I've been strongly considering adding a 3rd toon (mage, zerker, rogue) to add a little more dps to group box group.However, I'm beginning to wonder, is it even really necessary and how much would I gain by added a Mage, boosted to 100 to my group dynamic? Typically, as of late, I start my own group in LI and then add guildies pretty quickly. I pull with BST, send in pet to tank mob, auto attack, /melody DPS with Bard. Seems doing LS group content with this combo is doable, but obviously if I wanted to run a mission, it would be pretty difficult. Or, could i run those once both are 125 by myself? So 125 BST + 125 Bard + cleric and rogue merc?
I haven't touched the new expansion yet, but I added a mage at the end of EoK on Coirnav and have never looked back. That combo was enough to get everything from ToV to NoS done sans missions. Better players have it figured out though. I alt tab for perspective.
So your doing Brd/beast/mage? Is there one that your playing as your main so to speak? Other 2 helping you get things done?
My beast is my main, my bard is my second, and mage third. I am raid geared so the ear help the pet tank a bunch. Unless it is tricky, I pull two or three with the pet, get the bard into action and mezz if appropriate, and then cycle the mage up. I have audio triggers that tell me when the mage cast the last spell and jump back to hit the hotkey.
BST / BARD / ROG is my main trio. Rog is very low maintenance. Basically 1 macro button to /assist, another for short refresh combat strikes, a third for slightly long refresh combat abilities, then just refresh combat macros every 30 seconds or so. With this, your rogue will keep up with your BST DPS, even with your BST in full-on mash mode. My rogue burns are handled with just 2 or 3 macro buttons. The only downside is Missions. Inside missions, your pet wont be able to tank while other toons are in melee range . This is when you start thinking about rolling a tank in place of the BST. Or you can start using a Merc tank. At lvl125 merc tanks aren't half bad, at least when they only have to deal with 1 or 2 mobs at a time. Weapons with heal procs on BST can go a long way towards keeping a merc tank alive for content that is right on the edge. And last point. If you use Rog, make sure to align keys on your keyboard to be the same as on BST. For me "4" is attack on BST and i also use "4" on Rog for /assist. "3" is short refresh combat strikes for both, and "5" is spells on BST and longer refresh combat abilities on Rog. Using the same keys lets me fight with both toons without having to take my fingers off the keyboard. i just have click back and forth between screens. Now if you use some sort of automated button pusher, then you don't need to worry about clicky toons so you can go with a mage, or even a Wiz (ports are nice). I don't use any automation outside of EQ, so above is what works best for me.
as someone who plays a bst. simple answer in the missions they have the mobs set so that is a player is in melee range the mob hit the player over the pet. you have ot have a live/merc tank in the missions or be geared enough to tank the mobs on your bst.
so my BST is 121, I could probably still do mission using a 121 tank merc? with 116 Bard healer merc? but you think i would still need a 3rd box in order to accomplish this
if you need a 3rd all depends on your play style. I was just saying you can't pet tank in the missions cause of how the derv set it up.
To clarify, I’ve pet tanked both missions on my bst, trick is every member of the group must be ranged and can’t use melee dps mercs. Any merc or player in range of any mob will get agro over a pet in the group missions. Bst necro mage shaman ranger druid wiz etc? Good times. Add a zerker, sad times, tell him to make throwing axes. You’re not gonna box the 2 ls missions at 121+116, or even come close I think. At 125+125 bard bst will be very low dps in these missions due to neither being able to melee with pet tank, still not gonna do it. Making a tank that can tank those missions will be a year long project probably. A mage or necro would be quicker. Not sure on tank merc, but my experience with them back at level 110-115 was that they suck compared to pet/player but at least they can take agro off dps mercs and melee players.I’ll try one in final fugue today and see how they do. I expect they’d need 2 merc healers or a player cleric/shaman.
That's the part that is discouraging me from creating a tank, is that I know its going to be a long hall before its ready to go. With that said, there is plenty of other missions and content along the way. What about doing ToV-NoS missions?
