Just hit 80 and thinking about completely revamping my class layout

[Ellay]

Whew! well I hit 80 and had a blast doing it with my current combo, but I'm just not satisfied with how everything is panning out for the group and am sort of expecting more out of some of my classes.

Guardian so far is disappointing in holding hate, I know my gear is pretty bad just being 80, but I'm only grouped with myself and just not happy with it :P I easily lose aggro from my Wizard who I have moderate on which reduces hate gain by 33%!
Their AoE tanking ability is horrid at best heh, especially if it's not an encounter.
Warden, while a very effective healer it seems - I have heard/read that other types of healers require a lot less focus to be just as effective. Thinking about giving another class a shot in this position, possibly a Mystic.
Wizard, while the damage is nice it comes in bursts and many others on the orums here mentioned they swapped over to a Warlock. I think I plan on doing the same.
Illusionist - quite possibly the only class I truly think is awesome sauce, their DPS is decent- they CC VERY well and the group buffs are essential.

So now that I have had a full run through the game, I'm beginning to see what is needed and what can be improved upon, leaning towards a new set up of Shadow Knight, Mystic, Warlock, Illusionist. I'm not sure if I should just make them fresh or mentor down yet. Still up for grabs on that one.
Any thoughts on that layout? also my current characters have about 120-125 aa each so I've seen what they have to offer in that realm.

[Herc130]

When you start a fight, how do you do it?

1) All of your characters start fighting at once?

2) Your tanks hits mob followed immediatly by all your other characters fighting nuking?

3) Your tank begins the fight and gets a good combat round or 2 in, anger/taunting blow before any other character attacks?

I use to do #1, since I have a key that will have all my characters fight at once. My summoners pet usually ends up being the tank through most if not all of the fight. I still do #1 on easy stuff, because it doesn't matter really matter since stuff I am doing now are green to low blue. However, when I do heroric mobs, I always do #3 and my tank gets agro without having to fight over it with my other characters and keeps it pretty easy. Sometimes I do #2 by accident and my guardian has to fight harder to get agro back, but usually does. But yah, when I approach a fight and not rush all my characters into the fight and allow my guardian to set-up agro, he keeps the mobs attention no problem.

[Frosty]

Shadow Knight, Mystic, Warlock, Illusionist.

I don't have any agrro problems with my SK, but I can tell you, tanking is different than a Guardian.
I've been finding that my Inquisitor's reactive heals, and my Defiler's wards are usualy enough for tanking 3 blue heroics with no heals.
But I also have a Warden in there for extra healing umph, if things do go bad.
I haven't started min-maxing my DPS yet..stuff dies fast enough for me to be happy.
At a later time I might change out one of the healers if I find that I have too much in that area...but I'm finding EQ2 to be a little different in that each class can do decent damage.

[Ellay]

I have all my taunts on a key, and the other characters use the same key for debuffs. So the tank will spam out 3 or so taunts and the other characters will throw in 1-2 debuffs, then I switch to nuking and after about 10 seconds I re-taunt the abilities that popped up and go back to nuking.
It goes smoothly for the first 10-15 seconds and then it just breaks down.

[Frosty]

Ah, that's your problem, debuff = aggro..sometimes huge aggro. :P
I have 2 keys set up for building aggro on my SK. First key is a normal taunt by itself.. all other toons have this key set to assist the tank..nothing else.
Key 2 is my oh-crap-get-aggro-now key. It contains anything that can increase hate, and then some other AoE stuff too, just in case. All other toons have a macro with any spell/ability they can use to dump aggro.

[Khatovar]

SK, Warlock and Illy are all part of my current group, I'm very pleased with them. I dropped my mystic for a defiler since there's a lot of synergy between the def nox debuffs/dam and the SK and lock nox damage. But since I'm a 6-man group, I was more interested in her debuffs than heals. I also liked the Defiler AA tree over the Mystic AA tree. But, as I said, I'm a full group, so healing was a secondary consideration for that slot. As far as I can tell, thier healing "oomph" is about the same, with the mystic having more damage attacks vs the defiler having more debuffs.

