Mercenary (NPC-controlled) tanks/healers during 5 man instances.

[Jersovic]

Would this be going too far?

I was playing Warcraft 3 earlier and hired some Mercenary healers, and I thought about it for a second. Would this be an awesome solution for DPS queue times or a disaster in disguise?

[Deleted]

If this goes active I'll fill up the spare dps spots -after asking guildies- with NPC dps. (I'm a tank)

[Deleted]

jerso
You realise warcraft3 and WoW mechanics is no where near similar?
And those "merchanairies" are still controlled by you in war3.

[Jersovic]

jerso
You realise warcraft3 and WoW mechanics is no where near similar?
And those "merchanairies" are still controlled by you in war3.

Not when you right-click heal! It becomes auto-heal!!!

[Deleted]

Not when you right-click heal! It becomes auto-heal!!!

You say this as it would be news, warcraft 3 is pretty old and this option have been there a long time.

Yes they have an option to auto heal. But you decide if they should auto heal or not. And you decide where they should go. You know human priests works the same way?
And still there is a huge diffrence in the mechanics of the games.

Edit
There are alot of other units with autocast, necromancers, sorceress, banshees, druids of talon and shamans to name a few.

[Yunru]

Doesnt guild wars have something smiliar?

[The One Percent]

It's called Massively Multiplayer for a reason. Anything that takes out interaction with other players is bad design imo.

[Deleted]

Official forums:
"ZOMG BLIZZARD SPEED UP MERCS FFS! TOO SLOW! WHY DO 5MANS TAKE AN HOUR!!!"

[ComputerNerd]

DPS queue times are down to a community issue and that is the only way it can be resolved.
We got DK's who were held high as the solution to the tank shortage issue, and perhaps temporarily it did help.
Unfortunatly the cause was not resolved, and it reverted back.

The cause is that too few stick with tanking or want the responsibility it brings.
Tanking or healing is not just about the role anymore but having to cope with poor decisions by players who do not know their own roles.
Having to heal people who will not move out of the bad stuff, and getting blamed when a dps dies who was more fussed about their meter humping than actually doing their job.
Having to try to pull an angry mob from a dps who either facepulled because they weren't paying attention or because they chose to hit something the tank did not have aggro on, instead of a more appropriate and often marked target.

DPS is a low responsibility role, one where you rarely have to make up for the shortcomings or sheer stupidity of others.
Therefore is it any surprise that tanks and healers often revert back to that role ?
No not really.

Stop trying to come up with fancy solutions when it is down to stupid players as it always has and always will be.

As a role-teaching mechanism it has merits, but not as a means of replacing players in proper dungeon content.

[Deleted]

The idea is already in game, there are NPC healers who act as tanks and healers under your pet bar, Problem would be how to bring that to a 5man. as they would pull by them selfs.

[Berri]

That would take the multiplayer out of wow for me too much.

[Nobleshield]

LOTRO has this in Skirmishes and it works pretty well: You have an NPC "soldier" who you can customize and buy classes/abilities for. For instance I can make her an Herbalist (healer) and buy abilities for her that increase the HoTs she puts on me, but she can't fight worth a crap. Or I could make a Protector (tank) and give him heavier armor and more health.

It's not outside the realm of possibility BUT I think WoW would have to adopt the skirmish system first, wherein you can do them either solo (w/ soldier) or in a group (w/soldiers - you always have to have soldiers or you can't win the skirmish), with scaling rewards based on that. The LOTRO Skirmish system is pretty good in the sense that it provides the solo player something to do that doesn't involve the hassle of a random dungeon with the possibility of a group full of elitist douchebags, and provides them rewards for doing it, although let me say LOTRO does not have a dungeon finder; you have to find groups the old way like in TBC.

An example would be if they went from JP/VP to Valor Tokens, and kept JP. JP comes from dungeons and skirmishes, Valor Tokens only come from raids (LFR or otherwise). A high-end piece of gear could cost a few hundred JP and several Tokens, with the lesser set of gear only costing a few hundred JP and no tokens. To get the tokens for the better gear you have to do the more dangerous things, but even people who don't like to use the dungeon finder can do solo "skirmishes" for JP to improve themselves. LOTRO takes this further by having these "JP sets" at increasing levels from the moment you can start doing them (level 20), so you can get a full set of what amounts to blue gear at 20, 23, 27, 30, etc. but then there are the higher-end gear sets that require you to run the actual dungeons for marks.