I know everyone is probably tired of these but here goes. I run a Melee box group of Warrior, beast, ranger and bard. I realize most prefer caster groups but I love these toons. All are lvl 105 max AA and in EoK expac. I'm wanting to add a 5th, and I'm going with a priest class. Mostly just for backup heals, Which is a role my ranger has been filling just fine, but I hate pulling him off of his dps role. Since it's just a backup role should I go shaman or Druid or go ahead and do cleric. Cleric HP aura would be great but sham adps for the melee would be too. Ports Buffs and debuffs from Druids can't be ignored either. Just looking for some input. Thanks ahead of time for advice.
I'd say shaman as well, and definitely get his 2.0 full stop. Maybe if you had a caster (non-merc), I'd say druid, but meh. And you've gotten by without ports this long, why bother now.
What is your motivation for adding a 5th? Every toon past the 3rd is a net loss of dps and efficiency. In other words not a single toon is doing any special attacks while you are cycling to the 5th toon. No toon is doing its potential dps while you are back up healing. I would say it's nigh impossible to get half the potential dps of sticking with 3 toons. Both beast and ranger are mash heavy toons. Therefore, you aren't getting even close to each ones potential. Got a parser? Is your ranger pulling 80-90k right now? Is your beast pulling 50-60k right now? Is you warrior pulling 90-150k right now? That's why I'm asking what's your motivation. If it's to 6 box, be anti social, and never complete a hard task then go shaman. If not, 3 box.
Never really understood the need on here to talk down to and flame people. Yes, as I'm pretty sure Everyone knows you'll never get as much as possible from boxed toons. I box because of frequent AFK and erratic Play times and I don't wanna put other player off by waiting on me. My little group does just fine with dps, as I said Originally this was about a little back up healing. I appreciate the replies that were helpful and I agree Sham may be The way to go.
With IS boxer it is easy to outperform mercs, maybe less so with melee necause of 1-3 secs of positioning, but still.
Never used it. I've looked into it but seemed more complicated than I could deal with. My wiz merc parses out at around 25,000 on balance, just a bit higher on burn. Won't be to hard to out do that with a boxed sham I hope. Plus the added adps he'll bring to the other fellas. I rarely need the extra heals but this expansion I've run into a named or two and a couple of missions that it would've made things easier.
For min/max ing, shaman, for quality of life, Druid by about 1000%. Teleport to bind for a box team > everything else. I find it very very difficult to run any box team without a druid or wiz in it. Being able to run one toon somewhere, bind, and then just port your whole group in is just....really really nice. It will also give you a great toon to power level anything else you might want to try as a sub on your other boxes. Shaman will for sure make that team much better than a druid would, but I'd take the druid lol. I've run a lot of box teams, and for me, quality of life tends to outweigh getting higher parses. If you are already comfortably killing stuff fast enough, get ports. Any of them will be fine in a backup healer role.
That my friend has been on my mind as well. The one and only thing I envy about playing a single toon is getting around quicker/easier. But aren't Druids somewhat limited to where they can bind and group port tho. Mage CoTH seems like it would be a better tool for that, alas no backup healing from him.
A major + in the cle column is Group Perf IVU AA. Your current quad of characters don't have that utility. ...but if you've been playing years without it maybe that's not something you value. So go with Dru for Blackwolf+aura, Succor, better dps, etc. Or shm for Lion & epic.
If you are going to box a priest, I'd go cleric. At the poorly played level they function better than the other options which if we are honest with ourselves is about the best case performance level you will get when boxing that many characters. And if somehow you are a miracle worker and can box that many toons at the middle performance level, they still outperform the other 2 options at their main speciality. Ports is just a trap choice, and Beast buffs make shaman buffs largely unnecessary.
The other point I'd bring up is you are already leaving tons of dps on the table just by virtue of the fact you are boxing. If your existing team isn't sustaining 300+k dps (which is about where I'd guess it would be since my paladin/beast/bard trio can sustain close to that), I would urge you to perhaps consider waiting on adding a toon until you are getting close to maximum efficacy out of your existing box toons. Larger gains for less effort is a better return on time invested.
Cleric then because why settle for 2nd rate. And their dps is decent enough considering the healing advantage that it largely cancels out the small benefit of shaman 2.0, and shaman dots won't even have time to tick more than once if you are going hard.
