hiya I had a few questions regarding warriors and also tank mercs .. ive read alot of posts on warriors and could not quite find what i was looking for .. i know everyone will have an opinion on how they play and thats fine. I'm a sponge and would enjoy reading whatever input you guys have.. Especially where f2p tank mercs doing current content if that is even possible . ok a bit about my box crew .. I have 5 silver accounts and my main which more than likely will be gold 95% of the time so 6 accounts total.. now atm most of my toons are lvl high 80's to low 90's but please come at this as if my toons were all lvl 105 and max TBM group gear augs and prolly 5k aa's with autogrant.. now I know my f2p accounts will have to go gold once to get autogranted thats fine .. my 6th f2p account will more than likely stay outside the group and just add to dps as he can and i'll rotate him into group every now and then .. my Main account will eventually be 105 cleric main healer /puller and using a tank t5Journeyman merc .. my 2nd account f2p also is my 105 mage with 10k aa's 3rd account f2p is atm only 86 enchanter 4th account f2p is my 96 druid 5th account f2p is either gonna be shaman or wizzy and 6th account f2p (the one outside of group) another mage .. now the reason im thinking of 6 boxing is because i feel that if i 3 box and use 3 mercs the mercs will only be apprentice T5 and im guessing an actual bot toon would be better than an A5 merc ? if im wrong please let me know .. now here's where i need some help .. Im pretty sure with my main cleric as healer plus the debuffs +slow and a back up heal or 2 from druid/or shammy my cleric should be able to keep JT5 merc up pretty good up through TDS even on most named and if tank merc does go down mage pet will pick up slack.. if i come to a mission/task that is just to difficult for tank merc I do have a warrior i can lvl up on my Main account meaning he will be gold access or I can make him on a f2p account and still have my cleric main healing .. can a gold access Cleric keep a f2p warrior healed and can that warrior tank current content up thru TBM with all non prestige augs and current group gear with all aa's needed .. I was reading on f2p non prestige augs and there are alot of them out there plus there is like 10 AC augs from TBM that are 40+ ac and all are non prestige so if my warrior were to get all those plus some other 35+ augs could he tank current content named with his discs and aa's and a real main cleric healing him and a JT5 cleric merc ? sorry in advance for any spelling or grammer mistakes .. thank you again for reading my post and posting feedback hopefully positive
based on what I've read, your 105 mage earth pet is a better tank than a tank merc. I would not want the tank on the same account as the cleric - being forced to choose either your best healer or best tank is not an ideal plan. I personally would want at least 1 cleric merc if boxing to catch the heals when I'm on another toon and the mob gets a good round or I catch a lag spike. Cleric / Mage / Ench / Wiz should make a very solid 4 box team once all are up to 105 and up to speed on AA's. With those 4 you could add 1 healer merc as backup and 1 caster dps merc and you should go smoothly. If you want a tank to play consistently with the group, SK seems to be the most common choice for box group tank, although any of the 3 should work. War's are probably the fastest of the three to get up and running. SK's & Pal get a lot of spells & spell based AA along the way.
Tank class >> mage earth pet >> merc tank. I would not take two mages in the same group. A /melody bard will bring a lot more to the mix with no effort, and even more with some effort involved. Your group setup would need a slower. Shaman is a GREAT class, but it takes attention. Mage earth pet with shaman bufs and a lot of group AA can tank most if not all group content (slowed) pre EoK. You can also go for a chanter for slower. Choosing between druid or wiz, I would suggest the wiz, especially if you already have a shammy or a cleric. We play 4 toons 2 people: mage, shammy, bard, enchanter, healer merc and caster dps merc. There is some overlap in abilities, but the classes work fantastic together. If I had to add a class, I would add a SK. We have a lower level druid for ports, but we don't level him anymore (he is 94). We can do a gribble in 22 mins, which is pretty OK, without being mindblowing in any way. I have tried multi-maging, but it gets old fast. The versatility of having more classes is preferable, and allows to solve more situations. Remember to use a boxing tool like isoboxer, and to make a system where you make multibind hotkeys on all classes you play, so that hitting one key will activate a large number of related abilities. If you are not firing most of your AA during group play, you are leaving a significant resource untapped. And it is fun designing the setup
A live (or boxed) healer, and a live (or boxed) tank make a huge difference. Mercs suck. A bad dps merc is just bad dps. A bad tank/healer gets you dead. So if you're gonna box I'd suggest your first 2 classes to focus on are tank and healer. That could be mage pet and healer if you're going that way. But tank and healer.
