Anyone ever 3 box sk, cleric, beastlord?

Just curious of this combination compared to shaman and mage paired with the sk?

This is on coirnav, but I’m thinking long term through OoW and beyond

Any blatant weaknesses versus the other combo? Outside of weaker buffs and slightly weaker slow?
I recall during GoD needing balance of nihil to temporarily slow until turgurs landed, does landing beastlord slow become a problem beyond pop?

At least through LDON, that would be a really solid 3 box.

Grouping? You are a group already... just add 3 anythings.

3boxing by yourself? Can do probably anything.

Raiding? Cleric... enough said. But the other classes are fairly low priority on raids so you can focus on being a good cleric while still bringing utility.

I'm certainly not an expert, but pretty familiar with balance issues.

Bsts are pretty weak for a while, i'm not sure when they get good. I'm pretty confidant your first listed trio will be stronger than the one in the title.

Going forward more into the future, Sk+shaman+melee dps seems to be strongest, if we're talking SK+healer+something, but like I said not an expert.

Not really, at least into SoF (so far). I play a BST, DRU, RNG trio, and my beastlord is the main tank in the group. The one thing that I would like to have is the ability to AOE slow. That would be nice. Shaman I believe has one.

Great comments! I don’t worry too much about the speed of killing things, mostly the ability to progress on quests (vt shards) outside of raids.

Sounds like this will go well

Youd be better off boxing 3 shadowknights for omens+, as you have 100% uptime on epic meaning unless you massively f up you cant die, as well as enough burst to 1shot any group mob and great sustained dps.

Solid 3 man, could do pretty much anything it wants.

BL would give solid performance that's easy to pull off. Putting a chanter in for BL would give you more potential but would be a harder 3 man keeping up with chanter pets.

Outside of charm centric groups, that’s probably the strongest trio and eventually charm bottlenecks certain progression / farming opportunities.

BL slow always seemed to require a tash or malo/mala to land reliably. Loved my BL as a tank in EQMac, but given the hybrid nature of the class it’s a bit silly to dump a SHM for one....

I already have a cleric that’s 60 that I regularly box with my sk.

I don’t mind possibly power leveling a shaman to use long term if it means it will be more powerful with a mage third. But I felt like cleric heals were more beneficial, and with slows being partially motivated beyond GoD, slows would be less impactful on survivability and viability to farm named

of these combos, which has more power potential?

let's assume the SK is raid geared and the rest are all group geared

The biggest handicap to your crew, especially long term, is the cleric. Unless you are raiding on a cleric, and that's your route to getting into a good guild, a three man crew is better off with a shaman or druid. Remember that eventually you're going to have mercs. Especially in the pre-OoW period, damage shields are such an efficient source of DPS as to be almost broken, which paired with the transportation aspect makes me lean druid for all 3-box scenarios.

The choice of which DPS to choose to pair with an SK in a 3-box is difficult because of all the good choices. Right away I would rule out int casters, because their DPS is sub-par post PoP. Not by a little, but to an extent that is broken. I don't know when in the late game they start to catch up, but I do know that in OoW and DoN int casters cannot compete in burst or sustained DPS.

The beastlord buffs aren't as important for an SK, the mana regen can be got from a potion, and there are haste clickies available. Berserker, Rogue, Monk, Ranger are all going to be superior DPS for most people, until very late in the game. Particularly if you choose druid as healer, having DPS of a different armor type is a good idea. Rangers in particular can slow with their epic, if you are very concerned about slow. For a well geared SK, slow is overrated. As a raid geared warrior I can tell you that I don't even bother slowing group content, I had the beastlord nuking. And our SK's do even better against the group content.

That said, if you find a beastlord particularly interesting to play, and it is a favorite class of mine, it's hard to go wrong with that. Paragon is amaze-balls after a wipe or a bad pull before out of combat regen goes in during TSS, and their pets are adorable. The beastlord epic is also amazing.

Mages likewise are quite fun to play. They also tend to get their bolt spells at the first level in an expansion instead of the last, which makes them uniquely powered up right as new content opens, and coth can really help you move around and pull. The air pet stuns are awesome as well, often resulting in a greater mob dps nerf than slow. Mages also have the damage shield. Their 1.0 is the most fun to do, but you're going to need a solid guild to make any progress on 1.5 or 2.0.

If the only thing up for discussion is that DPS slot, I'd lean towards beastlord if you have a reasonable shot at raid weapons. If you don't, then I'd lean towards mage.

Long term, any DPS choice is going to be fine, the weak spot on your team is going to be that cleric, as it is competing with the SK for gear and all of the cleric overpowered-ness is in heals, which will be overkill for things you have a reasonable shot at downing. Shm and druid get rez pretty early now, and that's sort of the extent of what secondary utility you give up with the cleric. That said, all the SK box crews in my guild that don't include a cleric do often hit me up for rezzes as soon as I log in, so maybe that's a big deal.

