Ideal Foursome

[hcats]

Hi all, myself and three friends are gonna be returning to EQ after a very long hiatus. We were wondering if anyone might have some insight to what would be the best group of class/race combos for four people who are basically only looking to play together (i.e. only grouping together, not really raiding). Thanks :-)

[thufir]

Tank - warrior, paladin, shadowknight. If you are not planning to raid the knight classes are better tanks than the warrior because they have better snap aggro. My personal preference is SK, but roll an ogre or troll if you choose SK, and do yourself a favor.
Healer - cleric, shaman. Cleric is great for CH and rez. Shaman is a super-powered catch-all with the ability to do anything.
CC - bard, enchanter. I have been grouping a lot with a bard lately and love it. You might too. But you need one or the other to do anything you want reliably. Enchanter is more traditional. Bard requires a lot of work, but is very rewarding.
DPS/catch-all - shaman, rogue, monk. Shamans are really ridiculous. I include them here because you will be sad without one in the later game. Between their massive slows, buffs, debuffs, dots, and backup healing they are awesome. But rogues have the best DPS in the game, and monks are great DPS with pulling power too.

If I had to pick myself I would go shadowknight, cleric, shaman, enchanter. DPS classes are prevalent, so if you feel you need a 5th, you can grab a pug monk or rogue pretty easily. Remember that EQ is a game that requires people to select specific roles if you really want to explore things.

[PaulSkull]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Lizards:

Iksar Monk-Melee DPS, back up tank
Iksar Necro-Ranged DPS, back up heals
Iksar Shammy-Slow, Heals, Buffs
Iksar SK-Tank, back up badass, but also the main badass, because, so badass.

Enjoy!

[Kaleb]

3 magicians and a shaman.

[Morlaeth]

SK, Shaman, Enchanter, Cleric.

The Enchanter can charm a pet for more dps. Go Iksar Shadowknight, dat greenmist.

Evil Erudite Cleric for the win also.

[khanable]

me, girl, girl, girl

[ECDubz]

My friends and I run monk, shaman, cleric, enchanter, paladin, rogue. Decide which of those classes yall want to play because that's the best group in the game in my eyes and it has run beautifully.

[azeth]

me, girl, girl, girl

http://i.imgur.com/9Cdl2an.png

[Pyrion]

Enchanter x 3 and a cleric.

[Swish]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Lizards:

Iksar Monk-Melee DPS, back up tank
Iksar Necro-Ranged DPS, back up heals
Iksar Shammy-Slow, Heals, Buffs
Iksar SK-Tank, back up badass, but also the main badass, because, so badass.

Enjoy!

God damn that's a dream team.

Also I wanted to say if you've got 4+ in a regular group you can afford to let someone be a ranger or something :o

[nyclin]

With 4 people you can pick a ton of different combos that will work really well. You just need to decide on a play style, and figure out what your goals are.

If you want to 4-man difficult content, WAR/CLR/ENC/ROG is the way to go. You get the trinity + big DPS and you have defensive to handle hard-hitters that can't be slowed.

WAR/PAL/SHD CLR ROG ENC -- Warrior if you want defensive, PAL/SHD otherwise
MNK SHM ROG ENC -- Powerhouse duo gets 2 friends
DRU ENC ENC NEC/MAG/ENC/BRD -- Pet group supreme, can replace DRU with SHM or CLR depending on preference.

[JboxCSU]

Enchanter x 3 and a cleric.

[Nibblewitz]

4 spots - plenty of room for a porter.

[dafier]

3 magicians and a shaman.

I will NEVER forget the DL groups I formed around KC.

Mages and Necros. We stood in the middle of the field and were surrounded by mobs and pets. It was complete chaos and great experience!!! WOOO! Not all the groups were formed by me, but those groups were so fun.

Idea 4 some, IMO:

Warrior
Cleric
Monk
Enchanter

[maskedmelon]

Shm/mnk/enc/rog
Shm/mnk/rng/rog
Shm/mnk/pal/rog

[Colgate]

cleric, enchanter, shaman, monk

probably the safest and most powerful dungeon crawling group combo

[Pyrocat]

^^^^

but I like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Lizard proposal as well, Iksar SK/Shm/Nec/Monk

[arsenalpow]

Warrior, cleric, chanter, monk

Best tank (defensive/evasive), best heals (CH and rezzes), best buffs/CC (clarity, haste, slows) best puller (FD is unfair) - shamans are fine too but there's a lot of overlap with the chanter. This foursome will scale well all the way to 60 and be able defeat very challenging content.

