Quote (Goomshill @ 30 May 2026 23:17)

you need life leech to keep a merc alive
the 3 options are

chains of honor
skin of the flayed one + protector's stone
greyform + protector's stone

Protector's stone alone gives pretty comparable DPS boost to the %ed/str on chains of honor, and also gives more % mf, and has the 1% chance to cast fade which only comes into play in long TZ games
mercs are already at 62% all resists by default and 75% poison with cure, so you get 62/62/62/75 with flayed one 75/75/62/75 with greyform, 75% all with coh.
cold resist doesn't matter at all (only significant source is frost nova on death), 62% lightning is enough to survive souls. Fire resist matters the most, though warlock builds with tainted also get resist fire aura for merc for free
So you can have 7% leech or 5% leech and +13% fire/cold resist, or you can use CoH for 75% all and 8% leech and +20% ed might or +2 prayer, but not have the spiffy bonuses of the jewel

Quote (unitedcows @ May 30 2026 10:29pm)

In the rare case where you use a prayer merc, you won't need life leech with insight and cure because of the crazy prayer synergy/stacking that compounds the life rep provided.
It's what I use atm. Fine without leech.

Quote (Gilgameshed @ 31 May 2026 09:01)

in general yea but if you want merc to survive against harold and kumar boss types you will need leech with high dps. Even skin or coh with an amp curse going off is enough to keep them alive against non-undeads typically. Prayer cure insight synergy is busted though, especially on es sorc. Not good enough for tanking heavies though.