While it might be logical to make the merc earn AA themselves by having them active, it is still a bad thing. It is bad from the point that normally a group might before have invited a real player, now the group will not due that he/she wanna earn merc aa. I myself have said no due to that reason. This goes against playing EQ and socolize with other persons.
Yeah, its been sorta funny to run around various zones LFG and see half a dozen groups using mercs while I am sitting there thinking....I can out heal a cleric merc and out dps a wiz merc. Then again, it was like this before merc aaxp.
Mercs gain regular xp at the same rate as a player character (they level when you level), so why do they not also earn AAXP at the same rate? Then this would solve itself in a couple weeks playing casually.. Knock out the merc AA, then be done with it. Just my 2cp.
Meh, I am fine with not every single aspect of this expansion able to be completed in a week of casual play.
Mercs still have nothing on real players. AA/armor or not. If anything it is a means of allowing mercs to scale with content in an expac that has no level cap increase. Otherwise there has been no real way to boost merc power other than leveling, since a J5 merc is so easy to get it is arbitrary and there are no "Master Level" mercs yet.
Before mercenary's took a small % of regular xp... now that XP is going to the aa's. read that on one of the expansions right up.
This is why there should be a glyph to turn some player AAs into a merc AA...and also...the merc AAs should really be gained at probably at least 5x the current speed. Killing a mob that gives me at least 2 yellow of AA exp per kill (like some of the ones in the HAs)...should at least give me 2 blues of merc exp. -_-
At least mercs gain exp on Task wins +15% AA per partisan in CotF ftw! I wonder how much exp they would gain on RoF ones since those generally gave more EXP then CotF ones.
I just got the first rank of Improved Melee Defense AA. According to the stat window my merc's ac went up by 2.
Yeah this was my finding as well. Spend several days grinding xp for 2 AA on the merc. I spent the AA's and received a whopping 2 AC on my merc tank at level 91. I've seen all I need to see. I might remember to open my merc AA window again sometime next spring and spend the worthless AA points.
First of all, the rate at which they gain XP makes perfect sense. The Developers decided how long it would take to get the abilities and made it take that long. Would you be happier if they came 10x as fast and cost 10x as much? Probably, but it wouldn't be any different than now and could cause problems in the future. I'll bet that 2 AC is below the soft cap, so it's real AC, a.k.a. shield AC. It's the equivalent of a player getting a bajillion AC more in a non-shield slot. Ask any knowledgeable tank who's been around a long time to explain it. I'm really glad those of you who hoped mercs would be greatly improved were disappointed.
I had my merc out in a group for about 4 hours and earned 2 AA. However we were doing CoF progression stuff at the time.
