duo box for rizlona advice

i guess my assumption in swapping beast for mage was this:

1. in terms of pet tanking: beastlord pet + beastlord slow > mage pet w/o any slow (dunno if this is correct)
- important edit to this one: mage pet toys and their impact on pet tankability.

2. in my experience beastlords have far superior heals for their pet. i could be totally wrong here too

3. even when pet tanking, the beastlord can step in and juggle agro splitting the damage with the pet

4. necro benefits from BL buffs and regens(hp/mana)

5. in the case of a summoning named. beastlord can pop CD and take that damge while reposition group recovering from summon



these are my assumptions. hoping to mooch from yalls experience to correct them

I boxed as a Ranger / Bard and then as a Ranger/Sham for a long time on Ragefire.

The bard would sit in camp and sing all the mana / slow / haste songs etc and i'd self heal, on the ranger.

Eventually the damage output of mobs outpaced the self-heal / Bard Regen abilities of the combo and I swapped to a Shaman and used the snare pull ranger, swap to the shaman, slow on incoming, toss a HoT, swap back to the ranger and melee the mob until dead. swapping to the sham to heal when needed.

Easily Ranger/Sham can duo to 80 without any issue. I found the need for a real puller in underfoot+ to become more critical.

Any Melee + sham can work. Rangers are nice because they also have utility and taunt.

Shamans are dynamic later on and add A TON of utility to a group.

was there a noticeable difference in how fast your shammy went down vs the ranger?

would nec/sham suffer from not having a tank more than beast/nec would suffer from not having a priest healer?

You just need to get a bit creative. Shamans can get an FD ring in PoSky, which would limit you to 4 feigns before needing to go back there for recharge supplies could be used to split camps/named out. Or you can use CoTH from the mage, have the shaman root a mob and then run the others away from the camp. Call the Shaman which clears all aggro and then nuke the rooted mob until it runs to you while the others are pathing back.

lets say one is boxing mage/sham vs a named that summons. when the mob summons, and now both player characters are in melee range, is it the shaman or the mage who gets agro? the mage because transitive agro from pet?

mmm
Whoever is higher on the hate list / has aggro would be the one summoned and the one getting beat on. Mage pet aggro transfer only happens to raids mobs flagged with MOTM, normal trash/named the pet has it's own separate amount of hate. Alternatively there are also some mobs/zones where the pet CANNOT tank if a player is in melee rnage (ex: LDoN raid zones, the trash will always default to a player if one is close enough) but for the most part outside of raids the pet is handled as its own thing.

troll innuruk shaman can do a quest for a clicky snare neck

granted its like 5 seconds cast time, but its very useful

those early levels arent a good indicator of anything for a class, once you get to like level 10 or so the SK/SHM combo should start to face roll stuff

I still shutter when I think of back in the day, when SKs, pallies and other classes didnt get their first spells until level 9 lol

Shaman goes well with anything, in all eras of Everquest. Arguably top 3 most powerful class in Everquest, extremely versatile and useful.

I played a Shaman/Mage on Aradune and it was a nice combo. Once my shaman had raid gear, it was EZ mode to tank with shaman while mage did its thing

can also summon pet weapons/armor/etc and give to Shaman pet for extra dps. Mod Rods + Canni is a treat for mana

In later era, you could get AA to make the mage pet the tank and support it with shaman, as well as 2 additional mercs. Shaman can also step in as DPS as well, and use healer mercs, etc.. (but lets not pretend like anyone is actually going to stick around long enough on TLPs to get to later eras lololol.. you can tell yourself that, but it wont happen)

You basically can't go wrong with a shaman, but be warned, they require a lot of attention until you get to like OoW where your Cannibalize is on a longer cooldown so you dont have to spam it with that stupid canni-dance nonsense, and you get massive cannibalize too. Still tho, you're always buffing, healing, slowing, maloing, doting, rooting, hasting, etc on the shaman so i would recommend not pairing it with another highly active class

Shm/mage is very good combo, with SHM as the main and mage as box

I heard that neck has a 2 check resist so its much more easily resisted

ive always preferred pet classes. ive done mage countless times now. i could certainly do it again haha. i had tons of fun on my last TLP with mage/cleric. short on dps, yes. but to be able to chain complete heals on a fire pet with that DS up... so much fun!

now that being said, i dont want to lose potency but i would like to try to come up with some other combos that can do similar things.

considering it was your sham tanking(i likely wont ever get raid gear) i wont how that duo would fair with a necro? the gamble i see is that other than the sham you have no tank. yes you get a far superior puller/splitter in the necro. but in the end are all those tools worthless if you are seriously dependent on your shammy as your own form of meatsheild lol.

