Hey all, I am looking for a future proof trio that can excel in a lot if not most situations. I would preferably like to play shm/ench/clr. Use Shaman to tank, slow, buffs, malo and torpor. Use ench for max hasted charm pet. Cleric is obvious. I feel like I could mostly just play the enchanter here with a malo'd/tash'd pet and with good buffs just tear through content with the occasional cleric heal/CH to pet/ench. However, I am worried that Shm might be too weak in a lot of situations. For example, trio'ing phinigal autotrops or some raid target. Also, not having a good charm pet in zone basically kills the combo, whereas SK or War would be able to compensate with their dps/tankiness. What's the strongest in the majority of situations? If it's SK or War, could I still make shaman work?!!? Thank you!!!
You are right about shaman getting plowed by hard stuff, unless they are super-well geared/AAed and pre-slowing. If your requirements is Shm + Clr + ? for overall utility, you probably want a SK. They can more reliably pull with more control than a war/pal. BUT, any of them could work if you enjoy it more. If you want "absolute max" then SK+clr+ench. BUT again, any plate tank could work -.
I would do SK, paladin or shaman as your third but not warrior. They're not fun to try holding aggro with, but that's trivial with the knight classes and gives you a lot more control.
shaman + enc + Clr is awesome, ive done every luclin exp spot with that trio. shamans can take hits especially when stuff is slowed.
With SHM/CLR/ENC the charm pet tanks the Big Bad. The only exception is during charm breaks, when the shaman briefly tanks the Big Bad while the chanter recharms the pet and the cleric stuns or heals. Against slowed trash mobs, the shaman can tank just fine. Or the pet can tank; either way works.
Well, I decided to go War/Ench/Clr but having a bit of buyer's remorse. Is warrior at 60 theoretically superior for higher-end stuff? Should I reroll SK before it's too late?
yup go with a hybrid over the warrior unless you plan on being in a big guild and tanking the hardest stuff. Which, as a pally I have done before too. just depends on you healers =) If you're speaking in a raiding sense, the warrior would be better because of their discs. If you plan on trioing and killing dragons, mobs like phinny, I dunno, go with a hybrid before it's too late.
I’m reluctant to make any absolute proclamations because I’m not sure if and how PoP will change things, but I’ve never felt disadvantaged by my choice to play a warrior. In an exping context there’s nothing that needs to be slowed so badly that it can’t wait for me to build some hate, and against “special” mobs i don’t mind burning a few clickies and having a damage mitigation discipline is so clutch. The biggest advantage I’ve seen to playing a knight is the ability to keep multiple mobs in camp and on the tank at all times, and thus speed up exp camps and spend less dead time pulling. If your ambition is to keep a charm pet juicing a giant pile of npc vegetables a knight can do that better. If your ambition is to attempt stretch targets for your trio, a warrior will always pull ahead of the knight in equivalent gear.
Yep. Defensive and evasive disciplines are super powerful. In PoP, when a lot of hard trio kills will be high-damage spam-healing hard-burn affairs, having three minutes of disc will be awesome.
I play a Warrior and feel similarly as Thucy. That’s my trio, most times, W/E/C. But I’d add that the other big advantage of a knight - specifically the SK - is having a snare and an FD pull option. Plus corpse summons on your time that you don’t have to burden others for - it’s just handy. I played both knights previously and wanted to give Warrior a try. However, If I knew five years ago when I made my Warrior that my playtime would be a hodge-podge mess all the time, I probably would have rolled another SK. It’s just easier sometimes.
Agreed that warrior is the most powerful option for pushing the envelope and perfectly serviceable for everything else. I'll also throw in a plug for paladins as superior to SKs for most trio and exp-grinding purposes. Snare is nice to have (especially while leveling up) and feign-splitting is tremendous fun (though seldom necessary), but stuns and emergency backup heals are in another class entirely. Especially in PoP, and especially if charm is involved: Force of Akilae followed by Word of Serenity will save the day constantly with a hasted frenzied initiate turning on your chanter just as mobs arrive in camp.
