As the title says, what would the best two box and merc combination? I thought I read somewhere Enc+Mage with 2 healing mercs. Is that true? Thanks!
The addition of mercs makes dozens of 2 box combinations a lot more potent that they would be otherwise. Tank mercs seem to be considered the least useful of the bunch so having a character or pet (Mag/Bst) to tank saves you from needing one of those. Then you want some buffing/utility/pulling/ccing class.Enc/Brd/Shm/Dru/Bst etc. So yes Enc + Mag would be very strong, you probably won't need 2 healers the entire time so can run a DPS merc and switch to 2nd healer on tough targets.
I think SK + druid or shaman is pretty consistently top tier, albeit not the simplest box setup. Mage+bard is probably the best low effort setup.
J5 tank merc is really solid in HoT and VoA but for the future you probably want to make sure you 2box has a real tank or strong pet. Mage+bard would be a powerhouse combo I'd consider.
Almost anything goes good with a shaman, after that look at a pulling type class. An sk you can pull and tank. SK/Shm and Cler/Wiz merc would be a pretty good setup.
I disagree with this to a pretty big extent. I just spent the last couple days leveling a heroic Monk and Mage and I can say for sure that the tank merc is garbage. He can take a hit slightly better than my monk, but the mage pet is far FAR superior in terms of health, defense, and damage. Someone playing an actual tank, even poorly, would be a vast improvement to the J5 tank merc at level 85.
Mage+Bard w/ 2 cleric mercs can pretty effortlessly do almost all group content, once you get a raid tier pet focus you can drop a cleric merc and pick up a DPS/Tank merc to speed it up a little too. I imagine Ench/Mage plays pretty similarly I just really enjoy the mostly passive play of the bard outside of easily single pulling/splitting camps, and Selo+Coth makes navigating your boxes around so easy.
There's a lot of discussion of this topic happening on the miragul discord server https://discord.gg/5RDJmyP
I never tried that combo(Mage/Bard), if you can spare a few mins, could you give some insight into what makes it so good?
Mage pet along with the gargoyle swarm pets can essentially tank all group content provided you bring it mobs 1 at a time, which the bard excels at doing. Mage is also really good DPS in this era and is fairly straightforward to play while also having some good burn AAs for harder named. Bard provides easy pulling, constant selo for movement, mana regen, improved spell damage for the mage, and an overhaste aura that buffs mage swarm pets, while ALSO having good burn AAs for harder named. The bard can also CC with mez if a pull is unsplittable. At worst, a bard box pretty much can't go wrong because even if you never want to touch that character aside from zoning in and following the "primary" character you can just set a 4-5 song melody and forget it providing an extra merc and all of those song buffs.
I wouldn't say it's necessarily better, it's just easier (which, depending on your box skills, can make it better). The effort you have to put into boxing mage/enchanter for it to overtake mage/bard is definitely non-trivial. Bard also offers convenience with the added run speed. It's also a really easy combo to move around. If there's no real issue with see invis, move the mage, coth the bard. If it's a much harder place to get to, kill off the mage, drag with the bard (using bard tools like Fade, DA, etc) and rez with a merc when in a safe spot.
Awesome, thank you. Could I also ask how important is slow in HoT-live? On Agnarr it's pretty darn vital. And is bard AOE slow good enough or do you have to use requiem cause it messes up melody.
Requiem no longer messes up melody. Most everything mitigates slow nowadays, even zone trash, so it's not necessary. Bard slow is fine. And as long as you have all the AAs you can do 6 songs in a melody on the bard in HoT+ era.
What makes druid so powerful in this era? I've only played up to pop, and in classic to pop they have nice utility, ports, decentish dots and ok heals, but are definitely not powerful. What makes them a better choice than say shaman or bard?
The druid and mage pair well together in this era. It goes without saying that the mage comes with a built-in tank If each is running a healer merc, heals should be well covered. But if things get a little hairy a druid can spot/emergency heal and use some defensive abilities (spirit of wood, 3rd spire, spirit of the bear). Also the mage uses a lot of fire stuff. Druids can debuff fire very well and the mage's malo debuff helps the druid. The druid auras also add extra nuke procs for both the druid and the mage. A druid can do pretty decent dps via nukes and dots as well. Druids also get the group spirit of black wolf ability which increases the party's nuke damage and crit chance. With both the druid and mage having the spell twincast and improved twincast ability, the burns can be pretty tasty. And the druid can sustain really good burn dps with twincasted dots. Lastly, you can't beat the travel abilities when you duo a mage and a druid. Druids get ports and evac (which is nice for emergencies as well). You can run your mage to camp and coth the druid where you want it. I'm sure there are more benefits, but these are just off the top of my head.
There are 6 classes I want to play for various reasons, I play PC and laptop. Currently favourites are Beastlord and Enchanter. I also want to play SK, Shaman and Rogue, I'd also like a class which can track so I'm looking at bard, ranger or druid, guess the druid would proberbly play best with the rogue, though bard/ ranger maybe better with a tank and merc healer...
