Need Avice for Trio GroupFollow

Hey, recently a couple friends and myself started playing and we made 3 new characters, and gave them some decent gear. One guy is a warrior, another a shaman. But I need help on deciding which class would help them out the most for a third guy in the group. I was thinking either Bard or Ranger. But, if you fellas could share what you think, that would be great.

Thanks

Etuy gave excellent advice. Strongly consider one of the Damage Per Second (DPS) classes. Rogue, Necromancer, Mage, Wizard, Ranger etc. That is also the order of my preference.



I would like to add some specific musings on this subject based on my personal experience of playing a Monk (66) Shaman (63) duo. With Slow and a Warriors superior damage mitigation, this will not be too stressful. It will be a struggle though until level 55 (Chloroblast) or level 58(Kraggs Mending) because of the Shamans sad heal spell distribution. Greater Heal at level 29 then Superior Heal an astounding 22 levels later at level 51.

Thanks for the info.

Basically, I played from about 2001-2003 and now coming back with a couple friends. I have some decent armor for a plate class. (Mithril Legs/Arms - FBSS - Velium Resist Gear). As well, if this affects the class choice, we play on the PVP server.

The Warrior is set for one of my friends. But the other guy and I are still debating on which class to choose. We'll be playing quite a bit and trying to level up fairly quickly. More than likely it will be just us three leveling in the group, because the lower levels are pretty much dead, and Zek doesn't really have any people til 45+. Cleric is a definate for one of us now, but which class would fill in that missing role. Thanks guys.

I think a ranger, warrior and shaman would be an incredible trio at almost any level.

No indoor puller will really hurt you at higher levels.

It's not hard to avoid indoor zones, let alone zones that you need a pacifier for. Bards can't lull for junk at higher levels anyways.
Taunt(bard's cant; rangers can), long lasting utility buffs and most importantly, DPS(shamy enhanced too). And those are only the things that set them apart from bards.
Bards are nice, but a ranger would be more use to a shaman/warrior group.
BTW rangers are wicked fun past 50 well placed AAs and you never have to suffer at 0 run speed past level 36(i think that's when rangers get sow).

Edited, Thu Jun 9 01:42:47 2005 by SceltorEltor

Why would you want to avoid indoor zones... Dungeons are my favorite, LDON's, Expeditions etc etc.. Personally I would go with the chanter. Warrior/Shaman/Chanter

With small groups, CC > all.



DPS is my last consideration. Being able to control a pull and get the mobs slowed is waaayyyy more improtant than how long it takes you to kill it.

Taunt???? Let your tank keep the agro. This is another reason to ditch the warrior, snap agro is really important too.

FYI In your 50's 80% of the damage done to your tank is done in the first 30 seconds of a pull. At least, that is my experience.



Bards do produce agro, they pull agro from my ranger all the time. I beleive Jiggidy explained the high agro songs that bards have.

Shaman can offtank, my shaman does it all the time. Nice thing about shaman offtanking is they don't need to be meleeing, so they can be sitting their casting HoT's on themselves, and even canni'ing while they are getting beat on.

I have duo'd A LOT with my Ranger/Shaman combo up until my current level. The class I would most like to have hunting with me, most of the time, is a chanter. Pulling and CC, would save my life endlessly. It would also increase my zone choice by at least 2 times. I can hardly go into any dungeons, for the simple reason that I can not split pulls, and if I do get multiple adds, I have no real way to deal with them, except for the ranger gate. You are missing a lot of content, and IMO the best content, by choosing not to hunt indoors.

I posted about lvl 50-65 bard lulls a while a go, on another thread. The bard lulls go BS during that period or as I put it previusly, it plays a crule game of 'guess what level I work on.' I believe the mezs do too, but I didn't care to check, some one else posted it.
I don't appreatiate the rudeness.

There are times when some one will die or not be loged on. A ranger can temp for either class a hell of a lot better then a bard can. Although, if you just want to stare at a mezed mob untill the third gets back, hey, do your thing.

/sigh why did you have to respond more then I wrote?

I'll admit I forgot shamans got SoW, so I added in the ranger buff comment. Don't judge me, it's late.

Out of a year of tanking on my 66th level warrior, I don't remeber ever having trouble pulling a mob off of a bard. And to add, I have a friend who hapens to box a shamy and a bard and he said that his bard's agro sucks on numerous occasions(Rulo, bard @ Xegony & Ugalee, Shaman @ Xegony, they're bother over level 65 and ugalee is timed out). Their agro blows.

