Benefits of Mercenaries?

[Randymarsh9]

I was not sure whether to post this in its own thread or the mercenary development thread. I thought it would fit here more since it does not actually have anything to do with mercenary development. Now, what are the actual benefits of mercenaries right now as compared to bots? I never had experience with them on live, so I am not entirely sure how they are supposed to behave, but on my server, they act very similar to bots. The cleric did silly things like chain heal itself out of combat and the tank was not very good at keeping aggro. Are mercenaries fairly complete right now, or are they still a work in progress? I just want to hear how people feel about mercenaries when compared to bots.

[Zamthos]

From my experience, the only benefit is the fact you have a nice fancy window for Mercenaries, where as Bots aren't so fancy. Bots are much better than Mercenaries, because you can choose their class, however there's not as much of a variety in Mercenaries, where you only get 4 types, rather than 16 classes. Also, bots progress with you, where as Mercenaries stay at a constant level due to the fact they're an NPC rather than a player-like NPC that is completely changeable in the fact of their gear, etc. Where as a Mercenary has a set damage, set weapons, and they're just plain dumb to try on a server that isn't 100% live-like in the fact it would require a lot of modifications to them to make them anywhere close to Custom Content such as EZ Server or Lootfest, bots are just plain out better in the fact you can decide how good or how bad they are because you can give them equipment, where as with a Mercenary you cannot. Just my opinion, would love to hear others' opinions.

[Shiny151]

I don't have any experience with bots but I do have mercs working pretty nicely on my server. I'll say one thing I like is the fact that the mercs have pretty solid equipment to begin with. I have no desire to manage additional inventory so it works out for my personal taste and others on my server.

So there are some trade-offs; mercs are lower maintenance but limited in class selection.

I believe bad_captain is still tweaking mercs as time goes so i wouldn't say they are in their final/final state; he enhances them as time allows.