Mercenary Noftu from LON loot card

when they do their fabled, mythical and envenerate quest lines to get them

Noftu is worthless and here's why.

He's identical to the standard Defiler merc with a few exceptions. Noftu & Blurt both have the exact same crit chance, potency, crit bonus, ability mod, and health. Noftu & Blurt's wards and heal are rated for the exact same amount (still not sure why the group ward doesn't have a value to it). Stat-wise there's no difference.

The only difference between them is a few abilities. Noftu has Invective (which he doesn't cast on anyone), and he has Sonic Vision whereas Blurt has water breathing. You're essentially trading water breathing for a buff that the other merc wont cast.
------------------
The other main reason Noftu is worthless is that as others have mentioned, Stamper is just flat out better in every way.

- Stamper has better buffs, the only thing you get from the Defiler is simply some Strength. With Inq, you get all main stats + dps + haste.
- Stamper has better debuffs because he has Condemn which debuffs all resists.
- Stamper has better cures, not only does he have the same single target cure that the Defiler does but he also has a group cure.
- Stamper's rez is better than the Defiler. Stamper's rez doesnt give any rez effects, whereas the Defiler rez does.
- Stamper has Verdict... and he loves to cast it. The Defiler does not have that ability.
- Stamper does more DPS than any other standard healer merc.
- Stamper does more Healing than any other standard healer merc.

There is not one logical reason I can come up with to hire the Defiler merc, and there's not one logical reason I can see to favor the LON Defiler merc over the standard Defiler merc. Noftu is junk, a complete waste of a LON card, he doesn't even look cool. There is zero redeeming value for that merc.
------------------

How ignorant do you have to be to think dirge rez is an AA ability and not just a regular spell...

Why do you think you are entittled to having a better merc just becaused you paid a bunch of dollars in LoN?
Enjoy having the cool looking merc that only a few people will have while they ll be stuck with a pelt wearing ogre.
If Noftu is worthless why not...GASP USE STAMPER?
THE FACT YOU PAID LOT OF MONEY DOESNT ENTITTLE YOU WITH BETTER GEAR OR STUFF THAN THE AVERAGE JOE THAT DOES PAY2WIN.

teamed this one up with a pallie, started the pallie new, they are both now 90 and just finished the epic weapon quest and the following envenerated quest, so he works for a rat. By the way Epicx, paided nothing additional for this merc, got him during the past holiday give away of one loot card a day, only took a few seconds to log on and claim the reward, so I guess you can say SOE paid me to win

Then seems to me you are mad your FREE loot isnt as good as you think and you are disappointed for chosing the wing or flying mount, in either case you only lost 10 plat for hiring the merc check if he was good and then rehire stamper.
You never lost something since it was a gift for free.
Nothing to see here merc has been proven to cure and heal by the logs.

Nobody says he isn't using Stamper. And you do realize you can get this in the free packs, right? Just because someone has it doesn't mean they paid for it. What everyone is trying to point out about Stamper is that it blows every other merc out of the water. They offer nothing better than Stamper and don't even offer anything remotely comparable. Not to mention they are missing some of the most basic healer stuff like a group cure.

Also lol that you call out one guy for supposedly paying for it then call out someone else for getting it free.

Where did I say it should be better? I was just stating facts that it was not better than standard merc or Stamper as a helpful service so that people don't waste their time (or money) on it.

OMG I FOUND CAPS LOCK TOO !!

I DIDN'T PAY FOR THE MERC, I GOT IT FOR FREE WITH MY FREE PACKS. AFTER SEEING HOW WORTHLESS THE LON MERC IS .... GAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSPPPPP I HIRED STAMPER AGAIN EVEN THOUGH I VERY RARELY USE MERCS.

P.S. THE GAME IS PAY2WIN ALREADY WITH KRONO AND SC CARDS. EVEN IF THEY WERE MAKING A RARE LON MERC JUST A TINY BIT BETTER THAN A STANDARD MERC SO THAT THERES ACTUALLY A REASON TO THINK ABOUT USING A MERC OTHER THAN STAMPER ISN'T GAME BREAKING.

Neither Krono nor SC cards make this game pay-to-win.

