I have been debating for awhile about what to use my heroic characters for. I have decided I truly want a ranger-it was my first toon back in 2000, I have always loved the class, and I would like to begin one. Right now I box a mage/bard duo, with my focus playing the magician throughout the fight. I pull on bard, auto attack and /melody and be done with bard, save for an alt TAB back to bard to lower aggro. It is how I play on one laptop. If I do mage and ranger, the ranger is auto attack. Well, auto fire. Ranger would be good for some buffs and initial crowd control, but I would not be doing much on ranger. If I do bard and ranger, the bard will be the auto attack. I would be casting spells on ranger, like I do on my mage. Given the play style and my situation, which is the better duo? Thanks in advance for opinions and replies.
What kind of content are you intending to tackle? I feel like the mage/ranger is a waste as you would receive more benefit to the mage from bard, unless you just want to fart around in old headshottable content. As for the bard/ranger combo you won't be able to do much current content until you have min/maxed the ranger pretty good. This is coming from a maxed group ranger with all the bells and whistles/AAs and a few pieces of raid gear. Even then T2 ToV can be sketchy to tank. I love my Ranger but you have to know your limits of the class and aside from having a big tank every 20 mins, I believe a mage pet will do the job much easier.
I duo a mage with a ranger. Mage is still only 114. I am doing TBL progression with them. It is my favorite combo after SK and Rogue. I have done progression through Ry'gorr. Mage pet tanks, I just number pad and bind spells to it so I can cast with my left hand while using right hand for ranger. I play on two PCs. I don't care much about maxxing dps from mage, he just supplements the ranger dps. Pet has two healer mercs to baby sit it. Stuff dies pretty fast. I am doing GD stuff right now. In the miner tunnels currently killing stuff to spawn dervishes. No issues. Mage pet makes a pretty good tank, ranger pulls, does CC and my focus is mostly on ranger dps. I can help heal pet, buff and double invis for both. Ranger has so much utility and dps options. One of the best pullers in the game. Can grab aggro easy from pet, so need to use all your aggro reducing stuff if you are using the big dot and DD spells. My ranger doesn't pew pew only. For me, the ranger is the best companion to a Mage.
As much as I love the bard class (remember there are only 2 classes in EQ, bards and their groupies), I would probably use a mage. The mage pet will be able to tank more than the ranger or the bard.
