Not really. If you teleport straight to the throne, the hardest part is dealing with the cold immunes that are in that room. Once baal's minions come the only cold immune that spawns are those skeleton mages from the second wave. If you teleport right up to them your merc makes quick work of them. Of course sometimes one of the minion bosses will spawn cold immune as a second mod, but because its just a single monster my merc can take care of them in a reasonable amount of time (because the initial blizzards will take care of his buddies). I don't recall the total run time from the game creation to the death of Baal but it doesn't take that long.

As for the gear part, I use Tal’s set; merc uses vamp, Leviathan, and a doom eth crypt axe.

In regard to the original post, you should be good with your gear, weapon switch and merc setup. I play SC USWest Ladder too so maybe I will see ya around some time :-)