My tank merc with maxed merc aa can't tank a named from 3 expansions ago with one healer. When are we gonna get an upgrade, maybe some new merc gear, anything ?
you must be doing something wrong .. if your in CoV then that is a problem in itself as CoV named are harder than ToL from what I've read and heard.. so if your trying T2 named in CoV then its prolly true but ToV and ToL ive seen merc tank , tank 1 named .. you have all your tank merc AA's maxed ? for the tank .. not healer or melee but Tank .. Are you using a healer merc or real healer .. if healer merc are you blocking the appropriate healing spells .. does your merc have the Vigilant gear ? is your merc fully buffed ? do you have a slower or Debuff on the mob you dont give any info on your toon class/ lvl or what expansion your hunting in and your group makeup .. are you moloing or do you have a group of friends or are you boxing .. Mercs do NOT need an upgrade , maybe some better gear something above Vigilant or a few more slots added would be nice ..
Blocking the spell on yourself makes healer merc stop casting it. Usually the HoT / Long cast time heals.
I think he meant the merc healer spells (like Promised line) some players block so the merc wont keep casting the less beneficial heal spells. But everyone in group has to block those same spells
Joules and Cats are correct as that is what i meant . you block the spells on yourself and your merc wont cast those slow casting Promised lines or HoT spells on you . NM is see what your saying now .. true you cant block spells on a tank merc .. but I'm not sure if you block them on yourself does that apply to your Tank merc ? the OP did not give enough information ... all he says is that he uses a Tank merc .. doesnt say if he uses a merc healer or real healer .. and he states that his tank merc cant handle named from 3 expansion back , but doesnt mention which expansion , heck he could be refering to CoTF named or TBM for all i know .. I dont know if he is a mage or a bst or necro , and if that is the case why is he using a tank merc and not his pet .. I dont know if he is a pet class or not .. he might be a monk for all i know. I do know Tank mercs can tank in expansions up to ToL with the right situations and added assistance from slows, debuffs, merc gear etc.. here is a link on a rogue moloing with a tank merc in maidens eye just trash mobs with no healer imagine if he had a healer or some added defensive backup (ie. slower,debuffer )
Thank you Demi for providing proof that mercs are not useless after level 60 like so many players swear by. I have always said my tank and healer merc do just fine at higher levels
with the right situations and if your carefull and no how to handle your merc(s) ie using the correct stances . having slow's and debuffs and only single pulling mercs do fine .. granted there are missions and some named that would either be impossible with a tank merc but mercs shouldnt be as good as a real tank or healer.. however they do fine for 90% of group content ..
Tank merc tanks fine. Problem is that it doesn't Disc right. They need to add to the AI that the mercs use primary discs on rare creatures and secondary discs on multiples.
They're better than nothing, but I'm not sure I'd say they do fine. My Warrior is almost lapping (i.e. almost 200% of the DPS) the Rogue Mercs in my group. A DPS merc (either kind) should just barely out-DPS a (same-level average equipped) Player Warrior. I've got the ROG's with max AA and Vigilant gear - though I see a I missed a Pauldron on one that's Extravagant not Vigilant. And its not too far off the other one that is full Vig. I imagine the Caster/Healer/Tank mercs could easily be in similar shape. I'd guess they all need a buff to what they do, and a nerf to some of what they're not supposed to do. The Rog mercs can tank for entirely too long
Even at 60'ish I'd still consider them somewhere between "hilariously broken" and "excessively overtuned". Below that, it's just absurd.
@Warpeace: Are you still raiding as main with paladin and using shaman and bard pocket accounts that are also likely raid geared? I'd agree that dps mercs are fine, though.
I did some more looking at the log parser. They're not as bad as I originally thought, but they're still not fine. The warrior tank routinely out DPS's them. The Shaman Dots too. But it was exacerbated by them not being affected by the Burn Abilities - they had the same DPS in the named fight when I blew all my cooldowns as they do on a regular mob fight with no cooldowns. This means the Warrior jumps from ~215K DPS to ~360K, while the two ROG mercs stay mostly flat at ~160K - ~180K
The tanks do fine. They just need to disc on named and multiples. The rogues do not tank too long. They pull too much aggro. Way too much aggro. It's fine to scale back their durability after they way scale back their aggro. There's no reason a rogue merc doing 140k DPS should be able to pull aggro off a PC knight no matter how slouch the knight it, but they can, easily. Edit: Rogue merc DPS is on par with a poorly geared poorly AA'ed player. Unfortunately a lot of players are about on par with the 140k DPS the rogues are doing. Again, the problem with the rogue mercs is that they are not discing. Their 140k DPS is fine but when you pull a named they continue to chug at 140k DPS while PC rogues are jumping from 300k-400k DPS to 1.5-2million DPS. Even poorly played DPS toons should be burning close to 1 million DPS. If rogue mercs discs on rares or had a called burn key, then we wouldn't have to keep talking about their DPS.
No quibbles with the DPS part of your post, but as to agro, I keep my melee mercs on burn all the time, and rarely don't have agro on my SK. You're missing something critical if you're always losing agro to the mercs.
I'm not always losing aggro. I'm simply saying it should be down right impossible. PC rogues do a million DPS and sit at like 20 on the aggro meter. Meanwhile, a rogue merc doing 140k DPS can creep up. That's silly. Also I think there might be something wrong with the AI but I haven't taken the time to figure it out. I noticed in Ka Vathen one night when the SHD was marked Puller/MT and the mage was marked MA, that the rogue would go fight the add instead of the mob on assist. When I switched to the add that the rogue was on to grab aggro, the rogue would jump back to the other mob. Normally I main ENC but I was maxed on everything so I was on my ranger alt with no CC. It was the first time I noticed the behavior but it could explain why my rogue merc was dying so much. I feel like I have had less problems since I stopped setting MT.
I'd be ok with the "balanced" vs "burn" settings on Mercs essentially being an agro toggle with similar dps (~150-200% of a tank merc) A big part of Rogue merc DPS I find is their slow engagement. Can we give them perma selos or something?
