My merc is an act 2 holy freeze merc with Insight Cryptic Axe, Andariel's Visage, and Duriel's Shell. It seems like he dies in seconds to anything. How can I make him buff enough to tank Andariel/Meph?
Andariel is known as the "merc destroyer" because of her poison.
It isn't easy to keep a merc alive on her. In general he shouldn't be dying too much with that gear. Socket a ral in the andy's to fix fire resist and that should be a pretty decent setup.
You do have to use teleport to reposition him when nastyness is going on, he can't just tank everything (he can tank quite a lot though). I'm not sure what level you are but leveling up does significantly improve mercenaries as well. I like a treachery armor for mercs over duriel's shell, but either is a decent low end choice (can't be frozen is certainly nice). Gladiator's bane is a nice step up in survivability if you can cover his resists. Next step up after that really is fortitude.
Also don't be afraid to feed him rejuvs in tight spots.
After the merc's gear is okay (lifeleech, all res 75+, eth elite weapon) the next most important part seems to be kill speed of the sorc herself. There are many spots where a merc just can't tank well enough to live forever; but if you kill things in those spots fast enough, he'll do just fine.
Do you have a call to arms on switch to buff him with? That also helps a lot.
Andy just destroys mercs, you will have to teleport constantly to keep him alive against her unless you do insane damage (fully synergized blizz sorc, full fire sorc, or infinity light sorc) since her poison is so strong.
Meph is slightly easier, but you will need to teleport and play smart still unless using a Blizzard sorceress. You can't really expect any merc to tank Hell Andy/Meph/Diablo, they just do too much damage to hirelings
Oh okay, thanks for the advice guys. Yeah I had heard it was a decent setup so I was wondering why he didn't seem to be performing that well, but I guess I'm just expecting too much.
what i do when i get to lvl 4 catacombs is i use 1 tele to get in andy's room, let my merc deal with easy monsters and i walk to andy...Couple of skills and GG...anyways, poison resist and CTA help alot too
Once you're past level 80-85 he shouldn't have a problem handling most mobs indefinitely, but vs bosses the trick is mostly to keep him from engaging them for too long and taking down the boss ASAP, so your own killspeed is also a big factor.
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