EZ Server

I am trying to figure out what the best six chars are to box together, taking into account ease of micromanagement and ability to automate stuff.

I'll be tanking with warrior, healing with cleric.  I figure I'd want a bard to melody some nice buffs and to have a slower and a ranger cause autoshot is great dps without having to do much.  Not really sure on the last two spots.

Any suggestions?  Thanks in advance!

Cleric, Warrior, Ranger x4

Drop the slower as nothing pass Ldon can be slowed. You may want to consider adding a second cleric if you can manage it for back up group heals. Add a monk for dps plus the phantom ability, (12 second unresistable lull). You may want to consider a mage for cothing as six toons are a lot to manage. Also the pet does help out if you are able to use it reliably. The rest, rangers.

Warrior - Need
Cleric - Need
Monk - Need
Cleric - Optional Ranger or other dps
Mage - Optional Ranger or other dps
Ranger - Optional other dps

As with everything in EQ, 'ideal' is subjective.

Most of your high end boxers use a group like: War, War, Clr, Clr, Brd, Rng.  
Plusses - Easy to manage.  Excellent dps and healing.  
Minuses - Kind of boring as four of the toons are ignored during the fight while you heal.  5 of 6 are plate wearers so it'll take a long time to gear everyone from Qvic on when 3/4 of the gear that drops isn't plate. (worse in T2 and T4 when it's class specific armor and you need two complete sets of War and Clr)

Up through T1 content my group was War, Clr, Rng, Rng, Rog, Dru.  Certainly not ideal for dps, healing or ease of management.  But it was fun for me.  I also have a Mage for CoH but he's generally camped until needed.  That allowed me to use all the armor drops for quite a while.  Less rots until I got down to just needing legs and bps.  The problem with this group is it's just not good enough for T2.  If I replace the druid with another cleric it works, but the fights take a LONG time.  ;)

I forgot about bard, make a bard and swap him out with the mage as you see fit. If you need the mage, leave the bard at home. If you don't need the mage, bring the bard along.

Yeah bard + ranger 3.0 is like a .50 cal cannon going off.

My original Cler, War, Ranger x4 idea will get you through Tacvi easily, but for T1 and beyond it might be more beneficial to go with 2 Clerics and 2 Warriors for stability when the proverbial shit hits the fan.

Honestly? If you really want to limit yourself to 6 and go the farthest possible it's war/war/war/clr/clr/clr You can technically kill even t3 bosses with that config. I don't believe there are many other groups of 6 that can do it.  It's very boring though :)

war/war/clr/clr/rng/rng

i box more than 6 though. no limits for me!

Interesting input so far.  And yep, I know "ideal" is subjective, but that's why I asked - to find out what everyone's own thoughts on the ideal were!  :)

I see that double healer seems pretty important at endgame.  Just to minimize the amount of plate I need to find, and to split class drops up a bit more, I am considering druid instead of cleric.  Are druid heals at all sufficient or will I just end up wishing it was a cleric at the end of the day?

You will wish you had made a cleric. Druid is nice for the regen but heals are for the cleric. Making a druid or shaman as a healer on this server is a waste of group space.

I roll two setups depending on what I am doing. Currently I prefer

WAR
CLR
BRD
PAL
MNK
MNK

--
Lulls and shit but that paladin saved my ass the other day. Cleric got insta gibbed by tier2 boss and paladin proc heal kept me alive and in fact I waited to rez cleric just to see how long I could push it.
2x monks with bard songs = great dps + fd pop tikis + lull shit + I love monks.
Paladin is just a joke. when I run outa room on monks to hold crystals I just sac this fucker to the gods. I see better drops when I do that.
As much as hunter is a jackoff and nerfs the shit outa bards, you just cant beat them.

i meant to say

chanter, chanter, pal, pal, SK, shaman. Uber group and heals

If you are actually planning on going to t3/t4 and I'm not talking about halls of honor take the advice of the people here that have actually fought and won against a T3 boss with a group of 6 toons. :)

Anyone else giving advice without having succeeded at it, may not be your best source of information for actual end game group formation. No offense to anyone here, but taking 6 to PoD or HoH isn't the same as actually winning a T3 boss fight with 6 toons.

