Trio Choice Conundrum

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Alphawolf, Oct 31, 2020.

  1. Alphawolf

    Alphawolf New Member

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    Hello,

    Well, I've been at this a while! I started with SK/Enc/Clr, and while it is extremely powerful, I don't like the fact that I can't take a leak whenever I want. Having the enchanter is too constricting (for me). So:

    I alternatively thought maybe Bst/Wiz/Clr would be comparable in power, but perhaps I am not the best wizard, but the wiz sustained dps feels lackluster.

    I am currently thinking between Bst/Brd/Dru (Brd twists overhaste + DS) as a powerhouse, and while this has an incredible amount of utility, I worry the dps will be lacking and the APM extremely high.

    I've also been thinking maybe I should just go Bst/Mag/Clr. However, this combo has no snare (earth pet, but epic pet doesn't root [you could argue that DElf Clr has a snare clicky but it won't land on 55+ mobs]) and has no CC whatsoever (besides pets). Also, the mobility is relatively low (better than Sk/Enc/Clr though!) I still think it is my best non-enchanter option.

    Any thoughts on what I should do if I want a true powerhouse that avoids enchanter? Currently set on Bst/Mag/Clr. Thanks in advance!
     
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2020
  2. sowislifesowislove

    sowislifesowislove People Like Me

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    Beast dru bard is pretty powerful. Bard cleric enchanter with bard targeting pet playing mez song. Ranger/Druid and enchanter can ensnare the pet, then you’ve got like 14 minutes for an afk after you drop and memblur. There ain’t nothing like enchanter dps in a trio though.
     
  3. Aporia

    Aporia Member

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    What I ended up doing is rolling another support character to replace my enchanter when I don't have the time or energy to devote to charming. For me, this means I sometimes switch from my main trio of rng/clr/enc to rng/clr/bst. You could do something similar by swapping in your wiz or a mage, bst, etc. for when you feel like playing at a more relaxed pace.

    Also, wiz dps in an xp setting can be slow before you get get a cetain amount of mana regen via buffs and/or flowing thought. Snagging KEI from PoK would give you a huge boost as you level.
     
  4. Darchon

    Darchon I Feel Loved

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    Wizards are quite weak pre-60 with decent FT, gear and AAs. But once they have those things they’re great in a group. As a first character in a trio not too great however.

    If you want something that doesn’t require a huge amount of attention the pet classes are good options.

    Beastlord is a solid enough tank in most content and they can step away and let their pet tank in a pinch if needed. They also bring slow to the table so you don’t need to bring that through a shaman if the enchanter is already ruled out.

    The healer for a beastlord both Druid and Cleric work fine. I’d suggest the cleric for rezzes and for aego. Druid would work fine as well adding in Regen, DS and SoE over SoW.

    The third class in this mix I’d suggest going with a second pet user. Necromancer offers the snares if you didn’t go druid, and FD pulls where pacify doesn’t work. They provide solid DPS through just a few DoTs and their pet. Magician offers roots and backup tank through earth pet, Call of the Hero is extremely convenient for all number of activities, DS if you didn’t go druid and summoned pet gear especially in PoP for the beast and mage pets.

    This trio is fairly independent of gear until around PoP when having raid gear for your beastlord would help your durability quite a bit.
     
  5. Kithani

    Kithani Well-Known Member

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    Beast + (Cleric/Druid) + (Mage/Necro) is the way, and any combo of this nature will have its own pros and cons that you’ll have to decide for yourself IMO.

    For what it’s worth, I went Bst/Mag/Cleric and had no regrets. Although I had pre-nerf flash of light for the early levels, I think the Bst/Mag pets chew runners up pretty quickly and you can always use Cleric root in a pinch if needed. Mage summoned focus items are super underrated in a leveling trio IMO particularly once you hit the 40s and start needing level 3 focus effects.
     
