Hey all, I have Been playing for nearly a year now and have a bard enc cle trio at 47 and a bst mag dru at 42. I have recently been playing less because playing alone does get lonely but il eventually make the push to higher lvls. My problem is I love having the bard safety net and CH. But when I play that trio I really miss evac,ports, snare and sow. So as you can guess from title, has anyone managed to play enc cleric druid successfully. If I'm being honest a large part of the appeal is having Res , evac and ports to recover quickly. Because I am not the greatest player and often if I try and do a more difficult zone or camp il die and that's a day or twos play wasted for me. Have a good day takp
ENC + CLR + DRU was my first 60 trio, and it is incredibly powerful and versatile. It has enabled me to win EQ multiple times over.
I'm noob here, but from what I've read on these forums, two most popular enchanting trios are: ENC + CLR + DRU PAL + ENC + CLR And third most popular is combination with Bard for mesmerization safety net when charm breaks. Btw, I too am playing for a little over a year now, and I have two trios similar levels (a little bit higher). But I'm thinking to slow down a little bit and stop recklessly rushing through the levels. Time to start looking into some quests
Most popular are likely any combo that is like this: Character 1 - SK / Pal / Ranger (with these three being the most common) and maybe Warrior / Bard / Beastlord Character 2 - Cleric / Druid Character 3 - Enchanter Enchanters are simply too good in this era. Strongest DPS via a pet in most zones (Earth, Air, Time are about only zones without useful charmed pets). Strongest tank via charm or very strong tank via War / SK / Pal and decent tanks for most content via Rng / Brd / Bst. Best CC with chanter, second best slow, best mana and haste buffs. Clerics are far superior healers but Druids will do for everything but the hardest content (they sort of work there too if your tank is geared enough but are very inefficient by comparison). Most of the strongest non-charm trios tend to center around Beastlords who have the 3rd best slow, tank relatively well due to block skill and if they get raid gear with good AC, and are okay DPS. Character 1 - Beastlord Character 2 - Druid / Cleric Character 3 - Bard / Mage / Necro and to lesser extents Wizard / Shaman… you could go with any melee in this slot but juggling two melee is annoying.
Really any class can slot into Character 1 in Darch's first trio. X/(clr or dru)/enc is amazing for any value of X. The most powerful trio in most PoP settings is enc/enc/clr. If you learn to play that trio well you become a tiny god (until you zone into Air or Earth, where there's fug-all to charm!). Some folks also build trios around raids, rather than group content. This approach is much less common, but it leads to fun offbeat trios like bard/shm/enc (Team Debuff), wiz/wiz/wiz (Team Burn), clr/clr/clr (Team Rot), etc.
I'll sing the praises of my favorite war/clr/brd trio. I do have a pal/dru/enc charming trio, and it is fun, when I have multiple hours to dedicate to a play session (which isn't often). I like my war/clr/brd trio for it's near indestructibility. DPS isn't great (like half of what a non-duel wielding charm pet does), but I can log in and immediately start pulling. When I've measured it, the kill rate at the same camp is about the same (for me) between the two trios for a given 40 minute session, due to the time it takes to get pets setup. Every wipe is like a 10-15 minute recovery that my warrior trio doesn't have to deal with. They remind me of the tortoise and the hare : ) And while there is no doubt that charm trios can do some tough content, relying on having good pets for any reasonable amount of DPS limits you to a certain set of zones and camps. On the other hand, my warrior trio can take the party anywhere. I really enjoyed killing all of the WW dragons with that trio (including Harla Dar, excluding Klandicar and Sontalak). Their AE dispell makes keeping a charm pet quite difficult. So, tailor your trio to your play style. If you love seeing that xp bar zoom across the screen, charming is absolutely the way to go. I enjoy being able to pop in and out of the game, or getting distracted between pulls, and my warrior trio makes that enjoyable.
