I box a Halfling WAR/CLR/DRU. I played a Halfling Cleric on the BristleBane server from shortly after launch to shortly after Planes of Power was released. Having never reached the maximum level before the level cap was rasied (twice), I sort of have this chip on my shoulder. I've poked around different eqemu servers (ran my own for a few months) since around 2008. P99 made for a decent throw back experience, but I'm not the most social player and my availability is inconsistent, so it's taken me like 4 years to get to level 45 as a HFL DRU. Boxing on TAKP has been awesome. Sort of like scratching a 15 year old itch. Since Christmas, my boxing crew has leveled to 44. For the first time in my EQ career, I own a Rubi BP. Couldn't be happier.
Before Zumaik I had not even purchased the animation spells since the level 4 version. I've been trying Zumaik out, and you're right that he isn't terrible. It certainly isn't a charm pet, but Zumaik is less stressful. Annoying too though with needing to move the ench around during combat. I guess /pet attack will come with Dire Charm in Luclin.
Generally speaking, most of the experienced people here seem to roll X + <Enchanter|Beastlord> + <Druid|Cleric>. This combination gives slow, complete heal, decent dps, pacify, some mana regen, and above all doesn't require too many keystrokes. I gradually realized that boxing is all about APM. Shaman aren't worse than any of those classes in a vacuum, but they require a lot more keystrokes to reach their potential. Imagine replacing your Shaman with an Enchanter and a Cleric: you'll get more healing, more slowing, and you won't have to hit the Cannibalize key every 6 seconds (of course, you might end up doing two 8th shawls . . . ) The absolute strongest combination is probably Enchanter/Cleric/Mage or Enchanter/Cleric/Bard (AFK chaining mez on the enchanter pet). Enchanters should be flat out ridiculous in Planes of Power, charming pets that quad for 600 and only getting breaks every 5 minutes or so on average. Personally I rolled Monk/Shaman and I can't say I've been that satisfied with it despite my general love for the Monk class. Shaman is high APM as noted, and there isn't much need for Monk FD splitting when Pacify accomplishes the same thing with zero risk. Plus I end up tanking on a Monk which sucks. It's not even about the worse-than-wizard AC as much as getting 20% of my attacks blocked. Most of the people playing Monk here came from Project 1999 where Monks are a lot better.
Running SK/SHM/ENC myself. All around 52 - 54 atm in just ok gear. I have had it said I should swap the ENC out for a Mage for higher DPS but atm I am sold on the general utility of the ENC over the mage. The only annoyance is the lack of ports but the SHM will make up for that eventually.
Raev's point about Actions Per Minute is a really good one, and underappreciated. One-button boxes are amazing; they free up your time and attention to really squeeze the most out of your main. Taking the time to set up good hotkeys also really helps reduce boxing APM. I play SK/ENC/CLR on offnights and I love it. On raids I pretty much play whatever's needed at the moment. Boxing on raids stresses me out so I prefer to play 1 or 2 toons when possible. I actually think ENC/ENC/CLR is the most powerful trio right now, and I haven't seen anyone play it. Two charm pets plus CH would open up some really fun, challenging content. Charm breaks would be easy to handle with all those stunners. You'd have two super fast leveling paths: charm two pets and wreck shop, or make a nuker friend and PBAE. In PoP, ENC/MAG/CLR or ENC/SHM/CLR will probably rule the farming game. Most good PoP pets are just too resisty to charm without malo.
I think epic mage epic mage cleric will outdo enc/enc/clr just because epic mage pets are that strong, quad that hard and never break on you - they are fearless, hasted, and have a DS that beats most others. Charm breaks must be weighed into these things. Sure charm is wonderful, but its downside is tremendous (ie a full wipe will annihilate any measure of exp/hour or apm. But with very little apm needed (epic)mage/(epic)mage/cleric would be my choice for pure OP. And all of this is subjective - if you are one of those madman who can maintain really high APM over long periods of time i mean you'd probably get the most of our necro/bard/enc - I can't even consider the damage to a wrist that would cause but i suppose its possible.
