EZ Server

Hi all

Kinda new to server, got one char SK to 3.0epic and most TACI armor.

Ralizing I need to box more toons, what is a good group to have?  I don't play a lot, so prefer a group that can make it very far on their own.

Is a 4box possible?  Prefer 4 over 6

Also, noticed a lot of teams say cleric, but not sure why, explaining that would help as well..

There are about a hundred threads that start like this. To go far you need tank, healer, dps
Warr with 2hs to tank, epics will have a click stone wall
Pally to heal, Proc for group
Ranger, rog, bard, Beastlord, monk for DPS, (can equip Ninja strike augs) Bard seem to be popular these days with a new kick ass song they have
Can get to t5 np,

read older post for more

1 Tank 2 Heals 3 Dmg

Warrior  Tank

Cleric and Paladins for Heal

Bard Zerker Necro for Dmg

monk or rogue would be better dps then zerker...and instead of necro use wizard since you have the bard to keep mana up

sure dps better on rogue and monk but few aoe looks anytime good

Your SK can tank just fine.  You'll want to have 2 healers.  If you go with 2 Paladins, you'll have 2 off tanks as well.  You can get by with a group of 4, but dps will be slow.  Add a monk or rogue with the SK, Pal, Pal and you'll do ok.

SK - Tank

BER / MAG / MNK - DPS

PAL / CLR - HEAL

That Berserker AE damage is lovely, speeds up many encounters and farming by far.

I agree that the Berserker dps is pretty decent.
I hear pet classes are good but I prefer to never play a pet class.

If i had it all to do over again and was only going to play one group i would have started war for tank pali pali clr monk rogue with the rogue just being pref if not a rogue would have two monks pali's when you get up there and have good augs are decent dps and the over healing is never a bad thing specially if one healer dies on accident or something.

Never a bad idea. My group atm only has 2 "dps" classes in it. Always preferred to over heal

I enjoy overhealing also @ least with primary group

all of them are great box combos!

i started with war, pally, pally, shaman, necro, mage
now that im getting into t5 iv'e phased out my mage for a bard, one of my pallys for a monk, my shaman for a cleric and i will soon be phasing my necro out for a monk or rogue. I keep the shaman outside the group often though for kraken and buff.

Zerker is nice AE dps....but all in all I prefer a warrior for AE, because the warrior is a much easier tank than an SK. Pally/War/Bard/Necro is a solid base to start with, because the necro alone can pretty much solo til HoH. However, around T3/4 phasing out the necro for a melee dps class (monk is nice) is a good idea.

If you just want to use 4 chars, your best bang for your buck will be SK, Pal, Pal, Bard. Bard proc song will improve DPS on all chars, and bard does decent augged dps as well.

SK tank need only one support healor!!! selfheal proc and one pala is enough for rest of the grp!

That's fine if you just want to get to T4 and stop

Ive been running Pal,Clr,War,Mnk,Rog,Brd. I started out with pet classes, and they carried me all the way up into t5. Once you get there, pet classes start to be a hassle due to the damage output of the mobs/bosses.

SK does okay, you might need to buy cloak of anarchy and grind up a shield, but they still work in T5. Is a warrior easier? Sure, but once you don't get one rounded anymore, playing a SK tank and doing well timed 140k+ lifetap casts when you take big hits is pretty satisfying. The other two tanks are pretty much just /stick and let god sort 'em out.

Maybe T5+ pet classes need a pet only buff stonewall to help out with mob damage.

Maybe it could be like our halloween pets. Where the buff is automatic, it could pop on the pet as soon as the pet is created?

Good idea Severs +1

Pets seem to do okay if you actually position them so they hit from behind. Otherwise, They tend to die to ripostes pretty quickly since they swing so fast.

+1 on pet mitigation, I have 2 good mages both T6 that I don't use due to pets being weak.

I would go further and say that T6 pets need a dps boost, they don't add much to the group dps wise either in T6... i notice only a couple of % extra dps from them.

True, mages have a nuke... but it's only base damage since almost noone UC's a mage, they may get high sorc charm but I don't even bother nuking with them in T6 as it's too much effort for too little return.

