Best 4 person all caster/priest group

[fortior]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

They are the second best solo class. I don't think anyone said they were the best, other than random strawman arguments.

Nah, they’re behind druids, necros, enchanters, and bards.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by fortior [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Nah, they’re behind druids, necros, enchanters, and bards.

Not at all.

Necros and Druids are limited by the type of mob they can charm. There are less zones they can operate efficiently in because of this. Bards are great for clearing trash, not so much named mobs.

Enchanters are the best solo class because they can do more content in more zones than any other class. Shamans are second best in that regard. They can do a lot of content in a lot of zones solo, without a specific restriction other than slow immunity. Luckily this is fairly rare in soloable mobs.

If you are referring to solo speed while leveling, I agree Shamans aren't as fast as Druids, Necros, or Bards. However, leveling speed doesn't really matter if you don't plan on reaching 60. If you are the type of player who levels to 50 and stops, I am not sure what you are rushing for. If you are planning on reaching 60, it is more important to understand what your character is going to do at 60.

[Vivitron]

Originally Posted by 7thGate [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This is actually making me kind of curious about how well Shaman/Ench/Ench/Cleric could handle Puppet show. There's some possible advantages for a Shaman in comp there:

--Shaman gives easy ability to solo Geb, so you can have one member prep multiple puppets for you without having to waste time acquiring a pet to start the cycle. (I think enchanter probably has more trouble just popping on and soloing Geb efficiently?)
--Shaman slow is effectively a 20% damage reduction, which actually matters if your plan is to spawn 3-4 puppets and tank them all concurrently
--Shaman can be pretty tanky with good gear and brings additional buffing. AC matters for this a lot but BIS shaman can probably tank 3 or 4 puppets concurrently with CH cleric backup.
--Summoning means you can't do it with just pets as easily
--Targets have so much HP shaman is efficient DPS with dots and Avatar on pets
EDIT: Malo and Malosini help reduce pet breaks and speed debuffing.

Interesting, do you just have one person kill Geb a few times over a few game days and then call in the rest of the group? Maybe I've been doing puppets wrong by doing one show per game day.

[7thGate]

I usually do puppet show normally too since it's safer and more straight forward, but have done 2 at once before when it's more time efficient. 2 enchanters would be overkill for the DPS need to clear a single spawn, and a cleric is overkill for healing, so I think you would get more from your time if you did multiples in a group of 4. I'm not entirely sure that a strong shaman can tank 3 at once with a cleric backing them, but I think they probably could and would be curious to see how it panned out with that team.

[cd288]

The comment that Shamans are second best solo class comes with a huge asterisk of basically "second best if you spend hours on end getting epic, grinding to buy torpor, and getting geared up in general"

[Crede]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Not at all.

Necros and Druids are limited by the type of mob they can charm. There are less zones they can operate efficiently in because of this. Bards are great for clearing trash, not so much named mobs.

Enchanters are the best solo class because they can do more content in more zones than any other class. Shamans are second best in that regard. They can do a lot of content in a lot of zones solo, without a specific restriction other than slow immunity. Luckily this is fairly rare in soloable mobs.

If you are referring to solo speed while leveling, I agree Shamans aren't as fast as Druids, Necros, or Bards. However, leveling speed doesn't really matter if you don't plan on reaching 60. If you are the type of player who levels to 50 and stops, I am not sure what you are rushing for. If you are planning on reaching 60, it is more important to understand what your character is going to do at 60.

I'm not sure why you think that the solo ranking of a class translates into a 4 man group situation. The only reason you have an overlap in enchanters is because of charmed pet dps. If this wasn't the case, you would not want 2 enchanters in a group. Group dynamics change as the amount of group members change, with the exception of enc/cleric as this translates into all levels of play as these are pretty much the 2 most powerful classes in group content.

Also, Necros are not necessarily dependent on the type of mob they can charm for solo. If you watch some of UnchainedFury's solo videos, they get to a point where they can just face tank stuff spamming lifetap as needed. OP has not specified the level of gear associated with each class, so we have nothing to go on there. They can also fear kite when appropriate as well, and as been revealed in other threads, it's not difficult to throw fear down in dungeons in certain situations. In this composition I'd actually choose them over shaman as they are capable of outputting more dps with their superior dots, pet, and potential charm pet as well, in addition to bringing FD and Harmshield, not to mention emergency rez if needed. Their patch heal is likely sufficient enough to fill in if the cleric is busy as well. And with 2 enchanters, you could easily have 1 or even both of them on slow duty, since maintaining a charmed pet does not cost a lot of mana. A shaman would bring malo, but not having it isn't necessarily the end of the world, as pet kits can offset there and I doubt there's a mob out there that this potential 4 man group would need malo to land a slow on to win. And since you introduced pocket chars, you could easily have a pocket coth mage to drop a malo in if needed, as this class would be extremely easy to PL with enchanter aoe stun if you wanted to level one up.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by Crede [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm not sure why you think that the solo ranking of a class translates into a 4 man group situation. The only reason you have an overlap in enchanters is because of charmed pet dps. If this wasn't the case, you would not want 2 enchanters in a group. Group dynamics change as the amount of group members change, with the exception of enc/cleric as this translates into all levels of play as these are pretty much the 2 most powerful classes in group content.

