Would a box trio of Paladin/Shaman/Enchanter work well in RoS and later TBL? The Paladin is in Conflagrant with some EoK chase items including a self-healing Skyiron. Shaman and Enchanter just EoK T1 group. There is no melee-centric software, just alt-tab. Concern? DPS. Even in EoK T2, it takes a lot of time to kill. Of course, that could be a result of not being optimal. Would using a Mage/Air pet instead of the enchanter be better?
I can tell you that pal/shm/brd works fine* for both expansions as an alt+tab trio, and with enchanter in place of a bard you would be comparable presumably. I don't have raid gear, and I started my trio at level 1 with zero resources about 1.5 years ago (to be fair though, I had played this trio for many years prior on a different server . . . I just needed a fresh start). Your mileage may vary of course, but here are the issues I have: Generally, dps is lackluster. More specifically, I can't beat the Cactus mission in RoS (and therefore can't try the rest of the missions/VP as far as RoS is concerned). If the TBL evolving gear is important to you, this could be important, as they are all locked behind having VP access as a minimum threshold. I can't knock out three of the five Smoke trials in TBL. I haven't spent a lot of time since the patch fixed some buggy behavior in Strange Magic, but prior to the patch I couldn't beat that (and then the mission after it is locked as a result of this). Take all that with a grain of salt, as I am on a server where I can't even get help if I wanted to (Brekt). By supplementing your trio with others you could likely get over any issues you occasionally run into.
Tank+Healer+things is how great groups go, looks like you're set For dps, use 2h as aggressively as is survivable and work on getting Holyforge & Pureforge & BluntedBlade to be constantly on cool down. Shm & Enc Dissidents both, 1/minute each religiously. Twin Aura & Mana Rep Aura & Ruchu click all the time. Both shm & enc pets to carry Lion procs, and make attack-on part of the casters' assist routines, so they proc too. I'm sure part of the time the shm targets your paladin to cast Frostbitten Gift & Reckless heals, but all the time that character is debuffing & dotting & Squalling, they can get free procs from just having attack on while they do that.
I'd personally drop shaman for mage. The paladin/enchanter and 1-2 heal merc should be able to keep the mage pet healthy vs TBL named. You can then 2H dps on the paladin and you get full mage dps, augmented by enchanter, plus coth. I would swap to earth pet in ROS/TBL.
Interesting that you wrote this now. Last night I was spelunking through FM and SW and decided that it might be best to add a mage and earth pet to the group, at least attempting to work with the foursome. It clearly works better and for precisely the reason you mention. Used two healer mercs and had to keep up alliance and Incapacity on both Paladin and earth pet. However, no matter how much I wrote social key macros for the three casters, it became clear that key broadcasting would work wonders, if only to get everyone to their first macro immediately (send in pet, debuff, dot, cripple, slow, etc.). I may have to break down after all these years. Thanks for the post.
I'm not a paladin expert, but I generally wouldn't group a shaman with an enchanter because they don't complement each other as much as they overlap. I also think that pal/sha/enc is too much defense and not enough offense. Pal/dru/enc will be a stronger combination because the dru/enc will boost each other more than sha/enc, but you still have a lot of healing and no true DPS class. Pal/sha/mag, pal/bard/mag, pal/dru/mag, pal/brd/mag, pal/enc/mag, pal/bard/bst, pal/sha/bst, pal/enc/bst are all flavors of the same thing: Replace one of the classes with a DPS class + tank that can more frequently allow the paladin to use their 2H and deal more damage. If I were you I'd go pal/enc/mag or pal/brd/mag. The paladin is a serviceable healer, and the brd/enc provides a ton of utility, control and ADPS for the paladin and mage. Compared to beastlords, the mage is an easy character to box.
If you go with 3: Paladin, Bard, Berserker. Then learn how to use the bard and berserker properly. I use those plus a shaman, and just use 2 cleric mercs for afk healing. Know what is nice? Burning so fast on named mobs that they are at 20% before I tab back over to the paladin just clicking things then 1 round of button mashing on the zerker. Zerkers are amazing dps.
I've been enjoying my druid so far but he is still level 98. What kind of sustained single target dps can a druid put out with enchanter adps vs say, a mage or wizard?
I'm surprised we have had this many posts without some knuckle head talking about boxing a necro for the extremely low chance of a paladin slaying undead when the necro turns a mob undead. Well done.
OK, Paladin/Mage is the base I'll use. That leaves the last spot for a not very difficult to box character, other than a Shaman: Enchanter, Wizard, Ranger (Bow)?
My opinion the ranking of an easy box to add to pal/mag: brd > enc > sha > dru Where bard is your best option and druid is your worst. I wouldn't add a wizard or ranger.
Not excited about making an heroic Bard and leveling him up to 110 just to complement the Paladin and Mage (Earth). That sounds like it would take a long time, including a lot of mind-numbing Gribbles. So, perhaps the enchanter is the choice. How important is going through EoK and RoS progression for TBL? I have roughly one month of play time before the new expansion and that involves maybe three hours a night.
leveling up a heroic doesn't require doing bs content. Just put the character in group & do your regular thing. EoK&RoS progression would only be for unlocking the evolution of "chase" ring rare drops you might farm for. Which would then take some dozens & dozens of hours to evolve. They do get raid mana preservation focus at the high evolve levels, but whether the commitment is worth it to you can't be decided by the forums.
I recently casually leveled a heroic bard up to 105. I didn’t want to buy the recent exp with the new one coming out. It was pretty painless. A 110 paladins can clear gribble missions in minutes and then I did gmm undead in lcea and I kept a boxed toon in the hot zone to do the daily and just caught a ride there for the easy xp. I wasn’t taking it too seriously. When deciding boxed toons for my paladin it always starts with what I lack. Dps is the first choice after that zone movement pulling, Cc and transport. With the mage you will satisfy dps/additional tanking and help pulling/splitting. You then have to ask if a Druid will help out dps the bard mods on pet/mage and paladin With Druid speed invis buff better track and ports your best bet is probably Druid/pal mage as you will get ports cothbmovement and dps as well as less reliance on healer mercs so you could go 3 wiz mercs all using Druid aura etc. my next toon to add to the bard box is going to be a Druid just for the sake of getting around with my limited play time and I hear they are pretty decent dps debuffs not withstanding Black/white wolf will help considerably with the bard for the paladins weakest area ie mana regen
Only caveat to that would be tasks/missions because those have a maximum level spread (10, I think?).
I was not able to group the bard in a mission until 95 instead I took him to chapter house and killed floors at a time.