The problem with that is it is free dps. You  put nothing into the tune beyond epics and whatever left over gear you have and their pet has the same dps as someone who has a UC on their mage. Melee tunes have millions of plat that they dump into their toons and have to be properly geared to not get roflstomped. Until a way is found to require the same amount of effort and plat to increase your pet dps and survivability then I can't see where is a good idea to boost their dps and survivability. Maybe if there was a way to boost their hp by linking them to your own then I can see the survivability boost. Or maybe some items that right click summon pet gear/weps that is upgradeable by plat. Otherwise you will see people in the end game with nothing but pets, because they are free.

I'd be more than happy to pay for better dps on my pets. Perhaps there could be an item created that would buff the pet, similar to the mage 2.5 (I think it is). Requires same mats as fs/ns augs, tiers up to 10 for mitigation/dps boost to pets.

This makes this feasible and practical for those people wishing to invest in pets, and noone gets a free ride.

I've never cared for the click on the UC. I don't know if others use it but maybe replace it with a click buff for pets? And a better one for the UC2? It could be an hp and mitigation buff that lasts like 5 hours or something. And then make an item that scales up the same way essenses do, costing the same as augs that has a right click pet weapons and gear. Version 1 through x could be made so it can be upgraded the same way augs do. The pet gear would obviously have hp and some ac and maybe some haste, while the weapons would have some nice damage and procs. Since pets are already flimsy make it so the procs have some sort of negative hate modifier so that any other pc near them tanks.

I use the click all the time, even with 900k hps a 50k rune is useful. I am convinced it has saved my bacon a few times.

How about an item with a climbing mitigation buff for pets only? Something that would take cash and effort to get (yeah, I know....that means essences again :P). I agree pets are limited in their use after a certain point, but I also agree that its a nice offset to the dps they can do compared to melee having to purchase/make augs. A mitigation item for casters might be just the thing.

Oh! Better idea! How about a second CG quest....one that allows members to hail equip a set of pet armor that gives the mitigation?

Yeah, I also like the click on the uc

Mitigation and dps.

We're getting off topic but anyways...

UC is for all classes, so I wouldn't narrow down the click to pet classes only.

I could try to make pets have the stonewall.

Maybe some crafting item (yes essences) that the owner could click / give the pet or hail the pet to auto equip. With extra pet DPS and able to survive, then there would be a lot more pets in T5 and T6. Just don't want to make it soo powerful that players would rather use Mage pet than have a Warrior Tank.

Awesome. This might make me dust off my mage. She used to be a solid part of my group but got sidelined as my melee toons got more powerful than her.

how about UC rune land for both the character and pet... To help with survivability

and then create an aug/item via crafters guild that will increment pet DPS via essences

Though I don't think we want to take away a BST ninjastrike therefore I suggest we avoid a epic weapon aug for pet DPS

What is a good way to increase a pets DPS? Maybe pet power buff?

My mage is close to 330k DPS with UCv2 and ALL buffs..

About 100k++ behind monk and beastlord.

I can see pet classes questing with essences for more DPS via Pet Procing or Pet Power Buff or something :)

Flagged quests via crafters guild that let you hail your pet and give them different types of fireblade v2's, that have different procs on them. Maybe one dps type, and one defensive type. That way you can choose survivability, or higher dps.

Thats my 2cp

Long lasting I hope... otherwise it's a click fest...
Problem I forsee though with a long last buff, folks would just create a single item/aug and the share it with their group...

possibly a no trade item, BUT one that is quested in Nexus or other public zone -- don't think folks would be keen on having to TS each one of their pet classes

Just make an NPC that trades a normal UC for a pet class UC (back and forth like the epic vendor does with 1h/2h epics). The pet version click is a pet buff instead of the 25k rune.

Some tuning would be needed, or maybe some new pet spells should be created, since the mage and bst pets proc the same spellID as the mage T4 nuke.

Ideally, a 4.0 pet should do about the same dps as a melee with say, Strike Vs and no charm, but with a UC the pet would scale up by the same amount.

