Looking for opinions: I play on mangler and main a cleric. I'm planning on sticking around for a good long while. What's a good 3-box for general getting-stuff-done? My parameters are: be able to level, gear my boxes, and AA grind by myself, and also be able to easily form groups with friends without having to wait and pray for a tank to log on, etc. Right now I have cleric, SK, and enchanter, but I am considering swapping the enchanter for a ranger, beastlord, or zerker at some point. Are there other good options that I'm sleeping on? I really like how CLR/ENC/SHD plays so far, but I'm worried about whether I'll have adequate DPS after charm gets brought down to earth in omens. I miiiight consider a 4th box if 3 becomes limiting but I'd rather not (I truebox with main PC plus 2 laptops and my desk is already so full!)
I would keep the setup that you have, SHD/ENC/CLR works really well (trinity box) with some Merc additions later on. Alternatively I would swap Magician for the Shadowknight, because Magician (Pet tanking) with Enchanter & Cleric support is very strong plus it brings considerable DPS. If you really don't want to use an Enchanter I would use a Bard, as having some CC in group is a big help to box content, especially later on but a Shaman is the best priest to use with SHD/BRD. If you wanted a melee box setup you wouldn't really be served well by a Cleric, a Shaman is much stronger to box with a Melee character like Berserker. Once Mercs are available the CLR/ENC tie can be more easily broken but not in a way that benefits the Cleric, Clerics really do shine with an Enchanter in their back pocket & I personally would not main a Cleric without one.
Your present trio is well suited to go far. I'd not swap anything. If you wanted to add some DPS later a Mage box is easy to manage.
I'm going to give you a spoiler right now... You will add a 4th toon...you're already down the path and the only thing stopping you is adding another $150 laptop... SK/CLR/ENC is a good trio for grinding, and as you suggested, DPS is going to be the issue. The good news is that when Luclin comes out Dire Charm will be a pretty nice low maintenance source of DPS through GoD in places like PoFire and CoD. Once OoW comes out you'll be harder pressed to find ways to make charm be very useful. The easiest boxes to add for DPS are Mage, Necro, Wiz and Ranger once you get the archery AAs. The determining factor will be what set of secondary skills you want to add to the group...CotH, ports, track, another rezzer, etc. Whichever toon you can adopt for free from a guildie is probably the best choice. I predict your 5th box will be a Bard once you see how hard it is to run 4+ toons around.
I'd go with a shaman rather than the enchanter. In my 5-box crews, the shaman and enchanter share an account. I can make do with either, but I prefer the shaman. Or do what I do and level both SHM and ENC and use the best one for a given scenario.
I'm partial to bard, but I would do bard for a low-effort:high-payoff box... or a high high effort shaman box. Both classes offer slow, which is absolutely critical to most bosses, but the shaman's toolkit gets much better post-LDON than a bard. Pre-LDON, it's not a stretch at all to say the bard is a better slower in many situations, given their negative resist check AE slow. Next, I would add a plate tank, either an SK or WAR, depending on how good a tank you want (you kill old bosses) vs better DPS in a group. Paladin isn't a good option since you're a main cleric. I did a CLR/WIZ/BRD trio on Agnarr and it was pretty solid. For example, I was able to do stuff like 3 box Vox in Luclin but if I had a warrior tank I probably could have been on another level since I enjoyed killing old bosses more than group stuff, and that's where a warrior shines. Nothing really compares to a defensive warrior. You could also go crazy and be a CLR tank with 2 supports. The CLR summon hammer procs like mad and they get a reactive nuke buff which is solid in a few expansions. It's a very different style, but interesting. I was able to handily tank Seru on Selo as a cleric.
In my opinion and after much trial n' error between a few combinations, I've concluded for my playstlye that a Shadow Knight, Shaman, and a Bard is the best combo. Also with the addition of mercenaries, I'm able to sub in damage or healing based on content difficulty. On Phinny my default setup with the above is 1 Cleric mercenary and 2 Rogues. If the content is trivial then I'd use 3 Rogues.
