Since the servers are down… Quick background, I’m active duty military, been that way for a long time. I’ve played since basically the very beginning with a warrior boxing a shaman and cleric, which was eventually became a Cleric Main that I raided high end with up until 2008. I picked up an account with a bard/necro along the way as an addition to my crew, making my box crew 4. In 2008 military duties and pursuit of a bachelor’s took me out of the game until 2017 at which point, I returned. When I returned I was level 80ish and four boxing the following crew: Bard, Shaman, Mage, Cleric. I made an adjustment and moved on to: Bard, Shaman, Mage, Shadowknight and amassed 115 and about 25k aa’s each. Here’s the question, my DPS is light, should I change something up, or tweak what I have. Here are my options by account: Mage 115 / 27k aa’s. (Only worthwhile character on this account) Shaman 115 / 25k aa’s and Enchanter 115 / 19k aa’s Bard 115 / 25k aa’s and Necro 115 / 19k aa’s Shadowknight 115 / 25k aa’s and Cleric 108 / 15k aa’s and Wizard 113 / 18k aa’s I’m fairly proficient at each, not necessarily attached to any of them. When I dropped the bard for the necro though, I lost all semblance of CC. I dropped the shaman for the chanter and lost like 30k hps and quite a bit of utility. When I dropped the SK for the Wizard I got bored…lol. Do I already have the right group and just need to amp up the aa’s to increase lethality? I feel like the mage and SK kind of do a lot of the same job in the tank category. The SK and bard aren’t equal in pulling, but I don’t feel like I’m doing much with the bard after the pull and the SK can pull fairly well. Should I just pay the sub for IS boxer and git gud? At this point, I can kill just about everything in the group game, it’s just painfully slow sometimes. P.S. I know you hate boxers (yeah you), but I have seven kids, school, work, etc... I'm not a reliable group member and I have a guild that loves me and tolerates me, so that's ok. I group when I can, box when I can't, help out wherever possible.
Yeah, I think you're probably right....lol. I appreciate the input. I know IS boxer isn't a magic pill, but it would probably bump my dps a decent amount.
Hi Jaxxer. I box Mage-Mage-Druid-Paladin. I was very successful, but DPS was sometimes slower and lower than i wanted. I came to the forum asking about stacking wizards or SK's for burst DPS. A wise person named Tucoh told me I should expect much in swapping out in pursuit of burst DPS. He suggested i continue to refine and squeeze more out of my team. He was 100% right. And, i'm glad i stayed focused on my main 4, getting all the evolving items, procs, aug procs, AAs, clickies, etc., etc., all add up, and quite noticeably. I also had room to improve my own execution. My advice to you is the same. Bard/SK/Mage/Sham is super powerful, and you should probably stay with it, working on every small thing possible to improve performance. You should be able to tackle everything in current expansions. If it gets slow, you have the option of subbing in two DPS Mercenaries that benefit from Shaman and Bard. IS Boxer is absolutely not necessary. I am able to dependably 4 box all the TOV missions with my 4, no programs.
First hello to a fellow Veteran and Thanks for your service. We have similar paths except I retired after 24 years. I box all the toons you mentioned and then some. SK for tank can not be beat right now. Warriors have alot of DPS sure but SKs have all the self heals and aggro to keep mobs with tank. You want to add DPS you say? Add a Berserker or Monk to those or both. Then with your Bard they will be amazing. Your Bard should be playing songs that help your melee dps. My current set up is this: SK (Tank) Cleric Warrior Zerk Zerk Monk All 115 and working AAs. Now I am working up a Bard to take the place of my Warrior. Warrior is great at riposte dps when he tanks but I like tanking with my SK more. I have a Mage 115, Shaman 115, Chanter 115, and a Ranger 115. They provide buffs and pet toys or mix and match as needed. I like you have family that makes me like soloing a lot because I can get on when I want and have instant groups no waiting on people. I also will do stuff with my guild and friends. Have fun and good luck. If on Tunare let me know can help you figure out some stuff.
Tucoh is a smart dude. I watch his videos with my jaw dropped...lol. It's good to hear others have felt that pain though. As mentioned, I had swapped out for a necro and chanter and saw some dps improvement, but everything else suffered. One thing I have to get better at is healing on the shaman. Then I probably could swap out a healer merc for a dps merc. I appreciate the advice. I'm an alt-tab guy myself, but I do see the benefits of IS Boxer. I can't beat the TOV missions myself, but it's largely due to DPS and HPs, not because of anything else. For instance, Griklor, I'm doing fine until that heavy dot hits and you have to run to the fire. I can't reliably coordinate my crew to get to the fire before they start getting picked off by the DoT. Ideally, I'd be able to kill Griklor before the DoT hit though.
