Not sure where else to put this... MERCENARY concerns

[Ekar]

<p>My brother is afraid that the mercenaries in the next expansion are going to take over the role of any actual tanks and healers in groups making the game even less of an MMO. I agree that Oasis is horrible for grouping if you are under level 90 but I am unfamiliar with any other server. So I am just curious how good are these mercanaries actually going to be? I am a 90 sk right now with 257 aa, handful of ascent, pools jewelery and all PQ gear except the chest, am I going to be useless after they are released? Also how different are the common mercanaries or whatever from the expensive ones such as Lucan? One more thing, I heard there are wandering mercenaries around Norrath you can hire if you find, are they going to be over powered?</p>

[Mandaline]

<p>Here is the thread about mercenaries : <a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=503215" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=503215</a></p>

[feldon30]

<p>Ekar,Read the writeups and watch the videos from Fan Faire. Then wait and see what form Mercenaries actually take. And then you can tell us if they're overpowered in one of the existing threads. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Jrral]

<p>You only get one mercenary per character. And the AI isn't going to be that intelligent, they're going to do the basics but they won't be as flexible and able to adapt as players are. So eg. the tank will taunt and all that, but it won't be smart with it's snap-aggro abilities (if it has any) as a real tank would. It won't, for instance, hold off on a snap when the sorceror (with their big deaggro) grabs aggro and reserve it for when the assassin's in trouble. My sense is they'll be fine for soloing (eg. a healer might grab a tank or DPS mercenary to speed up solo questing), and to fill in a weak area in an otherwise decent group, but they're going to be no replacement for a real player who knows what they're doing in the tougher content (you're not going to want a mercenary to tank Kael and Drunder instances, for example).</p>