What is it like to box a full team in progression servers?

I've boxed before in World of Warcraft, but I've never done in for EQ. Plus other than briefly leveling a enchanter to 50 on Agnarr awhile ago - I haven't played EQ for at least a decade.

From the searching I've done, it looks like most people recommend monks and other non-ranged chars for dps. That runs contrary to my experiences that for boxing you want ranged dps so you don't have to worry about positioning.

So what's the deal for boxing a full team - is EQ far more forgiving for melee dps than I remember?

I always thought the typical eq boxing composition would be something like:
Tank
Cleric
Enchanter/Bard
Wizard/Mage
Wizard/Mage
Wizard/Mage or possibly a Ranger for arrow dps

Any help explaining it to a virtual noob considering how long I haven't been playing?

I start with a base of mage and ranger. Pet power increases are basically covered by spell level and Enhanced Minion item = done other than requisite AAs. Bow damage is doubled on stationary, unrooted targets. Mage pet covers that. Ranger bow DPS doesn't care if you move, while spellcasts do. If I need a better tank than a mage pet, I add a Shadowknight, if I need crowd control, add an enchanter. If I'm facing anything that's likely to actually kill me, I bring a wizard or druid for <exodus> which breaks aggro, but keeps me in the same zone, reducing reset time to replace the pet. If I need a healer better than a merc, I can plug in a real cleric. With decent AAs, a shaman is viable in this slot. Beastlords are handy like this also, added DPS, Offtanking and beast crack in pocket.

Positioning isnt really an issue if you use auto follow. Certain zones with sharp turns or water navigation can suck, but that will suck with casters too.

Mages are good for the initial rush to 50. Overall, i prefer 2 or 3 melee. They really pull away from caster dps starting in kunark, and monks are great in classic too. With autoskill they are also easy to box at 61+ as you dont have to manually kick backstab etc.

Basically you stack melee if you want dps, but mix in casters to provide utility like coth or evac.

It is taxing to box full group from an ergonomics perspective. I wont be doing it again unless it is a non truebox server, where key broadcasting and using 1 pc is allowed (your room will be cooler too). In early eq, boxing isnt too bad, but it gets real exhausting in later expansions where there are more buttons to press, and there are solo tasks to do on 6 characters. If you want to try boxing a full team, i would suggest rizlona or fv where there is no truebox.

The best way to truly describe boxing your own group in early eq would be like basking in the warm glow of a higher intelligence.

I like to play around with options. Warrior, Cleric, Shaman, Druid, Wizard, and Bard for me. Never done a group like this before but I been having a lot of fun. Not fast but for me fun > speed.

If you aren't using any programs that play your characters for you, 6 boxing can be pretty fun and it's not too difficult if you pick group comps that synergize and you have a good setup for it like a 6 monitor mount for example helps a ton. I 6 boxed on Phinny/Agnarr/Mangler/Selos and had different group comps for each one. Your group composition is different depending on what you are wanting to do. I also always had about 10-12 total characters that way I could situationaly substitute when needed.

On phinny my main group comp was Necro (my main) - Bard - Mage - Mage - Mage - Ranger. I ran this because it was best for DPS racing group content at the time, and was also very good on raids. Of course this composition has no healer, but when doing stuff on my own I always used my Necro to tank, which didn't need a healer.

Agnarr I ran 5 necros 1 bard. This was specific for one thing though.

Mangler I ran SK (my main) - Monk - Monk - Bard - Cleric - Shaman. This was by far the easiest to run group composition that I've done since the 2 monks and bard just auto follow the SK for positioning. It was really good for raids and doing my own group content.

Selos I did Rogue (my main) Paladin - Bard - Cleric - Shaman - Monk. Was a very strong group for group content but it's bad for raiding so I never boxed on raids.

The one class you always want to have regardless of what group comp you are running is a bard. If you are 6 boxing and don't have a bard in there, you are doing it wrong.

Big difference is in WoW you are constantly moving around between mobs, in EQ you can just put your whole box team in a corner and pull to that spot over and over for hours so all a melee box has to do early game is have something like AHK running an /assist /autoattack /kick macro and spam it.

Thanks for the quick answers!

I planned to use [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software] since I am very used to it. And one of the non true box servers as you have all suggested.

