Can We Talk About Tank Mercs?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Frogmancer, Mar 6, 2018.

  1. Frogmancer Augur

    Tank mercs appear (to me) to be at least wildly underpowered and potentially broken. At 110, I went to Scorched Woods and pulled trash gorillas. My healer merc, on balanced, kept my necromancer pet above 90% for the whole fight. Then I switched to my J5 tank merc, full gear, and my group mate popped a 110 healer merc. With the merc on reactive, the tank merc spent the whole fight yo-yoing between 40% and full health. Standard rounds hit the tank merc for 20% of its health (against *teal* mobs), and the tank eventually got spiked for ~55% and went down before the healer could recover.

    I know pets have long been better tanks than mercs, but that seems a bit excessive. A guildmate, at 95, takes their tank merc to SS, and the merc gets destroyed. Tank mercs seem broken, tbh, like the changes to AC a year+ agro isn’t processing right for them.
    Lorai likes this.
  2. Picaresque Augur

    More information please, mostly because I'm curious: Merc AAs and allocation, which merc gear (defender all?), spell blocking in effect, etc. I've used a mercenary tank with a level 92 cleric to good effect.
  3. Tucoh Augur

    As a warrior I feel like players should really be able to use tank mercs in modern content and be able to make progress, and the current tank mercs are no where near powerful enough.

    I also feel like the mag/bst/nec pets need a serious tanking buff also, especially in their ability to hold aggro on multiple targets.
    Quatr and GoneFission like this.
  4. Aurastrider Augur

    It is for this reason as to why I leave all my tank merc AA's for last and not just because I rarely use the tank merc. I buy the rogue merc AA's before the tank merc ones and I have only use a rogue merc once. My experience with them is they are like a wet noodle without any flavor. They are mostly there to hold agro long enough for a player to find the nearest exit before they die. Not to mention they completely ignore any rational logic in tanking like going after mobs that have been punted instead of the one attacking the toon that pulled in a lot of cases. They need to be evaluated and if possible made better from top to bottom because I don't see how people actually rely on them as a tank and this is coming from someone who has no reason to ever use one.
    Lorai and Fanra like this.
  5. Daedly Augur

    I think all mercs could use a tuning pass. Clerics are bad at healing, tank mercs could definitely use a boost in survivability AND damage output, and DPS mercs could stand to do another 10kdps at least.
    Lorai, GoneFission and Fanra like this.
  6. Smokezz The Bane Crew

    Mercs are really meant to be used as a healer with a real tank or a tank with a real healer. You're trying to use both a healer merc and a tank merc. This has never worked well. I'm not sure it should work well.

    I did all of RoF, TDS, TBM, and EoK with a tank merc except a couple missions. This includes every named in the expansions. I have a real Cleric backing me up. A merc Cleric would not have worked.
  7. Daedly Augur

    I honestly think the OP may have just ran into some bad luck, as I have used merc tank and cleric together in Skyfire. The initial round that the tank takes was usually decides if it died or not. Cleric merc took some time to ramp up its healing. Would be nice if they had the cleric AI cast a promise on main tanks when someone in the group gets aggro and the mob is more than a certain distance away.

    I will have to look again, but with all but the last two merc HP as and full set of droppable merc gear from EoK, cleric and shaman buffs, my tank merc has about 175khp. Not sure how that compares to other group geared tanks, but I speculate it might be low.
  8. Frogmancer Augur

    That’s about how many HP I have as a necromancer. I would guess it’s about 60% of the HP of a group-geared tank.
  9. Niskin Clockwork Arguer

    Did people miss the part where the OP was using a 110 Tank Merc in EoK and it was nearly dying to light-blues until it did actually die? Now I'm willing to bet the actual death was related to screwy Healer Merc problems, but a 110 Merc Tank should not even come close to struggling in Scorched Woods.

    The reason I say that is because I've fought tons and tons of mobs in SW and FM, and taken down plenty of named mobs in those zones using a Tank Merc, with the only difference being two Healer Mercs for the named fights and one for the regular fights. The only time my Merc Tank died at 105 in those zones against normal mobs was when the Healer Merc was on a hill and went glitchy.
    Lorai likes this.
  10. Fohpo Augur

    Aren't tank mercs worse than pets at this point?
    Fanra likes this.
  11. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    Tank mercs at 110 are worse performers than they were at 105 in the same content. Sounds backwards, no?

    Tank mercs are literally worthless at 110. I would wager that anyone saying tank mercs are 'good' post-level-100 have a slower in the group.

    I gave up on tank mercs. I just tank with my Zerker. He holds aggro better than a tank merc and can take a hit. He's at 15kAA and in T2 EoK group gear.

    DPS mercs could do more DPS, but again, mostly worthless. An unbuffed Shaman pet outperforms the DPS mercs.

    Healer mercs are the most powerful mercs in the game right now, but that's not saying much. Two healer mercs on Balanced have allowed players in the group to die whilst not casting a single heal. Put them on Reactive and it's not much better, and they drain their mana faster than a Wizard on Mana Burn.


    Mercs desperately need a tuning pass. Please?
  12. Daedly Augur

    I would be interested in seeing a parse of a dps merc vs an unbuffed shaman pet. I am not saying you're wrong, but I am rather skeptical of that claim.
  13. Gnomeland Augur

    Mercenaries are bad and have been bad for a while. With the latest trend in this game's development being to nerf everyone, though, I don't see any improvements any time soon. Face it - developers feel players are too powerful and content is being completed too fast. They're not going to make it even easier. That's the state of this game.
    eqgamer likes this.
  14. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    When have they ever been better than pets, really? Maybe not the same for other classes, but playing a mage even a water pet takes hits better (usually), doesn’t eat a group slot and being able to give it basic commands trumps the tank merc’s awful derp of an AI.
  15. Fohpo Augur

    Meh, I feel like low levels right now the tank mercs are pretty relevant - and honestly I think that's what they were meant to be. More of a catch-up mechanic rather than an actual slot being filled at max level.
  16. Niskin Clockwork Arguer

    Merc Tanks hold aggro better than pets from what I've seen, at least better than Necro pets anyway.
  17. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer


    Oh, the irony. :p
  18. moogs Augur


    The original reason for adding mercenaries was precisely because the game had lost most of its tanks and healers, so there were not enough players to form groups to complete group content. I can't imagine that the situation is better today.
    Fanra, GoneFission and Niskin like this.
  19. Fohpo Augur

    Pff, that problem is still being fixed. They made knights/tanks OP so all the FotM people flocked there and gave us the only merc worth anything - healers.
  20. Kolani Augur

    Unbuffed shaman pet does ~7k dps, wizard mercs pull ~25-35k.
    Daedly likes this.