The Spirit Realm

by **paladinguy** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 7:49 am

So my group and I went to kill Pherin the Traitor in Old Bloodfields. I am level 85 with 1477 AAs, 23k hps/4.3k AC unbuffed. I pull Pherin, chanter slows it, and I use deflection then Armor of Endless Honor. My disc wears off and with the mob at about 40% i die. The whole time I was chaining aurora of dawnlight with 2 teir V merc healers. Named finally dies, and the group laughs that after i died the tier V merc tank never went below 50% life while i was constantly at under 20% with spam heals. Yay for being owned by a merc tank. It's like 6AM so my typing probably sucks. Anyway, there goes my vented frustration.

by **iron299wind** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 9:26 am

Based on impressions and experience a tier 5 merc tank is probably about equivalent to a tier 4 equipped player. I am about 85% tier 5 group gear and the merc does quite well against kurns mobs, fos mobs, starts having trouble against tosk named, and generally gets squished by warrens named without extra heals from me and my druid. That was with one tier 5 healer. Now that I am working on a third alt, I don't expect problems until probably bloodfield and kor named

When I group with my normal group with sword and shield I'm sitting at about 40k ac 4686 with ward and steely live, and I don't have too much trouble against tier 5 named unless they get in some nasty spike damage and that's with one player cleric healer.

Website · by **Normy** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 10:04 am

Keep in mind that just like the real players, mercs have discs. This can make a huge difference.

As far as your dying after both discs, bring some extra DPS. That will change the whole situation. Basically it took your group 2 minutes of fighting to bring the named to 40%? And when in doubt, use your new LoH, since the HoT will make you damn near invinsible to group targets for another 42 seconds. No merc can touch that.

But yea, the warrior merc really are quite good on the high end. And that was badly needed, since on the low end orc pawns accidentally killed them by walking past and sneezing. They were useless at first. If your group gives you too much crap, let them have the merc tank the whole time and see how they enjoy that. Takes the pressure off you and you will greatly outdps the merc using a 2h weap.

Website · by **Abazzagorath** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 1:17 pm

Tier 5 mercs flat out need to be nerfed, both the tanks and especially the cleric ones.

Website · by **Normy** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 1:42 pm

Why? So they can be like shrouds? AKA useless.

by **boukk** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 3:07 pm

They wont be useless, but they shouldnt outtank a grp geared tank, they should be significantly worse, not the opposite.

Website · by **Normy** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 4:45 pm

Any nerf applied to merc will make them useless. I call that based on the history of other things nerfed.

And to my knowledge, the beginning ranks of both the healers and tanks do generally suck, its only really the Tier IV and V that are actually useful. I've done the progression arches, if you can make it through those tasks tanking as a paladin, your merc won't out-tank you. Same as a healer.

The description here sounds like three actual members with three mercs to fill out the group (2 merc healers, I assume one of them was Paladinguy's, and a merc tank). This makes the group a paladin, an enchanter, and something else. Not exactly the ideal group for named killing.

I really don't know any fully group equiped people right now, but I'd be interested to see the stats on that. Iron indicated he is mostly group equiped and seems to have rather impressive stats, higher than what I would expect out of the merc tanks. I still think it comes down to disc use since warrior disc will allow a weaker warrior to tank over a better equiped knight on a hard hitting mob.

by **frocus** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 5:02 pm

Paladinguy was the one getting eatten by the named tho and he is light on hp for spikey rounds from named in OBF.

Website · by **Normy** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 5:09 pm

Just for the heck of it, I mocked up a magelo using my character with all groupable equipment and augs. Now to be fair, it is some of the best group gear available, but it is interesting to see what a knight CAN get up to at this point in the game without ever raiding. I think. If I missed something on an aug or whatever, I'll see if I can adjust it.

Website · by **Brohg** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 5:44 pm

Those augments aren't nearly as good as they could be. You're missing a ton of hp, some ac. The armor set isn't optimized for shielding/avoid, either. You left off Emblem entirely. Power source should be Stone, for double ac of Elemental on every armor slot.

by **boukk** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 6:16 pm

Website · by **Normy** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 7:30 pm

I thought so as well, and as Brohg pointed out, its far from the best stats or even the best overall power source. I don't see the T5 merc tank out-tanking that hypothetically geared person in terms of gear/hp/ac. But discs, well yea a warrior does have superior discs that can make a merc a better tank for a named target. I don't want to see mercs be retired to another oddity of EQ like the useless shrouds, LDON's, and ship-to-ship combat functions that once seemed to hold so much potential.