For pre T3/T4 boss however war/war/clr/clr/rng/rng imo is the best combination. Trading out the bard for the second ranger will serve you well, especially if you have a chanter bot for buffing haste.

This is good advice.

See, i can give out actual useful knowledge at time... when im not filled with hatred for my job and take it out on the forums

I do War/Cleric/Bard/BST/Mage/Ranger.  Its really good dps, and the dps side of the house is well spread out so it makes gearing up a little easier.  3 Plat classes takes a while to gear up though.

Of the 3 dps classes I use, beastlord is by far the best dps, followed by mage, then ranger is last.

I advise against 2 pet classes as they are hard to manage at certain parts of the game. Basically if you are fighting a boss mob that spawns adds you will not be able to manage to keep the pets on the adds and will end up with all the adds spawned and your warrior overwhelmed. While the bst is better dps I personally prefer the mage because of Coth.

3 Warriors and 3 Clerics

You can accomplish anything with this combo.

Kinda boring tho I'd think  :P

3 war and 3 cleric would be if you can box more than 6 chars i would say.

i box 12 on good days (if im up to lots of multi tasking) have my tanks and clerics in a group, backup healers and dps in another. keeps it interesting

I've seen people doing T2 with 2x war 2x cleric 2 x ranger. atm I'm 4 boxing with 2 clerics warrior and monk/ranger ... still making up my mind on the 4th one, but you also have to remember if you do like 3 wars 3 clerics... thats ALL plate class... if i could 5-6 box I would use war war cleric cleric mnk ranger  reason IMO for 2 wars is lets say you get 1 adds or 2 wipe the main warrior... there you go Bam you dont have to worry about a total wipe, your second warrior is right there ( or sk or pally but.. ) honstly tho experiment have fun =)  this is a pretty EZ server =p..

~Tank~

Yeah Im looking to run 3 clerics and 3 warriors in one group and one group all dps not sure how it will go but heard this will work well.  I may be an idiot though and be totally wrong.

3 war 3 cleric = g1
5 ranger 1 bard = g2

Yeah only problem is I have 2 monks and 2 rangers with epics so I need to get people to gimme their old rangers or level a few on my own which i dont really want to do.

i made a ranger yesterday, took all day to do 3 3.0's and stuff... it was so lame and time consuming. worth it i guess though.

On the upside i ran through Tacvi dog ass tired and ended up with the arrow from boss 8. good day over all

true story. I was bored one day while guild was doing pod stuff and I decided to load only pet classes + 1 cleric.
Think I managed to get exp on close to 80percent of the bosses. Yes I did change to adds on spawn.

On topic. its boring as shit to be forced to 3war3clr shit. I refuse to make my own 2nd war 2nd cleric. If shit calls for it i'll box in friends chars so they can get loots. I prefer my bard/mnk/mnk (yes even tho bards are the fucking nerf target) as it is more fun.

Brd/Rng/Mnk/Mnk/War/Clr kills shit pretty fast sub t3

Yeah been fooling around with diif makeups, having the second war in group kinda fucks with me on aggro.  Having two clerics in group serious easy, I can be 50% retarded and still kill shit.  I  still love them monks and my itty bitty rogue even though the love is all over rangers.

rogues would be nice if they could BS for more dmg than they do now. somewhere closer to ranger dps

yea rogues are so iffy. If the RNG (Random Number Gen) hates you then man it sucks to be a rogue. On the otherhand if your a lucky bugger rogues can be some great dps.
I personally Love seeming them go pew pew SPLAT (Hi Vance) and i think its lawlsauce to see new rogues upgrade that bp. Player1"Oh dude I got a new bp, whats Wulans distance do?" Player2
"Oh man thats sweet for rogues you can now cast those spells YOU DONT HAVE from like 35percent further away while you are STANDING ON SHIT TO BACKSTAB IT. Isnt itemization awesome here on ez"

you mean the non existent itemization

Yeah that BP effect is an epic fail.

look we all know what the ideal 6 box for ez is, tank tank cleric cleric ranger ranger, call me crazy but i think the 6 box could easily solo all the way PoG.

Ohhh snap I forgot there is no such thing here as itemization. Shit. Well at least I can spam the forums cause I know it pisses off Cero to see more Balthor posts bumping shit to the top

No! Your forums posts are weak sauce man.
I am the posting troll

Nah my shits no longer XXX rated like previously because I was told to knock that shit off. Now I keep it to the PG13-R rated arena.

