With Enough Patience, A Merc Can Solo The Game
It has been mentioned here that a Frenzy merc has solo’d the game. That Act V bruiser is swinging a pair of Griefs, wearing Fortitude, and even sporting a Cham for the rare moment when Cannot Be Frozen comes in handy. I don’t doubt it for a second, my Rogue merc manages it even faster with less exotic gear.
The line “with enough patience, a merc can solo the game” shows up from time to time, usually from someone picturing a fairly equipped or twinked merc, and assuming that experience applies universally. But once we step into variant territory, the relationship between patience, power, and difficulty stops being that simple.
Variant difficulty isn’t defined by how long the merc takes to kill something. It’s defined by the stack of restrictions the player is juggling at the same time. Depending on the ruleset, that might include:
-Paper thin survivability - No Stat points, low life, minus 80 resists all, or outright one‑hit‑death fragility
-Skill restrictions - passive only, no skills, Oskill only, or whatever the variant calls for
-Hard caps on skills and Oskill levels - no synergies, no scaling, no class multipliers
-Item driven combat - fighting through Oskills, charges, and procs instead of class tools
-Merc centric progression - where your job is to stay alive and keep the merc alive. Actively participating.
-Budget merc gear - Reaper’s Toll or some low lvl Unique such as Woestave, Kelpie Snare, Treachery, and little else. Or Fire Engine Red's classic Rogue merc armed with nothing much than a Kuko
-Constant tactical work - pulling, kiting, recasting, terrain abuse, and AI manipulation
None of this is exotic to RB. It’s simply the normal operating environment for variants.
Why “Patience” Doesn’t Explain Anything. The idea that “a merc can finish the game with enough patience” only makes sense when the merc is strong enough that the player barely matters. That’s fine for standard play, but it has nothing to do with variant difficulty.
To illustrate the point:
If I create a naked sorceress with no stat points but full access to her skills, she can clear the game dramatically faster than many of the variants listed above. Teleport, Static Field, and high level elemental spells trivialize pacing. And, even without a merc. She requires less patience than any of the variants above.
But would we call her a harder challenge simply because she’s faster? Of course not. And that's why I have never made such a nood.
Speed has never been the metric. Her run is easier because she has power, not because she is more skillful or has less patience.
The other variants are harder because they have restrictions, not because they are slow. Patience is a side effect of the rule set, not a measure of mastery.
It is about Execution Over Endurance. A merc taking longer to kill Baal doesn’t say anything about the player’s skill. What it does say is the player is:
- Staying alive under harsh restrictions
- Keeping the merc alive with limited tools
- Navigating fights with no margin for error
- Compensating for every weakness the rule set imposes
The slower kill is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of higher difficulty.
How’s that for scratching the itch to return to some D2 gaming
I had to think this through, because I’m going to start by twinking up my most "useless" toon, Jeremiah the Leaping Warder, to address the whole "with enough patience, a merc can finish the game" idea by seeing if I can make it require a little less patience.
Jeremiah is the nekkid Baba who use Leap (not LA) and Grim Ward together with a Holy Freeze merc using a Reaper's Toll, the guy who can disable an entire level of monsters to a frozen fleeing state. Grim Ward alone is already slow by ~70%
With a stash of useless high runes staring at me, begging to be wasted, I’m going to make a rather useless freeze-stick so he can replace the HF merc and exploit other options. That means I’ll be dressing up Jeremiah as well, though he’ll stay passive with the same skill set
The first test will be Jeremiah running Beast (Fanaticism) in one hand and Doom (Holy Freeze) in the other…
PS: If you’re curious which merc to use or how best to twink one up, I’d appreciate any suggestions
PS2: Oh yeah he might as well go for max BO (I think I can get to lvl 48 so far) just because I hate to lose a BO showdown, my BO scream is going to quiet all Barbs
.
.
It has been mentioned here that a Frenzy merc has solo’d the game. That Act V bruiser is swinging a pair of Griefs, wearing Fortitude, and even sporting a Cham for the rare moment when Cannot Be Frozen comes in handy. I don’t doubt it for a second, my Rogue merc manages it even faster with less exotic gear.
The line “with enough patience, a merc can solo the game” shows up from time to time, usually from someone picturing a fairly equipped or twinked merc, and assuming that experience applies universally. But once we step into variant territory, the relationship between patience, power, and difficulty stops being that simple.
Variant difficulty isn’t defined by how long the merc takes to kill something. It’s defined by the stack of restrictions the player is juggling at the same time. Depending on the ruleset, that might include:
-Paper thin survivability - No Stat points, low life, minus 80 resists all, or outright one‑hit‑death fragility
-Skill restrictions - passive only, no skills, Oskill only, or whatever the variant calls for
-Hard caps on skills and Oskill levels - no synergies, no scaling, no class multipliers
-Item driven combat - fighting through Oskills, charges, and procs instead of class tools
-Merc centric progression - where your job is to stay alive and keep the merc alive. Actively participating.
-Budget merc gear - Reaper’s Toll or some low lvl Unique such as Woestave, Kelpie Snare, Treachery, and little else. Or Fire Engine Red's classic Rogue merc armed with nothing much than a Kuko
-Constant tactical work - pulling, kiting, recasting, terrain abuse, and AI manipulation
None of this is exotic to RB. It’s simply the normal operating environment for variants.
Why “Patience” Doesn’t Explain Anything. The idea that “a merc can finish the game with enough patience” only makes sense when the merc is strong enough that the player barely matters. That’s fine for standard play, but it has nothing to do with variant difficulty.
To illustrate the point:
If I create a naked sorceress with no stat points but full access to her skills, she can clear the game dramatically faster than many of the variants listed above. Teleport, Static Field, and high level elemental spells trivialize pacing. And, even without a merc. She requires less patience than any of the variants above.
But would we call her a harder challenge simply because she’s faster? Of course not. And that's why I have never made such a nood.
Speed has never been the metric. Her run is easier because she has power, not because she is more skillful or has less patience.
The other variants are harder because they have restrictions, not because they are slow. Patience is a side effect of the rule set, not a measure of mastery.
It is about Execution Over Endurance. A merc taking longer to kill Baal doesn’t say anything about the player’s skill. What it does say is the player is:
- Staying alive under harsh restrictions
- Keeping the merc alive with limited tools
- Navigating fights with no margin for error
- Compensating for every weakness the rule set imposes
The slower kill is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of higher difficulty.
How’s that for scratching the itch to return to some D2 gaming
I had to think this through, because I’m going to start by twinking up my most "useless" toon, Jeremiah the Leaping Warder, to address the whole "with enough patience, a merc can finish the game" idea by seeing if I can make it require a little less patience. Jeremiah is the nekkid Baba who use Leap (not LA) and Grim Ward together with a Holy Freeze merc using a Reaper's Toll, the guy who can disable an entire level of monsters to a frozen fleeing state. Grim Ward alone is already slow by ~70%
With a stash of useless high runes staring at me, begging to be wasted, I’m going to make a rather useless freeze-stick so he can replace the HF merc and exploit other options. That means I’ll be dressing up Jeremiah as well, though he’ll stay passive with the same skill set
The first test will be Jeremiah running Beast (Fanaticism) in one hand and Doom (Holy Freeze) in the other…
PS: If you’re curious which merc to use or how best to twink one up, I’d appreciate any suggestions
PS2: Oh yeah he might as well go for max BO (I think I can get to lvl 48 so far) just because I hate to lose a BO showdown, my BO scream is going to quiet all Barbs
.
.
KoP