by **paladinguy** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 10:34 am

In case anyone is wondering, I wasn't complaining about mercs really. I don't want them nerfed personally. It was a combination of frustration, laughter, and sleep deprivation LOL. Our dps was low (me, chanter, wizard, with 2 healer mercs and one tank merc)...low until the wizard started dropping 50k bombs that is LOL. Anyway, sorry if people took it as me complaining. I really wasn't. I just hope I can reach that group geared stature that was shown in that magelo or else I fully understand why I stay lfg so much with people preferring their mercs tank over me.

by **frocus** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 11:06 am

Given Pherrin's max hit is somewhere in the 8k range with 0 Shielding the problem is based on your hp level I think tier 5 mercs have better than 30k hp unbuffed which is likely where the difference came from as pherrin doesn't hit fast that I can recall. There is absolutely no need as a tank in tier 5 gear to be using flameshields and Shards anymore since tehre are 15 augs of 30 ac or greater a number of which include HP. I believe I had a Magelo in which the only augs with under 30 ac equipped were Dain Aug the 15 avoidance helps a lot in group gear and the Blood of hte Fallen Quested aug from Kith arc as heroic AGI is bank and totalled with the 135 hp on aug make it worth having over the straight 30 ac aug I would have included in it's place.

Edit: He will also gain some Ac and hp by using the Rarer type 3 versions of the loots used as tank stuff typically gains 2 ac 15 hp a slot using the type 3's.

Website · by **Abazzagorath** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 12:36 pm

Website · by **Saintsaens** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 1:20 pm

Website · by **Normy** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 3:10 pm

/shrug

Again, I guess I don't care if you really think they should be useless, everyone is welcome to their opinion. I get the impression that you are one of them that rarely has trouble building a solid group on your own, in which case mercs are the devil. However, then aren't bots the same stupid thing with more work? I mean, not all of us can/will afford a second account just so they can round out a group, I'm one of them. And bots also are a bandaid to the lack of real players.

I totally agree that I prefer a real person in a group. But as much fun as it is to sit with 3 rangers, a chanter, a bard, and me, it doesn't get much done for xp. If a real healer is looking for a group, I'll gladly drop my merc but I have to admit I don't miss sitting around waiting to find a healer that would dare lower themselves enough to go group in some place that isn't the top end or have direct relevance to their personal progression.

As far as the merc tanks, I really can't comment. I've never been asked to sit aside and have a merc tank over me. But I looked foward to the shroud system when that was announced, since then I figured I could become a needed class when 12 paladins were already LFG. That failed miserably. This is a change that just allows people to NOT bot and therefore be more social (because a person running two toons is usually too busy to be social). You can hope for their nerf, but I see it as unlikely.

And yes, I have seen a T5 merc go out of mana, it casts stupid spells and is not as efficient as a real cleric can be. However, its also never windowed out on MySpace either, or in cyberz with random_girl01.

Website · by **Peaky** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 6:55 pm

Website · by **Ughbash** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:55 am

mercs are useful as they allow classes that can not solo to get some xp.

Merc tanks are not as useful as a real tank, and are idiots runnig off aggroing whenthey shoud not.

Merc clerics are good but as for tanking no they don't.

And there is no way that a merc tank consistently tanks as well as a max aa paladin with 5300 AC. They tank approximately as well as a monk with 4500 AC but that is FAR below what a paladin of simialr gear level or even oen with 5300 ac tanks at.

Not every class can solo nearly as well as paladins, and for those classes mercs are needed. Just like they put in gimp weak melee mobs for classes that couldn't solo mercs were put in for classes who could not solo or to add a healer when there were no clerics availabel for a group.

Mercs are perhaps the best thing about this expansion.

Out of curiosity paladinguy could you post a magelo? I'm curious about the AA , avoidance and shielding.
Also you didn't mention it ut I assuem you were going sword and board tanking rather then 2 hander?

by **frocus** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:11 am

He Mentioned using deflection disc which requires a shield equipped I'd assume he wouldn't go to 2 hander afterwords tho. I'm in the firm belief his problem was due to not having the hp to take spikes more than anything else he has 23k unbuffed which only puts him around the 27k range since no shammy in group. With Pherrin's max hit that doesn't leave a lot of room for spikes. 8kish minus his shielding can't remember if Pherrin only triples or quads tho.

