picking up a 3rd box, advice please

Not just in group gear...he said he tanked level 105 HAs with a level 96 warrior still wearing the gear he came in as a level 85 heroic.

I'll leave examining your claim of tanking level 105 mobs at 96 with heroic gear to others to discuss, but I can say that I came into EoK with a warrior in near optimal TBM group gear. The ability of said warrior to tank increased with the new EoK gear dramatically.

Then when I went back to TBM I could faceroll tank the same stuff that was difficult before. So much that I could stay in 2H mode and carry the group.

Meanwhile my bard's contribution to the group? About the same as it was before. And my mage's DPS? Didn't get improved much by the new gear, but got a boost from the AAs.

So in that regard, warriors are more gear dependent than other classes.

I have been 3 boxing with a BL, Bard and Wiz,
I use a BL as my main and box a bard and a wizard, it works pretty good. I pull with the beast with slow and let pet tank while i dps, I dont do much dps with either bard or wiz box, i just use the Bard for her melody and selo, i use the wizard to port us around and evac, and i have both of my boxes using wizard mercs for extra dps.

My main bL uses the cleric merc, So i just put the two boxes on follow let them use wiz mercs. The only issue i have sometimes is cc.I can usually handle 2 mobs without CC, but with 3, i have to go into defense mode and chail heal pet with healer merc also chain healing until 1 of the 3 die. Havnt been good at using the bard or chanter to mez in general.

I have also used my BL to power level a 105 chanter, Shaman, Mage, Ranger using them for mostly buffs. I power leveled them all mostly using the Heroic missions in COTH.

Lots of fun though, i am now trying to get my trio through TDS progression, half way so far.

Just box SK, SK and SK.

Are SK's really that powerful? if so maybe ill start one tonight to check it out never tried SK

One thing I didn't see mentioned here...If you are combining instances onto a single machine, go into the everquest.ini file and make sure the bind affinities are set to different cores (they start numbering at 0).

Also, I'd have put in another mage. You already know how to box one and having 2 doesn't add a learning curve that way.

wow you can hard code that? if i remember i usually go into task manager and set the cores myself but i usually forget.

Yah, I don't have it with me at the moment, but when I get back home this weekend, I'll post the lines to search in the ini.

There is no denying that using tank abilities properly makes a big difference. But I still think tanks are the most gear-dependent/gear-benefiting classes in the game.

Regarding the ability to tank a DH HA at 96, in the original Heroic gear: the claim doesn't surprise me since it requires at least one lvl 105 toon in the group. I'm guessing that most 105 toons can molo a DH HA nowadays. So I think it's more likely that the 96 warrior was dragged (or more appropriately, "pushed") through. With runes and today's buffs, I think the right group of players could push a low level pet through an HA as "the tank".

Really impressive feats require videos to prove the awesome sauce! I just tried to "push" my 85 heroic druid using chanter runes and a merc healer, but it's harder than it looks - rofl. I still think a group of real players could do it easy though!

sk/sk/sk is probably more powerful than the trio the OP has in this thread (mage/sha/enc) but it isn't optimal. sk/ber/ber would easily beat 3x sks, for example.

But you have to be careful with overoptimization for a specific encounter.

The optimal 3man group for general questing, for example, is hard to make without a bard (selos speed + track), and a mage's call of the hero ability alone makes a lot of routine questing / farming old zones much faster.

The optimal 3man group for difficult encounters probably includes a cleric, because you'll need some intelligence behind the healing in a lot of cases.

I experimented today and tried boxing all three accounts on my desktop with just my 1080p monitor (rather than two boxing on the desktop with two monitors and running the third box on the laptop). After I got all the windows setup the way I want......yea, you guys were right. That's much easier. It's much better to just have to look at one monitor, use one mouse and keyboard, etc. Also, with the taskbar visible, it's easy to switch between the accounts just by clicking the EQ icons on the taskbar. I was concerned that three instances might be too much for my PC, but it seemed to handle it with ease (Intel core I7 3.5 GHz 4770k, 16 gig RAM, NVIDIA GTX 680, 500 gig SSD).

Since I have a lot of free disk space, I went ahead and made a separate folder for each of the three accounts.

Thanks, guys, that really is a better way to box. Haven't tried any third party software yet.

Yes, *please* let us know the proper way to do that.

I actually thought about it. Another mage would be easy peasy for me to box, but I decided to experiment with something different (for me). I'm still undecided about whether to continue with the chanter, or try a mega-overpowered tank class. After all, who needs crowd control when you can tank three mobs while scratching your a$$, picking your nose, and watching Game of Thrones? ;-)

I can't believe you were worried about 3 boxing with that PC. lolz

I guess I sometimes forget just how old EQ really is.

goranothos what server are you palying?

FV

I'm totally hi-jacking this thread, sorry



Short video of my lvl 85 heroic druid trying to tank a 105 DH HA mob (the mob is not 105, but the HA was). I might try again, but I got all distracted discovering youtube (this is the first video I've uploaded).

It's really just a proof of concept, showing that the other toons in the group can be the key to a lower-level tank's success Shammy, druid and chanter debuffing/healing/runing. Died when I alt-tabbed to try to increase damage on my other boxes. Healer merc was on passive cause I'm dumb.

Hahaha, nice! You totally tanked it for a lot longer than I thought you would. Shows what a 105 support group can do. If you had your healer merc on reactive, you would have tanked it down.

Damn. Now I may make a heroic warrior.

Gribbles had been a joke for a long time now. Sure, a lowbie might be able to tank for a few, but at the cost of slowing the ha down. Much more efficient to have a caster of level tank.

No need to be a Debbie Downer, bruh. NameAlreadyInUse's 85 Drood totally rocked that (for a while). It was a fun vid!