Well, thats when you gotta push the envelope

whats the point? Bofry slit his wrists or something. Most of china is gone. Supreme isnt around.
Not interested in hating on the new players and I dont even feel like playing much on the server with it being overcrowded as it is.

Figure i'll play nice and shit. Like when I do randomly log in I'll go kill MoW or TT for people needing it or some shit.
Still refuse to do qvic runs and shit like that cause I dont believe in bumping more people into tacvi//pod but epics are epic.

So far my only experience with pet classes is watching the 68 mage pet tear up BoT.  Is the beastlord pet even at that level better dps, or does it take 2.0, 3.0, etc before beastlord pulls ahead?

Here is a run down on mage, bst, and necro 3.0 pets.

Bst 3.0 pet does the most damage of all. I can't remember the spell the bst pet cast but it does not cause any agro problems. Bst has a heal that is larger than the heals on mage and necro and is effected by the oracle charm. Since bst heal is naturally larger than mage and necro heals they will get the best benefit from the oracle charm. This heal does crit. Personally bst attempting to dps a mob themselves does nothing but put the bst at risk of getting damaged themselves thus wasting time healing themselves that they could be healing their pet. On the otherside of that, bst is the best at flipping mobs because they have more hp and better defense than mage or necro.

Mage 3.0 pet does the second best damage of all. The problem with the mage pet right now is the root is causing agro issues. This problem seems to have gotten worse recently and makes the mage pet useless beyond tacvi imo. The mage pet heal does not crit and but is effected by the oracle charm. Mage dd's do not do enough damage to waste the time it takes to cast them.

Necro 3.0 pet does the third best damage of all. The necro pet procs a group heal though I am not sure how good it is. I think I heard 3k by someone but don't hold me to it. I am not aware of any agro problems with a necro pet. The necro pet heal is the same as the mage pet heal so it does not crit but is  effected by the oracle charm. Dots do not do enough damage to be effective. With the mana regen on 3.0's the necro spell to give others mana doesn't really have a place in the mid to end game.

Any corrections or additional information is welcome.

Pet heals are affected by Oracle Charm.

Sweet they changed it. Editing my post. Thank you very much for the info Danyelle.

Yeah it seems to for mages anyway lol. I haven't tried Necros/Beasts so don't quote me on them. And np :)

necro pet Grouop heal proc is like 600. Don't know if oracle charm change anything ?

But at hight end level it will be useless since pet die in 2 sec...

Would be nice to get a firebladeV3 (with nice hp bonus) spell on pet once you get PoG flag, so pet will be more hp and will no more dying in 2 sec.

Yeah shelving Homey was tough for me since he was my first char here but even just T1 bosses would eat his pet in seconds so not worth it.

Question:  I'm getting really close to getting the rest of our boxers into T3.  Hopefully soon.   I haven't really had any problems in T1 and T2 with our necro pet dying.  Sometimes, If i miss a heal it will be toast but it doesn't happen often.   How much worse is it in T3?  Should I go ahead and replace the necro before I get into T3?  I'm assuming your stating that in T3 the pet is going to die within 2 sec?
:(     I really don't want to level another another toon and go through all the epics again.  haha

T3 trash is similar to T2 bosses i've been told. I've only been there as a support toon though, my warrior cant get there yet. I played a mage and necro, or other trash while i was there.
pets die kinda often, but once you get the hp buff for pet it wont be as huge of an issue

It really depends if your unlucky on rampages or if your pet starts hitting the mobs from the front, ive had a bst pet live for hours on t3 trash, then die 3 times in a row in 5 minutes, as to t3 bosses, I normally have to resummon the bst pet about every 3 minutes, even with him hitting from the back.  Not sure how necro pets compare to bst pets hp wise, but if they are significanly lower, it would be troublesome on the bosses.  I have had a pet live through 90% of a t3 fight, but its been a rarity for them to even live 20%

Thanks so much for that, Xiggie.  Now, it may be awhile before I can get to 3.0.  (I'm just slowly building up my box - got warrior ranger cleric so far - and farming BoT right now)

Are the same rankings applicable for the base 70 pets?  What about 2.0?  Thanks much for any additional input you can provide.

