EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MERCENARIES

Mercenary/Partner System enables you to form a party using another player's character and another character you already have.
Copied straight from the article on the official website do read it if you have no idea what a "mercenary" is https://en.toram.jp/information/detail/?information_id=1289
For those of you that already know lets jump right into the details.

For basics mercenaries are of two types:-

Spoiler: Basic stuff that no one cares about

1.)PARTNER MERCENARY:
These mercenaries are your own characters to invite them go to Menu > Character > Switch Character > Choose the character and click Accompany
2.)HIRED MERCENARY:
These are the mercenaries of your guildmates, friends or just any random 5 players from the same world as you that have a mercenary registered as the same lvl as your current character upon logging. The random 5 for hire mercenaries can be refreshed by relogging or switching to a character with higher lvl than your current character. (Upon switching the random mercenaries lvls change to your currently higher lvl switched character)
To invite a hired mercenary go to Community > Party > Hire a mercenary to invite a random mercenary (To invite a random mercenary you need to pay spina equal to their lvl). Community > Friends > Friend Mercenaries to choose and invite a friend's mercenary. Community > Guild > Guild Mercenaries to choose and invite a guildmate's mercenary. (Inviting a friend's or guildie's mercenary does not cost any spina).

At once you can invite 1 hired mercenary and 1 partner mercenary in your party together but what's the main difference between them that they need classification?
Before we can figure that out we need to discuss how mercenaries work in battle and how their stats work.

MERCENARY STATS:
As you may or may not know already mercenaries when in battle can only use auto/normal attacks. For now they can not use any skill whatsoever which means they are very limited in terms of what stats they can use.
Whenever a mercenary is registered (Or in the case of partner mercenary, stats before switched) the system registers some of the character's stats to form a mercenary and the stats right from the status screen are:

Spoiler: List of allowed stats

1.)MaxHP
2.)ATK
3.)MATK
5.)DEF
6.)MDEF
7.)HIT
8.)FLEE
9.)ASPD

That means a mercenary will have these stats copied from the status screen of the registered character. The stats of the status screen not mentioned here like CSPD and MaxMP will not be copied and will automatically set to ZERO(Not like a character that can only auto attack use them either way).
The stats of your equipments will only apply if they boost any of the above given stats if not those stats will be completely ignored as well.
Heres a list of frequently asked stats if they work on mercenaries or not:

Spoiler: List of prohibited stats

1.)Critical rate +/%
2.)Critical damage +/%
3.)Evasion %
4.)Guard Rate/Power
5.)Aggro %
6.)Ailment Resistance %
7.)Physical/Magical/Elemental Resistance %
8.)Refinement of armors/shields/adds
9.)Physical/Magical/Fractional Barrier

The game explicitly cancels all critical rate, evasion, guard, AMPR and ailment resistance on mercenaries which means these stats can not be obtained no matter what(Again AMPR doesnt even matter).
While aggro generated by a merc per attack is fixed as well and can not be increased by aggro+% stats.

Now that you have in mind which stats are useful and which are useless for a mercenary lets discuss the main 2 categories of mercenaries:

ATTACKER MERCENARY:
As you can see mercenaries can NOT critical hit at all.
So that means they need high HIT to attack high dodge bosses which means DEX/Accuracy+ are really important stats.
If a mercenary manages to hit an enemy it will do damage and apply neutral proration on the enemy.
The amount of damage a mercenary does directly depends on the "Power" of the mercenary. (Power and maxHP are the 2 main stats you can see when recruiting a mercenary)
For any mercenary base "Power" is calculated as:
--If the mercenary is equipped with staff or a magic device it will have base Power = to its MATK
--If the mercenary is equipped with any other weapon it will have base Power = to it ATK
For any "Attacker" mercenary the base "Power" is multiplied by 2 (As marked by yellow font on mercenary registration/hire menu)
The damage done by an "Attacker" mercenary is always equal to 2x of its power after multiplied/subtracted by enemy resistance/proration/defense.
For example a Bowgun attacker mercenary with 4000 Power will do 8000 damage on an enemy with 0 DEF and 0% Physical/proration resistance.
The damage flow is done as if the mercenary was a player with 8000 ATK using a bowgun and that player did an auto attack.
To learn more about the damage flow of auto attacks or just DPS in general please refer to my good friend @TheXIIIthGuy 's guide on DPS
http://toramonline.com/index.php?th...se-a-complete-explanation-of-toram-dps.31919/

