Per class multi bind key, what’s your setup?, and some other Box opinion questions…

Hey everyone,
I play WE Ranger as my main, with a box support group. Group consists of Shaman, Mage, Bard and an Enchanter I added in place of my Cleric a while back, for better CC and a comparison test with my Bard. I’m usually running a Cleric Merc with Mage pet set as MT, 9 times out of 10 it’s the Earth pet for durability. Ranger is all access account, other accounts are Silver.



My short comings for this group is lack of a Real Tank, and managing my Enchanters agro at times...Mobs tune into him and if I can’t manage the mobs distance from my Enchanter with my Ranger, he ends up dead quick. I have to manage the timing of my Enchanter’s engagment from pulling agro before my Mage or Ranger builds their own agro. EoK mobs are making these points more abundantly clear when I’m outside the usual trash mobs. I don’t charm tank typically, I just use his pet, and let him cast for damage, and CC when I need it. My playing style is as a range hunting group, and in and out melee engage with ranger.



Since EoK and recent changes to Bard dicho, I have been re-tuning my Muilti Bind keys for burns to get some umph in the fight just to end it. Ranger mana management is once again an area to monitor (with the bard dicho changes) when he’s burning for agro away from the enchanter or just trying to end a fight. Even with back up heals from the Shaman, the Merc Healer sometimes just can’t keep up with healing the Earth Pet with some of the more durable mobs in EoK.



Wondering if anyone out here wants to share your favorite multi bind setups for your class for comparisons.



Any suggestions as to mitigating my Enchanters agro?...besides timing of engagement to mob?



Anyone familiar with Mages have and opinion to going All Accesss on the Mage account as a way to possibly increase Pet survivability? Would AA’s make enough difference to mitigate these problems?

I would only add to all of this that my ranger is the only class in this group that is getting the most out of his AA’s and burns, so I probably just need to be more effectively balanced with the other characters, beyond just the regular manual casting hotkey setups. Thanks in advance for the feedback.

I advise against using multibinds for boxed characters (maybe with the exception of a boxed healer in an emergency situation). It's a lot of unncessary stress on your keyboard when you can accomplish the same thing with proper macro'd spell chains. I box an enchanter and magician to go along with my main druid.

Don't know what you're doing wrong, but my enchanter does not pull aggro. Is your Spell Casting Subtlety disabled for some reason? Send pet, Tash, then Slow should be the first three things that your enchanter does in high end content, in that order. The only time that you should be leading with nukes would be in content that you've outleveled and where it won't matter if you take a few hits. I have two main hotkeys, one called Engage and one called Nuke. There's a third with various activated abilities for burning.

I'd seriously consider getting a real tank for your setup. The top choice is generally SK, but pal/war are fine too. There's quite a bit of overlap between shaman, bard and enchanter (in that they are the three support classes). I'd expect that if you had a three man group of ranger, (sk, war or paladin) and (bard, enchanter or shaman) with 3 caster DPS / healer mercs you'd cut through content much faster and more easily than with your current team.

I box a war/bard/mage. My mage rotation isn't anything special, but I'll post it tonight. Inner space and a logitech gaming keyboard (g510) or mouse (g600) may also be something to look a.

is "XXXX song of suffering" in your bard's melody?

it's got a negative hate modifier, if it's not blocked on the pet you could be pushing your pets aggro down...

some enchanter DoT's have a negative hate modifier, could try (if you're not) putting the mana tap dot in to see if that slows aggro issues.

• I gave the Tank problem some serious thought for a while. I have slowly been working on an SK on my Ranger account...I suck at SK though. I have a warrior on the silver account with the enchanter, I thought about getting him leveled up. I worry about the AA's limitations on the silver account negating any benefit gained by a warrior in that slot. I understand the overlap I have between my utility classes or bard, ench, and shaman...enchanter was an experiment and is still kinda there. I would miss the ease of my bard in a box, and would definitely miss the shaman buffs and extra heals when my healer merc decides not to pay attention. I find the enchanter the most difficult character to box effectively. Think that is the character I would omit first. My ranger will miss the mana boost however since that is the character that is mitigating the bard dicho nerf. I have played around with the idea of a keyboard...im boxing pretty straight forward manually with [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software]. I use keys 1 to + for casting hotkeys. [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software] for cpu usage and small windows for each character, Ranger being in my primary view most of the time. Im a simpleton at this. I failed to mention my main group are level 105, and my alts are all between 70's and 93. Your suggestion of 3 box is valid, as I have thought of that as well. As I have been working on my SK, I box him with a Wiz and a Druid as an example.

wiz was posted
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...h-me-how-to-dougie-105-wizard-edition.233230/

might check the class forums for other classes.

