Mage Partner

[Yillawen]

It seems he may be leaning towards Ranger and his wife playing a BL so will try this group and see how it goes.

[Zacatac]

It seems he may be leaning towards Ranger and his wife playing a BL so will try this group and see how it goes.

The main thing you need to worry about is later in life, who is your tank? If you are going with the idea that 2 mage pets are the tanks, any other melee must stand back and do range damage or cast spells. If the ranger or BL wants to get in there and melee, they become the tank, nullifying the whole "pet tank" idea.

I would suggest Shadowknight instead of Ranger if your friend wants to hit the mob with anything but an arrow.

[qibrme]

It seems he may be leaning towards Ranger and his wife playing a BL so will try this group and see how it goes.

LOL Yillawen, you got more feedback on this than most post that have to do with the future of the entire magician class with the Sony Dev get.

My 2cp is that you and your friends should make the characters that will be the most fun to play then figure out what you need to make it work.
EQ group partners change as people start and stop playing the game.
I have grouped extensively with both rangers and BST, both were awesome IMO.

When the game changes as you progress, there will be other players out there who can join your group to fill in the gaps necessary to handle the content.

Have fun, the rest will come.

Sued...

[bobipet]

well i play a shm,with mage as alt and it just rock.(so if u adding a 3rd toon, it's just add to the strenght of the trio )
what a shaman can bring:
counterbias slow 75% (mitigated) ---------> proc a 1733 heal per tic for the MT.
overtime heal lv 83 halcyon zephir -------> 1733 per tic heal .
listlessness ----------------------------------> 661 per tic heal proc .

that s 4127 hp per tic all time on pet (since the proc rate is high )............

many times with the UF trash mobs ( including converteum ) i just don't need to use any mercs at all.
adding lynx ,heavy dots ,fast cast dd , (aa root,hard to resit ( land 99% of time ) and last 3 min once maxed,refresh 90 sec ) ,regular root ,fast group heal who can crit for 50k if the one in group is low hp, (90 sec refresh tho ),or just adding some good dps.and always get unity

sometime mercs are just going crazy and stand right under the mobs and die / that's bad against a UF named,and when this happen ,i just have to chain cast heals who is usually enough to keep pet alive.

[Mendoros07]

Everyone seems to love Enchanters here as a 2nd char or box whatever. I know this is not a chanter forum but just HOW are chanters better at pulling than say a necro? A properly played necro that knows his beans knows when to FD and when to get up, taking advantage of distance, walls etc. Other than having to pacify each mob (if you can pacify them that is), or mass mezzing when they rush the group and hope to god you get no resists or that if you do that your own runes help out, still scratching my head. Self statis rocks but there's a long reuse time so that is not viable. Just saying since a good friend of mine always joins me with his chanter when 1 2 box in UF. His DPS is pitiful to say it kindly -- trying to even remotely think of charming a mob in UF, at least with his skill, makes baby Jesus cry. His mana flare, haste and auras do help, don't get me wrong but when our necro friend comes along mobs die in half the time and the pulls keep coming. Again not putting chanters down, they are essential in EQ period... just if I had 2 box.... or was giving advice to someone on boxing... chanters would NOT be the first choice...

[Merlaina]

It takes some skill to pull well with a chanter, but it most certainly can be done. Chanters have lots of nice little tricks they can use for pulling. Pacify is obviously one, but there are others. For example, a trick you can do is throw a dagger at a mob, and while it is in flight cast blanket of forgetfulness (targeted AE memblur). With practice you can time it such that the mob is hit, and him and all of his friends start running at you, and then memblur lands. Usually you'll end up blurring all of them (in which case try again), but sometimes one won't be blurred. As long as it's not the one you hit with the dagger no others will assist it.

Quick explanation: there are two types of aggro, regular aggro and assist aggro. You get regular aggro from hitting/casting on a mob or just getting within its aggro range. Mobs will ONLY assist other mobs with regular aggro. If a mob has assist aggro, meaning it it's just assisting something with regular aggro, it will not aggro additional mobs. This is often hard to notice because usually the two mobs are coming at you together, and the regular aggro mob is causing more assists as it comes.

They can also do things such as use beguilers directed banishment (knockback + root + memblur) to knock a mob into another mob. When this happens the mob hit with BDB has direct aggro, but the one that it was knocked into only has assist aggro and will come solo (and the one banished will be memblurred and leave you alone).

And then if a pull gets out of hand there's the runes that proc an AE stun when they wear off, which allows the chanter to AE mez everything, or if there's time and few enough mobs they can use regular beguilers banishment to knock back/memblur 3 of the mobs. And if it looks like those still may not work, there is always self stasis.

Or the chanter can AE mez a bunch of mobs, pull one out, and then AE memblur the rest.

You get the idea. The chanter has a lot of tools, and when combined with a good knowledge of how aggro works allows them to be very powerful pullers. All that said, I don't know if I'd say they're better than necros at it, just different. The necro pulling technique involves a lot of FDing, waiting for mobs to wander back, etc, while a good chanter can split up groups fairly quickly. However I think it takes considerably more skill to be effective pulling with a chanter, so for ease of use the necro wins. But that's just how I see it. Your mileage may vary.

[bobipet]

as for pulling,the other day i helped a friend doing the warren's task champion no more / disrupt the siege ,that one need serious pulling.
i did it with my shm / coh pull ,a clr in group who came to help, told me it was one of the fastest he did so far.once u used to it ,it can be done pretty fast.i would like to challenge a good bard on that one,to see how fast that task can be done when he pull and when i am pulling with coh.........i did it with a monk but it was slower than what i am doing,i agree bard ""might"" do it faster tho ....

it's not a ""must"" to have a chanter or bard in group for the pulling part,i would go bard if u really think it can help u on the pulling.but either of those 2 toon (bard or chanter) will lowered your dps imo,compare to a necro or ranger.
if i was to add another toon with my shm / mage ,it would be a necro.(or another MAGE )there are some pulls if i had snare,would be much easier (snare a mob run away,be coh and pick that mob snared who been left behind ).

i play a lot with a friend ranger or necro and it work well,either of them can pull pretty fast and all mobs come single usually.

[Mendoros07]

Merlaina: Best explanation EVER -- thanks for taking the time to write that up. Very kind of you.

[Zatpus]

what a shaman can bring:
counterbias slow 75% (mitigated) ---------> proc a 1733 heal per tic for the MT.
overtime heal lv 83 halcyon zephir -------> 1733 per tic heal .
listlessness ----------------------------------> 661 per tic heal proc .

that s 4127 hp per tic all time on pet (since the proc rate is high )............

just a small correction: listlessness hot procc and counterbias hot recourse are on same slot and don"t stack. when counterbias hot is running, no listlessness hot works.
On the other hand, the counterbias hot tics for some more than you would presume looking at the data from the spellparsers.

[bobipet]

forgot to add wild growth also, who add :
5200 hp for the rk 2
5600 hp for the rk 3
that buff is more hp than galantry.
well for the listlesness and counterbias , i will have to check it out.
someone told me it stacked but i didn't try it myself.i will go kill some mobs and see if they stack or not.
should not take long to see since the proc rate is high..