The difficulty therein lies in adding some sort of gradual way to scale the power increase over the charm ranks, which honestly is probably not worth it, as a 4.0 pet already demolishes all the content before it in its current state, it is only in content beyond T4 where people start getting UCs that pets really start to lag behind.

Suggestions:

Buff the mage and bst 3.0 pet damage, or nerf the necro pet. The mage/bst pets proc a 5k nuke, the necro one procs a 10k lifetap. It'd probably be fairer to just make the necro pet proc a 3k lifetap and be done with it.

The 3.5 and 4.0 pets are a bit more balanced in relation to each other, but do too much damage for a UC-level power increase. The mage/bst ones do double damage per proc relative to the necro pet, but no healing on their proc (so roughly a 30k dps difference). These pets should probably be toned down, as about 80% of their damage comes from procs and they already do about 70-80k dps when attacking from behind with just haste buffs. Suggestion: Lower the procs to a 15k lifetap and a 25k nuke. These pets would do about 40k (nec) and 55k dps (bst, mage) afterwards.

The pet buff buff click I'd like to see on a pet UC would be something along the lines of:

Increase spell damage by 300% (Mainly affecting procs, but would affect the healing the necro pet does)
Increase Hit points by 50k
Increase AC by 300
Mitigate melee damage by 15%
Add Proc: Ultimate Parry

Ultimate Parry (CBA to think of a better name)

Block Melee or Spells (1)

This should really help with pet survivability in the following tiers, as well as let their damage scale appropriately. The base pets definitely need a nerf if they are going to scale at all, considering all you need is the actual epic, and you get a 50-80k dps pet currently. The effort required to get carried to a 4.0 on a mage or necro and then use it to trivialize all previous content is extremely low, considering people sell MCP kills for like 50k and pages for 10-20ish. A couple hours farming velks is all that would be required.

Compare the damage of a 4.0 mage pet with say, a 4.0 monk using strike IVs with a sorc 1 (which takes a couple million in monetary investment for the augs), and the pet will still probably do more dps until the monk grinds his charm up to around a sorc 31 or something. Nerfing the pets but letting them scale with the UC is pretty much the only way to go about this, considering how fire-and-forget they are for damage.

Really good idea to give pets Spell damage... BUT... spell damage does not work on pets it seems.

I can easily add/edit the current pet code that when you hail the pet, it checks to see if you have an UC and if you do have one then you can request the pet equip a pet version of the UC on itself.

Maybe a drop spell that is pet only buff cast by the pet owner onto the pet. Each tier gives it more HP, Stonewall, Haste, etc. Could be some super buff to make the pets good dps and survive.

The necro drop spell scroll for pet buffing could be something cool like increasing higher life taps or something.

I like the idea of making pets worth having where almost everyone would want one as much as a Cleric and Warrior in their group.

Just have to be careful that we don't replace main tank classes.

What ive tried on pets so far.....


Buff for Spell Damage ---- Didnt work

Focus effect item --- Didnt Work

Worn effect item --- Didn't work



Only thing that I could get to work was scaling their Melee damage with a spell... hmm

What focus effects did you try, Paldail? Did you try like the mage summoned jewelry, or did you actually try a pet with a UC-esque damage modifier?

The mage and bst 4.0 pets (and beyond, I think) both proc Shylo's Bolt of Doom, the T4 mage nuke that is a double 25k hit. The Nec 4.0 pet procs a custom 25k lifetap that isn't available as a spell to players. Enchanter 4.0 pet has no proc. I have no idea about ranger pets on the 5.0+

I'm thinking that simply removing the procs from the pets and making their damage pure white damage would be the easiest move, but they still wouldn't scale as well with stuff like kraken/tempest blade. The necro pet is also reliant on the lifetap, and pretty much the only reason play necros is to brainlessly farm and trivialize stuff like shadow or PoD. Maybe they could have a spell they can buff their pet with that reintroduces the lifetap proc but at the cost of pet damage?

I like the idea of pet with its own version of UC, but do you mean same stats? Because a pet with +300% spell damage would be insane DPS.

Pets would never be viable as main tanks unless theyre *all* you use. Once an actual pc gets within range of the mob, the mob automatically attacks the player. So youd still need tanks and healers either way.