1. SK/BRD/SHM 2. SK/BRD/BST 3. SK/BRD/MAG If you could list a pro/cons for each team as well, would be great.
1 let's you heal, slows monsters so you only take 1/3-1/2 the damage in the first place. 2 You may have to use a merc healer. Just me maybe, BST could heal the pet if the pet could tank. I just don't think this would be a real viable strategy. BST will certainly contribute more melee DPS then a SHM. 3 Still needs a healer merc IMHO but you would be dropping monsters much faster with BRD and pets hacking while the MAG burns. Mage can cast a decent damage shield on the tank. I think the damage output rate makes up for having to use a merc. Pet is capable of tanking and MAG can heal their pets. SK isn't terrible soaking up heals. They get some life taps and vampire type spells that can keep up with the damage they take. Having at least one healer Merc isn't onerous either. Cuts in half the number of buffs the other characters have to use, will rez party members, that kind of stuff. SK is a really good character to be the focus of any group right now. Doesn't come into play until everyone is over 50, but MAG can summon lots of toys which will make the otherwise weak SK pet almost bearable. Any group focused around a SK is going to be good. You could have 4. SK, dead squirrel, imaginary friend, and the group would still do great with a merc or two.
You're likely to want a merc cleric in the party as an extra healer for difficult content regardless of which setup you pick. so I'll ignore that for now. SK/BRD/SHM This is the safe option. You have all the defensive support classes you'll ever realistically need. When farming trivial content you can fill the group out with three wizard mercs and laugh as they blast your foes into oblivion with bard buffs, while the SK and shaman do plenty of healing. You are unlikely to go wrong with this setup. One thing to note is that this setup is going to put a lot of the responsibility for defense and healing onto you when you aren't using a cleric merc, and you're going to need to be ready to win fights by attrition when you are using one (you don't have a lot of good options for either emergency offtanking or burning down mobs in a hurry). Your DPS against content that requires a cleric merc is not going to be all that high (though two wizard mercs with bard support is still a fine hunk of DPS in itself). SK/BRD/BST This setup appeals to me because it has the most entities making use of the bard's melee damage proc songs (e.g. the Song of the Storm line, Arcane Chorus line, and Noira's Song of Suffering line). In total you have the SK, SK pet, BL, BL pet, and bard itself all able to melee and get procs in, which is going to put out some serious DPS. Ditto that for making use of the bard's overhaste songs/auras. (The BST's good swarm pets even benefit from the aura haste.) The beastlord can also do a trick where he casts a short-cast-time single target haste buff (like Alacrity) on his own werewolf swarm pet once it's summoned, gaining much higher DPS from it in exchange for a very minimal investment of mana, and that will stack nicely with the bard aura. (If you're using boxing software like [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software], you can easily hotkey the process of casting the haste). If you plan on taking the game slowly and spending a lot of time being a completionist about quest arcs as you progress, then this setup should be a lot of fun, as your DPS will be impressive and you won't really feel an urge to change what mercs you're running depending on how hard content is (a cleric merc will always be fine to have and two wizard mercs will fill your other slots just fine in 95%+ of cases). Also, don't choose this setup if you would be frustrated by waiting for shaman buffs for your SK in the guild lobby (or don't otherwise have an easy source of shaman buffs). SK/BRD/MAG This one can create the largest possible damage shield on the SK, so if you want to swarm-tank weenies for lots and lots of exp and plats, this is a possible pick (though the shaman with defensive proc slow is better for actually surviving the swarm). Other than that, I feel like the magician isn't a great pick for this composition, mostly because it isn't providing that much synergy. The bard will help the magician's DPS (especially the overhaste aura's synergy with Rampaging Servant type swarm pets), but my guess is that it would help the beastlord's DPS more. The mage's pet toys will help the SK pet, but SK pets are still (at best) tied for being the weakest permanent pets in the game even with pet toys, and nothing is likely to change that. The bard already will be doing far more to make the pet useful from a DPS standpoint than the toys will. The toys will definitely help the pet be sturdier, but... this is an SK pet we're talking about. If you let that pet get aggro from an unslowed mob in current content, my expectation is that no amount of pet toys will keep it from splatting, and then you're back to re-gearing the poor thing again. (Grab a few Muzzle of Mowcha from the bazaar before departing for adventure if you'd like to give the SK pet some extra haste in the absence of the magician though.) One extra perk of this setup is that it does give you the option of killing the mage, using the bard or SK to drag the corpse to a funky camp past see-invis foes, and then summon a cleric merc to rez before using the mage to CotH the other character inside. But honestly, since you have both a fader and a feigner already (SK and bard), you can already use a corpsedrag + rez on the other party member anyway (in the handful of situations where you might actually want to do so). And of course, CotH is a nice spell in general, and magicians do have the advantage of being rather easy to box (particularly if you use this magician as an entirely DPS-focused water pet + nuker character with the SK controlling positioning to give the water pet the right setup for backstabbing).
The BL is the worst choice IMO (mage would do more DPS, shm could be close while bringing more buff/debuff, heals). Both box will just shew trough content easely, leveling a shaman give you buff gor your other char later on, mage would kill faster assuming you won't use the shaman as a healer.
1. Safe option. Easy, low maintenance box setup. You get buffs, slows, heals with the shaman. Can also CC some. Can manage without mercs. 2. More Dps. You still get slows and shaman level of focus. You lose some shaman buffs, but gain SE, SV and Fero. Pet can tank when needed. RF for dps burns. Requires more maintenance for positioning 3 melee classes. 3. Good dps. Roughly the same as option 2. You lose slows and buffs. You gain DS & CotH. Pet can tank when needed. Coth is nice for convenience. Run the mage....coth the rest to him to save time when doing alot of zoning. Fairly easy maintenance with hotbuttons. Less worries about positioning. To conclude...it really depends how active you are as boxer, and play style. Most would probably choose option 1 or 3 cause of convenience/ease of use. My 2 cp.
Between AC song (which last i checked functions as gear AC as opposed to buff AC) and bard slow you dont lose much with a bard Vs a shaman if anything at all.
Imo then Shaman would make the optimal combination of the 3 options listed ... even when it comes to DPS (I am assuming 2 melee mercs being used here), since once get to the higher levels a shaman also brings always-available group haste(which also applies to melee mercs - potions do not), group overbuffs (more str, dex and sta = more dmg/HPs), melee dmg mitigation and enhancement buffs, ATK buffs and group DD proc buff. All of this applies to all 4 melees in group + 2 pets (pet affinity + group DD proc buff).
