I tried him; no matter what setup I used, he was jus always worse. The sheet DPS doesn't account for the fact that Jab starts hitting at full speed right out the gate, with Frenzy taking some time to build up.
I even tried to make an A5 Merc that starts at maximum IAS instantly, and that still wasn't enough.

I suspect part of it is that the range on the Merc is worse. An A2 Merc can easily have 3-4 range, whereas an A5 merc is usually stuck on 1. That makes a difference when it comes to chasing.

Tried custom setups with dual Headstriker and full +30max dmg for scaling, etc. I invested a TON of resources into maxing out A5 Merc. Alas.

I have to share this with you cuz i've actually been enjoying the act 5 frenzy merc a hell ton for a long while now

but due to act 2 emilio is still pretty dominant in terms of his soloing capabilities so i still posted it as the best option for this build



HOWEVER! the speed from an Act 5 Magnus is really great for less baby sitting, the biggest difference is he aggro's councils so easily and keeps em' stuck on him
then the added bonus is his movement speed, Magnus chases down so much faster compared to Emilio walking with 0% frw so you need to telestomp with an A2 merc while chasing down

so when i run with Magnus i barely never need to re-teleport to reposition him, he just sticks onto them automatically which is great when im horking


Magnus's Gear

Crown of ThievesCham
Chains of Honor
Grief PB
Eth Up'd Headstriker ( no sockets yet im planning to use Amn Rune for survivability )


for his gear arreats might be a good option as well for many bonus added but less life leech
the biggest concern is he does have a little issue surviving if he faces a stronger enchanted mobs, im suspecting this is a life leech issue since Emilio does have like 35% total life leech compared to Magnus's 20% so im working on that

also the Double Headstriker used to deal more damage than Grief previously due to the base coding of Act 5 Mercs dealing double damage with 1H swords, but that bug is fixed now so wielding Dual Griefs or Grief+Headstriker is currently the highest damage build i believe
not enough research into this but also read posts about Grief+Last Wish doesn't add much dps since LW can be only made in PB, so Headstrikers critical strike actually does more for his Grief Main Hand.

my conclusion for the Magnus A5 Mercis using the current setup

He deals GREAT damage, no problem killing councils
Movement speed is really great cuz he keeps all the councils away from you when you are horking
Chases down councils nicely without needing to reposition him via teleport
A Ton less babysitting
Better crowd control capabilities via his movement speed/taunt and safer for you
Faster playstyle
Who doesn't love a barb bro fighting beside your barb?

Less survivability compared to A2 Emilio if the Super Uniques comes with powerful enchanted mods/auras - needs to be fixed via lifeleech imo
Does die easier if you leave everything to him alone, so you do need to Tyson the councils
Less life leech 20% total compared to EBOTD A2 Merc's 35% lifeleech = less survivability

yeah, so far i don't see myself going back to Emilio too soon, im having great fun with him seeing him chase down runners lol

This post was edited by HK21 on Jun 15 2022 10:23am

awesome, so my thought wasn't that wrong. Thanks for all the details with the gear etc.

Why CoH? Isnt Forty enought resists?

Kind of a footnote: that bug hasn't been fixed as far as I've tested, unless they hotfixed it in a recent patch.
As of 2.4's release, that was definitely still in.

Fun build. I switched from the standard leap and wait build to this (still using crappy merc gear but w/e) and this is a lot more fun. Also have found some good items in only 20 or so runs. Thanks for posting.

glad you're enjoying it man, best part is once you conquered travincal you could basically bash your way out to anywhere you want

horkers need corpses, the shiver armor from fort shatters corpses occasionally (like 1-3 bodies out of 10), so COH is the best option for it




yeah i just tested it its definitely fixed as i saw other threads discussing about it
these are my test run results running 8p Eldritch, i also skipped any stoneskin / holy freeze aura / extra strong enchanted mods to keep the results equal