So how does this even work... That question aside, and chiming on the topic in general, there's some times that I regret not having a bard in my main trio, which is Warrior, Druid, Enchanter. Now that Mahonri has a lot of AA's, it seems really, really strong. It's sorta somewhere between the "super safe" and "super volatile" trios that kai4785 (Meriadoc) mentioned above. Sometimes charm breaks while I'm already pulling something in plane of tactics (and these mobs kinda wreck face sometimes), and I literally just autorun Mahonri in the general direction that I need to go to get back, OR if that's blocked I just autorun him in the quickest-safest direction toward a wall, then I work on fixing the charm break with my enchanter and druid, getting it mezzed, re-snared and re-tashed and re-charmed, and then work on getting my warrior back into camp. Generally, if he's buffed at all, I can afford to have a single mob just literally beat on him for a little bit, unchecked. That sounds kinda dumb/basic, but let me tell you, having a big sponge to just sit there and soak up a whole lot of damage while I deal with the charm-related crap that's hitting the fan, it's been invaluable. And now that he's fairly well geared, I can sometimes even get away with having 2 PoP mobs just beating on him for a little bit while I get stuff under control. And with Druid CH being little to no agro, I can sometimes just chain CH's with 2 or even 3 PoP mobs beating on my warrior, while my enchanter gets the charm pet under control. HOWEVER, I do have a safety net rezzer, and I can't stress enough how valuable this is. If crap hits the fan uncontrollably, I do have my own paladin (was my original tank, swapped to warrior because guild needed wars and I like wars) for 90% rez, and as I learned to charm, or even if I just screw up, I use(d) him for rezzes and buffs all the time. If I did NOT have at least a 90% rezzer, I would be working on that as my top priority. If my paladin were a cleric instead Essentially, what I'm saying is: +1 vote for warrior (or at least a plate tank, because I'm a baddie and having a class to stand there and soak up damage makes it easier for my baddie self), and +1 vote for at least HAVING a 90% or better rezzer (whether or not they are in the combo you actively play). +1 vote for having ensnare (druid or ranger)) +1 vote for having ports/evac (druid or wizard) +1 vote for having low to no agro C-Heals (druid or shaman) And if you're really feeling extra gutsy, and want to try your hand at charming 2 things at once in some cases, +1 vote for having 2 charming classes for certain zones/mobs (druid, enchanter, or bard) So for me, all those "votes" mean I'm either playing warrior(or SK)/druid/enc (with a rezzer/buffer bot) or paladin/druid/enc, if I'm gonna charm. Side note - I've toyed around with Warrior/Druid/Paladin (after buffing with my Enc), and it's actually fun too, though very non-standard. 2 melees is a little hectic, but going back to what Meriadoc said, it's kinda nice to be nearly indestructible sometimes, and fun in a different way. If I were going to do a 2 melees & non-charming trio on purpose though, I'd probably sub out either the warrior or paladin for a BST, but I'm getting off topic with this stuff, because it seems like you're interested in a charm-related trio. The thing is, it all comes down to what YOU think is valuable, and what YOU assign YOUR votes to as being valuable/must-haves, what fits your style, etc.
There's a sort of far-out playstyle that rivals charming in some settings. The basic idea is to gear a tank to the teeth, pump their DS through the roof, and let a bunch of mobs beat on them while a they get low- or no-aggro heals. Tank/dru/bard is the god trio for this playstyle, as it can pump out 200+ DS. The drawback, of course, is that by the time you have the gear and AAs to do this really well, you no longer need to kill trash mobs
Back when Velks was considered the standard XP zone, this is what I did to XP. I even came up with a Spider score for how many mobs you could pull at once. I was pulling around 15 at a time with my trio, and 25 or so with multiple healers. At the time, 100 DS was shockingly high. When I need to farm mats like Velium Bricks, Hopper Hides, and so on, I still do this tactic. It's incredibly fun to push 1,000 DPS across 30 mobs at a time. But, alas, no xp....
OP question was about different combination, but I have to shout out for this trio bellow: WAR/CLR/BRD There was no more posts about OP question for a while, so I don't feel like hijacking this thread Many times I only have 30-60 minutes time play, and at that time I didn't even log in my main trio (BST/MAG/DRU) with two pets. Takes too much time for preparation. So I wanted to try this trio, where you can start right away. Also, I'm bad, bad, clumsy player, new in EQ/Norath world. My main trio (now 53) got wiped in Paludial by bandits twice when I pulled 3-4 and I just avoided them after that. WAR/CLR/BRD is amazing, if I pulled several, bard mezzed one, cleric rooted another and warrior took care for the rest of them. Same in HHK - gnolls. Pulled 3 reds and survived that way. 4-5 blues, no problem. (I've never been at this camp before, so I didn't know what i was doing) When cleric hit 29 and got better heal spell, I decided to try out HG's in rathe. Warrior 31. Everything is red. No MGB's. And no problem. Cleric most of time uses most mana since fights are little longer, warrior has frequent 6-8 even 10 misses in a row, at least once per fight, but this is normal, since HG's are red. (maybe 5% yellow) But I have yet to die from HG's. The only time warrior died was, when I pulled Brood B... (named). But this doesn't count, he is way way higher level, unbeatable at my level. I leveled whole level without any MGB' or other buffs but what trio has. Cleric did have to med after every fight, but not that long, since bard's mana song helps. During the fight, bard plays slow & snare (one song). Not twisting for simplicity. After I leveled up, I got KeI on cleric and now I can kill one red at a time without the break. No MGB's on warrior, just cleric buffs. HG's are still mostly red. This trio is amazing. Warrior does has some items I passed down from my other two trios, but they are all items I got for free in the past, like silver chiting gloves, silver chitin bracelets, some ~20ac helm, and boots. And I bought Reaver (40/40 2HS) for 400plat. So, nothing fancy. This is probably best trio for beginners and clumsy players like me. And it can start with action as soon as it logs in! So, thank you Kai for mentioning it. I have one trio lvl 53 another at lvl 50, but I just want to play this one now! To be fair, the reason is also, that 50+ levels are starting to be tougher for someone who is not familiar with EQ. But I have a feeling, with my new 'main' trio, I will easier tackle 50+ levels.
I gotta admit, the war/clr/brd trio posts have made me so nostalgic for my live days, when I played a bard, and the guy I played with daily ran war/clr on 2 computers. We usually just immediately met up and did trio stuff. I've started levelling my warrior and cleric so I can run them with my bard now, because I remember how adaptable this trio was and how much margin for error you had, when you needed it.