Website · by **Ughbash** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 11:09 am

by **boukk** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 12:38 pm

by **paladinguy** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 2:24 pm

Yup, I used a shield the whole time. I am also max shielding/avoidance. I don't have a magelo off-hand sorry! But yeah, those spikes were nasty LOL.

by **Bigcat Daddy-o** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 5:12 pm

by **paladinguy** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 5:49 pm

LoL at first I thought your post was positive. Then you started jumping on my case for criticizing mercs...If you would care to read MY post, and not the posts by other people, you will see that not one time did I criticize mercs. In my opinion they are the best thing SONY has done in Everquest in a long time...at least for MY style of play. My brother is back playing now because of them, and I no longer have to box so much. My original post was focusing on the fact I got hosed and the merc put ME to shame. It had nothing to do with saying I wanted mercs nerfed. Tanks like me can't sit on our asses in semi crappy gear anymore. The standards have been raised and, quite frankly, motivates me to progress my toon more because I am no longer the best option in SOME situations. I freaking love my Tier V merc. It allows me to do things I would have never dreamed of alone before.

by **boukk** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 6:29 pm

by **Bigcat Daddy-o** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 6:39 pm

Website · by **Abazzagorath** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:02 pm

Did I ever state that anyone that didn't box a cleric was lazy? Of course not, don't be ridiculous. I simply said that it was lazier to drop a boxed cleric you already had and use a cleric merc. Would it have been less offensive if I said "easier"? I mean, you're sitting here telling me how a real cleric is better, so if you have a cleric box, and instead use a merc, then by definition aren't you being lazy by using something less effective in order to have an easier time playing?

I do not have a problem with the concept of mercenaries. What I have a problem with is mercenaries that are extremely easy to obtain that outplay real people in terms of their tanking and healing capacity.

I never claimed they were perfect, or if we could raid with them merc clerics would replace real ones. I said what is my opinion, that mercs are far too powerful.

Mercs should have been "group fillers" for short groups, it was how they were advertised to us. Instead, they are perfectly capable of main healing or main tanking in korafax, and that is bullshit. They should not have that much capacity.

As I said before, mercs should have come in 3 flavors:

1) Healer merc that is balanced around allowing a non-healing class to solo better

2) Tank merc that is balanced around a healing class to solo better

3) DPS merc that is balanced around a self-sufficient class to solo better

To that point, when grouped only with you, they should take zero experience from the kill, to encourage people to use them to "solo" rather than punish many people.

And that would have allowed them to play support healer, support dps, or tanking in a pinch in lower tier zones. How absurd is it that a few missions capable of being done in one afternoon nets you a character that allows most people to "solo" in the discord theme zones (top group zones in the game)? How is that reasonable, fair, or leads to better gameplay?

I have met zero people that "came back to eq" because of mercenaries. What I have seen is the amount of people that did stuff by themselves and not bother to group, has increased dramatically, people have let bot accounts expire, and the lack of groups available have resulted in some people quitting or scaling back their play time.

As an example, this weekend, we had around 40 people on (non-raid day), and people couldn't get a group in guild and were talking about how the game has become a ghost town. There were plenty on, but they were off boxing by themselves.

People that couldn't solo/duo a lot of stuff and thus grouped are now solo/duoing. People that boxed a few accounts are now filling their group out with mercs, and the group situation is worse than ever.

Website · by **Normy** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:15 pm

Well, a few thoughts, but I've done the "few missions" you refer to, and I found them to be challenging even though I'm probably better geared than most group-only folks. In fact I wiped a few times on some of the things I needed in order to even do the proper progression tasks. If you can burn through them all in an afternoon, cool, but I doubt many can.

Still, I agree that doing the progression is still much easier than obtaining the top-end group gear yourself.

As far as the healers go, what I have discovered is that they cannot out-heal a real cleric. I've played a cleric in group and raid content. Its really not all that hard if you always pay attention. Thats really what got clerics fired up over, is that the mercs are showing that it really isn't impossible to play a cleric in group content, but I'll admit it is boring.

An attentive cleric can far surpass any merc, but the problem is that clerics are not attentive, those left still playing them are bored and generally in the game to socialize more than grind, and it impacts their performance.

by **Bigcat Daddy-o** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:21 pm

Did I ever say that you said that people that don't box a cleric are lazy? Don't be assinine. I said that you said that people that WERE boxing a cleric were lazier now than they were before by using a merc.

And what you stated very clearly was.