For fun, here is a little history on pet tanking with live players in melee range. Originally pets could hold mobs attention everywhere, even with other players in melee range. This was changed early on. Not sure when, but I believe it was because people were exploiting xp while AFK . Meaning BSTs could park at a spawn point and let Pets kill things while they were not at computer. For me as a soloing BST, the change to Pet aggro mechanic meant a lot of shuffling in an out of combat (the Beastlord Shuffle) because let's face it, we are awful at tanking. This lead to the rise of the Mages (since they can do full DPS outside of melee range) and a period of great stagnation for BSTs. The stagnation was most evident when you looked at the tanking power of a BST pet. A wizard in 2007 could mitigate hits better than our pets. In defense of the devs, i don't think they realized just how bad our pets had become. Eventually they fixed our Pet's ability to take hits, either in 2008 or 2009. Pet tanking mechanic was then changed back to allow pets to tank while other players were in melee range during HoThule expansion in 2010, but ONLY outside of missions. I'm not sure why they excluded missions. Maybe they were throwing a bone to the Mages, because this would certainly make mages with their range DPS more desirable inside missions. Sure we can stand outside of melee range to let our Pets tank in missions, but we lose at least 1/2 of our DPS when we cannot engage mob directly in combat. If they ever change it to allow pets to tank in Missions, then i would recommend continuing to go with BST Pet tank + melee DPS boxes. Melee DPS is less clicky, since they don't have to press buttons every 2-3 seconds like casters. I don't think you want to go down the path of Range DPS group + BST pet tank. Your BST becomes a boat anchor if you cannot use him for melee DPS. For me, the quickest solution is to learn to use the Tank Merc. At 125, they are not terrible, but you need to learn to control it. You cannot just let it aggro everything in sight and expect it to live. I exclusively use Merc Tank in /assist mode. When there are multiple mobs in a clump, you can send Pet on 1 mob, Tank on another, then put Merc tank in Passive mode to pull him back. This leaves pet holding down second mob away from group, while merc only has to deal with one at a time. I also use heal proc weaps on BST when tanking content that is right on the edge with merc . Long term, i am working on an SK tank in place of my Bard. Aside from the time spent XP'ing him, there is a learning curve. Playing a real tank if very different than play BST with pet tank. And my DPS drops a lot going with SK instead of Bard. Longer, longer term, i'm going to level a WAR (alt or Personna) in place of my BST. i think WAR/BARD/ROG will give me all the tanking advantages, and better DPS than BST/SK/ROG.
That is not so much a trick as it is tying one arm behind your back and surrounding yourself with big long range cannons. if going down the Range DPS path, i think it would be better to have a Mage in place of BST. I regularly do FF with level 125 BST/BARD/ROG and 1 merc tank + 2 clr mercs. I also use heal proc weaps, just to lower risk potential. Early on, this set up was right on the edge and i spent a fair amount of time patching. The change to allow our player heals to target the target's target was a huge help, since i didn't need to swap between mob and merc when i healed. (And when did this change happen? i missed the last couple expansions.) As i've maxed AA's and geared up, and learned the event, this mission has become much easier and there are times i don't need to patch heal at all. At this point, i could probably put a DPS merc in place of one of the cleric mercs, but their DPS is so low it is not really worth the bother.
So really it comes down to missions. When it comes to group content, BST Pet tank is more then good enough. Mine tanks two mobs in LS t1 content without even the slightest issue. If I want to do missions, then I've got months and months of getting a tank into a viable spot. I may try the tank merc strategy tho in a missions situation and see if I can make that work somehow.
Just know that there is learning curve to controlling mercs in content that is right on the edge. EQ doesn't come with an Easy button. Another option is to group with other humans for missions
IIRC the last time we asked why pets cant hold agro against melee in missions, the reply was "what missions are you talking about", perhaps implying that it was unintentional. Other than that there was no followup. edit: I think ill go ask again in the ama.
