Hi !
Playing Cry Barb now and i got good one 227ed/14ll eth reapers.
Merc wear Forti + Andy , currently socketed Toll with Shael.
Will Ber be better instead of shael ?
Main runs Travi, in TZs merc wears Insight

What's socketed in andy?

fort is not ideal, it shatters some corpses due chilling armor
coh is about just as much dmg, due to 200 ed% vs demons and +2 skills (applying to might and jab), but also more stacked res in case of conv, and no co

same for reaper, sadly has innate cold dmg on it
Using both will shatter a lot of corpses, and on a warcry barb you get more drops from corpses than the actual kill, so that's a major downside on your total drops

The optimal merc for trav is a5 frenzy, dual grief pb, coh, guillaume cham (I mean, for any build that does not benefit from might itself, like a warcry barb)
But if you need insight merc for running TZs, then I understand that you won't want to switch between 2 merc...

I'd personally suggest a single setup, both for trav and TZs :

eInsight GPA
eCoH AP
eAndy cham

But if you want to keep your setup,
the ias breakpoints with reaper are :

ias / bp
0 / 13
8 / 12
22 / 11
42 / 10
75 / 9

if you have a cham in andy, then shael in reaper + the 20 ias from andy = 40ias, 2ias short of the next bp...
you'd get the same result with a 15ias jewel, with potentially fire res (to neglect the malus form andy), or with ed% to get more dmg

between shael and ber, shael is better overall because he'll proc more decrep
if you don't have a 15ias jewel in andy, shael is even more dps than ber vs super unique concil members

edit :
well I just checked, and even with a 15ias jewel in andy, shael is still more dps than ber vs unique concil members on p1
so its better in everyway, more dps, more decrep proc, cheaper

no modification needed, unless you want to rework the whole merc as I described in the previous post

This post was edited by SinsOfTheSun on Aug 16 2025 12:40pm

Thank you, i have ral in andy =) Was thinking about coh also, got fortitude because its cheap and i can use it for myself with diffirent builds Maybe ill try a5 merc also, completely forgot about that. Lawbringer+Grief setup isn't better than 2 griefs because of phys immunes ?

Really too much corpses shatter, i wasn't putting my eye on it *sigh

Lawbringer also has cold dmg

Skipping the rare immunes is faster than killing them slowly while also shattering corpses

forty has close to zero shatters.. reaper has the cold dmg present, which shatters.

eAndy cham or 15/30fire resi jool

botd war pike or ghost spear is also nice for a dmg setup when running trav for example

What does your Barb do? Can it kill or are you only reliant on your merc?

Are you a Horcker barb for gold and items, so shattered council members are a loss? How often do they shatter per run? 1, 2 or 3?

Reapers + Shael, Andys Ral (or fire res jewel with other mod) ... fortitude just because res and ED is decent enough. Guessing Might Merc. If so... maybe a Pride or the BotD War pike suggestion.

Personally it is up to you, what you find comfortable with your build... just test it out.

40ed/15ias jewel

Well i done some testing.
It's MF barb for sure, max warcry and find potion + grim ward. I was pretty happy with him, but andy/meph/diablo runs were too bad. So i tested a bit (still haven't try out CoH because usually everything stunned and can't really hit my merc, so no shatter at all)
So i checked out throw barb build with warshrike+lacerator, played for a few hours but really not my thing. I like cry much more, because i love sorc and this build is almost same to frost nova
Merc stays with Insight in eth Giant Thresher. Usual boss packs are dead in 1 second because wc is around 2.5k damage +105 fcr, phys immune skip is really best way, not to waste time on them.
And to do normal speed (like 30 sec) boss runs all you need is 2x lacerator on swap, that's all. It procs when misses, and gives decent damage boost to do them fast. Not as fast as sorc, but pretty ok.
Thank you ppl for all your answers, it helped alot

This post was edited by Vic777 on Aug 17 2025 07:01am