duo box for rizlona advice

my goal is to be able to hunt big game in POP and beyond. so grinding is important but i still want to have the tools to take down big mobs even as things evolve like slow mitigation, mob burst dps increases in later expacs etc..

i know of sham +sk/monk and chanter+clr/dru

heres some id like some experienced players feedback on please!

1. beast + necro - can kite or pet tank. you have slow snare pulls cc etc. weak heals for the player but BL can heal pet pretty good right? well enough for named? can it work without a dedicated priest healer?

2. ranger+sham - was thinking the sham would face tank with ranger pulling/autofire but as slow mitigation sets in ive heard shamans say their tankability drops off and this wont work against named in later expacs. can the ranger serve as the tank during these eras or do they not scale well as tanks in later expacs

3. beast + clr - assuming that with cleric support the beast will be able to tank through the later expansions. i know beasts are in a funny place during pop but i hear they get better and better? will this duo suffer from shortages in pulling, tanking, or CC? will it have enough dps?

4. beast + dru - gain dps, track, snare, dots, and evac. but with the druids reduced healing are those tools effectless against he big game mobs because its jsut not enough healing to allow the beast to tank that content?

not a huge fan of boxing melee i have found. positioning drives me crazy when boxing haha.

I think this would be an effective duo for a lot of things, but would be hard to box effectively. Necro is a pretty high attention class to maximize.

Shaman will not hold aggro from ranger unless you have a TA and can chain slow. Otherwise you'll be burning through mana to keep aggro. This combo will work if either toon is raid geared. Otherwise not so much.

It's a very survivable duo, especially later on. You will be lacking dps big time though. Grinding levels and aa's will be painful.

You gain some dps over bst/cleric but lose a lot of your survivability. BST already has snare if you need it. So you're basically just gaining ports/evac and more dps for giving up great healing and rez. You'll be able to kill some named with this duo, but not as much as bst/clr.

If you aren't using any boxing software, try autofollowing the melee on the tank. Drive the tank, and it's super easy to position the mob in between yourself and the melee.

Thank you for the thorough reply!

so lets talk about that beast necro combo

i was thinking that i would main the necro and bot the beast. I would primarily kite with beast sitting and tossing dots, nukes, spot heals for necro due to lich or bad kiting haha.

heres the kicker that would make this duo work for me:

i dont want to be stuck to only kiting mobs. so i was thinking that in the instance the mob could not be kited. i would pet tank with beast pet. beastlord would be on basically chain healing pet after slows/dots applied. necro would stack dots and perhaps siphon heath to the pet? will this work against a large percentage of named mobs or am i grossly overestimating the effectivness of the beastlords ability to heal its pet haha

am i correct in assuming that beastlord mana regen buff stacks with lich aswell

I have been away for awhile my self. I didn't expect to see an explosion of progression servers.
Back to your question. Machen make good points. As someone who has main'd a monk with a necro alt (this was before boxing ofc) and now I solo with a j5 merc now on live and even with 50khp and good ac and AA's old expansions like HoT, stuff trucks hard.

My first TLP was Sleeper as a SK and then I played on Fippy with as a Shaman.
My knowledge of group content from classic up to the VoA expansion. My recommendation for effective boxing for everything but maybe some raid content (mostly by raid design) would be to reconsider melee.

SK + Shaman would be amazing.
Shadowknight's agro is solid you can take advantage of the visag/terror line(s). lv 69+ they get some very aggressive AEAgro spells. Fear kiting, Agro kiting, FD (huge) plenty of DoTs for dps, pets alittle lacking but I still rock him when I can. Summoning corpse (shaman res or merc res) makes recovery easy.
But with a SK, you can basically unload a crap load of taunts/snares and dots early and basically just AFK on him for agro while the shaman box, slows/dots and nukes and tops off with heals. If you use mercs in later expansions you can throw in a couple of dps mercs too.

Paladin + Druid ( or shaman)
Slay undead is amazing, lots of stuns for both agro and reduce the need to heal a lot but with all the aoe/single target heals and buffs and the ability to res less dps then SK's mind you but with a druid or shaman you will have a lot of dots to rely on for more dps, there are weapons that are camp-able for slows and tash.

I have been away for awhile my self. I didn't expect to see an explosion of progression servers.
Back to your question. Machen make good points. As someone who has main'd a monk with a necro alt (this was before boxing ofc) and now I solo with a j5 merc now on live and even with 50khp and good ac and AA's old expansions like HoT, stuff trucks hard.

My first TLP was Sleeper as a SK and then I played on Fippy with as a Shaman.
My knowledge of group content from classic up to the VoA expansion. My recommendation for effective boxing for everything but maybe some raid content (mostly by raid design) would be to reconsider melee.

