The behavior changes at 101. The visible stats show a substantial loss in AC. They do have increased mitigation though to act more like PC tanks. AC buffs and gear also help a lot more with the 101+ mercs as they're no longer well past some cap levels. Damage to the mercs does become more spiky. This does add a some more risk if you get some unlucky rolls of the rng. My personal experience is that they're about equivalent in effectiveness with the changes. I've used a tank merc with a single healer merc through all of TDS progression and in every zone. I do have to slow in some cases or else have trouble. If you don't have a slower, adding a second healer should compensate. At 100 in cotf, my tank merc could not tank multiple mobs in a gribble HA. At 105 with the "new" mercs, I've had one tank 3. Seems like an improvement there. You're not likely to be able to tank multiples in TDS as the mobs both hit harder and have more hitpoints and thus live longer and increase the chance of taking a bad round until you get the multiples killed. My merc does typically stay up long enough in TDS to get the multiples under control with my enchanter, but it can get really close at times. I personally don't feel like they were nerfed. It just took a little bit of adjusting to them behaving a little different. Had they announced the changes rather than letting people see the AC reduction and starting forum threads about them being bugged/nerfed, I think we'd be seeing much less discussion about this. It's more of a communication issue than a nerf.
I've found that a tank merc with max tank AA's does pretty well! Sure ya have to bring singles and its dps blows but its workable. Not gonna take down any named or anything.
This isn't quite accurate. AC=Mitigation, and their mitigation did decrease fairly substantially. What did increase was avoidance, meaning, similar to players, they get hit less often than they used to. It was claimed that this would help make AC gear/buffs/etc more meaningful, but there were parses done during the pet nerfs that showed even NPCs with extremely high starting AC receive relatively large returns on additional AC. It would make sense that there would be diminishing returns, as AC is a value relative to a mob's ATK, but I've seen no data that actually shows this. I have no anecdotal evidence to add to this discussion (beyond pointing out that anecdotal evidence is not the best way to prove your point), but I will say that Avoidance is not a substitute for mitigation. Tank mercs are now more like players, except they have an excessively idiotic AI that presses buttons at the most inopportune times, and they have HP pools that are unable to handle spikes. I think tank mercs are due for some retuning, and avoiding their stupid AI would be a large part of it (better option is to remove discs and add passive stats).
Thanks for adding better description of the technical side. The AI is no worse than before. With or without the changes, one is making a compromise using a tank merc versus a real tank or having a ranged group with a mage pet. Nothing they changed made that worse or better. The things are as stupid as ever. I've not done any parsing of mercs and have no interest in doing so. I think the pet nerf thread showed just how well one with an agenda can manipulate variables in a parse to prove a point. In the end, I much prefer real world usage and it's rather binary for me in this case -- do they do their job or not. I do depend on them frequently and have honestly not seen a noticeable loss in utility. Other's experience may differ. Maybe I just have a group make up or play style which covers up for the changes. I would not turn down any improvements. The recent hp boost they got was a good change and helped with the spikes. In the grand scheme of things, I think using a "merc nerf" as a reason to not buy tds or level beyond 100 is short sighted. I don't believe there's a significant enough change in actual use to merit that argument. I'd also prefer to see limited resources work on adding content or doing other things with a bigger return for the overall player base.
lol a player tank or healer can hit 1-2 hotkeys and outperform their merc counterparts, is the comparison here. Mercs to archtypes
As an enchanter, my tank merc seems to do just fine. I even leave a shield in his offhand, and he still holds aggro off all but the most excitable dps toons. I do cripple/slow every mob though. One of the things I've noticed is that people keep saying he dies to two blue mobs... well group geared tanks who don't pop defensives will die to two blue mobs in tempest temple too. If mercs were to out perform group tanks, why would we need group tanks at all?
Group geared tanks can intelligently stagger their defensives to keep one up. The tank merc blows his right away and dies on the next multi-pull
I agree. So don't multipull with a tank merc. Or get a group tank who can handle the multiple pulls if you can't manage single pulls. I've even tanked named in Arx Mentis with my tank merc, though it took me runeing him and runeing the group to ease up the healer mercs burden. The problem is that tank mercs have to be balanced around debuffs. If they get to where they don't need slows/cripple.. then you're going to be making them better than even a poorly played tank with a human at the wheel. Just like the problem with cleric mercs... if they were good at AE healing, then we wouldn't need real healers either (and real healers are already rarer than I'd like to see.)
So, here's what I've learned about grouping with mercs. You have Tank, Healer, and Debuffer. Of those three roles, one has to be a real person for the group to work. Every time I see a post saying "Merc tanks are fine," it's coming from a class such as Cleric, Shaman, or Enchanter. A real tank can compensate for a merc healer by boosting HPs, boosting incoming heals, using runes, or intelligently using mitigators. A real healer has access to far more tools than a cleric merc to be able keep a merc tank alive (cleric epic, Shining Bastion, Spires, healing multibind keys, Wild Growth). If you have neither a real tank nor a real healer, then you need a debuffer or you run the risk of failing messily. Runes, mez, slows, punting, stuns, attack and offensive skill debuffs will boost the crappy merc tank's survivability while being healed by the not-good-but-not-quite-awful cleric merc. If you can't get at least one of those roles played by a real person in your group... Well, good luck.