There are two exceptions to the formula and they are:-
For any "Attacker" mercenary equipped with either Dual swords or 2handed sword will get a further boost of 2x on their attack power.
Example:- A 2hand attacker mercenary with 4500 Power will do a whooping 18000 damage on an enemy with 0 DEF and 0% Physical/proration resistance.
This means mercenaries equipped with 2handed sword or dual swords can do the most damage. (For dual swords their subATK is completely negated as a mercenary instead they get this 2x boost)

Also as mercenaries they ignore the base stability and stability stats of the equipments/bases. Instead all mercenaries get a fixed stability of 80%.

After HIT and ATK next main stat mercenaries need is ASPD as more ASPD = More often attacks from the mercenaries.
ASPD conversion is exactly the same as Player:
Till 1100 ASPD it reduces the attack cooldown
After 1000 ASPD it increases the motion speed by 1% for every 180ASPD

Other thing's worth mentioning about attacker mercenary:
--It generates 10 aggro per auto attack just like the regular player character.

Now before we jump into Defender mercenary theres something we need to discuss common to all mercenaries
RANGE RESISTANCE:
--Mercenaries (regardless of their type/stance) take less damage if the attacking enemy is close to them. I decided to call this range resistance as it is based on the range of the mercenary from the boss.

Spoiler: Heres how it goes

At close range of 0-3m mercenaries only take 30% damage of what the players with their stats would usually take.
With each increasing meter the damage taken by them increases by 10%. There is no maximum limit to this damage so it will keep increasing infinitively.
Example:-
If the boss monster is 4m away from the mercenary its attack would do 40% damage
50% if 5m away
60% if 6m away
70% if 7m away
.
.
.
100% if 10m away
110% if 11m away
120% if 12m away
And so on
This means long range mercenaries can be killed easily if they are too far from the boss and get hit by a long range killer blue aoe.
It also explains why mercenaries take far less damage than they actually should against certain bosses at close range.
This reduction is also applied to pets

FAQS ABOUT BUFFS/PASSIVES FOR MERCENARIES:
This has been quite a frequently asked question "Do passive skills like power wave work for mercenaries?"
--And the answer is NO. Power wave does not work for mercenaries, mercenaries equipped with staff automatically get power wave regardless if it had the skill or not.
For the other passives if they increase the aforementioned allowed stats then yes they will work but other passives with extra effects like hidden arm, intensive knife, mail breaker do not work for mercenaries. The skill aggravate/strong chase attack does not work meaning they wont get guard break from auto attacking. Similiarly the stats additional melee/magic or Anticipate/GuardBreak do not work either.

What about party buff skills?
--I can also confirm aura skills like Guardian/BraveAura do NOT work on mercenaries.
How about non aura support skills like WarCry?
--Well it is pretty difficult to say as we can not see how much damage mercenaries do but...
Healing a mercenary?
--Yes a mercenary can be healed with Mini heal and ailment can be cured with recover. I am gonna assume war cry can heal their fear and bless can heal their HP as well untill I am proven otherwise or get sufficient info from mining.

