I'm a returning player and played a ton on my Ranger until 2006 and since then I played on and off for a few weeks at a time. I heard of Heroic characters and decided to come back and box some characters. This is actually my first time boxing ever since I was always afraid of lagging out my computer. This weekend I boxed my Ranger/SK with a friend's Mage/SHM (all freshly Heroic'ed) and I was pretty amazed that my laptop could handle all 4 accounts with zero lag but that's another story. It was extremely hectic and difficult to box 4 accounts but I guess I should have expected that. I ended up just using my RNG to autofire, SHM to heal/slow/dot and set my Mage's pet on attack while I tanked on my SK. It wasn't fun at all since I spent more time tabbing than playing. Plus keeping 3 people on follow was absolutely ridiculous when trying to cross zones, I was going insane doing the Dream J5 merc quest chain because my alts would bug out and run in circles or get stuck on things. Now I'm looking to cut down on the fluff and am wondering what 3rd class I can pick up for my group? I'm absolutely set on my SK/RNG since I love both playstyles. I can stick with the SHM but I read some posts saying that Slows are overrated now since mobs are either immune to it or it only partially sticks and the buffs aren't good anymore due to stat caps. Another option is probably just 2-boxing my RNG/SK but I feel like it wouldn't be an effective combo. I'm a Gold player and got the J5 mercs from the Dream quest chain so I've got the merc part down. Anyway, sorry for the longwinded post, I'm just real excited to be playing EQ again. Thanks for any and all input!
Some sort of healer, definitely. Druids bring ports, which as you mention can be a great quality of life thing for boxers. But I would do Shaman - stat buffs haven't much mattered for over a decade but they've managed to stay great aDPS. Bard would be another possibility - the ease of /melody can't be overstated.
I had this same problem. See I'm silver and my A5 merc doesn't get the job done at 85 so I was forced to box. I was up to 4 boxes but like you said it isn't fun when tabbing more than fighting. I got it down to a 2 box with SK bard and that combo is working great, even with just a silver sub heal merc and wiz merc. Like Feiddan said above /melody makes it so that you don't even have to switch to the 2nd box, I just switch on named to dps. I have a druid and mage as well I can bust out but unless im doing something special I think im going to stay 2boxin'. If you do want to take on a 3rd box I'd go dru or wiz for ports alone, like you mentioned running across zones on auto follow suck haha. Being a gold member you should have no problem soloing on the SK tho so just throw that ranger on autoshot for quick kills and tank it up.
Druid or Bard. Both are super easy to box. Druids are great floaters in groups, run a cleric merc still, and use the druid for DPS, switch to heals during named/tough pulls/adds etc. I love having ports, ports to binds, and evacs, some people don't value those as much. Druids have nice debuffs that go well with an SK, also a nice attack debuff that drops mobs DPS, pretty handy. Bard.....tough to beat. If you don't care about ports, bard is an amazing choice. If you don't want to use the bard to pull, you can literally just AFK /mel bot the bard and get a ton of benefit. Wiz would be the other choice I'd think about, as they are the 2nd easiest class to box in the game (bard being one as AFK). Wiz will give you the most DPS for the least involvement, and will also provide the taxi/evac if you like. I'd still take a druid, as I like having a spare healer around.
If you have a a tank already, the sk and a ranger, I know sk's and rangers can pull in most situations, with cover tracks, arrow pulling, lull and fd, snare and all though i think it's somewhat dependent on being outdoors for rangers. I have a monk pulling for me most of the time so I'm not quite up on rangers. But a ranger can always just sit back and autofire, while not as much dps as melee with the new headshot changes the gap is i believe a bit more narrow, and till about 85(?) I'd say you might want to use a bow *cough cough* For a third, It depends, if you're willing to pull with the sk or ranger than a druid would be good, depending on how important ports, evac and such are. While a shaman will help the sk and ranger do more adps it lacks self dps where the druid has more self dps. I suppose it depends if you're willing to make a healer to heal, if you're going to make a druid to dps and use a cleric merc. Now if you're going to use a cleric merc i think something like a bard or wizard, bard for melody alone would up the sk/ranger and any dps mercs dps a large margin, and can basically melody and afk. Also bards are good pullers, so if you are in a camp you could use the bard to pull, run to camp, snag it on the sk and just let the bard stand there with melody, put the ranger on autofire, add a cleric merc, two melee or caster mercs and you got yourself a nice lil group. I say either melee or caster, while wiz mercs do more dps on burn than the melee ones if you create a melody for a wiz you'll loose somewhat at least, additional dps from the sk/ranger. But how much I can't say as i don't play a bard or am quite up to date on melee/caster merc dps when having a bard. If not a bard, wiz is easy to box, have ports, evac, etc etc. it really depends how much you value evacs/ports and such or if you want to use a cleric merc by itself, a pc healer/merc healer and dps on the pc healer or just run a bard and pull on the sk/ranger or do a wizard and again pull on the sk/ranger. It really depends on how much you value certain things like evacs, ports, pulling, adps from melody for your sk/ranger/dps mercs etc etc or if you want to back-up heal and let a cleric merc do most of the work. I will say as far as i know a pc druid, in most situations won't outdps a wiz merc on burn. I know a lot of druids love to dps but you're still a healing class with damage in my opinion. In any case, I'd say druid, bard or wiz depending on what others and I have said. Sk/druid is a great combo, so is sk/bard, and sk/wiz is good too. The ranger can fill a dps role or a pulling role most of the time i believe. WIth autofire while less dps one doesn't have to worry about positioning the ranger in melee range, just stand in the camp and pewpew arrows at the mob.