I'd agree with that and it is why I do always state that I slow mobs as needed in TDS when talking about mercs being viable. In cotf and rof zones, slow is not necessary for anything other than named. You do need some sort of crowd control/pulling though. I do think a group of three could get away using two healer mercs (reactive + balanced) with a tank merc. The tank mercs are by far the weakest of the four. They require compromises. It used to be you required a tank to play. Now if you can't find a tank, but can find a shaman, enchanter or bard (beastlord?), you can depend on a merc tank with a healer merc. If you can find a real healer, you're set as well. Or better yet, you find a real tank. There are at least 8 classes you can group with that either make a tank merc viable or remove the need for one. If you're not mele dps, you can also add in mages and possibly necros for 10 classes. That opens up group options quite a bit. I don't see requiring some sort of group make up to be a problem. The mercs help fill gaps. They shouldn't allow you to completely eschew having real players of one of the group pillars when doing higher difficulty content. My entire point is that tank mercs do work. They're not worthless or broken. You just have to work with them to make them work. And the reason I reply to these threads is it drives me nuts when people constantly whine about them being useless. I use them every day. I'm not against buffing them. I just want to see people make a solid case why, not just exaggerate. If we as players want to be taken seriously by the developers, we need to be honest so that they trust us when we say there's a problem and not just think we're demanding everything to be easier.
Erm my crap mage alt easily sustains over double what the wiz merc puts out, whilst being boxed, and when burning it is more like a factor of 10... She is group geared with 8.5k AA. Wiz mercs suck. Nowhere near as much as the tank merc, but they still suck.
I'm beginning to believe that people claim (or believe) that their sustained (not burst, no major cooldowns) dps is much higher than it is, or that mercs' is lower than it really is. Without empirical evidence (I'm personally too lazy to install a parser still), and just going off what it 'feels like', it's kind of hard to say for me
Well, I don't have time at the moment to mine much more data but here is about 24 hours of logs on our group and it includes wiz mercs a lot of the time. This is sustained at it's best.. true over time DPS (as in all fights, down time, log in time, travel time.. all that is still in there. Raw data. 1888 fights here. wiz mercs are played in my group with a button to go to burn when the tank has set aggro, and a button to go to balance if I see they are getting hit etc. The majority of the players in this parse are boxed, except for the Enchanter, and the real tanks. /GU test2 in 41644s, 2179725k @52342sdps --- Ranger + pets 925103k@22215sdps (22216dps in 41641s) --- Wizard + pets 772180k@18542sdps (18549dps in 41629s) --- Enchanter + pets 332595k@7987sdps (7987dps in 41644s) --- Wizard Merc 75644k@1816sdps (10374dps in 7292s) --- Druid+ pets 65541k@1574sdps (1574dps in 41634s) --- Magician + pets 8662k@208sdps (12572dps in 689s) Now all of this was parsed on the Enchanter. Anyone who parses also knows that you can't see all the damage coming in for anyone but yourself. But to say that wizard mercs are even close to any other class in sustained is not even close. Real players will win out in the short run and the long run.
Like Koryu says, Heck, like in the Godfather: You can't set up your own tank merc for failure, you have to get somebody good (a player healer or debuffer, preferably both) to set them up for success. My friend just yesterday completed Master Hunter of The Buried Sea using her tank mercenary for approximately every check mark. For a while she was waiting for tank friends like me to log on to kill the named she spawned with the tier3 DS effects, but eventually she got tired of that and just figured it out. On the dps front, I typically run War & 2box Shm with two wiz mercs set to Burn full time. They combine for 46-47k dps super consistently. 23k each. I've no support to offer them, don't mess around with settings, that's just what they are. Single mob & sustained over hours+hours+hours is the same. I definitely do better (much better) on my own wizard when 2boxing and especially when playing solo (low 50k dps sustained, with Hotpants as linked in my .sig, who lacks TDS foci & has never seen anything raidlike) in other player's groups, but also: I've definitely grouped with many undereducated and/or undermotivated players whose "dps" characters barely earned their salt - or straight up didn't. 100+: 12k dps "rains are dangerous" mages, 6k dps rangers plunking away with their bow, 10k dps "what's a hotkey" wizards, 4k dps "oh I guess I didn't have haste, I thought you were just way high agro" tanks - they're out there. Ignorance abounds, and leads to wholly valid observations by folks who haven't lived the alternative that mercs are good dps and players aren't.
Your wizard was 8k ahead of the merc on sustained? Nothing to write home about. Granted, you said it was over the course of everything, including downtime, travelling, etc. I am not 105 yet (halfway to 103 finally woo!), but I believe at 105 a wizard merc on burn should sustain at ~35k dps indefinitely. That is quite a bit beyond a "lazy" dps class hitting 1-2 buttons. Also, dps wizard mercs synergize with enchanters and druids adps abilities in ways that tank and healer mercs don't with anything. I wonder how high a wizard merc dps can get with the right buffs and auras Once I flesh out more of my group TDS gear on mage, I will start researching and comparing. All I am saying is there is a very large disparity between the performance of the merc archtypes. Which is why you see people on forums talk about some of the easiest and most effective groups to make are combinations of CC + player tanks/healers + wizard mercs. Turn on caster adps for mercs, turn on wizard merc burn, alt-tab for a few seconds to watch youtube...oop mob dead. Go go merc lazers
Was your merc on balanced? I run my caster merc on burn and she does substantially more dps than that.
That statement would be fine if it were in relation to specific mobs in certain situations, like it used to be. Now it applies to the general trash mob population and that is exactly why they are broken. Getting help for situation that you can't make work is one thing, not being able to grind trash mobs without constant downtime due to mercs dropping is something else again. They are not fine currently if you have to include class x/y/z in order to force the issue in this way. There are players that don't like to play certain archetypes and right now they're being excluded. This isn't healthy for the game.
