The conundrum: I have a mage main, chanterbot, and 3rd mostly ignored and underutilized druidbot. I don't like healing so the druid doesn't heal--she DPSes, and poorly. The chanter has always been my main bot so I'm always keeping her. I run three healer mercs with the three toons and my pet tanks. While I like the druid, I don't feel I'm ever going to utilize her properly, and I'm most certainly not going to set her up to heal (unless someone can convince me that there is a DPS merc out there worth a damn... do your best). So I had an idea. What if I turned my third bot into a tank instead? What heroic tank would be easiest to gear up and put on autoattack and do as little as possible? Is there another third class that I should consider instead of a tank? Should I just roll with what I know and make a second mage? Thoughts, opinions, feedback?
SK ainec if you're picking a tank Not sure I'd bother with a 2nd mage unless you also want to make a 3rd for alliance procs/moar pets for volley
Second mage would be for ease of use, since I'm fluent in mage already and I know all* the tricks etc... plus the DPS would be great with the chanter and maybe alliance, hadn't even thought of that! *only Sancus knows all the tricks, us mere mortals pale in comparison
Add a 2nd mage and a Pal or SK? Boxing 2 mages isnt so bad. It's manageable enough you could add a 4th box and still pilot them efficiently.
Magician pet can tank any single groupable mob in the game, or at least 99.9% of them. The enchanter can handle all crowd control issues to allow a single mob to be tanked. If you do not care about efficiency that much, then I would go for an auto attack melee to provide some additional DPS. A "hit auto attack and maybe a burn hotkey" and forget it... A bard would provide a little auto attack DPS and songs will help you and the pet A monk provides a lot of auto attack DPS and can hit one burn AA on mobs until refresh on discs A ranger provides buffs and /auto fire To me, unless you can actively play three at once and you want to go through all that, a third should be a "hotkey and forget" toon so that you can focus your attention on the other two. When I duo with my bard, I pull a single mob to camp on bard, turn melody on, turn attack on, and then switch windows to magician and do all the work there. If I see the bard is not swinging, then I can tab over to move it into position then switch back. Minimal effort on my part IMHO...
First, tanks are probably the worse to properly gear up. They can however, but up some decent dps with auto attack (2 hs).
You are I have very similar playstyles, it sounds like. I am very content to focus primarily on mage, am very good at managing the enchanter, but the third toon I want to alt tab tab once per mob, hit a button, and ignore them. I hadn't considered a melee DPS, but your points are excellent. Sometime overnight it occurred to me that maybe I should consider a shaman! I have a shaman but she's on my enchanter account. I love their HoT and the melee boosting spells that help my pet so much. I've never really played around with their dots, so I'd need to investigate real DPS potential. The aDPS is stellar, though. Many things to consider!
Best class depends on your goals: sk: If you want to learn tanking, want to round out your group. Not that important to have a real tank because the enchanter CCs so well mage: if you just want to boost your DPS over what you're getting with your nuking druid. Will lose access to some druid buffs/ADPS, druid's alliance spell (that helps your healer mercs heal) and track. wiz: If you want to learn more about your sister caster nuking class. rng: if you want their ADPS. note that you'll have to deal with range to mob, if you usually fight mobs up close it'll be more trouble than it's worth. I wouldn't recommend a melee, it'd be too much effort to move them into auto-attack range, especially when you can't effectively control the positioning of the mob. I wouldn't recommend a shaman, they have too much overlap with your enchanter and your pet's DPS isn't high enough to warrant using a shaman for their melee ADPS. I would recommend looking into using inner space boxer to improve your efficiency and reduce the effort required to 3box.
I am not saying a shaman is bad- buffs are nice, you have an extra pet to send in. But chanter can slow, so that eliminates a need for shaman slow. And chanter handles all crowd control, so that negates shaman crowd control responsibilities. But more importantly, you need to spend some time playing a shaman with the DOTs. It is more involved IMHO than auto attack. I would guess that of all the classes in the game, a monk has the highest auto attack DPS. You can auto kick now, so you do not have to spam flying kick every couple of seconds like you used to. I am sure you will find the right class for your third. You just have to ask yourself what is most important from that spot...
2 mages is comfortable, especially with ISB. In my experience, Alliance is easy to set up with 3 mages, but it is not really worth the bother when boxing, because mobs die quite fast. Getting maxed out on swarm pets is a great main mage boost for the sweet many, I built my box around it, making sure all swarm pets for all classes was always on cooldown, focusing on having synergized Many as primary nuke. Problem comes if and when I don’t want to CCup front, but just charge, to keep a high kill rate. In this case, a tank is needed. The SK has pets and swarm pets, so it is an obvious choice. I am on involuntary EQ break because of RL obligations, but I am building a group with 2 mages, bard, shamand, SK, and BST. It is way too complicated, but that is to make it a learning experience. On the way there, I have had many combos, including 3 (sometimes 4) mages, bard, ench. It was very strong with ISB, but it can easily become a bit boring, and it can be slow in a dungeon because of the needed CC. It does not come close to the performance of Tucoh’s setup. Tl;dr: mage, sk, bard are fine options.
