Hello! I just started playing here a couple of days ago, and I'm having some trouble deciding what classes to go for. I've been hesistant to manage a trio, so I started out thinking about decent duo combinations. I believe I want to focus on a druid and ranger, but due to overlap I was thinking about 2 duos: DRU+MAG and RNG+SHM. I really like the druid class, but would also like to revive the ranger I played during kunark-luclin as a kid hehe. (Hopefully understanding more this time...) When I was reading the forum I happened upon a RNG/ENC/CLR suggestion, whiched hyped me a bit to try a trio. Not sure how much of the time I would charm though, mostly thinking to support the RNG with the ENC, and having a CLR safety net. But I am wondering, how would a RNG/ENC/DRU work out? It checks both the DRU and RNG box, but I understand its not optimal due to worse heals and no stun/res. (I understand I might be shooting myself in the foot, so the questing is more of "how hard" I shoot myself in the foot ) I've never had a character above 50. I'm not a min/max person and plan to play pretty casually. Grinding and some quests, but no plans of raiding at the moment. Always wanted to grind some AA, but never got there. Been playing on and off on p99 for a year and got a NEC and DRU at 44-45. Hoping to hear some of your thoughts!
Don't need stun when the chanter can mez. Also, druids get evac over a cleric and if pacify is ever needed the enchanter covers that. Druids and rangers don't get any overlap in buffs actually if your other class you were thinking of is cleric due to how cleric and druid buffs work. Any of the ranger buffs you want, are unique. Most importantly, druids nuke a lot better than clerics and thus you can do root nuking a lot better than with a cleric.
Concerning CLR/RNG/ENC vs DRU/RNG/ENC Either would work great, but the cleric is going to be technically superior due to better heals, better HP/AC buffs, & the #1 reason - to be able to rez yourself. BTW, you don't need to charm, but it does help a lot with your DPS if you take the time to learn to do it well. It's just about building hotkey muscle memory. If you don't charm, be prepared to nuke a lot with your enchanter & cleric. Also cleric hammer procs can add a little bit of dps. With enchanter slows & general CC, it will free up your cleric mana pool to nuke.
If you don't intend to charm, a shaman could replace the enchanter really well. Haste/slow, better utility. No mez, but ranger, cleric and druid can all pacify.
Don't worry too much about picking the perfect starting team. You'll most likely putter around with various classes until you find something you really enjoy. Just pick something that sounds fun right now and start playing. That being said, it's a lot easier to level up future toons if one of your first toons is a druid. Nothing beats regen + damage shields for power leveling.
Thank you all for the tips. I was fearing more disheartening answers, but these weren't bad. Might be overthinking this I can't remember last time I received a rez, so it's currently a luxury I won't miss hehe. But I can see how it is practical and gets important later on. Though I'm not opposed to charming, I also wasn't planning on relying on it. I have only tried it on p99 from 12-22 solo, though I might enjoy it more with my own group. The enchanter to shaman switch is an interesting tip. From what I gather, race choice doesn't matter too much here?
Iksar will have a light xp penalty. Not a huge deal. Ranger will want to be Tunare, for the best arrow available. Other than that, race is pretty minor.
Halflings get a nice 5% exp bonus. I'd suggest a starting duo of Ogre Bst and Halfling Dru. You get tank, slow, DPS, ports, heals, mana regen buffs, and your only real overlap is SoW. As Pithy mentioned having a dru is great for leveling other classes if you want to add a 3rd to your trio or PL a ranger one day.
RNG/DRU/ENC is a good team. Heals are kind of problematic, but not overly so. At 58 it becomes a really great combo when DRU gets the big heal.
If I can make one suggestion it would be run with a druid in your first trio. It's ideal for later power-levelling (with Ench, even better) when you inevitably want to add characters to your stable; say, a cleric! I did ENC/RNG/CLR and want to swap out the RNG for something else, and am finding my best bet is to try to PL a druid, to then get a bard.
Beastlord and Druid are often mentioned as one of the best starting duo combination. You get so much together, ports, DPS, faster movement, complete heal, damage shield, slow, snare, mana regen, HP regen... BST is a good tank. Not the best, but pretty good. Plus, you get a good pet with BST sarting at lvl 9. I can't think of a better combination as a starting duo box. Later, if you wish, you can with Druid power level any other character you want/need. For now, don't worry about missing resurrect. I have a cleric but before lvl 50 I didn't even bother to log him in to resurrect some character in another trio. By the time I would get him there, original trio would already make up that lost XP. In 40's resurrect would recover only 6%. Disclaimer, I'm beginner in EQ world. P.s. Ups, looks like I was repeating what was already written before. Sorry, saw a title and first post and I responded without reading whole thread.
If you want DRU+ENC, PAL instead of RNG makes it one of the meta trios. Keep in mind you can level with massive buffs from MGBs if you want, so there's really going to be no bad trios until higher level, where your DRU and ENC can PL something else up quickly if you change your mind. Just get out there and have fun.
Don't be afraid to start a duo and add a 3rd later. I felt similar when I started - 3 boxing felt like a lot to jump into. So I started a BST/DRU combo, got my feet wet and remembered the game. In my mid-20's I was starting to feel a lack of DPS, so I spun up a mage. If you go with a druid - they're one of the best powerlevelers, so it's easy to pull a 3rd up to you pretty quick and go from there.
Thanks for your suggestions everyone, I appreciate it! Still haven't decided, but working on leveling the RNG+ENC+CLR up to the druid and mage (level 15) and try some combinations. I see the druid gets the heals 1-2 spell tiers later than the cleric, which might become a bit scary.
The druid heals are fine in most content (especially if you've got a slower)... until you hit mid-50's. Trying to superior heal your way through luclin content (and PoP especially) before your CH at level 58 is rough. Once you get that, life is good again.
Druid healing gets a little rough until you get your CH at 58. BUT, once you get that heal it's simply amazing because that heal only generates 1 point of aggro if you are standing. So, if you don't sit (like if you're on a horse, for example), you can heal with wild abandon against multiple mobs and never have to worry about getting aggro unless your tank dies. It's honestly hard to go from playing a druid healer to a cleric because you take for granted how nice it is to not have to worry about aggro. The higher level CH is the same way. But, any patch heal you do will create normal heal aggro, so be careful on that.
