I would like wizard mercenaries burn mode to work on any mob, regardless of level/hp amount. While the idea of new stuff for them in CoTF sounds fantastic, even more fantastic to me would be for them to actually work. Is there anything being done about this, I am getting really tired of them doing absolutely nothing on every other named mob I face unless I go balanced mode.
Been broken for so long now its probably been dubbed a "feature". Presto! Now, its not broken anymore.
I find while using a caster dps merc, if you aggro something and the merc is far away it won't participate in the fight. To remedy this, turn the merc on passive, let it walk to the fight, then turn it back on your desired stance and it will participate. Whether or not this is the problem your experiencing or not I am not certain, so if its not feel free to ignore this post.
Another feature I would hope for is one to make the tank mercs stop burning Final Stand or Fort on trash mobs. Maybe add another stance named "defensive"?
Naw, that isn't the problem Tallanor, I know very well wiz mercs refuse to move much if any kind of combat is happening unless they are in passive mode. Had it happen many a time I'll agro something kind of early, have to passive the mercs up, then balanced/burn whatever. My problem is with burn mode refusing to do anything on certain named/levels of mobs, it makes no sense, but they just lock up and refuse to cast anything. Also as Gladare has mentioned, them actually assisting in burn mode would also be fantastic, I was doing unveiling the mystery mission with the 4 guards, I turn my 3 wiz mercs on burn, and they proceed to nuke the crap out of all 4 guards at the same time resulting in massive ping pong time for me. I don't even know how this happens.... Needless to say, it was balanced mode once again after a couple near wipes there....
MA, no MA, it seems entirely optional for burn mode at times. I always use MT/MA when wizard or rogue mercs are present though. Many times puller as well unless the group proximity gets out of wack. I learned some cool commands to get around that recently on the fly. Specifically: Social 1: (sets name to be MT, MA, and Puller) /grouproles set name 1 /grouproles set name 2 /grouproles set name 3 Social 2: (remove name from being MT, MA, and Puller) /grouproles unset name 1 /grouproles unset name 2 /grouproles unset name 3 Social 3: (set name to be MT and MA, but not puller) /grouproles set name 1 /grouproles set name 2 /grouproles unset name 3
Have you tried turning off Auto Assist and using call assist? at the least it should focus them on only one target
No, haven't done that. I was under the impression that this required clicking a button with a mouse though, which is less than ideal for the way I want to play. Worth spending a few minutes experimenting with when I get home anyways.
The problem with wiz mercs failing to assist in burn mode while multiple mobs are on agro is annoying. The wiz mercs do follow the assist, but during the brief moment between mob#1 death and the MA placing mob#2 on target, the mercs start just randomly nuking whatever is on agro. Once the MA grabs a new target, the mercs will eventually focus on that target, although it seems they will routinely fire off a couple nukes on other mobs before finally following the assist. It sucks having mob#2 on target and watching mob#3 and mob#4 life drop nuke by nuke. As Kura mentioned, those couple extra unassisted nukes will send the crowd into pingpong summoning. When multiple mobs are on agro and in casting range, wiz mercs are quick quick to choose their own targets, and are sloooooooooow to follow MA They are never slow to assist on a single mob, because there is no decision to make. Oddly, rogue mercs do not demonstrate this same slow response changing targets. MA can rapidly cycle through multiple targets in melee range and the rogue mercs go all stabby frenzy flipping targets following the MA almost instantly. The problem with wiz merc burn mode on namers is a separate issue. Wiz mercs don't cast anything when set to burn mode against namers in current content (they also didnt work worth a damn on burn when VoA was current content). Auto assist, call assist, makes no difference. While the namer is engaged, merc on burn does nothing but watch. Toggle merc to balanced and it begins casting. Toggle back to burn, and it stops casting. Setting wiz merc to burn is effectively setting it to passive -- its an off switch. Problem only occurs against namers. Wiz mercs on burn against trash mobs work flawlessly.
I use call assist. They still nuke random targets even with MA assigned. It doesn't happen 100% of the time. I *think* only if both targets were on extended target before call assist is used. As far as the wiz mercs not doing anything while on burn mode, it doesn't only apply to named. There seems to be some hp level that makes them do it. I ran into that problem recently in beta. Non-named with high hp still makes the wizard merc stand around doing nothing. You can switch them to burn when the target gets low on hp and they'll start the usual burn spells. Until you hit that hp threshold though, they have to be on balanced to do anything at all.
I noticed a real weird one chain doing Menace, Doom and Horror for the shattered hope aug. The Rogue Harbinger, I can use the mercs on burn up until about 70-80 %, then they decide they are done and must be put on balanced.
I'm of the opinion caster mercs being slow to swap targets is due to the cast time on wizard spells being longer. With that said, I've seen them cancel spells, but without knowing any better and no way to verify the inner workings, it has been my experience the follow occurs: 1) Mob #1 dies 2) Tank's target window automatically picks up the next mob to land a blow (assuming the target window doesn't bug due to DS) 3) Wizard immediately assists and begins to cast a long spell 4) A split second later, the Tank changes target to the intended target, as opposed to the mob which automatically populated the target window. 5) Wizard doesn't cancel the cast and continues to land the spell on the untanked target. I dunno. It's a theory. It might be worth some experimentation with a wizard merc to assign an extended target slot to "My Mercs Target" and compare logs for cancelled spells, the Merc's target in the extended target window, and the mob actually targeted.
Not my experience at all. My tank is never set as MA, so it doesn't matter what pops on target from a landed blow. I've watched the life of extra mobs drop from repeated nukes. Watching the life drop in chunks from 99 to 95 to 90 on two unassisted mobs isn't due to a long spell cast time. My beastlord is exclusively my MA. My workaround for this delayed assist when multiples are in camp has been to switch MA targets prior to mob death. I know between the warrior's tanking dps, and the warder's dps, and the mercs slow to switch that mob#1 will be dead by the time the mercs decide to pay attention and swap to mob#2. As I said in previous post, its an annoyance. As long as I engage all mobs in melee, its easily worked around, if you want to call tanking 4 mobs at once a work around. Problem really manifests when I have adds root parked (or as in Kura's Chelsith mission where mobs are permarooted) and the mercs help me out by not assisting and instead randomly nuking and breaking root or just doing enough damage to get themselves summoned to the rooted mob. Oh, and 3rd issue with wiz mercs. They occasionally seem to target a mob not even on agro. A great number of times I have experienced an add that suddenly appears on ext targ, destroys the merc immediately, and simply walks away. Doesn't add to the fight, doesn't transfer agro to healer or anyone else in the group. Its almost as if the merc targeted using F8 and gets pounded for the n00b tactics faster than a heal can land. Its very strange and extremely unpredictable.
Been noticing yet another new feature with mercs lately, the revive timers are wrong, often they will go to 2 1/2 minutes and the count all the way down, but still have 2 1/2 mins remaining before revive can happen. I'd trade an armor slot or two off them for them to WORK in the first place...
I believe you can do /mercassist as part of a hotkey line to Call Assist without clicking the button. If I have the syntax wrong, someone please correct me. I'm not in-game atm to check.
Wizard mercs also use rains when they are not set to AE. When you play a mezzer, it's really, really obvious- the MA can be set on one target the whole time, and yet they break mez on three other mobs a couple of times, due to casting rains. Ideally, they shouldn't be using rains unless it's AE mode, and AE mode needs some cleaning up with regard to which spells they use.
