12 conviction certainly won't be bad to have. Helps skeles hit, increases mage damage, and perhaps most importantly, increases CE damage. More corpses to be found, as well, since there isn't any freeze mod on infinity. It offers enhanced damage, and crushing blow makes boss killing that little bit faster. To top it all off is a +30% mf mod on it. It's my personal favorite a2 merc wep. ber-mal-ber-ist.

[XCodes]

Yeah, you are, by definition, looking for Infinity. Should know that after Conviction aura, Beast is basically useless. That low of Fanaticism adds basically no %ed to your skeletons and the %ar is useless since your skeletons already have a 95% hit rate. You can keep Insight on your IG and then get something to help the MF along in your MH. Blade of Ali Baba comes to mind, although some magic +3 summon elite wand with 2 sockets works almost as well.

[Mikey Two Guns]

Yeah, you are, by definition, looking for Infinity. Should know that after Conviction aura, Beast is basically useless.

I second the notion that Infinity is the runeword that HuggaBear should look at. Assuming that HuggaBear is playing on B.net, I also agree that Beast is not a good choice for him.

If you make an Infinity, you should make it in either an eth Colossus Voulge or eth Great Poleaxe. Know the IAS that the merc will have, study his IAS breakpoints for both base weapons, and choose accordingly.

[HuggaBear]

Excellent, thanks guys ^^
Guess that'll help a little with CE too? Not that it needs it either :P but good call on the MF weapon, amazed I didn't think of that...I've got an ali baba on a mule somewhere...

[jread]

I use a BotD weapon on my merc.