charms are great, but things can turn nasty very quickly and sometimes a few bad interrupts or a mis-click will result in a full wipe resulting in lots of downtime 2x enc charm + clr box would be insane, and seems a bit unecessary because I don't think you could pull quick enough to keep up with the extra dps in any group scenario anything more 'interesting' to kill would either be un-stunnable/unmezzable, or summon (or usually all of the above), and therefore you are relying on pure luck to kill quick enough without a charm break. would be pretty comical to get the kill then charm breaks -> summon -> full wipe and unable to loot corpse I always feel something else + clr+enc is solely to give you some ability to stabilise things should charm break, such as a snarer to give you some running room or extra heals while you channel some crowd control spells, or just flat out evac. without that support you are relying on a whole lot more luck and would probably experience more frequent full wipes of course just imo... would be interested to see if anyone can pull it off consistently (not just one or two lucky kills)
It was relatively straightforward to handle charm breaks against summoners as a solo enchanter on Project 1999. Keep Bedlam and Rune up, then cast Color Skew + Mesmerization + Allure + Blur or Color Skew + clicky + Boltran's on breaks, wc cap out the 1/10 times the RNG was being a dick with bash interrupts and resists, and make friends with clerics. I would think this would work even better here with spells being resisted so infrequently. Adding a cleric makes this even more straightforward: the cleric casts enough stuns to stay higher on the hatelist than the enchanter so the summoner will summon the cleric, and the enchanter sits right behind his pet so that he doesn't get summoned. The cleric won't die that quickly if the target is slowed, although I think Clerics might be a bit tougher on Project 1999. Several of us (including Darchon, I think) duoed the Mischief puppets this way, which is really a lot more dangerous than usual due to how cramped that camp is. The only issue here would just be clicking fast enough on multiple boxes. Of course, you're totally right that adding that X makes the process a lot easier. One of my biggest annoyances with theorycrafting a TAKP box setup is that I'd like to play a Monk and an Enchanter, but an Enchanter needs a cleric, and clerics just don't seem like they can heal a Monk that well against stuff that hits for 1K. Monks don't really take THAT much more damage per swing; the problem is the spikiness (= larger HP margin needed) and the low HP. Druids (ATK debuffs really help low AC monks) and Shaman (fixed size heals) seem to match much better. P.S. Faults I'm kind of curious why you included Necromancer in your list of high APM classes. I would guess pet attack + maybe 2-3 dots and a FD or two? That doesn't seem so bad.
A good necro should be using a pet well (not to mention the necro was part of that group, so in that group they would also be holding aggro via tap tank or aggro kite) should be tossing 2-4 dots, whatever clickies they have, refreshing dots, watching aggro, healing your party (yes), and if people get low on mana giving them a pump to maintain a constant chain of kills. I find necros only get more and more dps as I am able to focus more of my apm on them. FWIW the druid heal at 1k is fine to maintain my monks health, clerics can do the job just fine as well; I'd say one of the factors that I lean toward druid with is regrowth of the grove (regen in general) I enjoy having a static tick over 50 - and it helps mitigate heal necessity (combined with slow, but I don't fixation as often as I should). Mnk/dru/enc can get the job done but learning to evac early and prevent rezzes is probably the most underrated skill in that trio setup.
I went with pally druid beastlord and at 60 this is beastly. I must admit when I first started I did not realize the baby SP spells werent available (they are in Shadowhaven) or I might have chosen differently as mana was frequently the chokepoint leveling up (certainly not now though). If I ever did it all again I would try something like necro beastlord enchanter. Like Raev said you only have so much attention to spend at a time. Three pets (enchanter pulling but not charming) would allow for good dps without having to spend too much time frantically hitting buttons.
Same idea with my trio, I run a Necromancer/Beastlord/Magician trio and it has been a fun, albeit occasionally challenging, bunch to run with. The idea was to have all of the toons be minimal upkeep dps with the necromancer being the primary puller since he always has mana coming out of the wazoo, especially at higher levels.
I box enc/mag/clr as my first trio. I wanted my enchanter to be my main, but my magician has just been too strong in this era and charming, although fun and good practice, just isn't as efficient (which is important as my play time is limited). I plan on swapping out my ranger for my enchanter when I have time to raid as people usually have enchanter mains and there's usually plenty of them. So my magician has mostly become my "main" for now. But for POP I plan on using the ranger and enchanter for some ridiculous charming. The cleric is a funny character. I am pretty sure he is still whatever armor he looted from crushbone at level 8. But he can cast CH and Rez and buff that magician pet like a champion. I think cleric is easily the best box. In fact, I usually park him away from my other boxes so if I make a bad pull or wipe, I don't even care I just don't engage and just Rez the damage and you're back fighting within 10 min.
I play ranger/shaman/cleric. The ranger is my main and is my focus. The other two support the ranger as tank and help him to be all he can be. I lack CC, though careful pacify can get a lot done. I can't hit some of the targets that I could of I replaced the sham with a charming enchanter, but that's okay with me.
Yeah as a Ranger main I had trouble deciding Shaman vs. Chanter too. I played through most of Live back in the day with a shaman box and I really got to missing effective indoors CC. So then I played on p99 for a while and learned Enchanter, and that's why I went with what I did.