@bobbybick - what is the AHK program you mention?

Auto Hot Key. I've never used it with EQ but used it with Path of Exile.

I use remote desktop software to tile all my boxes and I just have a row of usb numpads that sit above my keyboard. Gives me access to 12-14 socials easily, and you could setup +/- to cycle hotbars, but that's more effort that I've needed to put into it. I run warrior/ber/monk/bard/cler/shm. I know people who swear by mnkx3/shm/ber/bard but really any reasonable class combination can be fine. The reason you probably see more melee dps than caster is that TLP life cycle is more populated in the melee quest eras and auto follow positioning is good enough for most situations. On the other hand cloth gear is basically free so I'd consider trying a caster group if I ever went back to square one.

Many opinions on group comp with few wrong answers. Different comps for different folks.

Without boxing software (TLP), I run:

WAR / CLR / DRU / SHM / BRD / ENC

It is not a heavy DPS group but it has immense utility and heavy sustain.

WAR can tank anything and holds threat great with proper gear. Some melee damage.

CLR is heavy heals, great HP/AC buffs, pocket rez.

DRU brings ports, beneficial buffs (SOW, resists etc.), good sustained dots (even manaless with certain gear in earlier expansions), share and root, good backup heals. Pet for certain circumstances.

SHM brings vast buff and debuff library, slows, more backup heals. DoT damage is great. Another pet.

BRD brings vast utility. Haste/overhaste, Selo, huge resist buffs, damage shield, mana and health battery, great pulling capability and threat dropping. Charm and some CC. Some melee damage that improves as the expansions open up.

ENC bring more utility. Haste/Mana spells. Malo. Charm. AE mez and mem wipe. Can DoT. Another pet.

Running a single group, I've had the most luck with this comp both on TLPs and on Live. Being able to DoT and forget has a lot value without box tools. Bard can be efficient with twist and melee unless you need emergency CC. Mana is never an issue. Travel is fast with ports and Selo. About the only thing this comp lacks is strong burst damage, though there is some if you have DRU/SHM/ENC all cast nukes on top of their DoTs. Since you are boxing, everyone can also melee so you do have some melee damage that you usually wouldn't have from group members that might slack in that regard on caster toons.

Depends what you're looking to do in terms of comp. I 5box on Agnarr to do old raid content and I have: SK, Clr, Bard, Ranger, then I can cycle monk, bst, mage, wizard, necro, druid for a 5th... Most ideal comp for raid targets tho would be sk Clr Bard monk monk. Monks are just superior DPS.

In terms of positioning, melee is ez... You have your tank and your crew on autofollow, run to a mob, flip the mob, and your box crew should be in autoattack position.

You can box many ways- I use multiplicity and also have numpads. My clr is on 2nd pc and I have a separate keyboard and mouse for it because I like to stay active w/ it on raids, but you can just numpads pretty ezily.

I've heard of AHK and it's quite effective but I think that pushes the limits of what's 'legal' to use on truebox so I've not yet tried it. Even multiplicity can be dodgy, because it does have a function that allows you to replicate your action on the main pc on all others. I only use that to type 'ready' to AOCs tho, otherwise it's a bit cumbersome in my opinion.

If unmentioned software is i s b, you might want to check out Tucoh's boxing thread. It's aimed at live which is much spammier than TLP but there are some videos in there that show what the melee team auto-follow playstyle looks like.

When I ran a TLP box team on Rizlona a while back (war/enc/brd/clr/wiz/mag to level 45), I ended up just doing mostly glorified alt-tabbing by using my i s b character switch keybinds (shift 1 through 6). The pacing of the game is quite a bit different so you need more control over when to nuke with a caster team. Melee teams can probably get away with a general spam key that you'd mash frequently.

Yeah if you don't wanna use MmmmQuueee to set up a party based box-team to play EQ like a Single Player party RPG game, Tucohs introduction to his set-up is very nice. Also, his class set-up is pretty solid for further progression down road from the launch of Gates of Discord.

I box 6 on mangler at the moment.WAR(main), CLR, ENC, MAG, WIZ, BRD. It's kinda hard work jumping between 6 computers, I'll group with real people when I can instead though. If you are boxing tank, healer and CC irs kinda easier to play all 6 than have 3 real players doing unpredictable things you have to react to.

