My observations on mercenaries

[Keltsete]

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

Haven't really given him a run test yet. Just finished up late last night, and was testing behaviour, not really any change up on checking how well he could tank (just finished Void C late last night)

Typically, when I am boxing in Kurns Tower, I have been using the J2 merc tank and 2 J2 merc clerics. This works fine, and then on named I switch druid to full time healing as well. Tonight I will try doing trash mobs there with only one cleric merc and see how she does. Normally if I try to run that with 1 merc cleric, within a mob or 2 she drops the ball, and dead merc tank. Mage pet takes over and she has no problem keeping mage pet up, but I lose the DPS from the monk...

Will post late tonight or tomorrow on the results of that.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

So, did a little 'testing' on the J3 tank and cleric last night. All subjective.

I am now 3 or 4 boxing. Brought my monk back, as there are just too many spots that I want to pull indoors that the druid can't really do any more. Too tight spaces. Poor little guy is dead before the COH goes off. Boxing Shm,Mag,Mnk and/or dru.

I 3 boxed (well, actually 4. I usually play monk out of group) trash in Kurns tower with J2 tank and 2 J2 clerics. One cleric on reactive, one on balanced, and they were able to keep the tank up with no problems. On named I would add in druid on healing.

So when I changed up to J3 tank and clerics, I tried with just 1 cleric on balanced. Some pulls she'd be ok, but 3 times the tank died. I then switched her to reactive, and she had no problem keeping him up. I had tried this in the past with the J2 cleric, and they were typically ok, but there mana pool wouldn't support extended runs like this. The J3 cleric seems to not have this difficulty as she was typically around 70-80 mana after a pull, and smart like a whip she is always regenning when she can.

I did the 'kill 15 dragonbanes in kurns instance' mission last night also, with the J2 cleric handling all the healing (oocasional spot heals from druid in some rough spots), and it worked out very well.

My other observation though is that my ogre merc tank has to be on passive when I pull in dungeons. I was in the back corner of Kurns, pulling the Dragonbanes (If you are not familiar with this mission, they spawn in the room where Louko spawn on third floor, and across the hall). If monk got hit, which he sometimes did trying to pull stuff around objects in the room, the merc tank would charge in from where we were camped. I have monk marked as puller, Mage marked as MA and MT (I thought maybe if he wasn't given the job he'd be more sensible) and tried him marked as MT. Didn't seem to matter. Dumb like rock.

I think they need to have 2 ranges on merc tank grabbing agro from the marked puller. One for indoors (shorter) and one for outdoors. It's possible too that the ogre is stupider than the others, because I (subjectively) don't recall the Half elf merc tank doing this as much. Anyone else have any obervations or information on this? If it's just a matter of ogre tanks being stupider, than I can carry a half elf or some other race of tank for indoor tanking. I really don't think they've made the tanks that variable, but would be impressed if they had!

I am using the ogre tank based on someone elses observation that the ogre tank was not taking stuns from the front (racial frontal stun immunity). If they've also made him 'stupider' to compensate for that racial skill, that would impress me.

[Kumudil]

[frocus]

Is whoever is MA targeting a mob while monk flopped i think that may be why tank merc charges.

[Brohg]

He said the merc was set to MA.

[kuzko]

Mercs can't be given the role of MA.

[Bloxr Fatso]

Has anyone tried transferring higher tiered mercs to people without the ability to get that tiered merc themselves? I had transfered a merc to my pally one time because I didn't feel like running him to PoK while leveling him in direwind. They both had J1 mercs at the time and were both level 80. I just thought of this yesterday when I saw Brohg auctioning off his healer merc yesterday. If I only have J3 mercs can I have a friend with J5 buy the mercs and transfer them to me?

[Kumudil]

Never tried myself but stated that you can trade your merc only to chars which have the progression to get it on his own.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

[Bloxr Fatso]

I had it happen in a Bloody Victuals missions with a monk friend... we had to put mercs on passive for every pull while pulling the assassins in the village. He was real far away but the mercs always wanted to go tag...

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

[Ughbash]

You can not transfer a merc to someone who does nto qualify for that merc (I tried).