Yep! I have pally envy sometimes, not gonna lie. SK pulling shenanigans did open up some cool camps in previous expansions. It was fun camping Tolapumj and the sebilite protector for rare spells with SK/CLR/ENC in Kunark, and fun camping Tormax's throne room and the Halls of Testing in Velious. Not sure those camps would've been doable in era with a warrior or pally. I don't know that SK pulling shenanigans will be all that helpful for trios in PoP, though. I can't really think of a hard/rewarding mob or camp in PoP where FD splitting will be necessary. The interesting pulls that do come to mind, like mini-nameds in the Plane of Earth, are more bard pulls than FD pulls anyway.
roll a bard and zoom zoom your way to 60 - if you are going for only the classes you listed go OGRE SHAMAN for frontal stun obv
BST/ENC/CLER is *very* strong in the TAKP era. It will give you some of what you want from the shaman, but the BST skills stack better with enc/cler than shaman because ENC slow is almost as good as shaman slow and beastlords are better tanks and definitely better dps than shamans in an APM-constrained environment. It's very difficult for me to imagine a situation in TAKP era that shm/cler/enc is better than bst/cler/enc unless you absolutely need two real healers, in which case it seems to me that cler/cler/enc is probably much better anyway... FWIW, when I still played on TAKP I ran BST/ENC/CLER as my primary trio for difficult mobs, even though I had a well-geared and well-AA'd warrior on the sidelines (and SK for that matter). Why? Because BST are good enough tanks that paragon, good enough snap aggro, and the (much) better DPS more than compensated for the better tankiness. BST are just really, really strong in this era.
I think you've got a ton of options with Enchanter/Cleric. I think that if you want your life to be easier, a bard is excellent. If you do nothing else put play chain mez on your chanter pet (and I'm not advocating that, Bards can do a ton but if you want a class to just sit there and do something useful Bard is a great choice). The chanter pet is going to be a tank and damage rolled into one. I love BL. So much that I'm bringing up a baby BL to bring to raids for an extra paragon (will likely switch in and out my druid/bard). They tank pretty well and can keep aggro (less so since they nerfed the shit out of Flash of Light, but still fine) just fine. And they do solid DPS and bring utility in the form of stacking mana regen, eventually paragon, buffs for pets, etc. Druid is another option. Snare (extremely helpful to snare your pet for breaks), damage shield, outdoor harmony (which can't critical fail), run speed buffs, lev, decent damage with DOTs or DD, ports make your life much easier, and you can charm on the druid too. And, this is vital, your mini-CH doesn't generate nearly the aggro the cleric's does. So, if you were up against a tough mob and wanted to make sure you don't lose aggro, use a HOT on the cleric and spam the CH on the druid. Mage gives you pet toys, damage shield, decent damage, a little AOE, and another pet. Mage epic and then higher level pets are bad mofos. Wizards kill stuff. They can port and snare. Ranger. Now, they are actually worse tanks than BL (block is better than parry), but they can hold aggro, and can do okay against many slowed mobs. But, I'd advocate your chanter pet being the tank and (once you get a bunch o' AA) having the ranger plink from afar. Aggro isn't an issue, they do incredible DPS if you have a way to hold your shoot shit key down, and they have snare. Or a tank, which people have talked about above. The biggest benefit I can see in terms of Paladin over SK is the snare. Yes, Pally stuns can save your butt and the can do some single pulling in some situations (but you ahve both cleric and enchanter for that so pretty redundant) and they provide great aggro, but snare is a real thing you need. And, even if you go DE Cleric and get the snare necklace it's not that great.
Flash of Light is good for generating aggro, like a paladin stun; not sure why you think it's nerfed. Once they reach level 22, beastlords should use http://lucy.alkabor.com/spell_277.html for aggro - this is like the druid/ranger flame lick spell.
I thought I read that the behavior on blinds was changed (not right or wrong, but changed) so that it was now potentially dangerous and could send something running? (I don't have any classes that use it). Either way, anything with Poison counters, or an AC debuff (cripple line), are high agro also.
It doesn't fix the npc to the nearest toon, which normally would be the paladin. So, it may create some aggro, but I doubt people are using it for that. Mob may run to someone else.
