Just went to Tinkerfest for the first time ever. I did Redd's parts quest & finished with the choice of the DOK or TANK merc. Since I was unsure if I could go back in to get one later, I took the DOK merc for the Beastlord I was playing. So the questions... 1) What is the best Merc for a solo leveling BL? Past threads suggest Templar or Inquisitor. What is the difference & which is more helpful? Or is a different type altogether better? I tentatively figured that with my pet as a kind of tank the healer type might be good? 2) Can you have more than one merc in your character window? I hired the DOK merc, then dismissed him because I am just trying this out & don't really need a merc for anything yet, but I do want to check out some instances with one later. Just wondering if I could have both the DOK & the TANK mercs if both are on dismiss since they seem to be available only during Tinkerfest. Also, if I CAN have more than one, is there a limit on how many inactive mercs I can "keep" to choose from when I need one? I didn't want to destroy the DOK merc in case it was good to have and I couldn't get it back since I already did the quest. Yes, I did do searches on Mercs both forum & web based. While there is information on what a merc is, how to hire and such, I could not find any good answer on how many a character can have at once. I also understand from checking the forums often in the past 6+ months that Merc assistance is often inconsistent or unreliable, so I am not expecting great things, lol. Simply trying to experience as much of this awesome game as possible.
From what I saw in 1-9 on Freeport today, the 2 new mercs are just the the regular Inquisitor (Stamper) and Berzerker (don't know the name of that one) mercs with a new look. It was also mentioned that if you have done the quest you can return to Steamfont and hire them later...hard to test that until Tinkerfest is over When my BL used a merc it tended to be Stamper. Reason being, my BL never left feral stance and Stamper did a darn good job at healing both the warder and the beastlord. I know I should have messed around with the different stances, but I never did. The drop-down option for mercs was put in so that you did not lose your regular merc when a quest required you to accept a quest merc. It allows you to retrieve your merc after the quest that displaced it complete. That is the only purpose it has at this time. Edit: I don't think the CoE beta forums are around anymore but there was a lot of complaining when players lost elite mercs due to quest mercs being required....bet you can imagine it, though!
Dulcenia - that is correct, the two quest mercs are nothing but new skinned versions of their counterparts available in the hiring hall. Stamper is my favorite, the paladin is next in line
The paladin? Never used that one. I usually switch from Vittia (SK) to Stamper when I get to Sleepers Tomb in the CoE sig quest. Even with my SK, dragging that one boss around trying to convince him to run over gargoyles was health damaging. Probably could have done it but meh...why do I have a merc trailing me doing nothing (if Vittia did anything it parked the boss and he would not follow) when I could switch to Stamper and get heals?
I really don't like the inquisitor merc. It's "1 health" skill is nice, and it will keep up with status cures, but good luck getting it to heal. The templar merc heals more often for me. The warden merc is good, but since they only get a single HoT and not a single direct heal, you'll find that they spam the group heal very often. This can cause power (mana) problems in earlier levels, but is less of a problem later on. Truthfully, I'm glad that my main is a pally and doesn't ever need healer mercs, because I'm really not that fond of them. Even when your health is dropping slowly, they sometimes wait until you're at 25% left before popping a heal, and if they get stifled for whatever reason then it could be game over. They are absolutely no substitute for a real healer, even at low levels. For any class that has heals and wants to take a merc, my first recommendation is always the ranger. None of the other standard mercs can match his damage output and he performs very well.
I'd say choose the SK first....then things will be dead so fast you won't have to worry...at least until 70 or 80 where you might be requred to participate. Edit: I have a warden..40ish atm learning how to keep a SK alive in Obelisk. When you cannot find a group a merc is good to practice on.
To anyone using Inquisitor Mercs. Stamper Jeralf: Cures but slow on heals Archon Construct: Cures and heals more reliably best used with heal-procs Dok-Tok Mk III: Apparently same as Archon but worse on the healer aspect. Same stats though.
For my beastlord I actually leveled with the berserker merc, then changed to inquisitor at 90. For classes with any kind of healing, the tank mercs are great to level with as they can take a lot of punishment and do a lot of damage at low levels.
i prefer Nevis just for the fact that he actively wards and thus is imho the most reliable one when it comes to heals. Stamper and Dok let me die in SG, Nevis never does.
It sounds like the Tinkerfest mercs are mostly for appearance. I will probably do Redd's quest on all of my characters, then try running with a few different types of mercs in each stance to see what fits. Thanks for all of the helpful information!
I have found that if you set your healer mercenaries so that they follow but do not protect and do not assist, they pay better attention to healing, curing and rezzing.
Yes, very true, and that's how I keep my healer mercs set. However, in the case of Stamper, I still can't get him to heal reliably. A battle for Stamper usually boils down to alternating between Cure and the 1 HP attack, while eating cheese the rest of the time. And truthfully, I was really disappointed in the pally merc, because of the skills they chose to give him. Pallies are heavily AoE focused and they only gave him one AoE, and our weakest one at that. And on my conjuror, I can't count the number of times he did Amends on my pet even when I attacked first, which really isn't helpful when you're out-DPS'ing the pets.