That said, you'll "need" to bring up a new tank and healer if you change your group. You can betray the Wizard to a Warlock and you want to keep the Illusionist, so you don't have to start those two over. However, mentoring will go very fast and the new ones will be lacking on AAs for a while unless you lock adventure xp. My newbs are around 90AAs at 78. My other toons are all around 120. On one hand, mentoring will let you fly through 1-70, and the 80s will be insanely OP against everything. On the other hand, you will probably blow past a ton of AAs and having to redo the 70-80 stuff is a real drag when only half your team is actually doing the quests. You'll also get a small boost to XP on each toon for having an 80 on the account. So it'll depend on how fast you want to get back to 80, which boils down to "fast" or "very fast".

Also, you can swap shards on your account. I have been doing the daily shard quest in LS on my 80 team and dropping the shards in the shared bank for my replacement toons. I'd highly suggest doing this while you bring up your new team. The daily part takes like 20 minutes {most of it travel time} and can be done in a group.

[Lyonheart]

Ellay, did you mostly quest to get to 80? I am just starting out really, i have SK..troub..Warden and Warlock. I'm thinking about just heading to 80..adding two accounts ( second healer/illusionest ) and mentoring down. Second time around i will work tradeskills/run dungons more..ect

[Ellay]

Thanks for the advice Khatovar
I actually thought about that some prior and decided to just roll 4 new characters up, trying to think of names that tie in with the Aelli theme so I can swap them out whenever but playing 4 new classes will make it a lot easier to see what others have to offer.
I'm going to probably level up SK / Mystic or Defiler, leaning towards Defiler after what you mentioned / Warlock / Troub.

Now to what Lyonheart mentioned, your composition is pretty much what I planned on possibly having at 80 since the Warden is an extremely strong solo healer, I just haven't played any others so I don't know what they can do, how do you like the synergy of that group?

For your question though, I quested through all of Timorous Deep, Butcher Block, and Enchanted Lands and I didn't quest after that point until hitting Kunark and doing Kylong Plains / Kunzar Jungle and the other one.. it's not ringing a bell, I had just started Jarsath Wastes when I dinged 80 with about 110 AA's, the rest or I should say most of the time from 1-70 was doing the dungeon crawls, which is probably the area that I liked the most because it helps you learn how to play the classes you picked the best. Currently about 3 days later after hitting 80 I'm at 125 AA ~ ish on all of them and I have so many places to quest, which I feel is a pretty comfortable spot to be in for AA's with the amount of time it took to hit 80.

So formulating all of that together..! I plan on doing about the same strategy with the next set of classes and then when I hit 80 I can just mix and match whenever I please. Seems simple enough hehe

[Ellay]

1 thing Khat, I keep looking through the trees, the spell lists etc. What makes Mystic / Defiler good with Wards / Heals, it seems 'decent' but I guess it's one of those things were you have to try it for yourself, my friend tried a Tank/Healer combo dual-boxing with a Mystic and was ranting and raving about how amazing it is, on paper though it just doesn't seem the same.
Would a Inquisitor or Templar fill that role even better?

[Ellay]

Bahh 1 more thing before I go to sleep haha,
Mentioning upping to 6 from 4, I've thought about this as well, but I love grouping with other players - it's half the fun in the game. At the same time playing 6 ( and this is something that was mentioned a ton when I was first researching on here) is that if you do build a 6 man group. It can be "perfect" and it is a LOT easier to find the synergy your looking for. Taking that team as you suggested and adding a Illusionist and a secondary healer.. your golden. It's pretty much perfect, you just can't make perfect groups like that normally - though if some 80 boss fight requires some additional attention it can be quite hard, but perhaps the synergy of the group can just surpass that point.