The problem with Mergen is the long cool down on the skills. Yes, Magic Arrow is great filler, but it’s still extremely inferior to PD2 and Pyro with Agny. If you are a party leader and you want to finish ET as quickly as possible because you have to do it every single day, there is no reason for you to take a fletcher/mergen over a PD2 or Pyro with Agny.
Make your own group that accommodates your mergen. It’s not like your mergen would do such low DPS you’d fail it, and there are plenty of classes that can support you doing it just as quickly. Synergize.
DPS is always replaceable with other DPS.
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I’m on Orsha. Everyone who was down to party with a Mergen for ET has already quit. I haven’t logged into the game for 2 days. It’s actually very lifting to be able to cold turkey and not do dailies.
I have seen this conversation too late.
Let me say what I think:
Mergen is the worst R8 class of archer tree, reasons are that you are pretty much stuck with only 1 hand (and if you are an hardcore gamer that’s a problem, since SR can use 2 orange weapons, but even silver hawk + orange pistol is MUCH better then what u got), and the cooldown of mergen class is ■■■■. Plus most build only run ranger 1, which means worst DPS into meltis since you give up extra levels of steady aim.
As I said already, aside from steady aim, retreat shot and A2 for crit rate buff there is nothing good in archer tree atm for PvE.
Still, I feel lucky,
My fixed grp for solmiki is gearing again ET 15F since we had to change 1 sup.
My group is:
C2Diev3MikoPd2
C2Krivis3Miko/priest/tao
cryo/crono/sage
Doppel
And me (meta A2R3SR3)
BUT, since we are rerunning ET, I’m taking my time to gear up an Archer 2 Ranger 2 Fletcher 3 hacka for Solmiki (YEAH, HACKA).
I do think that even hacka is better for solmiki over mergen since:
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You can have 2 practo weapon and off hand yellow gems lvl 7 are pretty nice
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AoE atk stacking work on multishoot and all the hacka skill, while aoe atk is garbage on mergen
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the cd of hacka skills are half the CD of mergen skill
Will see how it goes, if it doesn’t work I will go back to my A2/Ranger3/SR3 but, atm, I honestly think mergen is by far the worst R8 circle for archer, even counting cannoner 2 and falco 3.
No matter what, IF you main archer you got 2 options:
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you have to play with a team that can support your off meta build, like I’m doing(and this count for hacka,mergen,cannoneer2,falco3)
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you have to play Ranger3/SR3, 8x glassmole and go nuts with meltis because is just so much better.
Just my 2c, I’m sorry @Tenku but I can’t really blame your fixed grp if they choiced a better DPS over your build, especially if y were a stand in due to a temporary ban.
On a side note, I think that @Nicola did an amazing work in his guide and went really deep, but at the same time he make a lot of people believe that mergen could compete with SR, which I’m sorry but is simply NOT true, not due to Nicola but to a missing good SR guide on forum (IMO, at least).
Power of internet, mergen is a class between tier 2 and tier 3 (and for tier 3 I mean trash tier, honestly) and still so common. We should have more good guides on this forum, IMO.
Last side note, I will do a really complete guide of hacka when I will finish grinding my 2nd leather lolo chest and I will have done a couple of videos of hacka in library // solmiki contest
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You are comparing circle 3 vs circle 1. As for trans system 2h bow scales way better than main weapon and off hand dued to higher physical scaling. Yes SR3 is better for Solmiki but that doesnt make Mergen the worst rank 8 class.
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The problem is that we are stuck with R8, and no matter what the DPS builds “bottle neck” too much since they give zero utility.
Diev is unique
Meltis is unique
crio/crono/sage is unique
After that, you keep the best 2 DPS builds in ANY given patch time and all the other will stay at home. 2 builds between at LEAST 10+ builds that are playable.
This problem will NOT be fixed anytime soon, will be here again at rank 9 for other classes and again at rank 10 and we could repeat this ab infinum if we will have more ranks.
If you want to go off meta, you MUST have people ready to support you.
Want to have an ez life? Go support or in meta DPS (and be ready to trash your character at a new rank life, couz this ist the best “easy mode” for dedicated DPS that I can think about…)
umm, doesn’t this situation heavily come from players’ perspective? It happens in every online game
I’m sorry if I understand your intention wrong, but it seems as if you want to totally blame this on game design.
I’m not saying this game is absolutely perfect, but most players will just look for the easiest method whether by the actual fact or from the most popular guideline.
Well, I understand where your opinion come from, but I kinda disagree with “This problem will not be fixed anytime soon…”
The meta thing will always change but most players’ tendency for easiest mode will most likely stay the same. 
Heck, we can easily meet those meta chars nowaday. But whenever they don’t get the shiny number 1 they expect, we can see all sort of reaction ranging from “ok I quit the game, it s***” to “are you cheater? how can you steal no.1 from my godlike ****?” or some other bizarre reasons.
