There are plenty of threads about what to add to a box group, but these are generally focused on existing groups looking to change a single character rather than a bottom up planning. I am proposing a discussion about the perfect box group given the recently free heroic toons. Currently I 3-box, but I am proposing this conversation for any number from 2-6 as you see fit. Even if you are not boxing. Pretend you have up to 5 friends who are going to play with you, starting fresh, and you get to pick which character everyone is going to play. You get to setup the perfect group to play with everyday. What is that group? There are, I believe, 3 major components to a well balanced group, 2 are universal and one is specific to boxing... 1) Roles 2) Synergy 3) For boxing, ease of play. Using my current 3-box as an example... (MAG, ENC, CLR) 1) Roles - Mage is tank / DPS. My ENC is support/DPS. My cleric heals. All 4 rolls are filled. 2) Synergy - Conjurer's and Beguiler's synergy stack. IOG complements the mage, pet weapons for my animation, etc. Also CoH. However, I am missing track and ports, and a druid healer would have COP4 for burns. 3) Ease of play - I focus on the ENC. My mage pet tanks on auto pilot, chasing down mobs, holding aggro and not breaking mez with a simple /assist, /pet attack hotkey. Then just nuke on multibind. On my cleric, by setting each character and pet on the extended target, I can heal from /xtar #, /cast #. This allows me to play all 3 characters effectively while only focusing on one single screen. Let's talk about some abilities... Apologies if I make some errors. Tanking - WAR, PAL, SK Pet Tanking - MAG, BST, NEC Healers - CLR, SHM, DRU Patch healers - PAL, BST, RNG Slow - SHM, ENC, BST, BRD, tank belts, NEC (undead only) Tash - ENC, BRD Malo - SHM, MAG, DRU, BRD Snare - RNG, DRU, WIZ, BRD, NEC, SK Root - ENC, CLR, DRU, RNG, SHM, WIZ Mez - ENC, BRD, NEC (undead only) Call/Rez - CLR, PAL, DRU, SHM Hybrid HP - PAL, BST, RNG Track - RNG, BRD, DRU Lock-pick - BRD, ROG Group invis / IVU / Levi - Numerous classes Run mods - SHM, DRU, BRD, RNG Ports/Evac (Group)- WIZ, DRU COH - MAG Corpse Summon - NEC, SK So, what is the ideal group? Why (synergy/abilities)? Also which era (live, old world, TLP, etc)? What modifications to the ideal group because of the amount of work? (For example: SK, BRD, ZER, ROG, MNK, SHM would be extremely powerful, but very hard to box).
your question is with 3rd party software or not? there a a big difference between those who are using is_-box_r and those who don't. i play 5 on same computer / screen and i don't use a 3rd party software . so for me it need to be a caster group : shaman mage X 2 enchanter druid. and one merc healer i got a level 111 warrior with about 30 K aa"s . but it slow me too much to play a melee class with 5.. when i play my warrior he always going oor or can't see target ect. not an issue i guess for those using that 3rd party software since they can stay on the tank and other toons will all assist at same time, so for me --->>, caster group , send pet and start right away the dps hotkey.
Backstory is simple. I enjoy playing MAG, ENC, CLR. However, I made a FTP druid and I have loved having the ports and track, but I really miss it in TBL and ToV. I think that I would be pretty happy if the CLR were a druid instead because of snare, ports and tracks. The Heroic toon made me think about switching out the cleric for a druid, and it got me thinking about all the other abilities I don't have access to, such as lock picking (I know it's not common), wizards having different port sets, etc. Take the boxing out of it. It's really a question of synergy and ability. What would you call the perfect group? Like I said in post 1, imagine you had 2-5 friends who wanted to start playing with you. Those 5 friends told you they want the best possible group and will be happy with whatever you pick for them. What would you pick? Some might just say SK, SHM, BRD, ZERx3 for monster DPS, but I think a group of friends not standing in one camp all day would enjoy having ports, for example. And is that really a good group? I was thinking something along the lines of SK, ENC, DRU, MAG, WIZ, BRD? Covers all the abilities, but does all that aDPS work out to a top notch group? Switch out the bard or the ENC? Ditch the wizard for a BST? I dunno. I'm not making that group. Just making an example. Again, I'm not making a 6-box. I'm quite content with my 3. It's simple, powerful and very adaptable to inviting other people to play with me. I only 3-box because it is the optimal way to molo, and it's very easy to find real people to come replace the mercs. I like the company. Again, just a philosophical question/discussion.
Take plI main an ENC and picked CLR and MAG because they are easy for me to operate. I have the mage down to 2 keys (pet/malo and nuke) and the cleric at 7 (1-5 heal players and pets /xtar #, 6 HoT current target, 7 group heal). I get why you are backing yourself up with a merc cleric. I also get why some people just do 5 mages and a merc cleric. My question is more about class synergy. Say you had a friend or someone going to play with you. Or maybe 5 friends. Or maybe money is no issue so you have 6 screens, 6 keyboards, input isn't the issue, just a perfect world. How would you change your classes setup? I'm not changing mine. I'm just curious. If we didn't have to pick our classes based on play-ability, what would we pick? I went mage over SK not only because of the automated pet tank but also because the much lower dependency in gear and AA. If gear, AA and difficulty of operation, I think I would like SK much better. Also I main a ENC, which I wont change either, but I think SK, BRD, SHM/DRU would be a great 3-box.
