I am coming back and have a decent geared Mage. I am mostly cotf raid with a few pieces of tier 4 RoS raid. I have never really boxed in this game. I have tried it before but didnt really like it much. I wont be using fancy software or multiple monitors so I want something fairly easy to play. Im talking pressing 2 buttons and most of the DPS will probably come in the form of the added wiz merc. Thinking maybe Bard or Wiz but open to any other suggestions.
Bard. Let the bard handle pulling and press your melody button to benefit your mage and wizzy merc for caster dps.
Bard will boost your mage, pets, and even swarm pets. Plus give you some mez, CC, and fast movement when you need to travel. Track for finding adds, etc. Bard is VERY easy to box. Chanter would also be a good option. More dps than the bard, and can even charm when you want for really fast kills. Wizard is stout, and will give you ports. Lots of dps, just 1 button to dps most of the time. Evacs for bad times. If I was going that route though, I'd go druid, and learn to heal the pet. Between the mage and druid healing an earth pet, two wizard mercs can tear mobs very quickly. If the fight is very light, the mage himself can heal while the druid dpses or vice versa.
Enchanter Mage is a very easy box. Set up a multibind on the Mage and enchanter nukes, Face roll mobs
Enchanter is the only class I have never played. The main reason I never played one is because they just seemed like the hardest class. I remember watching them in groups just do crazy stuff if we got like 4 mobs in camp and then 4 more from respawns. This is back as back in early EQ when people didnt have 10k AAs and insane raid gear to tank 8 mobs at once. How is that an easy class to box? Or do they require less work these days?
You can box an enchanter fairly easily if you understand the class mechanics. it takes a bit to learn, but it's not overly difficult. But again, I've played one for 15 years. As long as you follow the basic rules of enchanting. Priority order 1. Crowd Control 2. debuffing 3. Assisted DPS 4. Personal DPS or Defensive / Rune spam It is possible to do some crazy things with the class, it's true. But as a wise Druid once told me, Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. You can use your enchanter to control and monitor your camp zones for safe killing. You will never be as good as an Enchanter main, but that is true for any box class. Besides .. I write class guides and make YouTube videos
I might give Enchanter a try. Will just look over their spells at ZAM and try and figure out what all I can handle. Whats the duration on Mez these days? Will it generally last long enough to burn down a mob or two? Or do I have to constantly switch back to chanter to re-mez? Actually I am kinda leaning more towards chanter now. Forgot they also get a pretty decent slow as well. I used to be able to solo yellow cons in t2 RoF zones 2 and even 3 at a time and that was unslowed. With slow probably dont even need mez.
That is the major benefit of chanter over bard, bard has to keep switching back every 4th or 5th song and target the mob he wants to mez, or to simply stop singing and only mez that target. While the chanter can 'set it and forget it.' We are the Ronco of crowd control. But be warned, chanters seem to be the hated class at the moment of the devs.
I (try to) box an enchanter and a mage, and on occasion I bring a druid or a wizard along (bards aren't my cup of tea). The reason I mainly use an enchanter is because of the utility it provides (soooo much utility there), but I wouldn't say it's the easiest to box. For nuking/debuffing you can use macros (and probably stunning), but for mez you're going to have to devote some attention. That being said, it will open up a whole new world of possibilities for your mage; if you get proficient at boxing the enchanter will definitely allow you to do a ton of content that was previously very difficult due to a relatively severe lack of utility. Just a warning about mezzes: as a mage main I adore rains, but they will break mez if you don't mez far enough away or punt the mob. In standard group content it's easy to position the mobs, but when things get hairy and the enchanter (same goes for a bard) needs to mez stuff rains can be a serious issue if you aren't careful. That being said, I'd say the easiest class to box with a mage is a wizard, and together you can do some pretty insane DPS. However, your utility is pretty limited there. As a mage, it's rare that I find myself saying "If I just have twice the DPS I could do it." For most group content we have DPS decently covered; the bigger problem is usually "I can't control all these adds" or something to do with difficult mechanics. So if you want to blow stuff up box a wizard, but you won't get as far as you would with a class with more utility (granted they have snare and root, which gives some "cheap" CC in a pinch). If I were going for something in the middle I'd choose a Druid. They're very easy to macro with decent ADPS (group black wolf), good DPS/Healing (easy to macro), and they have a lot of utility. They have root/snare/lull for crowd control (plus evac/ports), which makes for a pretty versatile and macroable class. Having a real healer is immeasurably useful in certain situations, especially with a pet tank (in ToR mercs love to run right next to the mob and die). If your merc dies you can still go on, plus you have a solid DPS addition in normal content (larger than the enchanter). You can get tripped up by tougher content, but for most stuff root/snare/lull will have you covered decently. In the end it's really up to you; you can have DPS, versatility, or utility. I'd encourage you to try the classes out, even at lower levels just to get a feel for them.
Not to echo what everyone else said, but i ran mage/enchanter for a long time and eventually added a druid to heal on named encounters and port.
gonna jump on this thread so I dont have to start a new one. I have a 100 Mage and a 85 Druid. Im guessing add in a Enchanter? My mage is also cotf raid geared with EM20. Even with all this speculation surrounding pet nerfs is a druid more than enough to heal earth pet with enchanter slows?