  6. Tuluvien

    Tuluvien I Feel Loved

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    SK/Shaman/Cleric would be fun and relatively low APM. Buff your SK into a superhero and lay out some slows and dots and heals.
     
  7. Ransom

    Ransom Well-Known Member

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    Beast/Mage/Cleric - Cleric provides roots and pacify for your crowd control needs. If the cleric is a Dark Elf or Human worshipping Innoruuk, you can get the snare necklace in your 30s to have a junky snare. Beastlords also have some snare proc weapons later in the game. With two pets on a runner and timed mage nukes, snare would be much less of an issue for this crew, rather than your typical tank group. I think the DPS from the mage really outweighs the benefits of a necro. In POP, mages can charm elementals in BoT.

    Beast/Necro/Cleric - The safer duo, but will lack both sustained and burst DPS due to no damage shield and no mage nukes. The mage pet should do more DPS than the necro also. This trio would dominate the other if once in a while you use the necro undead charm (Unrest, Kaesora, Howling Stones, Sebilis).

    Both awesome combinations if you don't want to charm.
     
  8. Alphawolf

    Alphawolf New Member

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    Beast/Druid/Bard - I do think this is extremely strong (and a dragon-slaying comp), but I don't think the dps is high enough for me. I think I'll always struggle for ways to maximize my bard, and the APM is still super high. I would like to try it out though.

    Beast/Magician/Cleric - Super strong and solid. Has a little bit of everything.

    Beast/Beast/Cleric - What about this comp? I know having two melee could be a pain, but this comp has a tank on every single class, and two slows! Could this work?

    Beast/Necro/Cleric - Not a big fan of necro playstyle, and I don't think this would work for me.

    SK/Sham/Clr - My SK's dps is super low even with KEI + Speed of the Brood (100% haste). I know someone trio'd Rumblecrush with warrior/clr/sham. I mean, I do understand this is a super super strong comp, but I think the lack of snare would be so annoying. Trying to do dps on a shaman isn't my jam.

    I don't think Druid/Bst non-bard would work for me because without paci, I would struggle.

    Are there any other comps without enchanter that would be a powerhouse? Also, seriously though, how would beast/beast/cleric do?!?!
     
  9. Auyster

    Auyster People Like Me

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    Beastlords are great DPS. I have seen the BST/Bard/Druid trio do many great things and the APM isn't that high. Just play overhaste and pull on the bard and you are fine with him meleeing along with the Beastlord. Don't underestimate beastlord DPS, from what I have found it is generally higher than a monk with equivalent gear to the beastlord. But if you don't want to play a bard than do BST/Cleric, maintains the pacify and slowability and for your 3rd toon do magician for more pet DPS and the occasional nukes. Druid/Bard will make life way easier for travelling around though as you will have a porter along with a racecar.
     
  10. Alphawolf

    Alphawolf New Member

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    You have seriously seriously intrigued me here. The main reason that a druid is better is b/c of threat, snare, DS and low threat heals? I mean, couldn't Bst/Brd/Clr work? I'm really intrigued to see if Brds have enough DPS for this comp to really, really work.

    Otherwise, I think Bst/Mag/Clr is the winner. Great post Auyster. TY all for replies.
     
  11. Auyster

    Auyster People Like Me

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    Druids nuke as well as a mage. They effectively have the same nukes as well. The main reason for me to pick a druid over a cleric is the fact that your Beastlord won't have incredulous amounts of HP so the druid 3k CH is more than enough to keep the BST alive along with the BSTs lack of generating aggro. The magician DPS wise would be superior to the bard with the pet doing as much or more than bard melee and then combined with magician nuking. A big portion of your DPS with Bst/Mag/Clr is just pet melee DPS and since you are choosing mage over bard, cleric would be needed to supply the role of pacification. Do note that BST aggro is not the best, getting channeling focus AA would be high on your list since the main way for the BST to generate aggro via spells is drowsy spam.
     