I find it odd that your enchanter grabs agro. I have 3 boxed with a ranger tank for years and it has gotten progressively easier over the years. The biggest difference is the increasing utility of my preferred 3rd box of enchanter or mage. With the mage all I have to do is send the pet and that pet instantly grabs solid agro. Is a silver account really that much weaker with regards to pets? If I choose to box the enchanter on the 3rd box the enchanter only grabs agro if I stack 2 dots on a mob and even if she grabs agro the runes are so powerful there is less chance of her dying than the main tank ranger. I've finished off eok t1 named easily just chaining runes and refreshing dots with the enchanter.

Here's my rotation. Mage is my weakest class so I don't know if it's optimal, but it works well for me.

Assist
Pet Attack (I use a water pet)
Darksteel Malo
Force of Elements
Activate Cooldowns
Remorseless Servant
Dichotomic Companion
Coronal Rain
Rain of Cutlasses

Fickle Conflagration
Spear of Molten Shieldstone
Remorseless Servant
Coronal Rain
Rain of Cutlasses

By then the mob I'm dying is usually dead, otherwise I continue the rotation of fickle->spear->servant->rains.

If he's tanking with magician pet, Dicho is right out.

Really, though, Enc agro isn't usually a problem, per se. Unity rune is some good...

Thanks for everyone's feedback. I did some digging into my hotkeys after mulling over everyones feedback, and see some fine tuning I can do, and a few areas of redundancy. I'm going to go tune up the spell rotations and hit the practice dummies. I'll post a follow up.

Still curious if anyone has experience with mage pet effectiveness between silver and all access account. Would my mage pets tanking ability be upgraded significantly? I suppose I could /test copy and go play with the differences.

Your subscription status nothing changes about your pet unless it allows you to equip a different pet focus earring.

I box multiple toons mage being one of them .. i have mage in any of my group makeup ..) mages rock .. make sure your blocking the delayed heal from your merc on pet and anyone else your boxing .. if you block it on pet but not everyone else can still slow down healing on others and on pet .. also are you using your block hits for your pet companions aegis and the current lvl spell version .. i use Auspice of Eternity also afaik all the group pet earrings are non prestige so you should be able to use those without fear of not getting the focus pet because your silver account.. just make sure you have all your pet aa's for defense maxed even if that means going gold for a month to max it out.. once you go to silver again you wont be able to get anymore aa's but you will sstill have access to the ones you do have ..

also its nice that they made it so when you cast your pet heal it doesnt target your pet anymore it just auto heals it .. used to hate that cast pet heal it would tar your pet then you have to retar mob.. i have my pet heal on a macro with my spell AoE block.. also dont forget about some of your other pet AA's that help with dmg mitigation off the top of my head .. host in a shell , second wind ward and fortify companion( i usually save FC for named or tough fights..) but its there if you need it.. you can macro all those if you need to .. usually if its a tough fight and i know im gonna have to pay closer attention to my tank ie mage pet i will tab over and main the mage while i get things under control.
another reason i like mage is group CoTH mahahah .. and they are just awesome

Enchanter DoTs pull stupid amounts of aggro. Add in twincasted nukes and it's GG for the mage pet.

Don't DoT, or let your assigned tank (it should really be the Ranger in that setup) build aggro before piling it on. Ranger can hold aggro over a DPS going balls out non-burn DPS, but it means the Ranger needs to engage with the intent to be holding that aggro.

If you're missing SCS (Spell Casting Subtlety) on the Enchanter due to silver status, that won't help either.

should really just drop the boxes and solo main the Enchanter imo

To add to this, if you'd like to see some improvement in your box group, pick a focus. You're a little mixed up there. The Shaman/Bard/Ranger compliment each other in all the right ways. The Mage and Enchanter pair well together. But all 5 in one group makes for an odd match.