Tier 5 tank merc tanks about the same as my raid geared monk in some ways, better in some worse in others.
Tier 5 tank merc was doing about 670 dps.
Tier 5 tank merc took damage about same as monk (4100 unbuffed AC which is high for a monk, maxxed AA prior to SoD, working on defensive in SOD, maxxed mod 2).
Tier 5 Tank had far better aggro ESPECIALLY on multi mob situations.
Tier 5 tank is stupid and still runs off to aggro everything (like entire camps of obliteration soldiers doing safe passage).

From everything I have heard (though I have not verified it) tier 5 healer merc is incredible.

[Unmei]

Tank merc AI is supposed to be getting a bunch of love in the next patch.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

You are correct!

My merc tank are got smarterz! He doesn't charge in when monk FDs now. yay! Still have to watch the radius on the pull, but that is a reasonable expectation I think.

I have no substantial verification on what I am about to commit to, but I am reasonably certain he got an upgrade in either hp or armor. Previously, to take on a named I have needed 2 cleric mercs and heals off my druid. Last night I was able to leave the 2 merc clerics to manage the healing, and nuked/debuffed off druid. (This was J4 tanks/clerics in a Tier 3 dungeon - Kurns tower)

Nice trick too though, if you can get back to group and flop monk before merc agros, he will wait patiently. It's tricky timing though so I still utilize passive mode for tricky tight pulls.

Nothing jumped out about merc clerics, but I have almost exclusively run them in reactive mode for quite some time.

[Veril]

The patch message did state that Tank Merc HP/Mitigation was increased (should still be less than a players but more apropriate)

[snakebane]

Does this mean a J1 Merc tank can take hits better than my druid now?

[Ughbash]

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

So after much fudging and fiddling about with the new mercs AI, I have finally come to a peaceful resolution with them regarding pulling...

I run my monk out of group when I have tough breaking to do. This sucks because he doesn't get xp, but it is so much better than trying to play 'beat the server tic reaction time of the merc tank and healer'. Either I am not following how they work correctly, or in dungeons it is just too tight to control their response properly with monk breaking an area.

The only issue I have run in to, and it is kind of a funny one, it seems if the monk gets agro, the merc tank will stop fighting if the monk isn't in group. I have to keep an eye on the monk and flop him occasionally (which really I should be doing anyway) but I was surprised that
A: He was able to steal agro from the merc tank and
B: that the merc tank just gave up when an out of group player had agro. I suspect it is something to do with the change they made around merc tanks jumping in on every fight that was going on near them.

Also, when the monk is bringing in the mob, I have to flop him or the merc tank won't engage until a member of his party is at the top of the agro list (guessing on that last part)


Anyone else run in to these issues and come up with a better work around?

Edit: sentence structure is your friend...

[Keltsete]

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

[HawklordXegony]

Normally I box a full group, with cleric. I'm away from home for a couple of weeks and the best I can do on the road is 3 box. I have a beefy (group geared) warrior and for the most part that with a J5 cleric means I never really think about healing. It's been great for that. A couple of observations...

I've not had any puller issues with the J5 cleric. I may not be in as tight of quarters as you are doing, Bigcatt. I did the Kurn's mission where you kill the 4 named and then kill the boss at the end. I had no issues with the cleric and monk in group at all. I'm not using a merc tank so that might make a difference.

The other thing I noticed is that on multi-pulls the cleric gets aggro more than my real cleric.

The cleric let the warrior die once on a two pull in Kurn's. I was surprised because those mobs aren't all that hard. On the other hand the merc doesn't have an epic 2.0 to save the day nor, apparently, does she have the AA that does roughly the same thing. A live cleric can use one of those tools when the tank is down to 25% and the fast heals aren't cutting it. Other than that, the merc cleric has been great for what I've been doing.

[Keltsete]

I'll say this much I've had no issue with the cleric aggroing mobs. I always leave him on reactive. Granted I usully leave a decent amount of space to pull to camp though. Although in Hatchery that usually means I'm pulling a room from one of the up/down hallways so it's not that far.