Pay-to-win means you have to pay real money in order to develop your character to where you are competitive with other players. Subscriptions (or Krono) are not related to character development, and the SC shop has no items that can give an unfair advantage to anyone - just convenience and novelty.

As quoted from here: https://www.everquest2.com/krono

" if you're a player without much in-game currency and can't buy things on the broker because prices are too high, you can consider buying Krono and selling them to other players to build up your in-game currency "

Selling SC Cards for Plat is the same thing. Now, explain to me... how is this not related to character development?

As I stated before, it comes down to convenience. Selling Krono is one way to earn plat. It's hardly the only way. Building plat in this game is really easy with or without any kind of interaction with other players.

And not everyone uses the broker. I don't use it at all, to buy or sell. Anything you can get on the broker you can find or make yourself.

And the SC shop sells absolutely nothing that can give a player a competitive edge over any other player that doesn't use the shop.

When someone uses the term "pay-to-win", it usually means that in order to have stats and gear that is like everyone else, you have to pay real money for it. Like in some games that you have to pay thousands of dollars to have a weapon and armor set that is competitive. None of that goes on in this game - hopefully it never will.

Pay-To-Win to me means that you can buy high end in-game gear with RL money. Selling Krono (or SC Cards) for Plat to buy Ethereals on the broker or x4 Raid loot rights is doing that exact thing. You're delusional if you think otherwise.

The point of this thread is whether or not Notfu is a waste. At a bare minimum Nofu should perform as well as any regular chain healer merc. This as others have said is not pay-to-win, everyone gets free packs and has an equal chance to get him, for whatever reason, appearance, name, race if they want him for that reason then so be it. Plate, chain and leather healers all have different roles and serve some classes better than others. Sometimes it is better to have heals than wards, some damage is unwardable, even some trash mobs have unwardable damage. If Notfu isn't casting Invective then something is broken in his AI but that in itself is not hurting his healing 'worthiness'.

I completely agree with you. Also agree that the LoN merc should be something besides a cosmetic change.

On a side note, I don't know why someone so logical would have such an illogical last name for his character.

Guess I could've named myself "Judicar Nerf'Brawlers" for the last three expansions, but that would've just been petty.

Over 99% of the people who play this game do not sell either Krono or SC cards, yet many of them have top of the line gear that they didn't spend a single penny on. Plat is extremely easy to earn just from playing the game. Pay-to-win means spend real money or go home. Go take a look at Runes of Magic. It costs at least $200 to get an endgame weapon like everyone else has. You have to pay real money for each upgrade to the weapon. Same for each piece of armor. The upgrades are only available in the cash shop - they can't be bought, looted, or traded in the game. That's what pay-to-win means.

I guess we have different definitions on pay-to-win, and that's ok. I'm not going to argue your opinion on that anymore.

Let's get something straight though, this Noftu merc is the worst healer merc in game in my opinion. I'm not asking for him to be the end-all be-all merc that's a must have and no one can live without. As a matter of fact, I don't even use a merc for 99.99% of my gameplay, so this doesn't even really effect me since I won't even use this worthless merc for the 0.01% of gameplay that I want to use a merc for.

Is it simply too much to ask to make this thing not complete dog ****? If they can make invective work, and give him a group cure he still wont be as good as the standard Inq merc, the SS Inq merc, the rare Mystic merc, or the looted CoE Warden and possibly other healer mercs.

I don't think it's too much to ask to make it actually be 1/2 decent as far as mercs go... I'm not even asking for it to be decent, just 1/2 decent would be nice. Sorry that I'm just simply asking for a rare reward from card game to not be the absolute dead last worst healer merc in game. Apparently that's just way too OP.

I respect your opinion. As you said, we'll both just say we have different definitions of pay-to-win and leave it at that.

On a separate note, did you really take your character to cap without doing a single quest? That's pretty astonishing. Even more astonishing is that you raised your tradeskill level to 95 without doing any work/rush orders. Seriously, that must be a record.

Nah. Something in the way of communication between servers occasionally prevents number of quests from correctly appearing in your EQ2U sig. Have seen it happen to my own sig. Dunno bout the TS thing, but guessing it's the same.

Oh OK, thanks for clarifying that.

Thread locked.