I really think melee dps mercs need to be re-looked at and the agro that they generate. I have subtle strikes maxed out and yet it still generates so much agro that it constantly pulls agro from my BST pet that has taunt and hatred weapons, and the merc also pulls agro on real person tanks often. This kind of agro cannot be intended and needs to be looked at being reduced.
It seems to vary between mercs for no reason I can ascertain. I have 3 x melee dps mercs, maxed with everything. 2 behave just fine. One has aggro that a hyped SK on steroids would be proud of - just ridiculous. While it makes for a few entertaining comedy moments (same merc seems to like to run off & pull too), there's clearly something not 'working as intended' here
Hmmm, interesting. I'll try to swap my merc model then. I don't use rogue mercs really often (most of the time we play with real characters without any merc), but my clockwork rogue is definitely nuts. My mercs are also maxed, and this one is just stupid, even on balanced mode. With my the wiz merc, even on burn, I can take a nap while tanking, but with the rogue merc on balanced, if I don't chain cast terrors, explosions, with demand running and so on, he's really prompt to steal aggro.
All my 3 melee mercs are DE, so I don't think that's the issue, but changing the model is worth a shot. The only difference is that the 'owner' of the 'problem' merc is fully raid geared/max AA etc, and the others aren't. Never had an issue with caster mercs, not even on burn
This is the case with melee mercs in general and does not depend on model. I am an SK, and with melee mercs 10/15 and 12/15 Subtle Strikes, I still have to work hard to keep or reacquire agro. Heck, it's about the only time I use Voice of Thule; with only mild success.
All you're going to accomplish with this is getting the rogue merc's DPS nerfed so they don't generate so much aggro. So good going...
just don't use it on burn with your beastlord? also is bst using the tank buff instead of the dps buff? My paladin has to work at it but he can keep agro over the rogue merc on burn
Rogue Mercs are parsing 300k DPS? I don't use mercs at all, but this sounds peachy. I will let my melee boxes go F2P and use mercs instead. Thanks for info!
As a paladin, I can hold aggro over my rogue merc with my normal tanking loadout and Marr's Salvation. Meanwhile, there's no denying their aggro is too high and the reasons why are known (Jan 15th patch, not using -hate abilities). Just waiting for a fix to the bug reports. Go vote them up.
I specifically specified that I was NOT USING BURN, this is on balanced mode. The dps merc still constantly pulls agro. And i have seen melee dps mercs pull agro off real tanks, that also happen to be raid geared tanks.
As a tank with them on burn you do have to fight a little with them, but that's really how agro should be. The way it'd been for a long time in EQ where DPS can dump what ever they want when ever they want and not really have to worry about agro is kinda dumb. The reason the melee dps mercs are pulling so much agro though is they do really good damage, really if you play with randoms a lot of the time the melee dps merc will out dps the randoms. You could always go with the good old caster merc that does less damage. Alternatively if you see them creeping up on agro you could toggle them to passive for a second. Kind of like how if a real dps plays with a bad tank they might have to turn off attack.
I'm a raid geared tank. Strangely *my* melee merc (all AA) never pulls aggro off me. Not above about 50% iirc. Other people's - not a hope in hell of keeping aggro. Way more aggro than a raid-geared rogue on full burn
Fighting a bit for aggro in burn situations is ok. And as a SK, when I'm also on burn, I don't have any issue with mercs, even rogue mercs. But, on balanced mode? As I said, I rarely use mercs at all, and I haven't parsed their damage output, but it seems that the issue is different :
I have been talking about this in General on FV forever, I been wanting them to fix this so bad. I love Melee DPS merc for bard and my bst, but the aggro is impossible to handle, I maxed my mercs AAs have the best Merc gear, even when I remove the darn gear it still pulls aggro from my pet with taunt and aggro weps with aggro procs, its crazy they need to make the merc AA more % or something ****Edit Forgot to mention, I do NOT use burn, I have NOT been able to use burn for years, I don't even dare press that button
Are Dev's even aware of this as an issue, and are they doing anything about it? Melee DPS mercs are really not worth using at the moment, and it sounds like that is the case for a lot of people
The devs probably know but might not be aware of the scale of the issue. There are bug reports on it. Feel free to reply and upvote there... supposedly that helps the devs triage things. https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/rog-merc-and-runaway-aggro.264882/
The s/w tester in me suspects this may be a start at getting to the bottom of the issue, and may be why we have the divide between seen it/haven't seen it.
I don't know what they're doing (I should parse it out) but I notice my rogue merc gaining 30% aggro during a single tick sometimes, and that's with me spamming terrors and taps.