Well, RMT and such is also one thing, but sometimes factor like lack of proper attribute level/equipment/playing skill is also the case too. One time I saw pyromeme argue with another player about no.1 dps got stolen from his godly weapon, when it’s just normal five hammer with no gem at all…
Maybe you sort of agree with me with the “if you want to go off meta, you MUST have people ready to support you…” Though I think “must” is a bit extreme, just find the friendly friends/players we can comfortably tag along with.
Not at all, but most teams will prefer SR3, PD2 or Pyro when you’re looking for DPS. Mergen just doesn’t bring anything to the table because it doesn’t outshine the other classes in the one thing it’s suppose to do well, DPS.
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Let me clarify, 2 things:
a) yeah, I do think that game design, especially for DPS classes, is bad.
We got too many circles that just do the same thing, aka damage. And if they are not balanced it doesn’t come to personal player preference but to DPS meteor.
I’m been playing mmo since Dark age of camelot american beta (was it end of 90s?) and I can’t blame people to min /max. Actually, I love min/maxers couz those people understanding in/outside of the games, help community, clean stuff, and honestly make games great IMO.
b) I don’t suggest to go FULL meta either.
Has a MMO player, my biggest playtime was at university in WOW between burning crusade and WOTLK.
I killed Illidan (last dungeon of BC) top 100 eu with a guild that let me use holy priest. In fact, we had 2 holy priest in our rooster.
To clarify, in the whole burning crusade expansion, and particular for black temple, nobody used heal priests couz they were so BAD and everybody sticked with 5shaman+1druid, basically.
When wotlk come around, guess what, priests where much better.
I quitted the game with a top 50 WORLD kill (a bit better that top 100eu of black temple) of freya hardmode and we had the 2 most geared priests of the server (me and another guildmate), couz those priests were good players with top knowledge of the class, not someone jumping into the class given the positive meta at that patch time.
And I’m talking about hardcore raiding race in wow peak time, not ToS (8+milions of subbers in avarage BC?)
I always loved my guild couz gived the spot to GOOD players, rather then GOOD builds. Sometimes we tanked problems couz of it, sometimes we were rewarded.
But still, we never random guilded 3+ trash shamans players knowing they would be kicked from the guild as soon as the next dungeon was realeased couz we were racing black temple clean, like most hardcore guilds did at that time.
In a 5 player contest (not a 25 players contest) is much harder to give more then 1 off meta slot but, at least IMO, fixed grps should try to do that in ToS. In fact, I think they can do that without many problems.
ToS is easy and require less tryhard than hardcore raid MMOs, you don’t need to min max that much.
as @GrimgarHaru said, choice the person over the char and you will go a long road togheter 
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Who told you that? Mergen will always be a bossing class, period. It’s essentially going to be Fletcher 2.0. Wait for next circles for it to get stronger.
err, after reading this topic i totally lost my will to keeping playing with my fletcher, he is already 245, and i am planning to be a mergen…
So he is good in something at least? what i can do with Ranger3 -> Flecher3 -> Mergen?
Well no matter what skill and power creep mergen gets in circle2 or circle3, there will be one downside for it forever, namely, it can’t use offhand for mergen skills. SR3 can use xbow+pistol which has more slots the a single 2h bow. On the same note, even hackapell is way better bcz it also can use xbow+sword and on the top of it gem calculation on sword is done as main hand instead of offhand its just hackapell lacks much range and AOE despite skill having scaling from AOE AR.
i had a a1 r3 fl3 hacka which i reseted to a2 r1 wugu1 fl3 hacka, i have a a2 r2 wugu1 SR3, i have a a2 hunter3 falc3 and i am on my way to build a cannon2. To me SR3 is the most boring class to play and falc3 is the most fun.
I am the strongest Mergen in all of NA with a 315 Orange Bow at trans 7. I get easily outdpsed on bosses in Solmiki by a pyro with a 315 orange staff at only trans 6. No matter how much stronger circle2 and circle 3 for mergen is, they will always be limited by their ridiculously long cool downs.
Note: I stopped playing for 2 weeks so I might not be the strongest anymore.
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What makes you say that?
Err… Why do you say so? I’m mergen myself, bossing is my worst content.
For Bossing you take a2>R2>F3>Hacka 
oh come on
warlock always in all the games have high dps and low def
but here warlock no def and no dps and no rang skills it’s almost melee and they want it a support for the Cleric lmao
I have recorded a video featuring my special snowflake build.
No biggies, but mergen becomes really stupid with falconer, even with a budget bow that costed me 20k :^)
What is your stat distribution, and what is your build?
I could be wrong (we’ll see), but I’m going off of speculation, and for the fact that we’ll have 15 levels of rain arrow at some point which will be huge. We’ll also get other skills to fill in our rotation with and won’t be relying on c1 skills I’d imagine. Magic arrow 5 was not impressive in the slightest, aside from the fact that magic arrow was a circle 2 skill. Our strongest skill is most likely not even in the game yet!
As well, agny, so unfair comparison. It will be nerfed yo.
I was told nobody goes that route anymore. 
I’m a2>r2, so just being facetious.