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

Only if they cannot slow, debuff, snare, charm, mez, root, and haste by themselves. They usually do lack some of these abilities. Only the shaman (healer+DPS), beastlord (tank+DPS), and necro (tank+DPS) as part of the holy trinity can cover most of them which is one of the reasons why they are OPed. Holy trinity = Tank + Healer + DPS.

The problem are pet classes because they can be all three. Not as perfect as a WAR + CLR + ROG, but they basically can do what three characters can do, without the need to join other players. I would say that a single MAG / NEC / BST is as strong as 1.5 - 2 characters which is way OPed. These pet classes are a core problem of the game and not mercs. They basically have already two mercs included which is their pet (tank or DPS) and their pet healing ability (healer).

The beastlord and shaman slow spells are much to powerfull. Same for necro slow spells and afaik they can turn every NPC into an undead NPC so that slow and mez can always be used. Necros should not be able to turn NPCs into undead NPCs.

NEC = 70% tank, 50% healer, 150% DPS = 270% <- slight tank + strong DPS nerf required
BST = 80% tank, 40% healer, 90% DPS = 210% <- strong slow + medium DPS nerf required
MAG = 75% tank, 40% healer, 75% DPS = 190% <- slight tank + slight DPS nerf required

WAR = 100% tank, 0% healer, 70% DPS = 170% <- Tank reference
CLR = 30% tank, 100% healer, 20% DPS = 150% <- Healer reference
ROG = 30% tank, 0% healer, 100% DPS = 130% <- Melee DPS reference
WIZ = 10% tank, 0% healer, 100% DPS = 110% <- Caster DPS reference

This is only a rough basic comparison which does not contain ADPS, buffs, auras, and other benefits.

These numbers, brought to you by Iven in Fairytale land where they're just thrown up there with no base nor reference for evidence with any actual numbers from the game to make them stick.

Just so you know Iven, 73% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

I like mercs to do bleedingly simple things at a lower quality than the average player.

• Tank
  • Aggro: It's actually pretty good at getting aggro... to a fault.
  • Take Damage: Moderate, barely uses discs.
• Cleric
  • Casts HoT well... but to a fault at times.
  • Casts quick heals well.
  • Rezes well.
  • Buffs well except for those "merc" group buffs. Ick.
• Rogue
  • DPS: Does "better dps than an empty group slot" and can be modified by shaman/bard.
• Wizard
  • I've literally never used this one.

Shaman would be expected to buff, heal, malo, and slow, but given the variety of things to do, I don't think a shaman merc would be able to do any of those poorly and still be used.

Bards would be expected to twist a few DPS songs and maybe hit the mob. I guess that could work if you limit the songs to overhaste, dmg mitigation, selos, and something else.

Now the question is: how do you set the parameters for both. When does the shaman decide when to buff, hea, malo, or slow? How would that program work when another add gets added to the group, how many problems is that going to cause when it goes to cast a slow and misses a heal and you go splat, or it fails to cast a slow or malo because it's too busy spamming heals because you haven't broken the threshold for it to stop prioritizing heals to switch to utility.

I mean these are simple basic things off the top of my head, how many other variances to different situations are there and how much of a programming nightmare would that be? And how long to wrinkle the bugs out. Let's not all pretend that mercs were perfect upon release. We've all encountered bugs that have left us dead and scratching our heads.

If you want to high-five yourself for replies you think are witty, go right ahead.

There have been many 'roles' over the years and sometimes by different names.

There have been/are many other roles besides Tank and Healer:
Snarer
Mezzer
Evacer
In some areas unless you had all three you generally waited before heading to your final group destination.
CC - typically would mean either FD pulling or mezzing, but in more open zones rooting could be acceptable as well
Puller
Slower
Tracker
Utility or Buffer - often used as a catch-all for when someone already had a tank and cleric but didn't have much depth to their other abilities. It was much more nuanced and context dependent on what counted.
WSer - rare (pretty much GoD), a class to avoid damage during trials (short for the Ranger Weaponshield disc). War qualified, but Pal/Shd did not.

For years 'healer' wasn't even a role. You were a Cleric or you were not adequate. You may cast heals, but that wasn't your role unless you were a cleric... and you waited until you got one.
Shaman, although still 'priests', didn't have the healer role for the group. They were there to buff (and debuff).

A role is whatever people feel have value enough to seek out and designate function to.
There were plenty of groups with no healers and no tanks.

They shouldn't be 'clerics'.
They should offer some combined and neutered ability set.
HP buff should block all Priests' lines, not just Clerics.
Give them cloth armor (even if for appearance sake so they don't appear to be clerics).
Give them weaker heals, but add regen.

They should not bring stacking advantages to groups with some healers and stacking disadvantages to others.

or you know, group with the class if you want the buffs? Surprised you're keeping this thread going, might as well ask for 50 new developers to be hired. At least that would be a good idea.

