what's the best way to get the most out a merc healer? Blocking certain spells? marking my self main assist and main tank? I do ok as a main tank against some named as a beastlord, but get killed sometimes when the named gets in a good round or two.
I'm always tank/assist on my mage as I box 4 characters/2 mercs usually. Many times I've died without being healed despite having a enchanter to cast runes on me. once when the other characters were being healed despite barely being hit. I use 1 set to reactive and the other balanced, both j5. It got a bit better after blocking cheal hot promised line and the small heal. Not a great deal however. Maybe I just need to not get so close to the mob though it can be hard sometimes . But yes, they are pretty bad whatever you do. Probably made that way really or the player preists would likely be upset. My druid wouldn't care, I made her to pew pew and for the ports mostly... most I do is use the group heal lol.
I would say mercs should be thought of as a mediocre to bad player. They're better than nothing most of the time but they're never as good as a competent player. I've read but not tested that their "confidence" check is based on pulls / adds, so hotkeying them to passive before you pull and reactive once you're in camp may help them not lose confidence and skip healing. Blocking the promised heal, complete heal, and possibly heal over time may help. I've also read that you should do that for all members of the group (and pets).
Do they really cast complete heal at max level? I block promised heal and the heal over time. Don't really notice a difference honestly, but I don't parse.
healer mercs are terribad. Get all the AA's and equipment for them and they are terribad -1 The best you can do it educate yourself about "blocking" certain lines of spells on your player characters so the mercs dont cast 10sec complete heal at 5% health Block CH on ALL group members and pets. A merc will not duck out of a heal to cast a faster one. Once they press that CH button on any group member or pet nothing is more important to them than their nails. Block Promised on tank. Merc healing will improve dramatically if you and your group will do those two things. .....For my toons i have to block Complete heal+ PR, + elixir's(HoT's). THough i will unblock them if i have a real healer in group because i know a real one will cast spot heals unlike the merc's who do not.
People can call them "terribad" and the rest. The reality is they are the 2nd most fundamental change to the game - and allow most characters to do DRAMATICALLY more than they ever could have solo, group, and everything in between. There are even things you can do with them you couldn't with a real cleric. So yes, a real cleric is way better for almost everything. But mercenary healers are light years from terrible.
Unlike others posting here I've had great success with a Cleric merc and that was even using the (supposedly worse) merc tank. I do have max merc AA but none of the new crazy EOK merc gear. I do current content as well so it's not like 3 expacs back with mobs hitting like babies. So... not sure how so many are doing so poorly with the merc. I didn't think the AAs were a huge difference but maybe they are. I'd say the effect of gear is pretty minimal though. The only issue I've run into is if its a clusterf* and then the merc winds up dead. Having the new gear could help with that.
I did extensive research on this topic. Turns out it's not the merc at all but my PC setup. Check out https://naroggsplace.wordpress.com/eq-specific-computer-tips/ Now I have nothing blocked and zero issues with the merc missing heals.
Interesting stuff, Narogg (this be Bregalad). However, I am wondering why would PC issues affect merc performance? I thought they were server-run. I am learning the ropes on my boxed druid, and there are so many combos such as remotes, inverse proc heals, blessings that grant twincast heals etc. Do mercs use any of those? Do they use any AA abilities like spires and such? I kinda doubt they do...
I dunno, I just can't see how this could be the case. If server events waited for people's logs to get written, game performance would come to a screeching halt for everyone involved anytime someone with a slow PC was in the vicinity. The state update server packets flowing to a client got to be a non-wait, non-ack broadcast. Mob hits player - packet 1 goes out to all present. Character health adjusted - packet 2 goes out. If merc AI is server run, the merc ought to note the player health updated whenever the merc-handling thread cycles to that specific merc, and starts casting healing - packet 3 goes out. Now, how long said packets take to reach the client PC, get processed, get logged, etc should affect only one thing - how long till the player sees those lines pop up in his chat boxes and sees his health bar update. After which, in response to those updates, the player might perform some action, and the packet containing this action would flow to server. Now, suppose mercs were client-run bots. Meaning, merc AI runs as part of client, and responds to self-same packets as the player. Then indeed, merc behaviour would be throttled by the logging delays. However, that does not appear to be the case. From the discussions I saw at EQ Emulate, they were able to parse out the packets carrying merc management activity by the player (stance change, suspend, unsuspend etc), but no server-bound packets carrying merc activity. I also myself saw, when boxing, that when a client crashes, merc of the crashed player remains functional.
Sigh. I guess this doesnt explain why my healer sometimes doesnt heal. I have an ssd and he still craps out sometimes.
Yeah same. I really can't see it being handled client side, apart from the stance changes and such. As if that were the case it would put people with lesser pcs at a disadvantage as well as being open to client side manipulation. Also I have eq folder as well as eq exe and log folder for good measure excluded in windows defender AND I have it on a SSD. So it definitely can't go down as they say it does for me. Funnily enough I noticed the merc casting blocked heals going over my log. And given I box a full group but the mercs and everyone including pets have them blocked, it seems they will still cast them, just not as much as if they weren't blocked. Below is a log from today's fights. And while it doesn't use them much it does still use them. I guess it could be healing swarm pets or itself as my characters and the pets allowed have the hot and promised line blocked. Though I have 5 ranks of the minus threat aa and never saw it take damage (they were levitating and in the air as well as hanging well back from the group) A drolvarg caller Overview Player Class Cleric Total casts 607 Total fizzles 2 Total interrupts 2 Count Bastion of Vie Rk. II 1 Blessing of Fervor Rk. II 2 Fervent Renewal Rk. II 102 Fifteenth Emblem Rk. II 6 Fraught Renewal Rk. II 3 Promised Reformation Rk. II 2 Rejuvenating Splash Rk. II 22 Reverent Elixir Rk. II 15 Reverent Light Rk. II 441 Word of Renewal Rk. II 13
We will never really know how it works. I just tried to wireshark the udp stream and its encrypted now. Hell I bet EQ is so old there is no documentation at DB of how it really works!
The mercs should be completely server side. But there could be some dependence on receiving updates from the client such as pc position to function. A client lagging could starve the server side ai of needed inputs. There's also the reliability built in to various ranks, pathing issues and plain stupidity in the ai.
I dont see it being attributable to client lag since they fail to heal when Im not lagging. I think different parts of eq run off separate servers - its not all one server - and the merc server lags sometimes.
In response to op without knowing if you mostly molo or group. Another way to take advantage of healer merc is to have the puller who can fd (aa, ca, pot, etc.) be set as group leader. That way if they need to fd after taking a few hits while pulling and successfully land fd, they can unmark as puller, which will send merc their way for some love. Re-mark as puller, merc back to group and carry on. I understand any group leader can assign / unassign roles, it's just easier use of that move if puller is leader.
Wonder how they keep healing when you've crashed or go offline. There is no log or PC data to go through then but they keep trucking right along for up to 15 min or until the next payment cycle. And how do they heal other players without being able to check log files or wait for results on someone elses PC? You can also just close EQ entirely, which I suppose should count as halting EQ, and the mercs just keep on keeping on. They'll tank heal and dps just fine till they get the final boot. I think updating position in EQ isn't really optimized very well, and this is probably the biggest contributor to the mercenary issues. Especially for the one listed as puller in your group. If it all possible I wouldn't give your puller a tank or healer merc, a non vital dps merc is probably the safest way to go. So when your healer merc randomly appears at the far corner of the zone because EQ couldn't calculate position fast enough or smoothly enough, usually do to terrain or lag, you won't be left high and dry. Outside of this, I've never experienced a merc standing in group that doesn't do its job.
