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I'm curious as to outside opinions. I have made a 4 box group consisting of:
Pally for tanking
wizard for dps
shaman for heals and buffs
And an enchanter for mezzing and mana regeneration
Do you think it's a bad group make up any suggestions would be appreciated
i am still a newbie but someone said all pally all the time and my 3x pally team is doing fine
LOL, he was asking in the EQ forum, don't think all pallies would work too well :)
Your group sounds fine to me. Though I've not gotten to the high level content yet, but I don't see any problems with that group makeup.
I'm running with MAG/DRU/ENC at the moment, with the mage pet tanking. So far, so good, am in the mid-80s now.
Tat
Bit of a necro, but I'll weigh in.
In EQ2 stacking pallies is viable. Not so much in EQ1; stacking melee's in EQ1 is painful; but with mercs, practically any combo is viable. The holy trinity is necessary otherwise: Tank, Heals, Slow. Mezzing is almost as necessary. A pulling class is nice, but not 100% necessary Beyond that, add DPS for seasoning.
If your talking about EQ1, almost any combo is viable with mercs. I prefer shadowknights to pallies as a tank [because of life-steal stuff]. Any 'tank' is viable, and there are actually merc tanks too. Shadowknights have feign death which is good for pulling - careful 'pulls' are a cornerstone of EQ1 design. There's also Warriors. Beyond that you can use pets or shoehorn other classes [like monks] into tanking..but its well, painful, and not recommended for prime time.
Shamans get best slows, and you can have a merc healer as a backup when necessary. They aren't quite as great at healing as a cleric, but still viable. Shaman buffs stack with cleric buffs tho, and you can use a merc to get the cleric buffs.
DPS wise, Wiz works, and gives you ports. Druid is an option as ranged DPS, ports, and as a bonus has backup heals/buffs too. Not all their buffs stack with cleric buffs, but some do. I always favored weird groups [and had a mage]. Pets add an extra dimension that has to be managed, but its not that bad. If you set up pulling, its not that hard to manage a melee as a DPS in EQ1, so its viable. Theres something to be said for sustained DPS versus bursty dps; melee's are definitely sustained DPS. Ranger is good for lazy dps [bow autoshooting.] Ranger buffs are overtaken by druid buffs for the most part tho. beastlords are sort of a shaman/monk hybrid and have a powerful pet [that can slow at later levels, which is a nice feature.] They have some buffs that shamans lack, too.
Enchanter wise they are king of mezzing and such, but another option is bard. Yes it's melee DPS but also has great buffs [song synergy with well, every kind of group honestly[ and their single-target mez's are much easier to manage [because its a song] than the enchanters. Enchanters are harder to manage, but better at multi-target mezzing. Bards are great at pulling though. They also have wide buff-overlap with enchanters, though the bard version is a song and requires the bards presence to maintain.
One thing about EQ1, every class has so many options, well, most things stack, to a degree, with most other things. However, there is very little reason to stack multiples of anything [other than healers; but it's still better to stack multiple types of healers before multiples of the same class; except in raid situations.] Same generally goes for DPS, because most DPS has non-dps features. Some exceptions; rangers don't really stack great, buff wise, unless you lack a druid. On the other hand, beastlords do stack decently well with shamans. [and have mana regeneration, tho not as great as bard/enc, but stacks IIRC...] So yeah. EQ1 is sprawling, and complicated, and almost anything is viable. My knowledge is a few years out of date, but I doubt the synergy has changed much.
If you were talking about EQ2, I believe that that combo is still viable, but I'm not an expert. Pulling isn't as big a deal in EQ2, to my knowledge, because it moved to the whole linked encounter system.
It's been a long time since I played Everquest (I); never played EQ II.
Back then, a Warrior was the best tank but the hardest to use tanking.
They had the most armor and mitigation, making them the most efficient choice.
But a Shadow Knight or Paladin had superior threat gaining mechanics, so the DPS could kill faster or otherwise behave more recklessly with the tank able to hold on to threat.
Back in Planes of Power (the last expansion I played), a Monk with a lot of armor stacked could tank as well, but aside from a few Monks on the server (notably Delnatha, in Afterlife) not many of them did it well.
Most groups wanted a cleric for the healing, because of the spell Complete Heal.
In a raid environment, you'd have multiple clerics casting C.Heal, in a chain such that it would land on the main tank every second (or whatever interval was necessary, to both keep the tank alive and spread the healing threat across enough characters to not piss the mob off terribly).
Everyone needed either an Enchanter or a Shaman.
The Enchanter had superior haste and mana regeneration, but inferior slows.
The Shaman had superior slows and debuffs (similar to the Chanter buffs, in overall effect) but inferior haste/buffs.
You didn't really need CCs, if your puller was careful.
But having them, would really save the day often enough that every group wanted either an Enchanter or a Bard.
I boxed a Cleric, Druid, Rogue and Bard.
My roommate was a Warrior in Afterlife.
My other roommate was a Shaman.
That made a six man group.
I'm not sure on where the game has gone, but I'd be tempted to experiment with multiple Necromacers or Beast Masters, and possibly to kite with Druids.
