Team Building

[Fr4nK!e]

Hey All,

Got a question. Putting together my team and have a few questions.

Currently I have a

105 SK
104 BRD
102 ENC
101 SHM
Wiz Merc
Clr Merc

Have been Gribbling for a while and getting really bored of it. So I started doing some TBM missions as I gear up the team. BRD, SHM, & ENC are all in T2 COTF, with out many augs. SK is in a mix of ROF and TBM, with augs from HOT era. I currently play the SK and bot the others.

So now for my questions. Gearing aside

1) what do you think would make the most sense for those last 2 slots.
A) Keep the Clr Merc & Add a DPS
B) Add in a Clr & Add a DPS

Seems my group has good support with the chanter, shaman and bard, but my dps isn't good. I have a TBM raid geared mage, that is on same account as the shaman, but I am currently taking a break from the mage.

For the DPS slot was thinking of adding a monk or ranger or I guess a zerker(but I don't really know much about them), since I have the bard and shaman for the buffs. Does that make more sense or just add either the mage or a wiz?

Or should I scrap one of the others (like maybe the bard) and add 2 dps slots?

Other Chars I have, but would need to be moved off of the used accounts:
105 Mage
105 Wiz
101 Necro
96 Monk
95 or 96 Ranger

I could move one of these or just start a new Heroic and lvl it up

Sorry for the rambling. What do you think?

 

[dewey2461]

It really depends on what you plan to use to box your characters and how many accounts you want to keep active.

If you have the $$ ditch the merc's. A real cleric properly configured will out heal a merc by quite a bit.

Also you have way too many support characters. I'd put your wiz back in and ditch the shammy.

Bards are kind of hard to get automated right but they bring a lot of utility. Run speed, epic, and fire DD mods for your wiz are all very nice.

Casters are also really easy to get setup. Don't really need much in the way of gear or AA's.

SK, CLR, ENC , BRD , WIZ , WIZ

 

[lookin]

personally i play
sk, mage, shaman, bard, wiz and cleric
mage is decent dps and nice for COTH when there are other players in the zone and i dont want to warp

 

[jamie75]

i recently replaced a merc cleric with a real cleric and it is amazing how much better the crew does

 

[aspire2008]

Real cleric all the way.


Let's see...when was the last time a merc did any of these?


Battle Rez
Divine Arb
Epic 1.5/2.0


Most powerful saves, that have prevented countless wipes over the years.

 

[LamahHerder]

Sooooo many good group makeups possible

I recommend 2 strategies

1. Pick 1 or 2 chars and build around them
2. Pick a thing you want to do and build around that

If you say SK+Sha then try for a melee-dps group which leads to
SK + SHA + BRD
Personally I do not enjoy playing without a Tank + Cleric so I would add CLR, maybe even play with a melee-cleric not sure how well they turn out but I would try it if I went for a melee heavy group.
Then fill in any melee and/or add a mag for pets that will gain from bard and group buffs as well

I have never built a SHA but borrowed a few, just not my cup of tea so not sure how they fit in the group world now.

 

[eltai]

As others have stated you may want to consider modifying your core of your group. The Sk will work with whatever comes after it, a real cleric will outperform a merc every day.

Then you have a couple of choices. If you are wanting something that will kill as fast as possible then you need to maximize your dos output. To do so you need to make the decision of melee centric or caster centric (I personally like my caster groups as they look much less bottish).

If you go melee centric you could consider going with your Shm as main healer depending on what content you are doing/etc. If you did that then you would be looking at a core of SK/Shm/Brd+3 melee dps (Bst/Rng/Mnk/Rog/Ber) or Sk/Clr/Shm/Brd+2 melee dps.

Alternatively, if you go caster centric I would personally go Sk/Enc/Clr+3 caster dps (Mag/Wiz) or Sk/Brd/Clr+3 caster dps or Sk/Clr+4 caster dps .

 

[Fr4nK!e]

Thanks everyone!

Ok, so I have some thinking to do. I thought having the chanter, bard and shaman were a good core and adding the tank(SK) and some dps would be ok. Funny enough, the bard was a big piece of the dps. Every once in a while he would just stand there and not engage, and I would be able to tell because it would take much longer to kill.

I guess I didnt realize how much dps I was giving up. I figured the chanter would be able to add the dps once I got her maxed.

So I guess I need to decide on these 2 options

Option 1

SK
New Cleric
Chanter
Bard or New Wiz
Mage
Wiz (move from SK account)

This will get me up to speed the fastest, since the sk mage, and wiz are 105, bard is 104, only have to bring up the cleric and finish the chanter at 102. Or bring up the cleric and wiz if I drop bard.

