Recently I've given him two headstrikers and... gosh, this boy is blind as hell. He literally hits 1 of 6 attacks in TZ.

I've tested the idea to give him double griefs, which in theory should make him hit EVERY attack due to Ignore target defense. But only in theory. On practice he keeps missing every 2nd attack.
All this makes boosting his damage or attack speed completely uselless, since there's no sence in boosting misses.

Any ideas to help him hit something?

This post was edited by subaridji on Mar 20 2024 03:25pm

You can try buffing him with Enchant (Demon Limb etc.)

i've come to the conclusion that it's not AR (it's similar to a2 merc) but the base range on a5 is 0 so he will whiff a lot as monsters die/move out of range


https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php/Melee

can't agree with that. you can leave him alone with some random unique mob with stone skin and watch how he struggles to hit him for 10 minutes.

what i've tried:

hustle sword w fanaticism lvl1: +40% AR
grief - ingore target defense
heart of the wolverine lvl30: +228% AR
enchant w demon limb lvl23: +218% AR

what else can be done:
sigons helm + armor: +792 AR

I Eth'd 2x Azurewrath vs Ubers but I didn't check how often he missed. My gears are written in:
https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=103519824&f=148&p=659531128

What level are you? Level affects chance to hit too.

Ignore target defense doesn't work on mercs BTW

98

Are you sure your merc is missing and not getting blocked or dodged?

i only use a5 merc for my gf barb now and with dedicated testing and large amounts of time trying different builds

headstrikers are inferior to grief
unless you want other functionality things aka crowd control/survivability or auras like last wish/lawbringer/plague
double grief pb is always going to come out as king for damage

he does have a severe attack rating issue, and ignore target defense doesn't work for mercs
you can test this simply by using a demon limb enchant on him and he can solo chaos, and the difference in his TTK is also significant

im lazy so i also hate using chant every game, so in theory in increasing his ar without using chant is only:

arreats - 20% bonus to ar
visionary - bonus to ar by level - biggest boost
self-wield beast for aura
hustle weapon isn't worth it because damage will be halved

thats pretty much it, i really wish we could give mercs more items slots rings/belts etc like pd2 has so we could have more customization