DPS Merc, Melee or Caster?

[orion949]

Anyone have recommendations on which one is better? The Melee or Caster DPS?

 

[Meltonian]

Melee++

From what parsings I've seen, the melee is at least twice as good as the caster.

 

[Crippie]

opposite here got 4k dps with caster on burn before he died.
around 2800 with melee...gonna have to do more parses inna few.

 

[jjmanfdl]

At this point I would say melee. Caster burn generates an ungodly amount of hate at this point and dies a lot due to aggro.

I would assume this is something that will get looked at because even being an sk and popping a number of hate spells/aa's the caster merc was still able to pull aggro off me and die.

switching from balanced to burn after a couple rounds does help on aggro though, but merc will go oom in about 90 seconds on burn

 

[Maskoi]

Melee here nice synergy with bard's Arcane Arietta Rk.II and Song of the Storm and Shammys Panther

 

[Whatzit2u]

anyone noticing that the merc melee isn't getting haste or champion from shamans?

 

[groo]

anyone noticing that the merc melee isn't getting haste or champion from shamans?

Intentional. Devs decided they gained too much benefit from buffs, didnt come up with a solution other than disabling them.

 

[Krugerr]

Can you guys post your findings on DPS and the rank of the merc please - makes it easier to compare

Otherwise ive got no idea what rank your using, only that it does 4kdps

 

[Crippie]

Journeyman T5 merc..and yeah waaay too much aggro on burn mode for caster merc...SK here too and could not keep aggro off merc.
ps almost 4k but fight was only like 25 secs or so and he died little over 3/4 way in...with less than 1/2 mana left lol.

 

[jestisp]

Intentional. Devs decided they gained too much benefit from buffs, didnt come up with a solution other than disabling them.

Did they disable all buffs or just those???? Will panther work ????

 

[Whatzit2u]

panther still worked...just not haste or champion as far as i could tell or shaman epic

 

[Jestercap]

bard songs

Do bard songs stick? Specifically bard haste?

 

[Maskoi]

Most buffs work stamina unity etc. Panther defiantly works. Just seems haste and champion type buffs.

 

[twizzops]

What about bard overhaste aura?

Anything not work with caster dps? Crack, bard aura, auria, etc?

 

[Crippie]

ok took mercs to UF... DPS greatly reduced by length of fight now mercs around 1400-2200 dps ..with melee a little ahead..guessing because can't use burn setting on caster merc.

 

[cudacuf]

We will continue to look and see if we can get the mercs to accept buffs, but currently they gain WAY more benefit than a player, making them do DPS that can exceed a group player by quite a bit.

We will look at methods. Perhaps mitigate the buffs, perhaps changing the speed, attack and damage of the mercs, or some combination of both.

Currently they are affected way too much and this was the solution that we could get in in time for the promised launch.

-Ngreth

I took a Journeyman t5 damage merc to the Arena to see how these new mercenaries work. There I matched him up a level 90 NPC sparring partner attacking from behind. I boosted the NPC's mitigatin with 30 "/increase mitigation" commands. I choose 30 because it seems to correspond to group mobs lately. In the past I used 25 but they seem to have become tougher in the newer zones. A default Test dummy has very bad mitigation giving distorted results.

I did relatively short parses using different sets of bufs. My first few tests were messed up because the mercenary seems to keep important things like disciplines from burn mode when up against a Test NPC. I got all funny results including 7k+ DPS with every single pierce attack hitting for 2976. Guessing what was going on I left the merc on balanced, zoned out, camped, reset everything and tested with an up ramp of buffs starting from nothing. Each new test includes all the bufs from previous runs. The tests are relately short, at least 15 minutes. Keeping aggro from the merc as a ranger had me using Devastating Blades, aggro poison and casting a great many Summer's Mist spells.

Bare - Merc with no bufs he doesn't cast himself.
Ranger - Strength of the Tracker Rk. III and and Yowl of the Predator Rk. III
Chanter - Speed of Ellowind Rk. II, level 72 chanter haste
Shaman - Unity of the Spirits Rk. II
Bard - Aria of the Poet Rk. II, Warmarch of Brekt Rk. II, Arcane Arietta Rk. II, Symphony of Battle click effect

Note that all of these are long term effects that one might keep running through an extended battle or grind session. There are no short clicks like epics, disciplines or AAs included. The shaman bufs do not include Champion or Lynx.

Bare - DPS 1093, Pierce 876, Stab 174, Direct 43.6, Avg Pierce 722
Ranger - DPS 1551, Pierce 1241, Stab 267, Direct 42.6, Avg Pierce 1010
Chanter - DPS 2334, Pierce 1868, Stab 425, Direct 41.2, Avg Pierce 1024
Shaman - DPS 2563, Pierce 2029, Stab 492, Direct 41.7, Avg Pierce 1134
Bard - DPS 3522, Pierce 2695, Stab 740, Direct 87, Avg Pierce 1308


Players are nothing like this. The bare mercenary hits mostly for minimum damage. Fully buffed he hits predeominantly for maximum damage. The distribution is 20 different values just like mobs and pets.

Pets are like this too. They have low attacks compared to players and respond strongly to bufs. Raising the mercenary's attack does wonders for its power. Most pets just aren't this strong. By contrast the effects of raising a player's attack can only be discerned with careful parsing.

I think it would be better if the DPS mercenaries did not get to be so powerful.

Both of these quotes are from:
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?&topic_id=164034

 

[Scorn]

Just got done trying out the wizard merc with enchanter in the group with MR rk3 aura up. Parsed DPS was 1600, about half of my wizards DPS just chain casting low level nukes and the big one on GoM procs.

In burn mode, the wizard merc gets aggro way to often. As soon as the mob was in camp, merc was casting Ethereal Combustion straight off. But the big thumbs down was the merc casting rain nukes while i had multiple mobs in camp and trying to keep them mezzed.

Will swap chanter with a shaman and give the rogue mercs a try, but if they don't get the advantage of a beneficial buff not sure it will be much better.

Edit: Wanted to add that the wizard merc was getting MR procs. I double checked the log files.

 

[orion949]

Well, I played around with the Melee Merc a bit and they seem to be as good as your average group melee dps would be, average parse seems to be around 1700 (on burn) but God help these turds if they get hit by any adds, they die quick!

 

[Littleguy]

they both are horrid, i definitly wont drop a dps box for one, Rather the extra healing because the clerics are way more useful then a DPs one.

 

[cactusdan]

they both are horrid, i definitly wont drop a dps box for one, Rather the extra healing because the clerics are way more useful then a DPs one.

i do agree with this but i 3 box mostly, but i do run 1 or 2 more when a friend is not on them i just use the merc for a little extra to fill in my group when i just have my 3 toons on. I bot a raid gear cleric group gear war (mainly tear 8 gear) and a tear 6 geared enc friend toons i use are a monk and a ber( when friends are not using).