Which pet does best DPS and which pet is the pest tank?

[WildcardX]

Greetings. I have 3 eq accounts now and in the past I use to 2 box with my 65 ranger, my 65 enchanter and then a good friend of mine was a level 60 druid. We did a lot of good teaming with this combo, but we never won any LDONs, because we just didn't have enough DPS.

Now my druid friend is gone from EQ which is why I purchased a 3rd eq account. I was just going to make a druid and continue on, but I really want to make a 3 box team for the sole purpose of winning LDON and then any other instanced zones, but my goal is primarily LDON.

On the same account as my enchanter I do have a 55 shammy that I could use instead of my enchanter so I could have slows, haste, dots, heals and a better pet then my enchanters summoned pet. So then my line up would be a ranger + shammy and then I find myself wondering how successful I would be with adding a pet class as my third choice, like a beastlord or a mage in particular. The idea being I could maybe use the pet to tank for a short time assuming the DPS is good enough to keep the fight short. How do the beastlord versus mage pets compare? Is one better for DPS and another best for tanking?

[Dreead]

Mage earth pet would be best for tanking, mage water? pet would be best for dps. I'm not for sure on the most dps pet for mages but it out dps's beast pet.

Beast lord pet would be the better all around pet vrs mage. Their earth pet has a TON of hit points, and their water? or air pet back stabs which can put out some nice dps.

[bham]

My main is a beastlord and I box a mage. I would have to say that mage pets are superior to beastlord warders in all ways. Any mage pet of the same level/focus will out-tank a beastlord warder. Mage pet DPS is also superior.

Of the mage pets, I highly recommend air pet for tanking and water pet for best DPS (if attacking from the rear.)

Necro pets are inferior to both mage pets and beastlord warders in tankability and similar to warders in DPS. (except the backstabbing level 70 spectre who does pretty good DPS)

If you want to win LDONs Im not sure what you should do. Many 3-box combos can win LDoNs, but Im not sure if I would take either a ranger or an enchanter, so my advice depends on what toons you want to keep and what toons you are willing to let go.

Tell me what toons you really want to keep, if any, and Ill suggest what to add to make it work.

[Thaeliun]

I 2 box a mage/bst sometimes.  They are my favorite 2 box team but a good portion of the time I have to bring in my druid instead of the mage to get the job done.  It all depends on the situation of course.  Since the druid is 66 and the mage is 59 it's not a fair comparison.  Ease of travel is often a factor too since the beast can't gate I like having that druid there when it's time to go home.

Anyway, I've found that the mage can do impressive damage, (especially when he's hiding behind my beast) but when I leave the beast home the kill rate slows down a lot.  For instance, recently I've been grouping my mage with my wife's 40 cleric in CoM a lot because she isn't big enough to group with the bst yet.  The kill rate is about half of what it was when I brought my 59 beast there to PL someone.  The cleric is better suited to this then many of the toons my beast PL'd when he was 59 so that's not a factor at all.  Of course one thing that does factor in is pulling ability.  I guess the bst is better suited to pulling because he doesn't need to med to maintain a nice level of sustained DPS.  The mage is much more limited by his reduced ability to nuke when he's the one pulling.  This wouldn't be the case for your LDoN group most of the time.

The beast would be more useful to that 3 box then a mage IMHO.  The mage pet out-tanking a warder is offset by the beast's better ability to heal, and help the pet tank when needed.  Add in paragon, player heals, SD and I think the beast helps keep the flow going faster overall in an LDoN situation.

Though I love my mage, I would switch out the enchanter for the shaman and add in a beast. 

[WildcardX]

Bham,

I guess I am willing to leave my enchanter out of my 3 box ldon team and go with a shammy. I do love my enchanter and I have had him forever and he is easy for me to mult-box because having played an enchanter for so long, it is like instinct for me. I love his crowd control abilities, his crack and haste as well and his slow is the second best in the game, but his DPS is probbaly the worst in the game of all the classes and thats a liability in a 3 box team doing ldon. I did start leveling my mage yesturday and hes now level 20 so thats going good.

So i guess my team will be: Ranger, Mage, Shaman. I figure until my ranger gets EQ and AM3, he can tank in ldon and use the mage's back-stabbing pet.

I have to admit, I am intriqued by your team and it has got me thinking. Although I hate to spend any more time leveling new toons, I am tempted to change my team radically to this: Beastlord, Druid, Mage.

Of course, I can use my own enchanter to buff 2 of my 3 toons, but the 3rd toon will have to get his crack from some other chanter in PoK. With the team I have now, that would have to be my shaman, and if I decide to go with the second team idea, then I  am thinking it would be best to leave the druid dependant upon someone else for crack since the druid can simply port to PoK, get crack, then port back to the ldon camp pretty easily.

[bham]

Druid, beast, mage is a very powerful, flexible and fast killing combo, but you lose some toughness with no plate tank or cleric healer. It should be very good for LDoN tho.

Shammy, Ranger and mage would also work for LDoN I think, but the shammy will struggle to keep up with the healing in higher zones like WoS, MPG and such -  unless your ranger is extremely well geared.

