looking for 2-boxing advice

In the years I've played Everquest, I've pretty much always just played one character at a time. Recently I've gotten the bug to give boxing a try, and I'd like to ask for some advice on good combinations.

The "secondary" of the characters will almost certainly be a cleric on a silver account, unless you guys and gals convince me that's a terrible idea. I'm most curious about other forum-goers' opinions on what else would be a good match. At the risk of sounding anti-social (I'm really not!) one of my favorite things to do is to hunt down current-content named or go do older raids all by myself. What would be the best front-man for that duo? I'm leaning towards warrior since having a cleric partner should eliminate most of the reasons warriors aren't so good at soloing that content, but I'm interested in what opinions other people have. Necro and Monk sound like good choices too, but I'm concerned the extra dps of the monk won't make up for decreased survivability, and I'm worried the necro will involve things like kiting that will make 2-boxing a pain.

Thoughts?

Are you going to be using Mercenaries?
If so My suggestion would be Mage/bard with wiz/cleric mercs. With this combo bard can single pull snare and haste pet while mage pet can tank current content named mobs.
If you just want to go tank healer then war/cleric with 2 wiz mercs may work but you will be losing the ability to single pull which is the only real problem I see with this combo. End game mobs hit hard!
Also this is just my opinion and I am in no way an expert on classes as I have only played wiz/mage/bard myself. Anyway good luck on whatever you decide. I look forward on seeing what others have to say on this topic.

When boxing, there are a list of things that you'd like to have on a team, the more of these you can have, the easier things will be.

1. Puller
2. Healer
3. Tank
4. Snare
5. Buffs, debuffs, haste, slow, CC
6. Ports, evacs, travel
7. Viable DPS

To that end, here are some 2 box combos that I have actually played pretty extensively.

1. Druid/Mage. One of the best 2 boxes in the game. You can see, that between those 2, they actually have all 7 areas covered. There is also an amazing synergy between M/D. Druids have several debuff lines that make mobs more vulnerable to fire, they also have their own set of fire based dots and nukes. Combine that with Malo and the mages fire based nukes, and you can just melt mobs.

There is also a fantastic synergy when it comes to timing between these two class (another very important point for boxing). They are both dead easy to macro, and neither one requires a lot of involvement. If I could only run one 2 box, this would probably be it.

2. Druid/Monk. The druid is fairly passive in this combo, as the monk is the puller and can be the tank if you are soloing and not using mercs. Once you get it down, you can have everything the druid needs to do on one keypress macro. Monks are the best combination of DPS and mitigation in the game, once again filling multiple roles with one class.

3. Chanter/Wiz. I 2 boxed this for a long time, very fun, very effective. Wiz is super easy to box with macros so you spend 95% of your time playing the chanter. No healer means this is a merc needed combo, but still very effective.

4. Sk/Beastlord. Haste, slow, mini crack, pet for adds. SK can pull and easily macro a chain that will keep agro so you can play the BL most of the time once the pull has been made. These 2 with a healer and a DPS merc are literally bullet proof. If you want a tough to kill, decent DPS, easy agro control I'd go this way. SK would also be a better match if you have your heart set on a cleric. They bring snare, ability to single pull, and are just generally better group tanks. (as in easier).

There are quite a few viable 2 box teams, especially with mercs. Just keep that list in mind, and also keep timing in mind. Having 2 classes that need to be busy at the same time can be very frustrating. For shear go anywhere do anything, it's hard to beat mage/druid. The travel options are fantastic, and mage pets are great tanks as you gain levels and in end game. You can do any old content you want too with just those 2 and no mercs, very powerful.

As a general piece of advice, in my opinion, Druid is the best 2nd box character you can have, almost regardless of what the other class is. Druids healing is very good now, as is their DPS once you AA for it. The amount of utility that they bring to the table is just impossible to beat on a box team.

Good luck, I've tried a ton of other combos, if you want some feedback on them happy to oblige, they all have their individual quirks and problems etc.

P.S. Just re-read your post. If you have your heart sent on a cleric as the 2nd, I'd actually recommend a ranger. They can single pull most places, have snare, can tank decently and have very good DPS. Warrior/cleric is not really enough DPS, and no way to pull singles does become a real issue post 70 or so. Also the lack of snare is a real pain in the behind, especially coupled with the lack of CC in that combo.

