DBL Exp exposed a flaw in HA changes. (Mercs)

Long story short...
Mercenary AA exp was already pretty darn slow.
With the changes made to HA's the kill exp for Mercs is almost nil. (even doubled!)
So. When it comes to the final hail - the Mercs need to see a nice exp hit too. Right now they get nothing.
(Note: This positively should NOT be deducted from player exp - but rather be a given percentage thereof - like the kill exp is.)
-Rat

i posted here that merc exp was very poor now in HA's a couple of days after the exp changes and got no response at all.... so i guess it is "working as intended"

I went from getting a merc aa every 2 or 3 or HA's to maybe getting one AA every 8 or 9 HA's

Do TDS HA, not have the XP nerf that CoTF ones do, In TDS, in T3 HA's anyways, is super nice XP per kill and super small reward on the last hail. So you can burn lesson. get merc AA's and group coins that you can actually use.

Leveling up the Bloodstained Shoulders seems to take forever unless you go out of your way to grind just for them. So it appears that item XP has the same issues.

Tds ha's seem to be great exp, merc gets atleast 1 as per.

I spent 4 days kiting in cob and evantail a year ago specificity to lvl up my shoulders and helm so I don't see where "going out of your way to grind" is a problem

How about just noting that "evolving items" kinda suck in general.
Enough to have to spend the DKP for them.
The added time sink to evolve them is blatently annoying at best.
And also very transparent that it's a deliberate time sink.
-Rat (who hates mind-numbing grinding for silly stuff)

Yes you can do other things and get good merc exp, my complaint is that they said despite the changes to how older HA's give exp, the overall exp should be about the same....

but this it *not* the case when it comes to merc exp.. they are getting much less then what they used to get from the older HA's.

The nerf to the exp was the easiest thing they could do to stop everyone from being max level and all that stuff.

Fixing all the stuff it broke may not even be on the radar since they are now working on the next expansion.

then clearly this item is not for "your type"

At my current pace, I will have 300,000 regular AA's by the time I finish merc AA's. My week old alt that is only level 50 with 0 regular AA's is about to pass my main for merc AA's. Logic? There is none here anymore, just a badly designed system.

Getting Max level and Max AA does not "Win EQ" - by a long shot.
Max level and Max AA just gives you the best base tools for working the real content.
There's so much more do do than grind levels and AA - I really wish the focus would come off that and onto real content in the future.
-Rat

There would have to be real content to focus on then.

No problem with 'going out of your way to grind.' However with the EXP nerfs, going back to grind in content two expansions old - like COB was a year ago - isn't nearly as good an option now as it was for you, just like the place I leveled mine isn't nearly as good an option now.

I'm not a fan of the exp nerfs in general - I think SOE used a flamethrower across a broad swath when a torch lighter would have done - but given that they are here, I could see a case for reducing exp for evolving items a bit. particularly if they carry this pattern forward of nerfing exp in other than the last two expansions..

I can see it now - folks de-leveling to work Merc AAs. As Ollie would say, "Another fine mess."

I shrouded to level 5, went to crescent reach, to max out my gnoll totem clicky. I guess I could pop a merc and do the same for it. The only problem is I can't tell a difference with merc AA. I'm always in a position where the merc either works for the encounter or it doesn't. I don't think I'll make "special time" for my merc (AAs) hehe

Honest question: Is there anything you DO like about Everquest?

Follow up: If not, why do you play?

If you read all my posts you'd see plenty of kudo's; particularly to the CS department, and the increasing transparency of Dev team.
What I don't like, is the fact that "Junkbond Status Sony" has pulled so many resources away from the "Goose that laid their Golden Egg" - that it's forced the Dev's into creating more and more "strange time-sinks" to make 1/2 an expansion last a whole year. Two years in a row now.
It was this whole "time sink" issue with EQ that let an upstart like WoW get the upper-hand at all ; this after EQ was already the dominant market force in MMORPG's.
I'm not saying to ever make EQ like "WoW easy" - but adding silly time sinks to impede "keeping up" just further erodes the (now older) average player base.
From a strict marketing standpoint, the only thing that EQ has over the all others is that itis so old that it's "multi-box friendly" on most PC's. Kill that and you kill the Group Game entirely - and the raiders aren't enough to pay the bills forever.
-Rat

Maybe its time to let players siphon off some of their own exp towards their mercs?

Do you mean even more than they do now just by being in group and taking a share of the experience? How aboutif we direct all experience towards the merc? I haven't experienced the new "experience" model but from what I've read here, there isn't a lot of experience to go around when killing mobs in HA's now.