3 Box Optimization

Wizard / + / +

I am trying to build a 3 box around wizard being my main. I have had a few ideas but wanted to reach out to the community to see their thoughts on a viable 3 box combination for Planes of Power and further.

Thank you for your time and input guys!

Why not start with these?

Depends if you're open to charming. If so, one is Enc and the other is a healer, either Shaman or Cleric, probably the cleric, and then you can put your wizard on your third box for the occasional nuke and insta evac.

Need more information on what your goals are? Farming, Raiding, etc? And, I personally wouldn't main focus the Wizard in the group... It's a class that can operate via 4 (or less) situational macros. Essentially, with a Wizard you don't need to pay much attention aside from tapping a button that'll chain cast nukes at certain intervals within the macro functional /pause limitations..

If you want a general team, I'd go Shadow Knight (Main focus,) Shaman, and Wizard.

SK - Single pulls, tank, mediocre damage, and snare
Shaman - Healing, buffs, mediocre damage, and slows
Wizard - Excellent burst damage, teleport, and evacs.

Aside from CC, all other bases would be covered.

The reality is, solo duo or trio setups will change with the release of PoP.

The traditional tank and spank requires slowing or you become inefficient quickly.

That leaves you to shaman, enchanter, bard in order of strength of slows. Relying on a proc weapon can be a ghetto option there, but not recommended.

If that is your planned route, tank and spank, SK/SHM is probably your best option as snap aggro and life taps make up for the shaman healing being somewhat limited in comparison to a cleric.

If you want to be creative and tank and spank you can simply rely on kiting via bard or even charm pets from bards. Charming uses mana on the bard, so your alt is going to need an investment in FT gear to make it sustainable. You wouldn't necessarily need a third if driving with a bard, but a second wizard or any other ranged dps or pet class could serve useful (such as necro or Mage). Necros do provide mana to help with bard charming I suppose.

A third and most powerful option is a charm pet centric group driven by an enchanter. ENC / WIZ have good symmetry as your wiz will benefit from enhanced mana regen. I'd suggest adding a Shaman as your third as charms will last closer to max charm duration via tash and malo lines. A Druid is a fair option as well because long duration snares and macro type dps can be linked to your wizard dps macros. The charming option is not for the lesser willed players, you're playing with fire as these pets can sink a chanter and your group in seconds with a poorly timed charm break.

Charming has a shelf life, however, as in future expansions many mobs become flagged as uncharmable.

That is why, all things considered, SK/SHM is probably your best option.

I agree! And, I believe adding a Wizard to this combo would make it just about perfect.

You forgot beastlord slows, between chanter and bard.

SK/Shm will do nothing for wizard's mana regen, while wiz dps'ing will require to the SK to burn more of his own mana to maintain aggro. Ok if you can always get C3, painful if you can't.

A bard with just the FT AA's will be pretty much set for mana regen. But bard charm is really situational. Here you are paying for three accounts and just using it to kill solo'able light blue stuff?

I might suggest going Wiz/Chanter/cleric and then you could either charm of course, or make an AE group all by yourself (speaking of not for the faint of heart).

Wiz is easy to set up a 4 box, not so easy as others have noted to set up a really great 3 box. You really need some sort of tank+heals if you ever want to do named. Enchanter pet works in some situations but not all, and less and less as the expansions go by. I'd go with sk/shm/wiz as a 3 box if you are set on 3 boxing with a wiz, but as others have noted it will have some drawbacks.

If you can add a 4th, Sk/Shm/Bard/Wiz or SK/Clr/Ench/Wiz would both be killer 4 box setups. Especially as you move into later expansions where the bard or ench give the wiz big synergy boosts.

Oooh, 4 box opens up a lot more options for tankage.

Shadow Knight, Shaman, Bard, and Wizard would be my top spot.
Paladin, Cleric, Bard, and Wizard
Warrior, Cleric, Bard, and Wizard
Warrior, Shaman, Bard, and Wizard.

LOL that last line!

I will say that if you are maining a wizard through Luclin raid content it's going to be hard to NOT cap FT.

I don't even bother getting a KEI on my cleric these days between capped FT and where applicable, horse regen.

I'm not entirely convinced lack of mana regen is debilitating to a main wizard in a box trio.