[fadetree]

chanter, cleric, druid, ranger.

Most fun.

[Grombar]

SK, cleric, ench, rogue/monk/mage/warrior
pally, sham, necro, druid/ranger/bard
necro, ench, mage, mage/necro/ench/wizard/cleric

1st 2 set ups are more traditional with buffs, slowes, heals, snares, pullers
3rd set up is fear kite/ pet kite, nuke em dead type

Good luck

[Colgate]

Warrior, cleric, chanter, monk

Best tank (defensive/evasive), best heals (CH and rezzes), best buffs/CC (clarity, haste, slows) best puller (FD is unfair) - shamans are fine too but there's a lot of overlap with the chanter. This foursome will scale well all the way to 60 and be able defeat very challenging content.

warrior is dead weight seeing as there are hardly any NPCs you will need to use defensive discipline on as a 4 man group, and monks are flat out better tanks than warriors on mobs that don't hit for 900+ on this server

shamans allow an enchanter to charm with much more safety, provide huge buffs for the monk, and take stress off of the cleric in regards to healing; group is safer and kills things much faster with more efficiency

[Baler]

shaman, necro, rogue, cleric for outdoor. Necro fears with rogue pet, rogue add's big dps, cleric heals if shit goes wrong, shaman buffs.
shaman, monk, rogue, cleric for indoor. Monk pulls, rogue adds dps, cleric heals, shaman buffs.

This is Really quick off the top of my head,. rogue could be replaced with a mage.

[Badplayer01]

Clr/Ench/Wiz/Wiz - AE FTW

[khanable]

warrior is dead weight seeing as there are hardly any NPCs you will need to use defensive discipline on as a 4 man group, and monks are flat out better tanks than warriors on mobs that don't hit for 900+ on this server

shamans allow an enchanter to charm with much more safety, provide huge buffs for the monk, and take stress off of the cleric in regards to healing; group is safer and kills things much faster with more efficiency

sadly, true

<furor monk rage here>

[Raev]

1. You need an Enchanter. The best leveling class and it's not close. Best buffs, best CC, best DPS.

2. You need a Monk. Because your enchanter can't charm well if you are also pulling in 5 mobs every time. Plus great dps.

3. You need a healer, either a Shaman or a Cleric. I lean towards cleric (stun on the charmed pet, best HP buffs, rez, best heals) but Shaman are superb as well (great stat buffs, malo on the charmed pet, slow is disgustingly good). Druid is possible but unfortunately, clearly worse than the other two.

MNK/ENC/CLR and MNK/ENC/SHM are the two best trios in the game, and its not all that close. Since these are both completely solid groups, you can pick pretty much any class as the fourth wheel. Really the only classes that wouldn't work are Wizard (just terrible for XP, period) or double Clerics.

[jarshale]

monk ench sham cleric

[Glacier.Frost]

Enchanter, Enchanter, Shaman, Cleric.

Don't bother with Tanks or DPS classes. Enchanter covers that. Shaman covers slows and spot heals. Cleric can't be touched as a healer or rezzer.

Come up charm grouping and enjoy.

[Swish]

Tank, healer, CC, dps

You pick.

[Vexenu]

A lot of good suggestions so far, but I'll come at this from another angle. OP says his friends are returning to EQ after a long hiatus and aren't interested in raiding. This leads me to believe they are starting fresh on the server and thus will be untwinked. It's also decently likely that at least one of the four players will lose interest along the way, which could reduce this foursome to a trio or even down to a duo. With these assumptions in mind, I would recommend he consider this foursome:

1) Enchanter
2) Shaman
3) Magician
4) Druid

An absolute min/max overpowered foursome? Certainly not. But what you do have here are four very strong solo classes that can also group together well, and who could also still form a viable trio if any single member dropped out along the way. Each of these classes are also good choices for a first character since they can all farm plat fairly well. Hunting in the right areas will give you two charmed pets that will be perma snared, tashed and maloed and who can thus also be kept hasted. Add in the Mage pet, Shaman pet and Druid and Mage nukes (with clarity) and you will be absolutely burning through mobs. You can make your way into the 50s with this foursome extremely quickly, at which point everyone will have a main who is also a viable farming character to gear up other alts (which, trust me, you will want to do if raiding is not your focus).