In the early expansions gear doesn't matter much so I'd doesnt really matter if you raid. From ~PoP onwards your life will be much easier if you raid with your chosen tank.

I started with
War Clr Enc Wiz Wiz Mag, then
Replaced Enc with Brd and Mag with Wiz

Ultimately I landed with War Clr Brd Rng Rng Rng; this was the the end of Kunark.

I ran that setup past PoP, although I did finally remove 2 rangers and replaced them with berserkers.

I will say this... for group content ya don’t really miss monk dps with 3 rangers swinging Wurmy and epics with a bard for haste in Kunark. I ran the lower dog caves / lower spiders in Velious while I did play, and never had a single problem.

With Luclin, griegs crawls were fine although ya gotta be thoughtful about autofollow if ya crawl it (I did and it seemed better than mass pulls and EQ/AM3. I had zero problems farming up 6 VT keys with this group and man do 3 rangers even with AOW bows churn out some good raid dps. Seru and Blob1 were my best mobs to parse against.

PoP started a real chapter for the rangers of doing silly things like farming BoT Tower minis; absolutely living in PoWater lower caves or getting extremely bored farming AA at the castle right before the huge demon dudes that lead the way to the boss of that zone. They all also got Time flagged so being able to run ranged dps group like that made for a good but long 6 months of farming there.

I made a decision that rangers after that became too gear dependent to keep up with DPS as (1) their best sustained DPS potential was moving back to melee and (2) after GoD I really didn’t have the capacity without tools to make all 6 toons play competently in raids which was going to limit the rangers from running 2 in-era melee weapons, max heroic stats and keep the full complement of melee and spell focii.

That resulted in looking for alternatives which if I was keeping the same construct, meant building zerkers who only needed one weapon to DPS, haste and the appropriate melee focii. With the advent if class specific short terms and epic 2.0 clicks, it really layered on some huge burst damage.

So, when I stopped I ran:
Warrior (Off Night Raid Tank)
Cleric (Main)
Bard
Ranger (Second Main)
Berserker
Berserker

The ONLY mistake I think I made was not making my warrior a main or second main. As expansions go on you find that you’re always trying to make him less squishy. But as I ran a CLR with enough responsibility on raids, playing DPS was a welcome change. Playing a warrior with responsibility does make raids a bigger chore night in and night out if your non-main raid night is a cleric.

Yeah

In theory ranged is better, and in practice that is better until about PoP. The problem thereafter is caster dps sucks and they pull aggro all the time. Mages/wizards are fine classic/kunark/velious/luclin. Rangers are better in Luclin/PoP. Once GoD/OOW come around rangers don't shoot bows and monk/ranger/rogue/zerker are the only real DPS.

To each his own but you have a lot of duplication there. The shaman and enchanter can both do CC, the shaman, druid, and cleric can all heal, etc.

My main box group is SK, SHM, MNK, MAG, BRD, merc cleric. I have ENC, ROG, WIZ alts that I can swap in depending on my needs.

Maybe I should wait for the next progression server Rizlona that locks at POP. But I guess that turns into a indefinite wait.

I do have one other laptop I could use and just two box on Agnarr I suppose.

They already have one pop locked server. It's unlikely they will ever do another, the need is already met.

IMO EQ got a lot more fun after POP, with the caveat that I'm in a raiding guild so that helped a lot with gear and progression.

When I'm goofing around, my box crew consists of Rogue (my main), SK, DRU, ENC, MAG, CLER (DPS, Tank, ports/back up heals, crowd control, CoTH/tank pet, heals/rez), and sometimes I switch in my BRD, SHM, and soon a NEC. All but the rogue are Elaborate or OMM group gear, so not that great. The rogue is raid geared so she's just fine.

I love boxing. Since we raid 3-4 days a week, I get a little burned out on the social aspect, so retreating to the box crew on off nights is fun (usually). Plus sometimes we get an off night raid going so I can have a shot at some OK raid gear for my boxes.

I'm on Ragefire since day 1 (and then day 1 again, and day 1 again, a few server resets in the beginning) and I love it. We get along pretty well together among the various guilds, so that's nice.