I would definitely use mercs when available, but I would want the team to be functional without them for when I go off and do things like attempting to duo Anguish.

I've played druid before (years before) and got serious cleric envy. I've heard that things are better now, but I'm still a bit shy...

Ultrazen, can you talk more about the timing synergy with Mage/Druid?

I just made Mage/Necro box group. Using a cleric/wiz merc. Haven't done much yet, but seams to be working.

For someone brand new to boxing - and even for us veterans - it helps a lot to stick with spellcasters. Melee characters have to constantly readjust their positioning in combat, so it's much more difficult to box.

SK/SHM, clerics just dont have enough utility to be great as a box. Get 3 and go SK/SHM/BRD and never look back.

I use a mage/druid with 2 wiz mercs for the following reasons:-

1. travel is very easy with coth and ports
2. druid aura + debuffs really help mage + mercs
3. spell cast times are not too quick so easy to switch between toons and use macros
4. pretty good dps + decent healing
5. druid can single pull outdoors + evac / coth allows some creative pulling
6. mage pet makes a good tank

Hey Ultrazen and Ringarok,

I have just recently obtained a heroic Druid and teamed him up with my Mage who is also a level 85, first attempt at 2-boxing, you guys mention using macros, could you please explain further how to make/use macros or point me in the right direction to learn how to make/use macros? Thank you so much!

Sostenes

Some useful links
how to make a macro - http://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/eq:macros (although /useitem is not shown)
alt activate list - http://articles.eqresource.com/altactlist.php

I'm not on my game pc so I can't list the macros but for my druid I normally use the following types of macros:-

Assist - Assist Mage's pet, pause, cast Blessing of Ro AA, pause, cast Skin to Seedlings
Damage - Cast best nuke, pause, cast 2nd nuke
Nuke - Cast best nuke, cast 2nd best, cast 3 best (no pause so will fire 1st spell that is available)
Heal - target Mage's pet, cast heal
QuickHeal - target pet and cast quickest heal
Clickes - /useitem to activate each clicky in turn

I normally use hotbar #1 and the druid and mage have similar macros in each position (i.e. button 1 is Assist, button 2 is Damage etc etc). This way when mob arrives at camp I switch to mage click 1 ,switch to druid click 1, switch to mage click 2 and so on.

Sostenes, I box a Druid and Magician (and Enchanter). I can't login right this moment but I will post some of my macros for you this evening.

SK/Druid is much better than SK/Shaman though I've been told that Enchanter/Druid is shockingly good and I can totally see that

Thank you

It is.

Just a plus 1 to Ultrazen's list. There's lots of perks to the combinations that are almost too involved to go deeply into detail on all of them. For instance, the Mage/Druid combination, the pet can tank and both the Mage and Druid can heal it if the situation calls for it. For boxing, you don't want to be switching between characters constantly so using DOTs vs. direct damage spells makes things a little less hectic. You will notice every combination listed includes a character that can DOT. Long acting buffs, long acting snares, long-long-long.

Having a healer in the group, 2nd priority in the list, means you can add a DPS merc. The Wizard mercs are fantastic for burning stuff down. If you do go with Cleric or one of the suggestions like Druid or Shamen, try one out. You will be in tough fights and all of a sudden, dancing sparklies and it drops dead from a Wizard mana dump.

Macros are something you need to spend a bit of time playing around with, as they are highly personal. There are some good threads on macros around that will go into a lot of detail and give you a list of all the available commands etc. I'll give you a few examples of some of my macros.

Mage assists the druid macro. (these are all made by right clicking on a hotkey spot and assigning a new social, this will bring up the window you create the macros in).
The spacing and per line commands are the same as they appear here:

/pause 4, /assist Ultrazen
/pet attack
/pause 40, /cast 2 (2 being whatever you want it to be depending on situation)
/pause 40, /cast 3
/cast 4

So let's say in that situation, 2 is malo, 3 is swarm pet, and 4 is a nuke. The structure of macros is very similar regardless of what you are doing or who you are doing it with. Adjusting the /pause ** length is really what you end up goofing around with the most, as it varies depending on spell cast times.

The pause placed at the beginning of a line, actually fires off *after* the spell you cast...which is.....kind of confusing and also silly, but that's the way it works. You can put everything on an individual line if you have simple macros and want to start experimenting with simple sequences to get the hang of it....for example.

