comparison of 2 3-boxes

[jabby]

ive been working on 2 three box teams

1) BST - CLR - MGE   - currently all lvl 56

This team has been doing pretty good so far just grinding in Droga, have had three deaths each on the beastie and mage due to runners. Cleric has snare necklace which works very well except when it wears out, is resisted or dont have time to cast it due to healing. Buffs are simple and long lasting. This team has eye of zomm+pacify for pulling which is nice. The beastie (using almost the same gear as SK, lots of all/all lvl 1 twink stuff) need much more healing than the SK so far, of course he only has a 30% slow vs a 75% for the sk, + druid attack debuffs. The cleric heals are awesome of course, the mage nukes at this point are just ok but its nice to have the extra pet + malo + DS. Im gonna try them at lvl 59-60 against a named snake in SSRA that the other team killed a couple times.

2) SK - SHM - DRU    - currently all lvl 60

Got the sk team all to lvl 60, was crawling SSRA at lvl 59 and took out a named yellow snake that hit for 800ish, unslowable - the druid+sk stacking attack debuffs made a big diff. The crawl itself was a bit tedious tho, as i had no eye of zomm for scouting, and no pacify for pulling, had to FD split a few spawns. Also, rebuffing is a bit of a pain but this team has proved to be pretty dam tight - they have not had one single death yet. With the two healers + 75% slow + malo + attack debuffs + plate tank + evac, its been fun but busy. Got the lvl 55 heal aura on the druid, is pretty nice.

At this point I think im liking the SK team best but will see.
ok, will update later once i get the beastie team to lvl 59-60.

[Helspawn]

I personally hate boxing.  I like to pay full attention to my beast since in our team I'm always the MT.  Unless we are missing my cleric account, then it's a pet thing depending on mobs.  We normally have my 80 Beast which is me, 80 Mage, and 75 Cleric which my wife's boxes.  Once you get to higher content your sk shm dru team dps will fall short and slow you down.  Mages just get more and more powerfull as they level.  We of course, as beasts, do pretty decent dps.  I could out dps my wife's Mage any day of the week till SoF.  Her dps soared with the new pets, AA, and spells while I have gotten much better I'm still only doing about 1200dps on regular mobs and about 1600dps on raids.  Yeah I know my dps sux but my guild is not a raid guild we are a family/raid guild so my weapon options are small and hard to come by.  Keep working on both your combos.  I was out dps'd a couple times by a SK but they used all thier HT AA's on the mob and had nothing left after till they refreshed.

[Khauruk]

For max potential - SK, SHM, MAG, or keep cleric and toss mage.  Shammies can do some respectable dps when allowed to.

Either are great until about lvl70.  After that, the beastlord will be falling short a lot due to tankability.

That's max/min crap though...glad you're having fun.  Wish I had a second comp/wasn't on dialup here so I could toss in a third account w/ my duo.  I just wish I could decide even what to add if/when that day comes lol.

[jabby]

about the beastie falling short in tanking at higher levels, i was planning on doing more of the back off, let mage pet and warder tank some thing if a mob is tearing me up.

for those of you with a beastie+mage at lvl 70+, does this strategy still work at those levels?

I really want my team to be able to take out the most difficult mobs possible. I also considered SK,SHM,CLR but I thnk druid makes a better fit, with all the utility, can nuke/dot on lower content, and has 180 points of -(200) resist attack debuffs and good direct heals for tough mobs (and reptile if anyone uses that, but it stacks with HoT, etc)

[Skraach]

76 mage pet can certainly tank, especially with cleric heals and bst slows.  It's a complete beast, if you'll pardon the pun.  Once slowed, anything that doesn't enrage can be tanked by your pets  and good healing.  Admittedly, that's a slow way to fight, but you're not advocating doing so the whole time.  Just be sure to jump in on mobs that enrage, and turn the mob so it doesnt eat the pets.  I run a 74 bst and 76 mage, and I'm usually grouped with a now 76 cleric, and we ran a tbs mission where my mage pet was tanking a level 73 mob and taking ZERO damage even without slow.  The jump between the previous pet and the newest pet is enormous (over 100pt increase in max hit), so much so that if it's grind more aa at 75, or level the mage to 76, you need to level the mage.

[Khauruk]

about the beastie falling short in tanking at higher levels, i was planning on doing more of the back off, let mage pet and warder tank some thing if a mob is tearing me up.

I really want my team to be able to take out the most difficult mobs possible. I also considered SK,SHM,CLR but I thnk druid makes a better fit, with all the utility, can nuke/dot on lower content, and has 180 points of -(200) resist attack debuffs and good direct heals for tough mobs (and reptile if anyone uses that, but it stacks with HoT, etc)

To do the toughest content requires either scads of healing to make up for low dps, or scads of dps to make up for low healing.

If mage pet is tanking, the beastlord will be contributing very little dps.  If that's your plan, I would go with MAG - CLR - SHM, or MAG - SHM - WIZ.

Same for SK - if you're not able to overgear the SK, you need to make sure fights will be very fast (i.e. add a wizard), or you will have amazing endurance to counter lots of dps taken.

SK with druid:  Druid will only need resist debuffs for it's own nukes.  Heals are very poor compared to cleric, and dps gets to near pathetic amounts at higher levels.  Anything past PoP spells, druids start to seriously fall behind imo.  Dmg shield dps is miniscule, the fernspur line is hugely mana-inefficient.  Magic dots require lots of time to be mana efficient, and the shorter dots are nowhere near as mana-efficient (Vengeance of the sun line).

The druid will, imo, realistically bring:  Ports, atk debuffs, some healing, slight dps, lulls in some zones.  You won't be able to get all of these from one single other source, but I don't think they all add up to a complete package.

Don't get me wrong, I like druids (and play one).  But, druids are one of the classes most in need of a *SERIOUS* overhaul right now.  Come to think of it, I'd say only BSTs and SKs (and arguably bards) come anywhere near what druids need as far as dev. attention.  And druids need at least twice as much help.