helps when you can FD .. how often does your merc healer get killed ? also wait till your into TBL or ToV. TBL the AE's will own your merc if you decide to do TBL .. but having an SK as a tank helps the healing alot as SK can self heal thru alot of stuff.. Also are you doing progression I mean the actual missions merc/part ? sure if your just grinding experience or doing hunters a cleric merc might be all you need but a real shaman/cleric will be needed for doing merc/partisans.. And a real cleric can do more than a merc cleric anyday .. that is a FACT .. just because a merc cleric is all you need doesn't mean it is better than a real cleric .. shaman or cleric can out heal and out play a merc . Period I'm not saying dont use the cleric mercs .. I'm just saying they are not as good as the real thing. I also use a cleric merc for mainly healing so my other healers or backup healers can relax and not have to worry unless its a tough fight .. but I do not admit that a cleric merc is better than a real player in any way .. they might be good enough to get the job done in 90% of group situations , but its that other 10% you'll want to have that extra healing either with shaman or cleric.. I dont play druid so not sure how they stack up ..
Same. I had 3 clerics on 3 accounts at level 100 for various combinations of alts, leveled only one to 105, and stopped playing all of them after that. No reason to when a merc, while not as good, required no effort and allowed more focus on tanking and dpsing (I don't use any software to assist with boxing). TBH a lot is due to how wimpy content (other than some TBL when current) has been in recent years, combined with raid gear. I honestly run 2 cleric mercs (1 on reactive and one on balanced) and it gets me through just about everything. If I was less lazy I'd use a rogue merc, but, I'd rather not die. Zerker burns so much its moot anyway.
Ya RAID gear helps a ton. I guess if your on FV and can buy the raid gear then this game would be on easy mode for most if not all of group content with mercs .. or if your a raider and just earn your raid geared toon .. but for the casual grouper it wont fly for that 10% of group content .. I love how people get on here when groupers are trying to make a point about the effectiveness of certain things how game mechanics work in the group game and Raiders with Raid gear max AA get on and just say its a piece of cake Also a Zerker that is raid geared can assassinate pretty much anything group wise..
Ugh, the proper melee DPS group has the following format: 1. Knight, 2. Shaman, 3. Bard, 4. Melee DPS, 5. Melee DPS, 6. Melee DPS. If you run a cleric instead of a shaman, role a Beastlord for one of the melee DPS. If you’re going to role a Warrior and a Cleric, I’d run two berzerkers and a Beastlord.
Never to AEs (currently in RoS). She'll die on a 3 pull if for some reason all my CC methods fail. I have done a lot of partisan tasks, missions, etc. The last arcs I did for progression to unlock zones was TDS. I did a lot of TBM missions as well. I had a hell of a time on some tasks such as "The Handmaiden" in TBM but that is because they are hard to box. Plus perhaps the cleric merc was out of mana quicker than a real player cleric would have been (I'm not sure of a merc's mana pool). Oh, absolutely. I real cleric, even when boxed, is better than a merc. However, I have a lot going on even 5 boxing because of TrueBox (no automation, no 3rd party help). The cleric merc is better for me because I can focus on DPS. That's fair.
I'm group geared so it adds an extra level of difficulty. On some mobs I'll drop my monk out of group, give him his own merc cleric, then pop a second merc cleric in group. That strategy is generally only needed when I'm undergeared for the content I'm doing (level 114 named when I was only level 106 as an example).