/assist Ultrazen
/pause 4
/cast 2
/pause 40
/cast 3

Macros can only be 5 lines long, which is why combining /pause and /cast on a single line becomes necessary on more complicated macros.

Here's a macro my druid uses to assist my mage.

/pause 4, /assist Megazen
/pause 40, /cast 1
/pause 40, /cast 2
/pause 40, /cast 3
/cast 4

That sequence will
Line 1: Assist my mage with a 4 second pause (you need this so the server has time to catch up and you don't start firing off things before you have a target)
Line2: Casts a fire debuff/dot
Line3: Casts another fire dot
Line4: Casts a fire based nuke
Line5: Cast snare

Once you get the hang of building macros, they are highly usefull. With that assist sequence, I only need one keypress on my druid per fight to load a mob up with everything I want to do. I have different tiers of macro depending on how much I really need out of the druid. I have a macro that's just an assist and a snare for easy situations, one that's just the dot/debuff and a snare, one that's just a nuke or two and a snare etc. It's easy to set up multiple macros so you have every situation covered.

Of course I have macros set up for healing everyone as well, whether it be pet or player. Once you get everything set up, and used to them, fights become really easy to manage. By the time a mob has about 20% of it's life gone, I'm already leaning back in my chair with my hands off the keyboard lol.

Post pulling, I am usually only having to deal with 1 keypress per character per fight, which makes grinding, questing etc really painless. This is a bit easier to do with casting/pet classes, as you don't have to fiddle with positioning from fight to fight, something that can turn into a real pain in the butt with multiple melee charcters.

Now, as far as timing goes, that's pretty easy to figure out. You don't want to combine classes that have to be busy at the same time during a fight. Just segregate the classes into when they are usually busy, and you'll get a good idea. Tanks tend to be the most busy at the start of fights trying to get agro under control, whereas wiz rarely do anything at all until mobs have at least 20% of their life gone...stuff like that.

Oooooooooooooo Thank you Ultrazen! That is what I was looking for

I will totally have some fun this weekend going to a low level area and testing macros out to see what works for me

I posted some of my macros a while ago and Borek shared it on his site.

http://www.paullynch.org/eqblog/?p=563

Thanks moogs! That is also really informative

Can't wait to get home and mess around with macros while 2-boxing my Mage/Druid team

So here's the macro on Moogs that casts DoTs just after I've pulled the mob to the camp. This is how I lead off 95% of my fights.

I pull with a debuff (Blessing of Ro AA) because it produces low aggro. I want the tank to be able to pick up aggro and get that thing off of me ASAP. Also because it instantly makes the mob weaker before it touches anyone in my party. And also because it does no damage - a mob under 98% hp could chain-summon and beat me down before I can drag it back to the group. That's really dangerous, and even if I survive it's super annoying and makes the pulls last waaaaay too long.

Then I use Storm Strike AA which is fast casting and does a little damage. Then I use Entrap AA to snare the mob. Then I click this custom social. It's just named "DPS"

/pause 31,/cast 5
/pause 31,/cast 7
/pause 31,/cast 6
/alt activate 15073
(I left the last line blank for now, and yes, It really is 5,7 and then 6.)

There's a magic dot: Horde of Mutilids (spell gem 5)
A fire dot: Sunblaze: (spell gem 7)
Another magic dot: Horde of Vespids (spell gem 6)
Banestrike (have to be in a short range and it may or may not fire depending on the target)

I like to DoT at the start of the fight because they are fast casting, they produce low aggro (as the tank is building his own), they last through the duration of the fight without having to think about them again, and they do really nice damage since I have all of the AAs and gear for DoTs. I cast Sunblaze in the middle because Mutilids and Vespids share a recast timer. So I can go Mutilids, Sunblaze, Vespids without any delay. If I try to cast Mutilids and then Vespids immediately after, I'd have to wait several seconds in between. Several seconds doing nothing is a complete waste.

The macro is finished in a short time...it's enough time for me to switch over to click my first macros for my magician and enchanter. Then I'm ready to start some nukes on my druid and switch to start nukes on magician and enchanter.

Very easy, very low maintenance. I don't even have to use key bindings. I like keeping the macros on the short side (total time-wise) because it allows some flexibility in case it hits the fan and I need to start healing or do some crowd control. Then I'm not frantically clicking my spells to try to override the slow, in-progress macro.