So i finally reached NM act 4 and my damage with rabies is useless (but i want to stay committed to rabies)
Currently got skill points into:
20 - Rabies
20 - Psn vine
20 - Heart of Wolverine (added physical damage for merc)
couple points into Werewolf & Lycant

Heres the question:
Where should i invest to help merc survive?

Solution choices:

1. Invest in meat shield (Bear) for merc to survive more DEFENSE

2. Invest in Fury for more damage OFFENSE

Current gear:
spirit sword / Ryhme
Smoke armor
+3 SS ammulet
CB Gloves (SHITTY)
SoE belt
30 FRW / dual res boots
2x High AR rings
black / ancients pledge on swap

Merc Gear:
Obedience partizan (350+ max damage)
up'd rattle cage (swapping to treachery ASAP)
Blood craft Casque (like 2-3% & 7-8 DS)

It depends if ur thinking NOW or endgame^^
Basicly if ur not gonna use cta then endgame u can have a DW + 20/-20 shield switch or spirit. And Eth tomb mainhand...

But to stick true to ur rabies build, u already are boosting merc via HOW, then going grizzly makes u focus on rabies still, once u go fury u will automaticly stop using rabies and gearwize u will probarly start leaning towards fury items setup.

So i voted defense. Both rabies and summon is skillpoint based, and that makes u gear for rabies and stay true to ur build original plan. Grizzly also recieves syntenergies from +skillpoint adds from gear, not only hardpoints and become rather strong.

So then an endgame gear which u would probarly mf for a year or more to get looks like this:
Merc act 2 nm offensive: Eth reapers BER or 40/15 + Duress + Guilaume cham (effective boss killer, boost bear and himself via might + decreap)
Urself: Dw + Spirit or 20/-20 shield. Eni, 2 sojs, hl or 3/10 ammu or whatever skillpoint based fitting ur needs(mara also a choise, craft and rare as well). Trangs, Jalals, gores or WTS for mf or Resi or aldurs for survival. Strings or arach. (i would have some leech somehwere)
Offhand u can have: Pride, or beast + pheonix or storm, or cta + spirit.

This post was edited by gel87 on Mar 20 2020 08:47am

Well attacking from me is pretty much just rabies a time or 2, Feral rage a couple times, and then switch to fury for helping (considering --- attacking in the next 15 seconds is a waste until the duration of rabies wears off)
If i just went strictly RABIES it would be 2 hits every 15 seconds, lmao..

I have aldurs wep in stash if i wanted a little physical but it seems that the CB from me is more beneficial than what little physical i can put out, even tho merc can put out massive CB alone right now..

Sharing what I can but this is from my casual P8 SC WT, so take that into consideration. NM A4 was shitty to me too but shenk/eld are right around the corner
I've found recent success by hauling around prebuff gear in my cube. +3 summon helm and ammy (plus wearing spirits) and that 1 point in bear/oak will feel worthwhile. You'll even have room for +SS prebuff if you decide to rock g face or MF helm (might need trang glove 1st to compensate rabies dmg loss)

Hybrid style has been very exciting for me and I had to give up surprisingly little to integrate fury. Start with rabies then fury until ded or rabies needs recast. Wep swap in combat is annoying, cant tell which set you're wearing, but I try and remember to drop Spirit when I repair so I can see which is which. Ignore Target Defense has been a huge help for me and lightsaber is my new eventual end game. Grief has it too but I CBA running LK. Right now, I struggle with bosses (NM Diablo was miserable) but waiting on a CB/IAS wep to solve that issue.

I think treachery will go a loooong for merc survival. Not enough ias on Obedience to make that LL work for you

Well, then u can basicly just use a pure fury build with as high skill adds as possible like jalas(2all and 2 shape) and rabies once, then swap to skillboosted side and swap back and fury around. Since rabies will stay at the highest dmg output.

Like my pvp wolf, my eth tomb / bodt ba+storm side got range adder +2 or +3 depeding on tomb / Axe-shield. So i always rabies with that, then swap to dw + jmod 20/-20 side to trigger highest possible rabies dmg, then i switch back to bodt/eTomb.

Do you have a link to your walk? I thought i seen someone post a rabies walk a couple weeks ago but never searched for it..
My merc has the damage output for Rest of NM, i just have to keep him alive. So maybe i will just skill down to bear and atleast add 1 point into it and see how it goes from there.

I'm thinking i could also take some points out of Werewolf if i do happen to reskill later (because if i'm just using rabies and periodically using fury then i dont really need all of the AR/IAS from the skill itself. Maybe i could go along with this layout and see how it goes..


107 total

20 Vine
1 oak sage
20 Heart of Wolverine
1 fury
20 rabies
1 feral rage
1 werewolf - couple more here if i dont have enough + skill to make some ias to have some swinging motion atleast
20 Lycanthropy - Not sure about this yet (maybe even finish maxing after grizzly
20 Grizzly
1 raven
1 dire wolf
1 spirit wolf

Survival on grizzly and get that merc OP

Voted offence. Don't need deffence if everything dies fast ^^