Switching up my 3 box team. Currently it’s tank (SK/Warrior) / Chanter / Mage. I know I’ll catch crap for this but: I’m looking to get rid of my Tank and let the Mage pet tank in his place. Reasoning: I’m tired of gearing up tanks lol and I’d like to have a more DPS oriented group. With my Chanter, I don’t need to worry about pulling multiples. Or I can pull multiples and just have them staged to take down one at a time. Now given that, I was thinking either BST or Druid. Now I know how well a Druid synergizes in this group set up. Plus their utility is nothing to look past either, not their decent DPS. But was wondering if adding in a BST that would give me a second back up tank and even more DPS would almost be the better choice? I’m just focusing on group content. Pushing progression while just slaying things. Any/all advice welcome
When you realize that you mage pet has huge problems holding agro, you will regret putting your real tank on the back burner. Real tanks are worth all the pain and effort. But, if you really can't stand the real tank, I would pick druid. Mage pets can't out agro a beastlords melee. At least druids can cast with spell casting subtlety.
I have done both trios and mage/chanter/druid was a lot more successful for me. Druid adds ports/evac, snare, spot healing/rezzing, fire debuff, group sow, group HoT and tracking. Plus does decent DPS with Dots and nukes. You have enchanter already providing slow, haste and mana regen. You can single pull or mez so off-tanking pet not really needed. Sometimes when tracking down a Named, I pull with druid. Really fun trio. I only wish pets could be given roll of Main Tank so druid could target it with a healing macro.
You would have to set one of your extended target slots to the pet, and then use /xtarget # to heal the pet. You have to set the extended target again if you zone out, log, or resummon the pet though. It still works.
At one point I played a Mage/Enchanter/Druid trio to 86. It was a very solid team and I am sure I could have taken it much further. However, I discovered that an all-caster group wasn't for me. Standing back and wiggling my fingers just didn't feel like it was "me" who was playing the game. It's something to consider when dropping your only melee character and going all-caster. Perhaps it will work better for you than it did for me. Apparently it does for many people.
The snare alone makes Druid worth it. Having the awesome back up healing with the simple touch of a hot key is an added bonus. Don't listen to the tank purists about a proper Mage pet being miles away from a "real tank." I've mainlined a Mage from launch, and I promise you a well played/geared/AA'd pet (don't forget swarm pets as well) comes shocking close in effectiveness to a group "real" tank. Of COURSE, a geared/auged human tank will be better, but not by THAT much. I play with plenty of amazing tanks, and they constantly tease me about how well my pet tanks. As for aggro control, there's almost nothing you can't handle with a 'Chanter in your team. I played Mage/Enchanter/Bard forever, and there was almost nothing I couldn't handle with a little planning and mastery of the classes. I often thought of swapping the Bard for a Druid, but I became used to the masterful pulling ability of the Bard and painful ease of boxing a Bard (though, Druid is a nice box class as well). I vote for DRUID all the way, and dominate everything in your path!
Aye, going full caster group would probably be the hardest obstacle for me to overcome as I prefer to be an in your face kind of player. But! As long as I have a toon I can focus on and not just hit macro 1 and macro 2 and afk, I think I'll be okay. Well they're not wrong...a PC tank is able to react to variables that get added to any fight a lot better and their reaction time is usually far superior (assuming you're a half way decent tank which I would like to consider myself as..). And having a well geared (albeit even just group geared) tank class allows you to push the envelope in the game, which is all great and grand and all. But I'm not pushing content...I've honestly spent the last week farming EoK t2 gear for my Warrior so I can work on RoS t2 gear and surpass my Conflag gear (I'm okay with the Mage/Chanter sitting in RoS t1/Conflag). But as it stands now, I'd just like to be able to go "faster" in the game. And part of that issue for me is being a little lackluster in the DPS department. I feel like I do just fine for myself...but I know I could be doing a lot better by replacing my Tanker. It's a hard choice, but I'm halfway leaning towards the Druid as most are agreeing with.
I have a lvl 110 mage. I can say for sure that the pets can't hold agro vs. melee players. Like I said before, if you are just using priests and casters you can get by. Also, you won't be doing a lot of DPS with your mage. The only thing that keeps the mage pet alive is the mage casting shielding spells and heals once in a while. Player tanks... are far... far... better. But hey do whatever you want.
I think your main gain with druid over warrior is track, since warrior can dps decently, and I will agree with going with the warrior. I would also suggest you add a melody bard, the adps and mana regen is fantastic. When you hit 6+ pets, the mage spell Of Many becomes the best mage nuke. So if you think you can manage the bst, and is open to adding the bard on top, then I would suggest building a pet-centric group. I used to play mostly boxing a pet group, a brief example below:
Nice boxing setup you got there. I'm nowhere near that level. What classes did you have in group? Looks like you were boxing 4 mages and a bard?
You're playing your Mage poorly. Of course, I'm not a Wizard, but I'm close. I'm always at the top of our raid parses.
