I'm trying out a defiance merc now. I'm not sure if I'm sold on it. I seem to be getting hit a bit more anyway which I find odd.
I ended up running NM meph twice before going to hell by accident. It was a good map (two teleports), but I forgot to screenshot.
Back in hell I went looking for meph again:

Sweet! No teleports at all!

There are council members in the middle on the way to mephy. One of them gave me an upgrade! Replaces a 6mf.
Then on the ~20th run, mephy gave me something useful, at least if I ever make enigma and need to make up fcr loss from the vMagi.

See the video of this run here:
http://s1078.photobucket.com/albums/w486/d2thing/torch/20120217/?action=view¤t=arach.mp4See drops from all ~20 runs here:
http://s1078.photobucket.com/albums/w486/d2thing/torch/20120217/Also, I found a couple 15 IAS jewels, so I dropped one in the merc's gface for a temp. I will hel it out before UT and replace with Um or a shimmering jewel.
This post was edited by DManZ on Feb 17 2012 02:41pm