I don't see it that way. We're talking grouping here. The only thing that really matters is sustained DPS and utility. Mages and wizards bring both. The sustained DPS of these classes is not so abysmal that it offsets their utility.

What utility do wizards bring? From what i saw, once pok came out ports are mostly useless and at least through ldon their group utility consists of evac.

Pop comes so fast i wouldnt roll a class for ports, or if i did i would be ready to reroll in pop. Druids have a lot of utility but they really are second rate heals and dps through pop. I heard they get better later.

My 5 box crew formed organically as follows...

Started with the standard SK/Sham crew at level 1. By the time I got into the 20s, xp really started to slow down due to lack of dps. I then inherited a 45 Mage who was obviously a beast when the level cap was still 50. When my SK/Sham caught up to the Mage and I was 3 boxing SolB, I realized I needed CC. The choice was Bard/Chanter, and since my "main" was the SK, I couldn't see myself charming mobs for DPS, and I already had a slower. The Bard offered permanent mez on 1 mob with a single button press, and a lot of utility (Bard speed, mana regen, pacify, haste, lock pick, track, etc), so I added the Bard as my 4th. Then Kunark hit and I found I didn't have the heal power to go deep into Chardok. I added the Cleric to heal which allowed the Shaman to focus on slows and DoTs (surprisingly good dps with poison).

With that 5 box crew I could do pretty much anything in Chardok, as well as bigger targets like Drusella in HS. I am looking to add a 6th when Luclin comes out, but I'm going to wait until I see things play out before picking a class. A Wiz/Druid would be nice for travel, and the FD/Rez combination of the Necro is appealing for wipe prevention/recovery (just DoT/Pet and leave him FD in the corner).

I'm guessing you're stuck at the point where dps is holding you back from grinding efficiently, and unslowed big mobs are too tough to tank. You likely split camps with the Cleric pacify line, and then methodically work on single pulls. Since I didn't have the Cleric at first, I wanted the Bard for mez, but that's not a need for you with pacify to split camps.

The easiest and most efficient DPS box will be the Mage, period. Apply the DS to the SK, send in the pet, and nuke as mana allows. Sustained DPS doesn't get any easier, and the Mage has some decent burst when needed. CotH isn't as useful for your own group (you will rarely be able to run your Mage somewhere that you can't just run the whole trio) as it is in getting others to you easily.

A Necro will work much the same, and will also provide FD/Rez for wipe recovery. I don't have any experience boxing a Necro, but they seem pretty ideal and I am strongly considering adding one as my 6th toon.

Adding a Shaman with slow will allow you to take on bigger mobs at the expense of losing DPS in a grind setting. However, the Shaman poison DoTs are fast acting and provide a lot more DPS than I expected. With a Cleric to heal, your Shaman would slow and DoT for decent DPS. The pet is also non-trivial DPS, though clearly not anything special.

Enchanter does a lot of the same things as a Shaman, without the DPS...unless you charm. If you are willing to charm, Enchanter is the answer...period. Charmed pets are the most OP thing in these early EQ expansions, and being good at controlling one is the single most powerful skill in the entire game. This is an undeniable fact, but you have to be willing to babysit a charmed mob to pull it off.

Personally, I would suggest Shaman or Enchanter...Shaman if you don't want to charm a pet.

An SK/Cleric/Slower trio will be able to handle almost any mob, and adding random DPSers as needed is trivial. The box bug has bitten you, and you will likely be adding a 4th at some point. Once you have the tank/heal/slow, adding a 4th DPS box will be as easy as sitting a $130 laptop next to you and hitting 1-2 buttons every mob...so get the tank/heal/slow trinity set up first.

Later on the combo of Secondary Recall and Teleport Bind cannot be beat. Plus evac, of course. They can snare if you don't have an SK (which you should have).

Edit: And even with PoP the porting should not be minimized.

Not at all true. Lots of expansions have a whole lot of running to do if you are only using PoK books. And wizards get teleport bind, allowing them to save a group even more time to get to regular xp spot. Especially used in conjunction with secondary binds and, later, campfires.

I still prefer melee dps over wizards but having a wizard in the group is extremely handy.

This is all really helpful!

So yea right now I’m leaning towards the sk mage shaman combo, but i still plan on leveling up a beast lord for fun, I don’t want to 4 box if I can help it...so it seems that the mage will provide more utility and damage than the beastlord?

If you have a shaman, yes. If you don't have a shaman, bst utility goes up dramatically.

If you are concerned about DPS, neither option is great.

Sk, cleric, bst is a completely viable trio. If you already intend to play a beastord because you want to enjoy one, then don't be swayed by what anyone else may say. Every class combo is going to have its ups and downs, it really boils down to what you are going to enjoy.