What's the best duo for two boxing? I have a warrior and a shaman. But I've been thinking on switching the warrior for a mage...
the best ? who can kill the higher level nameds?,, mage + shaman . bard?..humm,mage pet tank much better than bard , bard can *add* some more damage with songs , bard won't do much damage beside what it can give to mage and pet shaman can add some also with lion proc line * PLUS * very good dots, not only adding some benefit to the mage nukes,,but add some pretty good dps by himself. pet would always have unity line of buffs ( add hp + str + avoidance ), growth buff who stack with all other hp buff (more hp than clr and druid buff combined ). very good overtime heal at higher level , many time it s all you need to keep pet healed combined with counterbias slow (add another overtime heal as well who stack ).good ,fast group heal at higher level ,can spot heal here and there if needed. could use 2 caster mercs with that set up who are pretty decent dps at higher levels. can cast apathy line of buff on pet to add some agro for pet and another overtime heal proc , easy to pull with shm as well, (COH ) combined with aa spirit of cheetah run speed ( at higher level ), combined with the best root in game ( aa root ), or the spell * root * you can run much faster than mobs and can root them one after the other one , and can be COH if needed and pick the one left rooted near camp, ...........and the list goes on
Paladin + shaman, SK + shaman are good, and will always be good and not subject to "new expansion comes out and no my flavor of the month strat isn't working anymore" syndrome.
It should be noted that bards are low DPS, but can easily make or break a fight with how much utility they can offer. They can slow like a Shaman, but not nearly as much, and can DoT like a shammy, but not nearly as much. If I load up all DoT songs, with my 3.6 Percussion Mod, I can drop ~10K per tick on mobs, more with crits for the DoTs. As melee goes, I can hold 4K DPS when I put some effort into it, with clickies, I can push it to 5.5K, but have yet to reach 6K. I regularly see Shaman around 6K and that's when they're not paying attention. Pets for shaman only add about 500 DPS or so. This is from DPS meters I was running last night with a monk and Shaman in my group. The monk was pushing 10K when he wasn't paying attention and 17-20K when he wanted.
Enchanter + mage = very powerful. Everything the bard brings to the table + clarity, twincast, and mana reverb. (No real melee buffs except haste though.) More powerful Crowd Control, and easier pulling IMO. I usually do 5.5k dps just with dots and nukes. I can do a lot more if I go into charm mode.
humm , maybe if shm cast only one dot, fast dot can crit over 60k, not sure all the dots a bard can cast can even come close to that, and that's from only one shm dot, shm can hot key 2 high damage dots , a fast dd , and 2 more dots who are doing close to 3 k per tic , base (not modified ). anyway , best thing about EQ is you can play any toons that you enjoy the most , that s the key ...
i would argue necro + shm. although i havent subed my shamy account in a while i used to rip stuff up necro pets are as good as mage pets these days and the dps is better. these days i just run necro + healer merc and rip stuff up.
Are there any threads that teaches how to "box" accounts? I did a search, and did not find any specifics. I wasn't sure if this was frowned upon, but since people openly admit whether or not they do, I figured it was tolerated. Thank you in advance.
It's not frowned upon except for by some frumpy players. There are many ways to do it, and even more ways to get fancy. I use a no-frills setup: 2 accounts (sometimes I play 3) 1 keyboard 1 mouse 1 monitor Windows 7 Run EQ in Windowed Mode. Alt-tab out to the Desktop, or click the Taskbar if you prefer, and run the EQ launcher a second time. Log into the second account. Alt-tab or click taskbar windows to swap between the two instances. Congrats. You are now boxing. You can make things more complicated by adding computers, monitors, external programs...but those are all completely optional.
something new.... How about go out and get a group or even start a group with real people or other people.....
moogs, Thank you very much for your reply and answer. This is fantastic news. When reading through other threads, I was afraid "boxing" required another program to download, which is something I am 100% against. I did not know you can simply run the launcher again when playing in Windowed mode. I had a few more questions, and hope you do not mind answering them: 1) When running in Windowed mode, do you have both windows open at the same time, maybe utilizing 50% of the screen each? Or do you still have each window maximized, but having it Windowed mode makes it easier to Alt+Tab/Taskbar switch between Windows? 2) Do you mind sharing your computer specs? Off the top of my head, mine are: - Intel i7 Quad Core with Windows 7 - 16 GB of Ram - 2gb Video Card (can't remember company, I think AMD?) - 120gb SSD Yes, grouping would be ideal if I can find people to play with. I am asking more for a backup option in case the former idea does not pan out as I like.
