Most builds don't care that much about their mercs dps compared to their own benefits from aura, especially since its gimped by 75% against bosses
The benefits are also a lot more marginal than 'doubling'. On a basic might merc you get ~530% ed baseline, so getting ~150% ed on coh (since most are undead or demons) or 300% on fort alone, would be like about 24% and 48% more overall damage respectively. If he's attacking a 50% dr demon, a protectors stone can wind up being 25% more damage just from its +20 avg / -10% dr. There's a lot of PvM where a greyform with protector's stone in it does about the same DPS as a Chains of Honor, except for the higher leech on CoH
dps on fort/andys isn't anywhere close to being worth the benefit of cure

Don’t forget boneflesh… not as good without the life rep but still LL. I’ve found 3 of those in my SSF (including 1 eth, LFG) but still no Flayed, so work with what you got.

Well unless you really need open wounds for something like ubers, its just inferior. The other 3 options all have some best in slot applications. At level 98 mercs have 62% all resists in hell so the +65% all resists on CoH is barely better than an um rune in skin of the flayed one, and greyform + cure leaves them with 75/75/62/75 resists and opens up a slot for a protector's stone

Get rid of that garbage and get a cure

in andys, ideally you want a 15ias/30res jewel, if not just a ral works as temp
go this route when you really want your merc doing damage paired with something like efort and ereapers/ebotd/edoom

if a caster, cure ftw, especially if you spend alot of time in tzones and not in chaos. goes nicely with prayer aura and the meditation from insight

This post was edited by C4NTWO on Mar 20 2026 06:37am