Faith merc? Or Might?

[:1]First-time poster. Not a first-time player, but just started again recently after nine years away.

I've been reading a lot lately about putting a Faith bow on a mercenary. I was under the impression that mercnaries had their own attack speed independent of weapon speed... is this feasible?

I was debating the use of a Might merc, using a Faith bow myself, and using HoW from a Wisp Projector. Wouldn't this be a more viable arrangement?

Also, since it's been ages... when and how does the ED from Faith, Might and Heart get added to my total damage formula?|||If you are going to use Strafe as your main attack, then you carry Windforce with might/pride merc. If you are a Multishot guy, then your merc should use Faith.|||Mercenaries do have a standard base frame attack speed, but I believe it can be improved by IAS from weapon/gear/etc. The main point of putting a faith on the merc is of course for the Fanacticism aura, you will see that there are multiple posts comparing the different end game bows and the overall result is that the DPS you put out is higher using a faith merc and you using windforce as opposed to you just using faith because you benefit from both a higher damage weapon and the fanacticism aura. I don't recall any of the posts comparing using a faith merc to a might merc with pride, so that could be an interesting outcome to see. Also all of the ED from Fanac, Might, and Heart are off weapon ED so they are all summed together and then multiplied against your on weapon damage. I believe the formula would look something like this:

Damage: (weapon damage + on weapon damage modifiers) * (fanac ed + might ed + pride ed + dex bonus + skill bonus)

This is obviously a rough formula, I will see if I can find the full detail version and edit it in.|||I'm actually playing a Frostmaiden, but I find so far that I rely heavily on Guided Arrows and Multi; Multi for sticking Amp Damage on a crowd if I can't just destroy them with Freezing Arrow (she uses an Atma ammy) or just provoking mobs outside the screen and Guided for taking down single tough mobs if they're immune to cold.

As such, between CIs, the Atma ammy, and my constantly needing mana when using FA, I find myself depending on the physical damage aspect of my bow a LOT. On the upside, even among Hell-difficulty Stone Skin/Physical Immune/Cold Immunes, I'm yet to meet a creature I can't take down with my well-heeled merc and easily-placed and reuseable Valk.

Still, the killing can take some time at current, and I haven't hit that peak setup yet (by far), so I'm exploring my top-end options.

Her current gear:

Head: Mavina circlet

Body: Mavina armor

Hands: Mavina gloves

Belt: Mavina belt

Boots: War Travellers

Weapon: Mavina bow (with Shael) (yes, I'm wearing the complete Mavina set)

Offhand: Arrows (duh! heh)

Ring1: Raven Frost

Ring2: Wisp Projector (for HoW)

Amulet: Atma

Her skills are 20 CA, 10 IA, 20 FA, 20 valk, 1 in bow prereqs, 2 in D/A/E, 2 in CS, Penetrate, Pierce, and 14 in Decoy (a useful tool AND a hp boost for my Valk, who has been VERY useful to me and often survives where my merc doesn't!). I haven't raised skills like Dodge or CS further because I figure my gear adds enough bonus skills to punch them up where I want them.

Even using normal attack right now is very handy for me... the set fires fast and the bow fires Magic Arrows. FA wipes out most crowds of non-CI mobs when I can see them. G is my weapon of choice versus big bads when my kids tank em, and Multi is my weapon of choice against crowds of CIs or very spread-out crowds.

My merc is a level 81 Might merc, currently using an Obedience Cryptic Axe, Guardian Angel armor and a 7/7/28 Vamp gaze (yeah, it has a Ber socketed into it so has 28% PhysR. Some guy just gave it to me shortly after I started, so I've been putting it to good use)

Nevertheless, mass killing in Act 4 or 5 Hell right now takes some time because this seems to me to be a midway setup. I'm trying to determine now what I should be aiming for as I accumulate higher runes (sadly, I haven't even seen am Um yet). I have an eth bugged kraken shell armor with all the runes for Fort in it except Lo and an Andariel's Visage waiting for my merc and a +2 bow skills/20% haste/knockback crafted set of gloves waiting for use, but I'm yet to figure out the rest. My current plan is as above: me using a Faith bow, and my Might merc using, ideally, Pride, with a level 5 Heart of Wolverine from Wisp projector to further boost things. That's about as far as I've planned, though.|||There is no doubt that the Maviana's set is not a fast shooter, on my one bowzon that specifically uses crossbows only I still use the circlet for the incredible 30ias that it provides. Overall though when looking at damage comparision's the bow lacks when it comes to physical killing power since the maximum it reaches is so low. I think the problem is that you need to decide what kind of frostmaiden you are going to be because it seems like from this set up that you would prefer to use the cold skills but are stacking various forms of physical damage instead of trying to improve your elemental damage output.

If you are trying to focus more on the cold damage route, I would highly recommend trying to get an "Ice" runeword bow, that is by far the handsdown best bow for frostmaidens. It not only provides solid damage, but has -enemy cold resistances, +cold skill dmg, ignore target defense and a holy freeze aura. If you really want to top out your cold damage another recommendation would be to get a nightwing helm, it too provides additional cold damage and plus skills, always a bonus and if you want to go to the extreme you could get an ormus robe with 15% cold damage but this really doesn't provide any other decent mods for a zon. If mana is really the problem, then consider an insight polearm for your merc, its cheap to make and is still effective at killing solving your mana problems. If you still want to keep your physical damage stacked though then you'll have to consider some form of mana leach such as cresent moon or a manald heal ring, but then you'll have to lose either your amp damage or How since you'll want the cbf and dex from your raven.

Once you start switching out pieces of Maviana's though, without the complete set it does even worse, so I would recommend switching the gloves and belt of course, the bow gloves will work great, but for the belt definately look at getting a razortail so that you can have maximum pierce (very important for cold and fire bowzons and is fairly cheap) this will allow you to hit multiple groups with your FA.

Also fort is an excellent zon choice in almost all cases since the enhanced damage is nothing to sneeze at and will vastly improve you physical damage. If you are really rich and want to keep switching back and forth between cold and physical skills then have ice on your main, and faith on switch.

P.S. Side note, atma's ctc amp will only work with the middle two arrows of the multi shot, so you may want to consider strafe if you are relying heavily on the amp damage (there are many ups and downs of both multi and strafe so its more of a personal preference though).|||The bow really is my weak point, due to the low damage.

The issue that keeps me focused on physical damage is damage immunes. No matter what I encounter, the Atma amulet will stick Amp Damage on it; I'm yet to encounter a monster I can't kill with a little work, mostly because of that Amp Damage and partially due to magic and cold damage (the Mavina set itself adds cold damage AND adds 20% to cold skill damage).

I AM likely to switch formats down the line; cold has low damage output overall, and the Ice runeword won't break immunities as I understand it (something like Lower Resist or Conviction is needed for that), while the Atma ammy gives physical damage a leg up.

As I've said, I know the Mav set is essentially a handy midway gear arrangement; ultimately, I suspect my inclination will be for a fast bow attack (if I use a Faith myself, I'd likely make it a Mat bow for it's lower attack speed breakpoints), so that I could get Amp stuck faster, but I'd also need to maximize my physical damage once it's stuck, so the question becomes:

Windforce for me, Faith on merc?

or

Faith on me and Might merc with Pride? merc weapon would have no innate enhanced damage except vs demons, but gain benefit from all three auras, Fort armor, and he'd either stick with the Ber'd Gaze or move to Andy's Face. An ethereal Cryptic Axe Pride with Fort and all three auras at max, according to the calc I use, would still do 618-2841 before Strength addition, mercs get great innate resists, and the Gaze would provide significant physical resist and leeching.