DEFENDER MERCENARY:
The defender mercenary is a quick replacement for a pure tank for most of the cases (The ones where they can survive at least)
As you can see RefinementResistance or just any type of resistance like physical, magical, elemental or even guard does NOT work for defender mercenary.
So their only way of survival is... well HP and the RangeResistance.
All defender mercenaries gets their HP boosted to twice.
Example: A character with 30000 HP when registered as a defender gets 60000 HP
Well... They do have another buff which is to their def and mdef.
But as you may already know how redundant def/mdef becomes past 250 and yeah mercenaries use the same formula as the player def/mdef. I already discussed DefFactor on my other guide but since its a bit messy in there heres the recap:
DefFactor =
-0.8% for every 10def below 0
+0.8% for every 10def in the range 0 to 250
+1% for every 100def in the range 250 to 1250
+1% for every 333def above 1250
Maybe because of that they are a bit more generous on giving the def/mdef boost:
--The mercenary with Defender stance gains def and mdef equal to 10*Lvl
Example: A lvl140 defender mercenary gains 1400 points in def and mdef
That is around 30% additional reduction before the Range resistance giving a total of 80% reduction if the enemy is close to the mercenary.

A defender mercenary generates a fixed aggro of 150 per attack which can not be changed with any aggro+% equipment.
So the only way for a defender mercenary to hold aggro properly is via having more ASPD and of course HIT (Missed attacks will not generate any aggro)
Even at 1100ASPD you will feel that mercenary can not hold aggro properly against your combos that is because the sheer amount of aggro generated by some skills per second is just way high compared to the auto attack of a mercenary even if the player is equipped with a lot of negative aggro.
To let the mercenary hold aggro efficiently in cases where you can not find a pure tank learning how to use the skill sneak attack is really useful.
You can read my guide if you want to know how sneak attack works:
http://toramonline.com/index.php?threads/everything-you-need-to-know-about-sneak-attack.31874/

For damage dealt defender mercenaries deal damage equal to their power not equal to twice their power as in the case of attacker mercenary.
Which means the damage dealt by a defender mercenary is around 1/4th to that of a attacker mercenary (1/8th for 2h and DW mercenaries)

Some good weapons to use for defender mercenary:
--Bow or bowgun gaining decent ATK from being full DEX they can do small amount of damage while tanking properly by the aggro generated from HIT.
--For tanking very strong bosses on NM mode where they have very high dodge rate best mercenary would be Full VIT barehanded.
Being barehanded gives you the highest graze rate compared to all weapons a total of 50%. Without making it too complicated, 50% graze rate means if the character had 0% critical rate and the enemy dodge was way high than character HIT the character can still hit 50% of time doing graze attack meaning no matter how high the dodge of the boss gets the mercenary can still hit 50% of the time and generate aggro out of it.

RETREAT AI:
You may have noticed long range mercenaries running around haywire if the boss gets close to them.
--All mercenaries have a retreat AI when bosses get close to them causing them to run off to random directions. If theres an obstacle preventing them to move farther or if they fail to move farther from a given fixed distance in a certain amount of time they will attack once and continue running to a random direction.

Spoiler: Safe distance

--For all mercenaries equipped with melee weapons the distance between the mercenary and the boss to trigger a retreat (I will call it safe distance) is 0m so retreat AI is not as much as a problem for you if they are set as a defender.
But for mercenaries with long range weapons this distance is larger.
--Staff mercenary has a safe distance of 4m
--Magic device and bowgun mercenaries have a safe distance of 6m
--Bow mercenaries have a safe distance of 8m
Meaning in a large map if the boss is targetting your long range defender mercenary it will may keep moving away from you and making the boss move away from you as well coz of it being chased, because of this constant retreat AI it can be difficult for you to DPS if you are melee fighter with a long range defender mercenary.

MOTION LOCKING:
There is one known way to bypass retreat AI is by having high ASPD.
--If you have more than 1000+ ASPD on your mercenary it will become motion locked into auto attacking and will never trigger retreat AI after the first retreat.
The only way to move the long range mercenary from their spot now is by either moving 12m or more from the mercenary (All mercenaries are hard programmed to move closer within a 12m radius of their summoner) or if the boss moves out of their attack range.