  12. thucydides

    thucydides I Feel Loved

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    I feel like the people casually dismissing wizard and necro damage would be shocked to see a parse.

    that said, wizards are either actively destroying something or doing nothing, and when they’re doing nothing you are just watching your tanks dps trickle by, which is a bit demoralizing. I get that. But if you take a step back and ask “what % of the mob’s hp do I want my wiz to deal in this fight?” I think you’ll find you can do 60%+ quite easily. It’s just the rest of the hp bar is paint drying. I would be surprised if it doesn’t even out in the end, it’s just the rate of killing is uneven.
     
  13. Cillipis

    Cillipis Well-Known Member

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    SK / CLR / Necro - solid set up covering virtually every need. You can also role play it a bit (be somebody!!) and focus on undead leveling with the trio if you really need slows.

    Edit: reroll all three as Erudites and really be somebody!
     
    Last edited: Nov 1, 2020
  14. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    For a non-charm trio with good DPS, there's also DRU/WIZ/WIZ. Grab KEI, kill 4 mobs in the time it takes most trios to kill 1. Quadding is viable as early as level 4 and stays strong through 65/max AA. If you get bored with quadding, bring the booms to groups and raids.
     
  15. gardnerjens

    gardnerjens People Like Me

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    I rolles 3 wizards in a time with No kei, with kei. You are golden once you get your quad snare
     
  16. Vladimirr

    Vladimirr Member

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    BST/DRU/MAG has my vote. Very low learning curve and you can absolutely tear through xp camps. Leveling a Druid first will also give you the option of PLing a Bard and Cleric if you want to swap out. I’d say pick something and start xping. Who says you can’t xp multiple trio combos at once?

    Not much mention of Paladins so I’ll contribute some of my favorite Pally trios. Keep in mind I’m not interested in charm trios so no enchanters.

    Pally/Druid/Beastlord - This one covers a bit of everything if you’re looking for a self sustainable trio. One major downside is lack of CC and camp splitting. Pacify is not very useful in higher levels.

    Pally/CLR/Wizard - Most raids will have plenty of knights. If you want a Pally trio that’s most beneficial to a raid, go with this one. Downside- no slows.

    Pally/CLR/NECRO (All Erudite) -This is my future trio for PoP. It’s the ultimate undead slaying trio. Downsides- Lack of ports and invis.
     
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  17. badpoet

    badpoet Member

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    Re: BST/DRU/MAG Biggest downside to Mage in that trio is no indoor splitting. Bard can be as useful as you want them to be. Their DPS is very low, but it's pretty easy to pull with one and in PoP it will get even easier and if you want to mostly main the bard you can do it that way too since they won't really take aggro from the BST ever.
     
  18. Alphawolf

    Alphawolf New Member

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    Yea, my head is still circling all the possibilities. I'm currently considering possibly:

    Bst/Brd/Clr - This setup is perfect except that it's not b/c beastlord agro is weak. I'm not saying it couldn't work, but it would take effort to keep agro which would make your bard more ineffectual.

    SK/Brd/Clr - I am extremely reluctant to go this route as the dps is low, and the slow is a low %. However, if you can get past those 2 things, I think this seems on paper extremely strong. 35% slow with a SK tank + cleric healer is going to be at least equal (but probably way stronger) than a 50% slow with a Bst tank + druid healer. You rely on bard epic haste for regular haste I'd think.

    Bst/Brd/Dru - still considering this of course. Low-ish dps, weaker tank and weaker heals without a really great slow make this very strong for non-upper-tier content I'd think.

    SK/Bst/Clr - This is actually great except that it feels rather flat.

    Enc/Brd/Dru - Slightly weaker than the cleric version but has much more portability and evacs and lower-threat heals and more dps with the thorns.