I don't mean to be rude, but I'd have to agree with Sagarmatha. My mage does pretty darn good in the DPS department. And with correct AAs / gear / weapons, my mage pet (air/water) hold aggro just fine. Granted I can steal it back in a second on the Warrior if I wanted to, but that's another matter. Another thing one needs to look at whilst using an Earth pet, is they cast a root. While rooted, mobs will attack the closet person/thing to them if their #1 aggro is too far away. Stand at max melee range with melee toons and you don't have an issue with aggro.
Mage/ENC/DRU will rock socks depending on your ability to play those 3 well and the EM you can get your Mage. I'm currently set up as Mage/ENC/WIz/DRU and it's amazing. I use Water pet to tank nd even the ENC pet is viable with maxed AA's. I use the ENC pet to take the initial hits on pulls. DRU do have Snare but also BST pets have Snare. One down side to the BST over DRU is constant positioning.
sorry if i have missed any haves/must-haves here in thsi thread as I'm a little distracted right now, but this part stuck out to me most. I dont feel like a druid or beastlord replacing the tank will help that much here really. tanks these days also have pretty good DPS, especially with appropriate ADPS. there's a whole thing about warriors beating DPS classes' parses to me, moving faster in game means not just killing mobs faster with DPS, but killing multiple at a time. maybe just my perception, but the transitions back and forth between combat and rest are the most time-consuming thing, whether it's regrouping, single pulling, any pulling... the more you minimize the downtime, the faster things move. the problem with pet tanking, as i understand it, is that you need to single pull and then set up again for every each pull. let me know if you feel differently, or if i'm wrong, as i don't play a magician very well are you open to boxing more than three? if so, I feel it's best to keep a tank and stack on more DPS classes, probably a wizard since you already have an enchanter and magician. their synergies work very well with each other for boosting DPS.
Well I'm an alt+tabber. I don't use a program like Ibliz does So I'm usually maining at least 1 character - depending on the situation depends on which one. Multiple mobs = Chanter. Namer = Warrior. Quick kills = Mage. And for me, there isn't much down time. When mobs hit about 20% health I'll pull another. With or without playing a tank. If things get dicey, mobs get mezzed and I whittle away 1 at a time if need be. So unless mobs are scarce, there's usually one in reserve. And tanking multiples with a Mage pet tank is tricky but can be done. For me I'll have the pet tanking a mob. Let mob get to 60% health, and use the chanter to pull/debuff another mob. Stun DD, then sick mage pet in on him. Pet still has aggro on first mob, and picks up aggro on second mob while DoTs and Mage + mercs take down the first mob. When first one dies, second one is already underway and HP is dropping fast. Has 2-3 DoTs on him, Mage transfers over and starts blasting away with mercs while Chanter goes and grabs another one. Rinse and repeat. Now pulling multiples at a time can get you in trouble...but chain pulling...as long as you're active and on top of it with the Mage, you can be fighting 2-3 at a time fairly easily/consistently. Now I'll admit, when trying 3, I've gotten myself in trouble with aggro. But that's also why the Chanter has all his runes/combat innates up And while the Enchanter is decent DPS/aDPS, the latest nerfs hurt a little bit. So using him to stack a few DoTs/debuffs while pulling as the other two toons + mercs kill mobs means I'm not missing out on too terribly much. Main issue with being an alt tabber with a Warrior as a main is that I'm usually on him while tanking multiples just to make sure I can fire off discs/AAs properly if things get dicey and damage starts spiking for whatever reason. This reduces reaction time / cast time on my DPS toons (yes I have them set up with macros/hot buttons but nonetheless). And while the Warrior is decent DPS in his own regards, I feel like the Druid may be able too add more aDPS to the group and just more DPS output himself (especially over the warrior), even if he's just set up with hot buttons / macros while I focus on the Mage for the most part.
Gotcha... well as long as you have ways to make it work, that's fine. I was just using the analogy of a supermarket checkout line. One guy with 100 items is going get serviced faster than 100 guys with one item each. As long as you find ways to minimize those ramp-up and ramp-down periods and stay in the groove of combat, it works. That said, I still want to say wizard instead of druid... it's even more DPS. But if you definitely want a druid or beastlord, definitely the druid!
It's been my experience that if you want: to be "in your face" do group content which generally requires tanking avoid having to gear up/AA a tank your options are somewhat limited. A BST is one possible compromise: you have a built-in tank and emergency heals you are meleeing you have decent DPS your gear requirements are modest: EM + weapons, the rest is less important The downsides are: pet tanking limitations, which you are already familiar with BSTs are a busy class, which leaves less time for other boxed characters I haven't played a BST in anything approaching current content, so there may be other issues which I am not aware of.
I was really speaking about group content. Mages can do great dps, but in a box group with the mage pet tanking your dps will suffer a bit.
Not entirely. At 110 you can use your Air/Water pet to tank trash mobs just fine (then suspend and bring out earth pet for namers if need be). And in group content, most mobs are dead before my mage can finish his rotation off of a macro set up ^.^ But technically you're not wrong either. A boxed character loses out on a crap ton of potential, regardless of using a program to help or how efficient you are at tabbing.