Is motion locking a good thing though?
--For most of the cases on a long range defender mercenary yes. But for a few cases you would wanna instead let them move/retreat.
Fractional spikes:
The thing that is the cause of 90% mercenary deaths for me coz refine resistance not working for mercenaries. I am not sure if range resistance is canceled for these spikes or its just they are always far from the boss when the spikes hit, if your mercenary gets motion locked on these spikes it is dead for sure. While allowing retreat doesnt necessarily mean they will survive more or if they will attack more than with motion lock its just to make sure your mercenary does not die immediately.

 

Some info that was lacking/incorrect on main post but since the character limit is already hit and I am too lazy to edit the whole thing:

--2h/DW mercenary have increased attack stat regardless of if its "attacker" or not.
--Katana mercenary has a nerf of halved attack stat and no still Two-Handed bonus does not apply because of 0 crit rate. Unsheathe attack stats do not apply either. This makes katana the weakest attacker mercenary
Attack stat here is after the attacker stance 2x multiplier being applied.
--The damage calculation of attacker mercenary looks something like this:
((MATKstat + MercenaryLvl - EnemyLvl)*(EnemyMagicResistanceModifier) - EnemyMDEF)*(1 + TirednessModifier) (For mercenary equipped with Magic device, staff)
((ATKstat + MercenaryLvl - EnemyLvl)*(EnemyPhysicalResistanceModifier) - EnemyDEF)*(1 + TirednessModifier)
NOTE:
--TirednessModifier is a value between 0.1 and 1, it starts out at 1 on a healthy mercenary and slowly drops down starting from 1 hour total time in field after it is summoned.
--The said TirednessModifer is also multiplied to all the stats of a mercenary except for maxHP.
--For some reason bowgun mercenaries target MDEF stat of the enemy instead of DEF stat
--Mercenaries can trigger a second retreat AI if the summoner comes less than 3m near them which always results in a retreat away from the summoner. This retreat AI can not be bypassed by 1100 ASPD stat.

 

Finally.. After all this years ❤

 

Have you ever realised about a bug in Mercenary Equipped with staff ?
I mean everytime i use my staff merc, it has Power Wave activated, meanwhile i haven't learned that skill before °—°

 

Its not a bug staff mercenaries are special they have power wave on by default. The power wave skill itself does not work with any mercenary with different weapons.

 

great info

 

BUMP
Added:-
--Defender mercenary
--Retreat AI/Motion locking
--Minor changes

Yet to add:-
--TirednessRate
--Sample mercenary builds

I am still having trouble finding the exact attack range for different weapons so that topic will be postponed untill I find the exact values for all of them.

 

Any info about shield on a merc? Or is it better for a merc to carry weapon without it?

 

Not that much because most of shield's advantage such as guard rate , power & refinemnt resistance are part of the stats not inherited by merc.

 

I am using the new shield in my mercy. 1K aspd is nice.^^

 

Good Job

 

Ty for info

 

Theres nothing specified in the code about shield on a merc nor can I feel any difference in game.
Vulcan and the event shield are really good for their ASPD. Candela + Vulcan can easily get me to 1000+ ASPD, if you have enough aspd you can choose magic arrow to get +100 accuracy
I will make a list of good equipment for defender mercenary later if more people want.

 

Priest mace+ event shield+ lil devil garb is a whopping 3k+ aspd for merc(heck if that don't generate good proration i dunno what will). Just asking if the "extra" stats on shield will work or it is not active on merc.

 

As I already said if the shield gives any of the allowed stats it works.

 

Yey, thanks. Only question now is:
If the merc got an event only stat, will it expire after the event or it still need to be overwritten first?

 

If it is registered before event ends it wont expire but yeah it will be gone if you reregister after event.

 

Someone please give this guy a medal.

 

Hmm... My Mage Merc will inherit 3292 ASPD :V I guess I need an Add that will Up MAtk now?

 

I just thought of something stupid... Would drinking all the Drugs (i.e. GigaSpeed Potion, Magic Amplifier) BEFORE registering a mercenary boost the resulting mercenary's stats? o.o