So with PoP I find that my merc's DPS is two orders of magnitude lower than my own, and I'm a Templar. So I can dismiss them and not even notice the difference. It's not so much that they do less damage before, it's just that the new PoP gear gave me an extraordinary DPS boost and the merc didn't share in this. My question is, would leveling my mercenary to 10 and equipping them with PoP gear fix this? If so, I don't mind ponying up the DBC so that my mercenary is once again contributing to my solo play experience. I'd just like to know before doing that if it's going to be worth it. In particular, my favorite mercenary is Matri Dut. She currently only does 1M DPS, while I do 100M. If she were contributing even 50M DPS, I think it'd be worth it. Does anyone know if that will happen when she's fully trained and geared?
Really don't need my merc very often in POP currently. If i do have him up it is more just to cure me of any curses, other that that he never attacks and throws a heal once in a while.
My Defiler merc from Altar of Malice Collector's Edition, Kluuron - http://u.eq2wire.com/item/index/1171520422 - is so far researched for 9 gear spots (5 armor 4 accolade) and sitting at about 19k Potency, so his wards are not letting any damage through even soloing Kunark Ascending heroic zones, and running PoP Duo zones his ward gets so insanely high, it's just basically me hitting everything and not getting any hit in. So for the warding + curing, I'm quite happy with him, betting that once he's researched for full gear slots he might be almost viable for a heroic zone spot. But I wouldn't take any merc for dps, they've been pretty weak for dps pretty much always and I doubt that'll ever change. Take a healer merc to heal + cure, that should be more than adequate, or a tank merc if you find the solo zones too hard.
My Templar has crap for DPS. If I can't group him, I don't play him. PoP mobs take too long for him to take down.
Yeah, that's not working for me either. It's hard for Lady Liae Croae to hold aggro when she's only doing 1/100th as much DPS as me. (And of course I don't need a healer merc.) It's not that the solo zones are "hard" per se, but slow going with only Templar DPS. Even if the merc did as much DPS as a Templar (which, again, really isn't that high a bar), it would help tremendously.
I have the ability to get one of the 10 year mercs. What, is people's opinion would be best? I have the DE SK standard merc from Neriak to tank for me (yes, I'm a SK but I like doing damage) and I also have Whackya, the pygmy paladin also as a tank (she worked well in AoM and KA kinda) but should I bother getting one of the 10 year mercs or save them for a young alt to level up with?
I think 10 year merc are available for each char, i got Lord Valkiss on every of my char. And Lord Valkiss is much better than the default one (neriak), but don't expect him to be viable anyway, they don't scale well. I wonder if it has to do with that potency mitigation (combat mitigation?) or the resolve check.
Healer and utility mercs (chanters and bards) are viable. Tanks mercs can't hold aggro and dps mercs get kicked to the curb by even the lowest dpsing healers.
Well I wouldn't go with Matri Dut for a DPS merc anyway, if you need one. There's two mercs which dps I've found to be decent - one is the Gardening Goblin, Brigand class which heals whole group on every successful hit but has no cures, from Kunark Ascending crafting timeline, final quest - http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/The_Gardening_Goblin Another is Claz'zakla from Kunark Ascending, Ranger with (not shown) group cure + heal spells, don't remember whether Collector's, or Premium Edition. Even bit higher dps than Gardening Goblin, but no mitigation debuffs which the Goblin has. If you didn't get either when that expac was still current, the merc wouldn't be available anymore however. http://u.eq2wire.com/item/index/1599729848
Anyone using any of the Colliseum of Valor Mercs(token drops) like Dr Arcana and such? How are they working out?