I kind of like this option since I have a pseudo back up tank with the mage pet plus CotH makes getting around zones alot easier and with the wizzie's ports as a bonus. The wiz is pretty easy to setup as a bot (atleast with my limited knowledge). I could play either the mage or the SK and bot the rest.
Could even consider dropping the bard and adding a second wiz.

Option 2
SK
New Cleric
Bard or Shaman
Ranger (move from SK account)
Monk (move from SK account)
Zerker (on Chanter account)

This will take longer since most are in the mid 90s or upper 80s. This would be a melee heavy group. I think when they all get maxed out would put out some good dps, but as mentioned earlier melee will be much more apparent about the botting.

I am really just looking to play in current content do progression missions and try to gear them out as best I can. I am not looking to have the group playing un-attended, I just wanna have fun. Will probably do epics on the toons that don't have them yet. If I want to go back to raiding I have the mage that I can raid with.

Thanks for the help, (and added confusion LOL)

 

[aspire2008]

I'm going to give you a 3rd option, because I do this every time one of these threads about which class to add pops up.


Why limit yourself to 6 toons, just move the shaman out of group for static zone play and extra dps.

I run 12-18 toons sometimes, 6 main toons with good gear, and the rest of my shit toons are wearing either defiant, heroic, or CotF tradeskill gear.


If I know there will be blue cons in the zone, sometimes I'll run a 2nd group built around 3 zerkers or 3 rogues outside of the group. Rogues if the blue cons are heavy on being humanoids for those 950k+ crit Assassinates, or zerker (650k crit decaps) if the blue cons are heavy on a mix of humanoid and other non-humanoids.

 

[dewey2461]

I raid on a monk so my main group is a monk. I started boxing a SHM (by hand) a long time ago (Kunark). As fiends came on went I added other classes until today I'm boxing SK, CLR, MNK, SHM, BRD, RNG and I can take most anything in the group game unless its one of the PITA scripted events.

I personally like having both CLR & SHM to rez the other should something go wrong. The sK/mnk can both FD, and with the bard I can run / flop / fade to setup a campfire. I'm been tinkering with their setup for years and have them working pretty well as a unit.

I will second Aspires comment about outside DPS. I've been leveling some wiz's and while I'm doing stuff in an open zone having an extra 4x SILVER wizards makes the named go down in half the time.

The main thing you really need to work on is your scripts. A poorly scripted toon is going to suck no mater what level / gear. This is were a wizard really shines. Low AA count, couple pieces of gear and your set.

 

[William12]

Anyone who doesn't have a zerker right now is crazy. Even a group geared zerker will destroy anything. I got a war, mnk, ber, wiz, brd, clr group going right now and the group zerker is doing 150k sustained.

 

[dewey2461]

Is your zerker out dpsing the wiz ?

 

[PumpThump]

My Wiz only sustains about 70k to 80k dps without running out of mana. Would love to hit 150k!

That being said... I don't fully understand the draw to having a second group of dps outside my main group. I used to do this when I was PLing. I would have 3 lowbies in my main group soaking up exp while I had 3 ungrouped necros in the background burning everything down. Nowadays, however, I can drop all trash mobs in the game in under 45 seconds, and that's only the super hp EoK mobs. T2 EoK mobs take 20-25 seconds on average, which leaves me with a hard time finding a camp with enough mobs to satiate my killing speed. With 4 wizards out of group I could only imagine how fast you must be killing mobs (10 seconds?)... do you actually find camps which can keep up in spawns for you?

 

[aspire2008]

I just make my pull radius larger, or make more pull paths, if I'm running out of mobs and having to med more. I've never had an issue running out of mobs for the most part.


Btw, giants in EoK are crazy good exp 2 AA per kill without LOTD. And named giants are giving 5 aa per kill without LOTD.

 

[dewey2461]

That being said... I don't fully understand the draw to having a second group of dps outside my main group.

A few months ago I got a new machine and suddenly could box a 12-15 and a couple friends gave me their info so I made some wizards.

Going into EoK my melee group's DPS is decent but named like the bridge keeper can easily take 3-4 minutes to kill. Since I had them handy, and its an open zone, I added wiz's and it completely change dynamic of a named fight.

As I'm starting to gear up my main group its nice to hold down as many PH's as possible so for example I'd clear Deathfag -> Kennel Master -> Dry Rot -> Grand Herbalist with my 6 man team but would have a repops. With the extra DPS I drop named with out a problem, and I can clear 2-3 more rooms and add crackjaw to the list.