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mercs keep taking aggro and die..Follow

#1 Apr 22 2015 at 4:32 AM Rating: Decent
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I am playing a mage, I will put merc on passive pull let pet get it. I let pet tank mob until down to 90% or 85% mob health put merc on assist. Merc grabs aggro tries tanking rogue or warrior dead does not last very long. I figured ok maybe what they do so figured leave let me try wizard it gets aggro stupid just stands there and let's mob kill it. Very frustrating I know not as good as player but come on, seem like pointless after level 65 or 70 only good merc is cleric that way it can buff and heal mob while I nuke away. I guess only way can fight, and also find if grouped with someone else same level I use tank and they use cleric merc it does faster than my pet. I would think tank merc would be a little better than my pet but seems my pet is better at tanking especially yellow and red con mobs.
#2 Apr 22 2015 at 5:24 AM Rating: Decent
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I run 3 box of druid , necro ,wizard and use 2 healer mercs and 1 caster dps merc. I pull with druid for singles and necro pet tanks. I stack 5 necro dots and when mob hits 95% life my wizard starts nuking and my dps caster merc starts nuking. Pets holds mob 95-99% of the time, and when a caster does peel, the necro pet takes back aggro very quick.

This is with my wizard casting best ethereal nukes and the merc dps caster on burn mode.
#3 Apr 22 2015 at 5:25 AM Rating: Decent
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I run 3 box of druid , necro ,wizard and use 2 healer mercs and 1 caster dps merc. I pull with druid for singles and necro pet tanks. I stack 5 necro dots and when mob hits 95% life my wizard starts nuking and my dps caster merc starts nuking. Pets holds mob 95-99% of the time, and when a caster does peel, the necro pet takes back aggro very quick.

This is with my wizard casting best ethereal nukes and the merc dps caster on burn mode.
#4 Apr 22 2015 at 5:35 AM Rating: Excellent
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First thing, mercs count as players to mobs, so they will always attack a merc before a pet if in melee range. So Rog or War merc is out if you want the pet to tank. If you aggro it yourself and kit it around, then you can use them, but that's more of a Necro / Wizard tactic.

Second, is pet taunt on? Are you setting group roles, and not putting Wiz merc on burn?

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#5 Apr 22 2015 at 9:47 AM Rating: Decent
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mercs are messed up as of after patch. i run 3 toons healer mercs seem to be ok and can change their stance from reactive to passive. the caster mercs however canot be changed except to burn. i haven't been able to change to balanced and if they are not in burn mode they just sit there passive. i have tried to zone/rezone, log off and back on, nothing is working. the dps casters , when you try to change stance, stay highlighted green, so, balanced and passive, both stay highlighted green. will there be a fix for this? thanks

Just rebooted , logged back on, caster mercs were both set for balanced stance, after logging back on, both were back at passive
Edited, Apr 22nd 2015 11:48am by Edditude

Edited, Apr 22nd 2015 12:45pm by Edditude
#6 Apr 22 2015 at 4:25 PM Rating: Good
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BeenAway wrote:
I am playing a mage, I will put merc on passive pull let pet get it. I let pet tank mob until down to 90% or 85% mob health put merc on assist. Merc grabs aggro tries tanking rogue or warrior dead does not last very long. I figured ok maybe what they do so figured leave let me try wizard it gets aggro stupid just stands there and let's mob kill it. Very frustrating I know not as good as player but come on, seem like pointless after level 65 or 70 only good merc is cleric that way it can buff and heal mob while I nuke away. I guess only way can fight, and also find if grouped with someone else same level I use tank and they use cleric merc it does faster than my pet. I would think tank merc would be a little better than my pet but seems my pet is better at tanking especially yellow and red con mobs.


Honestly, this kinda displays how out of bounds powerful mage pets are. Yes, "normal" tanks have an issue tanking yellow and red con mobs without constant healing. The fact that a mage pet can do this is a whole different subject.

As to the agro issue, what kind of pet are you using? Is pet taunt on? Do you have the agro indicators (not sure what expansions you have, but you should have this. Little green and red numbers next to each name in the target boxes). This will tell you if your merc is actually taking agro, of if he's getting hit because your pet may be rooting the mob (earth tanks do this I think). A rooted mob will always attack the "closest" opponent. One of the things you have to realize is that the game engine does some odd calculations for this. Generally speaking, due to ease of programming, NPCs have a longer reach than PCs. And NPCs tend to always sit at maximum distance. So an NPC (like say a merc or pet) will always be farther away from a rooted mob than a PC (Root a mob that's being tanked by a tank merc and watch the melee players health. It's fun. Sorta). It may be that pets count as being father away than mercs. Not sure. But if the mob is being rooted, that can absolutely explain how a melee character can get what appears to be instant agro.

