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I've decided to run two accounts; two characters and two mercs.

I'm going to use the Bard as a music box and pull/tank with the SK that I am leveling now. My mercs will be rogue and cleric. Those two types of mercs seem to do a reasonable job. The cleric needs its cast list curated though.

I should be able to do most of what I care about with this group.

I went ahead and dropped the 4th and am going with 3 and 3 mercs. Will that be an issue when going for the epic 2.0s? Can you do them at the appropriate level? I think I read that the raids after PoTime don't allow Mercs.

Tuco said:

I've tried basically three types of groups:

1. Plate tank with melee
2. Plate tank with caster DPS
3. Pet group


#1 and #2 are both great, I've been using #1 for the last few expansion (shd/brd/shm/bst/rog/mnk), before that I was shd/brd/shm/mag/mag/mag. Next expansion I but am going to transition to pal/enc/dru/mag/wiz/wiz this year because caster DPS got buffed.

#3 is a bit unwieldy, plate tanks are just too good at holding aggro in tough situations compared to pets that can let a mob through and eat the mage. Plate tanks are also very strong DPS for the last decade, so it's not like replacing them with a DPS class is a huge benefit.

Slow is significant, but not as much as it used to be.

Attack buffs are extremely significant. The entire game is built around buffs and synergy.

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Thanks for this. Was the caster DPS buff you refer to just something at the 120+ level? Or is this retroactive in some way (similar to the dot revamps)?

Ok, so my brother and I are DUOing (with mercs) on the Mischief server again. Not looking to do raids or anything for a very, very long time. Our intentions are to just slowly play the game casually. Obviously with a shit ton of content between us and current end game, we're in no hurry at all. Think of it as two old farts strolling down nostalgia lane with no goal in sight.

That all said, I am curious if anybody has suggestions on things to hit up along our journey. Obviously will be doing epics. What else is worth experiencing?

We will be doing personas of course, but our mains right now are Shaman and Druid with a Tank Merc and Healer Merc (for now.. will trade out the healer merc for DPS eventually, but right now the Tank/Healer merc pretty much make the whole level 1 to 60 experience feel like autopilot).

I am the shaman and my brother i the druid. At some point much, much later on, one of us will likely have to switch to an actual tank persona, but for now, we're enjoying letting the tank merc do the job.

Oh also... fucking love the auto-granted spells right now. That changes the low level game so much.

Tuco said:

I've tried basically three types of groups:

1. Plate tank with melee
2. Plate tank with caster DPS
3. Pet group


#1 and #2 are both great, I've been using #1 for the last few expansion (shd/brd/shm/bst/rog/mnk), before that I was shd/brd/shm/mag/mag/mag. Next expansion I but am going to transition to pal/enc/dru/mag/wiz/wiz this year because caster DPS got buffed.

#3 is a bit unwieldy, plate tanks are just too good at holding aggro in tough situations compared to pets that can let a mob through and eat the mage. Plate tanks are also very strong DPS for the last decade, so it's not like replacing them with a DPS class is a huge benefit.

Slow is significant, but not as much as it used to be.

Attack buffs are extremely significant. The entire game is built around buffs and synergy.

Click to expand...

I've been doing SK/SHM/BRD/MAG and was thinking of adding 2 more to try out. Would you recommend 2 more MAG or 1 of them a WIZ? Note - I'm not very good at boxing.

Rabkorik said:

I've been doing SK/SHM/BRD/MAG and was thinking of adding 2 more to try out. Would you recommend 2 more MAG or 1 of them a WIZ? Note - I'm not very good at boxing.

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People keep telling me boxing casters is hard, seems easier for me, easy to setup a bunch of macros. Thinking of even getting grok off the bench to write me some macros. Melee you gotta position them yeah? So harder?

Yeah I wasn't even considering melee with my boxing ability yet. I'm just wondering if the WIZ provides enough boost to merit over another mage. I won't be doing any end game raiding just want to go through all of the content I can after PoP.

Rabkorik said:

Yeah I wasn't even considering melee with my boxing ability yet. I'm just wondering if the WIZ provides enough boost to merit over another mage. I won't be doing any end game raiding just want to go through all of the content I can after PoP.

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What ive read at some named/content melee sustain is king, and your group seems primed for a monk and another melee with the bard and Shaman. At least from my current testing and im still late 30s and early 40s, wiz, mage, druid, cleric and enc throw one spell each per mob, and on nameds its maybe 2 spells. Very fast kills. Probably will change alot as I get up in levels, but im thinking of dropping the druid for a bard as well.