Only occasionally do I put tank on reactive so it's not that big of a deal but in dungeons it's hard to get the radius needed. Fortunatly it's usually overcome with just putting tank on reactive and then hitting agressive as mob gets to group.

That said the merc healer is great. I pretty much just put him up so I only have to heal with my cleric on named mobs (spike dps but then they do hit hard in dranik/blood).

Overall I am surprised on how good the AI turned out to be honest.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

So, still having an issue with merc tanks. My only CC is Shaman VP, and it has proven to be absolutely useless when running merc tank. If anything it makes the situation worse because when I VP a mob, merc tank runs after it, the mob he was on runs after him, now he has one mob at his back at all times, getting mitigation free shots at his back. This is in a 2 mob situation. This is regardless of whether the MA has one or the other targetted.

I assume this is happening because the AI wants the merc tank to always be at the top of the agro list, and if shaman VPs it out then either the shaman or someone else has agro... I don't know if there is a solution for this unique situation or if they even want one but it is a bit annoying to lose our only CC tool when using merc tank.

Your thoughts?

[Sowslow]

[quote="Bigcat Daddy-o"]So, still having an issue with merc tanks. My only CC is Shaman VP, and it has proven to be absolutely useless when running merc tank. If anything it makes the situation worse because when I VP a mob, merc tank runs after it, the mob he was on runs after him, now he has one mob at his back at all times, getting mitigation free shots at his back. This is in a 2 mob situation. This is regardless of whether the MA has one or the other targetted.

I assume this is happening because the AI wants the merc tank to always be at the top of the agro list, and if shaman VPs it out then either the shaman or someone else has agro... I don't know if there is a solution for this unique situation or if they even want one but it is a bit annoying to lose our only CC tool when using merc tank.

Your thoughts?[/quote]
Depends on how you play, but I noticed the same thing. Once they added the Assist stance to the tank merc, it seems to help resolve this. I mostly 2 box shaman and mage, have tank merc on shaman and healer on mage. I set the mage up as MA and MT, shaman as puller and set the tank merc to Assist instead of Aggressive. Since the mage pet cannot be a tank if a merc is close, the merc will always tank the pet mob. Using the Assist instead of Aggressive stance seems to help when I have more than one mob and have to VP. It works well with mage because of the pet, so not sure how your setup would work.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

Oh, I like that, but I am also runnning a monk in my box group so might not work. I will give it a try though, can always flop the monk more often. Neat idea.

Edit: Thinking I might also be able to throw the tank back to aggressive from assist at the point that I have things under control. This way the merc will be in when the mage pet is, and I can add the monk and give priority to the merc by putting him in aggressive at the point I deem all is under control. So long as the merc doesn't decide to then jump the add that has been VPed at that point....

Will give that a try tonight and post how well it works.

[Keltsete]

I got to tell you I have no real issue with being able to VP mobs off to the side and I have the shaman set as main assist.

Sometimes I have to hit passive on the tank merc for a bit because I don't retarget quick enough but he very quickly leaves the rooted mob alone then.

I was so close to picking up a freaking 4100ac unbuffed paladin but with the mercs there is no way I'll do that now. Instead I'm thinking about adding a mage/wiz/berserker 5th box for some extra dps. Possibly wiz but then with sod porting seems pointless as long as your in the sod zones.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

[Keltsete]

[fendaann]

Sorry to get off topic - One of the Herald of Druzzil Ro in either TIME or POK sells I think WIZ and DRUID spells for a SOD release port spells to PLANE of TIME.

[HawklordXegony]

[Keltsete]

[HawklordXegony]

With Tier 5 arms (55% fire focus) and 2nd spire I get crits of 55-62k on the wizard. The max crit for the big nuke without using 2nd spire is around 44k.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

Link to post by Hulkling regarding an issue with Merc tanks on assist

viewtopic.php?f=35&t=6469&p=87331

Hopefully I did that right.

Basically is discussing that Merc tank on assist (in my case J5) is still doing all the things a MT would be doing.

- Fights with MT for agro
- Intercepts incoming mobs on the puller (marked or not)
- Is doing this whether there is a MT or MA assigned, regardless of whether they have it targetted or not.

Edit: Diction is your friend.