Mercenaries

Playing around with an enchanter alt, mainly for jewelcrafting purposes,
I finally got around to trying the mercenaries.

Here's the basics: There are two sorts of merc, healers and tanks, and
a wide variety of races... don't know that there's any difference
between races except for looks. Each sort comes in two skill levels,
Apprentice and Journeyman (they are supposed to be adding Master in
later, but its not implemented yet, even on Test), and five tiers.

The Apprentice comes with two "stances"; Passive, which is basically an
off switch, and "balanced" which is supposed to be not too aggressive or
too laid back. Apparantly the Journeyman has more stances, allowing
you to better fine tune his behavior, I haven't experimented with these
yet. The Journeyman is also supposed to be better at his job, higher
mana pool, more spells, more skill, better AC, whatever. Again, I
haven't played with that yet.

Then there's the Tiers. This is basically a "confidence" level.
Mercenaries are NPC party members, not like Pets, they can and do mess
up, and the worst thing they can do is get scared and run away on you.
The higher the Tier, the less likely they are to run.

Lets talk more about that confidence thing. Here's my understanding of
how this works. Mercs look at how many mobs they are on the aggro list
for. After twenty seconds, if it looks bad, they check to see if they
panic. If they do, they drop to the bottom of the aggro list (so they
don't train your mobs away) and run a short distance away, no longer
doing their job. Every tic after this, they check again to see if they
regain courage, if they do, they come back to work.

Mitigating factors for this confidence check are things like slow and
mez; if you pull six mobs but mez four of them within 20 seconds, even
the lowest tier merc won't blink.

OK, so what do they DO? Well, the tank will apparantly try to tank for
you, or at least DPS. Dunno, didn't experiment with this yet. From
what I've heard, it sounds like this is about as successful as someone
shrouding to a tank class and tanking, only less willing to listen to
orders.

But then there's the (for me) Gold: Healer. The healer is a sort of
cleric, who will buff and then do a reasonable job of healing, using
HOTs and direct heals and trying to keep out of the way. My biggest
problem was that my merc healer was constantly going LOM while keeping
me at full health all the time, I'd prefer one more conservative and
keeping me above 50% HP. Ah well, sure better than nothing.

I ran the cheapest merc, Apprentice Tier one. He only ran away twice,
both times when I had multiple DB to me mobs on me... and plenty of
times when the situation was even more dim, he stayed.

So lets talk costs. OK, my Ench was only level 32 when he hired one,
it cost about 100pp to hire, and then about 1pp every ten minutes to
keep around. There's an option to turn him off when you're not using
him (suspend) but then its five minutes or so before you can get him
back. If you go AFK for an extended period of time, apparantly he'll
turn himself off for you after a while.

Other observations. Mercs use the same aggro system as PC's do, NOT
the one pets use, which means you may have to work to get mobs off the
merc. Mercs can and do Die. If they do, you can get them back, but
there's a five minute or so delay before you can do that. I guess they
go AFK BIO on death or something.

And the oddest and most annoying thing to me so far, they seem to be
immune to mez. I was fighting in TOFS, and ran into some mobs that
chain mezzed both me and my pet, and then proceded to eat merc alive.
If they'd mezzed him too, we'd have all been fine, but despite landing
Tash and Malo and DoTs on him, and despite mezzing me and the pet at
least a dozen times each, they never once mezzed the little guy, so he
ended up dying to green mobs that I could have killed in my sleep...well
apparantly NOT in my sleep!

Materials, 39 enchanter, Test

Lance Berg wrote:


Must have been less than this, was only 48pp or so for a level 39.
Materials, 41 enchanter, Dulak Harbor, Test

Lance Berg <emporer@NOSPAM.dejazzd.com> writes:

Initially, you can only hire an Apprentice or a tier 1 Journeyman. I'm
told you can "unlock" access to better (and more expensive) mercs by
progressing through the new expansion, but I haven't done that yet.

Mercs don't take a share of the loot (other than their salary), but do
take a share of party experience, including adding to the total party xp
just like a player character would. Your merc thus "levels up with you",
i.e. your merc is usually the same level as you (with occasional hiccups
when you ding, or shroud/unshroud, etc.).

Also of note: they count toward the size of the party, so two player
characters plus a merc can take an LDON mission, and can use Leadership
skills such as the HoTT window (and the party leader gains LXP, too).


The tier 1 journeyman still has just two stances. I don't know how much
higher tier I need to get access to more. Higher tiers of course cost
more to hire and maintain.


