So i hate boxing, but i'm so behind and with no friends that it's the route to catching up.

The key is to pull with high +hate abilities that total higher than the bard's (low/capped) beneficial buff aggro. What spells are you using to pull with?

If you're pulling with a mage then I assume you start with a clickie and then Malaise AA? Followup quickly with any other debuff clickies and a swarm pet to lock aggro. Engage with your pet (taunt on) and /pet regroup it if you don't like the positioning or spacing.

My mage can take a hit so I don't mind that on a pull and I use Bodyguard buff to proc swarm pets from hits and ripostes (mage melees from the front).

The bard box should rarely if ever get aggro if you're doing all that on the mage.

Use 7+ taskbar tweaker. Easy to install and use, and no more alt tabbing as can ungroup (and move around) your eq tray icons.

This isn't feasible for everyone but I typically invade a camp instead of pull, have my bard invis between pulls and stop his melody and pull with my warrior. If I'm pulling to a camp I typically use my bard to pull.

This can get nasty when I'm grouping with someone else who is pulling. This makes a lot of sense because they can just keep chain pulling while I grind stuff, but the bard will constantly take aggro from them way before the mob is near the camp.

I agree with warrior pulling. You start at #1 on the aggro list and don't have to pull it off another toon.
Unless you really need a split or CC, just starting on the warrior is so much easier.

oh! i'll look this up for sure, not having to alt tab all the time will be really good. Would be great if i could give commands to the other chars without having to switch screens, but i guess that's only possible with 3rd party, and i'd rather not risk it.

Also good news, i was able to coerce two friends out of retirement, so we'll each be boxing 2 chars. Do you guys think a Druid can main Heal all group content? We're thinking about going chanter+druid for the synergies and adps, with a sk tank and caster dps.

I giggle every time my bard pulls to my sk (running all the way past the sk) who throws a instant high agro spell, and the undead/animal still stops to donkey punch a random dps who has done nothing at all. One of those camp mechanics you just have to consider, like mage/druid damage shields on every mob or casters that feel like fighting you from 80 yards away.

Spacemonkey555 - you made me LOL with this one. Nice.

Druid can group heal and the enchanter can support with runes, but Druid's healing has stagnated over the last few years (to the joy of most druids). It'll be fine until you run into a tough named or mission with lots of AE damage that a druid has trouble sustaining against because of a lack of low-cooldown group heals.

A good example is the hardest mission from the previous expansion, the Crusaders, which put out considerable AE damage. Check my group's health bars at about 5 minutes into this fight:



This is with a shaman and paladin, who are a really strong healing duo thanks to shaman's outstanding synergy spell and the paladin's Group Armor of the Inquisitor. Even with them running and with the previous expansion's best in slot group gear this was a challenging fight for me.

I'd recommend using a cleric instead of the druid. You won't get the same ADPS for your group, but the druid's ADPS isn't that formidable compared to what the enchanter brings. The cleric will dramatically increase your group and tank's survivability (especially as you get gear / AAs) and they are much, much easier to box effectively. You could blindly cast the cleric's group heal spell and likely out-heal a competently played druid under most situations. With a druid as your healer if you're ambitious about the content you do you'll regularly run into mobs you can't beat that you would handily kill with a cleric.

Thanks for the feedback! I was under the impression Druid adps was reaaaally good. If not i can see us going the cleric route instead, we want to be able to tackle all group content, and some older raids that still give relevant rewards. That video really drove the point home! Nice UI and setup btw! how do you get your screen to look like that? Not having to alt+tab would be a blessing!

A real druid can correct me if I'm wrong but my take is that druid adps is good, especially group spirit of the wolf, but not really good. Here is a vid of my mage team which used a druid as a healer, but they were on a different monitor. If i ever went back to that team I'd swap the druid for a cleric.


I use inner space boxer to manage my windows.

A druid can heal group content, although mileage may vary depending on your group composition, gearing, AA's, etc.

My personal opinion is having a Druid as a main healer is a waste of a Druid as you will spend more time healing than DPSing which defeats the purpose of a Druid.

An Enchanter/Druid combo can pump out some really good numbers on burns, but if you are having to mix heals in it will certainly impact the total DPS. Enchanter DPS alone is pretty lackluster as well.

For reference I run an Enchanter, Druid, Cleric. The Druid is DPS/Support with emergency heals if needed.

Edit: I agree with Tucoh on Druid ADPS, unless you are building a caster group the biggest impact the Druid ADPS will have is on the Druid itself combined with the Enchanter ADPS.

Fixed that for you ToL missions were a joke

They’re fairly tuned for being leveling content that everyone has to do. ToL2 will have max level tuned missions that will be more difficult. Expansions come out in two parts with half the content.

Yeah the missions were very disappointing. Oubliette of Light was a fun boxing movement challenge until I learned how to cheese it by hiding in the rooms.



Other than Group Spirit of the Wolf and Spire of Nature what big druid ADPS spells are there? They are both good but not enough to warrant bringing in a druid and wasting them, like you say, as a dedicated healer.

This is a big reason why I dislike level increase expansions. They don't even try having post-leveling content. I typically beat them before I hit max level because they're so good for gear farming, but then leveling up, getting spells, gear etc is basically pointless because I've already done the hardest group content the game has to offer.

Nightchill Aura
Seasons Wrath Debuff for Fire and Cold Spells

Nothing game changing. The biggest impact you'll see with a Druid/Enchanter is a properly synchronized burn and well timed CH to get the Dot tick of Nature's Swealtering Wrath. Right now with group geared toons and still no type 18/19 proc augs my druid can hit 31M on the big tick and about 1.2M DPS on Shei.

You also have to consider that with us getting so little content per expansion that group content has to be tuned so as your average grouper who is in sub par gear can do the missions. Can't really have hard content when there's only 4 missions.

For people who want a challenge, just one hard mission, one hard zone and one hard raid is all that's really needed. Just something to give meaning to all the work put into building up characters, groups and guilds. A lot of us only want to say we've done a hard fight, not do it every raid every week

Oh I agree it would be nice to have but then they really need to provide more total stuff in an expansion. There's a lot of fun for me in barely being able to do something and being challenged.

is_boxer give a huge adv vs those who don't use it , if you want a real challenge try to do them without using that 3rd party software , you will be surprised how many missions you couldn't box.