What happened to my poor Merc?

Actually yes at lower levels I do expect my 10 year vet reward merc to be useful. I've tried Ruins of Varsoon and Sol Eye at level. The flying snakes were green took on 3 and merc could not do it. So much for Speak Like a Dragon.
And yes I did push the button. Maybe someday the mercenary will be good for low level again. Until then there are other things to do with my free time.

From reading these comments, it appears that the problems with the Fabled Mercs are disproportionate. I've dabbled with the Fabled Mercs over the last few weeks. Sure enough, Lady Croae has about 180 mitigation at level 100. I guess this makes sense, given that she is supposed to be blind. For those of you who are old school EQ1 players (I mean back in the original game, Kunark, Velious, etc.), Lady Croae and Lord Valkiss are like summoned enchanter pets that immediately pull aggro. Seriously. Exactly like that.

I had my armorer whip up some rhenium plate armor for Valkiss. Bear in mind that I haven't had time to level either of them up very far, so only about four armor slots were available. I thought that this might be the answer. Wrong. I think Valkiss's mitigation when from like 540 to 580 at level 98.. The difference is that all of the mobs used to shout "Ding!" when he died. Now they ask each other whether there were any "phat lewtz." Keyrin Curetouch calls Lord Valkiss "boots." That's just mean.

So my conclusion is that, as things stand right now, Lady Croae and Lord Valkis are purely ornamental. There are a few issues with the other mercs, but it's not as bad as it was in December. Basically, Lady Croae and Lord Valkis are for people who want to run around with a personal menagerie of useless pets like Quacker Yig, the dire wolf pup from Withered Lands, or whatever weird stuff they have picked up one way or another. (Note to any of those people who read this: you don't actually need to keep the harvesting goblin and the pack pony summoned after you tell them to go do your work for you. You can hide the devoted shadeweaver sidekick, too. Just saying.)

Mercs also seem to gain little benefit from equipped items. I chucked spotted leather items - refined no less - on Raffik and his health stayed exactly the same as did mitigation. I think only the physical attribute and blue stats make any difference?

That just seems cheap to me. That said I got a lot more mileage out of Raffik once I made him completely passive and switch all options off except follow. Now he heals me a lot more and doesn't run halfway across the map, pull all the mobs and die thus killing me in the process like he used to. Did Veksar the other day with him for quest updates.

Duplicated!

aren't mercs just for the end game buff now? (im totally serious btw)

I noticed a big difference with a level 30 questing toon im playing. Stampers heals do next to nothing. The only reason i use a merc at all is to rez me and the Kelethin tracker. They do very little damage and always seem to run off and be halfway across the dungeon and sometimes continue to fight trash and dont come back even if I hit the passive button.

N

No one knows for sure. We the customer do not deserve to know how Mercs are supposed to work now! It is a secret it seems that only the deserving get to know.

I guess making the mercenaries all but useless is a way to force players to group? Nothing about it makes any sense.

Either way, it is a slap in the face to customers. We paid for the mercenary feature and have been playing with it for several years.

Now we are expected to accept the sudden drastically reduced performance of that feature with no reasonable explanation? That would be like them saying we decided you don't need mounts any more just because. SMH.

I ran an experiment just to see how the Fabled mercs compare to the off-the-shelf mercs. I have a level 100 character with Lady Croae. She had no armor. Her health was 3,062,XXX and her power was 92,XXX. (I am using the XXX because, for some reason, mercenary health and power slowly decrease just standing still. I have no idea why this happens.) Her mitigation was 184 and her avoidance was 7665.

Next, I had my armorer made a full set of 96+ plate armor, and I installed this on Lady Croae. Her health bumped up to 3,323,XXX and her power bumped to 112,XXX. It looked like her other stats (strength, etc.) bumped up in about the same proportion. Her mitigation and avoidance did not change at all: 184 and 7665.

Then I found good ol' Jennis Proudhilt hanging out in front of a bar, as usual. I loaded him up with the same set of armor, except that I hadn't leveled him enough to wear the boots. His health was 2,547,XXX and his power was 79,XXX. His base stats looked to be proportionately lower than Lady Croae's. But his mitigation was 3312, and his avoidance was 8610.

So Lady Croae would be okay if she just had mitigation and avoidance in the proper proportions relative to an off-the-shelf merc (say, about 5000 mitigation and about 11,000 avoidance). Instead, she has almost no mitigation at all and weaker avoidance.

So as of now the Fabled mercs appear to be broken, either by design or by oversight. As Aesop would tell you, a fable has a moral. The moral of this tale is that free mercenaries are worth what you paid for them.

I hope they are not thinking that "making the mercenaries all but useless is a way to force players to group". That thought has proven incorrect over and over again. What it will do is make people quit and play another game. it is indeed a slap in the customers face, and with no motive, except maybe thinking you will spend money on crates to get an Uber Merc.

People in PVE games will not spend money like they do in PVP games that are pay to win. There just exists no reason for them to do so. Especially since in this case it is gambling, as you are betting on a chance to get one.

okay, so I didn't realize you can train your merc and equip gears on him until now

LOL

Takes forever to train them and it looks like pretty much 75% of the stats and other abilities on equipment as well as adornments have no effect on mercs. I'm honestly not entirely sure why they bothered with this feature?

For training, if you do Overseer Missions, they drop Mercenary Training Potions (also training for spell research, mounts, and familiars). So that helps. And periodically, there will be server bonus periods where those things can drop from Mission Crates.

At low levels, yeah, you just start them training and check back every few days to start training again. Then equip them as slots come open. If you think that an untrained, ungeared merc is the same as one that is level 20 with full gear and accolades, well, I don't know what to tell you, other than take that level 20 merc and take all their gear off and compare the stats for geared vs. ungeared.

And, if you have deep pockets, you can accelerate training via cash, there's a button on the merc UI that allows you to buy the training.

Haha..NP, we have all been there!

Mercs used to work well, then someone had a brain....

fixed

imagine if they halved the horsepower and gas mileage of everybodies cars five years after they sold them to you

Well I'm only lvl 93 so at the bottom of the exponential climb but Raffik without gear is not substantially worse than Raffik with gear.

I guess once he can start equipping accolades that may change?

I've always kind of had a sneaky suspicion that the merc gear and accolades were like the emperors new clothes, you think there's something there, but there's not. Might be because they used to be OP so why make it more so.

I unsubscribed back in Oct and came back yesterday. I went to do the return of the light lowbie HQ and my merc (Lady what's her face) is getting crushed. As soon as the mobs jump on her she starts that annoying cowering animation and doesn't fight back so we don't even kill one solo mob.....

This is awful and not fun. I can't do anything that I used to do. If they don't fix this soon I'll find something else to play.

Scroll up to my post from last weekend about Lady Croae and Lord Valkiss. Ditch Lady Croae and get a regular off-the-shelf merc. The devs need to fix the Fabled mercs, but I doubt that this is high on their list of priorities.

I switched back to a regular city merc and it's mostly the same, especially the cowering part. I hope this gets resolved.

Note that this is for heroic mobs 6 levels lower than me.