What is the best Mercenary for a Barbarian?
Since a barb tends to be a front line melee specialist, he should look for something for crowd control or more damage. 2 clear choices are the NM mercs of act 2. They must be hired in NM as in other difficulties their auras are different, and not as useful. 2 clear choices – Offensive, which gives a might aura, and defensive, which gives holy freeze. Might is the most commonly used since it will boost your damage a lot. Holy freeze is another choice for some, who prefer the crowd control ability. At high levels, it definitely can’t be ignored. You should give your merc some form of life leech to keep them alive. You can even give them some items such as vamp gaze/shaftstop as this would increase their survivability by a large amount. However, few people could afford this. Also, in some places it is actually better to let your merc off dead, especially in the cow level or against bosses where they usually crumple and fail quickly.
