Not sure what to use. What are yalls thoughts?

A5 while you have no gear

If you have money for:
Templars might
Faith rw
Beast rw
Pride rw

Things get interesting
You can get a1 merc with vigor base + faith + templars for vigor/might/fana
A2 merc with thorns base, pride and templars for thorns/might/conc
Or a5 with beast for fana/might

Personally I go with the a2 approach because a5 merc ai is batshit, my second choice would be a1 for the same reason

I might be totally wrong this is not a copy paste and I don’t know exact dmg numbers but as a summoner with no unbreakable resist problem imo you just use your merc to boost your already beast minions

Mercenaries cannot stack auras (couldn't in vanilla either).

By that I mean they can have their base aura, plus 1 aura from items, but cannot have multiple auras from items. I have play tested and confirmed.

That being said, best option is to wear a beast and a tmight, and get 2 additional auras from your mercenary. I am running A1 vigor merc, tmight armor on them, and wrath runeword for amp dmg and CB, and then wearing beast myself. Theres a lot of options

Personally running a5 for might with a high dmg eth hell slayer and cb/ds gear then using a low str req Beast in main hand on the necro, really not regretting having +skill or res in that slot as i have no problem doing everything in the game setup like this all the way up to soloing ubers on him

a5 > a1 but expect to resummon even with great gear if you do maps / ubers. some of the summoned mobs in the first map can't be leeched from

a5 with beast seems like the best option

I might end up doing that. Should I give him Ik set or is that just for the giggles?

it's not the best option, just amusing seeing a merc with a set aura

Edit: just noticed that's for private realms, so I am afraid rules might be different there, sorry if the below is completely useless!

The below is the ultimate merc for necro summoner imo:

Eth tresher infy (high ed, -% light res not fully exploited indeed).

Giant skull *2s* (i.e. 50% CB, high dmg) 1 of the 2 sox cham for cannot be frozen, the other can be rare gz jool, ias\resi, etc (eth or noneth, u nn high def so mater or style I'd say).

Armor: Bramble (can be non-eth, you will have multiple target so ur merc won't die often, but when hit, you'll get the bramble dmg).

Result: Ur merc and both melee and missile minions will have urfana (from beast, mandate weapon on ur summoner after leoric pre-cast),might from the standard default nm hired act 2 merc,conviction due to infy, and this will boost chance to hit for melee and dmg for missile elemental ones (and a bit more on top when they spawn light dmg-based as a nice addition), thorns from bramble, which will be quite a nice boost by consider that ur own def, merc, and mage minions is not great. At the same time, u have multiple targets so you are basically immortal.

Why we would avoid pride on merc: I love that weapon, and I must have made tons of them indeed but all in all, the above produces an equally good result with the addition of an incredibly powerful merc, which overall makes u kill bosses way faster than hdin or so when all the things are at the right place indeed. I did try both and compared, this build is better than replacing pride with infy on the merc.

Finally, there is indeed a professional way to get your concentration as well, and this is replacing the safe and useful good old clay golem with the nasty bad boy iron golem...made from pride. This assumes that you are prepared to spare a few prides ocasionally, but in any case with current protocols, and if you know how to play, there are really not that many risks...You can just make around 10 pride 20 from random polearms in ladder, store them, and happily live thereafter. This is the best possible build, though I do love the way clay golem slows target (yeah, one could consider decripify, but if you want to get a good iron bad guy, u won't get the points to get there as far as I recall). Happy to answer to questions about summoner, good memories

This post was edited by awk_xxx on Nov 27 2020 09:25pm

Idk if forgot this or newer knew but thanks for the heads up