Tempest Temple "Clearer Skies" mission much harder now

Kravitz, just confirming - Degmar appears to be fixed on test in terms of the mezz issue?

The second issue here brought forth here, other than messed up immunities is tanking. The elephant in the room as that tank mercs used to be able to do current content (except during Underfoot,) and they no longer can. I wonder if DBG really thought about who this hurts.

Tank mercs can still do what they are designed to do.

Take one to Degmar's Castle and tell me that.

How about Degmar's, Caverns, Thuli, Combine and Arx? (Though granted Arx actually makes me work). And granted, I'm a real cleric though there is a merc cleric as well since I tend to act as puller as well.

I guess we should start another thread about mercwarriors or maybe bump and old one.

They work fine in Degmar. But they are less forgiving than a player tank (at least ones with a clue). You can't just expect a group of random classes to work well with a tank merc. The group needs to have some sort of balance to make up for the deficiencies. You'll need at least one of either a real healer, slower, puller and/or crowd control. I do perfectly fine playing my enchanter along with a tank merc and one healer merc. I did all of progression that way and have killed named in every TDS zone. You'll also likely want to have fairly good dps as the faster stuff dies, the less likely you'll get some unlucky rounds that kill the merc. In some fights, you need to support the tank merc and cannot just expect it to be on auto-pilot for you.

I usually play a chanter and the room I'm talking about wasn't mezzable. And it was even hard for a monk to pull one out.

Rune the tank before the pull so you have a buffer while you get the mob slowed. If you're seeing spiky damage on the tank, support the healer by using runes. If you don't have a skilled puller (either the monk or your enchanter) and the adds are too much for a tank merc, your enchanter can tank as well.

Sure, they may be able to tank but it's still a struggle for them 99 times out of 100.

The main thing is I can plug in a merc healer - although it won't give me the wide array of awesomeness a real cleric provides - it can do the job more than well enough to be effective in 99% of all situations I'm in. A real cleric is definitely more efficient, talented, a flexible than a merc but in a majority of group situations, all their utility isn't truly necessary. It's mainly fluff where they flex their healing muscles.

Same thing goes for dps mercs. Just mindless killing, they are around the 25-30k dps range which is perfectly fine for my needs 99% of the time.

However, a tank merc can't even come close to being as efficient as a group-geared tank. At best they're only tanking 1 mob at a time in the upper tiers and they'll still struggle without pretty major support. Meanwhile, a well geared raid tank can tank 5-10 mobs in TDS with just a healer merc. You won't see a tank merc tanking this amount with a real healer. They'll get rounded. There's just a major discrepancy between tank merc effectiveness and healer merc effectiveness.

Come on Trix, your really gonna compare a raid geared player tank to a tank merc????

Heck, you get a raid geared healer and they better be putting out dps and healing, or at least making you be able to tank 1-3 more mobs in that set way more than a cleric merc can do!


You cannot compare a merc to a raid geared anything, thats not what they were put in for. As seg said, they can do all regular group content if you are doing it in a full group + merc, they are not designed to be 100% effective without support.

The compare is easy... A raid geared Cleric with a Tank Merc should be able to kill very close to the same mobs as a Raid geared tank with a cleric Merc. (That's called balance). Right now the real tank side has a massive advantage. Tank mercs where far more useful when compared to the current situation mostly due to a lot of crying about the tank mercs being too good.

Either the tank mercs need a boost or cleric mercs need a nerf... I would always prefer the boost side of the equation.

A raid geared cleric isn't going to be using a tank merc

If the tank Merc was decent they just might.

well cleric mercs are decent and you see pallies with wiz mercs......

The good raid clerics I know use wiz mercs for tanks. They get a tank and dps in one.

Tank mercs are fine. They're not suppose to be as powerful as a real tank, hence their gimpness. A merc tank can get you far if you have the right support.

No merc tank is going to be able to face tank 10 mobs at a time in arx no matter who the healer is. Meanwhile a good tank with a merc healer can.

I can compare. I just did. I can easily tank handful of mobs at a time at will with a Merc healer. A real healer is just fluff for me or makes it possible for me to not use any defensives.

Meanwhile, a real healer with a Merc tank can't touch me tanking with a Merc healer. It's not even close. Sorry.

your comparison is flawed, a cleric with a dps merc will have about equal kill rate as you with a cleric merc. clerics dont use tank mercs. Tank mercs are for groups that don't have someone that can tank for them or the ability to keep a dps merc healed.

I wouldn't say that his comparison is flawed. I would say that the design is flawed if that's the case, Sojero, and I think that's what others are saying.