Cleric, Shaman or Druid?

[zuuper]

Another returning player question:

While soloing, would you rather 2-box with a toon that can slow, snare or a great healer. My mage is 71 with 352 AAs. On the other account I have a 55 druid with 12 AAs, 70 shaman with 85 AAs and a 70 cleric with 565 AAs.

When I last played in 2008, I 2-boxed the mage and cleric. Cleric was puller with pacify line and would do a little tanking for fun. I just love CoTH! But now with mercs, should I add tank & rogue merc to speed up killing? Is tank merc better than air pet? If air pet is better, should I use 2 wizzy mercs?

If I use tank merc & rogue, would shaman be better than cleric to add melee buffs and slow?

I never worried about lack of snare using cleric's root & stuns but I am not sure the state of the game now plus druid would allow for tracking and evac.

I am a casual player that likes grouping and soloing but I just do not have the time for raiding. I am not sure of the current state of the game and what is a higher priority as I level up. Also I am not sure what strategy to use concerning mercs. Any advice would be highly appreciated by this returning player.

[Fleiss]

I am a huge fan of shaman. That is what i started boxing on. They are good at everything.

Pulling isnt that hard anymore, you can do it in most cases without another class or just deal with two. Non-factor for me in choosing.

All three have buffs, druid probably least useful since we have a line of self buffs in same cat as their main buff. Shammy buffs cant be gotten from buying a merc, so I give them the advantage here.

Heals, it is kind of a push. Clerics by far have the best tools, but as a box most of the time they are played in a routine. All the cool heal abilities are mitigated because most of your activity is on the mage (I would assume). Any of these three can heal for you.

Snares, only druids can help you. Cleric stun means little if you are using air pet. Cleric root can mean little if you let your earth pet root. Shammy AA root should be sufficient for most content if you worried about mobs walking off. So this is really a matter of do you need snare or not. VP can also help in splitting mobs.

DPS and mods. Cleric is going to be lowest. Druids can mod spell damage with their auras, shammies can mod meleer damage with their spells. I give advantage to shammy because 99% of the time pet will be attacking, depedning on mana and playstyle, you will not be casting that much. Their DPS off spells will be similiar.

Pets. Shammy wins. Shammies can control its pet and can make them non one hit wonders through AAs. Cleric and druid pets are a sideshow and wont provided much of anything to you. Also they can not get pet affinity to have tiger line land on their pet for free DPS.

Slows, shammy wins. Cripple, shammy wins.


Mercs? well that is all up to you and what you can handle. Get multiple merc slots if you think you will have an itch either way. Play around with them and see how they work. Understand they are a program and a routine. Once you go oh that is how they work, you will know what they can and cannot handle. they don't have really oh crap buttons where they will change thier routine vastly. They will DPS/tank/heal based on the information in their script.

[zuuper]

Fleiss,

Thank you so much for the feedback. It was really helpful. Concerning the rogue merc, will he pull agro from air pet and get squished? Not sure if he is treated as a player and gets auto-agro.

Zuuper

[deadman1204]

Shamans are over rated.
The dps increase their buffs will give your pet are very small compared the damage a druid can put out itself on auto-pilot.
This can be done on automatic. Just make a few hot buttons that say nuke/pause/nuke/pause/nuke, and another to throw out some dots.
The firemod/debuff is quite worthwhile as well.
Plus druids are the only one of the 3 that give your mage more mana with their skin buff than on your own.
The snare and pacify of druids does let you do alot more. It can open op some places you just cannot do on your own.

Plus, since everyone plays SK/SHM, its gonna be harder to get shaman gear

[Piemastaj]

SA is quite huge from clerics. I really wish a cleric merc would cast this on our pets when we used mercs. You also need to include Quiet Miracle which is somewhere around a 10k mana every 10minutes. Then you include BDA, epic click, and their group heals are quite nice. They are more beneficial to our weakest aspect, which is healing out-put. Not to mention our second weakest aspect, mana regen.

IMHO if you want DPS make a DPS class not a healer. Druid/Shammy are good for ADPS, but another DPS class will make up for that and then some. Especially if u add in a Necro with RB. If you want utility and overall healing power, cleric is the clear cut favorite. You can always add another healer merc with the pet, and go full bore DPS and you will make it fine.

You should be pet tanking, Earth is the best bet at higher levels. Air is quite good sub level 85.

[Fleiss]

Shamans are over rated.
The dps increase their buffs will give your pet are very small compared the damage a druid can put out itself on auto-pilot.
This can be done on automatic. Just make a few hot buttons that say nuke/pause/nuke/pause/nuke, and another to throw out some dots.
The firemod/debuff is quite worthwhile as well.
Plus druids are the only one of the 3 that give your mage more mana with their skin buff than on your own.
The snare and pacify of druids does let you do alot more. It can open op some places you just cannot do on your own.

Plus, since everyone plays SK/SHM, its gonna be harder to get shaman gear

Umm, You can put a shammy on autopilot as well with short duration dots if you grouping (which is what he mentioned he was doing). Add in bite with that and you looking at similiar DPS. Plus pet with tiger on it is going to be like an additional dot. So I find that point invalid.

Druid skin is in same line as our guardian line, AKA doesn't stack. They were equal but druid skin has hp on it. Latest versions have mages with more m regen, so you are wrong. You can self buff this, and so all you are gaining is hps.

The debuff is okay, i'll give you that.

Snare is okay but IMO not a must. Pulling isn't as hard as it used to be, why I said non factor. With any of them you can always COH pull if you have no pulling skills. Roots can suffice as well. why i didn't factor in.

IMO I get way more out of a shammy than a druid. Though I'll admit I have a necro in my group so that mitigates using the aura, and thus make them weaker to me.

Nice healing tricks on the cleric but you only need so much healing. when you ahve enough the effect of it do zero for the group. So like Pj mentioned maybe you want a DPS toon (though I see you already have the other three toons type lvl'd and avaliable).

[zuuper]

I have duo'd my mage with all three healer toons now and played around with mercs. Healer toons are all about the same with healer merc aound.

It might be that I need to level a DPS toon to work with the mage for faster kills. Would any DPS class level faster from 1-71?

Ranger = tracking + snare but how good is ranged DPS
Wizard = big nukes + snare + ports + evac
Necro = great dots + pet
Ench = mana regen buff + slow + mez; not really into charming; how good are their nukes
Mage = got 1 already, would rather have a different class

[Conjurous]

I use mage (main), necro and either shammy or chanter. Necro is great dps, pet can offtank if needed and he can pull, snare and knockback root any adds + FD is great. I also go with 1 healer merc, 2 dps caster grps, stuff dies fast, even in top grp zones mobs can die b4 my necros 5 dot hotkey can cast them all.

[Sillaen]

I've gone away from boxing recently, mainly because I gave away one of my comps, then the other one blew up and wife's mainly on the laptop so just down to 1. But even still, for me there was no beating a cleric for boxing. Yes, I know we have mercs, but mercs are so dumb they can't replace what you can do with a real cleric. The difference is almost night and day.

When I do box, it's still me and my trusty old cleric. Can't go wrong for healing with a cleric.

[zuuper]

I decided to go with cleric as partner to mage and each hired a wizzy merc. This is a really fun! I thank all of you that responded.