Was told that the 10 year SK merc would be good enough to tank things for me up til the level 100 stuff. Ran Crushbone Keep with him and everything was great. No issues. My DPS just wasn't great yet. Fast forward to level 25+ and doing the event solo instances with him and he goes down quick with just two mobs on us. That's it. He's got 14,000 HP. Me on the other hand I'm only a Ranger and only have 2k HP and I can take 3 or 4 and sometimes 5 by myself without him and no healer. That doesn't seem right. He wears plate. Me chain. But yet I barely have any HPs or anything and can tank 3 to 5 mobs where he fails at just 2. What's the trick? Yes I know a healer merc (Kenny) would be best but still the fact remains that this 10 year FABLED SK vet merc is just plain squishy.
From my free play all mercs level 1, running things like triad or duoing dungeons with a friend perspective, I agree. The vet mercs are actually useless. Kenny is top of my list of mercs you can get without doing much. Dok tok mkIII is also decent and less mad in general than Kenny. You can unlock him during tinkerfest which has just gone though. I did get a new merc on one character Glull a ranger, and he is amazing in comparison. I think what has happened is mercs have gradually got better and better and the vet ones have been left behind. Out of the "fighter" mercs I found Gigglegibber to be best, but mainly because you can manage his aggro. The vet ones and the "tanks" are aggro locks and then they just die. Oh things may be about to change though as free play may get the ability to rank mercs soon.
Both the SK & Paladin vet reward mercs got seriously nerfed a while back (they were super squishy last Frostfell, so it's been at least that long). Now they tank about as good as my Warlock...actually, I think my warlock tanks better. It's bad =( ***general FYI, F2P could already level up mercenaries if they had the appropriate expansion, though I can't recall at the moment which expansion that was. I just know my free account can and it is an expansion lock thing, not subscription locked.
Someone in General chat told me the SK merc was a beast. Could tank well and hold aggroe and do good dps. Even though I am a Ranger I was highly advised to use the10 year SK merc. Like I said it was good in Crushbone but as soon as I did my first event instance it was squishy. There's no way he's that squishy. 2 mobs and he melts like butter with all those HPs. I can take on 4 mobs and have 10,000 less HP than him and only wear chain... Maybe I need to train it up or something I don't know how all that works yet. I can trian mercs now since they added the next 3 expansions to F2P but not sure how all that works yet. I know how to click on train and wait over 24 hours for training to be done but past that I don't know anything.. like if he gets more HPs or abilities or something. And can you only train one merc at a time? If you train one merc up but switch to another merc will that other merc lose it's training? So many questions...
You can train one merc per character at a time. You can switch to another mercenary without your previous mercenary losing their training. Training them gives mercenaries equipment slots so you can give them gear to increase their stats some.
both veteran reward merc, paladin and SK that you claim, were nerfed severly. I would advise you not to waste valuable time to train them. Instead get yourself an inquisitor merc and train that one. From the highest expansion you can get. If you are free to play with no extra expansions bought, then Kenny or Perrin or even good old Stamper from Freeport will do. Free to play can get all the way to PoP expansion now, don't remember which inquisitors we got in those expansions beside Bhooghar (he was a per order or collectors merc, so not available any more) but there's gotta be something you can get. This achievement from Scourge Wastes (Zek special zone with access quest) rewards a merc some people still use https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Exploring_the_Scourge_Wastes_(Solo) There's Evania from Kunark Ascending expansion, however token to hire her comes from panda merchant, and panda quests require paid membership. Something to do ASAP if you ever can splurge on a month of subscription. Speaking of splurging money on the game, if you have money to buy even standard edition of recent expansion it will give you access to all that new content. You still will be restricted to what gear you can wear if you are free to play, but access to higher zones allows you to hire mercs that are stationed there. Not to mention it gives you ability to level to 125, which is expansion based, not a membership perk. Previous expansions usually go on sale (used to be 50% off, recent couple years it was only 25% off) late summer, early fall, in the weeks right before preorders for new expansion start.