Also, Necros are not necessarily dependent on the type of mob they can charm for solo. If you watch some of UnchainedFury's solo videos, they get to a point where they can just face tank stuff spamming lifetap as needed. OP has not specified the level of gear associated with each class, so we have nothing to go on there. They can also fear kite when appropriate as well, and as been revealed in other threads, it's not difficult to throw fear down in dungeons in certain situations. In this composition I'd actually choose them over shaman as they are capable of outputting more dps with their superior dots, pet, and potential charm pet as well, in addition to bringing FD and Harmshield, not to mention emergency rez if needed. Their patch heal is likely sufficient enough to fill in if the cleric is busy as well. And with 2 enchanters, you could easily have 1 or even both of them on slow duty, since maintaining a charmed pet does not cost a lot of mana. A shaman would bring malo, but not having it isn't necessarily the end of the world, as pet kits can offset there and I doubt there's a mob out there that this potential 4 man group would need malo to land a slow on to win. And since you introduced pocket chars, you could easily have a pocket coth mage to drop a malo in if needed, as this class would be extremely easy to PL with enchanter aoe stun if you wanted to level one up.

It is not a coincidence that Enchanters are the best solo class, and also happen to be the number one pick for any thread on this kind of topic. If you look at how an Enchanter plays in a group, a group with 2 Enchanters is basically 2 Enchanters soloing together with support classes allowing them to play longer before a med break. An Enchanter really isn't playing differently in a group from how they would solo if they are Charming pets.

Most content 3-4 players can do is still basically content that is soloable by an Enchanter or Shaman. Grouping just allows you to do the harder solo content without using expensive clickies. Unfortunately the next level of content usually needs a full group to do it consistently, with a Warrior for discing. I honestly can't think of a lot of content that specifically needs 3-4 players, and couldn't be done with a duo, or a solo player with all the expensive clickies.

As for a Necromancer, I am not trying to downplay them at all. They are a fantastic class. The main issue they suffer from is their strongest abilities (charm and fear) are limited by mob level (fear) and location (charm). That is why they can't really solo the harder content that a Shaman or Enchanter can do. If there was a Howling Stones equivalent in Velious that dropped really nice items, then that may have been a different story.

[Gloomlord]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The comment that Shamans are second best solo class comes with a huge asterisk of basically "second best if you spend hours on end getting epic, grinding to buy torpor, and getting geared up in general"

With Puppet Strings, in addition to those things you mentioned, they surpass Enchanter.

Noone is denying they're a really good class. We're just denying they're needed in this hypothetical group.

And this fucking idiot can't concede to something even a mediocre player can figure out.

[Crede]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It is not a coincidence that Enchanters are the best solo class, and also happen to be the number one pick for any thread on this kind of topic. If you look at how an Enchanter plays in a group, a group with 2 Enchanters is basically 2 Enchanters soloing together with support classes allowing them to play longer before a med break.

Most content 3-4 players can do is still basically content that is soloable by an Enchanter or Shaman. Grouping just allows you to do the harder solo content without using expensive clickies. Unfortunately the next level of content usually needs a full group to do it consistently. I honestly can't think of a lot of content that specifically needs 3-4 players, and couldn't be done with a duo, or a solo player with all the expensive clickies.

As for a Necromancer, I am not trying to downplay them at all. They are a fantastic class. The main issue they suffer from is their strongest abilities (charm and fear) are limited by mob level (fear) and location (charm). That is why they can't really solo the harder content that a Shaman or Enchanter can do. If there was a Howling Stones equivalent in Velious that dropped really nice items, then that may have been a different story.

Actually, I think it is a coincidence. Because Enchanter charmed pet is such high dps, that they can fill the dps role quite well.

Any other decent solo class you would likely not want to double on. Shamans specifically, you will basically never have 2 in a group. Because the utility gain wouldn't be worth the dps loss. You only need so many slows, heals, roots, etc. It diminishes a lot faster than massive DPS by an enchanter pet.

I would agree though, that OP's question is so hypothetical that it never happens. I don't think I've ever seen 4 casters plowing through content, as enc/cleric can basically kill mostly anything groupable until you need to start bringing in a bigger group with a war or other classes to open up the next tier as you indicated.

[fortior]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Not at all.

Necros and Druids are limited by the type of mob they can charm. There are less zones they can operate efficiently in because of this. Bards are great for clearing trash, not so much named mobs.

Enchanters are the best solo class because they can do more content in more zones than any other class. Shamans are second best in that regard. They can do a lot of content in a lot of zones solo, without a specific restriction other than slow immunity. Luckily this is fairly rare in soloable mobs.

If you are referring to solo speed while leveling, I agree Shamans aren't as fast as Druids, Necros, or Bards. However, leveling speed doesn't really matter if you don't plan on reaching 60. If you are the type of player who levels to 50 and stops, I am not sure what you are rushing for. If you are planning on reaching 60, it is more important to understand what your character is going to do at 60.

Nah. Enchanters are the most versatile soloing class, but Necromancers and Druids at least have niches of their own in being dad-friendly (infinite use feign death) and mobile (porting around, being able to bind at a camp and port to sell/xfer) while being less versatile. Bards are the king of xp/hr with 10 plat in gear on a fresh server and deserve a mention because of that. Shamans are just worse Enchanters.

It's a class with no rez, no port, no charm spell. It's an entirely mediocre soloing class bombarded to god-like status because it can facetank and very slowly grind down impressive-looking mobs with minimal input required. You can kill a lot of mobs, but you lack the tools to efficiently get to the location of the mob, isolate the mob, and dps the mob.

Everyone looks at the time it takes to kill a mob, but you have to get there first. Druids reign supreme when there's something to charm for dps since they can just port there. Enchanters can paci down a dungeon before a shaman makes it past the first pack of mobs. I feel bad for people who kit out a Shaman and find out that they never evolve from 'facetank mob, whittle it down'. You'll never be able to port. You'll never be able to paci. You'll never be able to feign death without recharging your sky ring. You'll never be able to charm without using puppet strings clicks.