Why would you ever want Terrify and need a Phys Immune sunder to break phys immunes? Or did they stealth change Grim to break phys immunes?

And 2.5M edge swap is just odd. More trips to gambling town? Or you just gamble after each run at Jamella? Could be a fun one.

This is 100% a trav build. Goldfinding anywhere else is dumb anyway.

Grim Ward is really good outside of Trav. Barb can run Pit naked with a janky Insight and zero life leech on merc. It doesn't break PI but once you get the movement down (basic routine is GW a body, immediately leap away from it over a crowd, proceed to leap-pin crowd *into* the ward and taunt/push stuff to minimize merc movement) it's basically a better fishymancer. Fun ladder starter with friends or solo. In Trav it's a crutch that makes bad gear viable.

Time spent running to stash shuffling gold is wasted. If you're not going for LLD/tri-res/crafting gear just do it all on one character. A3 runs until primary stash full -> A4 gamble at Jamela -> repeat.

Really high MF horker has been a solid way to start the ladder. Beats making yet another sorc, ya know? I was more curious how early it could transition into running hell trav - answer was level 85 or so with an ITD weapon. Once ladder stabilizes could retire the character into a dedicated trav bot but I won't be playing that long.


For reference, I'm getting ~2:20 runs from creation to S+E.

Setup:
- lvl88 with max FP/FI/GrimWard, high Leap, low BO
- eth Arioch's Needle (Amn) + Treachery + Gface (Ral)
- dual alibaba / tele amulet / 0 FCR / -30 to -10 resists all around
- no Cham/CBF source on anything :|
- Harmony swap for town and run to temple
Rough route timings using LiveSplit:
- 10s create game loadscreen
- 10-30s identify/sell
- 15s stash, trav load screen, buff
- 1:00-1:30 clearing (Grim Ward 1st body, taunt/warcry/leap/tele to position)
- 5-10s check loot and Save+Exit (horked during end of kill phase)

This post was edited by Zeiris on Feb 19 2023 01:05pm

Grim ward always broke phys immunes. But it doesn't work on elites xD.

I think I've tried all the tactics in his post (using self dps builds) and came away with the conclusion that they're all super clunky or suboptimal with even mid gear. As in, as soon as you have grief and 2x babas lol.

Maybe at super low budget the fear effect can be more helpful than not, Idk.

Two MF weapons instead of self-DPSing looks like ~25% more gold with bad gear (MF-optimized) ~20% with okay gear (GF-optimized) and ~12% more with 40 slots of ideal goldfind charms.

I personally doubt the help on stoneskin/PI is worth losing the ability to micromanage merc. Human actively using their brain can taunt/push/howl stuff around so merc doesn't have to walk, or split damage across adjacent targets, or waste hits on PI/stoneskin when you can do it last. If you can't do all that and have to low effort autopilot (due to meat robot operator or otherwise) then yeah zerk should be expensive but good.

if i'm parsing you correctly, you're saying self dps is bad cuz you lose the skill points/ability to do all that taunt/push/howl micro?

well, self dps zerk + dps merc just sorta brute forces through council. You can even start horking halfway through and let merc finish off.

my runtimes on decent gear was like 53s, capped 10M gold in the 14:xx range (PR was 13:19). I've seen people do the same with various gavel builds.

Cool, I listed my gear and runtimes today on the current ladder reset as a self-sufficient ladder start char. Is it worth pumping fg into a one trick pony build that won't PVP?

I mean it doesn't break Phys Immunes at Trav, rather. Which is all that ever mattered :/

But yeah. Either full Merc or self-Zerk hybrid is the way to go.

How'd the dual Beast swap tests go? Is it worth doing dual Hustle now, especially for Frenzy mercs?

would this amulet be worth using? any price checks?

2 warcry
10str
36pr
9cr
21mf
tele charges

yeah i think it's nice, just nothing amazing
no fcr, just warcries, no goldfind, etc.