Grouping or Boxing with possible merc outside of group?

[bobokatt1970]

Good day all.  Lately and being very grateful, my friends and I have been able to get together on a semi-usual basis and have some fun in VoA.  Now the issue is that there are at most 4 of us.  We have my BST, a necro, mage and SK.  All of 4 of us have tier 5 healer mercs LOL -- naturally.  Now normally with 4 of us actually paying attention and doing our job, with 2 healer mercs we've been able to do most of what we set out to do in regards to VoA named.  As you can see none of our actually characters are healers.  Other than the necro's aa heal that procs off spells, and bst's warder buff that heals the SK that is holding agro, we rely strictly on the merc healers.

Now in certain occasions, generally with our stupidity or not reacting fast enough, we all die to a tough named.  My question about mercs outside the group -- would it be beneficial if one of us that obviously does not have his healer merc, since we have only 6 spots, switch to DPS merc and have it sit outside the group attacking and doing DPS, knowing that if it gets hit with a AE or agro, it's dead as no one is healing it. Is that viable?  Also if the main tank, our SK for instance, pops his healer merc after we have a full group so his healer merc is out and active but just not inside the group, would it still help heal the SK, which needs most of the heals as the SK is the one getting hit.  Thus would this be possible and thus allow us to in practice use 4 chars and 4 mercs? I just thought of this today so I cant test this till I get home. Anyhow ever do this? Any other suggestions?  Would it just be better to get the two chars that dont have the 2 healer mercs in the groups just switch to full DPS caster mercs and have them nuke outside the group for added DPS, thus in essence shortening the fight?

[Inphared]

Mercenaries cannot be outside of a group with their owner. It's coded that way, so this "out of group mercenary" thing is already not going to work for you.

From what I remember, the DPS mercenaries were never particularly viable to begin with, and the healers were usually the best. My recommendation is to not change your mercenary setup.

You have four people, which means four mercenaries. My suggestion is,

Group 1:              Group 2:

SK+Healer           Mage+Healer
Necro+Healer
Bst+Healer

This way, everybody has a healer, your SK has more healing, and you haven't gained or lost any DPS.

[bobokatt1970]

Thank you Inphared.  Perfect and great explanation.  My bad for not reading up or researching the coding about mercs. I will try your suggested setup tonight when we all log in just to see how it works.  We really should be able to do most thing with the 4 of of us and just 2 healer mercs.  I swear that with wives calling, kids throwing up, folks needing their dogs to go out, our blackberry's going off with work requests, Christ we are all lucky enough to get a 30 min LOD session going or maybe hit one named and be grateful for it.


Cheers!

[Quilly]

Considering your group make up, I would think RB would proc a LOT of heals, since everyone should be casting either a DoT or a DD or tap almost constantly during the fight. Maybe make sure the SK's discs are up before taking on a tough named.  If you want to split the group up and pop all the healer mercs, maybe use necro with their healer merc seperate, since they can help tap if the merc is being dumb (which they often are).. Believe you can RB the group, when not in it.

[nedoirah]

I have to agree with Inphared. His set-up is better due to the fact that mage pets are better at tanking than either the necro or bst. If he has the tank pet up that is.

However the nerco can feign and cast a rez if the group wipes....

[Nusa]

Mercenaries cannot be outside of a group with their owner. It's coded that way, so this "out of group mercenary" thing is already not going to work for you.

From what I remember, the DPS mercenaries were never particularly viable to begin with, and the healers were usually the best. My recommendation is to not change your mercenary setup.

You have four people, which means four mercenaries. My suggestion is,

Group 1:              Group 2:

SK+Healer           Mage+Healer
Necro+Healer
Bst+Healer

This way, everybody has a healer, your SK has more healing, and you haven't gained or lost any DPS.

Three healer mercs isn't really much better than two. A variation would be to swap necro and mage, have both of them pop dps mercs...fair odds the necro doesn't actually need a healer so long as the SK is alive. Depends on the event, of course.

[Quilly]

Necro taps are decent, but some of the AEs on the VoA nameds, even just the T2 ones, would be really hard to tap through.

What kind of gear does the SK have? AAs? SKs are one of the classes that NEED to have a ton of AAs to be effective at tanking tougher content.  My SK just hit 3300 AAs and still don't have the things maxed yet that I want..

[bobokatt1970]

Yah SK has like 3750 AA's thus far.  He has a mix of some group Hot and VoA gear.  About 80K fully buffed I think maybe around 8K ac. You are right I know he needs more work for sure.

BTW tried a few setups this weekend, got good results with Mage and his merc OUTSIDE the group.
Going to get the guys to try the necro outside by himself with a dps merc and using his recourse aa and lifetaps only to heal himself if need be.  Always fun to test stuff! Thanks again guys.

[Quilly]

3750 AA and 8k AC is pretty good actually! Think mine has a little more HPs, and around 7600 AC, you should be able to survive with him/her tanking. With that # of AAs, most of the important stuff should be covered.   With a very good cleric, I have tanked a number of T3/T4 nameds with my SK.  Glad to hear things are working better for you guys :)

[nedoirah]

I've tanked HoT T4 named with my bst. I only have 5100 ac and at the time 3k aa (all defensives to her level 90). Unless they amped up the VoA namers further than they amped up the ac and defensives, you really shouldn't have issues with the SK tanking with 8k ac and 3750 aa. Provided that his defensives are up to par.

My pre-retirement set-up was as follows:
1. lvl 90 bst w/ 3k aa and T5 j-man tank merc
2. lvl 90 shm w/ 2k aa (all healing aa to lvl) and T5 j-man healer merc
3. lvl 82 war w/ 800 aa (most defensives to lvl) and T5 j-man healer or dps merc (if I 3-boxed)

With that, I farmed many of the T4 HoT named easily. My major problem was crowd control and pulling. You really shouldn't have issues with a 4 player team. I have confidence in you!!

[Khauruk]

Yeah, HoT nameds were very easy compared to VOA nameds.  And many t3 HOT nameds were harder than t4.

[Quilly]

Night and day difference in named as far as difficulty.  My SK could probably solo a lot of the HoT nameds now with new gear and AAs, can barely live thru a VoA T3 named right now, with 2 healer mercs. They have between 5 and 6 million HPs in T3/T4 (approx), so the fight takes much longer also.  The VoA T1 nameds aren't too hard, but they get pretty difficult starting in T2, and up.

[nedoirah]

Ok so they didn't scale back the mob difficulty from Beta... I attempted a T2 Valley of Lunanyn namer Blood-Gorged Hunstman and every time I died to an add that for some odd reason VP refused to land on. I think I would have beaten it easily if not for that damned add.

[Quilly]

The only things I remember being immune to run speed changes in Valley are the BIG, higher con yellow spiders. The smaller, lower level ones are rootable.  Being able to kill that named with you and merc is awesome, I might be able to do it on my necro (with some nice RB procs, and if merc could keep pet alive!), but no way in hell could I do it on any of my other toons with just a merc.

[nedoirah]

Ok so they didn't scale back the mob difficulty from Beta... I attempted a T2 Valley of Lunanyn namer Blood-Gorged Hunstman and every time I died to an add that for some odd reason VP refused to land on. I think I would have beaten it easily if not for that damned add.

Last I checked bsts can't use VP.

No I was 3-boxing my bst shm and war with 2 healers mercs and 1 tank. I still couldn't manage it even after 3 attempts and 3 different placements of the namer. Including killing anything that might have added.