Mercenary Quality Guide?

Returning player trying to find information breakdown on the plethora of Mercenaries in game today. I've been unable to find indepth information when trying to compare one merc to another.

- Crates list Common / Uncommon / Rare / The never going to win because your dice are rigged = SuperRare
- 'Normal' mercs found in the Tavern
- Archon mercs, Monster mercs
- Event mercs, claim mercs from deluxe edition purchases
- Elite mercs that roam certain zones...

How in the world is someone supposed to focus on obtaining a certain merc when it seems impossible to determine which ones are better?

I realize a lot of people will say it doesn't matter as they are probably useless for the latest xpac etc.....but for some of us, we enjoy doing old content and taking it slow. No desire to reach lv 110 any time soon and having a powerful merc allows me to enjoy said content to it's fullest.

So my question is....has anyone put together a guide that compares all the possible mercs the game has to offer? Or at least been able to put them into 'tiers' as far as power goes?

It always depends on what you need. Myself als healer doesn't need an Inqui or heal merc, I am used to go with Mana Feed ;-)
Everyting else is mainly going with an Inqui Merc for getting some heals plus verdict + cure as far as I know.

Yes, but for instance I like having an Inq merc, but one inq merc is not necessarily the same as the next inq merc. Some are FAR more powerful than others. Where can we find this information without actually owning them and manually looking at the stats?

No one has ever really sat down and recorded the basic stats on each merc. If I had that data, I could add it to the wiki. One of these eons when I am bored I probably will.

Below link is about as good as it gets. Has not been updated for a while.

There are City Merchants In the rougue’s gallery. The Rogue's Gallery is in the basement of Fish's Alehouse Freeport and Inn in Qeynos Harbor. A good way to determine rarity and merc goodness is to check price with these merchants before consuming the merc. Higher priced mercs are better.

https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Mercenaries

In what way are they better? How do we know without some side-by-side level 1 unequipped stats?

Daeron Ashenwing for muscle and Raffik for heals/cures. Honestly, I havent seen a gigantic difference in mercs abilities in a stripped condition like Sigrdrifa mentioned above. You could probably use Jennis Proudhilt (very first qeynos merc) all the way up to 90ish soloing and not see much difference between him and some cash shop ethereal

Since we can now equip mercs, it's worthwhile to get the best possible gear on the merc and adorn the merc gear! Thanks to Tishan's Lockbox, I was able to easily get potency adorns for every slot.

Mercs can't use "set" adorns, like the Foundation/Ascension/Firmaments, but they can use Chorus of Night, Symphony of the Void, and Rune of Embers. Nab 7 shoulders from Tishan's Lockbox to get the orange adorns and use those on your mercs.

All the new CD accolades have just an orange adorn slot, but this far I have not found any orange rune that will go into an accolade slot

Does Symphony of the Void stack?

Well, it does not give a message saying that you have one equipped so you can't equip another...

Never say never as the old saying goes. I found out first hand last DBC grant when I took the 2-pack mercs option per usual, that it is in fact possible to get the Ultra Rare mercenary since I did and fortunately, it was on my main who is a Wizard. She certainly kicks butt, no doubt about that. I like the snarky remarks she makes when killing stuff too. They don't get old for me, at least not yet anyway.

On the other hand, I think my two headed monk guy that my Inquisitor got is only a common. Yet, he also tends to kill stuff faster than I can keep up with. I haven't been taking them to anyplace challenging yet though as a returning player also after a long time away. So I can't comment on their power under real duress. Then again, what really qualifies as real duress in the solo game anyway? When I was kid, there was no mercs and we liked it! lol

I read the same Wiki merc guide myself and was glad it was there. I think it is pretty safe to say you can just use the rarity as a general guide to power and call it a day. It isn't worth obsessing over in a game with this many progression systems at play all the time from spells researching to mount leveling to merc leveling to gearing both of the latter now, to crafting to all the other numerous pursuits one can undertake on just one character.

And then there are the alts, oh the alts.... need I say more?

In other words, with so much to do I highly recommend counting one's blessings for stuff like mercs, buffed mounts, familiars and the rest of it. Call me a filthy casual if you like but keep in mind you can solo in this game with none of it. Taken together in solo content it all makes you OP really which is fun and all but not being maxed out in things like the merc or familiar or now the mount levels and gear is not going to make or break you or in many cases or even be noticeable really.

I recommend taking a chance on the crates each month with your DBC grant personally and not because I miraculously looted the ultra rare. Open one on your main and hope for the best. If no joy, open the other. No joy, ditch them for status and try again next month. If you get lucky on the first try, they are heirloom so you can shared bank the second crate to an alt. Meantime, go hunt the elites of the merc type you want for what should be among the most powerful of their kind if not the most powerful. Elite means elite, you know? Don't worry about the stats. It's not worth it unless you are raiding at a high level honestly and that doesn't apply to mercs anyway.

I want to close by saying I sincerely mean this to be helpful and encouraging, not annoying. Sorry if I got it wrong. I just know how it can be from my own experience when I let myself get overwhelmed by feeling I need to do this, that and the other thing to have fun when really I don't. I just need to relax and let myself have fun playing the game and whatever I get is what I get. It's not a big deal unless you need to survive and beat the hardest content the game has to offer. If that's your thing, mercs are just toys for solo anyway. A raid geared player does not need a merc to help them in any solo content.

I just wish it was possible to train one mercenary and have that degree of training carry over to any other mercenaries. It takes so long to train particularly with the latest expansion that changing mercs seem less and less possible.

I can do this, but only for the free ones or the few that I have gotten through crates, like the gingerdread family, I was lucky there and got all of them. And I have gotten a few of the merc crates from the DBCash at renewal time, I also buy tokens from the broker if they are reasonably priced, and I have gotten 3 mercs as drops. But I will not start buying every merc from the marketplace just to do this. I can send the info to you Sigrdrifa and you can wiki it if you wish and yourself and others can add mercs they may have.

Is this something anybody would be interested in? I don't want to spend a ton of time doing this only to find nobody cares.

DBG's business model relies on cash shop sales, remember. You can play almost all the game free to play, and revenue has to come from somewhere. You can speed up training your merc or mount with Marketplace level boosts. If you're a paid member, you can use that 500DBC they give us each month towards that sort of thing.

I think for valid comparison purposes, we need one toon at the same level and equipped the same way looking at all the mercs. I was thinking of maybe making a level 1 and buying the coins from the broker and doing some of the comparisons while the alt is "naked".

That is what I was thinking of. I apologize for not being specific. I can use my DBCash and buy another slot and just put the character in my guild and let her use my plat to buy tokens and all the town mercs. Then I can delete that one and make another of opposite alignment or betray her to get the stats of the town mercs on the other side.

If you can PM me or post screenshots of merc stats, maybe even info on what spells they have, I will write it up for the wiki and get it into some kind of tabular form. Wiki has a Credits template just for stuff like this

I will begin this project as soon as possible. I will use a level one, in their undies, with no spells or anything on. I will put clothes on to go and get the different mercs, but will disrobe prior to screenshots or notating anything and send what I can screenshots, lists, etc through the private messages here. Is there any preferable race or class to use for this? (not sure if there are any that will have racial traits or class traits that may throw off the results)..

You can wear a non-stat cloth outfit, any of the tailor crafted ones I don't think class or race matters that much, so long as we're testing from a stable base point.

Alright, I will get started on this as soon as possible.