Option 1. If you are dead set on having a cleric, drop the shaman for a bard so everyone gets mana regen. Shaman wouldn't be doing much with a cleric around. The above assumes you don't want an enchanter, although I think an enchanter would be a better pick over shaman with a cleric.
You can still use a enchanter or bard, no one says you have to charm with them. Actually the enchanter animations like other pets have had massive upgrades since classic days are way better then they used to be, I used to use them to tank seafurries in the mid 40's on Phinny and they had no trouble doing it.
Yeah, I just got the impression OP is like, anti-charm classes or something. IMO, it really doesn't make sense to run that many mages without mana regen, and both enchanter/bard offer some CC ability that's much needed in the lineups given. FD splitting on an sk is time consuming and doesn't always work out.
If you go with casters, aka 3-4 mages you need chanter for mana reg unless you plan to spend dbg points on mana pots from market.
You want a bard no matter what. For just leveling, casual play, andor quitting before gates, imo mages are top notch and a ranger is actually solid for your tank. So ranger or maybe sk, bard, shaman or maybe clr/dru if you insist, and 3 mages. For long term its sk shm bard with 3 monks. Anyone who disagrees is wrong. You can sub it around as like war bard cleric with 3 whatever if you want classes that fill more typical raid holes. Rangers until gates and then swapped to berserkers is also viable either way.
Sk/Cleric/Chanter/Wiz/Mage/Mage 1. Bard songs don't work on pets until AA 2. Trying to CC with a bard in a 6 box absolutely sucks, way too much micro due to short cc times. Hard chanter CC is essential on a big box team, makes life much easier. You can pull with the chanter, which is much easier and faster than trying to FD split stuff. 3. You do not want that group without mana regen. Every single class needs it.
War (or SK) Clr Shm Brd 2x DPS of your choice. Monks are likely best here, but positioning during xp grinds is a pain. Rangers are good luclin+ for being very low maintenance. Mages are easiest to box early on. Subjectively, you can mix in some utility here from lesser DPS classes, Necro for mana pump / corpse summon / fd / ghetto-coth / snare. Wiz for ports / snare / evac. Including a mage or ranger is nice for DS if you want to PL others. Mages and Necros are good for farming tradeskill mats.
PAL(main) DRU ENC MAGx3 I ran this on Ragefire and absolutely loved it. A few comments about my unorthodox group: Paladin gives you rezzes / lull / downtime heals Druid gives you heals during combat / SoW / ports Enchanter gives you CC / Clarity / Haste / Slows Mages go boom / Coth BRD value starts to really climb around PoP so at that point I would drop a MAG and pick up the BRD. The ENC (even without Charm) is far too valuable to replace with a BRD. Hell, also by PoP you'll probably want to replace the Mages too.
