"oskills" and Mercenaries

[Nyalitch]

A few questions regarding the Act 3 Iron Wolf Fire Mercenary:

1) If I were to equip him with the armour (<-- yes, I'm Canadian) and helm from the Trang Ouls's set to activate the +18 bonus to Fireball, would he receive the full +18 benefit or would it count as as "oskill" towards him, resulting in a piddily +3 to Fireball?

2) Would he benefit from the Burning/Blazing/Volcanic magic prefixes that indicate "+1/2/3 skills (Sorceress Only)". If so, I'd assume that the Lightning and Ice Iron Wolves would also benefit from the corresponding "+sorceress tab" skills.

If anyone is able to shed some light on these Burning ("ahem" ... sorry) mysteries, it's greatly appreciated. Thanks for the time...

[ryan4nayr]

2)&nbsp; Would he benefit from the Burning/Blazing/Volcanic magic prefixes that indicate "+1/2/3 skills (Sorceress Only)".&nbsp; If so, I'd assume that the Lightning and Ice Iron Wolves would also benefit from the corresponding "+sorceress tab" skills.

Sorry, "Sorceress only" means exactly that. Yup, they fixed that pre-1.10 bug where certain skill prefixes count as +skills for the appropriate merc abilities.

I wish Blizz kept this bug though, would make the mercs a tiny bit more durable. Just a tiny bit.

EDIT: used more exact phrasing

[adeyke]

They get just +3, not +18.

They aren't affected by +sorc skills or +sorc skilltabs. However, they are affected by +all skills, +fire skills and +specific skills that they already have (even though it's labelled sorc-only, e.g. a +3 fireball Ormus' Robes).

[bigeyedbug]

Hmmm. While we're at it, what about "grey-market" synergies in the Marrowwalkian tradition?

[Obi2Kenobi]

Can they even use anything that adds charges to a skill that they don't use which also synergizes one of their skills?

[adeyke]

Yes. For fire iron wolves, there are can be charges of fire bolt on rare/magic swords. Fire bolt synergizes with fire ball. I don't think there are any such items for them, but I'm sure the other mercs also have at least some such items.

[Nyalitch]

Thanks for the replies, guys! ... *sigh* ... although, for that brief time, it was nice to dream of a merc weilding a lvl 50 Fireball. By the way, back in 1.09, I remember a lvl 98 Fire Merc would use a lvl 29 Fireball and lvl 21 Inferno. Does anyone happen to know if this was changed in 1.10? Either way, thanks again (...goes off to look for a Hand of Justice...)!

[adeyke]

A level 98 fire iron wolf hired in normal will have slvl 30 fireball and slvl 32 inferno.

[LavCat]

This might be a good place to ask a related question: I was recently told that in 1.10 the stats and skills of a mercenary no longer depend on the difficulty level at which the mercenary was hired. Is this true?

[adeyke]

No. It still matters. Mercs hired in normal are still superior in almost every way to those hired in nightmare, which are superior in almost every way to those hired in hell (with the exception being act 2 mercs' nightmare-only auras).

[patriach]

I apologize if this has been mentioned in the forum, but I want to know if synergies work with merc. If this is true, then the cold iron wolves and lightning iron wolves are clearly superior to the fire ones, right?

[Obi2Kenobi]

I want to know if synergies work with merc.

Yes

If this is true, then the cold iron wolves and lightning iron wolves are clearly superior to the fire ones, right?

No. A freezing arrowghtning fury hibrid zon would get much more use out of fire (assuming they don't want to use an act 2) It's just a matter of situation.

[librarian]

Heiho,

I may hav missed some recent knowledge enhancing topics due to strolling around in Ancaria more often than in Sanctuario, so

>> I want to know if synergies work with merc.
> Yes
Obi, could you link me to some location where this is explained in some more words?
Otherwise I'll still believe there is no such thing as synergies with mercs, because they don't have skilltabs, they just use two (sometimes three) skills borrowed from the char classes.

TIA

[adeyke]

Mercs do benefit from synergies. Cold iron wolves' glacial spike and ice blast synergize each other. Lightning iron wolves' lightning and charged bolt synergize each other. Barbarians' bash and stun synergize each other.

I think that, aside from bug exploitation, these are the only cases where mercs actually have a skill that synergizes another skill they have.

[librarian]

Heiho,

I've just met Red Havoc, and he also says that there is most probably synergy between the merc's (appropriate, of course,) skills.
Well, that's new to me, I always thought it would not work that way. But if the 'do_that_skill' trigger actually points to a character skill in skills.txt, there seems also to be a formula field for synergy check.

Next conclusion is that even a monster gets synergetic effects, assumed it has the ability to use two character skills with synergies to each other. In an unmodded game this should be of no concern, I don't know many monsters using actually character skills, not to mention two synergetic ones.
If Charge and Smite _would_ synergize, then Duriel would be a candidate.

What about Pindle (using Charge as Defiled Warrior) with a randomly generated Might Aura?

adeyke, thx4answer, but it was my lousy question, I'd have to ask 'why do the merc's skills synergize' :-)

[Caaroid]

One could test that, seeing how blood lords have both meteor and fireball as skills.

[librarian]

Heiho,

no, this won't work, because they don't use the player skills but VampireFireball, VampireMeteor etc.

As I said, there are only a few monsters using actual player skills.