And of course, anyone who's ever tanked knows this distance issue very well. Swarm tanking is the worst. Mob can be close enough to hit you, but you'll get a wall of "your target is too far away" messages. It's actually a really annoying issue that they should have fixed ages ago, but never have. These are just little things you have to be aware of when managing multiple melees in a group (even when boxing or using a merc with a pet).
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#7 Apr 23 2015 at 8:57 AM Rating: Decent
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Thank you all for the replies. Yes pet taunt is on pet even has summoned weapons which states increases opponents hate toward you or something to that effect. Yeah guess warrior is meant to get aggro regardless no matter the role, can be set to no role, main tank, or main assist still aggro dead, with warrior I understand that. But Rogue and Wizard dps class they should not get aggro die just stand there let mob beat them to death. The cleric at least is smart enough to heal move out of the way. I just let people know don't waste there time, money or merc. The pet I am using is air or water.
#8 Apr 23 2015 at 9:03 AM Rating: Decent
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I have all expansions except tds. Just figured would see what is going on....

Edited, Apr 23rd 2015 11:04am by BeenAway
#9 Apr 23 2015 at 12:56 PM Rating: Decent
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Hmmm... That's strange. Maybe check the merc stance? I know that the tank merc can be set to like aggressive mode (which means he'll taunt and whatnot). Wizards have a burn mode. Not sure about rogue though.
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#10 Apr 23 2015 at 1:06 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
Hmmm... That's strange. Maybe check the merc stance? I know that the tank merc can be set to like aggressive mode (which means he'll taunt and whatnot). Wizards have a burn mode. Not sure about rogue though.
Rogue has burn mode as well.
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#11 Apr 23 2015 at 1:14 PM Rating: Decent
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I thought so. Just been ages since I used one. I know that if they're set that way, you really need a human played tank to keep agro off the merc. Wouldn't surprise me at all if a mage pet wont work in that situation.
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#12 Apr 24 2015 at 5:43 PM Rating: Good
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For the record my 105 warrior out-performs my 105 mage's pets no problem. I guess it all comes down to how you play your tank.
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#13 Apr 24 2015 at 5:48 PM Rating: Decent
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[quote=Edditude]mercs are messed up as of after patch. i run 3 toons healer mercs seem to be ok and can change their stance from reactive to passive. the caster mercs however canot be changed except to burn. i haven't been able to change to balanced and if they are not in burn mode they just sit there passive. i have tried to zone/rezone, log off and back on, nothing is working. the dps casters , when you try to change stance, stay highlighted green, so, balanced and passive, both stay highlighted green. will there be a fix for this? thanks

I experienced the same thing since the Wed. patch. Caster and melee dps mercs now do nothing in balanced mode, and only perform in burn. There was something about mercs in the patch, time to do an in game bug report I guess.

#14 Apr 28 2015 at 12:37 AM Rating: Excellent
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Just info regarding the caster mode on balanced issue in case anyone did not know: there is a workaround. I saw it in general chat and it sounded crazy and my first thought was "BS that can't work". I kept playing and my caster merc just sat there so i finally decided I had nothing to lose. The whole time I was thinking it was just a prankster seeing how many people they could get to waste their time. Put the caster merc on passive. Click on the word "Stance" at the top of the column so it reorders the stances. Balanced went from top to bottom of the column. Put the merc on balanced. Sounded like there was no way it would make a difference but to my surprise on the next pull my wizard merc started casting as normal. I guess that is just the nature of bugs though - they often make no sense. As useless as this tip sounds it has worked for me every time my merc was not casting.
#15 Apr 28 2015 at 1:46 PM Rating: Good
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Hah. That actually does make sense. Can you put the merc into burn mode when it's ordered that way? What about passive? Sounds suspiciously like someone took a coding shortcut.
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#16 Apr 28 2015 at 11:46 PM Rating: Excellent
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I could make any stance changes and they stuck. Any time it did not work, I just reordered and it would work after that. /shrug. Just weird, eh?
#18 May 26 2015 at 3:40 PM Rating: Decent
I use two melee mercs and have been working on getting one up in "Subtle strike" merc AA and the other up in "Silent Arcanum" . Both is to reduce the amount of hate they generate. I had problems controlling agro using melee or caster mercs, but went with melee because it seems like melee mercs were easier to handle agro wise. But even then I was using /mercassist after I got good agro with tank instead of letting them jump on the mob at will. That helped greatly. With gear and AA upgrades, I was able to hit /mercassist right when I got the mob to camp and still hold agro on my tank. When they're on auto, it seemed a lot of times they'd start hitting the mob before I even turned my tank around to start fighting.

