Coming back to my bard main! 3rd for bard, mage, ??? trio?Follow

I'm coming back and am going to run a trio. I played a bard as my main for a long time (was loved in LDoNs...) so I know what I'm capable of as far as pulling. I know I can work wonders even with this combo, but I want what will add the most to it.

2/3 of the classes are going to be controlled with key broadcasting. Bard will be main and used for pulling, slow/snare, overhaste for mage pet and general buff/utility. Mage pet will be tanking, mage will be nuking. What am I missing most? With bard pulls/mana regen and mage already having pet haste (Burnout) with bard overhaste, I don't need a chanter. Also please no melees I have to constantly control and position so I can be in complete control of my bard. Leaves me with:

So what would go great with Mage + Bard?

Another Mage
Wizard
Shaman
Druid
Beastlord
Other suggestions? And why?

Looking at high end group content and general messing around (not raiding really). Consider use of mercs 90%+ of the time. Thanks for your suggestions and reasoning!

Looking forward to the game coming back up so I can start.







Edited, May 3rd 2011 11:36am by Darrith

Yeah, that's pretty tough. It's not easy to box a melee character that needs to be in melee range, correctly positioned, holding aggro, etc.

For Underfoot and House of Thule group content, it's advisable to have one of those three be a strong tank, preferably a warrior due to the adds (though your bard will help with this).

For lighter content, a ranger with /autofire is about as easy as you're going to get. I love my druid. Quite versatile and I can crit nuke for over 20k. From your list, I would choose a shaman. The slows are huge and the buffs are tough to beat...they may even be enough to enable a J5 level 90 merc tank a lot of the content you want.

I would go with druid for transport, and utility spells. But then I like utility spells.

I've had occasions where merc tank has gone down so I let EM 8 pet tank t4 nameds for basically the whole fight. However, that's using 2 healer mercs in addition to chaotic blessing buff on my mage (heals any pet within radius for about 4500hp any time you cast a damaging spell; fast cast nukes are your friend). It's not something you want to rely on doing on a regular basis because you will wipe a good portion of the time.

I don't have hard numbers but pet type in HoT does significantly affect tanking ability - Earth > Air > Water, but dps is reversed - Water > Air > Earth.

Regardless, I'd really suggest either shaman or a tank of some sort. If I could start my 3 box crew over today I'd go SK / shaman / bard ... that trio has incredible utility and with 2 dps mercs and a cleric merc I think you could do damn near anything in game.

It's not difficult to 3 box in EQ at all, but there's no way I feel I could box a bard and SK at once efficiently. I need 2 classes to be used to good potential without ever having to switch to their screens (so by using key broadcasts, perfectly legal). That's extremely simple with classes like shaman, mage & wizard who you never even need to be in direct control of. Not so much with melees or CC classes.

I am thinking I'll go with mage + bard + wizard

or

mage + bard + mage

Either way I can use the bard to its full potential for pulls & the occasional mess (CC) and the nukes/pets to theirs as well with barely any additional effort.





Edited, May 4th 2011 12:50am by Darrith

i run 2 90 mages 2 clr mercs. 1 mage has over 6kaa and em11 outher 1 has about 1700 aa all in the pet runin em8. my mane mage i can heal pet t4 nameds any wher i want buy promis heal the outher 1 cant coz not anuff aa 10k deff in mana. as far as mages go u can set thim to send pet gargol 86 bolt and 90spear nuke and jist repeat it over and over agen. no mater if u are runin em8 i run earth with argo sords on the mane mage have the outher 1 run water with mewipe sords. with my 2 mages i pawn what ever i want rilly. a bard and 3 mages wold b a grate box team but if u ask me cant get any beter then 5mages and a clr merc ...........................MAGE FOR LIFE.........................

i ran a SK sham bard all the time as well as a 4th ber worked great just have bard pullin with auto run (press num lock) and on inc tab over to SK as bard is running for a wall have hot key for assist /cast terror line spell with atuo attack tab over cast slow on sham and debuff tab back to bard to put him in line to auto attack with melody tab to SK 1 more terror line back to sham to dot u will get very fast at this i know i did but this was 2 expantions ago i used healer merc and thats it as no DPS mercs where out and found tank merc screwed up a lot i could handle all group content with np


Edited, May 6th 2011 9:59pm by Pimok