What is the lowest effort 6 box group for Live?

My main is a bard & I want to mostly play it. Not be alt tabbed on other characters.

Would this group make-up let me spend more time on the bard & still be strong? Or are there better classes to pick?

1) - Warrior. I heard warriors need less attention to keep aggro than SKs. Is that true?

2) - Shaman. Slows mean less time spent on healing. Backup heals & DPS.

3) -Bard. Will be main puller & crowd control. If I could give it more attention, it will let me add some extra DPS with chants, nukes, & clickies.

4) -Cleric. Is it the easiest to heal with? Also, is having 2 healers necessary for later expansions and doing old raids? Otherwise, should I drop this for another DPSer?

5) -Ranger. Need snare so bard doesn’t waste a song on it. Ranger doesn’t need to be positioned to DPS with archery. Can also synergize with shm+brd 2.0 epics.

6) -Mage. Can use earth pet to root or off tank. CoTH for getting around. Best AoE nukes in the group. Also doesn’t need to be positioned to DPS good.

Thank you for the help.

SK is super easy to keep aggro with, can also snare, any tank can wear a slow proc belt. Certainly the belt isn't Shammy slows, but still something.

If your gonna keep the ranger and mage make sure to use the air pet as if you use the earth pet it will root the mob and then the rangers dps goes way down on rooted mobs. Unrooted mobs ranger doing ranged attacks do double damage just a heads up.

Pop a couple of mercs. If alt+tabbing is something you don't want to do, the other classes do not play themselves (and if they do, hopefully you get a long term vacation)

I always had a feeling from your posts that you had no idea what you're talking about. This tells me 100% you've never touched a mage. The pet window has a button you can set called "spell hold" which disables the earth pet root. How many decades have you believed you have to switch pets to stop the root? Rofl....

I only three box, not six box, but your group is lacking DPS in my opinion, and you don't need two priests. I'd drop one of them and put in another DPS class. I'll let people who know more about priests debate if it should be the shaman or cleric.

hey fellow bard! .. bards slow..
for me, and ive done all progression with my box group.. there are always haters ..
Bard, Wizard, both raid geared, Cleric, Mage earth pet (tank), Mage water pet (dps), Mage water pet.
The earth pet holds very good agro, with cleric you can easy keep pet up, throwing in group heals to get all the pets. Names and harder mobs i drop the mage water pets and bring in 2 more earth pets .. group heal all pets on taunt and yeah the mob doesnt know what to do.. use your bard AE mess, and wow you will make things look good an easy.... of course there is switching on the team to keep spells and things going, build some in game macros to cast on your dps toons will save lots of switching, just means it becomes passive dps,.. get things cranking i can easy pump out 150+ aa in 30 min burn.
happy adventures!

Air pets are not real DPS anyway, use the water pets for maximum dps from mage pets.
If you are tanking with Air pet you not getting far and lots more healing needed.

If you hold the Earth Elemental spells, don't you also stop Earth Elemental Strength XIV from proccing also? That is a decent buff that it procs. Absorb Melee Damage: 50% over 20000, Total: 87000
The 116+ pets can all tank any mob easily. I just tank with the Water pet, because it never has a a HP issue on anything, even named and it's much higher DPS. I was using my SK to box, but found it easier to just use a pet, SK takes too much attention. Just pull with the bard and pet attack.

War/zerker/bard/sham/bst/healer merc. Super easy to box and GREAT dps and survivability.

Your easiest 6 box on live is to play 1 character and play with 5 friends.

I always like how "I box 4 melee who spam these different buttons super easy to box and great dps"
when you know they have to be using some kinda tool to help them or they just are sitting in FM thinking they do great dps.

There's a guy who uses 3 mages and 3 cleric mercs and thats probably the easiest full team with only you boxing without any automagic going.

I run a 3-box: Warrior, Enchanter, Mage with 3 mercs.

Warrior - Tanks with no aggro problems, high survivability. Has an ability to snare with Call of the Challenge. Fortitude is unbeatable for boss pulls until slowed.

Enchanter: Calm, sooth, for easy pulling. Mez for multiples. Slow and tash, then DoT or DD

Mage - DPS + backup tank. Also when boxing the ability to use Call of the Heroes makes movement so much easier.

Mercs for healing and DPS.

If you want to full-time bard, I'd recommend two mages to tank. They do a lot with minimal gear and minimal attention. As an alt/tab boxer I personally love having a paladin as 2H DPS (most his dmg is from auto attack) that I can swap to for tanking and healing emergencies. He's not my preferred tank. The mages are low effort and low stress!

Well I wouldn’t go with 3 cleric mercs because that just makes no sense. But an SK paired with a bard (melody) + cleric on one pc. So sk yo drive from and the cleric you run social spam heals. Paired with 3 mages on the other pc is by far the easiest to box. You can get good dps out of that combo because it’s simple enough to weave and run.

Lowest effort could mean one of two things:

• Lowest effort to play after spending a LOT of effort setting up
• Lowest effort to set up and accepting a LOT of effort actively playing.

I've put an obsessive amount of time into my 6box setup and I likely spend less effort during relaxed play than a lot of people 2boxing with alt-tab.

In either case, when optimizing for low effort it'd be hard to justify not having between 1 and 3 mercs. I'd recommend starting with war/sha/brd and swapping between cleric / rogue mercs to start. You may do everything you need to with that group and you'll be able to spend a minimal amount of time on your war or sha and spend much of your time on your bard.

I'll answer this how I feel the question was ment to be answered.

Personally I've experimented with many 6 box setups.. from ranged to melee to mix there of.. but far and away thee absolute easiest I've personally played..

War
Sham
Sham
Ber
Ber
Ber

With this setup you get extreme survivability combined with extreme grp dps sprinkled with minor crowd control and massive grp healing capability. Combined with shay adps and their own dps now..

Create yaself social hotkeys that spam single target as well as grp ae heals and then literally 2 seconds to toggle over an start healing you're team. Same deal with berserker. Create an assist hotkey.. with 1 hotkey bar for spammables.. and you now have a setup that's very VERY powerful and versatile.

Whulfgar is close. I would trade 1 shm for a bard. Having 4 melee and no bard is insane.

Not a recommendation but...
I am leveling SK, Shaman, War, Cleric for various combination to get the missions done with other toons.
Going to stop at a point to level Bard, Ber, Ber, Ber.
It's time consuming to level the 85 toons with 120 toons.
Not sure how viable it is to DS level pass 85 toons in the hive at POK (???)
Currently have 1 chanter and 5 mages and added 2 more accounts for various combination.

I run SK/Ranger/Bst and just added a bard to it he's almost 115 now but I'm having a ton of fun on it. I always thought bards would be harder to play than they are. Wish I made one ages ago lol.

Good to hear the Bard is easy to play.
I am kind of worry about playing Bard, hearing about twisting songs, etc.
Thinking to myself, my finger probably get all twisted try to play too much of songs, etc.
Oh and the lag that can make things worst.