Hey guys! I used to play on AK on the final year as a cleric named Santas. I rerolled here and got to 16 on a cleric/chanter/Druid. I must say I’m hating the charming, I was wondering if anyone can give some pointers on which trios aren’t heavily gear reliant or twinking/plat required. I’ve been doing a bit of reading up and I’ve seen cleric/chanter/mage also has been a strong trio.. but I’m not sure if this trio also depends on charming or runs the mage fire pet as the tank cheers in advance
The reason you're charming is the lack of tanking, I take it. I run a druid/enc/ranger and don't charm much. Kind of wastes the chanter in some sense but the chanter sword pet actually is pretty good dot and you still get all the cc capability, mad buffs, and a semi-decent nuke without all the tension. The usual meta is cleric/chanter/some kind of tank, so you could swap in a pallie or sk or a ranger or even a war, but they are all kind of gear dependent. Any actual tank will be. Really though at this point decent gear is CHEAP up to the late 50's and by that time you can gen up some plat. So. I'd consider a BL for one of your slots, actually. I think a BL is not as gear dependent, but not sure. Cleric/bl/mage might be low APM, lots of heals for the pets. Even druid/bl/mage, fewer heals, no rez, but both pet classes have pet heals, or cleric/enc/BL if you want CC and buffs.
My first trio was ench, clr, druid and I found it to be quite powerful since it required zero gear except maybe a green silken drape for the enchanter (optional). It's not worth charming until you get to level 30ish, since animation pet is almost just as strong, and your chars can just tank and melee the mobs. That's what I did. Once you get to 30ish you can start hunting Hill Giants and get tens of thousand of plat and get all the super cheap bazaar gear. I lived in Rathe mountains from lvl 30ish until 44 or so, then I went to Sebilis to get better exp and hunt bugs there for gems and other sellables. It's a very powerful and totally non-gear dependent trio, I couldn't think of anything more powerful and versatile for my first 3 chars tbh. I didn't create any melee chars until I got my ench/clr/dru to 60, since melee chars are almost entierly gear dependent, and need a lot of money, time and effort sunk into them. Only with proper resources was I ready to level melee and other chars
On AK I ran Dru/Cler/Enc. I leveled druid to 65 first, then PLed the Cler/Enc to 65 after and used that trio for almost every camp in PoP from T1 to Elementals. As fadetree mentioned, the most annoying factor in all of this was the lack of a tank once charm breaks. On TAKP I also ran Dru/Cler/Enc trio but around mid-Luclin I swapped out my Cleric for a Paladin to have a solid tank in my trio for whenever charm breaks and druid got the mini CH which allowed me to heal the tank semi-effectively. This is definitely a much more relaxing and powerful trio for most content where a cleric isn't required. If you have charmed on other servers before and are just feeling like you are hating it here, I would suggest waiting until you are higher level to write it off completely. Low level charms do not last long, you often are doing camps with extreme variety in mob cons from low blues to deep reds all of which your charm can land on. Always charm mobs that are blue, never charm a white/yellow/red con or it will be breaking almost instantly. Once you are 29+ your druid can always Ensnare your pet to keep a 12+ minute snare on the charmed pet making breaks more manageable where you have room to move around. Don't underestimate the value of the autorun hotkey, autorun enchanter away from pet, tab to one of your other characters to cast a heal then tab back to enchanter to stop running and recast tash or charm etc. Once you are 49+ with Allure you will find charming to be quite viable and your EXP sessions will be more reliably positive rather than a bunch of charm breaks and deaths.
If you want a charm-free trio with good DPS and utility, consider a beastlord. They're decently tanky, have strong pets, and can eventually do most of the stuff chanters do: slow, haste, crack. I suggest keeping the druid in your trio so you can PL other classes later. With a beastlord and a druid, you've already got a solid core. Add any low-APM DPS class and go to town. Mage is a strong easy option, but necro or wizard is also good. Most folks avoid boxing two melees because positioning them both gets annoying.
Cheers guys, I think I’ll stick to my current trio and test the waters At higher levels, might as well since I’m a few items away from completing all 3 newbie sets. Appreciate the solid advice
Hey man and welcome ! =0 I run a chanter cleric druid and I gotta tell you the trio is crazy powerful. if I had to do it all over again? I'd go chanter paladin druid. I'm lucky in my case as many of my friends / guildies run tanky trios so we compliment each other extremely well. If you're really not down with charming though (which gets amazing in pop with TD3) then I'd go with what Pithy said... BeastLord, Druid, Necro would be capable of doing most content. See you in game !
I played MAG/CLR/DRU for a long time, until maybe the summer before PoP. CLR and DRU together are great at keeping almost anything alive. Being able to CH and HoT at the same time can be super useful. Pre-PoP most mobs outside of raids (talking xp and quest mobs here) could be tanked unslowed by the epic pet in this manner. Now that PoP is out, I think BST/CLR/DRU would be better if you don't want to charm. Having res and exodus on the same trio brings peace of mind.
cheers, yeah I tried playing the trio again this weekend and I just can’t seem to bare it. I’m thinking of going mage/clr/dru till 50-60ish and then probably roll the beast since I’m assuming it would be gear reliant
If you are considering BST for a future trio, I suggest just starting with it. I made that mistake and eventually got tired of leveling and went on a long hiatus from TAKP. I started mag/mag/shm until I got my first mage epic, then switch to mage/ench/clr for big time charming. Well, I found it to be a little too busy and then started to PL up a BST for bst/mage/clr before burning out. Point being, if you plan on too many iterations of trios you may also lose interest leveling more toons like I did.
Kinda makes sense to me. I think it's hard to understand what driving a particular class to groups and raids day in and day out is like until your arrive at the end game (at least post-60) and start to get a sense of what the pain points and strengths are. Personally, I always assumed my BST would be my new "main." It looks great on paper. Excellent slow, excellent buffs, decent dps, pretty good defenses. But I didn't like the way it played at all. Managing two pets is rough in intense situations, and if you miss enrage you're likely to lose a pet and need to re-summon. Many situations are better off pet-free. I chose Ogre and that meant I was fat and ugly all the time unless I took steps to counteract. The bear is always too big even max shrunk. Many martial weapons have major graphical glitches on ogres. BST brings with it another spell book to manage every time you die. The self-haste you get at 60 is sort of a joke, being such short duration. SD is nice but my casters all had FT15 before the BST showed up, and KEI lasts hours. On top of that, the Beastlord as a class finds its strength by addressing weaknesses and countering enemy strength. The productivity zone for BST wants to turn every fight into hamburger and then make the hamburger in volume. BST lives in the grey area between extremes and finds success by pulling enemies in there with them. It's a great strategy and works well, but it can get boring. I make this post only to highlight how personal satisfaction with a class is subjective. EQ tends to come across differently at low level vs high level. BST is a great class with many powerful abilities. You won't know if its right for you unless you play it. My other general suggestion would be to take stock of the actions per minute you can devote to each box, and pick classes accordingly. One might feel an instinct to frown upon low-APM classes or talk trash about them, but they can be super useful components in a trio. Help yourself to a CLR and DRU while your trio is young. Those will pay dividends even if you retire them. BST less so. Edit: BST is my favorite slower to group with