DPS is important in any group. That's obvious.
Pulling is rarely an issue for any one with a brain. I pull NC murks, jords in BoT, any thing in a roaming zone and any thing in PoV, PoTactics and some others I probably skipped just fine with out lulls and rarely with adds. I may as well add, CC starts with pulling and at higher levels any one with agro can OT in normal exp zones and shaman slows.
K, I'm tired... I'll finish responding tomorrow.
[edit] Just one more thing I have to add. He wants a bard or a ranger in addition to his friend's shaman/warrior, so that's where I'm arguing.
O ya, and rangers are wicked fun DPSing past 50 AAs...
[double edit] christ I forgot this too.. I was grouping with a bard and a few others in WoS before I was able to tank there. He said he had almost 10k HP buffed. He was going to tank, but he said that he couldn't keep agro if his life depended on it. If you guys admit that a taunting, chain casting ranger can out agro a mezing or what ever bard, I'll be happy.

Edited, Thu Jun 9 02:44:22 2005 by SceltorEltor

It is quite silly to say "anyone with a brain can pull". Its about the same as saying any class can solo. In literal terms it is self evident.

In a discussion among experienced EQ players, the obvious assumption is that we mean "can pull effectively in places that are actually rewarding to go play in".

It really doesn't matter what level you are talking about, at every level the best places are the dungeons. In dungeons crowd control is everything (as Reinman said). Rangers (and Druids) are probably the worst dungeon pullers in the game.

There are also hundreds of outdoor situations where Rangers are dreadful pullers.

I've been pulling in EQ for five years +, and though I do not claim to be any sort of expert, I do at least understand a bit about aggro radius, social aggro, range, pathing, run speed, have used snare and root on one or two occasions and even use harmony now and then, And the number of places where I simply cannot pull, even outdoors, seem countless.

For every place you quote (like PoV ) an experienced ranger will quote you two where its a total waste of time.

I'll trade you your PoV for the revised Mistmore, MM is a great place to exp with some usefull drops, you may as well have the warrior pull, he wouldn't do any worse than the ranger.

How about RCoD, another good out door zone. Having a ranger pull there is about as effective as having a wizzy pull.

Rangers have long lost their utility benefits, they have only one dimension these days and that is DPS, and to get the best out of that you need close to 200 AAs.

A warrior, ranger, shaman trio would be extremely limited and frustrating as a permanent team.

Well, there's some truth about the bards on both sides of the argument here. Bards generate a LOT of aggro in the early game, say pre-30, just because the tanks typically can't generate enough aggro to counter the bard buffing 6 people every 3 seconds (even though our songs are coded to generate much less aggro then normal songs). After that, pulling aggro is kinda tough, at least until you start getting into raids and you're playing AEs. You'll die a lot when you first start those for the same reasons... too many people getting hit by songs causing you to outaggro the tank, or hitting a puller with an AE and drawing aggro that way.

In the high end... I never draw aggro. When I pull, the tank can typically take aggro with one arrow shot (or taunt, or incite, or stun, or whatever) and it's typically very hard for me to take aggro on purpose. If the group wipes, I'm usually the last one standing, and not through a lack of trying (I like to pretend I'm a ranger at those times and try to draw aggro off the cleric... no dice usually). I can hold aggro if that's the plan from the start because I have to have some specific songs memmed... but you'll rarely see a bard being the kiter in a PoF tables group for instance. When everybody starts laying the damage down, the bard could quite easily lose the control. Even procs are coded to generate smallish aggro. That's while you see a lot of bards wielding a boomstick of some sort. A 1200 crit proc from a bard probably won't draw aggro off a halfway decent tank. That's really moot though because...

we VERY rarely get in those situations. Bard pulling is so superior to ranger pulling, indoors or out, it's not even funny. If you realized exactly how many different tools and techniques bards have for pulling, you'd never question that they were the kings of pulling again. Don't get me wrong, monks are great pullers too, and at times are better then bards, but for most content... Rangers do well in most outdoor content, but they have a hard time dealing with roaming adds and such in the newer expansions (particularly for those mobs that are immune to run speed changes). And, as we all know, if the bard does overpull (intentionally or not), we can usually clean up our own mess, or at least contain it until the group is ready to deal with it.

