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Discussion - Best Group

Joined
Nov 28, 2024
RedCents
140¢
I am about to purchase Red Guides and was wondering what the best make up would be? Would be a group of 5 with one merc.
DPS group?
Raid group
 
I am about to purchase Red Guides and was wondering what the best make up would be? Would be a group of 5 with one merc.
DPS group?
Raid group

Depends on your wants and goals. Consider it to be a playground, pick some and try! Replace them when you need. We have lots of tools to help automate the common game play.
 
Honestly EQ is easy mode! Anything your heart desires.

Tank / Healer / Support + 3 DPS of your choice is going to conquer anything in EQ to its easiest ability. As long as your Tank is geared with proper AAs etc.

95% of peoples favorite option for melee is
SK / Shm / Bard / Rog / