Tank mercs

are worthless. Even at 105 in RoF. Melee defense 9, Steadfast resolve 1. Agro ability 0. Full COTF AC gear.

Agreed. If cleric and wizard mercs functioned as poorly as "tank" mercs, no one would use them, either. The drastically reduced (approx. 2k) AC when you and your merc ding 101 was supposed to be offset by some other considerations hidden in the code.

One of my regular group and I tested this in Degmar. A level 105 merc with AC gear but no defensive AAs did not appear to tank any better than a level 100 merc with the same AC gear and one (that equates to 3 AC for the uninitiated) defensive AA. The warrior merc has approximately plus 20k HPs and minus 2k AC at level 105.

The only way a 101+ warrior merc seems to be viable in TDS content is with a shammy to slow, backup heal, and VP adds. Please, EQ team, revisit the tanking ability of "tank" mercs.

I kept hoping it was because my tank merc is wearing Soother (+healing) gear instead of +ac. However, it does have max'ed melee defense AA's.

Normally I pet tank, but I've been trying to invite people to do some TDS questing with me in Tempest Temple. Even in the T1 TDS zone, the tank merc goes splat vs 2 blue con undead sailor mobs, with a cleric merc (with full healing gear and max +healing AA) on reactive trying to keep it alive. It's even gone splat with a second (albeit slightly lower level) cleric merc assisting.

It is just completely terrible. I understand they might be ok with access to slow and atk debuffs on the mobs, but I don't have access to these

edit: gear set swaps on mercs would be nice too. Would give me a reason to want to do more of those cotf HA's to get additional sets for merc types

Don't put any gear (shield or sword) in your mercs off hand, it kills it ability to duel wield, cutting its DPS almost in half and dropping it agro generation ability significantly

Exactly. You said he's in full gear and that's going to be your main issue here.

I'll try taking his shield off but with the shield, he just died to a single coral serpent in Tempest Temple while getting reactive heals from a 105 cleric merc with healing acumen 6/8.

do you have anyone slowing/debuffing the mobs ferry?

My 105 warrior merc just tanked roon no trouble, with my 105 merc cleric on balanced doing the only healing he is lower level but does hit like a truck.

Maybe its because I have my druid melee debuff and ench slow everything and I have not had any of these issues?

Shield AC isn't special for mercs. But they do lose aggro and DPS by having anything in that slot.

Tank mercs are the least useful of all the merc types. Honestly, if a tank plus healer merc were as limited in what they could accomplish as a healer + tank merc, the boards would be awash in complaints!

With or without the shield he can't tank 2 light blue mobs in Tempest Temple but the agro is certainly better without it. Thanks!

Meanwhile on a dps class, I have to be burning cooldowns (which luckily, at lev 101+ there are lots of cooldowns to use) to stay ahead of the godly wizard mercs (and that's with no twincast or other auras beefing them up)

I had a lev 98 BL the other night take hits from a TDS mob better than the lev 101 tank merc. I'm not sure what the intention is to make wizard mercs (and to a lesser extent cleric mercs) so much better for their roles than tank mercs. Maybe it has to do with lopsided dps class populations. Regardless, as it stands now, a player tank/healer + cc + as many wiz mercs as possible....is the best small group you can make atm in my opinion

I play a 105 shaman and can (barely) solo named in Katta / Tempest Temple with my tank merc. I have him max AC / Mitigation AA and wearing all AC gear. Anything past these zones, he goes splat pretty quick. They definitely have their uses in the right setting. Melee dps mercs on the other hand, their dps is probably 50% of the wiz merc capability. I don't think hardly anyone in game is using these guys. And I'm a shaman so theoretically the melee merc should get the most benefit from being grouped with me, and he still is not even close the wiz dps.

This has been a known issue for months. I can only hope it has a high priority to be fixed.

I kind of doubt they are spending a lot of time fixing it, I submitted it as a question for the twitch feed and it was ignored as usual.

Should have been one of the 5 questions posted on reddit that were used instead.

They really don't like it when we molo named in current expansions. Some classes can do it, but the fact that it wasn't the easiest for you unfortunately isn't an indication itself that your tank merc is bad.

I know that's not the point of your post but in case someone else read it, wanted to make that clear for them.

And take away from the coding time put into the new loot system?!?

You mean wiz mercs have shamed you in to not being lazy and playing your class correctly?

At what level are tank mercs nerfd so I can stop leveling?

101, like the exp nerf.