Suppose you wanted to explore zones and kill hard (ish) stuff on your own in a trio. What's the worst trio you could pick? For the sake of discussion, let's say the trio has to contain a melee (WAR/PAL/SK/BRD/RNG/ROG/MNK/BST), a priest (CLR/DRU/SHM), and a caster (NEC/WIZ/MAG/ENC). So ROG/ROG/ROG is out, sorry! I could see a fun "max the min!" challenge testing the limits of a pretty bad trio.
Brainstorming a bit: Pretty sure the worst trio would lack slow. That rules out BRD, BST, SHM, ENC. The worst trio probably can't kite, either. That rules out classes with snare: SK, RNG, DRU, NEC, WIZ. That leaves us with WAR/PAL/ROG/MNK, CLR, MAG. Of those melee choices, I'm pretty sure the worst companion for CLR/MAG is ROG. Can't tank, can't stab! What do you think? Is there a worse trio for self-contained stuffkilling than ROG/CLR/MAG?
CLR/Wiz might be worse than CLR/Mag pre-endgame. maybe CLR/WIZ/[rogue|monk] but honestly a bard in that might be competitive for the worse tanking and worst agro, though the utility makes it less crappy. and dungeons vs kiting also affects the selection -- "exploring zones" implies dungeons? I forgot who, but there was someone who did WAR/CLR/WIZ and did pretty well without assistance (but carefully). and I've heard of bard/wiz/wiz doing interesting things with mez/nuke timing.
Shadowstarr used to play a rogue/cleric/wiz? I can't remember the 3rd for sure, but I know he main'd a rogue and had a cleric he boxed with. Used to farm the tunnels in the basement of Ssra quite a bit.
I played SK, Wizard, Bard until 46 or so, it was pretty awful most of the time but had the tools to stay dynamic. No heals was extremely limiting.
ROG/CLR is not that bad. Mostly it's not bad because CLR anything is not bad. It's probably a playstyle thing but to me not having a healer is bad, WAR and melee in general are terrible in this TAKP era, MAG has a lot of utility and can probably just solo carry the other 2, so I vote for the pure melee setup: WAR/ROG/MNK Edit: Oh I forgot the restrictions about needing a healer. In that case I don't think any trio will be bad because you're including a melee and a healer. The priests are all good, but shaman heals the worst. Of the melee I think warrior is the least fun to play but rogue might be even worse since you need a tank for a trio. Casters offer a lot of utility and pets, except Wiz so I'd say ROG/SHM/WIZ would be the worst for my playstyle. Probably just end up carrying with the shaman or wiz while the other 2 watch. These bad trios are the best to pair with a traditional power trio though, if you decide to play social instead of strictly alone.
Rogue, Druid, Wizard is probably the worst trio you could come up with given the constraints mentioned. You have no reliable tank or slower. Your primary DPS is greatly reduced because you don't have back arc for backstab while tanking on Rogue. You have no haste for the rogue, the only mana regen you have is from druid 9s. I suppose you could kite stuff with rogue chasing behind but that limits you to mostly outdoor zones and only non-summoning mobs. Good for leveling, bad for everything else.
I tanked all the time on my bard coming up, but I used prox aggro and the pet to keep myself at the top of the hate list. I think a cleric healer and no pet damage would kill that play style. Bard / Wiz / Cleric would be awful for my play style, but I would have just changed it up. I think that if we stick to your rules, we'd just adapt our play to match the trio. It would be fun to play differently, honestly.
This is an interesting thread and I agree with Break, I think whatever trio you end up with, you'd just figure out what works for you as far as play style. In Darchon's trio, I think there would be plenty of situations where the rogue would just be idle and the two casters could carry, and I would be ok with that. Like doing cyclopses or hill giants, I'd just opt to nuke them down instead of tanking and healing. If I end up grouping up with somebody, it would be a nice change of pace to then switch to the rogue as the dps and druid as support. Once you get to summoning stuff though, it really pushes you toward that tank/healer/dps setup by design. I still think that including a priest makes any trio good though, as I consider those the strongest because of all the utility they offer. Not to derail too much but I was reminded about this.. FWIW the NPCs preferring to attack players over pets thing that Break mentioned was eventually fixed after the AK timeline, and it seems like such an obvious thing it's weird it took so long. It makes beastlord pets actually useful for tanking while the master melees and just makes more sense in general. I recall being in some pet groups where I (ROG) couldn't help because of this, so it's a really bad mechanic because it excludes players from social play based on their class. Once it was changed (much later than AK) it became viable to do things like ROG+MAG with pet tank, but I really don't understand why the designers didn't realize this in Luclin when they created a monk+pet class. I'm sure many people remember these pet groups and how they don't want melee players - probably wasn't obvious when they coded it but it made for terrible results where you have these evil mages/necros farming everything and refusing to invite the warriors because the pets are better tanks (don't need rezzes either and don't have to wait for them to run back).
I remember Fanglore doing war/clr/wiz on original AK, then did shm/rog/wiz on here, which are two of the "difficult" combos mentioned here. He did well by many metrics.
Probably paladin/cleric/wizard. The paladin's spells are almost all eclipsed by the cleric, other than the aggro stuns. There is no slow. No haste. No mana regen. No hp regen. CC is limited to root. The one thing you do have is the ability to single pull, but basically everything else is missing. The fastest and safest exp might be literally parking the paladin and cleric and quadding with the wizard. With no mana regen. Make sure you max the annoyance factor. Make the paladin an erudite, the cleric a good race, and the wizard has to worship someone other than Our Lord and Savior Solusek Ro.
Worst trio is ironically one that many raids would love - rogue, wizard, cleric. No tank, no slower, no charms, no mana regen, no sow.
I am tempted to reply whichever trio can be 3 vah shir, but alas your class split made that impossible.
Ironically for a new player, (hello ALL), this also serves as a nice convo on where to start, on the flip side I mean. \o/ will have a better feeling on where to start, don't have a lot of time for playing right now but love the planning and reading, also will be running on a old Linux laptop so got steps to go
I must push back on this! Paladins get self 25% Haste. Also Paladin and cleric get their shielding line which has mana Regen on it. And Shackles of Tunare is hugely undervalued as a CC tool. I think this trio would do just fine in most scenarios outside of the highest end content just due to the lack of slow.
Can always turn the dps up with Instrument of Nife and Ghoulbane and devastate Lguk Dead Side. Does it get better than that? I wouldn't be surprised if Crypt in Seb could be managed with this trio, I know I could do it with my box. It would be dicey. It would ne a challenging trio but not the worst, that may have to go to Wiz/War/Rogue or a few of the previously mentioned one. You always have interesting questions Slouch
