What a Tank Merc/Healer mercs really do? Nothing!!!

How are people going to get to level 120 if they rely on mercenaries that rely on equipment that they can't get because they need the mercenaries to have that equipment to get it...?

You had a level 120 mage to molo with. What about players on classes who aren't 120 or who rely more on their mercenaries than mages do?

You called me out for power leveling an alt then talk about being 120 with fellowship bypasses. Pick a position and stick with it. You're doing a pretty good job arguing with yourself so I'll just bow out and let you have your fun.

Same way the people have gotten to level 115 and then to level 120 back in ToV and ToL - grind in level-appropriate zones. Let me type it again (and you have quoted me above):
"And for genuine level 110 characters - go farm GMM, the zone was made just for you, awesome level 110 gear, Vigilant armor and some augs too."

Since I play with a tankless (and group-focused pets, no raid EM earrings back then) group I had to grind in GMM up-to level 113, when my primary beastlord got the new warder and then I went to ToV to begin my progression in EW. No PL'ing, no twinking, no buying taskadds. Just good old grinding in GMM. And I have farmed all the Vigilant gear for my toons while doing so.
All that was very doable in-era and is even easier these days.

Yes, and that was a counter-example to those who complained that these days, when characters are level 120 and are forced to go back 4 expansion to farm Vigilant gear. My mage molo'd the whole set (and more) as a time-filler. It's very doable these days and is not a burden.

So, it's 2 for 2 - doable in-era at 110 and a light-duty molo farming today at 120.

Capable molo classes (tanks, pet classes etc) at 120 can farm Mearatas molo, others can farm GMM easily regardless of class.

Vigilant mercenary gear is not hard to farm, there are multiple ways to do it. There is no reason to complain about that gear.

Troll

I'm not following the logic of "if you do years-old progression in an overly-keyed expansion and farm it you can make your mercenaries marginally better, so it's okay if they neglect mercenaries in current content."

Frankly that's absurd to me.

Took the advice. Went to Mearatas with my PL'ed SK. She is 120 with 38300 AA. She is missing a number of augs, but has 350k HP and 8500AC.

I'll readily admit that I don't know how to play my SK, but I figured, 120, some ToL raid slots, a good chunk of defensive AA, 2 cleric mercs with maxed out Healing Acumen, spam some lifetaps, mash some random things that sound defensive-y, it'll be fine.

She got absolutely destroyed.

Fortunately, my mage was there to clean up the splatter. It's usually not good advice to compare other players to a class that has a beast of a tank with a 1000 pet fortification AA and a single piece of foci gear. Mages only need 1 AA line and 1 blood-soaked item and they are ready to tank most anything. No other class has that luxury, but that class was the baseline of the just go to Meratas and grab some armor advice.

As an aside, TBL makes me the saddest of all the modern expansions. It’s genuinely unique and content filled, but locked so much behind weird progression. Also, looking at the expansions that followed it ToV and CoV and ToL comparatively had so little content and creativity.

I got 6 main mages, 3 FTP account mages, a few mages on most TLPs and Zek, I love mages and being a mage.

I do not like that amount of power in a single slot; I think it would be better game design if 'pet power' were calculated from combined heroic charisma or something.

anyway, on Mercs, I'd like to see the hero's AAs you gain copied to your mercs

https://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Hero's_Special_AAs

would give you something to work for to improve your mercs reasonably.

Heresy!
Pets are not good without a raid EM earring. Not good at all. This forces pet classes to go raiding. Yes, it's just 1 raid item, which makes the difference, but it's raiding nonetheless. And some people do not want, can or wish to raid. And they have to, if they play pet class.
It's a big price to pay for non-raiders, and your suggestion to water-down the reward (EM boost) is not fair. To illustrate how meaningful and valuable EM is I can mention 40 Krono (or so on Bristlebane for example) price for EM ultra-rares . No other rares command that price level.

Those stats are less than my guildie's SK in-era when we did the progression at level 110. Which only highlights the hard path in front of plated tanks and why most tanks can't even compare to raid-focused pets in tanking.

As the SK was PL'd as you've mentioned I venture to guess that alot of Hero's AA's from progressions are missing. Again, the hard life of tank on the road to glory.

I've sent my mage to there not because it's the best class choice I had. My beastlord kills those nameds even faster (BST has mostly CoV raid gear, so it's not fair to compare), as well as PL'd necro of my wife can molo in there too. Although, some nameds are immune to melee and some others are immune to spells in Mearats pit and some have massive DS and some have some big AE. Beastlord with it's hybrid attacks is the best for the job, but other pet classes do well too.

Overall, I think that your SK was simply unprepared to fight in the pit, there are many surprises in there. But those are just that - surprises, not real overwhelming difficulties. Once you learn each named things will be much much easier.
Nameds in the center of the pit are harder than nameds spawned by killing placeholder guards, which come to the pit room from the corridors.
And GMM nameds are even easier than Mearatas' nameds. And all drop Vigilant gear and Type 18's just the same.

You figured wrong. A 110 SK in conflagrant and 20k less AAs can do Mearatas just fine if they know which buttons to push. A SK at 120 with your stats is dying because of the player, not the mercs.

I think the only way Mearatas could take down a 120 SK that fast is if that named that silences your group tags you before you're ready

Found the problem.

Maybe. But even a Cleric box mashing the same spell out-heals two healer mercs.

I've been thinking of setting up my cleric box with a foot pedal to hit that single heal as needed. not finding good input devices that look like keyboards to the OS (and hence EQ) to do it with though.

Except raid gear presumably has better overall stats, including Heroic Charisma. It would make raiding to fill ALL slots important/useful.

i have no problem with mercs unless they stop healing in the middle of a fight but thats rare and hasnt happen in a long time.

People do use foot pedals. I don't know what input they use though.

I bought this:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B08MC4PFHY

With the configuration program you can set it to any key and act as buttons etc.

very nice, looks like the software for this one reprograms the device to set keypresses; instead of injecting keypresses into the input stream; should never get wrongly flagged as 'third party software'