My normal 3 box is a 110 SK, Shm, Mage. I also have a monk I enjoy playing when I need a break from the others. At first, I thought I would just swap the monk for the SK (they are on the same account) and use the monk to pull and the mage pet to tank with shaman for buffs, DoTs, etc. However, I often want to run similar content but have lockouts (like GMM missions), and it's nice to have Lesson of the Devoted on the second set of toons so I'm optimizing my time between both groups (I.E.-Run a GMM mission and lesson burn with SK, Shm, Mage, and then do the same with the monk and his counterparts). I tried a group that consisted of Monk (pulling/DPS), BL (pet tank, buffs, utility), and Ranger (ranged dps). This was awkward because it's hard to position the monk and BL together; I'm just not very good at melee positioning for multiple toons. Any suggestions on a strong composition (not talking min/max here, just something do-able for missions and T1 mobs sort of thing) that works well with the monk and doesn't require multiple toons with melee positioning? Thanks. Gio-Cefalu
Necro pets can tank pretty well with the cascade spell. It's even on a pretty short recast. Combine that with companion's aegis and the strong pet heal, your pet will tank fine. You're probably already pulling singles with the monk, but necros also get a nice "push back and root" aa. Very handy. Druid is a great choice too. You can backup heal when the cleric merc can't handle it, or just DPS the easy stuff. Plus ports are amazingly handy. It's a decent suggestion. It's tough to give really good advice here, because we're limited to only one melee class, and it's the monk.
to position your secondary melee characters, have them /follow your main melee character. then move your main char just past mob the mob and turn to attack it. Any toons on /follow should now be on the other side of the mob facing it and ready to attack. I would not worry too much about getting everybody positioned perfectly behind mobs. any time spent fiddling with perfect positioning is time they are not doing damage. In your case, i would make the BL the main melee toon, since sending in Pet is a critical part of the initial engage. Have your monk and ranger on /follow the BL.
Thanks for the tips. The past few nights I've been playing the Monk, BL, and Ranger actually; it did require a lot of switching though. I have tried what you've described before, and more often than not, my characters end up "inside" the mob and aren't actually doing any damage to it, or they still end up too far away from it. I end up running my characters in circles trying to re-position the mob in front of the main toon with the others behind it while the mob just beats me down. I really like the synergy of buffs and abilites between Monk, BL, and Ranger out of all the groups I play with (outside my main group), but I usually make the ranger a ranged character. I really don't use him for melee, which does complicate things a bit because /follow it still too close to use a bow. I wish /follow had an additional parameter for distance so I could make the ranger hang back more, like /follow 80. I'll keep practicing this technique and see what happens.
There are a few tips to help with /follow: 1. The more FPS your boxes have, the better they use follow. 2. Being shrunk reduces the distance they follow at, usually the shorter the better. 3. EQ will predict your movement if you move forward or backward and your boxes (and mobs) will try to follow that predicted movement. EQ does NOT predict when you move side to side (strafe), so the boxes/mobs will follow only true movement that you make. So you'll see in vids I'll try to only move side to side (all good tanks do this too to stop the mob from freaking out). 4. Tanks get different abilities to control the mob that make it much easier, ex: warriors get grappling strike and press the attack. [11033/11033] Grappling Strike I Classes: WAR/254 MNK/254 Push: -5' [5939/27543] Press the Attack VIII Classes: WAR/254 Push: 6' You can see monks get Grappling Strike. I don't know what other spells they might get for moving the mobs. I don't even know how to search for it since it's not an SPA effect. Manipulating mobs, especially groups of them that summon, is what makes the game frustrating at times but very rewarding for a strong boxed group.
My group is monk, bard, shaman. I tank on the monk. It's a great group. My fiance plays a ranger so when he is home I have even more DPS/ADPS.
Are you tanking named mobs in current content like TBL (even if it's just T1)? Even with defensive discs, I don't think my monk could handle that. When I came back recently, a friendly, random monk hooked me up with a bunch of TBL gear, so with a basic set of gear, my monk is just working on AAs now (including CA/CS), but I never expected he'd actually be tanky enough with staff block and defensives to handle real named mobs outside of GMM first mission.
Raid geared monk, yes TBL named. I did all my hunter except some of wind zone. Not sure if group gear will handle it or not as my group geared monk is still in conflagrant stuff and I havent set foot in TBL yet with that one.