It is no problem at all, I don't mind sharing information at all. I have not done any tests on the other epic pets but I am thinking they are about the same as each other, (as in all other mage epic pets are about the same as bst and necro). As for pre-epic it could be a toss up between mage and necro. Bst spell pets don't have any boosts as far as I know.

im done with pet classes.
between lack of hp and mag pet root, you are better off with a necro or turrets

I hear ya. Unless I am in a pre PoD zone all I do with my mage is coth. I have picked up my old bst that I created when they first got 3.0 pets. It's sad because my mage has about 50k hp. Would really like to have her back though. Hopefully this will get changed.

Would you say that CotH is useful enough to a full box to make leveling up a mage worth it then?

CotH is extremely useful especially when you are boxing a full group. Even if you use stick, CotH is still extremely valuable. You can use your mage to blast through ldons and just coth your needed toons when you get something to drop you want them to have. You can go get buffs when your in the middle of a zone and get coth'd back, (except ldon 2-5 of course).

Hmm interesting, I've been debating on what pet class to play lately because I don't have one (sorry, I don't count CG pet), deffinately going to have to make a mage, while were talking about pet classes, if you take out a druids 3.0 clicky, would it be better to box a bst in his place? Does bst heals do the same amount as a druid?

As far as for PoD and up relying on bst or druid for heals is a mistake in my opinion. Rely on a cleric for that, if you are using them for back up heals, use a second cleric as back up heals.

But to answer your question I am pretty sure the druid is going to have a heal that is much better than a bst.

ok, ya, I'm not really relying on a druid or a bst for heals, but I figured is a bst could heal for just as much as a druid, why not box that instead and get the pet for extra dps, but then theres that hole "pets suck" in the tiers

I am not sure what happen but the root on 3.0 has started getting agro like never before. I always sick my pets on the backside of the mobs and before recently rarely lost a pet. Normally when my pet didn't have buffs it is because they wore off, not because it died and I had to recast another. I recently decided to raise a bst so that I can actually use my pet in battles. They are a wonderful source of dps.

Why oh why would you think a bst could heal for as much as a druid have you played this game at all? Anyway pets are pretty useless after t2 anyway bosses in t3 kill them too quickly for them to be of any help at all. So either do warx3/clerx3 or warx2/clerx2/rangx2 would be your best bet but you can do whatever since it will be your box crew do what fits your playstyle.

Because I saw a bst heal once that did as much as my druid, thats why I was asking excluding the 3.0 clicky which would benefit more.

i saw my cleric epicly fail at healing once, and my paladin crit healed for 40k. time to drop my cleric for the obviously superior paladin heals

=p

oh yea! i am rezzing this thread

whats the new 6 box hotness?
has the ideal group... War War Cle Cle Rng Rng group been replaced?

paladins replacing rangers?

what are the DPS rankings.. now that paladins were updated?

Ranger still out dps's Monks a little and certainly still out dps's Pally. I have seen people replacing the second cleric though. I replaced my second Monk for the time being because of the extra heals. Once I get him into PoG I will really be able to gage whether it is a good trade off though.

My new 6 man killing crew is War/War/War/Rng/Rng/Clr. My crew is geared much heavier than any others though, so may not be a fair estimation for most.

Can the new Pal not replace one of the WARs?
Or a cleric as mentioned already?

unless the paladin has ultimate charm and 4.0, i dont think there is any way to compete with cleric in T3 and T4.... but idk because im not in that position. Maybe paladin with that setup could outdps a war with 3.0's

Now that I've been in T1 a little tiny bit, I am wondering...

The group with 5 rangers and 1 bard. Doesn't it need a cleric to counteract the AoE damage of boss mobs? Will bard regen be enough to keep them alive? If so, does the bard need an Oracle Charm or something? My 3.0 bard only heals in the 700's range each tick. Those AoE's can do thousands of damage.

I like the idea of the bard haste on the rangers. The math seems to work. If bard haste increases dps by 70%, then 170% x5 = the dps of 8.5 rangers. An ideal leverage of bard buffs, plus the aoe regen helps both groups.

It just doesn't seem like bard regen will keep the rangers alive. Am I missing something??

well you could have one of the clerics in G1 target someone in G2 with heals and it will heal that group. at least i havent had issues doing that.

