Hello all. New player here with a question about buff classes and boxing. I just started playing the game on live with a 3 box crew: SK / Wiz / Bard For mercs, I'm using a healer on my SK, and tanks on the other two. This has been great, but I am open to suggestions. (I should note that only my SK account is Silver, the other two are F2P). Got to level 40 so far and everything has been a breeze (except when my mercs fall through the bridge over the water in City of Mist and come running back with half the zone in tow). The Bard is really nice because of the song buffs, and it got me thinking...I want to make a second 3 box team that is focused on buffing my main team. I also just want to try out other classes, but this gives me an excuse. My main question: Which classes have the best buffs that would compliment my current team, without being too redundant? I am talking about just buffs here, not so much running around adventuring. I plan on parking this team in the guild lobby to buff my main team before they head out. I have been reading at Allakhazam until my eyes bleed. It looks like Shamans, Clerics, Druids, and Enchanters might be good choices? I would love to get some informed opinions here. Thanks in advance!
Your current set up is nice but I would switch out at least one of the merc tanks with a caster merc. The buff team I have is Paladin (for one buff - brells lol) Shaman and Enchanter. I feel the shaman is some of the better buffage out there. But I am a ranger and can cover a lot of the shield stuff etc. So maybe go ranger/shaman/enchanter. Rangers are handy when you need to find mobs or get foraged stuff. Being Silver and F2P should not affect the buffs that much since there doesn't appear to be a huge difference between the normal spell and the RK 2 or RK3 which require paid accounts or the thing in the marketplace. I wouldn't bother worrying about getting the RK 2 stuff. I did go gold/all access on my main (ranger) so I could run the better merc as a healer. That worked well up into the 100's but now I have a few paid accounts just for other perks. Then I have my "transport team" - wiz , mage (COH) and druid.
The cleric merc will cover the big hitpoint and AC buff. - Shaman gives LOTS of good melee buffs, including a whole new hitpoint boost to all. - Enchanter gives mana regen, big time as well as melee haste (which you are missing). - Beastlord gives mana regen as well as attack boost. The wizard will be only as good as you have mana regen. You have a bard and SK to pump mana to the wizard. Adding the enchanter and beastlord (to the SK too) will be amazing. The shaman is a melee buff powerhouse. It will do your SK (and bard) proud.
You all are some great folks, all this advice is just what I needed! I didn't even think about the idea that the healer merc's buffs would be the same as a Cleric's. It looks like I am solid with Shaman and Enchanter. Now I guess I need to research Beastlord and Ranger to see which way I want to go for the third slot. Are there other buff classes I should contemplate? On my main team I will also try swapping out one of the tank mercs for a caster and see how that goes, so thanks for that suggestion.
Tank mercs can carry your group to the 50s, which you'll be at very quickly. Buff wise, enc and sha are going to be huge. Your best third choice is going to be either beastlord (mana regen) or ranger(melee buffs) I would pick beastlord. That, the enchanter buffs and the bard will let your wizard and sk really cut loose on spells with minimal downtime.
Beastlords mana regen is same as enchanter's. Well not the same but that would be 2 characters with same line of regen. Of them all only the ranger has floaty and or speed, a couple nice skin spike buffs and strength if you don't have a pally around. Plus group cammo.
Beastlord mana (and hitpoint) regen spell line stacks with enchanters' spell line. It's really good. OP, to be honest, to make your buff bots exceptional good buffers, you'll need to level them up and get AAs for them. You'll spend massive amount of time creating the buff bots, likely more than you'll end up saving on the original characters. You might consider turning the buff bots into main characters. Ex: SK, Enchanter, Shaman is a solid combo and a buffing dream.
In general, the better the buff the shorter the duration. A Magician casts some really strong fire based damage shields but they are short duration and don't exactly last the night<my night anyway>. Long term a mid level Ranger gets some good buff that last a long time. Druid spells like Share Wolf Form, an attack and run speed spell, don't cross zone lines at least for the illusion part. That kind of sums up what I wanted to add. To get the really good buffs from lower level characters you really need them in the zone. Rule of thumb for buff monkeys is you want them ~20 levels above your characters to have the most effect. It's OK to use ~Heroic store bought level 85 character for buffs but they have to throttle back their spells to the level 60ish one for them to stick on your main party. Recently I've been leveling up my characters on FV. I did downplay the Druid and talk up the Enchanter but as soon as I got my Druid's level 86 Harmony type spell things got much better. Still great to have an Enchanter and Shaman along of course but I am OK with current mainstream using a Druid for now. In a group he just adds stuff or missing pieces. If you are taking down fire resistant MOBs for instance, Druid damage shields and bug DOTs actually work better then nothing. Useless of course if they aren't in the same zone helping out. You'll find yourself carrying a lot of potions to use when the buffs wear off with your planned Guild Lobby group anyway. You can always run a Shaman up to level 30 and use them to make potions for just about everything from damage shields to manna generation and you don't have to take the Shaman along to use them.
Perhaps because damage shield may be available by potion no one is discussing this. There are two stacking categories. I will call them white and red. The best of the white is the Magician line. Druids and Rangers also cast white damage shield. Rangers are the only class who cast red damage shield. Rangers have other buffs that make things go better too.
These damage shields...are they different than the ones my Wizard casts? Would the Ranger's shield 'stack' with my Wizard's?
So this: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/EQ:Items_Clicky_Buffs_DS is an old list. But it does talk about damage shields and has a small mention of mage, druid and ranger ds spells and what SLOT those are. The reason some damage shields stack (and some don't) are because of the SLOT number the effect has. Most primary damage shields (mage, druid, wizard, enchanter, and one line of ranger) use SLOT 1 and are not compatible with each other. DS potions and the other ranger DS line use SLOT 2. Druid and Ranger self only ds buffs are SLOT 3. ...and as you can see by the list, there are a number of items that can grant ds as well. The SLOT number is the next to last column.
For your buff team Druid brings damage shield, Track, Druid teleports, and later in levels some mana regen.
Since I have been seeing some characters last couple expansions hit max AA quickly I took a page out of the PLers book and have two groups at my grind spot(s). One is the tank group (non exp) and the other is the dps group (exp group with 2 to 4 characters I want to improve with level or AA). To assist with this, I have enchanter and shaman MGBs that work out quite nicely. It's nice not to have to micromanage the buffs or gate\stein back to GH or POK for a buff. Also MGB on pally is usually available. The only thing I have to slightly micromanage buffwise these days are some ranger stuff since my current project(s) involve fartin around with what kind of dps I can squeeze out of 1-2 rangers under various circumstances.