The merc AA's also helped a lot. My one melee merc with subtle strike lvl5 is obviously better at keeping her agro down compared to my other melee merc with no points in subtle strike ( I used all of that mercs AA points in getting silent Arcanum for when I switch to caster). It's interesting watching the agro meter and how the mercs play with it. My melee merc with subtle strikes usually stays low on that list and when she gets above 90%, she /evades and drops it. I also set her back to autoassist and she does great DPS and almost never grabs agro. I think higher points will have them staying close to where they almost grab agro, but don't (more DPS).

I've considered going to both caster mercs, but having tried; caster and melee merc; caster and caster merc; melee and melee merc....I don't really notice much difference in DPS. I'm not running a parse and all the parsing I ever seen point to caster mercs as being much better DPS, but all those parses are from 2013 or older. I use a /disc on every fight to bump up my tanks AC and to tell the truth, I seem to finish with more time left on the disc on average using two melee mercs than I do using two caster mercs. So it would seem I am not killing any faster with caster mercs, but the sudden drop on the health bar of the mob is pretty cool when the mercs start dropping bombs.
#19 May 26 2015 at 4:46 PM Rating: Decent
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Yeah, I've not really looked up parses and whatnot, but I'd assume that melee mercs would be pretty similar (maybe even a bit better?) at single target DPS, while the casters will help with AE. Of course, that opens up a whole bottle of agro issues though. As far as even single target agro though, I have to say that I haven't had too many issues with keeping agro off the melee mercs, while I definitely have to work to keep agro off my caster when he's in burn mode. The melee mercs are based off the rogue, and will use deagro abilities (sorta). The caster is basically a wizard and if you tell him to nuke hard, that's what he'll do.

I'd forgotten about /mercassist. I usually just switch modes when the mob gets to camp to avoid the merc agroing the mob. Also, a good habit is to set yourself as puller and tank (assuming you are tanking, of course). That way the mercs don't follow you when you're pulling. If I forget this (or worse, both), inevitably, the merc will agro the mob while it's still out of position (like in an area where other stuff roams rather than that nice safe spot I had picked out for fighting). Then I have to spend time/effort getting the mob off the merc, and then completing the pull.
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#20 May 27 2015 at 1:33 PM Rating: Decent
gbaji wrote:
Yeah, I've not really looked up parses and whatnot, but I'd assume that melee mercs would be pretty similar (maybe even a bit better?) at single target DPS, while the casters will help with AE..


Well, I went ahead and downloaded a parser (Gamparse) and ran one DeadHill HA. I don't really know how to combine all the fights in the parser to give an overall parse of every fight for the HA/time-span. All I'd be able to do is link each individual fight. But it's pretty clear caster mercs are pretty far ahead on DPS compared to melee mercs. I even have the melee merc on auto, so she jumps on the mobs ASAP, while I hold the caster merc back till my warrior fire offs all of his agro disc and it's still not even close. There are a few fights where the melee merc came out ahead, but the caster merc is usually not far behind and that only happens when I was a little late calling /mercassist. And even though I am holding back on the caster merc, the majority of the fights, the caster merc comes out ahead and many times....far ahead on DPS. I suspect once I get all or enough silent Arcanum AA's to reduce the casters generating hate and can have 2x caster mercs on burn and autoassist, it'll be pretty ridiculous DPS. Agro is not to much of an issue with only 3 points spent on Silent Arcanum. By the time or IF, I lose agro, the mob is less than 20% health or dies in the run towards the caster.

I was seriously going to go melee merc and caster merc, but now it will be 2x caster merc. I will work on getting the melee merc AA's, after I get casters done as a just incase I do some high MR named or something, but for everyday trash mob killing, it's caster mercs all the way.

I think lvl96 was a pretty big DPS bump too. I noticed before the caster merc was doing @60k a nuke. Now she is over 100k a nuke. 2 caster mercs doing that....yeah

In all fairness though, I do have my enchanter with his hate reducing aura and twincast aura up which helps casters.
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