I personally have them both in full screen (windowed) so only one character is viewable and alt-tab or click taskbar icons to switch. You can arrange your windows for a split screen view if you want to. WinEQ 2 arguably allows better controls for this. If you're new to boxing, try it out with a F2P account and see how you like it. It will take a little bit of getting used to. Grouping is strongly preferred. I usually team up with another boxer in my guild. We try the /LFG window, guild chat and general chat to fill the group. We like to have a full group for the social aspect, not because we need somebody else. Preference goes to lower level mains. The only time that I box all by myself is when I do not plan to be online long enough to start a real group. That lets me accomplish a quick task without inconveniencing somebody else. My computer turns 5 years old this month. It's a quad 2.4 Intel, 8 GB RAM, an SSD for the boot drive, and a workstation video card which is a few years old (Quadro 4000) but handles modern games exceptionally well. You will want about 2 GB RAM per EQ instance, and 1 GB for the OS. Minimize all background applications, pause antivirus scanner, etc. EQ is not exactly resource-intensive, so it should not be an issue even with older hardware but there are some things you should be aware of such as setting your background FPS to 60 in order to help auto /follow performance. Hope that helps. Edit: For the purpose of this thread, I typically box a Druid and Enchanter. Sometimes a Magician or Warrior on a 3rd account. Boxing spellcasters is much easier, only because of not having to deal with constant re-positioning on melee characters.
I two box a Wizard and Shammy and it works great. The Wizard has a Healer Merc and Shammy a Tank Merc. The main reason I chose those two was that they were my two highest toons when I returned to the game. I too prefer grouping vs boxing, but it is hard to find groups at the lower levels. My keys to two-boxing: * Dual Monitors. Well worth the investment I am amazed how much I use my two monitors, even when not gaming * Hot Keys for your most used commands/spells on each toon.
Dual monitors are great. One window on each. I had that until I bought a 30" monitor. EQ's UI components use up soooo much real estate. I love being able to see where I'm going instead of peering through a tiny gap between chat windows. Now I use the second monitor for browsing these forums and ZAM.
I have been running an SHD + CLR box setup for a really, REALLY long time. SHD does the tanking/pulling/snaring/dpsing (well he pretends), CLR does buffing/healing/rampage tanking. Is a no frills setup to be sure, the whole point of this setup is pure endurance with enough utility to get by. Can easily be seeing a lot of dps if I include 2 wiz or rog mercs though. But for instances/old raid zones where mercs aren't available, I can still endure through for a very, VERY long time. Sometimes I'll bring a 3rd box like a shaman or necro(or both for 4 boxes), but since you wanted to know about 2 boxing, I'm mostly mentioning that setup. As far as how to box goes, I've heard good things about [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software], but due to the fact I'm cheap I use wineq2. The window switching speed/practicality it offers alone is enough to be a good boxer. If you really get into it though, learn the art of making good hotkeys. Great few examples here using socials: /pause 30, /cast 1 /pause 30, /cast 2 /pause 30, /cast 3 /cast 4 /vtell 008 bob Casts 4 spells for you, sends a vtell to a player that doesn't exist so you don't get vtell echo, vtell tells you it is time to do something else on that toon. /cast 2 /stand /cast 2 /2 Casting Light on %t /cast 2 Casts a heal on player, practically immune to fd effects knocking box down unexpectedly, lets raid or group know what you doing. /cast 1 /cast 5 /cast 1 /cast 5 /cast 2 Casts 1 or 5 if they are up, 2 if neither are up, I use it to hold agro on SHD using 2 agro jolt spells and 1 agro over time spell (2).
If time invested did not matter to me, I would chose Shadow Knight - Pulls and tanks. Very good group tank to say the least. Shaman- Buffs, off heals/cures, some cc, slow/debuff, dps, and Adps(with both the sk, shaman pets, and rogue mercs the talisman proc's add up)
If you are going to maintain 2 accounts then 3 box. Heres why, If you already plan on paying for 2 you can make a third account thats pure silver and roll a bard. Just having a bard in your group with /melody on is HUGE. With that third being a bard your options open up greatly for to solid choices for the other 2.
