818hp is a wash yet people will camp upgrades for themselves that are a quarter that? That makes no sense. Power is cumulative and 800hp+ a slot is a big jump. Naked 0 Aa merc tanks struggle in hard content. Who wants to bet fully aa'd Mercs with gear won't struggle a fraction of as much.
As a healer it's very annoying. Many classes can pop their healer merc and be productive, where as when I pop my tank merc al I get is stress. The tuning is broken when as a druid I'm better off with a cleric merc and myself tanking, and by better I mean - much higher dps, higher survivability, and fewer glitchy merc related annoyances. Not many classes tank worse than a druid, so if this doesn't highlight the problem I have no idea what will.
Are you really claiming that you tank better as a Druid than your tank merc? Tank mercs aren't super awesome by any means but they sure do a better job than than most group geared classes. The biggest thing the tank mercs need is a toggle-able stance where they won't use their large defensive discs so you can save them for named.
An AA for a new stance with just this...would be great. AAs that unlock special commands/abilities for the mercs that you can tell them to use on command would be great. I think there are a couple of reasons that this is a wash for people. In order to get the 818hp you have to not get the ac...and other things like that. There's merc gear with 'just' a silly mod3 on it. Why? It's pointless, imo. The merc gear isn't stored 'per merc' class, and therefore you have to keep multiple sets on you if you have multiple mercs and want to have them at their 'maximum potential', even with the minimal advances these give. There's only 4 slots for merc gear. That's far fewer than a player's slots. The merc gear should have comparable values to player gear of the same tier of content, imo...because they should still be behind, but not *as* far behind as before. These are just my opinion on this, though...I can't say with anywhere near 100% certainty that this is actually why they think it's a wash. Given these points, though... IMO what they should do is convert all this gear stuff into augments...and have bought gear pieces with 'base' stats and say...3 or 4 slots. You can then buy the gear piece, then the augs, to customize your merc's gear better. This would also allow people to further improve upon the mercs and giving them more to do than just getting 4 pieces and then being done. Make the 'merc armor piece' w/the aug slots cost 1.5-3x the cost of the augs, imo. Have specific augs be specific types (like...the spell damage augs could be 'type 2' whereas hp/ac would be 'type 1'...and there could be 2 type 1 and 2 type 2 aug slots..or something like that). All of this being said, however...I haven't really noticed a difference in my merc with 2/8 Healing Acumen...but I also haven't been paying that much attention to it, either. Maybe the higher ranks are more noticeable or something, who knows.
My Beastlord's pet is twice the tank as my tank merc. My main is a warrior and tanks better standing on his head, naked, with his head in a bucket of water and holding a swarming hornets nest between his legs.
I am a wizard and feel I tank better than a tanking merc. I also have a 8/8 Healing acumen Healing merc with full Healing gear... and I hardly see the difference from a 0/8 one ( but heal may be harder to notice? since anyway he's using splashes, delayed heal or heal over time at random moments).
Your Beastlord pet isn't "most group geared classes". A naked tank merc isn't going to out-tank any appropriately aa'd group geared tank or Mage/Necro/BL tank with appropriate aas, but that "naked" tank merc will tank much better than your average group geared melee dps, priest, or caster. Tank mercs are an option of last resort for a group that can't field an appropriately powered tank. Without any aa or gear they get the job done in a pinch. With appropriate aa and gear, they fare better ... but are still going to be inferior to any actual PC who possesses tanking ability. To my knowledge, the only merc that functions better than your average group geared toon is the wizard merc, and they still won't outperform group geared intelligence casters played appropriately ( ... except necros). To the above poster, have you tried blocking those delayed heals and heal over time aas? After blocking those on my tanking characters, healing was much more reliable because they always blast when you need a blast. As to the wizard tanking better than the tank merc, ummm ... no, not with group gear at least. I've not played a raid geared wizard - but this discussion isn't really relevant if you're tossing overgeared players into a discussion of mercenaries.
