With 2 youll get most of the raw power you need for progression and named. You can proc alliance with just 2 while using Twincast, but youre lacking the pet numbers to integrate of many into normal grinding, so youll be using more spears ( more mana ). With 3 you can use alliance anytime and you can integrate ofmany & attempt missions on your own, with practice and determination you might beat 2/3 of the RoS ones.
I have a 5 box group, SK/shm/bard too, just going back and forth with what kind of DPS to fill it out with to finish the group. I thought a lot about eventually dropping the shaman, picking up and enc and cleric to run SK/bard/enc/clr/mage/mage... I see a lot of people saying to run mage/wiz if there's only two DPS.
What sort of resolution are you playing at Iblis ? With that nice clean UI maybe you can drop the resolution down a bit for more performance, buttons look pretty small. Know what you mean about frame rates, i can barely run 3 and do video capture. I run at 1200 x 768, maximum 30 frames for the front window, max 26 in back windows, but i think im going to toy with lower background frames to see if i can improve performance some. Sometimes im getting a caterpillar effect, where when i strike a social for all 3 characters ( same Spells, same pauses ) by the time the social finishes 3-4 spells, one of my background characters will be Half a second behind the others. Performance related im quite sure, This is something i really want to fix.
That could be a delay with ISB too, I've noticed that when I have all 5-6 running, GAMParse, Gina, Twitch, and a few other things running that sometimes the mapping is delayed. EDIT: Sorry, phone picture sucks but this is my general setup. I typically have graphics setup to only show group spell effects, most things on medium while boxing and run 1920x1080 resolution. I'll see what it's like when I turn something like Fraps on to capture video and let you guys know if there's a delay. I'm relatively sure that it's a ISB thing and no necessarily just a graphics issue though.
If you run 2 Mages I think you'll find your Enc or Shaman or Bard become redundant. If you get an Add you just sick One mage pet on it... So make a social which is /Xtar 2 /pet attack Give it a Hotkey like F2 in [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software], and thats it. One-key pet offtanking /crowd control. With 2 pets you make F3 tell your other mage to /Xtar 3, /pet attack . and boom, you have easy crowd control for 2 adds. and F4 can /Xtar 4, /cast Servant from both mages. Now you have 1-Key crowd control for up to 3 adds. A wizard would be a fine addition, too. But the utility pets bring to the picture would, I think, enable you to sub-in a 3rd DPS if you'd like to by replacing the CC ability of the enc or bard.
I don't really worry about the adds tbh, I can handle 3-4 mobs on SK pretty easily. I was more thinking of switching the shm out for an enc and adding a clr to heal.
You may as well drop the bard too. SK/enc/clr/mage/mage/mage is extremely good. You can replace the clr for a druid for a little less survivability and more DPS from the druid's ADPS (and tracking)
Could’t you just have one add-button, where mage 2 attacks xtar 2, and mage 3 attacks xtar 3? I am quessing that if there is no xtars, they just stay on mob? Both bard and shaman generates a lot of swarm pets. Shaman has this proc pet thing on detrimental cast, and bards have lyrical prankster plus a longer refresh one. Shaman has main pet as well of course. Ench has main pet and longer refresh swarm pet. With mages, you want to activate everything
Hmmmm,.... 1440p... The most important thing for me is to zoom out as far away as possible, isn’t that based on resolution?
Nah. I frequently run a configuration with a war + sha + cle + brd + 2 dps, and that much healing / mitigation enables you to take on content you shouldn't be able to, as well as survive encounters you really shouldn't. I've gotten a lot of comments from folks who see me screw up a pull and get 10+ mobs and survive through it. Right now I'm only using the shaman just because the game is too easy with two healers. If I pull more than a few it's game over, so I have to stay on my toes.
With the shaman dot changes you could at least dot stuff again to throw a little extra DPS out. Removal of potion belt messes with mage macros =(
Yes. Ever played Icewind Dale? Tucoh said it perfectly, only thing I would add is that it has taught me so much I didn’t even know that I didn’t know . You are right that it is less an MMO when boxing, but is not relevant for anything. Fun matters . I also duo-box with a buddy, and we want more of our RL friends to come back... but that is not so easy...
I love the different layouts ISB offers. Mine is pretty stock as I have not looked into doing much of a custom layout such as this (Have main toon on one screen and all my box toons on my second screen each with their own window with swapping only between second monitor so my main never gets swapped out). Since I literally am redoing every macro and UI in EQ due to a recent windows reinstall I might consider something more custom such as yours. Was it difficult to setup? I am not the most computer savvy person but can figure out the basics.
I did not run a parse with my old box crew which was composed of ranger (main/tank), cleric, wiz, mage, necro, and bard but it seems this crew was killing about as fast as my current team which is sk and mage x4. I can certainly see the difference when I swap one of my mages out for my wizard (which I have been debating doing for a while but my mages are so far ahead on progression than my wizard so I would have a lot of back work to do). As far as boxing they are both equally easy if using ISB imo because they have such similar macros. 1 (assist/pet attack/swarm pets/swarm pet attack/fastest reuse dd AA) 2 spam casting my spell lineup 3 Swarm AA + activates BP clickie 4 Swarm AA 5-7 (AA burns with all 5 lines. One of them also has twin cast spell in it) 8 through = are non combat stuff like mod rod, mana return AA/spells, follow command and if I hold = It will make all of my toons float down (this is also my follow key). I have made some tweaks to my lineup since I played my wizard last such as separating the swarm pet AA's into two separate buttons instead of including them into the burn AA's but I am sure I could find something to place there for my wizard. Overall they are just so similar minus the pet aspect that they can easily be mirrored to function the same in terms of key presses for boxing. I also have individual keybinds for each toon that does not broadcast for things like horn of unity which would be useless for all my toons to use at the same time. They are all keybound in the same spot on each toon for fast use and my keyboard has extra buttons on the sides which I have utilized so all I have to do is press M1-M5 and it will make the screen active for which ever toon is associated with it so I can cut down on mouse use. Ok more info than you probably wanted =)