I dunno about the perfect box group, but the group that I took into the last few expansions and will take into the next one is war/brd/sha/ber/mag/cle. It's a great all-around group with a lot of survivability and versatility. It's good for taking on unknown encounters and being able to survive them, handle surprises, overcome bugs, deal with mobs that have intense damage shields or spell-reflect. After I get comfortable with an expansion and change to farm mode I swap the mage and cleric out for two berserkers, which turns the group into a glass-cannon group that's a lot of fun to play but no where near as durable and versatile. My guess is that replacing the warrior with a shadowknight or even a paladin would improve the group, but I dunno, my warrior does pretty well and with all that ADPS he does impressive amounts of damage in dual wield while maintaining amazing tankability. If they added the ability to change classes (even if I had to farm a bunch of AAs, redo my epic, get new visibles etc) I'd try out an SK for an expansion. Here's a vid of my group with the mag/cle and here's a vid of my group with three berserkers:
Last year I tried to make a mage group with mage pets tank worked, but after getting them to the then cap I decided it wasn't ever going come close to a group with a plate tank.
After mulling things over for months, and leveling a mage molo to 85, i jumped in with a 4 box: Mage, Mage, Druid, Paladin. They're all max group geared now, and it has been a blast for me to play. I have no regrets. The only areas I sometimes struggle with are Lock Picking and certain situations that require CC or high burst dps. As any boxed group would, i struggle with knockback and fear, esp in zones where CotH is disabled. I use zero programs (not even maps) and just alt-tab on same screen. Two mages let me have two low maintenance tanks, and they complement each other well for dps and tanking. Since they play the same way and have the same buttons, it's almost like piloting just 1 box. So, while I 4-box, the effort is similar to a 3-box. Paladin and Druid are generally low effort to box as well. Having two characters with CotH is hot stuff, allowing me to venture out, and potentially call party to two locations at any time. I usually run with 2 healer mercs. I only use AOE heals on Druid and Paladin, eliminating all targetting inefficiency, and allowing me to power through basically any AOE dmg from mobs. At endgame, the Paladin is an excellent healer, especially when crap hits the fan. I preferentially have mage pets tanking over paladin. That leaves the paladin open to 2H dps, heal without interruption, and pick up any adds without stress. If both mage pets go down, i will have had time to decide whether i want to stick it out with a discing paladin (rare) or evac and try again. I rarely wipe as a result. Druid utility is something I would not go without. Evac, ports, telebind, tracking, forage, movespeed buffs, adps for mages. For the noncombat portions of Everquest, the Druid is essential. For the combat portions of EQ, the Druid dot burns are now quite formiddable. By itself, the druid is not an exceptional healer, and is infact surpassed by the paladin. In combination with the paladin, i have AOE heal spam, two rezzers, and healing synergy stuff. Where healing is not needed, the druid can become formiddable dps. What's ideal for any one person will depend on what they want to do in-game (and as others mentioned, whether you have software "assistance"). Druids/mage teams get a lot of utility that makes the noncombat portion of EQ far more enjoyable for box teams, imo. They aren't terrible in the combat portion, either.
I'm fairly certain that Tucoh is going to have the best insight on all this and recommend that people take his word for it. No bs or sarcasm.
So, to add to the discussion you have to build a group from one race only, what would be your pick? I’m thinking dark elf for SK, Clr, Ench, Mag, Mag, Wiz. It’s difficult to construct a melee group around one race, because you can only have bard or shaman not both.
I'd love to make my setup more like Tucoh but I don't know anything about setting up UI's or anything like that. I 6 box Warrior, Wizard, Shaman, Cleric, Bard, and Ranger, without automating software. I'm not as effective as a group of individual people, but I do okay and feel like I've got pretty good balance with dps, tanking, and healing. I also value redundancy in healing and emergency tanking, a pretty broad set of buffs, ports and evac, high burn DPS and synergy,
I have almost the same group composition for one of my main teams : SHD, CLR, ENC, MAG, WIZ and ... RNG in my case, the only non-dark elf (but fixed with the chanter project illusion ) With a second MAG instead of RNG, you should be fine for a full dark elf team. You'll lose a couple of tools (Auspice for instance), but you'll gain MAG alliance, which is really nice. It's a really strong team. Maybe not the absolute best one in terms of DPS, but very strong, durable, and versatile.
Ogre/Troll Shadowknight Shaman Berserker Beastlord Berserker or Beastlord Merc Cleric (or 2nd shaman) Vah Shir Warrior Bard Shaman Berserker Beastlord Merc Cleric (or 2nd shaman)
I completely forgot about the Van Shir. I’d probably look at adding in a second berserker or maybe a rogue, in that 6th spot. Good catch.
SK plate tank good self passive healing and dps (just never played another tank) Bard best puller in game pull names from where ever in the zone to where ever I wanted to fight them good AA buffs and /melody also very easy CC 1 mob Mage good dps , back up or off tank if needed Coth is mandatory for boxers Wizard ports / evac super useful and the Mega boom kill group content stupid fast. I don't use any boxing programs but that's what I been playing last 12 years or so and just plows through everything so . I just think I could never play this game with out a bard & mage in group *shrug*
I roll with sk, brd, brz, brz, clr, bst. Second zerk can be substituted by a ranger monk or rogue and shaman for cleric if you'd rather. For straight killing, this combo demolishes about everything. No mage for coh, no ports, but perfect synergy between the melee toons. Warrior might be more dps with all that synergy but I love my crew as it is.
What you enjoy most. I tend to only 4 box because I don't use programs, and do it on one PC (too lazy to use 2-3 computers for this game anymore). That lets me run 2 clerics mercs and just never worry about healing in 99.9% of situations. I use paladin (main), shaman, bard, zerker. Works well, especially in ToV with all the undead. When I hit burns things just melt. If I wanted to be more optimal, I'd definitely add another zerker, and actually heal with the shaman. Not optimal, but works for me, and I enjoy it.