The regen from bard i would have to get you when i get home today (if i remember) cause it is a decent amount of regen, but likely not enough to counter the AoE.

But yeah, like i mentioned you could always have a cleric from g1 healing g2

Ok, that makes more sense. I didn't know clerics could do a group heal when they are not in the group. Is that the Vivification spell to do that?

Ranger snares then Ranger roots then they move back and /autofire on

I tried this with Vivification and it didn't work.  My group heal still only healed my group.  (Yes I had /tgb on)

Quick follow up question to this: I assume the mage pet is using CG fireblades in your comparison.  What about beastlord pet?  Does it use weapons, and if so, do these comparisons assume CG fireblades also (assuming beastlords can even get it)?

My run down assumes an even playing ground, so yes, the fire blades is included. To get the fire blades you have to join the casters guild. To be specific, bst pet can get the fire blades if the bst joins the casters guild.

Is this in practice or theory?

I know my exposure to T1/T2 fights is very limited, but I have been in them and from my experience I do not see a ranger surviving a T2 fight even at a distance. The AoE DoTs I saw were doing like 40k damage and have a huge range.

I still don't see a ranger group surviving without a cleric. For those that do it... what am I missing here?

No dots do 40k.... i dunno what you saw but you saw wrong. Milein is capable of not only surviving without a cleric but she can solo T1 trash/minis an T2 trash the only exception being Kronos if we let adds pile up, 8 dragons doing 3k AoEs and Kronos' DoT=painful. Of course she's only full T2 gear so she could be better. 4 casts of  Counteract Poison will clear any poison AoEs off you. Depending on how many we pull and how fast we kill Mil can be poisoned during the beginning of the pull and last until after the mobs are dead plus the time it takes to cast the spell 4 times. Ranger regen is a beast. That alone should get you through many situations.

Of course why would you be out of group without a cleric anyway? =/

omg dany, log on! your bard :)

Wat? no wai!

i mean log your bard on now dany!

Crab is this setup strictly for HoH crystal farming or do you get by doing T3 or even T4 bosses with this as well?  I of course do understand your tanks are going to have a substantial amount of hps and your clr is probably capable of healing more than the average bear.

Right now for farming of T4 bosses I'm using War/War/War/Clr/Pal/Monk. I'm capable of all T4 bosses with that crew of 6.

Practice. Use to be rather easy to land but one of the recent changes made resists act wonkey as shit. Some times I have to cast snare a few times for it to land.
Its good practice to snare every t1/t2 boss however as if they path you can lose the corpse to one of the hundreds of glitchs in the zone.

I remember seeing a SK + 3 RNG in a group doing t1 named some time back. SK proc kept it alive and rangers just max range bowed. I figured they were snare/rooting when I saw the SK die on a bad round of attacks and the boss changed target to a ranger but stood there.
Surprised more people dont use those spells

Sploosh.

Well played sir.

Yeah i'm using Clr/Clr/War/War/Rng/Rng for stone farming and it does well, I could/should probably drop a cleric for another ranger or monk but will make that change when boshog gets his ulti soon.

What lvl is your clrs oracle charm?  I'm trying to get a feel for when I can drop a clr in favor of more dps for stone farming.

Now that some time has run past I would like to throw
that question into the round again.

Up to T1 it seems to work, but I am a bit worrying if thats
also the case for T2 and on?

Thx for the answers!

imo ideal would be war/pal/clr/clr/rng/rng

pal/pal/pal/pal/pal/pal * Wario  laugh and runs off *

Won't work when you get up to DT mobs, pally can't tank long enough really against the super big boys. Always at least 2 war.

gotta be big and ugly too...the ogre type.

lol

What class would you replace then in that team? one RNG?

Crab....question for ya, bud.

A lot's being made of the need for the Ultimate Charm to win the 4.0 boss fight.  Could you complete that fight by removing the UC's from your Warriors and replacing with just Guardian Charms?

I would love to try WAR/WAR/WAR/CLR/CLR/CLR if I ever had the time to do all the backgearing.

With sorc 41 on all 3 warriors I am guessing the dps would be close to where it needs to be.

You don't require UC to win that fight I wouldn't think. Just have to have correct class balance with DPS, will it make it easier, yes. But honestly I think the epic 4 for warriors may well be more powerful than the UC.

/salute

Thanks amigo!