This.
The 'get all the MGBs you want before your mission' current method should be trashed.

If you aren't in a group with someone (or in a raid in a raid zone) your buffs run out shortly after they leave.

Oh, and healer mercs should heal/cure/regen/rez only.
No need for them to buff at all to be blunt.

Plenty of folks out there running 3-6 accounts. Some a lot more. On the flipside, there's barely enough active devs to make a full group. If they were all in guild they would probably rely on boxing and/or mercs to progress. Is that the game we want?

I'm not sure what your asking

Congratulations, you named a lot of utility. And the reason utility isn't a "role" is because it's blended throughout all 3 different roles. It's simply additional benefits to the 3 main roles

Have you ever bothered with a healer merc? They already do have a neutered and weaker spell set.

Beside the holy trinity there are support roles and some classes are focused more on support than others. Some classes do offer that much support that they can be called support classes. Maztastic has named most of the support roles. Bard and enchanter are typical support classes as they have nothing outstanding to offer for holy trinity roles.

All healers are also support classes, so some classes can have multiple roles, in that case it would be healing and support while healing is also support. Support can be splitted into the roles that Maztastic has mentioned. ADPS is another important support role which does occur from buffs / debuffs / potions (SHM / ROG). ADPS is part of combat support which does include defensive buffs and regen abilities.


Combat support:

Crowd Control:
Snare, root, mez, memblur, smoke bomb (AE mez + AE memblur), charm, stun, blind, fear, evac, escape/fade etc., FD, lull/pacify, aggro management (+/-).
Some of these can be used for pulling but all of them do have multiple purposes.

Offensive / ADPS:
Haste, overhaste, ATK (attack), accuracy, DD proc auras, DS, reverse DS, AC/agility debuffs, resist debuffs, pet toys.

Defensive / Healing / Regen:
Healing, reverse heals, AC/HP buffs, rune shield, slow, HP regen, MP regen, EP regen, disarm weapons, ATK/accuracy debuffs.


Non-combat support:

Travelling:
Portal spells (ports), gate, evac, CotH, run speed, levitation, invisibility, see invis, ultravision, enduring breath.

Other Utilities:
Scouting (Eye of Zomm, SoS), tracking, foraging, lockpicking, sense traps, disarm traps, bind wound, sancturary.
.

I think an enchanter merc would be easier to code and more useful.
1 AE mez, then if mez gets broken no more mez.
2 Complain about mez breakers.

Utility isn't a role because all classes have utility attached to them. Some more than others, some with varying abilities.

Because my SK can pull and heal and snare and tank doesn't mean he's a Healer or Utility or DPS. He's a tank

Because my Ranger can tank for 20 seconds every hour doesn't make him a tank. Because he can pull and snare and root doesn't make him utility. Because he has healing spells and buffs doesn't make him a healer or buff utility.

I could do this with every class. All classes have utility. That's why it's not considered a role. You don't need utility to progress through the game. It makes life so much easier, but it isn't required.

But you do need 3 things.

1) Something to survive being hit: Tanks
2) Something to heal back the damage so the things can keep taking hits: Healers
3) Something to make the things die so you get experience: DPS

You're not going to snare or root your way through the levels. You can mess around with how much of each of the above 3 you need, but they're needed. Snare is not. Heroic Focusing from a Shaman is not. Slow is not. Useful and helpful, but not needed.

Utility is a subcategory of support. While support can be a role, utility does not offer enough weight. It does depend on how individual players do see it and how they do play as nothing is chiseled in stone.

There are role categories and subcategories. The primary role of the shadow knight is usually that of a tank but it does not have to. When two shadow knights are in a group, one is usually the main tank, while the other one is DPS and the offtank. But it could be also just DPS and the role of the snarer if there is a better offtank. Group roles can be very flexible and it does depend on how much weight got put into a role and how the players are acting. Acting alone does define a role more than the theory. A rogue that never does evade and reduce it's aggro can easily be the main tank, even if that is not desired by the group.

In other words: There is a theoretical role potential, but in the end the player actions do define the roles.

Crowd control is very interesting because in the end everything in combat is crowd control including tanking, DPS, and healing. But for a theoretical concept and class balance, you have to create a structure with categories and subcategories to sort and define everything.

ENC mercs are not a good idea as they would made ENC PCs even more useless. I also doubt that they would be working well enough with the DoT problematic. Bard merc using charm would be the way to go for a support and CC merc. No need for the earlier mentioned bard DoT songs that would only screw up mez.

Yeah that's not how that works. I mean i'm still searching for that "support" section of the classes here on the Forums.

And more proof that nothing you say holds any weight or credibility lol

Doesn't everyone have a full load of buff bots already? It amazes me the amount of people sitting in the lag pile waiting on buffs.

It are posts like this why no one is taking you serious.

Interesting, especially as you'd need a scanning electron microscope to find anyone agreeing with you or offering any support for your posts and (endless) threads.