Who all thinks a Bard and a shaman merc would work with players

Let's get some opinion on a Bard merc, and a Shaman merc.
Pros
Cons

I want an enchanter merc that blasts the pull with aoe mez and I also want a necro merc that blasts the pull with dots to break the mez

Pros: sounds great on paper
Cons: No way to program them to operate in the way you have in mind.

Theres a reason the mercs we have are the basics of the most basic. Theyre not meant nor capable of assessing a situation and reacting properly/accordingly in the way you have in mind

It would cost DB a lot to make bard and shaman mercs, because so many non-bard/shm classes are willing to pay for an extra account to drag a bard and/or shaman box around with them.

Mercs are the Devil.

Bard merc is easy to program. You would only get 2-3 songs and almost zero ADPS since the vast majority of bard ADPS comes from AAs which no merc can use.

Merc epic - nope
Merc fierce eye - nope
Merc Quick time - nope
Merc Aura - nope

So we get almost nothing with a bard merc and they are horrible autoattack DPS. Remind me again why we want a bard merc.

I would love a shaman merc that

picks a random mob from the hatelist (as would be on a players extended target window)

if target not malo'd

{

red con 80% cast malo
yellow con 60% cast malo
white con 40% cast malo
blue con 20% cast malo
green or below skip

}

if target not slowed

{ 66% cast slow }

if target not crippled

{ cast cripple }


maybe have stances to shuffle those around, along with an AE stance.

Ahh yes, shaman mercs should make into game so even cleric mercs are useless.

Since we're dreaming. Two mercs. at one time. There would be even less reason to group that way.

Two mercs 1 cup?

Mixed well.

My stinky stein has rough dirty lips.

Both can work and it would make things more interesting.

The bard could charm NPCs and playing haste and regen songs. And it can snare fleeing mobs. Out of combat it would use Selos travel song. More details here !

Shaman: Buffs, heal, cure, rez , malo, slow, cannibalize.

Make a persona, pl a new toon whether persona or not, use xp pots on dbl xp week(ends) boom you have your own alt any class. We don't need mercs at any time, we need more people grouping together...

Step 1: Admit there is a problem.

Step 2: Ask Mighty Brell for his divine guidance and assistance.

Mercs are required for the level catch-up process. Not every player is good enough to do that without them, and many classes would struggle doing so. Removing mercs would only further boxing and many players would just quit. Fact is that many players do not have the time or do not want to search for other people to form a multiplayer group. Even when someone is lfg he/she rarely does get an invitation on low pop servers. The multiplayer concept does just not work anymore like it did in the early years of the internet and online games.

You can study players very well when doing event tasks like the Year of Darkpaw tower to see what works and what does not. I never saw a single multiplayer group there on AB and a few other servers in all the seven months since this event is running. I completed about 140 tower missions successfully and failed also a few dozens of times. All by molo boxing. When I was looking for more players in the chat channels or went actively lfg, I received always zero replies. I also saw nearly only very well equipped max level characters there that got boxed. Rarely toons that were lower than lvl 115, it were to 99% lvl 125 toons.

So it is ridiculous when I do read in the forums all the time that people want to enforce grouping, as the ingame reality on live servers is completely the opposite. Nobody wants to group with strangers there, and it is even hard to bring friends and guild mates together doing that, as everyone has different goals and thoughts about how and where to play. Players only want to complete their own stuff without wanting to help others. About 95% are generally egoistic opportunists that only do form groups when it does benefit them to reach their own goals / achievements.

This is why we have heroic toon upgrades - they can group with max levels and the issue is people don't want to help new players out. Giving us more mercs is just going to create more bots and more issues.

More merc types would give the players more flexibility and sometimes also more power. The current merc types do just not fit to every PC class, which had furthered boxing. One reason why bard and shaman are that popular today is because mercs cannot slow, cannot root, cannot snare, cannot haste, cannot regen mana/HP, etc. So there is a disbalance between merc and player classes and their capabilities which greatly nerfed the cleric and pure DPS player classes, while benefiting other player classes.

Botting is a side aspect that is there anyways. Mercs are not the reason why people are soloing as PCs are usually much more powerfull than mercs. Sure they do further soloing, but that is needed to some point.

Shaman and bard mercs would be very nice additions. I would also add a paladin merc for the wizard as no current merc type does fit to this class. Maybe with better healing and aggro at the cost of DPS without making that merc OPed for other player classes.

Again just make a different class - I don't want this to be another afk play game...