I'm currently 6-boxing warrior, rogue, berserker, bard, shaman, cleric and looking for ways to improve the team. I think the weakest link is the cleric, as its healing power isn't really needed in most of the group game, it doesn't bring much utility, and has pretty weak DPS (I don't think I could achieve more than 50k sustained). I'm thinking of swapping the cleric for a paladin. Reasons: Still offers healing for more difficult TBL content. Things can get pretty hairy with a single boxed shaman healing Adds off-tanking capability to the group, which is sorely lacking Presumably would do a non-negligible amount of DPS Before dumping the hours to level/gear a new character, I had some questions for experienced paladins on the forum: How is paladin healing? Could a paladin/shaman healer duo handle any TBL needs? How would paladin sustained DPS be with bard/shaman aDPS? Assuming group gear, maybe casting some DPS spells but mostly auto'ing with a 2h
Honestly I wouldn’t run two tanks and I wouldn’t run two healers... And you’re being super inefficient boxing a melee group... But all that aside- drop the cleric for a second zerk or drop the warrior and cleric for a Paladin and zerk.
Although this isn’t feedback on your specific questions, I figured it was worth pointing you to Tucoh’s boxing thread. There has been a ton of fantastic discussion in this thread with feedback on class mixes, synergies, challenges,etc. Tucoh provides his original box team and through feedback and experience, the thread and team evolves over time. Most classes get discussed and I think it’s safe to say you would find useful info on improving your build. Wasn’t sure if you had already seen it or not. https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/tucos-setup-critique-welcome.240258/
Paladin healing on the tank (whether that's the paladin or another character), via HoTTs, is strong. As a baseline of heals versus mob dps, Pal should be entirely functional. Pal Wave isn't as good as Cle Syllable, dunno if you were using that. Pal support "extras" are basically nonexistent juxtaposed with Cle, looking here at DI/Guardian/Shining/Retort and spell+AA HOTs for named. Pal "rescue" ability versus spike damage is both more taxed in the absence of those support extras and less available, limited to Lay on Hands & Hand of Piety with 20 & 10 minute cooldown timers respectively, contrasted with Cle Divine Arbitration & Divine Balance available each every 3 minutes. Pal have arguable advantage when it comes to healing "disc", though. Based on duration and power and especially on the fact that more paladins actually remember to effing use it, Group Armor of the Inquisitor basically knocks the socks off of Cle chain of Channeling the Divine + Flurry of Life + Healing Frenzy + Celestial Rapidity. Pal dps isn't worldbusting without real dedication, but it can be expected to easily over double the figure you've put forward for Cle. Also it's not quite just autoattack, most of the HoTT spells you'd be casting for tank heals are nukes and there's significant uptime on Pureforge & Holyforge & Blunted Blade
Thanks for those details, Brohg. I don't even use my cleric cooldowns, so I think a paladin would definitely be a better fit with everything else it brings. I think I'll go for the swap and see how much I can level while the xp bonus is active. I've also been toying with the idea of making a 2nd box crew centered around a paladin, so this could play into that as well. Melee boxing isn't bad at all with inner space. I've definitely thought about dropping the cleric for another DPS (I'd pick rogue instead of zerk though), but I feel like that group wouldn't be as capable, even if the DPS is nuts. Might experiment with it at some point, burning a TBL named in 15-20 sec could be amusing
Considered mage? That will bring your off tank, decent dps, and you get access to coth/group coth. If an encounter requires two healers, you can swap in the cleric again, right? Paladin are a lot of fun, and they specialize in group saves. Always the first char i swap to when things go sideways. If that sound fun, i'd go with it! Otherwise, I dont think paladin will help your group's ability to down tough content more than the cleric.
If you're not using cooldowns on the cleric, I suspect you need to pull more mobs. Paladin can attribute 75k dps or so but the return of a cleric healing content far outweighs that of a paladin. If paladin's were able to be swapped in the context you're asking, no one would run a cleric in favor of extra dps. You need to pull more mobs.
I've only considered mage for a caster-oriented group, not this melee team. Dropping to a single healer makes me a bit nervous - it might be completely fine in 90% of situations, but I'd like to have a more flexible comp so I can just grab the achievements on everyone and not worry about swapping. Possibly. I've already finished TBL challenger with the team, so lately I've mainly just been farming Fight Fire and Relic Raider (while working on EoK+RoS progression). I'm already 2h tanking the whole waves in each of those missions though, so not too much room for improvement on the healing front there. More mobs sounds legit but also somewhat situational. Also, with a paladin couldn't someone theoretically still pull more, but just have the paladin tank a few? Not sure how the healing would work out there. And the point about no one needing a cleric - I'm actually wondering about that as a general point in the group game. Are paladins just strictly better, given that healing requirements don't tend to be too crazy? Maybe if the group has only one healer, cleric would shine, but that kind of composition would be vulnerable to random silence effects like the Trial of Three miniboss.
