Effectiveness of this 7 box for the lazy?

My main group has a bard and a monk. I set the bard and monk next to each other and pull to them with the SK. I'm not getting max XP per hour but that's not critical to me. I rarely put them all on autofollow and move through a zone but whe I do, I run past the mob with the SK and turn around. The melees are positioned fine in that circumstance.

bingo~~

I use 3 characters & 3 mercs, I set the two boxes to /autofollow me (my Bard & Shaman), I use the Merc tank on my main account/pc so that if I need to reposition I can do it more easily, the boxes use a healer merc & a rogue merc.

Tag a mob, get into melee range of it myself moving to be opposite side of it to my boxes, I hit attack macro 1, then similar on my 2 boxes, one has a macro to attack/slow & debuff/pet attack the other has a macro to attack/swarm pet/bellow - mob dies. For Nameds I hit more macros to make it dead faster. I have multiple macros on my boxes to account for different situations (counterbias / single aa slow / ae aa slow for example).

Rinse & repeat.

As someone who has 6 boxed things like Tipt in the first week of GoD relase on Coirnav with SK, Cleric, Shaman, Bard, Mage, Wiz (previously Druid), I can tell you that if you want to 6 box the gnarliest content you will want a Warrior MT...period.

SK was great as the tank back when I was 2-3 boxing because with so few toons it's best to have versatile characters. When you start playing 5+ toons, you have enough tool kits that the specialists are king.

So start your group with Warrior, Cleric and Bard. This is the cornerstone of any end game group, and transitions perfectly into the foundation of a raid force. Snares can be handled with the Bard if needed, so don't pick a tank based on that...get the alpha tank to be the bedrock of the group.

If you want to charm, Enchanter is easily the best class to add until at least through PoP, and it isn't even a discussion. Not wanting to deal with a charm pet is completely understandable, but being able to mez more effectively than a Bard can come in handy. Clarity potions and bard songs make their primary buffs a bit useless, so if you don't charm they will essentially be mez bots and nothing else.

Monk is the other god class, and the only DPS that compares is Ranger between Luclin and perhaps GoD/OoW when they are easy archery turret DPS. I've seen folks use auto-follow to do very well with multiple Monks in their box group, but it isn't something I would want to hassle with. The payoff is huge though because Monks stay god DPS from Classic through DoDarkhollow (the current Coirnav expansion I have experience with).

If you're like me and don't want to manage melee DPS as a box, Mage, Necro and Wizard offer super easy DPS with nukes and pets. Necro DoTs seem wasted on fast killing groups, same with Wizard nukes for the most part. Mage seems the best to me since the pet is constant DPS, and CotH is invaluable while moving a box crew around. Some people are very good at moving toons around, but I always ran into issues where it was super convenient to simply CotH stranded toons to the group...like all the time. Ports/evacs from the Wizard are also really useful, as I hate running my box crew all around (hello Siren's Grotto).

Having a 2nd healer is also nice, so I like to have a Shaman or Druid in the group. Shaman is redundant if you have an Enchanter already, but the buffs are very nice, especially once OoW rolls around. Druid offers a bit more quick DPS, Dire Charm is nice through PoP, and ports are great if you don't have a Wizard.

If I were to roll all 6 over on a new server that I planned to play on for 2+ years, I would go Warrior, Cleric, Bard, Shaman, Mage, Wizard. That's mainly because I prefer no melee boxes, no charming, ports/evacs, and CotH...this is the convenience package that sacrifices killing power for ease of use.

If I were to build the ultimate shredder group and was willing to deal with melee boxes, the 6 would be Warrior, Cleric, Bard, Shaman, Monk, Monk. I would deal with no ports and just rip through all content with insane sustained DPS. Hardcore players will probably prefer this type of setup over the convenience package I prefer.

Disagree. I've been using SK tank for 101 levels on Phinny. I can only remember one named I just gave up on because I didn't have enough tank, and that was an undercon named that a warrior probably wouldn't have been able to tank, either.

Interesting. I was unable to tank Chardok Royals during Kunark, ToV during Velious, or Nijacka during GoD with a top end geared SK until I was decked out with current era raid gear...when it didn't matter anymore to box that content. I'm confident I could have with a Warrior the moment each expansion opened.

Perhaps I was doing something wrong though, and furious/defensive weren't actually useful discs against top end content.

They're not very useful in a 6-7 box setup because any hard fight is going to last longer than those disciplines. If you can only stay alive when the discipline is active then you'll die when it goes inactive. Having a second cleric is far more useful than the difference between a warrior and a knight

Those are raid mobs. Granted, they aren't full-on raid mobs but in original EQ we had 2-3 groups minimum to take the royals. I understand that they can be single-grouped in current TLPs. I would like to be able to tell you that I tanked the royals in-era but the truth is that, as a 5-boxer, I couldn't effectively split the rooms to get the King or Queen solo.

Having said that, I tanked (and 5-boxed) all the epic 1.5 mobs for Shaman, Monk, Cleric, and SK in-era. The toughest of those was the SK fight in Western Wastes. It took me a few tries.

Well if you have ever seen me 6 box you have seen manual boxing. You setup your 10 key pad with complex well written macros with delays. If you want to mix in the melee kicks and such before /autoskill I find it is best to make macros that kick twice and hit them as needed in the fight. Most mobs only require one extra cycle of button presses past the initial go macro.

You either run the tank thru the mob and turn around, if you are moving around with the team, or if you are in a steady camp it is often easier to park them as others have described. Any kind of additional foot speed is usually a functional debuff while towing a full set. I hardly ever buff for movement speed when killing.

My name has been Ahze on Phinny, Coirnav, and Selo. What is your main's name? Have we met?

And yes, the large majority of players cannot tell if a boxer is cheating or not. I've been reported dozens of times, investigated by GM's often. I have had conversations with two GM that came to bust me cheating. I've never been punished in any way for boxing. I just don't cheat. Yet I've been accused of cheating innumerable times by the ignorant.

Control setup -
https://imgur.com/a/XnDKsVe

yes but how many mages or necros you run at the same time?

Why 7? One person is always never getting exp and if your doing Raid exp your entire crew is getting really terrible exp.