Mercs have become almost useless

Are there any plans to beef up mercs or perhaps do a full overhaul instead of the zone specific buff thing that I assume is hard to maintain?

Sending my merc in to fight a ToT solo mob is like watching paint dry 270K dps for the higher end mercs is pretty pointless. For comparison sake I have 6 different spells/abilities that hit for over 10 million and i'm only in unadorned adv solo gear.

The only benefit I can get out of any merc at this point is "amends" to hold aggro or a healer cure bot.

Why are we so conservative on dps? I think they should be dealing millions of dps at the highest level and it would still be fairly underpowered and STILL wouldn't have a role in a real group, even though they were originally intended to fill a spot when real players couldn't be found.

Suggestion:
Set the merc stats based on the power of the mobs in the current zone. That way in theory one chunk of code can be reused throughout the game instead of the zone/expansion specific buffs and the maintenance would be low.

They could have a base set of stats in case you highly outlevel the zone you're in, but if that's the case you don't really need a merc anyway.

I would say play a single player game...and you don't have to worry about mercs...

This is meant to be constructive. The fact is that mercs do exist in the game and they don't work very well as is.

I have a theory that they want them to just hold aggro and cure for now until a ton of people start dropping off in March. I bet when most of the zones are just people moloing around they'll beef up the mercs again.

Right now they're useful for soloing and they certainly help keep you alive longer, but if you're boxing they become totally pointless except for mana flow on the coercer merc. Once you get a decent amount of gear they're totally pointless, I don't even use mine 99% of the time. It would, however, make it really easy for me to dual box things like Bar Brawl if they did a few million dps.

Mercs are intended to help players, not kill mobs for them. People who use them on low level content have a skewed version of their intent/abilities because the mercs scale down about as well as players who mentor (ie almost not at all). They are supposed to do their mob 'well enough' for people who need an extra boost because they can't do it themselves, but they're not really intended to be a replacement for a real player in anything resembling challenging content.

If you've not Noticed...it's "Pay to Win!"

Who cares about anyone else who can't afford Store or Collector's Mercs for them are about the only ones that can withstand the new expansion. None of the other mercs or even rare ones were beefed up, so unless you Pay, you going to die a lots! I know I am being sarcastic here,but I told the dev in feedback even before expansion came out that the other mercs need to beed up too but either ignore it or just don't care.

I think the only thing they beefed up for ToT was aggro and a very teeny tiny increase to DPS across the board. The pay to win thing doesn't really work since the ones you pay for don't really help either. I own several of them and I almost never use them. They provide a very meager DPS increase and the tank is worthless once you've geared up.

What's really funny is that the collector's edition merc is pretty terrible. Lorr'Kejut remains one of the best for most classes and Werner (the monk guy) is really good as well, followed by the veteran merc, so really, your best options are all things you don't pay for.

Raffik does just fine in ToT, and he's not locked behind luck or money.

I use the Paladin werewolf merc while on my fury and he does fine in the ToT AS zones. Of course, I help him kill things. I don't just stand and watch him do all the work. He grabs and holds aggro very well, heals himself if he needs to, and with my help, we kill multiple mobs at a time very well. I now also have the 10 year Lady merc, but I haven't tried her out yet. I'm sure she will work just fine for me as well.

You're proving my point of why my suggestion makes sense. People at a low level shouldn't have mercs crush everything. People at high levels shouldn't have mercs that are useless.

I never said that mercs should do the work for me.

I've found Kluron and Raffik to be fully functional in ToT. I realize not everybody can get access to Kluron, but people can get Raffik via tradeskill (or some of the AoM mercs through the broker or AoM content).

I can definitely cosign onto some kind of merc bump up. Do I want them replacing group members on any kind of regular basis? No. I just think there is a need.

In some completely off-peak time, it was me, a dirge and a monk rolling around the KP contested, and we popped mercs. We used all three of the TOT brig merc from the sucker edition of the expansion and we are not allowed to change their names, so ironically they all popped up on ACT as one damage source. That was humorous, until I saw I was out DPSing all three of the mercs as a Channeler and only healer in group. There are aspects of contested that are very channeler friendly (very low heal intense fights, LOTS of mobs for AEs, and many of the scripts favor my heal on the run capabilities) so that is important to note, but even still, I out DPSed all 3 of them. And the Brig Glaufaye from the sucker pack is supposed to be one of the best of the best.

The coercer mercs do do an excellent job of feeding power to a group. But again I believe they are only pay to win items and do virtually no dps.

I just ran an adv solo with klurron and the heals/wards are about 225K and of course the casting speed is really slow given his class. It seems pretty underpowered to me considering our health pools these days.

I sailed through everything on my brig with Lorr (inquis). Absolutely no problems.

He kept my coercer and dirge alive just fine. I admit I didn't check the parse on his heals. I'm just care if the healer merc can keep my toons alive in the AS zones. The bolster Klurron and Raffik have is also a nice benefit.

I'm not saying I had any problems. The point is that the mercs aren't really doing anything anymore aside from cures/amends. I'd recommend checking the parse. It's pretty sad : (

I just took down an epic training dummy with the 10 year vet mercs and the new ToT dps merc and the results were about the same. I dealt 98% of the dps both times(and i'm not well geared http://u.eq2wire.com/soe/character_detail/871881395328). That 2% they provided is useless.

The results aren't much different in ToT zones. I think something needs to be done. I think my original suggestion would work well. I'm not sure how good mercs should be, but I think if they dealt 40% of my dps that would be about right. For healers, if they could heal 40% of what a real person could do I think that would be fair as well. Right now I'm guessing they would account for about 1% of the dps/heal parse when paired with a well geared player.

Those 40% numbers are just a general thought. I'm not suggesting it should be based of an individual players dps/hps, but rather by the strength of the zone you're in.

DPS mercs have always been a joke.
As far as 40% of a 'real person'... which real person?
One that struggles to do 1 mil dps or one that does 10 mil dps without trying? I've seen both types of players
If it's the former, people who do the later (or even the middle where most people fall) will find them underwhelming. If it's the later, the mercs will be similar to how they work at lower levels, dominating the weak players and being as good or nearly so as the average player.
As a healer, I wouldn't mind a dps merc that would make the zones go enough faster to make them worthwhile. As they are, the ToT CE merc does about 1/4 of my warden's dps. I agree that's horrid for a 'dps merc', but I don't know if there is a good way to balance it.
It won't work if you do it based on player gear/ability, because then well geared/performing toons would do better to bring a merc then even an average player, also, the weaker toons are the ones that need mercs more, not less. While the current system is far from perfect, it works 'well enough' and I'm not sure what system would work better.

Yeah the dps mercs are horrid for sure. The healer mercs were ok for the most part up until this expansion, aside from the annoying AI at times. What about my original suggestion for basing merc heals/dps on the mobs in the zone you're currently in?

For solo zones, sure, but I don't think they should scale up for heroic or raid zones.