My warrior merc just doesn't seem to be tough enough to solo (duo with merc) anything decent. I can kite with him (use merc like a rogue) but forget about taking out any mobs that summon. It upsets me a bit because I watch my SK friend with a healer merc easily handle those same mobs. Are there any tricks for druids and mercs? I just don't see much value in even using the merc since he sucks so much EXP....

Warzle
83rd Druid
isty Thicketer

I have a t5 85 merc, so not sure how the other levels and tiers hold up but......

I notice mine can't keep aggro for crap unless she's got Haste & Strength for sure.

Compared to a real tank, her HPs aren't so great. But, compared to my HPs? she's purty good, so depending on the situation, I definitely take advantage of her plate armor.

I do 1 of 3 things when soloing w/ a merc...

1) let her tank the mob, heal her, just dot and try not to draw *too* much aggro (i.e. stay away from 3 big blasts in a row)

2) kite the mob and let her just follow along and hit it from behind (this happens if I accidentally steal aggro b/c she has no haste, or if she's getting hit too hard and it's more mana efficient to kite than it is to continually heal her)

3) Let her die. If I have a few mobs I'm trying to kill at the same time, I snare one, she runs in and takes all aggro from 3+mobs -- snare and dot all of them asap.. she's usually about dead by this time.. and i just kite em around. By the time I'm done, tank is ready to be revived again. Saves me from the "oh noez! snare didn't land and 5 insanely hard hitting mobs are chasing after meh! evac!)

Overall, mercs are a pretty good help. While warrior mercs do kind of suck sometimes... so do the cleric ones... they take ninja afks and forget to heal every so often...:rolleyes:

At lower levels about 1-60, the tank merc is actually superior to a player in terms of both mitigation, hit points, hit point regen, and dps functions. Other things you can try to help the tank merc, is watch the debuffs, snare, the fire dot especially was huge aggro. A dirty trick is to swap the merc on passive when it has aggro and kite that way, can help the summoners some.

side note...

quote"so do the cleric ones... they take ninja afks and forget to heal every so often"

with the high hitters in Sod, made worse by the high hitpoints of the mobs, getting randomly gibbed a minute or so into the fight on my ranger against trash mobs was quite annoying.