Do Wizard Mercs burn past yellow con 101 + yet?

So I don't actually know the answer to this, I been out of things for a few months. But really curious if the burn stance for a T5 Journeyman wizard merc works yet, or if it is still something like be forced to do balanced until the mob is 50 % or something like that. I'm really concerned about this as talk about level 105 + and the next expansion has been circulating. Anyone tested this lately, really curious

Pretty sure they do i was using one a few days ago it didnt stop casting on yellow mobs.

It doesn't matter what level the mob is, it's the amount of hitpoints.

Merc casters are supposed to go, "oh look, this mob has over > x amount of hitpoints, it must be a named, therefore I won't burn". However, there are mobs in COTF that aren't named, but have stupid high HP anyway, so mercs won't burn on them either.

Would be interesting to see where it gets to the point that many average NPCs won't be affected by merc burn because of the way they jack up their HP by huge amounts.

EDIT: GRRRR, forums are still buggy as crap.

Edit: Thank you for the better information on this Uxtalzon, I knew it was either level or current HP count, but forgot which.

Indeed, Everquest isn't really known for next expansion mobs ever having less HP, or even the same HP. Why on earth would they design them this way though? Oh this mob has a lot of HP, I better not dps him too much. Because it is a named, doesn't that mean get rid of it even faster if possible?

Be much appreciated if this was addressed before another Expansion hits. I'm sure it is more complicated than changing the max current hp variable to nuke in burn mode, but doesn't seem like it should be THAT major of a chore.

I didn't know this. Heck, that's when I do use burn on my mercs, when fighting a named. Once the tank has aggro lock, it's burn time. But apparently burn is broken?

They'll eventually burn when the hit points are low enough, but you're better off setting them to balanced until, say, 80% and then switching them to burn.

Well that is unfortunate, so wiz mercs are still as broken as ever, in an expansion where one of the main features was supposed to be upgrades for mercs. Could it even make it a feature and force us to buy the merc AA, Unbroken merc, that is just sad they are still broken this way.

The magic number seems to be about 2 million. If a mob has more than that they won't attack on burn. Once it gets below that they will.

So if you put them on Burn they do nothing until mob is below 2 million HP? Or on Burn will they act as Balanced until under 2 million HP and then act as Burn?

First off, this is crazy of SOE to do this to us. However, if for some strange reason unknown to us they don't want Burn until under 2 million HP, at least the merc should not be doing nothing until then. At the bare minimum they should be acting as Balanced at first, not standing around on coffee break.

Under the aforementioned circumstances, setting wiz merc to Burn is effectively setting it to Passive -- it casts nothing whatsoever.

Give it a try sometime against a namer. Set the merc to Burn prior to engage and it stands there idle after engage. Switch the merc to Balanced and watch it cast spells normally. Switch it back to Burn and watch it completely stop casting. Can watch the casting animation, or can go to the chat log, they simply do not cast anything. Toggle merc back to Balanced, it resumes casting. Toggle back to Burn and it stops again.

Burn is an off button against namers or other mobs with tremendously high HPs. Three years completely broken -- working as intended.

The other goofy thing they do is sort of the reverse. They refuse to finish a mob that happens to be very low HPs. I regularly slum around just me and my wiz merc doing nothing in particular. I often left the merc gank agro and tank away while I also toss nukes and the occasional heal. If merc happens to drop the mob down to, say, 1% life then the merc stops casting. It just stands there getting its skull pounded in forever and ever. It will not cast another nuke, assuming because the AI says this mob doesn't have enough HPs.

I really wish we could do something about mob hps. Trash clearing has gotten infinitely more tedious since the start of Rain of Fear, and is fairly interminable now.

a) ^Thhis and b) The not enough HP one is particularly funny- 0% mob frozen there, merc sitting around saying "Nah, it's cool, couldn't be bothered."

Wizard mercs have been broken for ages. On RoF nameds you can switch to burn around 30% and on CoTF named ya can switch them to burn around 25%. Switch them to burn before that and they will just stand there. Should be able to burn regardless and imo it should be looked at and get fixed, especially since most people run mercs anyways. It shouldn't be that hard to fix.

There are two bigger problems with wizard mercs on burn. The first is the fact that if you pull more than 1 mob they will nuke whatever they want, take aggro, and die even though there is a main assist (myself) set. And second, on burn, they start nuking before the mob is even close to your camp, get summoned and killed.

All are pretty big annoyances and really need to be fixed.

Quoted for truth. Wizzie mercs do not assist on multi-pulls, and simply stand there and do nothing on many mobs in CoTF, which makes the life of a group depending on the mercs for dps extremely miserable

I posted about this last year and got no response to it. At least I know I'm not the only one having this issue.

Yeah, the not nuking on burn thing is annoying.

What irritates me even more is when i have multiple mobs incoming on a pull and the merc starts nuking the wrong mob before they get into camp. The nuking early is okay, since that's the price I pay for being too lazy to toggle/call for merc assist, but it'd be nice if it would at least nuke the mob the designated main assist is targeting. Sometimes it does this, sometimes it doesn't. I try not to use it as much as possible now.

So yeah, I concur with the sentiment that wiz mercs are weird. A real player is better, although that's not always an option for some people. Fixing the merc weirdness would be nice.

Mercs sometimes don't even follow their own ruleset. I like using my wiz merc, and have put all my merc AAs/gear towards her. The frequent use means I've also seen her screw up pretty big. Sometimes, even with a Puller set, and Auto Assist disabled, she will suddenly decide it is HER TIME TO SHINE and start burning a mob that's still in the middle of being split outside of the camp, around the corner, and down the hall. She is, of course, promptly deleted by said mobs. On a multimob pull, sometimes she will follow the Main Assist's target ring, and sometimes she will pick her own target at random.

I find the lack of any Feed back from the Dev's .. the most telling thing they could DO .. in this instance.

Come on Sony / Dev's .. get with it Give us feed back on this ?

Pretty sure their feedback would be that merc power is about where they want it to be and there are no plans to make any changes at this time. Doesn't hurt to ask, though.

Mercs pay little to no attention to walls, floors or other barriers. I've done several tasks and HA's in Bixie and my merc has decided to nuke, or attempt to nuke a mob that was being pulled at the top of the zone but directly above our group's current position which was at the bottom. They also stop moving as soon as anyone in the group gets agro unless they're on passive which makes doing some events with mercs a royal pain since those events require that you kill and move constantly. I also don't think that there's any set radius that mercs read as "camp" since I've seen them attack a mob that's 3 corners and halls away and yet NOT attack a mob that's been pulled to within 5 steps of them. It all seems rather random and, sometimes, deadly.