Ok the purpose of merc's is so people can still get exp since its almost impossible to find groups anymore. Why do they just stand then and watch me die? i have tried balanced and reactive settings and they heal a little and wait and heal a little and wait and heal a little then im dead. so what am i doing wrong here
A more complete answer might be possible if we had more information about your circumstances. What class and level are you, and what mobs are you fighting? In general if the merc is healing and you're still dying the two most likely scenarios are that either you're taking damage faster than the merc can heal it or the merc is running out of mana. The first circumstance is likely if you pull a mob that is way over your level or fighting too many mobs at once, or if your gear is terribly inadequate. The second is more likely if you're pulling mobs that you can handle, but you're just pulling them too fast without paying attention to your mercenary's mana bar (the blue one). Both of these situations can come up at once if you pull multiple mobs and let some of them beat on the mercenary. Then the mercenary can't focus exclusively on healing you and will be unable to keep up.
Sometimes they're buggy. More the tank mercs than the healers. The healers won't heal you if they are very low on mana. At lower levels, usually Balanced is better. At higher levels (when the 10 second cast time Complete Heal is no longer needed), you definitely want to go Reactive. There's one other possibility, which is that the mercenary loses confidence. This only happens if you are fighting 3+ red con mobs.
If youre under, say, level 65 you should be on the tank merc... even if you're a tank class! Set him to main tank, and he basically Pls you to the sixties.
Unassign the puller role from yourself. If that's not solving your problems, block Complete Heal and the Promised line of spells on yourself. Knowing your level would help, but for a large level range, Complete Heal is the best ratio heal (7500 hp for 400 mana) that a mercenary has, but it comes with a ten second cast time that can't be focused down. If you're taking damage at a rate higher than 750 dps, you either need to find a way to slow that down - perhaps pull fewer mobs - or look into improving your gear. Promised has similar issues, the merc AI anticipates a heal at the end of a certain timer and won't prioritize casting a heal when it's about to tick off. Also, possibly related to the incoming DPS amount, are you playing a swarm class and trying to pull too many mobs with a low confidence mercenary? If the merc thinks you have too many mobs, it'll "panic" and stop healing you.
As mentioned, it's impossible to provide quality information without details (why do posters STILL fail to understand this?). You're almost certainly trying to fight mobs you have no business fighting. You first need to evaluate your armor. Dark blues are markedly tougher at even HoT and up if you're under geared. Then, try to kill a GREEN con and see what happens. If your merc has trouble with a single green con, you have serious armor issues. After that, examine your play style. It's possible you're just terrible at playing your class. That is not an insult, it's a fact of life. The mercs are the farthest thing from rocket scientists, so you need to help them help you as much as possible. Are you using defensive abilities, etc. There is a LOT to consider, but usually it's not the mercs fault.
There are lots of people here trying to help ya, but we really need to know more about your situation: Are you All Access, or Free-to-play? Huge difference in merc quality. What level and class are you? Who else is in your group? What are you trying to fight? Mercs are awesome and we've used them to beat all the group content in the game. As mentioned by others, do not use the Puller role. Instead, make hotkeys for your merc stances so you can micromanage your merc like a boss. Don't be a potato and hope the merc will do all the work for you http://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/EQ:Mercenaries
And when you switch from Passive to Agressive, one click doesn't do it. I find I have to double click for the change to occur.
took me for ever to log back in and answer, first off I'm a level 88 monk, with full heroic gear. I'm fight the mobs at the entrance in house of thule. they are all blue cons and my merc is not out of mana or even low on mana. The thing just stands there and doesn't heal me, and yes its on passive. it literally does what i said in the op, heals and then waits heals then waits, sometimes doesn't even heal just stands there doing nothing, then it tries to heal again and im dead.
You do know passive means they don't do anything? As in no heals? They says skins don't matter but fire that one and go get a J5 High Elf Female healer and see what happens. I had a bad merc healer once also. But all of this we have told you in server chat already. At 88 that area may be too hard for you (yeah I know) so let go and return to the lower level snakes that con blue but are easy in Feerrot - near the merchants and see what your merc does.
Keep merc on reactive as they wont do anything on passive. The only thing passive is good for is saving money, if you plan on being afk for a while. If you switch to passive the merc will charge you after the current 15 minute period runs out, but wont charge you further. If you are in full heroic gear w/o the Heroic Character Augments from the HoT quests or other armor augments, you may not be able to handle those mobs yet. You may have to find a group with a slower or box one. If you want to molo (player and merc) I think you might have to find somewhere else to go or farm some ac augs.
omg its promised recuperation, thanks Kolani didn't know you could block spells, thats what its doing casting that promised crap and just watching me die after blocking that now it keeps up
i guess its not, mercs just suck and are built to let players die i guess. I can find a group so stuck soloing and the only reason i came back is because everyone was saying merc make up for that but they don't, unless you play a mage apparently. this was pointless and a waste of money.
Monks really aren't that tanky. Somebody should have said this earlier, but trying to "molo" (solo with a merc) is going to be difficult no matter what. You might consider boxing, and you really might consider playing a tank class (Shadowknight, specifically) if you want to molo. I can imagine your frustration. People will tell you that you can do it, and it is technically possible. But most of the people who do it have a lot more experience than you do, and they still move very slowly. Despite what anybody says, very few people will enjoy EQ as a solo player without boxing. EDIT: From level 1 to about 60, the tank merc will literally do everything for you. Not so much later on, but I can assure you they are still powerful assets even at 110.
It not that. at 88 even taking on mobs in HOT zones 1 at a time is going be hard. For a monk until you get maxed out def/off stuff done you better off in a exp below you. Monks are great at dealing out damage but not so much at taking it unless you are gear/aa for it.