Mercs should be useless. That to me indicates a pretty large problem with mercs. Call it my interpretation of the semantics.

I don't know what kind of folks you have in your guild, or in Boukks, but my experience appears to be different than yours. More people are comign back in mine. More people are grouping than before in my experience. As I stated I used to box five and would hesiatate to bring anyone in to group as all my boxes needed the gear. Now, my mercs are fine! they don't compete for the gear! I drop em in a heart beat if semi capable players are available. What has changed for me is I don't have to group with dickweeds that play clerics or tanks. Now that isn't to say that all or even most tanks or clerics are dickweeds, but some are and I am stuck playing with them in the past unless I boxed or wanted to sit LFG hoping another one came along. I can list specific instances of clerics being total dicks but havint to put up with it because,,, it isn't like a dps that you can just drop and keep going. Or a shaman that can be replaced by several other classes and is a nice to have only. YOU HAVE NO OPTION WITHOUT A TANK OR CLERIC. Now people have an option. And it is a fun one.

And this soloing named in Korafax with a merc? You must have some super powerful people in your guild. I have had a merc tank in korafax running a merc cleric flat out, and my druid flat out healing AND my shaman running spot heals. Please stop exagerrating the truth Sir.

Can they tank named in Korafax? yes. they can. With a hella support.

The OP was way undergeared for T5 area but was almost able to pull it off. Nothign against him. I am glad he is having fun, but he is able to with the now support of mercs.

I fear that perhaps people who had everyone else by the short and curlies are feeling a bit of the angst the other classes have felt for a long long time...

Peace

Website · by **Ughbash** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 8:22 am

Mercs let the cleric I always group with relax and play her alts. Since the game SHOULD be about having fun I think that is a good thing.

Website · by **knytul** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:36 am

me personallly, im a good fan of mercs as long as they are utilized properly. atm im raid leading a new guild and recruitment has been very crappy lately. With low #'s, my guys still have the opportunity to go build groups and can fill spots w/ mercs if needed to keep their XP bars goin. When the situation comes up that theres 4 or 5 mains in group and a merc, and someone of similiar class to merc is LFG, they know to pocket the merc and get that main in. So for us, its proven very beneficial.

The only problem is when greed comes into play w/ others on the server. ive seen countless times that people will block mains out of a group with mercs saying (groups full). Theres 2 sides to this too. Either 1) the persons just an ass and greedy, or 2) the new person coming in sucks so hard that even a merc, or a box, or even a HoT pot can out heal them, or a ranger in crap gear can out tank them.

So, my vote....dont nerf mercs to uselessness like they did with Shrouds. They could still use some MINOR adjustments in code to tweak their performances, but overall leave em the hell be. if u dont like mercs, DONT USE EM. But damnit Jim!, dont go out of ur way to try to ruin it for everybody else

Website · by **Ughbash** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 11:03 am

by **Sylvia Sunhair** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 1:34 pm

Website · by **Normy** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 2:09 pm

Very nice Syliva, like I said, mine was just a quick mock up, I didn't chose augs very well or really even put the gear together very well, just threw something down to compare to. Point is that I don't think the mercs are more powerful than a group geared person, but as Abazzagorath pointed out, they are easier to obtain than the gear.

Website · by **shiftie** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 6:50 pm

The only major problem I see and it is huge problem just taking a look at that magelo- While the stats seem nice on the surface the Mod 2's are horrid.

25/35 shielding is really low.
20/35 spell shield
22/35 stun resist
26/35 dot shielding

You almost have avoidance capped at 96/100 - I don't see the anti impact helical spring in your armor set and it has ac/hp 1 shield and 5 avoid, which would at least max your avoid. I'm not saying your gear isn't nice but the lack of mod 2's really hurts you more than anything. You could definitely replace the shield of the otherworld at the very least with the Beza aug.

I don't know what the solution is for a group geared player to improve those stats, but I know shielding should be a priority. Off the top of my head the helical spring, the hp + shielding aug from circle of drakes to gain another 4 shielding and the hp + shielding from anguish mini's to gain another 3%. Sure you'd sacrifice some AC but you'd gain 8% sheilding. I'll leave that debate open to people who can give the pros/cons of losing ac to gain 8% shielding.

Nice hp/ac at any rate
cheers,
shiftie

by **Cellan** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 11:33 pm

by **Cellan** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 11:45 pm

by **Sylvia Sunhair** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 9:05 am

Website · by **Ughbash** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 9:13 am

The Spirit Realm

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