I just started here - and I am enjoying myself very much. People on this server have been kind with their time, mana, and gear. I am running the PC client, and I can personally attest to the fact that it takes about 2 weeks as others have said to get used to the "jittery" 3rd person view, and cycling views. That being said, hotkeyfix is awesome for boxing without a 3rd party tool like MQ2. It really makes the process smooth and probably about as comfortable as possible given the circumstances. With all this in mind, I continue to go back and forth on boxing. To me, playing a single character is quite a bit more immersive and enjoyable. My goals when I play is to adventure and interact with others. I find that soloing gives me the most of what I want out of play. I enjoyed very much soloing my first character, Dru (Grelwin) to lvl 20. I started boxing a SK/BST, so far they are up to 12. It is not as enjoyable right now, but the Druid is not actively involved yet. I figure I might as well get them all to level 20 and see how it goes. If I don't like it, I will probably go back to playing 1 at a time. Even though farming and obtaining gear will come easiest with a 3 box, I try to continually remind myself that I am doing this to have FUN. If I am not having fun, I need to make a change. That change usually involves solo questing and adventuring and grouping, because that is what I enjoy most about this game and I find that Druids best fit my goal from 1-59.
I box because trying to play rogue solo on this server topped out around lvl 50. SK/Ench/Sham. Got the tank, CC, Slows, Heals, Utility, Buffs, Charms. I think the only reason I didn't choose cleric over sham is because of sow. My experience so far... Overall it's been very good. In my opinion it's one of the best trios, if not the best. With that said, the main reason I die is probably my lack of patience, my lack of fucks given about keeping track of spawn times and all that tedious shit, and pushing my limits to the fullest. (Pet pulling the majority of emp room, AE mez, snare target and single out of group, switch back to ench in time to AE mez again, charm a pet, sic all pets on target, AE Mez, maybe throw in a torpor if need be, and repeat til all are dead or I run out of mana and die.) Maybe that's childs play for some of you but those are about my limits for now.
Btw not to derail this thread but even though I don't play often if you need an ot hammer I can set this up. Just PM me and we can set something up. I'll do mains for free and alts for cost
If Spaide is busy building flying toilets I can do stuff on him too, but only during the official Bum play time of m-f 8am-noon cst
Currently boxing a Chanter / Mage / Druid. This combo is deadly and quick... Crowd control, mana buffs, slows, haste / Pet, dps, mobile vending machine / Buffs, heals, transport (future powerleveling toon to help others). My setup is as follows: Primary focus is on Chanter screen so I can single pull or mez as needed. Mage has macros to autofollow chanter and assist. Assist Macro: /sit off /assist Chanter /pet attack /pause 45, /cast 1 /book Druid has macros to autofollow chanter, heal chanter, assist chanter Heal Macro: /target Chanter /sit off /pause 40, /cast 1 /book Druid's assist macro has an extra line above /book that casts snare. The autofollow macro is easy: /sit off /target Chanter /follow *note, I remapped the "m" key to toggle spellbook so it's easier to sit/stand I enjoy being able to explore the old zones and move about with my pre-made group. It's also nice that each toon can help out other groups with buffs or breaking up tough mob spawns.
Some really clever stuff here; I like how you use /sit off and /book. I had trouble getting sitting and standing to work right due to toggling.
Curious, why /book? At first thought, it might be nice to know if im sitting and meditating in first person on a character if their book is open... is that why?
/book allows me to just press the "m" key (mapped to toggle spellbook) to stand up for whatever reason and lets me know for certain that I'm medding. (I play Gnomes a lot and those lil' guys are pretty vertically challenged so there's not much of a visual cue when they're sitting) /stand is far too modern of a command... /sit off is OG all the way (says the guy who's not using the classic character models) It's just a habit formed a long long time ago.
Am I the only one that boxes a necro?! Necro chanter cleric I find the utility of a necro great for a trio box. A necro pet can tank fairly well with cleric hp buffs, fd for pulls crawls, can spot heal my pet. The Koch and twitch line goes great for the longer fights in luclin as a 3 box combo. Necro has a much utility including self succor and necro Rez for wipes I do most everything with the necro to get mob in camp then use chanter to slow and debuff and buff cleric and cleric just heals. Also, when we get to pop the necro pet can hold aggro and live just long enough for me to recharge bit mobs on chanter and send him back in so I don't wipe. The huge hp mobs of luclin and the amount of mana regen I get with lich/twitch and kei/voq and the damage over time I get with necro dots allows me to do a lot in the luclin era.
Bard/Necro has got to get clicky AF (if maximizing) at times. Imagine adding a sham to that duo tho lmao.
