With heroic accounts and my ability to level up fast, is there any need for a merc anymore? What would you prefer in your group: A boxed lvl 100 silver account (I can box about as well as an average player can play) A merc with full AA's Both are basically free. Merc takes some plat, but so does a silver account toon.
From a pure DPS standpoint, j5 caster merc will outshine any class assuming that class only has 1k AA, and rank 1 spells. I'd say the same goes for having rank 2 spells. On the other hand, if you take a 100/1kaa character and make them gold for a month you can get into the 2500-3000 AA range pretty easily. If you get the important AAs with requirements beyond level 85, then auto grant on the last day of the gold sub (before going back to silver), I'm not sure if you retain the AAs from the auto grant. I haven't read into that. But if that's the case (and probably even if not the case), then that character should be able to out-perform caster mercs for sustained and burn DPS, depending on the class. I've done the cleric and shaman route, and I prefer a healer merc for the role of healing while boxing. But I'd rather focus on controlling battles and pulling with my bard while getting great DPS from my mage and wizard. As for which is better, I think player healers even at silver can outplay a healer merc just due to the ability to make judgement decisions better than what the AI presents. But that requires focus which takes away from other aspects of boxing. Melee DPS mercs? Use caster mercs - simplest answer I can give there. J5 tank mercs are miles beyond silver tank classes. If you use pet tanking and have no others in melee combat, you can just use a caster merc in place of a tank merc. If you want to melee with any of your characters, I'd go tank merc over silver tank any day.