Are you using a third party software to help manage all that? If not, there's some merit in either ditching the two casters and focusing on the melee, or ditching the three melee and adding a wiz or a druid. Box performance gets exponentially worse the more toons you add when you're doing it all manually. The Bard could handle CC for the melee 3-box (it will not be as good as Ench CC but it has better synergy with a melee group than Ench).

Just a couple things to think about if you're having troubles. You should definitely play what is the most fun for you, because that's what's important. Just remember that every time you box an Enchanter, a kitten dies.

I feel the same way when people try to box druids. It's so wrong.

Unless your mage pet AAs are maxed out especially anything that adds to defense I would say that is a huge issue. I currently box an sk and 4 mages. Two mages are silver but I maxed their AAs through TBM and the other toons are all access. I see no difference in my all access and ftp pets since they all have the same AA's. I frequently have my mage pets tank while I pull with sk. When the mob the pets are tanking is dead I have them tank the mob my sk is tanking so I can pull more mobs and have little issues with pets surviving.

Before this I six boxed with a ranger tank, cleric, bard, wiz, necro, mage and did fairly well until I hit brothers island. This was before pets could tank with a melee toon which is why I rolled out my sk. I would either pony up the 15 bucks or burn a krono on your mage account to farm some AA's and max out your pet. If your pet is your tank you need to treat him like one. I doubt you would ever try to tank with 105 warrior with 1k AA and expect to survive current content. Also try giving your pet player made armor and weapons. Dimensional warrior armor will add AC and HP's and should help some. There are player made weapons that have nice proc's also.

I'm kind of a noob with mages. Do all of your mages assist the SK? Do you have any tricks to share to help pets pick up multiple adds before they run rampant and kill your group? I'm considering having my pet classes by default use /xtar 1, /xtar 2 and then /pet attack instead of all /main assist just so I have some speed bumps in place while I'm trying to do crowd control, but I'm interested to hear how others handle this.

Sorry was at work and now on my phone. I have some things to do but will share my macro and keybinds when I get to my PC. I believe you said you use the unmentioned 3rd party boxing software? If so I can help with some simple macros and keybinds suggestions that work well for casters assisting a puller or tank.

I spent the past several years boxing manually, switching between 3 windows on the taskbar. Just began using the [perfectly allowable] unmentioned 3rd party software a couple of weeks ago to see if I could improve my efficiency. I have an enchanter in my group for pulling/cc and a tank mercenary that is great for picking up aggro quickly. I'm having the occasional issue where adds are coming from around a blind corner and gangbang the wimp tank merc and my pets are already engaged because they're assisting the MA. (And I'm usually already slowing the first mob on my enchanter while the merc is getting killed.)

What I'm thinking of doing is:

1) De-couple my assist/pet attack function from spell casting entirely. This will allow me to mez faster instead of being stuck already casting tash/slow on the main target when I really need to stop and emergency mez some adds instead.
2a) Make two separate /assist hotkeys. One that will use /xtar 2 and /pet attack on my enchanter and /xtar 3 and /pet attack on my mage, which should pick up possible adds 1 and 2 immediately and keep them off of my characters while I fix issues with adds.
2b) If there are no adds, immediately move on to the next hotkey, which is the standard /assist main. So I can press these two in rapid succession and then move on to casting the normal DPS rotation if there are no fires to put out.
3a) I'd like to set up Video FX to display one of the enchanter's hotbars on my druid's screen. (I was able to do this in testing.) I would like to be able to set up Click Actions in order to pass through mouseclicks and be able to a) heal the tank on my druid, and b) mez adds without switching windows. I was unable to get the Click Actions to work so I need to figure out why it's not passing input through to the secondary screens.
3b) I tried out the broadcast hotbar function with 1-0 and - and = keys and that technically works but I had to disable this because the game doesn't know the difference between when I want to perform a macro action and when I do NOT, examples being typing my account password (GRR!) and typing numbers when I'm at a bank or NPC merchant (GRR!). So when I want to perform the same macro # hotbutton on each character I have them bound to NumPad.

If I couldn't box and work out problems like this, I probably wouldn't play EQ. This is more interesting to me than the everyday game content.