Tainted Breath is fine. A lower level slow works better, and can be used on mezzed mobs to build aggro (so can incapacitate line) without breaking mez. How Flash of Light worked on here previous to the nerf is that it acted like a root that didn't break with damage. So, whoever was closest to the mob, regardless of how much aggro was being generated, had aggro. Wizards could nuke non-stop from 100% down to 0% and never fear getting aggro as long as the BL (or Pally or Shaman or Cleric) kept up FOL. It was the ultimate aggro tool, just spam it and have others stand at max melee/nuke from afar. It also, like root, prevented mobs from running, but unlike root it didn't break on damage. It also allowed you to single pull mobs—one would come out of the pack and go along the fear path for it's spawn. FOL still does generate decent aggro, but it's a shell of its former self.
I'm not the rules police but I think it's just playing dumb if someone thinks that's how FoL is supposed to work. Nevermind snare immunity, assistance from other NPCs, aggro weapons and concussion spells, we've got a beastlord here?
People here have played on many different custom emu servers (most of which are wrong in many areas) and many different era's during EQ's life on live. The only ones that truly would know what should and shouldn't be are really those that have a good memory and played on AK exclusively until it was shut down and then not played anything else until TAKP came along. Thus, log evidence should be used before anyone's word if it exists. Things can be hilariously broken and still AKcurate.
The general guideline I would go with is that if a spell/item is considered to be useless in general, but it's useful on TAKP, then it's worth starting a thread and asking if it's supposed to be that way. Otherwise it could be considered intentional exploiting.
The problem is that when stuff like this is brought up on relatively benign things that most people remember being that way, it can often have the hammer brought down on it all for the sake of AKcuracy when there is no change to mechanics or gameplay that I would consider an exploit. The container changes recently is an example of this. It does nothing but punish people with bad connections. When it comes to blind and pseudo root, I remembered it rooting mobs on live during this time frame when I played on live. So, I guess I am considered an exploiter because I assumed it would match my memory along with many, many other people?
The uber FoL is how I remembered it from live and various emus I tried out. It honestly makes some sense that a blind mob wouldn't run aimlessly, if in arm's length of something that's attacking it. Threw me for a loop when I first rolled the bst, drowsy has worked fine since.
I didn't play on the original AK server, so I don't know what is Akurate. I have to take the word of others on what is and isn't. That being said, I remember the TAKP wiki mentioned a bug from the old server where the SK spell Mental Corruption would sometimes allow its proc to completely fill an SK's mana bar. Since I had played switched to SK as a main on Live way back, I thought that would be a lot of fun and one of the reasons I chose SK over the other tank or melee classes. I'm not mad or upset that bug was "fixed" and really enjoy this server. That being said, I think that bug should have been left in, just like the nerfed Monk AC or any other "quirk" or "beloved bug" that the original AK server had. I understand that the only reason Mental Corruption did that was because it was a bug that was on a bucket list that never made it to the "get 'er done list" before the server hit the sunset. Attempts at "balance" and "server health" that depart from what the original AK server was, lumps and all, to me seem a bit quixotic when we're talking about a game almost no one plays any longer in comparison to the golden days of EQ, on a server that was originally meant to emulate an old server that appealed to only a narrow segment of the EQ population even while it was Live. The same rationale that ensures that monk AC will remain nerfed here for ever, because its Akurate for the original server even though SONY eventually reversed course, is really not applied consistently. Again, I am not angry about this stuff or attempting to troll, not trying to disrespect the staff who run the server. Its simply my personal opinion that this emulation of the old AK server has lost a bit of its quirky charm, that was once celebrated by the server population, as the mission to remain Akurate has not been to hued to as closely as it once was, and other considerations have crept in to remove some of that quirky charm.
If MC landed it always filled the mana bar. But honestly, as unbalancing as it seems like it would have been, it wasn't really. SK spells kind of suck. The good lifetaps have long recast delays, spears have enormous recast delays and the dots are pretty trash. I don't remember any content that was trivialized by the MC bug. And honestly I don't remember mana ever being an issue on TAKP any more than it was on AK. As awesome as the MC bug sounds, it really wasn't that awesome.
MC bug was extremely OP, you could lifetap indefinitely and require no healer. I played SK on AK and I did lots of content that would have otherwise impossible if not for that bug