EQ1 Joke:
Q: What did the Ranger say to the other Ranger?
A: Is this your bind point too?
Considering it's free to play, if I wasn't so lazy, I'd pull a Sam Deathwalker. I thought about it, but way too lazy to level all those wizzies.
My friend keeps trying to talk me into coming back and playing a Necro... They are supposedly pretty powerful now a days, no idea how they'd stack though.
I was always kind of tempted to stack all the pet classes for laughs, tho. There are 3 beefy ones [mage, necro, beast.] As an aside, that'd give you slows and snares. So, add a merc tank/healer and that'd be a viable group for pretty much anything.
I'm thinking of coming back, but downsizing and just doing 3-4. SK, Monk [my old main], Beast [slows, some buffs] and maybe a Bard. [CC, Haste]. Add 2-3 mercs and call it a day. I've done a lot of combinations, but haven't seriously boxed in a really long time.
Merc's are really cool though; make healing a lot less stressful. They kind of reduce the 'absolute necessity' of a cleric. Also, other classes get ressurections now for what its worth. [And Cleric mercs = everyone can have a res in their back pocket.] Other classes are decent at healing too... Shamans get some really cool heals. And so do druids; things aren't quite like they were where clerics were the only viable healer. Maybe they still are in a raid situation, but otherwise, all 3 classes are viable; depending on AA.
That's probably the biggest issue with EQ; there are 1000's of AA, and some classes are not viable until you grind out some. [Like tanks, to be effective the passive defensive AA's are absolutely required to be maintained more-or-less at level. This is a bit of an issue because well, they increase the level cap, add several hundred AA every expansion, and some of those AA's are usually mitigation or evasion boosts, and at-level content usually gets built around that. Come to think of it, it might be easier just to grab a tank merc, or just kite. LOL.
leveling is so much easier now in EQ1. There are tons of quests in the new zones ( post PoP ) Mercs are amazing! Your mercs can PL you while you sleep in some spots and its ok with Sony. I would park my trio in a spot with fast spawns, go to bed.. wake up and have a few levels or a chunk of AAs. Point is, sometimes mercs play better than real players. I would not do more than 3. I did 6..than 5 with a merc healer, then eventually went down to 3. I had Ranger, Shaman and Wiz for ports, with merc heals, tank and DPS.. somtime i used two merc healers if the content was tougher.
If you stick with 4.. then you can do tank and healer merc. Than play a CC type from your main window with the rest DPS. Playing a tank in EQ is harder than any other game.. you have to have TONs of AAs to be able to take the hits and do enough threat Mercs can do a good job right away.. hell the merc healer and DPS can take some good damage as well.. they tank better than a player tank at lower levels lol.
The Free-to-Play stuff is...
Races: Barbarian, Erudite, Halfling and Human.
Classes: Cleric, Fighter, Rogue and Wizard.
You can buy a race or class (maybe both together, not sure), for a one-time fee.
There is a 'Silver' access, that gets you something... not sure what.
The regular monthly subscription, gets you all of the restrictions removed.
this has a break down... http://www.everquest.com/free
Honestly, the biggest annoyances are AA. I can see AA unlocks getting prohibitively expensive as you advance towards the end-game. However, if you just have a couple of serious characters and a bunch of extra DPS and such, silver accounts are pretty viable. You can pay for the race/class unlocks you want. You can unlock several of the gold benefits, actually. [character slots, bag slots, AA...] But not all of them.
also you get station-cash for free for being gold. Eh...its not a bad system. Could be better. Beats full on subscription access, especially for messing around with alts. They aren't necessary, but for camping/grinding stuff, they are kind of useful.
I'm actually starting to think subscription games are bad juju for me. I'm just not terribly consistent, sadly.
One thing you might want to consider. There are a few classes that have AAs that alow them to kill a mob instantly, or in a few shots. You can start to do this in the mid 70s and it gets easier as you gain AAs. The mob has to be a certain amount of levels below you. its basickly light blue and green con mobs. By them selves, the exp is not great.. but when you can insta kill them, you can pull them fast and steady! and the exp is great! The best class for this is the Ranger.. they can Head Shot mobs.. so snare, kite and autofire shots are what can "crit" a head shot. They can only head shot humanoide mobs ( anything that walks on two legs and ins not undead ( yes, even lizardmen )
Shadow nights are damn good as well.. but take a lot more AAs and skill.. they do what is called "swarming" They literally gather up a whole bunch of mobs ( 50+ ) And with a combo or AAs that heal them when they take damage and proc damage back at the mobs.. they can kill whole zones doing that for crazy good exp and coin/loot.
Lastly there is the Rogue, rogs can assassinate mobs ( similar to rangers ) but they do it in melee range and its a lot more risky than they other two.. you pretty much have to have a healer and you have to be able to control the agro with your rog doing rog tricks.. ) ae stuns and such ) So they take the most skill to do this.
The reason i say this is because in the later levels your exp slows waaaaay down. Having a toon that can do this means you can go into an instance and mass kill mobs.. go out, reset and do it again. The coin is good and the exp is as good as you will find.