The tank actually does okay. It's not a great tank, but it stands up
almost as well as my Anguish-geared monk. If I tell the merc to tank,
I can pull a mob past it and it will grab aggro instantly before I even
get hit once. (I think it does a stun. And of course it always times
it perfectly.) Running a monk/cleric two-box, I find the tank adds
another 50% or so to my DPS, and it means if I need to FD to buy a few
seconds for a heal to land, the mob switches to the merc instead of the
cleric. At level 81 the tier 1 journeyman is costing me about 130pp
per hour, and easily pays for herself.

I also sometimes pop out a healer merc on the other half of the two-box,
but that one's just a cheapo tier 1 Apprentice for when I want a little
insurance.

And yes, I'm told the race of the merc doesn't matter. (Else I guess
all the merc tanks would be ogres / trolls / iksar for the stun resist
and regen.) So just pick one for aethetic reasons. :-)

You can buff your merc (and can see the buffs if you expand the bottom
part of your target window), but you can't give it weapons or pots to
use.

Mercs base some of their decisions on the "roles" assigned by the party
leader. If the merc is Main Tank she'll try to hold aggro, otherwise
she'll just DPS (and perhaps offtank (not sure when it decides to do that).
You can't make the merc be Main Assist; a real player has to call the
targets. If you're tagged as Puller, your merc won't follow you but
will stick with the nearest other party member(s), or will stay put if
it's just you and the merc. But if you're travelling invis through an
area it's okay to bring the merc along; they don't trigger proximity
aggro (though they *can* trigger social aggro once they're in combat).

There are definitely still some bugs with mercs; see the official forums
for various threads. :-) But overall they work pretty well.

-- Don.

p.s.: I was amused to see an Enchanter bitching about getting mezzed.
Poetic justice? :-) I do wonder whether you could've suspended your merc
while you were mezzed to avoid having him die, though of course either way
you'd need to wait 5 minutes to get him back.

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Yeah, I thought so too.

On Test you can no longer suspend or unsuspend mercs during combat,
don't know if thats Live yet or not. Also, currently merc apprentice
healers only get a 90% rez.

On the bright side, the buffs they get are equal to ones a cleric would
get at your level... when I dinged 60 my merc got Aego.

One trick: if you are happy soloing normally, and really stingy about
money, get a healer merc, and unsuspend it only long enough to get fully
buffed up when buffs run out. Higher end buffs (temp plus, so thats a
pretty moderate version of high end) last a long long time... and since
your timer only runs while the merc is active, you can get quite a few
recasts out of a single 5 minute charge. Plus of course you won't care
at all about merc Confidence, so you can get Tier One.

Don Woods wrote:


On the flip side, they count towards maximum party size; three people
plus three mercs is a full group, if you want to add someone else, you
have to kick mercs to make room.

Lance Berg <emporer@NOSPAM.dejazzd.com> writes:

Indeed, though I don't usually find that's an issue. If the group is
getting that large, chances are the new PC being added will more than
make up for the lost merc. It did become an issue once when a party
member was bugged (or perhaps just confused); his merc had died or
something and even after waiting out the timer he couldn't "revive"
the merc, and unless the merc is active you can't dismiss it, so the
dead merc was taking up a party slot.

Usually, though, I'm happy to just take any comparable-level PC and not
bother with the merc as long as I have 3+ to activate leadership skills.
Last time I was killing worgs and wereorcs in Loping Plains, which I can
do with just cleric+monk but it's a lot easier adding the merc tank, I
had a guildie come along with a second high 70s cleric, and that was
enough that I just ran my basic two-box plus his cleric, no mercs, and
we did at least as well as two-box plus merc tank. (He mostly went into
his "battle cleric" stance, with Vow of Victory and so on.)

Different point about mercs: last night I think I figured out how to keep
them from running off when the party is split up. As mentioned earlier in
this thread, your merc won't follow you if you're tagged as Puller for the
group. Instead, it sticks near someone else in the party. I've seen my
merc go haring off across most of a zone to follow someone who was turning
in an update on a task, rather than staying near my cleric as the monk
goes off to pull. I *think* what's happening is, at the moment I get
tagged as Puller, my merc looks around and picks the closest other party
member, and follows that person thereafter.

-- Don.

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-- See the a.g.e/EQ1 FAQ at http://www.iCynic.com/~don/EQ/age.faq.htm
--
-- Sukrasisx, Monk 81 on E. Marr Note: If you reply by mail,
-- Terrwini, Druid 64 on E. Marr I'll get to it sooner if you
-- Teviron, Knight 59 on E. Marr remove the "hyphen n s"
-- Wizbeau, Wizard 36 on E. Marr