[Izmael]

Enc, sham, monk/rog, sk/pal
Clerics overrated when you have two slowers and CC

[Colgate]

cleric is a must for when that hasted quadding charm pet breaks

cleric buffs are also the best buffs for a monk

[PaulSkull]

I would like to hear back from OP and see what they chose

[Thomas Paine]

He saw through curtains of white satin.

[PaulSkull]

He saw through curtains of white satin.

I love the Andariel

[Beastagoog]

Dru
Chanter
Monk
Shaman

Optional out of standard group.

Dru - ports/evacs/heals/ds/snares chanters charm pet/dot dps when not healing (remember at 60 they also get a 900 point heal)

Shaman - buffs/slows/heals/dots/pet

Chanter - mind buffs/cc/charm pet/haste for monk

Monk - op puller/tank/mitigation(monks mitigate huge dmg)/dps

[Beastagoog]

Also aslong as you have a healer+tankish+cc class, group make up doesnt really matter for the majority of EQ zones.

It's only for high end zones that group make up becomes detrimental to success.

I.e seb, velks, the hole, chardok etc.

Leveling 1-55 you could do it with a druid healer if you wanted; but post 55 your group will start to faltered as you need a better suited healer (cleric or torpor shaman).

[Beastagoog]

Also the 4 classes I listed can all solo camp for when your pals arent on and you wanna do something =).

[Fanguru]

I would go:
- Enc, charmed pet is all the dps you will ever need
- Clr, heals, hp buff and you will need rezzes at some point. CH charmed pet is a must.
- Druid, backup heals, ports and overall utility

As 4th, I can see 2 options:
- SK/Pal, snap aggro, root. You have an actual player tank.
Or:
- Mage/necro, so clerics can heal just pets, and it's no big deal if they die. Necro would also add CC, ghetto heals


All of these are cheap to gear up and versatile.

[Naxi]

Dwarf Paladin, Erudite Paladin, Human Paladin, and another Dwarf Paladin. It will always be a fun knight when you guys plays together. Bash and stun your way to level 60!

[Zehrikrom]

Warrior/paladin/SK/ranger for the tank, perhaps monk. Go ranger if you're a cool hipster.
Wizard/magician/necromancer/enchanter for the caster, enc seems more useful in a 4-man group because pets and CC are amazing. Can't go wrong with any pet class though.
Cleric/Druid/shaman for heals or whatever.
The last spot could be pretty much anything. Ranger/rogue/monk if you're lacking wiz/mag/nec, druid/shaman if you don't have one already, bard if you like to fight with musical accompaniment.

[wizrad]

Wizard.

Four wizards.

Hexadecakiting.

[zati]

forget ideal, go for imaginative and fun

SK /Paladin / Bard / Ranger <-- I always wanted to try this n forget purecasters

SK- main tank, puller
Pal - secondary tank, heals
Brd - CC, regen, slows, mez
Ranger - DPS, heals, root/snare cc, atk buffs

Basically the SK would tank first and FD when dangerously low.
The bard/ranger should both be on CC using snares/root/mez/charm/slow
With hp/mana song the pally,ranger, lifetap heals should be enough for the tank



or

ranger /ranger /ranger /ranger lawl

[hcats]

Thanks for all the feedback guys. Since someone mentioned they were curious we decided on the following:

Dark Elf Enchanter
Gnome Rogue
Troll SK
Troll Shaman

[Izmael]

Another fun 4 some would be Necro / Necro / Necro / Necro and stick to undead places.

[Pyrion]

4x ranger might actually be very nice. 1 ranger snares and flame licks all the time while running away, and the other 3 just hit from behind. For each pull the lead ranger changes so that everybody has a chance to regain mana.

I can see such a group fly thru the levels :)

[SNIPERS]

4 mages has always been fun.

[Phantasm]

My go to foursome:

Monk - pulls/dps/tank (iksar of course)
Shaman - dps/slows/buffs/side heals/everything? (iksar, naturally)
Cleric - enough said, cleric gone cleric (can't be be an iksar, womp)
Enchanter - insane dps/cc/dps/dps/buffs/dps (can turn into a half iksar, acceptable)

this foursome allows you to take on almost any camp in the game, pull any camp safely, engage almost any mob with minimal "oh shit" moments

the enchanter/shaman combo allows for some redundancy for any inevitable misfortunes, cleric can provide resses and monks are all around badasses. The only downside is that not all of these classes can be iksar

[Issar]

Paladin, Shaman, Enchanter, Rogue

[Qtip]

Monk, rogue, cleric and enchanter.

