Best 4 person all melee/hybrid group

[Keebz]

What are we doing with this group? Biggest target? General crawling? Need a goal to give a real answer.

To muse a little, however, without raid gear I'm less hot on just massing monks. I also think the 3 monk 1 bard puts probably too much burden on the bard for general play. But for raid geared characters you can do a lot with just 2x monk, so I buy that as a decent strat.

For crawling, I'd love to be able to do basic cc root/snare and slow without the bard, so the bard can focus on charm, haste, hymm, etc. A ranger could slot in there and also provide some buffs (HP/AC, massive 50% slow, DS, ATK, etc.)

On the other hand, for sustain, a paladin can heal for days and has great CC.

Rogue has the highest DPS and some decent procs (namely, a 35% slow proc).

Warrior has disc, which might unlock something? and a slow proc.

SK has pet pulls I guess? Probably vanishingly small opportunities for that, but there might be one. Fear and snare as well I guess.

At first blush, I could definitely see combos with Ranger or Paladin in the mix somewhere if you need a slower or just lots of healing.

[Penish]

hammer salts

[Jimjam]

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve always viewed shaman as more of a melee hybrid than a pure caster so …

[Vexenu]

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

monk monk monk bard would kill the toughest mob of any combo of 4 melee

How can you even begin to make this argument when a Paladin has celestial cleansing, 1 LoH and 5x CH from Soulfire available for tough kills? There's no way the additional DPS/Mend/avoidance from a third Monk outweighs that much raw healing. As DSM would say, it's just math.

[Toxigen]

Best all-around:

bard
rogue
paladin
monk / ranger (if ranger has both epics would be pretty sweet for slows but until then monk is miles better)

Sure, the bard can interrupt casters but having a pally for dedicated stuns will help with the biggest potential problem: eating nukes that chunk HP pools.

Bard, rogue, paladin really can't be replaced. If you're trying to do big targets you're gonna need a soulfire and rogue dps...and the snap aggro enables the rogue to go HAM right out of the gate on every XP mob.

Now, if you're going a self-found route...its 100% naked monks + bard. But ain't nobody tryna do that in 2024.

/thread, pack it up boys before DSM's military-grade autism kicks in.

[Jimjam]

Bard for aoe kite and 3x SK for Word of Spirit spam.

860dps from Word of Spirit. 600 dps from earthshaker proc (melee damage not accounted for).

Sell 50s pl, buy loot rights from the enc/cleric group.

[eqravenprince]

Everyone forgetting Rogue poisons which would be useful in this made up group. 50% slow.

[Penish]

still surprised the water boy hasnt chimed in

[Keebz]

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

if ranger has both epics would be pretty sweet for slows but until then monk is miles better)

You can also use Swarmcaller to get a slow if necessary.

[7thGate]

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

Everyone forgetting Rogue poisons which would be useful in this made up group. 50% slow.

50% slow is not going to make a big enough difference. Rangers get a 50% slow proc, so do warriors, and too much is immune because of the root component.

If Rogues are going to be needed to do something hard, its almost certainly going to be Blinding Poison for on demand 108 second blind kiting. I'm not sure if there's a good target or not to really showcase that though; you can blind kite Dain, but he's too resisty and has too high regen to do with 4.

I suspect the hardest targets are still targets where you can get NPCs fighting each other for most of the work and you assist by tanking. With no enchanter, you probably need to go help mobs that fight each other naturally.

I would target Zlandicar as possible hardest target. Start a fight between Zlandicar and Neb, and tank for Neb while he does all the DPS, then kill Neb right before Zlandi goes down. I think you probably want mostly Paladins for that; 4x Paladin gives you 24 CH, plus healing, plus 4x Lay on Hands, with Sanctification backing things up.

Maybe there's something with a bard kite swarm tossing blocks of 4 pets at something?