Consensus? 4 Mages or 4 Shaman?

[justatest90]

Hi, oldschool EQer here who multiboxed 18 person raids. But boxing in EQ was a lot different, so I'm going for 5 here. I'm trying to decide between 4 shaman + pally or 4 mages + pally (or 3 mages + SP, using DI when shiz hits the fan). I'm leaning shaman for rez, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

Is there anyone who does, say, 1 Pally, 1 DestLock, 1 MMHunter, 1 SPriest, 1 FMage?

Thanks!

[Knytestorme]

PvE or PvP?

PvE it's 4 shaman + paladin hands down. Firstly, who is going to heal your paladin while he tanks in a 4 mage + paladin PvE group? The survivability of the shaman in mail vs mages in cloth is also something to take into consideration for those times your paladin goes down and a boss is at 1-2% and needs to just be tanked a little bit.

PvP it's a lot closer but I'd suggest that shaman still have a slight edge overall though instant burst dps may lean slightly to the mages...overall though I'd say either option works.

Bottom line (for anyone asking this in the future) is that it's hard to give an answer without knowing where your game focus lies (and I'm assuming it's PvE given your concern for res), but from there it's also hard to give an opinion as you may enjoy a different playstyle or classes to the rest of us so usually the easiest answer is to say try out both options and see which you prefer in terms of early leveling and try to extrapolate from there. And yes, I know, both types of groups will play very similarly at early levels and quite differently at lower levels but I think that the lack of a healer in the mage + paladin group will show the problems with it very early on in a PvE instance such as Deadmines or RFC.

[justatest90]

For PVE.

I saw your profile you have a Pally, Priest, Shammy, and 2 Mages. Does that make management difficult, or does it work fairly well for you?

Does anyone else use a hunter pet as a secondary tank, or is it pretty much necessary since we're rolling with pally tanks?

And now I digress a bit, but: Would you recommend PLing your 4 toon group independent of PLing your pally (I have a 70 pally already - I -could- level another one, but...), or do you level everything together?

(Right now I'm using my Lock pet to dps the mobs after the shammy group tags with quad lightning bolts). I guess to clarify my question: Will not having a pally hurt me when I'm instancing in the mid ranges?

[Knytestorme]

The only time I have noticed it being an issue for me is in arena where it is still taking me some time to get used to setting assists on the mages for poly in real time and the general confusion of non-set encounters, or in situations in instances where mobs drop fear bombs (eg first 4 pull of casters in ramparts) but other than that I have general combat macros sorted so I can dps or heal/dps at the same time and in fights where I know I'll need to cc I can usually set up and get ready before having to pull. That being said, I still haven't really tested myself in instances yet so I may revisis this answer :)

I don't think you should need an offtank in instances with a paladin tanking, as long as you gear them up well for holding aoe agro as needed (eg first boss in ramparts if you have no cc), and I think it would be hard to control a pet as an offtank depending on your macro setup but it could be doable and a hunter can make a good team member for dps + cc if you like them.

Can't really answer that as I didn't pl any of these or my other characters. With this team I wanted to roll a new paladin on a seperate account as a prot to go with my holy, and I had a mage on that account + a shaman on a second account both at 20 so I just bought 3 more battle chests and created the paladin, mage, priest on those, leveled them up to 20 in the starting area and then grouped and leveled them on quests all together in the old world. If you already have a level 70 paladin then I'd say just use them to boost the other 4 accounts to 60 using the method linked in the wiki and from 60 on group them with the 70 paladin as your team (it's how I intend to level up 3 more shaman to give me the option of rolling with my current team or 4 shaman + Smara in the future)

If it came down to a choice betwen leveling the 4 shaman with a paladin or a lock I'd say go with the paladin...boosting with a paladin aoe tanking with a sporegaar shield + spike vs a warlock is no contest and the paladin should be able to boost for your group all the way to 60 (well 70 really but once you have the shaman at 60 and grouped with the paladin in outland quests and instances I'd say it's now grouping and not boosting).

[Mak]

Sorry to Kny above me if you said this but I got lost in your post >.<

My opinion on this is - go 4x Shaman with Paladin. I don't have them, probably won't have my shaman team for a long time but I have seen them do very very well in PVE and PVP b/c the versatility is great. For PVP, you can always drop the pally and take the four shaman and for PVE, you have an awesome tank.

On PLing - I was considering powerleveling my team but the only reason I didn't was mainly because I tried to three-box three 70s (different classes) and learning them is crazy. I would much rather level them together so I can have a smoother learning curve. Granted, I'm running 4 and 5 classes in my teams so it is naturally a bit difficult. For you, I don't think it would be so bad.

And I have the same team as you said above (a Pally, Priest, 2x Mages, Shaman) and so far management isn't so bad. Granted, I'm only level 9 and expect it to be a little more complicated as I go. For now, the mages and shaman sync pretty well when casting and I use Focus/CC macros. I'm planning on swapping a mage for a druid since I have one sitting at 25 then hopefully level them all together.

Whatever you choose, enjoy your team and welcome to the forums!

[Ken]

As mentioned before, 4 shamans is best for PvE. Since you have to level all the way up to level 70 through PvE, I'd go for shamans.
I chose 4 shamans(no extra) because of:
- regular (out of combat) resurrection
- wipe resurrection
- healing spells
- trucks full of helpful totems (even area of effect)
- mail armor at 40 (handy stuff for surviving the more difficult instance bosses)
- you can spec one of them as a healer if need be

With 4x a level 22 shaman, you can instantly kill a level 20. Someone of my own level will take maximum 6 seconds to kill. That's enough damage for me :)

[edit] If I'd have 5 characters, I would go for 5 shamans because:
- one can be the main healer
- 5x same character is easier to control than 4 + 1. You'll have less macro's and keybinds to set up and maintain.