Box Setup

So i'm finally, after many years, trying my hand at boxing. Just running a 2 box at the moment and I'm wondering. Is SK/Bst or SK/Necro a better combo? The necro or the bst is eventually going to be my "main" once i get even remotely close to where everyone is these days. The SK is 85, bst is 86 and necro is 87. I wish i could three box it, but the necro and the bst are on the same acct.

Either box setup will work OK.

The beastlord would contribute some melee ADPS to the SK and would contribute their own DPS.

A necro would contribute DPS.

Both the necro and SK are somewhat difficult to box, the necro because you'll have a long string of DoTs to apply to each mob and the BST because it's fairly spam heavy and you would need to position them.

i would go with the beast over necro... the effort you have to put in to effectively get anything out of a necro is much more than a bst... at least if you want to be lazy with the boxing bst will do decent melee/pet attack damage.

Not what you asked, but I'm curious if any of the level 85-87 characters were heroic upgrades or if you have any heroic upgrades available. If so, I could see SK/Shaman + something or SK/Bard + something.

I used two heroics on the bst(which I had leveled to 73 before hand) and the SK, when I decided that I was finally gonna try boxing. The necro was my original first character when I decided to come back, so it was leveled the old fashioned way(and has it's epic 2.0)

If this is your first foray into boxing, I STRONGLY recommend a caster to pair with your SK. Personally, I would go Wiz or Mage. Why? Because the SK is going to require a lot of attention which means you have less focus to spend on the second character. So you want something a bit easier to manage. Wiz or Mage both have benefits and are somewhat easier to extract more DPS out of.

Someone suggested Bard. This is a waste of a Bard IMO. Bards' real strength is realized in a FULL group. With two players and two mercs, you simply are giving up too much DPS going Bard instead of a Wiz or Mage (or pretty much any other DPS class). Bards are nifty and neat, but you want as much brute force as possible for as little work possible.

It's somewhat cliche at this point, but choose whichever of those two classes you actually want to play as your main at max. It really does make a huge difference in terms of the amount of effort you will put towards it, and your enjoyment. I recently leveled a 5 box team that checked all the boxes of being good synergy wise, then slowly realized i wasn't actually interested in any of the characters and was gradually losing interest in playing because of that. When you grind for that aug or item that you really want on a character you care about, it's a completely different feeling than grinding or camping something just because you know you should.

Especially in your case where you've stated you definitely want one of the toons to be your eventual main when you catch up, pick the one that you want to play. Both will work, and you're far more likely to stay with it than you would be if you just pick something that is most efficient or easiest.

I would advise however, once you get a feel for boxing and whether or not you want to continue that, to bump up to a 3 box eventually. The amount of goodness you get just from fellowships is worth it imo, and with either of those setups something fairly easy to box and that does well FTP like a bard/mage/wiz etc. would fit well.

Having two heroic characters gives you some interesting options moving forward. When you say that you want to three box, does that mean you want three all access (gold) accounts?

Three boxing is a threshold. It gives you a fellowship and a full group with 3 mercs. It also lets you play tank+dps+utility/heal.