    Enc/Brd/Clr - I'm warming up to the idea of this, but I will say that the lack of a tank means that some content is not doable whatsoever barely where as a normal knight/enc/clr combo would do well there. One issue I see is that you will not have nearly enough spell slots for everything enchanter would be required to do. Short-term mez breaking kill target, long-term mez ads, slow mobs, aoe mez on charm break, memblur so pet re-agros. However, this comp is definitely intriguing. Another issue is if bard is chain mezzing pet, then who does the pulling? The bard or the enchanter? Either is not ideal. Dealing with agro issues on charm breaks seems difficult.

    That's what I'm currently mulling over. Any thoughts of course are so welcome. I read all the replies. Thanks!
     
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2020
  19. Braven

    Braven Well-Known Member

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    You seem to have a low impression of BSTs so I'm curious why you want one in your trio.

    I think really only you can answer your own questions. For example,
    1) do you really want a BRD among your 3?
    2) do you plan on attempting edge trio content or group content and XPing.
    3) do you plan on connecting with others or mostly playing solo?

    These will all affect your choices for what you want/need.

    Good luck!
     
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  20. Faults

    Faults I Feel Loved

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    I've tried most trios with my bard as the main piece if you need advice on it you can shoot me a PM on the forums and we can chat.
     
  21. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    I play this trio a fair amount. I don't use the bard as an AFK mezbot. I pull, tank, melee and twist on the bard. Most of my actions are focused there. The enchanter just assists, sics charmpet, and either dispels or (for tough mobs only) slows. The cleric mostly HoTs (so as not to out-aggro the bard) and occasionally CHs. The bard twists whatever's fun and useful at the moment, which usually ends up being two damage shield songs, but sometimes includes pac, mana, mez, resists, overhaste or DoTs. On charm breaks I flip to the cleric and stun the pet. When I want to AFK I roll bard mez on the pet.
     
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2020
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  22. Alphawolf

    Alphawolf New Member

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    Thank you for the reply! Actually, I sincerely love beastlords. They're probably my favorite class, and if this was a true-box server I would play one and never look back. However, they're not perfect. Regarding your questions:

    1) Yes, I will play whatever. I'm just hoping to avoid enchanter (unless enchanter/bard could work) as I don't like the time restrictions on any bathroom breaks or stretching your legs to be 1 min 36 seconds. I do understand a snared, memblurred mob would work, but memblur not showing whether it took or not until after mez duration just isn't ideal. Also, paladins + necros + to some extent shamans aren't my favorites. Paladin because of having to target and cast your own heal (I much prefer Shadowknights!!). Necros as you can't see DoT dmg and lich is not my favorite. Shamans are very high APM and hard to maximize in a trio while maintaining two others.
    2) Edge trio content
    3) I'd like to be self sufficient, but I will not shy away from grouping with others. I just want to be able to be self-sufficient/self-reliant.

    Thank you!
     
  23. Alphawolf

    Alphawolf New Member

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    You guys have given me some ideas. I'm just throwing these out there, but how does Brd/Enc/Dru compare with Brd/Enc/Clr? I was thinking maybe druid would be more solid due to lower threat CH at 58. Just a thought.
     
  24. Auyster

    Auyster People Like Me

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    Brd/Enc/Dru trio is far worse than the Brd/Enc/Clr trio if you plan on charm tanking. The druid can snare the charm but that is negligible with the bard auto mezzing the charm.
     
  25. MikayahEQ

    MikayahEQ Well-Known Member

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    One of the biggest issues you will run into with Enc/Dru is the Druids lack of CH, especially once PoP hits. Even in good gear a Druid just cannot keep up heals on a charm pet in an exp group. Mana becomes a real issues, especially if you're snaring and trying to add any dps whatsoever with the Druid. Clr just pulls way ahead with CH.
     
  26. Cillipis

    Cillipis Well-Known Member

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    You can also make more toons later. I swap in other classes when I want, and you will too when you make a few more. Also, you seemed to give SK/BST/CLR a review of flat... that’s probably the tightest, in terms of bang for buck, full group I can think of.
     
