To the designer(s) of NAMED (RARE MOB) abilities. Have you kept mercenaries in mind? Let me throw a scenario at you. The Darkened Sea( TDS ) : over 90%, if not 100% of all Named in TDS have an ability that might have a different name, but it's all the same thing: Corruption DoT. This DoT in itself is pretty harmless. The bad part about the CORRUPTION AOE: Healer Mercs prioritize CURING over HEALING. Yes they're AI. But why is CURING prioritized over HEALING? Ok so, no big deal right? Maybe if I cure on my main, who is a healer, the merc will focus on healing. .................................... (signifies time passing) Let's go do some old content. Maybe an Alaran Fragment task since it was decided to be a good idea to not have any Alaran NPCs in a current level area. Hey, look, a named that aggro'd in the middle of this task, how inconvenient and annoying. Passing Shadow - Small single target DoT, 6 tick duration. If cured, the curer will eat a DD and will be silenced. So. I go back to why does a merc prioritize curing over healing!? Hmm Why Can't I Cast Anything!!!??? Oh, because the merc, who lacks the "intelligence" in "artificial intelligence" thinks CURING has a greater priority than HEALING. I don't appreciate having my time wasted like this. Next expansion, which I know you're in the midst of designing, can we have more than 1 AoE Ability for our NAMED RARE NPCs? One corruption DoT is just sounds and looks like a place holder ability for something that never got implemented. Thank you for your time. TL;DR Mercs should not prioritize curing over healing. People die when you cure everyone before healing someone. Pro tip.
Make 2 hotkeys. One blocks the cure, one unblocks the cure. That's what someone smarter than myself always recommends when these issues are posted. Can't remember for the life of me what it is though.
An excellent suggestion. I do sometimes forget that you can block beneficial spells, not just buffs. Good call.
Sorry man, mercs are supposed to be stupid, and they quite often are. Plus you can at least pickup the healing slack, a lot of folks can't. If we're going to wuah, how about their inability to cure mez? It's fun boxing in arx with a healer merc and wiping when an enchanter randomly casts mez and the merc can't help. Also re: pillars or w/e VoA named you're referencing, there's a few that have brutal cure mechanics. It happens. Complaining about that is like that dude claiming Vorovelze in DH was impossibly tuned because the merc spam cures the not-supposed-to-be-cured-dot and gets itself obliterated.
Mercs who prioritize healing over curing will get caught in an endless loop of healing every tick to combat continual damage, will they not? That causes problems of its own.
we need a recording of this cuz quite frankly there isent enough entertaining stuff happening in eq right now, this whould help it along for sure #SaveEq
Everyone should remember that mercs weren't created to be the best at their class, they are a tool to use when you can't get a group. A very frail, cheap, tool, but a tool non the less. SoE originally made them to be fillers, they would rather you want to group with someone then have a merc, which is why we'll probably never see an upgrade to the AI. I just wish my caster/healer merc didn't run 2 inches from the mob I'm currently killing!
My pet peeve, ignoring mercs, is mobs with damage shields. You may as well say "this is a caster only named" when some of them (a couple in combine dredge spring to mind) have DS so high that rogues, monks, etc are likely to be dead in 2-3sec if they don't attack off. The heal burden is so high that you just get into a situation that melee can do nothing worthwhile at all vs those mobs. I'm not asking for caster parity (ie mobs they can do naff all against too) as that's equally annoying. Just please consider these values - reduce them so it's just something we need to be wary of and attack off periodically. As it is, it just totally destroys the fun. Argin Hiz raid is another example of this. Those imps make that raid dull as ditchwater now, with all fun gone for me. I didn't roll a rogue to sit around doing nothing (or at best 10% of my abilities). Please give us something else to do if there are mobs the raid design requires us not to be engaging.
Pria the Penitent is maybe the best example. That ds/reflect/resist stuff is also pretty awful as an sk, since every lifetap being resisted while active coupled with not being able to attack as much to leech cripples self healing pretty badly.
Yeah our group on that one basically had to juggle it around to swap real melee for caster merc as basically it's just not killable without caster dps. Sad!
It does, but casters have a lot more time to react to it (can stop mashing their multi bind during the global cool down after seeing the reflection and/or duck while the next nuke is casting). T3 Group geared rogue with 19 delay weapon goes down in about 1-2 seconds. I've been able to keep up with group heals on a spam nuking mage. No chance at all healing a rogue that doesn't react.
