In another thread Niente said that they are going to "fix the Merc AAs" so hopefully they will autogrant those as well or speed them up somehow. Maybe they'll fix how heroics work on them as well.
I haven't tested th dps mercs yet since my gamparse is currently not working but the tank merc upgrade is nice. I tested for a while in FM goblin camp purely because it's easy to get to. I recognize it's not a difficult spot. As a 110 cleric I was only healing 1-2 times per fight and the merc was able to Easily keep agro off my monk altz even when burning. I think I remember something about reducing monk agro when using heel & bp but still, merc tank tanking was a nice surprise. Also him surviving tanking bifaak was another nice surprise. There were still a few times when tank merc derp'd out and ran off the wrong way and abandoned us but I suspect this was pathing related and being on the hill. Autoassist still leaves a little to be desired but you can make a hotkey and say when to assist to get around that. Did not test merc tank with merc healer yet simply because my only character with a tank is my cleric. I suppose I could have just sat there and used the monks cleric but didn't think about it at the time. Overall very happy with the initial round of changes but will need to test a harder location to know for sure.
Have you actually looked at the gear? It's ridiculous. http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=133111 http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=133107 The healer merc has 185HA which is about 5-6pct of what a healer pc is running around with, 9 mana regen, which I have never seen a healer merc go below 90pct mana anyway geared or not. The tank merc gets some endurance regen??? for what I have no clue, I have never seen one live long enough to use any endurance. It also has 156 AC which is probably like buff or shield AC as merc's only have 4 slots. Its not enough to keep the tank alive in anything that gives XP. But I have seen a healer merc off tank 3 or 4 mobs before while the party recovered. Now given that the mana regen and endurance regen are useless on mercs. The heal amount probably isn't noticeable. I wonder how much more survivable a healer merc would be if you put Tank merc gear on it? Since he only real difference is between the two is the AC. Much like the itemization on all the PC gear look at these rings: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=133847 http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=133851 http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=133846 http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=133850 http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=133852 compared to: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=133848 Now sure priests need both focii, and everyone wants both clicks(which if you put in the work or plat or whatever you don't have to wear your best click,) Everything else is pretty much the same, the only difference being the 66 extra AC on the Secure Ring. I have not really looked at really looked at raid gear yet. But from what I have seen of the group stuff, it doesn't matter if your a tank, or a dps, or a utility or a priest(excepting druids whose worn AC does nothing.) The fact is, if the only difference between a "tank item" and a "DPS" item is the amount of AC on it, then every one of the archetypes is better off with the higher AC one. Every tank aug has just as much HA and SD as the caster ones or the priest ones, as well as just as much attack as the melee ones. Its looks like the guy who did items owes a mafioso tank main a lot of money.... The tank blackmailer then forced his mark to make sure Tank classes get more AC, but not at the cost of DPS or any other mods, those need to be just as good as every other class has, cause tanks need to be dps too! Do it or you'll be sleeping with the fishes see?
Try harder content then. If you run the merc healer on balanced or efficient, they don't run out of mana, but if you need to use reactive (necessary in TBL and RoS) they WILL run out of mana. The same thing applies to merc casters. Burn mode will run through mana.
Yeah I have seen the caster mercs run low on burn. I have run every mission and every quest dozens of times or more with healer mercs in every expansion since SoD. I has never occurred to me to even put a healer merc on balanced or efficient. Balanced against what? I have heard people say that they heal better when you stack them by putting them on different modes, but never seen that to be the case. Never once seen a healer merc go LoM unless a mana drain effect was in play. The two recent expansions you wanted a real healer for skyfire in RoS. If your group is good enough now, they can do it with a healer merc. You will need a real but, non-druid healer for the achievements in cliffs, i believe. Still trying to figure out how I am going to my main through that last achievement. Everything requires a tank or a melee/pet that can tank. About a third of the missions you probably need a real tank class tank. But I have used ranger and monk tanks for most the others. I have not found any spot where a tank merc is useful even with 3 healers, in RoS or TBL... I tested them in EoK, after I used my healer merc to grind up enough XP for them and obtained the new "tank" merc gear. They were still worse than any classes pet; and every type of melee class. Max gear, max AA, fully raid buffed with 2 healer mercs and a real healer; their average life expectancy was 1.5 mobs. I have referred to them as FAIL Mercs since.
Mercs are still crap. Klunzar, VP, old expansion, - one rounded - with one AE if not protected with an Enchanter mitigation buff. Even all 15kAA F2P toons with TBL T1 or RoS Conflagrant survive that crap but mercs went into dust... They are more a one time pop buff - that is what they are to me...they are >spurn< but only usable every 5min sometimes...