Thanks Silimtao. I'm on Xegony myself, but I appreciate the advice. I played Warrior for a long time, but I wouldn't trade him for my SK these days. They require a lot of attention in the ways of gear and AA's that I'm just not ready to start over on...lol. Besides, he's on my mage's account, which when all else fails, can pet tank anything in the game right now without a single gear or aa upgrade from what I have right now.
sk/sha/brd/sha is a very powerful group. I second what Lyyr said and look into either getting inner space boxer to improve your setup or just pushing a bit harder on all your characters. If you swapped out your shaman with a berserker you'd increase your DPS, but it'd come at a pretty big cost to your utility/survivability. Same with the mage or bard. You could also add a berserker, but I don't recommend people box more than three characters without inner space boxer or macro quest 2. I've found it useful to post parses and videos of me playing in difficult content for people to give advice on, but you can also just spend some time focusing on each character and reading DPS strategy guides for each one to improve. Here are some big things (some obvious, some not) that you can do to get good DPS for each character: SK: maximize how much time you spend in 2H and review burn strats https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...ing-disc-sets-rotation-for-sks-at-110.248612/ sha: enable your SK to use 2H and make it easier to use 1/2 DPS mercs in more challenging scenarios by getting good keeping your healing and buffs up. Increase your group's DPS through proper usage of ADPS (2.0 epic, dissident roar). Get good at using your CC/debuff options to reduce mob's DPS so you can burn harder. Get good at using a DoT macro on either named mobs or mobs you will kill last when you pull multiples. brd: Get good at keeping your melody and ADPS up (2.0 epic, fierce eye, quicktime). Get good at staying in melee range and meleeing. Get good at using boastful bellow. Synchronize your swarm pet abilities with your mage's Of Many Spells. Consider using heal proc sticks (ex: stonemason's hammer, conflagrant rod) + Reckless Renewal song to improve healing to let you burn harder. Review the popular melodies. https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/bard-melodies-with-tune-change.260945/ mag: Use the water pet, get good at keeping your mage actively casting and using their force of elements. Strategically use your Of Many spell when your Host of the Elements or bard swarm abilities are active. You can use your swarm pets to tank and let your SK stay in 2H more often, but I find it better to just lock down aggro on my warrior instead of risking my group by not acting anytime I don't have aggro on a mob. Review popular mage spell rotations. https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/mage-casual-rotations-sustain-non-burn.254634/
Thanks a ton Tucoh. All good advice. Went ahead and sprung for IS Boxer and reading some of what's out there for setting up. Will have to play with it once servers come back up. I'll take a look at the links as well. Your point on getting good at healing with the Shaman is well taken. Something I definitely need to work on. There are definitely things I can tweak on the other classes as well. I really just wanted to make sure there wasn't something drastic I should change before I poured too much more time into the current group makeup. I never use water pet by the way...lol. That's something I can easily change, but I've always been directed towards air pet for stuns and earth pet for tanking. For a long time my SK was too to tank, so the mage pet was my main tank. I guess now that the SK can tank some, I've never made that move back to the water pet.
My 4 box team is Bard, Shadowknight, Shaman, Magician. All level 115 and I NEVER find myself lacking for DPS, you may need to tweak your current set up some.
Chopin, I've seen you around often. I'll send you a tell in game sometime and we can discuss a little. I appreciate the note, what may be lacking on my end is the 20k aa's more that you have and the experience that go with them, but I'd love to talk sustained and burned DPS sometime if you are up for it.
I 4 box an SK, Druid, Cleric, and Mage. I was looking to get rid of the Druid for more DPS. Would a Bard or Berserker add more dps to my group? Thanks Also wanted to add my RL friend plays an Enchanter with me.
Druid, Mage and Enchanter should be solid DPS. I would investigate if there is anything more you could be doing with that setup instead of going through the replacement process. Is the amount of DPS you have an actual roadblock to completing content? If you really want more DPS add another mage for simplicity and the alliance.
The Mage is only 112 right now but the others are all 115 with max AAs. I added the Mage instead of my second SK. I have completed all content myself except for the Kael group mission with the 2 SK's, Druid, Cleric, and Enchanter. I would either do too much DPS on the Avatar and get too many adds, or took it too slow and my Discs would run out before I could kill the adds and slowly DPS the Avatar. I have read burning him down fast is the best way to do that mission and the Druid runs out of mana too fast to sustain a burn for both parts. Thanks for the reply.
