1. Give them resists! OMG at level 35 they still have ZERO resists by themselves. No wonder every time I open an exquisite chest with a Deadly Trap, mine loses 95% of his health! 2. When I say DO NOT ATTACK, I mean it! When mobs use AEs, mercs ignore you specific instructions and go Leroy. 3. When I say assist/protect someone else in my group, DO IT! Mercs DO NOT assist other group members. They will only assist you. 4. Keep the button commands set to what I set them too (set default to none of them pressed upon summoning a merc). Everytime you zone the Protect Yourself is activated, which is a PITA when zoning into nearby mobs (also a PITA when zoning into the goblin entrance to ROV and the merc is placed right on the edge of the walkway so the goblins below aggro on it, thus engaging you in combat before you may be ready). To be clear, all previous command buttons are reset to just, "Protect Yourself", after every zoning. 5. Abilities placed on mercs vanish at every zoning. I think I read a dev somewhere say they are fixing this. 6. Give the Paladin merc better tanking ability, and let him use his heals/wards on himself as well as others! Trying the paladin merc with my T4 mystic in beta I found I was better off just soloing heroics than using him. It was very hard keeping him up on simple groups such as even/yellow duo ^^ plants in Feerrott. I can easily solo those myself. I think part of this would be helped if #1 was implemented, which brings me to an idea: Devs: You gave mercs an appearance slot. How about giving them an option where if we have throw-away loot in our bags, we can actually give it to them (it vanishes from our inventory forever), so we can at least give them treasured jewelry that has resists on it. Edit: I just compared the brigand merc with the guardian merc. Why does the brigand have more health @ 9305h/2145p at 35 with an inquisitor, while the guardian has 7332h/1904p?? The brigand's agi is 310 vs guardian's 283 (brigand actually is stronger than the guardian but of course that doesn't matter). The brigand's sta is 304 vs the guardian's 275. Something seems really out of whack here. Edit 2: I just tried to use the guardian merc at level 35 vs the level 40^^^+40^^ hired assassins for The Reaching Blade of the Assassin HQ, twice. I went back, got the brigand, and succeeded on the first try. These are my main gripes right now, using mercs from 10-35, and once in mid 80s.
Personally I agree with most of what the poster said, but... One of my problems with the healer mercs is they don't heal group all that well when told to "protect" or assist? Either way neither one them works when group with another person when you tell merc to assist or protect the other person in group. I think healer mercs need to just be healing above all else but see them get right into the fight without hardley ever healing or even curing for that matter. I've tried serveral combos to see what could make this healer actually just HEAL and havn't got the merc to just do that. So the needed change is the healer commad "Protect" needs to be a heal only- 1) heal only avatar, 2) heal who I assign as MT in group, and lastly heal the group once the person who I have assign has been totally healed -which means heal himself last if I've assign someone else to have main "protection". Oh yeah, I've seen a bug of sort that a non attackable npc mob who if you target them has a epic tag start attacking merc for no reason and kill merc. Perhaps related to this bug of sorts is in Chardok the suprise attack mobs that drop down on you don't become attackable once they drop if merc is close by but will kill merc with no way of saving merc because mob never becomes attackable. I know I would like to see an option to change the race of the merc once I hire one though. Perhaps this may have been talked about among the devs but I sure would love see this added in to give a bit more variety in mercs we are seeing around.
also there needs to be some self preservation added to the healer merc. i can be at 100% with a detriment on me and the merc will be at 10% health and instead of healing himself he will cure the detriment and end up dead.
The AI needs to work better in regard to defendhing himself. At random sometimes my merc will just stop fighting. I don't know why: he sits there getting beat on till he dies, I sat and watched it happen thinking 'this has gotta fix itself' and it didn't. And at random protect me toggles off. I don't know why. And I have never seen my Pally merc use a heal other than LoH ever. And I use the Pally merc every time since he is supposed to be a good compromise between attack/defence.
Brigh wrote: I have only ever used the Paladin merc: a tank. So maybe some non tank merc code is affecting this guy?
The eq1 merc developers need to step in and fix and improve mercs in general. Also while purely cosmetic, there needs to be mercs of every race and gener available.
I posted this in a threat on the Test forum but it would fit here also. There's a list of /merc commands for them to melee, backoff, etc. Please add a /merc quiet command so they will stop spamming group chat. One of my lowbies plays with another lowbie and for some encounters we both pull out our cleric mercs.. my god the spam.
The mercs need to be fixed so they can not be exploited, the reuse timer for dismissing a merc in a zone needs to be set to 72 hours and a new merc can not be rehired for 72 hours as well if a merc is dismissed in a zone.
Lempo@Everfrost wrote: Then I suggest you start grouping with everyone on the server that want to group. You won't have time to do what you want now having to group with everyone now. That what merc is for when you want to complete a quest but can't cause no one wants to group anymore. As for exploit, I hired a merc and got jumped immediately right off the back by a heroic and both of us died instantly so I rehired him immediately. Why should anyone be punished to have to wait 3 days to rehire to merc cause you and your merc died 5 minutes after hiring him to an accidental death. Sorry I disagree with you. If everyone group then merc wouldn't be needed.
sorie67 wrote: Lempo is making an extreme comparision for many reasons; he knows some of you are exploiting the heck out of the Mercs, he knows that some people wouldn't bother if SOE put obstructions in-place to make them less attractive. As far as m concerns at Lempo's 72 hours rehire comment, I'm ALL for it, under a few conditions such as we have the ability to rez them when they die, becasue they stink so bad 85% of the time, and that when we buff them they actually stick or they can stand up to AOE in raids. Otherwise, Mercs are mostly used by healers and tanks when farming... we all know it. The solo levels don't need the Mercs to "help" themselves level up, any class in treasured gear can already do that easily. The Mercs are lucky to do 25% the DPS of a semi-decent player not to mention when compared to a player that knows what they are doing. They heal very poorly in any content which is relevant, but turn a geared fighter into an ATM cash machine or a US Treasury printing press.
My tanking merc does fine. . as long as I play a healer. Otherwise he doesn't have the heal support he needs to keep up with all the damage that's incoming. He does most the damage himself regardless of the class I play, so when he dies I'm probably dying as well. The biggest problem I've had with the mercs, especially the melee ones, is they have a tendency to get into places where I can't heal them at all. They like to go underground, or in a pool, or up on a cliff, and it happens so quickly that I have to readjust my position to get to them before they die. If I try to call them back, sometimes they stand there like a goober and just take damage while I'm desperately trying to get into a position to heal them. That needs to be fixed imo. They're here to help us with group content, but their pathing is so annoying and useless that it only serves to make things harder for us. There's a difference between difficult content and content which is difficult because the AI is stupid.
