Box Question Please

Hello there, Me and another friend have recently started playing on Xegony server and were going to box our own group together. We are looking to play three each. We are both All access so have the better mercs.

My question is should we play three toons and have the mercs cover healing or tanking, or is it much better to play the trinity ourselves. We have only been playing about three weeks on Mangler and we wanted to make our own grps and try the non tlp servers.

My friend was leaning more toward playing his main toon a Rogue with a merc and me playing the other four. I just am not sure what the best set up would be for the most success as we get to higher level.

Any advice is appreciated thank you.

Merc tanks are useless at higher levels. If you are good at boxing and are attentive, healer characters will easily outpace healer mercs by a wide margin, and you can use boxing tools like inner space boxer to help. There will be a lot of difficult content that the healer mercs will fail at (movement, AE damage, cleansing etc) that you'll have to outclass and beat only through brute force.

I would not recommend your buddy roll a rogue solo. Rogue + merc make a poor combination and he will be unable to do much of anything without help. If he does not box I'd recommend a class that solos / molos well. Shadowknight, beastlord, mage etc do well.

My recommendation is that you two put together a team that synergizes well with each other but can be played effectively apart. It should include at least one plate tank, either a bard or an enchanter, a tracker and at least one healer. If you have a playstyle or classes that you want to include we can give recommendations.

If you want to see videos of a box group, you can check out my thread:
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/tucos-setup-critique-welcome.240258/

WoW thank you so much very helpful, I am looking to play Shadowknight and Cleric as my main two with dps mercs for now. I think if I make two free accounts i can play caster dps like Mage and Wizard to macro assist me with nukes and pet instead of mercs. I will see if he will play Enchanter that would help me allot.

TYVM again

We all have different opinions and play styles in this game so to give you a perspective of a casual boxer -

I 3 box. Using my main, 109 ranger with J5 healer merc and 108 enchanter with J5 tank merc. The third spot is where I will throw in another lower level 80-100 paid or free with usually a caster merc.

That merc tank has been able to stay alive with that merc healer since around level 100 in FM while tanking named. Keep in mind that when people say that merc cannot tank or heal they are probably talking about the highest zone in the game atm or some other reason. Mercs don't do well on raids at all (that's sarcasm since they are not allowed to join raids).

I would suggest that you make sure if your using a tank or healer as a merc that you use those on paid accounts and get the J5's. They are good mercs. *this message provided by the MErc Too movement

Otherwise the combination is really up to what you feel comfortable playing and what works out. I had been leveling up an SK to take my paladins place in the group but with the recent exp bonus I made my shaman heroic (level 85 pop) and he is already level 104 and a ton of fun. But most people would flame me for using a shaman with an enchanter in the same group. But I can see the drop in the damage out put and with the shaman in the group we do have a hard time maintaining the level of killing the other combinations produce.

Two boxing my 110 bard/wizard the highest progression where a tank merc will work is in TBM and it's quite sketchy there to say the least.

You can get by with a merc healer if your tank is good but merc tanks are a special kind of bad. You can brute force it into working if you're using a merc tank but it's a lot harder than with a player tank and a merc healer

Get a G15 or similar keyboard - learn how to setup the hotkeys, it makes boxing a breeze!

https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Gaming-Backlit-Programmable-Buttons/dp/B0086UK7IQ also makes things much easier. Hell, it makes every game much easier. Last week I installed Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy and set up the thumb buttons with the 12 force powers.