SK + Shaman would be amazing.
Shadowknight's agro is solid you can take advantage of the visag/terror line(s). lv 69+ they get some very aggressive AEAgro spells. Fear kiting, Agro kiting, FD (huge) plenty of DoTs for dps, pets alittle lacking but I still rock him when I can. Summoning corpse (shaman res or merc res) makes recovery easy.
But with a SK, you can basically unload a crap load of taunts/snares and dots early and basically just AFK on him for agro while the shaman box, slows/dots and nukes and tops off with heals. If you use mercs in later expansions you can throw in a couple of dps mercs too.

Paladin + Druid ( or shaman)
Slay undead is amazing, lots of stuns for both agro and reduce the need to heal a lot but with all the aoe/single target heals and buffs and the ability to res less dps then SK's mind you but with a druid or shaman you will have a lot of dots to rely on for more dps, there are weapons that are camp-able for slows and tash.

My concern with necro's if the mob can be kited but maybe not rooted. When you are on your box trying to DoT or nuke. Necros if I recall tend to be very squishy.

Another option might be worth looking into is Mage/Shaman or Mage/cleric.

i did mage cleric for a long time on agnarr i think it was. really enjoyed it. however the fragility of the mage was cumbersome to me when boxing.

basically sk+shaman is my failsafe. if i cannot find an effective duo otherwise. its become clear to me that this one will work.

im really eager to get some feedback on how i envision my above premise with the nec/bst set up would work.

i just started on rezlona and my sk shaman team died to a white con spider outside of oggok. the other thing about melee is gear. i have none.


nec/beast could be a great way to get myself situated and get some gear

however if anyone out there can speak to the following... i would really enjoy the feedback!

I don't know what you mean by big mobs. Most of those combo will do well at dealing with trash mobs in most zones if you are decently geared, but they are all going to have an issue taking down things like the wing named in bot in era. Charming can work to be able to deal with most named when there is a mob that can be reliably charmed, but does come with the risk that if charm breaks, you are probably dead. Most duo's are going to be more limited in what they can do by their gear. Most named that you run into in the game do summon so you will need a tank of some sort. A raid geared Ranger will be able to tank at least most group based named for that era, but still could require a good amount of healing.

You are probably overestimating the healing potential of a beastlord for its pet. Without focus effects for healing and spell haste, you are going to be healing about 2k every 6ish seconds in pop. A cleric will be healing about 2.7k for that same 6 seconds. In a quick glance thru some google searches I am not able to find out how much hp the various pets have, but as I recall from my past experiences, during pop, a raid geared plate or chain class will have more hp/ac than mage earth pet who has more than bst pet who has more than a group geared tank class when given the same buffs. Also do realize that beyond pet focus and aa, your pet on day 1 of pop will be the same tank as the last day of god.

You are correct that beastlord mana/hp regen line stacks with lich as well as beastlords getting a basic regen that stacks with both. With those running a necro should be fine with lich running for hp or at least close. Although I don't think the beastlord gets their first regen till 55 so might have some issues while lvling up.

If your goal is to be able to step into a zone and go kill most any group level named with a duo, a chanter with either a cleric or druid or shammy is probably your best option. Cleric gives you a res for when things go wrong. Druid gives you an evac if you see things are going wrong and adds some decent dps with dots. Shammy gives you more debuffs so charm won't break as much and good dots.

That said, because of changes they made to various things in different eras, there is no duo setup that just destroys everything put in front of it during every era. A tank that is raid geared with a healer following it will generally do ok, but the less gear you have will mean more healing needed which will be a limiting factor in the dps you do.

I feel like enchanters are pretty op for taking on everything anything short of raid targets. I remember enchanters soloing PoP - BoT names easily.

I do like the idea of Enchanter/Druid though I will endorse that with a +1. I forgot that both get dire charm at some point which is really nice. And with animal charm for druids, you could easily have both charm and kite.

I've been trying out a Bard/Necro duo lately and I like it so far (caveat: I'm only in the mid teens). Bard can break up camps with lull song. It's easy to bot with the "melody" command, and you get speed boost, mana/health regen, plus damage/DoT songs. Necro can heal the bard if needed in a pinch.

Druid/Mage works pretty well too I hear, but I haven't tried it out much yet

Here is a duo thought with this combo. You can root rot with the sham while bowing with the ranger. Snare for when the mob breaks root, etc.

not a bad thought! though i think a necro would do that role better due to FD? i wont be raid and from what ive gathered there'll be nothing to save the ranger or sham in the instance of summons, root breaks, or even root/snare immunity

currently im leaning very hard towards necro+ beast or sham.

but i dont want to stuck with only one means of taking down tougher mobs.