IMO cleric is your weak link, not druid. Druid can't heal super well alone, but if you have any additional support (SK self healing, enchanter runes) they'll get the job done, while simultaneously providing ADPS and beefy DOT DPS. I'd replace the Cleric with either Paladin or Shaman if you want to keep healing capability high. Otherwise, a bard or any dps should be able to sub in over Cleric and boost DPS substantially.
That is funny because I replaced my 110 Shaman with my Cleric when ToV came out. The Cleric has been able to do all the healing and my druid doesn't have to anymore. I will say I use a Cleric merc instead of my actual Cleric in the Kael mission, because I don't have to duck with the merc. I have only tried the mission twice so far and just started working on the Mage instead.
Shamans are great.. he could just as easily replace the Druid with the shaman though and use that as the only healer using your logic. Then add another dps (zerker, Rogue) for the cleric.. But clerics make healing Easy and allow you to focus on other things like dps on your other toons... and since the entire expansion is undead.. clerics aren’t even that bad of dps if you are actually playing them to dps. They have turn undead for a ton of damage.. they have an excellent undead dot/slow with the sermon line a base 40K+ per tick.. and they have two very viable undead nukes. For group content you can heal an SK pretty easily.. so on a cleric you can use mainly contravention heals which allows you to melee and use divine avatar often if you actually want to do dps on a cleric you can.. oh and unlike a Druid they basically have full mana all the time.. druids run out of mana rather quickly and shamans too but atleast they can constantly canni.
Thanks for the tips every one. No one did say if a Bard or Berserker was better for the druid or cleric though
To the OP, ISB should help you a TON. Like, unbelievably, once you get it set up. I boxed by alt tabbing, or desktop/laptop combo for years. After finally getting ISB, it's like a whole new world... Multibind everything you can: For mag, make a social that assists SK, casts AAs of malo, force of elements, spire, servant of ro, and /autoinventory. Then place on a hotbar, with all buttons on that hotbar set to same key (example, "1") then set that social as first button... 2nd button make/drag a hotbutton from pet window of pet attack, 3rd button make/drag a button as pet swarm (NOT Qswarm - and, make the hotkeys from the pet window, a second social, on same multibind, with like /pet attack and /pet swarm does NOT work well. When multibinding, you're limited to 1 social, and 1 clicky, per multbind, or it starts messing up). 4th button as RS pet, 5th button as twincast spell gem, 6th button as highest spear, 7th button as chaotic, 8th button as 'of many', 9th as thaumatize pet spell gem, 10th as harvest spell gem,11th as firebound orb spell gem, 12th as firebound orb clicky. This will automatically assist your SK, and spam all those things, in order, as they become available. When mob dies, it will automatically (because no longer have a target) attempt to cast each mana regaining spell, or summon a new firebound orb, if both them are on cooldown (they get refreshed a lot, though, with chaotic). It will also automatically autoinventory anything in the mage's hand (like firebound orb, mod rod, etc) and attempt to click the firebound orb during global cooldowns, every time it's available. Do the same thing with Shaman, make a social of /tar (sk name), whatever heal boosts, AA, /useitem (epic, etc) that you want to constantly use as soon as they're available, and Highest Reckless > 2nd highest Reckless > 3rd highest Reckless for heals. For SK, whatever you want to use as spam, while attacking. Add whatever discs it is that want to constantly keep on cooldown, AA, whatever, in the social, then whatever you want to spam, while fighting. For bard, when spamming their stuff, like epic, BP clicky, etc, it interrupts their /melody A LOT. Far too often, unfortunately. So, I don't multibind anything on the bard, personally. I just have a couple hotkeys, to activate their stuff, then another to start /melody again With shaman spamming reckless x 3 on you, you should easily be able to do away with any healer mercs, and just use 2 melee dps mercs. Do similar things, using other hotbars, for 10 min burn stuff, for 15 min burn stuff, or what have ya. So, can like spam "1" over and over for 'normal' encounters... "2" may activate burns, and best defensive disc for SK, and maybe swap bandolier to sword and board... "3" could be for mana regen abilities and buffs for each char, "4" for AE hate, group heals, etc... whatever. What ISB does though, is activates all these things, in coordination, across ALL TOONS at the same time. It's way, way, way faster and more effective than anyone can do alt tabbing, using just 5 line macros, etc. Your DPS woes should disappear.