Thanks for the compliments, but i think aozs has surpassed me in a lot of ways! Aozs, my solution to your problem was to replace the cleric with a pure dps and then swap to the cleric on hard content. Trying to survive with a boxed shaman during bad pulls is a lot of fun. Another rogue or a berserker would be my recommendation. Also check out dual wield tanking if you haven't, it does nearly as much dps as 2H but is massively better defensively.
Well, I went ahead and leveled the pally. Took it into TBL as a fresh 110, threw on TBL T2 + GMM gear (FV), and went into Fight Fire and Trial of Three. I was able to get 130k out of the pally in both missions from just auto attacking with Imbedded Shard Macuahuitl. Both missions are quick enough that Quick Time is basically up the whole time, so it's more of a "burn adps" scenario. It's not even remotely close to the warrior or DPS, but it's still miles better than the cleric. I suspect as I add in discs, spells, and AAs, I could probably get to around half of an actual DPS (or more). Haven't really touched the healing part yet, but so far I'm liking what I see. Yeah, I've considered having swap chars. I actually have a 110 warrior on the berserker's account for various reasons, and messed around with it a bit when attempting Three At Once. Ultimately though, I really like the idea of having one "main" comp that does everything, so I ended up toughing it out with the bard tank instead of using the swap. As for DW - I use it all the time as my go-to defensive stance. I came to the same conclusion you did in your thread - that it's really close to 2h in DPS, but much better defensively. What ended up happening is that once I geared up, I basically never bothered with the shield any more, since I'm running with 2 healers. I've found that pulling more mobs to the extent I need a shield isn't really worth the DPS drop from leaving DW stance, especially since my DPSers don't have great AOE.
I have 2 headshot maxxed rangers that I recently leveled. They do max of 3400dps.....in frontier mountains. It's a battle between the 6 arrows between them on which 3 to 5 will arrive first and kill the mob. But when dabbling with grind exp in Sathir's tomb, 2 pallies (Mercy is 2 hander) and 2 dual wield warriors (Ros weps on one, TBL Ascending Sun on other) pump out 500 to 600 dps or so. It's seems wrong..but oh so right It's all about auto attack and 15 seconds later getting those exp messages.
Drop the warrior and cleric if that's the case. Paladin far superior to warrior in group content anyways. Don't even need the shaman either and can still pull 3-4 TBL mobs self healing no problem. Drop those for another zerker or maybe add a beastlord into the mix for more ADPS.
You could use an SK instead of War. Combo with what ever other classes like shaman and druid for healing and dps or a mage vs rogue for coth'ing the group around the zones you are killing in . For hard to get to camps you can have the rogue drag the mage to camp if needed , then pop a merc rez the mage, drop the merc re-invite one toon and coth the rest of group. In group content , when tanking multiple mobs if the tank is stout enough to use a 2 hander you will get more dps for whole the pile.
Thanks for the suggestions, but I'm very happy with the comp now - war/pal/rog/zerk/brd/shm There are definitely optimizations that could be made for certain situations, but I feel that this comp is very well-rounded and won't require any swaps to beat challenge modes. For example, Three at Once was much, much easier with the paladin as 2nd tank. DPS-wise, the group sustains over 900k (could prob push 1m with aggressive pulls/cd usage) and peak burns around 3.5m. Sure, swapping the pal for another zerk or rog could increase these numbers, but realistically they're more than enough for group content. And not needing to swap makes me feel "cleaner" about doing old content, achievements, etc with one main team
I don't think there's anything wrong with this and you save a lot of time by sticking to one group, especially when you start getting ambitious like smokebane and starting getting BiS gear, completing achievements, doing chase items like the TBL gear, artisan prizes etc for your boxes. But I always get excited by trying new combinations and seeing what weird things can actually work really well. Once I get a team in a state that they can do anything it's hard for EQ to keep my attention until a new idea of improvement strikes me.
After all this time, I am *still* bouncing around the idea of using an SK as a main with 3 paladins as the boxes and seeing how the paired up procs work out for over-all healing. Even if it kills slowly, it could be interesting at the least, and that's fun to me!
