I 5 box with a healer merc. Easy question - should I suspend my merc at the final han din or leave him in group to maximize my xp?
I always leave mercs up. I want all the merc AA I can get. Maybe if I max my merc AA I might start suspending them but I am nowhere near that point.
You won't get more XP suspending the 6th group member. Ages ago they changed it so that the last group member does not decrease XP for the other 5 members (like 2003-ish?). Tat
Each group member "adds" a bonus percentage to the group. They made it so the 6th person adds enough of a bonus that it pretty much means that the 6th person is free. And on another note, is the experience split between members? I was under the impression it was a set amount?
Leave your merc up if you ever want them to gain xp in HA's so they become more useful. Suspending them is not only going to progress them slower meaning worse heals and such but it will also not benefit your xp gain at all.
Also keep in mind that mercs do not give the % bonus so more than one merc earns less exp per group slot than a player. An under performing dps could even do less dps then a merc and still 'earn' more exp. 3 Players and 3 mercs only earn 40% bonus to the total. 5 players earn 80% and and the 6th slot gets exp with out taking from the whole.
Couple things to think about. 5 mins to call back a merc if headed to next HA, if trying a lesson burn that hinders you. Mercs only get exp when out and not on passive. 6 is better than 5, to add a toon at the end for the “big” exp is actually wrong now as they need to be in the task for all the updates.
Plus if you auto granted AA then your exp is fubared. For example I run 3 box, same levels, same % disbursement on AA/Exp, same levels of merc etc. 2 used auto grant and get 16-32 AA per HA in DH. The third guy who I did not auto grant gets 135 AA for same. I know you loose the AA % bonus by auto granting but that is a whopper!
You are half correct. I don't have the link handy, but they talked about this a few years ago (maybe 5 or 6). Mercs DO give the bonus (20% per group member). Real players give more than that, though they never stated how much more. Tat
I would like to hear a bit more about this. What levels. How much AA presently on toons that did autogrant? How much AA on the the one who did not? The bonus is that huge only when you have next to no AA. (1000% at 0) And it decays very rapidly. Once your third guy hits 3000 he will be getting only a smidge more than the other two and by 4000 the bonus is gone entirely. Past 4k, your 3rd guy will be getting the same 16-32 per HA. With autogrant, depending on class, you will hit 11-12k by lvl 100. But even lets assume you keep getting ~130 per HA all the way. Who is fubared? Someone who clicks the box and gets 11k+ free or soneone who slogs through 80+ HAs to grind those same 11k? One argument could be made for earning your first 3-4k AA the regular way while you still have the bonus, spending that AA in categories that will not get autogranted, and then turning on autogrant. The problem with that approach is that almist all non-auto are locked behind levels or earlier pre-requisites. And you can't bank more than twice your level, so you will gave to spend those points in areas you could get free. Leveling to 100+ with no AA = severely gimping yourself.
It was just a comment about other things that could affect experience ratio. No need to derail to auto granting debates.
Two things My title is, well, wrong lol. I tshould refer to EXP not DPS, woops. 2nd is nothing to do with this, but spinoff of what Scorrpio said. I really, really, really wish we could choose what to spend our Auto Grant AA's on. Like, I turned on my zerker to gold yesterday, he went from 4k aa's to 9k aa's or so at lvl 103. I really wish I could hand pick what those AA's were spent on. I am very greatful for the auto grant feature and like it a lot, I just sort of wish I could customize my character more. I can always not auto grant, but like you said, 80 HA's grinding, f that. I'll do the 80 HA's and fix what the auto grant didn't get basically.
Auto-grant is not about giving you a bunch of points. It is about reducing the amount of catching up. When you ding 100, you end up with the same set of AA as a player who maxed his during RoF, less the tradeskill stuff. Anything from CotF and onward is on you. Main reason for autogrant: consider the long stretches of time active players spent at level cap, swelling their AA counts. When a new expansion launches, its content is typically tuned for players close to or at max AA. First time, IMHO, it was really felt in GoD, the difference between a newly-dinged 65 and one with 300+ AA under his belt. And the gap since then only widened. Curent content, low AA on a character that is prone to take hits, can be totally brutal. Auto Grant put you sqarely into comfort zone to tackle CotF content, espectially by lvl 100.
Right, I like that, I just wish I could choose where to put the aa’s. Like, you get 1000 aa’s at 100 to spend. That would max you out to RoF. You get the aa’s then spend them however you want.
I don't understand your objection. Auto-grant covers ALL AAs you can get for a particular level. You don't need to worry about where they're spent, because they're spent everywhere. The AAs you might want now, it doesn't give you, because you're not eligible. It appears that way, because you waited til 103 to go all-access, but the last level that gets auto grant is 100. So, that sweet AA you wanted but didn't get? It's a level 103 AA, and the auto-grant ended at 100. If you had been all-access at 100, you would have gotten everything, and wouldn't have this objection. Tat PS - There might be some confusion due to the fact that auto-grant gives all AAs through RoF, which is level cap 100. However, CotF is also level cap 100, and those don't auto-grant. So it may appear that there were some AAs which could have been auto-granted, and didn't, and you'd rather have those. But they're not auto-grantable (yet). Once the new expac comes out, CotF will auto-grant. Since that's just a couple months away, you may want to favor taking TDS/TBM/EoK AAs where possible, and then the CotF ones will be auto-granted to you at that time.
That's my point - Maybe I wanted to take the 50 aa's it would require to do natural durability to get up to date for CoF expansion and put it into a TBM AA instead, something class specific, assuming i'm of level and own the expansion.
Yes, that's what this amounts to, wishing for a different feature than what we have now. The current feature is, when you level, they auto-grant the specific AAs for that level, from specific expacs. The OP wants a set amount of AAs, to be spent as the player sees fit. I don't see them ever changing that. And this is only an issue of you're level 100 or higher, because up to that point, you get EVERY AA available for your level, if you have auto-grant enabled. Which is even more interesting, because when you ding 101+, you don't get any AAs auto-granted, at all. So, again, this is only an issue if you're higher than level 100, and weren't all-access as you leveled up, and then go all-access and get a huge pile of AAs granted. These are the only people who could even see this issue, to potentially wish it would work differently. I have to believe that's a vanishingly small group of players. Tat
Thing is, most AAs are locked behind prerequisites and/or level. So saving those 50 from Natural Durability to progress into another AA line in TBM would stop ya cold in your tracks. Hey you're 103!....but need to be 105 to put more AAs into said line....well now you're just holding onto those 50 AAs. Best to put them.back into ND and get the benefit from it. Auto-grant feature is a catch up system that gives you pretty much all the AAs of the less relevant expansions (in this case, as mentioned, up to and through RoF). So instead of wasting time grinding out AAs of older expansions they're just given to you. Even if they just gave you a lump sum of AAs to distribute, you're still going to to spend them on things you do not want due to the level bar and prerequisites required for some AA lines.
Not entirely correct. Prime example: innate run speed, which got two extra ranks in EoK. Level requirements are fairly low, but being EoK, it is not autogrant. I totally get the OP. Recent expacs introduced some pretty nice things which I would definitely prefer having to some of the auto's, but it is quite simple: you want them, you earn them. Gotta say, AA gain speed these days is so fast it is hardly worth fretting over. Feels like every time I spend all my banked points, I barely have time to sneeze and I am pushing the limit again.
