Mixing it up, Mage+Wiz duo

[Vincentt]

So I like to mix things up sometimes. Currently I'm crawling through level 84 and it's the most discouraging trial ever. I've calculated 5AAs = 1% of xp at L84. And it only gets worst???!!! I'm not enjoying the grind.

Anyway, I tried duoing with my 75 chanter and tried Charm fighting with chanter+charmed pet+cleric merc+mage+pet+tank merc in Vergalid mines. Although it was fun for a while to control my own swarm, the joy was short-lived and I found it monotonous. Charm didn't break prior to running it's course, ever. However the effort was not worthwhile wince my dps was heads and tails above chanter. Nor did I need a tank. Nor a healer. Do chanters come into their own later on? I grouped with a high lvl chanter in HoT and all it seemed she did was haste, slow, and cast mana reiterate. Do they get anything awesome in their 80s?

Then I took up my 78 wizard (1000AA) and prowled a few haunts. And oh my! What a team we made. Mobs were dieing within 12-15 seconds. The xp was flowing for the wiz and I had no problems with adds since the primary target (wiz assisted pet) was dead within the lifespan of RS. No mana issues whatsoever. Crits were slamming like a lightning storm. Here's what I found odd though, my kill speed with a 81-BARD was faster than with the WIZ. I didn't expect the bard to be that much of a booster, but I actually had to wait on respawn with the bard, but not the wiz.

Go figure!

[Felinya]

Bard's are the end all for bot toons (imo). They offer SO much that I am shocked more people don't have one trailing behind on autofollow. They're the best bang for the buck I have seen.

[Fleiss]

Bard's are the end all for bot toons (imo). They offer SO much that I am shocked more people don't have one trailing behind on autofollow. They're the best bang for the buck I have seen.

It is hard to disagree with this statement if you just want a passive box. I have to stop myself from creating a bard on my chanter account all the time. I do have a friend with a well geared one I can borrow at anytime though, so probably keeps me from doing it. If you want to actively play multiple toons, there are better classes out there for most everything, but not having to do anything bards just add a to anything you are doing.

[deadman1204]

I have a friend with with a mage, bard, and wizard.
Bards just don't compare to a wizard if you are only duoing.
Unable to melee, a bard will increase a mage's dps by 30-40%.
A Wizard will outdamage the mage - and totally rock the dps contribution from the bard to a single mage.
With the wizard getting a knockback root, and CoH pulling, thats all you generally need.

[Vincentt]

Mage at 1500aa, Wiz at 1000aa. Both are purely offensive with only 100aa's put into personal defense each.

I'll try again when my wiz reaches same level as bard. So far I was finding mana regen from bard along with dmg shield, melee mitigation, and spell dd boost = killing 7 more mobs in the same time limit than the wizard.

While his dest.fury and spell crits are maxed, I probably need more practice with the Wiz. Perhaps leveling his familiars will improve his caliber. I just can't find any good wizard websites as good as MageTower.com! Graffe's is un-navigatable

[Zaltan]

I box a bard / Mage.

Boxing with the wizzy will be better dps.
I personal went for the bard because of the abilities. You have CC, pull any camp, slow, extra mana regen, boost your group's dps or AC if you struggle with named.
I use a Tank merc, Cleric merc so the bard can also melee, iv had no problems so far in T2 RoF).

Again i only went for the bard because i liked that they boost everyone, i group with other guild members a lot, also the safety of being able to take any camp because of mez/pull skills are always good to have.

[Gnomeland]

Bards scale linearly with the amount of people in the group. The bigger the group, the better bards get. In a duo scenario, you're not getting your money's worth of DPS from a bard - though pulling, mez, regen, etc. make up for that. But there's a threshold at which bards become better than additional DPS.

For example, say that bards increase mage DPS by 40%, and you're thinking about adding a bard vs. an additional mage. Then, provided you box your toons with optimal macros and gear:

Bard + Mage ~ 100% * 1.4 ~ 140% DPS
Mage + Mage ~ 180% DPS, because dmg shields do not stack

Mage + Mage is better, though a bard box is going to give you better DPS sooner because it takes less to get the bard's songs up to par than it takes to get another mage up to par.

But increase this to a group of three, and the bard scaling begins to show:

Bard + Mage + Mage ~ 180% * 1.4 ~ 252% DPS
Mage + Mage + Mage ~ 260% DPS

Group of four:

Bard + Mage + Mage + Mage ~ 260% * 1.4 ~ 364% DPS
Mage + Mage + Mage + Mage ~ 340% DPS

Group of five:

Bard + 4x Mage ~ 340% * 1.4 ~ 476% DPS
5x Mage ~ 420% DPS

Group of six:

Bard + 5x Mage ~ 420% * 1.4 ~ 588% DPS
6x Mage ~ 500% DPS

In practice, you break even a lot sooner with a bard because without third party applications there's no way to box >2 DPS characters optimally, while a bard's songs are easy to box due to melody.

[Zaltan]

Gnome - Can i ask if the bard is using any nukes or Dots in them parses or is it just song boosts?

Cheers

[Vincentt]

A point for the wizard:

After some practice I stumbled upon a macro combo that allows me to take most mobs (in 80 wizard's lvl range) from 80% to 0 in 4-8 seconds. While it depends on crits, most wizards can expect to crit frequently with the right setup.

Here it is. While mage and jober start the party, wizard joins in with a big nuke. If mob is stunned by air pet it might ignore the wiz, so he continues to nuke, no concussion needed really. When either the wiz gets summoned or the mob reaches 80%, wiz fires this combo:

-stun for 8 seconds
-tangle weave (next dd is a whopper, like our fickle line
-force of will (doesn't rob tangle weave boost)
-instant dd (affected by tangle weave)
-wild fire / ethereal
-concussion (or die!)

With global cool down at 1.4 seconds for me, the spell bar is always grayed out and this macro makes the wizard seem to fire like an uzi. Pop pop pop pop dead.

If GoM procs then an Ethereal Whopper comes down hard. It hardly seems fair, i know, but those npcs deserve no less.

Looking forward to what wizards can do later. I grouped with a lvl 100 wiz with 6k aa. It got frustrating cuz I hardly had a chance to get my 2nd nuke off. When he fired all his crit AAs at once, he killed 6 level 85 mobs (with approx 400k hp each) before his train reached the group.

And I thought rangers could power-level! Wizzies are very nicely tuned in their current state. Well done devs.

V

[iwantedapet]

For many years i boxed mage /shammy(lvl 96) . i recently switch to mage/bard and have a wizzy i can box to also . im a big fan of 2 things big nukes and mana regen .. my mage/bard are now both lvl 100 and is probly the easiest box combo i have ever played . mana regen is huge with chorus and pulse of salarra running and self buffs i can hit combat mana regen of 1114 . his gives me almost unlimited mana regen in most camps..

My next project is my mage /wizzy (lvl 91 atm) i have been fellowshipping him some vitilty as i was lvling the bard to 100 .. i plan on working a few macros to see how this combo works out at the higher lvls.. im sure i will get my bigger nukes and faster kills but lose the great mana regen ..

I also run cleric/wizy merc and wondering how much dps i will lose from merc from not having bard in group also ..