Eldritch Clear 8p

Dual Eth Up'd Headstrikers time- 2:14 to kill
Grief PB + Eth Up'd Headstriker time- 1:55 to kill
Grief PB x2- 1:14 to kill




AND heres some news to the Act 5 Magnusthat ive been testing over like 3 hours

so this was his setup

Crown of Thieves Cham
Chains of Honor
Eth Up'd Headstriker Amn
Grief PB

THE PROBLEM WITH A5 MAGNUS FRENZY MERC

turned out it the Amn runelife leech didn't help at all, i did think that it was not enough life leech but that wasn't the case either
tested in SP with hero editor and the end results is that -HE JUST MISSES TOO DAMN MUCH

the base damage of A5 Frenzy Magnus is already lower compared to an A2 Emilio, so he's already leeching less life right from the get-go
plus with all the missing hits he's just not able to survive the whole thing himself

so same as everyone would try to fix this is increase his attack rating, i took my dusted Demon Limb out, gave him enchant
he busted trav himself for the whole 20 runs, including stone skin( i did take out the Physical immunes for him )



TEST RESULTS

yeah.. its his attack rating thats utter shit
as i always do i try to not use items with charge buffs so i tried these following setups to increase his overall attack rating

Arreats - Cham
Chains of Honor
Grief PB

Ethereal Fury Cryptic Swordgives 20% Bonus attack rating and 5 Frenzy + 66% open wounds
Ethereal Passion Cryptic Swordgives 80% Bonus attack rating
Ethereal 300ed Fool's Cryptic Sword with x2Gul Rune - boosts around to 9k AR( i tested it using the same level frenzy as Magnus and no points into Mastery )

Fury Cryptic Sword did the best results in order of survival, but still not comparable to Demon Limb Enchant charges or A2 Emilio

so i also wield Beast BA to provide him Fanaticisim aura on top of those builds, still no prevail

*EDIT: due to how Frenzy and dual wielding works, the weapon bonus's only work on one hand, so if you wear dual wield a fools weapon
only the fools weapon will receive the AR bonus, this includes deadly strike/open wounds etc etc so Grief would not get the 100% deadly strike bonus from Headstriker
so the best way to boost his AR is using Fury's +5 Frenzy and Arreats +4 skills and 20% bonus AR. hence why Fury worked the best since its +skills and not single weapon bonus
because you are trying to boost his Grief side AR, i did thought the off-hand fools/fury/passion AR increase would act as solely an life leech offhand, but seemed it didnt work out that way

after that i just felt Enchant on Magnus was really strong and clearing faster than Emilio so i took him back to Eldritch 8p test with Enchant on

Arreats - Cham
Chains of Honor
Grief PB x2
DEMON LIMB ENCHANT

Eldritch Clear 8p

Dual Eth Up'd Headstrikers time- 2:14 to kill
Grief PB + Eth Up'd Headstriker time- 1:55 to kill
Grief PB x2- 1:14 to kill
Grief PB x2 + Enchant - 0:57 to kill


TL;DR

Enchanted A5 Magnus Frenzy Merc is the goto build if you want him to solo Travkindly reminder you still have to zerk off the physical immunes

oh and i found a Lo rune during the test process, gonna give Magnus a second Grief PB now LOL

This post was edited by HK21 on Jun 15 2022 09:26pm

Magnus 2.0 Powerhouse Setup

gotta find him an Eth Arreats face to put a Cham in
but for my laziness im still not going to enchant him every game with demon limb

This post was edited by HK21 on Jun 15 2022 09:20pm

Just did a few runs with Emilio too lol.. the results were quite interesting


Eldritch Clear 8p

Act 2 Might Emilio Setup

Crown of Thieves - Cham
Chains of Honor
EBOTD GP

Pre-Proc Might Aura - 1:17 to kill
Pre-Proc Might Aura + Enchant - 0:56 to kill

[IMG] https://imgur.com/u8vBXwz [/IMG]