Lance Berg
2008-11-26 14:21:45 UTC
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
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