Scelter is correct about the goofy area for lulls and mezes in a bards career (high 50's, low 60's), but it's not IMPOSSIBLE for bards to pull. I hated it when I was there, but I'm kind of glad that I went through it. It forced me to learn things about pulling that I otherwise wouldn't of, like aggro-on-tic generation, proximity aggro vs generated aggro, mez-fade and fade-bellow splits... the list goes on of course. It hurt, but it helped too (in a weird way).

As far as DPS... the ranger does win here in a head to head competition. Most people realize that the bard is a support role though and it's about what they bring to the group more then the DPS they provide themselves. Between DS's, overhaste, spell focii, unresistable resist debuffs, small rune type songs, song combos for any and every stat, group DA, selos, group levi, group invis, mez, charm, highsun (mob gating), snare, AE snare, AE slow, blah blah blah. Of course there are limitations, namely the group needing to be near the bard, but that's not that big of a problem usually.

If it were me, I'd put a bard in a trio that had a cleric over a ranger. If it had a shaman healer, it COULD go either way. I'm biased though. I love playing my bard and I quit playing my ranger at 57 out of frustration. I know if I would of toughed it out a few levels/AAs, he would've been much better, but I fell in love with the bard about that time. You won't SUFFER if you bring a ranger. He'll be able to provide some nice utility that the bard won't be able to (long duration snares are very nice, as well as root). His AC/HP buffs will also stack with the shamans, which is a bit of a bonus, but they'll be useless if you have a cleric. All in all, I'd still pick a bard.

Edited, Thu Jun 9 10:37:41 2005 by Jiggidyjay

I kind of have difficulty relating to the low end. Its a long time since I played there, and its not really something that interests me, as most of my friends play at moderate high end. But I'd agree that having a ranger wouldn't hurt the group.

Having a bard would be the best option I think - as the OP has shown, they know the game, so bard would be well within reach.

Are you guys going with:

Warrior / Cleric / Other

or

Warrior / Shaman / Other ?

Wasn't sure if you'd changed the shaman for a cleric or not.

The only time(s) I've seen a bard have good aggro they were vastly over-geared compared to the group / zone, and the group wasn't overly ambitious / stupid about over-aggroing.

I can see what you mean about aggro being noticeable at the lower levels though.

Speaking of AE aggro - humourous story from Qvic last night. Last Msha (named mob) is at 10%. Suicidal chanter casts AE rune. MSha AE goes off, destroying most AE runes. Msha eats chanter immediately. Much fun and laughter ensues.

ASh

Shaman=Slower (critical), healer, buffer, decent DPS and unlimited mana.
SK=Superior agro control (ur gonna need it when slow lands), split/puller, tank, self mana regen abilities.
Rogue=DPS (nuff said)

I can do expeditions and LDON's all day long with this combo succesfully.

Strengths
Shaman slow is teh win
SK can maintain agro allowing Shaman/Rogue to go all out.
Fastest kill ratio of any 3 toon configuration.
Not mana intensive group requiring KEI

Weakness'
Only works on slowable mobs. HoT might not be enough on slow resistant mobs.

Shaman<Cleric if a rez is required.

Just my 2cp. I know that the warrior is set in stone =/


Edited, Thu Jun 9 20:48:15 2005 by Necrophobe

Rate of levelling isn't just dependant on how much DPS you can bring to bear during a fight.

Also work taking into account downtime - specifically such downtimes as:

Time between pulls
Time medding / regenning, etc
Time recovering from wipes.

Ranger is going to give you more overall DPS than bard. But bard should give you faster pulls, increase the effective of the group via haste, atk and mana regen and give you a "safer" group due to CC and single pulls.

One other thing to note is that your progress through levels and zones is going to be decided by the ability of the shaman to heal.

From 50 to 58 you'll have a slow spot. Warriors HP's and immediate damage incurred are both going to be high, requiring a correspondingly high heal from the shammy, which he will struggle to supply. So you can either import one via pickup / friends OR tackle slightly less risky mobs (With lower exp return of course).

Once you start hunting in the planes (Starting at Plane of Nightmare, and working up through BoT and then WoS, MPG etc) you're going to need a cleric (or at least a druid) for heals.

At least four stalwart chaps are going to leap in and point out that a shammy can, and has healed in these zones easily. True - but it depends on the gear the tank is wearing.

If you're getting gear via bazaar / own hunting, you may find a shammy struggles to heal from level 65 onwards.

Don't bards get a snare?