As somebody who 3-boxes with mercs a lot, I have concerns about merc AA. 1. It's way too slow. IIRC there was a bug that made it much slower than intended past lv 105(?), and one of the devs said it would be fixed. That was back in December or January, and I don't recall seeing any mentions of that fix in the patch notes. Is it still not fixed? Merc AA xp is not affected by any xp modifiers: Lesson, potions, holiday bonuses - none of that works, you get the same amount of merc AA xp per kill. Why? Maybe it made sense back when it was just implemented and the ranks were 2-3 AA per, but now you need a whole lot more per rank. Please allow xp bonuses to apply to merc AA xp. 2. They need vastly different amounts of AA. To be viable in TBL, mercs need to complete several lines of their AA. All classes need max Improved Spell Resistance and Improved Health, otherwise they get annihilated by the mob AEs. But that's where the equality ends. Healer needs to max Healing Acumen, and pre-requisite for it is Improved Spell Resistance which they get either way. That's it, just 1 extra line. They don't need Subtle Magic, their heals never generate too much aggro. No need for Improved Mana either, they don't run out of mana for a very long time. Melee DPS needs Rising Fury (requires: Improved Health) and Subtle Strikes (requires Improved Health again). That's 2 extra lines. Caster DPS needs Mystic Destruction (requires Improved Spell Resistance) and Silent Arcanum (requires Improved Mana). That's 3 extra lines. Tank needs Improved Melee Defense, Steadfast Resolve (requires Improved Melee Defense), and Furious Wrath (requires Improved Health). That's 3 extra lines. As you can see, Tank and Caster DPS need a whole lot more AA than Healer or Melee DPS. Please consider changing the pre-requisites to make things more even between the merc classes. 3. Switching mercs is unreasonably hard. One of the advertised features of mercs was the ability to switch between them. Extra merc slots are sold in the Marketplace, so that's a supposed source of income for Daybreak. But as it stands right now, there is no way to switch between mercs without a massive loss of efficiency. Given the number of merc AA required for them to be efficient in the current content, it requires a no-life maniac to max the AA lines even for 2 different mercs, forget about 3 or all 4. The only 'reasonable' option for an extra merc slot is if your main merc is something other than a Healer - then you can add the Healer just for rez and buffs. Merc gear matters a lot (as it should). But that means you have to switch those items every time you switch to another merc. This is a smaller issue compared to the rest of this post, but it would still be nice if each merc had his own gear slots. Each merc saves the buffs. Please consider saving the gear as well.
I agree with your first two points, but you lost me on point 3. I don't find it hard, unreasonably tedious, or inefficient to switch mercs, and I have 3. The only thing I don't like about switching mercs you didn't even mention, which is the 5min timer. It's not that hard to change 4 pieces of gear, and even if you want to, defender's is usually the best for most mercs given the small returns on the other stats.
They just increased the rate at which they gain AA by vast amounts, so, experience works based on killing mobs, maybe they should just gain exp by standing there in PoK?
Do you have 3 mercs with maxed class-specific AA lines? Grats if so. But if not, then switching from a merc that has his class AA done to one that doesn't is a major efficiency hit. If your Healer is good, but your Tank dies to everything and can't hold aggro - there is no reason to switch to him even when you need a tank. And you need a huge number of AA to make them both efficient. That's what I mean. It's faster after the March patch, but still too slow if you want to max them IMO. The patch only mentions 'increased merc xp gain', as in for all mercs. I suspect that the bug that was specific to lv 106-110 merc xp gain may still be there.
It's a bad system, not just the tedium of different lines for the mercs but across different characters. Merc AA lines should just be general not specific to Tank, Caster, Melee, and Healer. Mercs were supposed to be the pop and play boost that solo and small groups could use. Start by just autogranting AA's for mercs, especially since players are up to TDS-era for autogrant. .
To be honest at this stage of TBL I'm not that concerned, they will all need retuning come the next expansion anyway. But agree they should have a seperate tab for merc gear for each type. Being able to give mercs AAs from our own AA pool would be nice.
The new announcement means a lot more merc AA to get for them to feel adequate in the next expansion. Doesn't take a genius to predict 5 new ranks of each line, probably at 12 AA/rank. Which means even more disparity between the classes and even more work if you want to play more than 1 merc. Unless something is done about the xp gain, ranks and pre-requisites.
It also means they need tuning, it took what a year and a half for them to have time to look at the 110 mercs? and they still aren't all upto the job. I'm not holding my breath for them to be any better at getting 115 mercs tuned in any less time than it took 110 mercs. I gave up on anything other than healer mercs being useful a long time ago and run with 3 healer mercs to keep the group alive. It used to be 2 but I've found even 2 doesn't cut it anymore.
