Possible Diving Merc Scaling Vector

Skip the preamble if you don't want to read the pre-blurb that comes before every recipe website. Here's your ctrl-f [SKIP].

I believe I might have found a way to make our favorite diver merc usable?

So to preface this, I am a super casual PoE player. I like to play each league launch, typically get to maps about a week in, noodle up to reds (if im lucky), and generally stop about 2 or 3 weeks in. I never make any currency outside of the one (1) or two (2) natural div I tend to get per league and I might max out with about 40 or so chaos. Outside of Cowgirl league where I finally killed quest Exarch/Eater for the first time ever I've never seen seen endgame content, I just remake the great love of my life (Chains of Command Guardian) and happily alch and go some level of red maps mindlessly bopping monsters for 10-20 minutes a map.

All of this of course changed with Luminary.

I have always hated how it takes me until past level 69 to get my CoC online. I want my friends sooner, not later. I am a masochist- I don't follow build guides, I go through the campaign with my chosen skills, and I don't build towards something else to carry me to my chosen "swap" point. Luminary seemed to solve my, albeit few, complaints about my wife. Merc before Dominus? Plus I can gear them with random trash/uniques that I can also pull back off of them? I don't have to solve ramping time to make UNLIMITED SWORD WORKS I can just run forward and my merc will say its mercing time and go merc monsters? I'm sold. Call me a fish cause I was baited hook, line, and sinker the second I saw what Luminary was revealed to be. I also didn't run into any of the issues that most people seemed to run into with Luminary. I reset maybe a dozen or so times looking for a merc that called to me, and call to me he did. I leveled one of the smoothest starts I've ever had with a big bad slammajamma Eruptor. Volcanic Fissure of Snaking obliterated everything in front of me all the way to taking down quest Eater/Exarch again with only one trade out for a similar Eruptor but lvl83 with much better supports that cost me a whopping 15 chaos. I even took down the memory pinnacle and can actually do the memory mechanic now! But for as much as I liked the Eruptor, I wanted more. He didn't have that comedic absurdity I've come to enjoy in life. I tried a warpriest because I wanted to see if I could do Touch of God shenanigans but without a weapon mercs do nothing but run in place and when they do have a weapon equipped they cannot cast Touch of God. Then I read about the diver and how he speaks like Kenny. I'm sold.

[SKIP]

Here he is, in all of his diving majesty. I'm using two Ephemeral Edge's (EE) for his weapons to give him some added flat based on my ES because I'm too much of a turboslut for Chaos Inoculation to do lifestacking. We also can't lifestack because Elemental Hit of Ice (EHoI) can only ever deal cold damage which also means I can't use Untouched Soul/Enmity's Embrace for free defences and fire pen. Now for the people smarter then me in the audience you might have noticed that EE adds Lightning Damage and EHoI can only deal cold damage: I solved this by giving him two catalyzed Call of the Brotherhood's to convert all of that added lightning into cold damage. To solve my pen problem I remembered via the courtesy of the wiki that Crystallised Omniscience (omni) is an amulet that exists. Omni solves his res issues, gives him the cold pen he requires, and isn't too terribly hard for a shitter like me to work with. My merc's auras are Herald of Ice, Purity of Ice, and Hatred so we've got a little bit of base to play off of.

Here I am. Ever since my failed armorstacker I have been enamored with being an aurabot. I run Chaos Inoculation because of my aforementioned sluttiness, which combos into my bisexualness of rolling armor/block based with my Guardian's favorite uniques Aegis Aurora/Melding of the Flesh. For my defensive aura's I run Tempest Shield, Purity of Elements, Discipline, and Determination. For offensive I'm using generosity supported Haste/Wrath and spam Smite to apply cold exposure. I'm using an Ashes of the Stars to boost my aura's one more level and my rings were just Zana's Ingenuity's that had an ES roll and a defensive roll that was helpful for me at the time (I don't want to get crit and I needed the ele pen immunity to survive Exarch's gigantic fucking balls bashing my poor body across his arena). I'm using a Ceinture of Benevolence to help my merc out a little with his survivability to give him my flask effects and I'm using Protective Link to keep him alive. I found The Arkhon's Tools from the memory pinnacle and tried to run skitterbots but theyre expensive and didn't feel like they were helping as much as I wanted. My hat is an armourstacker hat that I crafted from the armourstacker google doc and it is easily the single most expensive item I've ever had.

Even if I'm not playing CoC this league I could never neglect my boy. I'm running a support Anime Guardian with my usual set up of cheap uniques, Leer Cast/Gruthkul's Pelt/Legacy of Fury. Instead of his usual Voidforge I've given him a Victario's Charity so he has a good chance of giving frenzy's to my merc and I chose to give him a Singularity because there was no other unique one-hander with an interesting debuff I could find on the wiki. Do I know if applying Hindered is helping me or hindering me? No, I have no idea, but it's a fun toy for him to play with instead of his usual kit. My Sailor Scout is being supported by Meat Shield, Companionship, and Elemental Army. I've also given him Hrimsorrow so he can only do cold damage, thus applying cold exposure thanks to the Elemental Army gem, and I just realized while writing this that I don't need cold exposure on my gloves because he is applying cold exposure and I don't think sources of exposure stack.

All of these pieces combine to make a framework that someone much better then me can probably work into an actual build for our favorite diving merc. He can clear maps faster then I've ever cleared them before (around 2 minutes is absolutely blazing fast for my casualness, to the point of me literally not being able to control my character with an accel shrine anymore) but he's missing that little bit of special sauce to really make him go insane in his membrane.