I also do agree with the previously mentioned BL sentiment but with a wizard and BL, any addition that isn't a cleric is pretty redundant. Not to mention BL alt isn't truly designed by default to tank. Not saying they cannot, but you need to be really specific on gear choices right now and going forward to make a BL tank-centric. It's not really as efficient anyways because the BL is still going to need a healer so you might as well go SK for a tank option.

I only even mentioned bard because it's a possibility and having your own personal rizlonas going forward on raids is a desirable alt box to drag around because it's so hands off and multiples benefits for every group member. Shaman and SK boxes don't offer that residual benefit to your main wizard in raids.

Why not Pal/shm/wiz

Pal is agro too, and better tanking - since they heal better than an SK does. This also makes up for shaman being a weaker healer.
You will lack fd pulling, but all 3 classes will have cc abilities - root, snare, pacify.
You can certainly get by.

In my opinon a Paladin is no good in a 3-box situation without CC - you'd lose too much efficiency if things go wrong.

For example, lets say you crit resist on a pacify and now have 3-4 planar enemies that all quad for 400 heading your way. What do you do in that situation? Working it out in my head it plays out the same way depending on the gear, AAs, and 3-box skill. I'd say you are looking at a wipe, partial wipe with evac, or you could kill them all by the skin of your teeth.

With a Shadow Knight you are just about guaranteed single pulls with Darkness/FD and greatly reduce the probability of the above scenario. This statement is little different when you get into Tier 3 & 4 Planes (HoH, BoT, Tactics, and SolRo) where some npcs can't be snared.

Looking at this the wizard would take the least amount of work. Enc/Bard require a great deal of micro management in regards to pulling/chain mezzing/stunning/charm pets unless you just leave them on standby for buffs and occasional mez duty. Bards can pull even better in PoP with intro to fade but with 900 mana cost use is sparingly. With SK you could pull effectively and focus on that char for a large majority of the time then run a shaman as the 3rd box. Running 4 opens up a ton of options but gees that would be hard to manage all the toons at once.

My vote goes for SK(tank/pulls), Shaman(Slow,heals,buffs), Wizard(Damage, Ports, Evac)

Edit: If Mana Regen becomes a problem you can get 4 hour KEI buffs before heading out =D

Yep, and shortly we'll have VoQ aka C4 on the table.

No combo is perfect. And in those places where you cannot snare, fd pulling doesn't work well. But things hit harder and you'll want a stronger tank

It depends on what you box for. I 5 box and have 3 dif box crew set ups that I use. None of my box crews however are meant for me to be by myself. I run no tank and no cleric. I like to box with other boxers, that's what I find fun, and the people I box with always have a tank/cleric in their setup. Because I like to box with others, and the majority of boxers have a set up based around playing by themself, I normally run a full DPS box crew because that's what they lack. My favorite set up to run is my necro, 3 mages and a bard. If you want to box with others and don't really care about doing your own thing, you could go something similar with like 3 wizards, or 1 wiz 2 mages. If you are wanting to do a 3 box and only play by yourself though, you are significantly hindering your boxing possibilities and efficiency by throwing a wizard in there. I'd say wiz ench cleric would be the only viable 3 man with a wizard. If you put a tank in there you might as well throw out the wizard and get something else.

Atibishi, I have seen your box crew and it is very impressive. I also like how you made all the mages look alike ;P

I think you are right though and is where I am having some issues figuring out my setup. I want to play by myself when people arent online but i'd much rather prefer to play with someone else. I tend to play a bit later than guildies sometimes and end up sitting LFG sometimes for quite awhile. 3 Wizards would be interesting but I imagine a nightmare for a tank ;D

Uniformity is fun with boxes!!

I get what you're saying. Fortunately for me, my necro is my main, so I have the luxury of just soloing on him when people aren't online and can save box crew stuff for big targets when people get on. If you're fixed on playing a wizard, and you want to do both soloing and grouping with other boxers, I think wiz/ench/cleric is a really good trio. I have a friend on here that boxes that same setup and he really likes it. Each class would require a minimal amount of buttons and no movement to play, which is very important. You would be strong enough to take down a lot of different farm camps with a charm pet and a wiz/ench/cleric would fit well when combining with other box crews. Going in to PoP, charming becomes king again and we'll be there for 6 months.

If you decide to go with a tank like some have suggested, remember that 3rd slot would pretty much have to be a shaman because you will need slow and heals. If you do that, you have no 96% rez which can get really annoying.

3 Wizards boxed isn't going to pull aggro more frequently than 1 wizard not boxed... At least as long as you're doing the same thing on all 3.