At 85 rangers get Flusterbolt which is amazing for pulling. At 88 they get an indoor paci to go with the outdoor one. At 90 They get Blusterbolt so they can have two up. FB/BB (same mechanic as Beguiler's Directed Banishment) punt/root/blur a mob and are instant cast. Add in regular root/snare and Vinelash Cascade and you have some amazing crowd control and pulling. Rangers can't quite pull as well as a monk or bard in tight confines but are a close second if well played. Melee positioning is pretty easy, just /follow the tank and keep the mob between you and the ranger. After about 5s building aggro on my SK, I can cast Called Shots/Focused Storm and then chain Summer's without any aggro worries. They put out some pretty respectable DPS for a hybrid. I would probably go with a druid or wizard. When you're three boxing ports are such a convenience. Druids have a great synergy with the way the SK class functions. They are pretty decent DPS and healing. Wizards have some amazing burn DPS and are rather easy to box.
Since you don't have a traditional heals I would go shaman. Not only does it offer the heals, but also slows which will help a great deal when fighting names etc, plus, I would bet it brings more dps to your group than a druid would since shaman is adding championesque and pantheresque buff in addition to dots and nukes. Plus, ancestral aid and epic click are money. As far as you feeling really hectic with boxing, I would say going from not playing to 4 boxing would be pretty overwhelming for almost anyone. As you get used to boxing it will feel much less hectic, the good thing about your ranger is that you can just use autofire as opposed to melee which is a switch and hit 1 key every mob(assist + /autofire on). You could also make a hotkey like: /pause 7; /cast 1 /pause 7, /cast 2 /pause 7, /cast 3 etc, last time I played I believe rangers had two big nukes(cold/fire?) and then a hail of arrows type spell? With the right hotkey you could have all 3 of them casting on one button press. Last time I was playing live I played my buddy's necro and used 3 hotkeys to keep 6 dots up .. it's all about dat keystrokes, less is more! If your ranger does just have 3 nukes I would do something like: /cast 1 /pause 40 /cast 2 /pause 40 /cast 3 Pause of 10 is ~1 second. I wouldn't give up on boxing more just because you haven't given it a real shot yet. If I was going to play for free I wouldn't play less than a group .. why not, it's free! I was playing 18 on mac!
Those alts running in circles is a common problem to do with your framerate (or maybe refresh rate, I forget). There is a way to make it stop happening. I think u just set the max fps on both to the same # but lemme look it up
SHM. Slows have been nerfed to the point that they don't do as much as people think, but that's not the main reason to box a SHM. 1.) Counterbias - Slow that puts a heal over time on target's target. So you start healing the tank immediately. 2.) No target heal - SHM's group heal does not require any target. This makes it easier to hotkey as well as tab over and do a "oh crap" heal. Furthermore, the (main) group heal follows up with extra waves of healing. 3.) Talisman of the Snow Leopard (or whatever cat) - imbues everyone in the group with a melee proc ability that significantly adds to dps. 4.) Buffs, heal over time, epic, and other miscellanea - the heal over time AAs start to make the HoTs actually pretty effective. Between your normal HoT (group or single), counterbias, a couple AA HoTs, your epic's HoT, and the AA that puts a HoT on your target after a direct heal, you can often have a few thousand HPs per tick going off on the tank. The epic is one of the best two or three in the game at this point, IMO, as it is clickable every 3 minutes and increases melee dps via crits. Unity, regen, and haste all serve melee dps very well. If you were doing a caster group, I'd recommend a diff class, but as a support class to melee, and particularly as a box toon, SHM is probably the best. You can start with a hotkey that slows, casts the group wave heal, talisman of kitty, group heal over time, and another group wave heal, and then tweak it from there.
I did not notice how powerful the shaman's "No target group heal" was until I started to level up another toon on the same account. Merc healers are only able to handle so much incoming sustained damage, before they get to far behind the healing curve and your tank is going to die. It turned out my tanks fast refresh discs and life taps were not good enough to stay ahead of that curve, but when you add counterbias and the group heal is made a huge difference in the survivability of the tank. In a box group trying to change targets fast for a direct heal is time consuming but a strong group heal is ideal for a box group and a toon that does not run out of mana easy makes casting these high mana spells easy to use.
I have macros set up for everything, so there is no clicking on targets. /pause 4, /target *character name here* /pause 50, /cast 1 /pause 50, /cast 1 /cast 1 Or some variation of that depending on what heal/buff you're casting. Different hot key for each person in the box combo. Couldn't be easier. No matter which way you go, and they are all good choices, named macros make boxing pretty easy, regardless of combo. The only time you really get frantic with boxing, is when you have multiple classes that need to act at the same time, that comes down to planning and combining the right classes. For you, any stationary class that you can macro easily will be fine.
Consider shaman, enchanter or bard. You got great melee dps, and tankage. Adding one of the above classes will provide flexibility. Personally, I would go with an enchanter, in that shaman buffs last longer enchanter haste. Enchanters has many auras to choose from, charmed dps, best in camp CC class, similar debuffs compared to a shaman, some dots / DDs, and runes for damage mitigation. The disadvantage is that enchanter does not enhance melee dps as much as bard or shaman would. Another disadvantage is that most times the enchanter is doing something very different from what the rest of the group is doing, and can take a while to learn. Finally an enchanter charmed pet, is a two edged sword, and can backfire on the group. Druid or wizard is ok. Ports are nice to have, but not as important as some capability during the encounter. Druids provide a bit more flexibility then wizards. Both can port and both classes DPS, while druids provide healing verses wizards provide much more dps.
