Mercenaries Pay(gold) versus Free Subscription

Trying to understand, if I buy a monthly 'All Access' (gold) subscription, can I hire better mercenaries? I'm in glooming depthss and it seems I still only have access to Tier 5 mercs.

Whats the scoop?

with all access you can get the Tier I Journeyman mercs which are much better than the Apprenice mercs

Yeah the subscription are a lot better mercs.

Free Player accounts are stuck with A2 mercs.

I wish they'd bring back silver accounts so you could at least get an A5 merc.

Also took me forever to figure out that at the top of the merc vendor window is a drop down box that you can switch from Apprentice to Journeyman. There are a couple quests to get the J5 merc, but they are all around level 85ish....

That was what I was running into, I didn't see that drop down. I need glasses I guess

Go all access for a month then let if go back FTP...your account will be Silver then.

You can only get silver now if you were grandfathered in on it. Though some say it is completely gone.

Its not gone, all 5 of my acounts are silver.

I still think they could bring it back at $5 per month and part way up from ftp and folks might sign up for it. I've seen a number of requests for it over the past few years.

edit:

I think the older silver accounts should be grandfathered in and not pay. I cannot afford $25 a month for all 5 of them. I rarely get to play anyway.

I don't have much experience with Apprentice mercenaries at higher levels, but I did some tests at level 1 for the tank and healer mercs. The A2 and A5 are almost identical at level 1. The A5 has 2 more hps and mana. They both have 0 combat regen, and the healers have 1 combat mana regen.
The J1 mercs have about twice the hps and mana. The J1 healers also only have 1 combat mana regen at level 1. But both tank and healer J1 merc have 52 combat hp regen.

If memory serves correctly, apprentice mercs start to get hp regen at higher levels, but it lags behind J1 mercs. I'm not sure how the mana regen compares. I only remember rolling a mage when the free heroic characters came out. While trying a single mob in Feerrott: The Dream, the healer merc ran out of mana very fast.

The biggest difference between the A2 and A5 mercs is staying power; A2s can get routed easily (they run away) against white- or yellow-con mobs, whereas A5s will stand in there even against some red named as long as those don't summon, or you don't aggro other mobs at the same time. The J1s have marginally better stats than the A5s at level 1, and will gain more as you level, but they'll also run away more early on. Bottom line: you can go from level 1-65 quite easily with an A5 merc, you won't miss not having the subscriber's best merc available. It can be done with an A2 merc as well, you just have to pick and choose your fights a little along the way.

They should add in a market place unlocker for A3-5; because they are completely useless to anyone with access to a J1 merc. So presently the few people who have grandfathered silver accounts actually use them.

i HAVE AN OLD ACCOUNT FROM TEN YEARS AGO THAT I RECENTLY GOT BACK AND IT IS A SILVER ACCOUNT

All accounts that are that old will return as Silver. If your not paying.

Its the ones between 2014 and now that everyone has different results with as far as paying one month then reverting and getting Silver or not. There is a special flag on your account that says "chat token - Silver" that will tell you if you will be Silver if you stop paying.

Edit: not much has changed in the 4 years since this original post

Why did you resurrect a 3 and a half year old thread?