Merc skill bonuses from gear

[TheHighestTree]

Hi, this is my first post here. I Decided to register because I made the runeword Peace for my merc to use in the hopes that I'd be able to give him a minimerc with the 2% chance to cast 15 Valk on strike. Well, I played for about 30 minutes, and so far no dice.

:umm

Does anyone know the ins and outs of mercenaries and skills? For that matter, I don't even know if the +2 to critical strike works. The Slow Missile works, and I've used Tomb Reaver successfully on a merc before, but the 'returned' skele is probably much more simple than a Valk. Any info would be greatly appreciated. (Unless it's bad news )

[Hamtaro]

Actually, the "2%" makes a difference, its like that Saracemans chance amulet, "2% chance of casting iron maiden when struck"
It also depends on the merc, only melee mercs(a5 or a2) can use it succesfully, and time doesnt, % does.

[dNiym]

There used to be a bug that was abused with peace, if you put it on your merc and the 2% fired casting valk the game crashed. They did patch this exploit but since they have I haven't tried using peace on a merc to see if it does in fact spawn a valk.

Other things do work tho; Delirium for example will turn your merc into a bone fetish, and if the returned reanimate works then the valk might work too.

[TheHighestTree]

The two are really different though. (BTW, i'm not a noob to the game, but just got back into it after about 1 1/2 years hiatus) The skele that pops out of a corpse as 'Returned' is a semi-sentient monster that doesn't follow you directly or have a meter that shows up. A valk might complicate things...

BTW, it's buggy when I equip it on my barb...the valk just fades as soon as it appears.