[Ueauvan]

in ldons a ranger can lock aggro as the tank, they can ds themselves with long term self shield
a sub 9k ranger unbuffed can tank mpg and rss with a cleric but not with a shm

[neko]

hi hi,

I tried to do a beastie/mage/druid ldon team.  The biggest problem i had was pulling.  With out any kindof pac or cc, and when all 5 mobs came out of the room, my poor little druid could not keep up with the heals.  If I was killing singles, the dps was amazing... adds flustered me.  When i added the cleric for pac, things went much better :)

[bham]

Yeah, beast / mage / cleric works good for me too. Did you try pet pulling?

[neko]

I tried the pet pulling thing, but it did not work very often.  Someone told me i had to be out of los, i think that was what i was doing wrong /shug...

I've been in WoW for the past few months, hunters are everything i thought my beastie should have been...  I kindof want to start up my eq team again with a beastie, ranger and a cleric... maybe add in a mage too :)

[rcw3]

I've been following many of these threads with great interest.  I'm coming back to EQ and was going to start fresh.  I was planning on three boxing - primarily to get up to the higher levels (60's) and get geared before joining a guild with some old friends of mine.  I've played most of the classes over the years, and 3-boxed some into the 50's, but never felt like I had a very good combination.   I have 3 accounts (well, 4 actually - including my wife's account I could reactivate).  I also should add, I generally like multi-boxing due to the challenge and diversity, and pretty much have never "not" enjoyed a class.  Well, actually, I didn't like playing a Bard :).

The use of pet classes intrigues me.  My original thoughts were along the traditonal lines of Warrior (tank), Cleric (healer) and either a Wizard or Mage for DPS.  I thought with the base Warrior/Cleric I would be pretty versatile, but was a little concerned that I might not have the DPS to handle LDONs or other content in a fairly efficient manner.

Switching out a Ranger for the Warrior was one thought to boost DPS (as the expense of tanking).  The thought of replacing the warrior with a BST never really crossed my mine.  I also noticed Bham 4-boxing by taking both the Wiz and Mage.  The cleric and wizard (and mage I would imagine) are fairly low maintenance - so I might not be averse to doing 4.  If doing 4 though, would Clr/War/Wiz/Mage be a better 4-box?   

The comments on this board have been very intelligent and well-written.  I really would appreciate your thoughts!

Thanks!
Rich

[bham]

Cleric, war, wiz, mage lacks a slower, which is very important at higher levels even when everything mitigates.

If you are set on a beastlord, then you build you team around it. Bear in mind that boxing 2 melees is a pain in the ass, especially with 1 or more pets pushing..

If you arent determined to play a beast, I recommend the trinity. Warrior, chanter, cleric. With either a wizard or druid for snare and ports and DPS.

Remember that DPS is always /lfg. Tanks, healers and slowers arent...

If you can competently 3-box the trinity, you wont even have to check the /lfg list for DPS when you log on. You will be getting tells from DPS classes who have grouped with you before.

[rcw3]

The trinity has crossed my mind.  My very first EQ character was an Enchanter.  I'm a bit terrified at the thought of boxing any number of characters with an Enchanter  :-)

I would imagine the enchanter would become the primary focus of attention -- with the cleric, warrior and wizard being very single purposed classes anyway - this might be doable.  As you said, if I wanted to stay with a 3-box, I can add the dps from the lfg community.

The Bst/Clr/Mag/Wiz 4-box sounds  a bit more manageable and quite powerful.  I've been reading some of your stories of your BST tanking with a bit of awe.  A "pseudo" tank with DPS makes the boxing experience quite efficient.  If you were to do a 3-box with a Bst/Clr, would you choose the Wiz, Mag, or something else - say a Druid?   

I'm not really set on a Beastlord, but I do admire it's flexibility. 

[bham]

Prior to the new beast slow with the resist mod I would have said mage for sure, for Mala, DPS and CoH.

Now I think either a mage, necro, druid or wizard could all be used, depending on taste.

[Thaeliun]

To rcw3,

I think you should strongly consider keeping a mage and bst both in your multi-box.  There is so much versatility there, it's a hard combo to beat.  For your healer it's personal preference whether you go druid or cleric.  Early on the druid is a frustrating healer to play but a mage/bst combo isn't really dependent on a healer anyway.  During the 30-50 stage the druid is handy enough to make up for the lack of decent healing.  When fighting mobs with a lot of HPs a druid can out DPS a bst and still manage heals pretty effectively much of the time.

Of course I am somewhat biased because I have spent so much time with a druid along in my 2 box.  The mage/bst combo is more fun for me but the utility of the druid causes my mage to stay home a lot.  My 3 box of choice would therefore be mage/bst/druid.  As my wife's cleric comes into her own I may change my mind a bit on that but I doubt it.  If you want to play that 4 box you talked about, adding a wizard would work well but I think I would prefer a second mage along for the ride.  Mostly because I really enjoy pet groups.  I also like not being dependant on KEI for sustained DPS.