I am thinking about adding a fifth box account. I am currently running paladin, enchanter, druid, magi. This group already covers nearly everything in the game. Tank, heals, CC, haste, slow, resist debuffs, track, evac, snare, coth, mana regen, movement speed. Which means this fifth slot is wide open. I don't think war, SK, cleric, shaman or bard make much sense with what I already have. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. That leaves zerk, rogue, monk, beast, ranger, necro and wizzy. Thoughts?
Bard, no question. They add so much to groups, and they don't need to be paid attention to as much as other classes. You will see a huge increase to your dps.
Bard for the 5th group slot, and because the bard is so easy to play, roll another mage for the 6th spot.
I am surprised everyone is saying bard. I assumed enchanter and bard would fill the same role. I don't have a problem with it. Just surprised is all.
Bard are great on their own and in a group they are a force multiplier. Enchanter and bard have the same roll and will complement each other as their ADPS stacks which means you get even more bang for your buck from the rest of your group. Once you get used to moving around at selos speed its hard to go back to "normal". Since they can use /melody they are pretty easy to box.
I will be on Team Mage for your fifth, assuming u dont mind pet tanking. There is noticeable improvement in tanking with two pet tanks tossing aggro back and forth with prism skin procs and additional stacked rage pets at start. Pal, dru have effective aoe heals, too. This allows paladin to stay 2H dps mode, gives your mag and dru another Mage synergy proc, and adds a lot of pets for big mage nukes.
Just having /melody set up correctly and ignoring that box to focus on the other boxes is pretty amazeballs. You have a merc that augments all your damage, but isn't mentally challenged like a merc lol
Having ENC does not mean you shouldn't do a BRD. BRD and ENC pair very well together. ENC handles CC and slow. BRD is good DPS and great aDPS. A BRD will often make up for the shortcomings of it's DPS by making everyone else do more DPS. Easy Dual invis. ENC is awesome puller but BRD unlimited fade gives bard some amazing tools. So my vote is bard, except for one important thing. If you've always found a class interesting but haven't gotten to experience, for me that is a BST, for you it might be something different, do that class. You do have everything covered so your 5th could be something that enhances your experience more than your group.
So, is bard + ench a common thing? Nearly everyone is recommending bard. Either bard + enchanter is the best option. Or bard is just more useful than enchanter. One of the two. Probably going to add a bard regardless. Just curious.
I'd go wizard. I'm actually running pal enc dru mag wiz wiz (basically your team plus 2 wizards) in NoS and it's really good. Pal/enc/dru is the perfect core for a nuker-focused team. Wiz will add a lot more damage than a bard will, especially on burns. 2nd TP bind is nice for quick mission farming. It's also quite easy to box. Personally I wouldn't run a bard and enc together unless you aren't concerned too much about optimal DPS, but it wouldn't be bad either. Just keep in mind a major portion of bard aDPS comes through the synergy which requires all of your characters to be melee'ing to get the extra damage. Not sure if you're doing that already or not.
Are wizards really doing that much more dps now? And furthermore, can the druid handle being main healer? Is the paladin alleviating that? Can this group actually do hard missions and such? Sorry I have many questions about this setup!
Yeah wizards got big buffs at 120. They're a lot better than what I remember at 115 in CoV. Can druid handle being main healer? Only with a paladin, otherwise I wouldn't trust it. I played sk/enc/dru/wiz/wiz/wiz in CoV and it was REALLY sketchy with the big mission AoEs. Actually I only won because I could burn through missions before the big aoe stacks became a problem because the druid straight up didn't have the tools to keep the group alive. There aren't any big healing checks in NoS but pally with group armor + wave + 2 big instant group AA heals is plenty of coverage combined with druid for CoV-style mega DoTs. AoE DD's aren't too much of a concern with enc runes and whatnot. I also don't know if I'd consider the NoS missions hard but I was able to complete NoS challenger without much issue, mage pet is a really beefy 2nd tank for when that's needed.
I had this same composition for almost a year on Agnarr. The shortcomings always came down to the healing ability of the druid. No heal over time spells, and their version of CH wasn't as good as the cleric's CH. The paladin would end up dead on harder encounters because the druid's heal spells didn't land fast enough. I vote cleric for the fifth. Swapped out the enc for a bard. And use the sixth spot as flex with a beastlord or ranger. That's what I ran for the longest time. If I don't need to haul everyone around with CoH, I'll even swap out the mage for a monk.
It's mostly just that bards add a lot of extra DPS to the group almost completely passively. If you're old school boxing, bard is far and away the most effective option, as you couldn't realistically play that many toons actively at any reasonable level. If you're using keystroke repeaters, a bard is still a strong choice, but it would also open up another mage or a wizard as options, as both can be played with a multibind and your group is setup for caster dps.