  27. Mitya

    Mitya Well-Known Member

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    You've got a lot of suggestions so you have a lot to work with here, but I will throw in my two cents:
    If you want to be completely self sufficient and not have to worry about ever grouping with someone, you can pretty much roll with whatever you've already outlined. I run Nec/Dru/Enc and it's a LOT of APM. You have to keep track of a lot, but when it works, it works. The enchanter's charm pet tanks and does a majority of the damage. The necro pet is the "stand-in" tank, but it's a non issue with enchanter slowed mobs. Even my druid with his poop heals (pre 58) can keep up without a problem on a necro pet, and the pet seems stable enough to tank slowed mobs well enough. They die quickly with an enchanter charmed pet. If I am indoors and not feeling comfortable charming, the enchanter pet adds some defense and a little bit of DPS as well.

    Alternatively, if you REALLY like to punish yourself - you can charm something with the enc and have it soloing something on it's own, while the necro fear kites since both the necro and enchanter can fear. But you gotta have a lot of focus for that many APMs. You can also have a third mob root-rotting. I've done this in Skyfire and it's effective, but stressful. I know you're not a huge fan of necros, but I feel like they are a great DPS class since they are so good at everything they do: They have the pet adding nonstop damage and backup tanking, they have the DoTs for "damage and forget" and they have nukes if needed to burn something to the ground. Ultimately, I find myself swapping to the necro, casting a few spells, and then medding. I spend a majority of my time on my druid healing/buffing/snaring and on my enchanter making sure we don't wipe (slows/mezzes/roots/pet control).

    Now I bring all of that up because of my B team. I run SK/Cleric/Bard, and as you pointed out, it's definitely not fast but god DAMN is it much, much easier. Without a true tank type, you're gimping yourself. It's just SO much easier to have a class that can grab aggro, hold it, and be "hands off" - I recommend a knight type, like most people have suggested. Something like a SK or Pal. SK grabs aggro and tanks, the cleric heals and meds, and the bard does all the utility of mezzes, haste, clarity songs, etc. I end up swapping to the bard and playing him as the "main" in that trio and, like Pithy said, they offer a lot to the fight. And, when the fight is over I stand the cleric up and either do a massive heal, or during the fight I'll drop a HoT to keep the SK up. It's far fewer APM and far less stressful (just having the tank).

    In some ways, I wish I had started completely differently. I am now 53 (almost 54) on my mains and I am struggling to either boringly solo HHK or bum off the generosity of others if they are kind enough to let me join their groups.

    But ultimately... I say, play whatever you think is fun! :)
     
  28. MikayahEQ

    MikayahEQ Well-Known Member

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    I'll just throw in on the SK bandwagon...I know it's not apples to apples, but I most recently played SK/BST/DRU on Coirnav, and it was some of the best times I have ever had playing EQ. You can park the BST and pet in camp, and if you pull the mob to the right spot with your SK a simple /assist SK; /attack on; /pet attack; /cast slow hotkey is all you need to get your BST off to the races. SK has no trouble keeping aggro over the early slow, and the DRU adds a lot of utility, mobility and plenty of heals for an SK with a little gear tanking a BST slowed mob. If things get ugly for the SK, FD and the BST can off-tank and in a pinch, back out and the pet can take over. It is a really, really good time.
     
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  29. Mukk

    Mukk People Like Me

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    I keep telling myself I want to play an enchanter and learn how to charm, since it's something I've never done. And I've been watching players on Twitch doing it, being blown away at how powerful it is... I mained a bard on live, and play my bard as my main here, twisting 3-4 songs usually... I don't know why I never thought I could do it... I think you just made me change my trio... lol
     
  30. Kithani

    Kithani Well-Known Member

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    I think you can’t go wrong with pretty much any trio that has been listed in this thread, and with the nature of a (Luclin or POP) locked server you will hopefully end up playing all of these combos at some point eventually! Most important advice is to log in and get rolling!