In every case you are just better off putting out a healer merc. Even with a real cleric in group. Even if its a really really really good cleric. Have that cleric nuke or tank instead, they will out-DPS a DPS merc, while giving all the accessory buffs/auras that healer mercs don't cast. When they stop and wonder why they even play a cleric, you can easily help them figure out their new Shadowknight, mage, or necro name to main switch to. Lord knows the servers don't have enough of those classes. The healer mercs are always sufficient for a pet or a tank class. If you have a monk or ranger or shaman pet tanking use two or three healer mercs, they stack very well. They will also help fill up those groups so you don't have to meet new people, or worse share loot with them. No one who plays a Massive-Multiplayer-Online-Role-Playing-Game actually wants to get to know anyone else. The devs know this much better than the players, they have wisely corralled the player-base away from those classes they have never really liked, by supplanting them with healer drones and giving them no way molo current content like other classes can. You may be stubbornly sticking to your 20 year old cleric or druid main, out of some sense of duty or nostalgia. Much like those stranded Japanese soldiers who were still shooting at people from pacific island outposts in the mid-70's. The drone strikes started ten years ago, you are on your way out, just smile and accept extinction. In ~30seconds you can be reborn as a the shadowknight or necro that Norrath has been looking for! Healer drone in tow! Healer Drones for President 2020 - Make Norrath Molo Again - Whether they want to or not!!!
Any chance they got worse in some situations? My cleric merc doesn't seem to be keeping up with heals on 110 mage pet/raid focused/all pet AAs against 2 level 108 lizards in EOK content where I thought it used to be no problem.
You also claim a proc healing for 1k is healing for 300k a minute too. So we know how valuable your subjective opinions are. Merc healers constantly run oom or lom when on reactive. Its not everyone else's fault if you sit there for 2 minutes between mobs in ancient content.
Really? Not seriously... Are you still playing in EoK or do you support your healer merc with a Paladin? Time to test your mercs in TBL Trials or in Missions...
We seem to have some reporting that mercs never go below 90% mana and some reporting their mercs are constantly oom. Maybe merc race does make a difference? jk
I haven't parsed it but I don't notice a difference. They still act dumb and are not very good in current content.
At 105 if the tank Merc stats got DOUBLED (and I mean all stats) they would still be terrible. It’s like a sponge trying to mitigate hydrochloric acid.
If you are fighting trivial mobs mostly, then probably they wont go oom, but if you are fighting current content they absolutely will go oom in reactive mode. If your healer merc is not going oom in reactive mode then you are fighting trivial mobs. If you are not fighting nameds or missions then healer mana is less of an issue because there are frequent breaks while stuff is being pulled/spilt etc. If you don't have those breaks they are going to run out of mana in reactive mode. In my crew I run two of them, one in reactive mode, the other in balanced or efficient. When one runs low I switch modes on them. The third merc is usually a rogue, since they don't have mana issues. Sometimes the third merc is a wizard, but I find that those tend to be poorly disciplined and do dumb stuff, like go and cast in the middle of CCed rooted mobs and just stay there while the mobs beat it down, or start nuking things being pulled on inc. I have a shaman in my crew, but he was not necessary for healing for the most part in RoS with the two mercs. They can handle most stuff in TBL so far, other than some mobs and most missions, where I need to spot heal with my shaman sometimes (some can be done with mercs, provided they don't run out of mana - that is the limiting factor)
My team appears to be more stable in current content than before the patch, so anecdotally I would say that there is a difference. The mercs still do stupid things though, such as ignore a rooted mob beating on them or running off and attacking things that are not currently the target.
I am doing current TBL content with a chanter pet to tank, as that is my only real option. Still trying to figure out a way to pull my druid main through. Over a month ago i was taking a progression group through(using the chanter pet to tank.) It was double named spawn weekend. I had my 20 year old max AA raid geared druid main with my 15 year old max AA raid geared chanter alt, a raid geared cleric main, and a returning poorly geared ranger who would die from the AEs We spawned 4 named in stratos, tried to kill and wiped on the first two. A group geared warrior with his monk alt came and easily killed the first 2 using two healer mercs. We ooc'd for him to come get the third. When the fourth one spawned I camped my druid main out to bring on the tinker-bot from his account. A badly geared under AA mage who I really don't know how to play well. He easily killed the named. At which point it was obvious I didn't need my raid geared chanter, the cleric main or the ranger. All i needed to do was play(poorly) my crap-geared mage with his OP healer merc. One alt toon was worth more than three raiders and a returning ranger. Why should anyone play a druid or a cleric, why should I pay for two accounts, when one crap toon can do more than the huge chunk of my life investment in the other two?