My experience is that Merc healer is really good, but it is imperative that you block some of the bad healing spells on your pet. Before I did that, the healer merc was almost useless. If we have a hard situation, we put one healer merc on reactive, and have the other merc be a healer as well, on balanced. Multibind your ½-key with 3 pet runes (Aegis, Auspice, Stance), and you are good to go. It is of course also imperative that all AA goes to pet tanking and pet dps (for aggro).
A healer merc is not good. I rarely drop below 80% with a real healer (which could be a pally even). With a merc I'm hitting 20%. This is modern info, both situations this week in same gear. I was dumb enough to join a group with a healer merc as a healer. We did win, but it was ugly.
My recommendation as someone who boxes a war, mage and bard: 1. You've got your cleric main, and that's a great core to any boxed group. But do you have an affinity to any other classes? Do you really like your 105 mage? Do you want to keep your enchanter? 2. If you're ambivalent about the classes besides the cleric, my recommendation would be to add an SK to your group. Warriors are great too (my main), but have less utility in groups. 3. Next, choose between an enchanter, shaman or bard. All three can buff melee, shamans have great slows and can supplement healing, enchanters/bards can buff casters, enchanters have great CC and bards have track/runspeed. My preference is a bard. 4. With a cleric/tank/buffer, you've got a threebox team that can do most of the content in the game. Next you've got to seriously question how good at boxing you'll be, and how much time you'll be able to dedicate to that mage to set up their rotation. In difficult fights you'll be spending a lot of time shared between your cleric and your tank, and in my opinion only a skillful, very efficient and dedicated boxer will outpace caster DPS merc on a fourth box. Additionally, every character you add is another one you need to drag around, gear up, allocate AAs to, learn how to play etc. It's a lot of work, so I wouldn't roll out a 6man group lightly. My recommendation is to just get 3 caster DPS mercs. If you do add a fourth, the mage is a great choice because the water pet offers decent sustained DPS (and earth/air pets can offtank), mages are fairly simple to set up a DPS rotation for and mages also have Call of the Hero which makes moving around complex maps as a boxed group much easier. Re: healer mercs, Bigstomp is 100% correct that a real healer blows a merc out of the water in a variety of ways, but one convenient aspect of healer mercs vs tank mercs is that they stack effectively. If a fight requires more healing you can drop a DPS merc and get another healer merc and improve your healing output. But you can't have two tank mercs that fuse together into a better tank!
Agreed, real healer >> merc healer, I should have added that I meant that also. I am still quite impressed with a merc healer, but ONLY if you block the slow casting spells. If you do not, you are in severe risk of dying . This hazzle-free healing is great, we play with two healer mercs currently, and I do often use the pet runes. But we can make it work, which is fantastic, since we do not have a real tank.
Try playing a tank who gets real healers night in and night out. A healer merc is like a healer who heals as well as your dps merc dps's. Which means not very much. I'm ok with that, a merc can fill a role in a pinch. But you're working with sub par healing. Sub par tanking. Or total crap dps depending on your merc choice.
There are a couple of ways. If you know the names of the spells you want blocked, go to your EQ button in your UI. There is a blocked spells for player and pet there. Type in the names of the spells you want blocked. The other way is a macro and you need the spell ID numbers for that.