[Sage Truthbearer]

Gnome Mage x4

[Morningbreath]

If I had a group of 4 to level with I would always, ALWAYS rather have a druid over a shaman.

Why? Because I'd want to do dungeons and the grind of getting a melee extracted out of a lot of dungeons would be totally mitigated by a druid. By the time a shaman gets their uber slow you could have fearkited all the way to 39 with zero downtime. And you'd always have a free port back to WC when it was time to pack it in every day.

Druid(sow ports snare heal), Enchanter(charm haste fear CC slow), Paladin(invis undead, tank, puller, lull), Necromancer(endless DPS ...and just about everything else).

[James_Joyce]

if i can pull them from any age they have been previously, young britney spears (just 2 cross off the list), young Hillary Clinton, and current Bernie there with his mouth wide open for the dribble drobbles ya dig?

[Tetrian]

Iksar monk
Ogre warrior
Enchanter
Cleric

You now have the holy trinity - with DPS and pulls.. meaning you can do pretty much anything in EQ.

Alternative solution. Switch out the monk with a druid - gives you evacs / transport(!!) and more durability from the offhealer - in turn loosing the puller/dps.

[Izmael]

Why putting in a warrior instead of a knight? It's not like you're going to need defensive disc against anything you're going to attempt with this team.

Paly has heals, LoH, root CC, snap aggro, lull
SK has FD pulls, snap aggro, snares, fear

War has nothing of it.

[Cochonou]

mnk, rogue, enc, shm

[Zehrikrom]

Pick what's fun to play. Having a superefficient able-to-kill-vox-at-level-30 group is pointless if you're all bored. Assuming none of you know what you want to play and will be okay with any class, though...

1. Paladin. You get buffs and little heals, and can tank decently.
2. Shaman. Better than cleric in this scenario because you have non-paladin buffs, and better than Druid because you can go into a dungeon and still be maximum useful.
3. Wizard. Ports are awesome, sick burst is awesome, kickass face-melting nukes are all-around dandy.
4. Ranger. You get a bigger choice of weapons than rogues. you're sacrificing 0.2% of the damage a rogue or monk would have gotten you, but you have (shitty) heals and snare.

[Keela]

As many have said, having fun is the most important part over a bit more efficiency. But if everyones pretty open and just looking for most efficient then for over all useage I'd say:

Paly: Solid tanking and oh shit heals. Oh shit heals are great for unexpected problems since shm/clr have cast times this gives a more instant saving.

Shm: Between solid slows and pretty good heals, I feel that unless you're doing raid content or have a chanter(another slot) the shm out performs the clr over all. Once something is slowed and debuffed, you don't need chain CH or anything like that. Also, good buffs and pet for minor dps increase.

Rogue or Wiz: I'm partial to rogues... personal favorite but also best dps, pick pocket is always fun, and corpse drags are easier cause shit will happen. Wizzy still very respectable dmg, less utility via corpse drags BUT you have ports and evac.

Bard: I suggest a bard rather than an ench just cause a bit more utility... regen song, mana song, pulling, super selos, mediocre dmg, and pretty good buff song for melee dmg if you go with rogue.

Alternative - Ench if you take wiz over rogue: If you take a wiz instead of rogue, ench is good as helps with CC for extra pulls, charm dmg if you're brave,clarity for wiz/shm etc.

[Izmael]

There's no way I would put a wiz in a 4-some like this, the class is just too linear and really only does two things - burn a mob fast (and med for 10 minutes afterwards) and evac.

A rogue does more damage in the long run, can CR, can be a ghetto tank if main tank dies, can sneak pull, can scout pretty much anywhere...

[eqravenprince]

I start any traditional group off with a Monk. You will want a healer, the most versatile would be Shaman. Enchanter and Bard to round out the group. So you will have the best mana regen, haste, slows, cc and fast run speed. What is missing? Tank, but you don't really need a tank with the best slows and that much CC power. No port class, but ports are super easy to get. No rez class, if you don't die, then this will not be missed.

For non traditional group, I would pick 4 magicians.

[Troubled]

me, girl, girl, girl