The way to counter massed sources of moderate damage is integer physical damage reduction (PDR). Corrupted rogue archers deal some elemental damage as well but an easily obtained defense that will still last your mercenary long is sol runes, just as with pesky nightmare dolls. Cast weaken too, that will ease things a lot. For example:
10 lucky dark archers fire and hit for maximum physical damage, 10 x 84. 840 damage, and two such volleys will finish your town guard.
Weaken them, and the damage shrinks to 10 x 54, 540.
Put 7 Sol runes in helmet and armour and the damage of each weakened hit is reduced to 54-49, a meagre 5. Or 50 damage per volley.
This will not be so effective against a few stronger enemies but those are easier to avoid with ample teleporting and nothing stops you from keeping several setups of merc gear in your stash. In Act I, the dangers to mercenaries are in my experience predominantly swarms of archers rather than big individuals anyway.
Sol runes are of course the countess' domain. You can keep raiding nightmare Mephisto hoping to find excellent mercenary armours like Shaftstop (against bosses) and Iron Pelt (against mentioned groups) and just about any lucrative raiding that gives you gold to gamble circlets (of life everlasting) for can be worthwhile.
10 lucky dark archers fire and hit for maximum physical damage, 10 x 84. 840 damage, and two such volleys will finish your town guard.
Weaken them, and the damage shrinks to 10 x 54, 540.
Put 7 Sol runes in helmet and armour and the damage of each weakened hit is reduced to 54-49, a meagre 5. Or 50 damage per volley.
This will not be so effective against a few stronger enemies but those are easier to avoid with ample teleporting and nothing stops you from keeping several setups of merc gear in your stash. In Act I, the dangers to mercenaries are in my experience predominantly swarms of archers rather than big individuals anyway.
Sol runes are of course the countess' domain. You can keep raiding nightmare Mephisto hoping to find excellent mercenary armours like Shaftstop (against bosses) and Iron Pelt (against mentioned groups) and just about any lucrative raiding that gives you gold to gamble circlets (of life everlasting) for can be worthwhile.
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