Best Runewords for D2R 2.4 Mercenary - Top Weapons for New Act 5 Mercenary

Last week, we’ve got the second balance change of Diablo 2 Resurrected Patch 2.4 PTR, now the Act 5 mercenary will have two options. Then which weapons to use on your new mercenary?  Here are some of the best D2R 2.4 Mercenary Runewords for Act 5.

Best Runewords for D2R 2.4 Mercenary - Top Weapons for New Act 5 Mercenary 

Your normal optional being the Bash Stun with Battle Cry being able to use a two-handed sword as a one-hander, and now we have a frenzy barbarian that can dual wield. Thanks to MacroBioBoi, we have 8 Diablo 2 runeword weapons for PTR 2.4 Act 5 mercenaries.  

1. Headstriker 

Headstriker is considered to be the highest damage output for an Act 5 mercenary, when it is equipped on the original mercenary that is one-handed, the damage will be doubled. In addition, an Act 5 mercenary can actually quadruple crit, they also have a 5% crit chance, that's multiplicative with everything else. If they have a 100% chance to crit from the deadly strike, and if you successfully apply deadly strike crit and the mercenary crit, you actually get four times the damage, that's why something like Headstriker was so powerful. There is a chance that putting a Headstriker onto your mercenary is still going to be the highest damage output even on frenzy.

2. Fury

Fury is actually a really good option get +10 to frenzy, if you dual-wield it, they get a deadly strike, they get enough life stolen per hit so that on hell difficulty they still get at least 1% massively increased attack speed minus target defense and bonus attack rating, it's actually fairly nice, they won't apply the prevent monster hill but that open wound is really good.

3. Hand of Justice

You can dual wield Hand of Justice in a cryptic sword and also wear Dragon and then throw on Andariel's Visage for the survivability that they'll need and have a level 46 holy fire aura on your frenzy mercenary, that's also going to carry minus 40 enemy fire res and they've also reverted at least one part of the change so that holy fire will gain that 200 radial damage. If the target is in is within melee range, you're actually going to have a pretty decent amount of AOE fire damage coming off your mercenary. But it is expensive, you get to put it into a high max damage ethereal base and you get to level 46 holy fire. 

4. Last Wish

Last Wish is another weapon that is actually very interesting because you can dual wield it in Phase Blades. It is a six socketed D2R runeword, but the level 17 Might aura will stack with itself, so your mercenary can give you and itself a level 34 Might aura, which is kinda cool, keep in mind that this mercenary being able to carry large auras also makes it a legitimate contender when it comes to summon builds like necromancers and now the very viable summon druid itself. The only problem with Last Wish is that while it is going to get you lifetap which is very nice typically on those builds, you want to be able to put down Amplify Damage or Decrepify, the Barb will basically never die because it will have to fade up at all times, it does have really high damage but it doesn't get you any increased attack speed, so your frenzy is going to be very slow.

5. Lawbringer

Using a Lawbringer on an Act 5 mercenary was already a great option because it had such a high percent chance of casting Decrepify, and then on top of that, the Sanctuary aura would help to cc undead and push them away from you. So if you were to dual-wield Lawbringer, you're effectively increasing the chance of having a Decrepify aura applied at any given moment and you're going to get up to a level 36 Sanctuary aura, which is going to knock back undead to a further radius. It's not really going to increase damage altogether that much theoretically, if you were to put this into a really fast base, the frenzy barbarian at max stacks will be applying to crepify at a faster rate than the normal barbarian mercenary already does.

6. Oath

One of the best budget options on this mercenary is probably going to be building out Oath, it comes with an incredible amount of increased attack speed on the base, it's only a four-socket runeword, so you have a lot more options when it comes to what weapon to put it in, which mostly unlocks something like a cryptic sword for one-handed as well as a conquest sword for one-handed. Cryptic swords gonna give you that higher maximum damage but conquest sword is going to buff up your minimum damage, so they have better chances of surviving. Oath is probably a top-tier option.

7. Plague

You can put two Plague runewords onto your Act 5 Mercenary, doubles the chances that lower resistance is going to be Proc whenever they get attacked, and then on top of that, you're going to gain up to a level 34 cleansing aura, so while the healing from cleansing aura isn't altogether that important cleansing aura's main benefit is that it's going to drastically reduce poison length and curse length, it applies its minus length every two seconds, so it takes the initial value reduces, it takes the remainder and then every two seconds does that again and again, but also a really good alternative to something like Infinity.

8. Unbending Will

Unbending Will is something that you would typically build in a really big ethereal weapon for the normal Act 5 mercenary, since it is a 6 socket, it can only be put into a Phase Blade, but the mercenary itself casts Taunt, and then if it could dual wield weapons that would apply taunt on striking, you could have like a massive cc bot running around, so this is going to be really powerful on a hardcore playthrough and on any build that doesn't need infinity on its merc and doesn't need insight on its merc. Throwing two of these onto a frenzy Act 5 mercenary is going to give you a lot of space to work with as far as maneuverability and survivability, it also comes with a decent amount of increased attack damage.