this is where i landed on beast/necro. you trade the potency of the sham buffs for weaker variants in the beastlord. but you gain a pet similar to the mages and a monk in the beast himself + a slow(albeit not a full sham slow). gear the beast up for wis/mana and play a hybrid heal/melee adps role. while the necro is puller, dps, and when possible the kiter. in theory id like to think the beast/necro has two forms of taking down tough named. kiting them when possible and pet/facetanking beastlord when not.

im certainly guilty of over thinking things but to distill my thoughts into a few simple questoions...

how far behind the mage pet is the beast pet without toys?

how does the beast himself heal his pet compared to how a sham could heal a mage pet?

how does the beast(not the beast pet) himself tank compared to the mage pet?

how does the beastlord or beastlord pet serve as a meatshield for compared to using a sham as a meatshield? i read on another forum about how beastlords tank better than rangers due to block being much more effective than parry or whatever.

in the end ill need to just play it and see lol. but figured id spend a few days on the forums while at work trying to pick the minds of experienced players so i can make as educated a decision as possible before investing the time. thanks!

Shaman is a pretty good tank all things considered. If it can be slowed it can be tanked by just about anyone.

Shaman is way better duo partner for necro than BL. Way better dps, way better buffs and debuffs. I have never felt a duo partner was needed for necro, but when I do duo I have found bard, mage, and shaman to be best duo partners.

i guess you nailed it. i want to find a partner for the necro that supplements the only thing a necro needs.. an answer for mobs that cant be kited or feared or just "necro'd" in general haha

edit: shaman tank > beastlord or beastlord pet tank?

If its slowable the shaman or a necro pet can tank it. Just buff the necro pet with cleric and shaman buffs and mage summoned armor. Try to get the encyclopedia necrotheurgia from plane of hate and that will boost EoT tankiness a little more. Doesn't work on the 61+ pets but LDoN has a pet focus that does.

Necro / Shaman is a very nice duo...in fact, I have that exact duo right now on Aradune. Raid-geared Necro and group-geared Shaman. If I could do it over, I would probably get a Raid-geared Shaman instead...but the necro tanks well enough.

Necro/Shaman PROS
- Necro can charm undead, which starts to be very useful (ie; OP) around PoP. Shaman Malo improves this.
- Necro has more survivability than mage and synchronizes well with SHM DOT dps
- FD split pulling
- Rez with necro (shaman in GOD or OoW get rez as well in an AA)
- Necros maintain mana well with Lich, so you can go pretty much nonstop. Mages med when OOM
- Fear kiting
- Necro snare

Necro/Shaman CONS
- Both are very busy classes to play well
- Both use DoTs, so wont be a lot of burst damage but will be very steady damage
- Necro DoT revamp still hasnt occured on TLPs yet, which significantly reduces the power of Necros
- Necros tend to be less desired in groups generally speaking, whether fair or not.

Mage/Shm PROS
- Call of the Hero (can split pull with this as well) is amazingly useful
- Summoned pet items for you and group
- Mage requires very little attention to box

Mage/Shm CONS
- No reliable snare (only innuruk clicky neck)
- Dont get the Charm Pet damage that necros do
- Mage takes forever to recover mana
- People like mages in group, very reliable DPS, even if you have someone half asleep at keyboard.. all they need to do is hit their pet attack hotkey and can consistently provide reliable DPS

Not to detract for the conversation. But I am thinking for the next TLP I may roll a caster, I would assume that also depends on the state of the TLP because I know some expansions certain casters serious edge other classes out pretty hard.
Would caster_x be more worth while on a third account? One of my account has two tanks (sk and mnk) the other has a shaman. The only thing I would miss out on is veteran AAs I think.
And with all these TLPs that have popped up since I left the game (I play on Sleeper and I think Phini or Fippy..I can't remember) what caster has been the most consistent?

I was thinking either a necro or mage main for next TLP. Something fun with a lot of class quests to break up the grind. But this isn't a deadset criteria.

Mage > Wiz > dru

though i think bard would be best

edit: as far as adding to your sk/monk + sham

/bump

Not really sure on the question.

Seems like through other posts, you're set on being a Necro. In that case, Sham is your best partner.

You will not regret having a healer as a box with any DPS class...

Shams are nice because later they get big AA Cani and an AA that will use HP instead of Mana to cast.... Helps for those times when you're Low on mana, AND you can just cast a Group HoT and it will use your health but also heal you and the group....

Necro solo: Kite, Fearkite, Tap-tank, Pet Tank, Root/Rot.

Shams can add DOTs to Kite, Fearkite, Heal you (Save mana), Add a pet themselves, have arguably the best root in the game with Virulent Paralisis AA.

Appreciate that.

Agreed. I duo'd a lot with a friend who was a necro. No boxing but the synergy was epic and that was just briefly in classic/kunark. I can't recall if we did a lot of names but I would imagine just bear tanking everything would be fine with slow/cripple agro.