I box a war/bard/mage right now.
It's fine and once your warrior is geared you can pretty much do all the group content on your own except some of the difficult missions.
I am considering replacing the mage with either a berserker or a cleric. The berserker would increase kill speed, the cleric would make me more able to do challenging or awkward content.
I got sk, shaman, ranger. 2 dps casters and ine cleric merc. I had one caster and one rogue merc, but I found the rogue merc died alot when multiples were pulled and I get way better TTK with 2 casters. I like the ranger for set and forget dps, outdoor calms, ghetto root mez, even vineleash for those oh shit moments when you see 3-4 mobs on a bad pull. Hes also decent puller too, if outdoors. Shaman is meh post 80ish, slows dont work 80% of the time fully and too much upkeep for the dps as a box. Hes basically a buff bot on auto follow. Im sure in a real group the shaman would rock, but as a box its too much trouble for the dps. By the time i land slow,malo, dot it up, the mob is at 30% lol. So i use the smaman for buff bitch, slow, and 2 dots. They get a slow line in the 80s and up that slows the target and provides a decent HoT on the tank which is nice. I do love the SK though. Pretty hardy tank that comes with some self healing and snare utility.
I get more dps bang for the buck from keeping aggro solid on sk an letting the caster mercs run silly with bombs on burn setting. Oh well im stuck with shaman, im like lv 92 and the fuck of im about to tortuously level another. The SK is keeping up still being in lv 85 gear sprinkled with some lv 90 stuff here and there. On the boss/named fights I have to switch one of the caster mercs to another healer since one bad round can send him bye-bye when the start hitting for 8-9K now. trash is no problem though, I usually mow down whites and even yellow single pulls no problem. Been doing the Grobble heroic tasks in Dead Hils for the past week or so. I usually get one level per 6 of them, so about a level per night of casual play. The good thing about them is you get heroic marks for gear. Ive been saving up for a full set of 95. I contemplated on getting lv 90 stuff, but I figure if I can just last out till 95, I can get a full set by the time I get there of some 2K hp/mp gear.
On an classic-PoP emu server a few months ago I made an SK, mag, monk, cleric(no mercs) which was nice. Until I got to PoP and the mobs started hitting like mack trucks and I had no slows. So damn if you do, damn if you dont type of thing. I ended up quitting because I hit max level and it was all about AA and gear grind and honestly I could not stomach that shit anymore on an obscure emu server. It was nice seeing all that content again, I thoroughly made it through most of the classic and kunark dungeons which was cool.
Also Tuco, I vastly prefer the healing merc to running your own cleric. I know youre missing the calms, thats essentially what the cleric added to my emu group. But straight up healing, you just cannot beat a merc. you cannot even react that efficiently, especially if youre running multiple boxes. To really power through nameds or whatever I just get 2, one set to reactionary and one to efficient. I have my SK switch out the merc, I think the extra merc slot was like 1000 daybreak bucks.
I play on test though, the fuck if im gonna pay for 3 accounts to play at their fullest potential a 1999 era game. no economy there, but people are generous and willing to help a brother out if you need it. Plus you can always test copy shit over if you really need it.
