My brother has convinced me to try eq again, he wants to roll a monk, from what I can tell perhaps a shaman, beastlord or bard would work best for a duo. My question is what would go best with one? What one would give the most bang for our buck? Would two pullers be redundant? At what level can he tank mobs up too if i play a shaman? Or would a beastlord/monk with a healer and dps merc work? I prefer not to play a tank class as of now as i want to relearn the game first so I'm mainly looking for a healer or dps to go with his monk. Also his main is a cleric, rather i get that level again I'm unsure of but if he wishes to play the cleric also what of those classes would benefit both of his classes, should he decide to play the cleric over the monk, but as of now I'm mainly looking for a duo partner for the monk. To note I haven't played in a long time and would be relearning, I don't know the zones that well to pull in, rather that's a problem I'm unsure of, would the shaman or beastlord be a safer bet until i learn the zones or with maps and a guide(my brother) would I be okay pulling, that is if he doesn't decide to pull if I play the bard. Thanks for any input...
Shaman is the way most people would go, but I think you're wise to consider what happens if your friend switches back to Cleric. Really, any class will work. Of those you mentioned, the Bard is probably the least powerful in that combination, but you'd do fine even as Monk/Bard. Figure the Monk can pull. Also figure the Monk will NOT tank. Yes, a well equipped and AAed Monk can stand up to quite a bit, but don't plan on the monk tanking until he gets raid gear and a bazillion AAs, and even then you'd do better with a tank merc.
I've been running monk/shaman for 10 years now. Couldn't be happier that i went shammy over another class.
*IF* you don't chose a Shaman: Monk doesn't have snare or root, AFAIK, no merc will do that for you. A lot of the game opens up for you with snare and root, if you don't have them you are limited to zones with monsters that don't flee or have no help they can run too. Trains can be pretty exciting if that is what you are looking for. At least for the first 50 levels, SoW may make your Shaman a better puller if you have the room. Just run in circles while your brother's Monk beats on it from behind to get it to switch targets.
Inny-worshipping Troll Shamans can get a snare necklace from a low level quest. It's not a great snare (base duration 36 seconds, I think) and it takes a while to cast, but it's nice to have as a backup. Shamans can also use weapons that proc snare (see http://everquest.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_clickies_with_a_snare_effect#Shaman), e.g. http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=84683 . Monks can use Anklesmasher (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=8900), but the drop rate is extremely low, so it's a tedious camp.
Shaman is the obvious go-to choice, for reasons already stated. A shaman is pretty much a monk's bestest friend in the whole universe. Shamans are the ideal buffers (and supportive debuffers) for "tanky DPS" type characters, and monks are tanky DPS at its most basic. Beastlord is an option that I would argue for if you personally enjoy playing with pets. It will give you (significantly) more DPS than the shaman will, but at the price of more limited slowing utility, and CC that's very offtanking dependent (rather than being very root dependent). Also, I should add that I only recommend beastlord as an option in one of two (very different) cases: The first case is if you want to build the beastlord for DPS (using a tank merc and a cleric merc in the party) and you don't mind putting in extra play time to grind out lots of AAs. This is a fine setup for a party, but beastlords are extremely hybridized, and if you want to maximize their DPS (which it sounds like you would want to in this setup) you're looking at a huuuuge AA investment (every type of crit AA including pet crit, flurry AA lines for both the master and the pet, double/triple attack AA, and then some activated short-cooldown DPS AA lines like Bite of the Asp and Feral Swipe that you ALSO get to keep up with xD), and if you want to be able to do anything other than just DPS you're going to need further investment still. The second case is if you want to play the beastlord as a "pet cleric" who mostly sends in the warder, stands back, and heals it, with your mercs being either two wizards (in very trivial content) or a wizard and a cleric (in content that the monk needs a healer for, which is going to be pretty much everything after a certain point). This is a far less AA intensive way to build a successful beastlord (pet healing, tanking, and DPS is a much more manageable list of things to build your AAs for, and it has the side effect of making you a remotely decent offhealer for the monk too), but I'm concerned that your party's raw tanking power will eventually end up too low in this setup unless the monk also AAs (and gears) rather hard toward defense. Of course, your partner may find that he enjoys building the tankiest bruiser of a monk he can muster, and making use of that tankiness in the process of kicking butt (literally). If that's the case, then this setup should be viable until the very latest levels (by which point you may have recruited a third person to join your regular playgroup anyway). I can also say that both the monk and the beastlord will have snare options at the late-middle and high levels, due to the Crippling Strike AA (need at least rank 3 before the strength of the snare is tolerable imo) and Hobble of Spirits AA, respectively. Anyway, if you don't anticipate putting in a lot of AA-grinding playtime yourself, and/or if being a "pet cleric" doesn't sound very appealing to you, then you might more strongly consider the shaman option than the beastlord. Bard is also a very fine candidate for grouping with a monk, but is something I would more so recommend if you had at least one more person planning to play with you, to where you would have a full party once mercs were taken into account.