Most of my experience boxing is TLP up to OOW, so that's what I base my opinion on. But based on your options I would rank them:

#1: Ranger/Shaman: It's very versatile and both classes support each other well. Shaman is tough because it's a higher APM type of character, but if you get the hot keys down, this is easily the best duo you have listed. Depending on who you're gearing either can tank group stuff up to GoD pretty easily. The shaman with group gear can tank anything in era atm. Pull with slow, hot yourself, spam a lower level cripple a few times and you'll hold aggro off of a bowing ranger. If the ranger isn't bowing, it's probably better to just tank with the ranger anyway. At this point on Aradune, I'd say this is the highest dps duo you could have, and you can sustain that for a very long time. Get a KEI on your shaman and it never runs out of mana. A raid geared ranger can tank pretty much all group content for the foreseeable future, outside some GoD stuff possibly.

#2. Beast/Druid: Again, they both compliment each other well. Slows, heals, DPS. The druid gets a rez eventually, but that's down the line. Druid/Shaman dps is substantially higher than cleric unless you're fighting undead, which is why I tend to run with one of these two healers. A raid geared beast will be solid consistent dps along with a fine group content tank. I'd imagine GoD group content would be a struggle still, but everything else a beast should tank fine.

#3. Beast/Cleric: In most situations a beast/cleric will do fine as a duo, just be slower than a beast/druid. However you add rez in case of bad pulls. The nice thing about beast+healer is that you can grind slow if you want, or you can add a tank and a dps and have a solid group. There should never be much waiting.

#4. These two don't sound like they compliment each other too well. The beast is going to have to save a decent amount of mana for healing, and have to take a break from meleeing to med if tanking mobs. If kiting, beasts just don't have great dps with spells alone. You're losing half of the beast dps by not using your melee. If you were going to go necro+kiter you'd be 1000 times better off going shaman/druid/bard, because they have tools in their kit to contribute to the necro without losing anything.

You actually don't want to root rot with a ranger, it cuts his dps down by a bunch. Anything that's slowable is tankable by a shaman through PoP pretty much. Make an ogre shaman, pull with slow/aoe slow, torpor/hot yourself, spam low level cripple on assist mob, have your ranger assist and burn down one at a time. If you have the mana pool you can also use ebolt to help dps with the shaman. I found that slow+1 ebolt and my ranger wouldn't pull. Just slow and the ranger pulls almost every time.

good feedback on ranger shaman!

out of curiosity... how would you compare ranger shaman to necro shaman? loose the tank, gain the fd puller, dot synergy, malo + charm, etc lose track though... and melee + that shaman proc buff is sweet but you still get that in necro pet





my thought with the beastlord/necro was a flexible style of hunting...


for speed killing and most trash mobs id kite with the two pets chasing and both character doting. the necro has lich so will be doing the kiting, the beast will be medding with the necro running circles around him. efficient and fast chain killing and can work on named that dont summon and can be snared/feared etc.

for the mobs where kitting isnt an option - the beast puts his big boy pants on, face tanks or juggles tanking with pet. necro stacks dots and helps heal beast and beast pet. after fight, beast sits down and necro resumes kiting.


edit: note that these are new toons on a tlp so watching a ranger level with a rusty broad sword sounds like torture lol

any of those are fine for xp ginding, hunting big game pop+ you prob want a real tank

Shaman/Necro is very good, especially anywhere the necro can charm. Killing some named in PoP might get iffy with a necro pet tanking, but I would imagine there are things you could do. I think that overall shaman/ranger is better because it provides you more options, tanking, kiting, root rotting if all else fails. Rangers also get WS which gives your shaman time to slow.

To be completely honest, shamans are so good that you can pretty much pair with with any dps/tank class and it's going to be a solid duo. Shaman/Mage is another one that's really really good. Probably couldn't beat shaman/necro at exp per hour, but could take on named easier.

Agree with most here. Shaman just brings too much to the table in small groups to ignore. After that, its take your pick. Monk probably will grind xp faster than sk without worrying about spamming spells to max dps, but tanks seem to start becoming scarce later in the progression. Course, snare is nice, but the monk/shm duos I saw on Phinny didn't seem to have much of an issue without it.

do shamans stay this good after pop? what about slow mitigation?

my thought with shaman mage is that they would have no options to split camps. same as with shaman ranger. ranger can split outdoors but indoors youre SOL right?

rangers tank better than beast pets in the expacs after POP. i was under the impression beasts became the better tank but this is just from forum research. block > parry. plus you can juggle agro with pet.

but i can see we're splitting hairs here because plate tank seems to be irreplaceable. especially when everything the monk can do in pulling the sk can do better due to snare/fd tricks. thsoe being the same tricks the necro has. but for first toons on a TLP i think im just being lazy and wanting to rely on pets in lue of gear but ill reach a dead end it seems in what i can do without a melee and will need to roll one eventually?

Shamans get even better after pop. Slow mitigation is a thing but mobs hit hard enough that you still need the slow. Shamans do become more oriented toward melee support though, with tons of melee adps options. So I'd tend to go a different direction paired with a caster post pop.

This playstyle you're describing with the BL would work better with a mage imo.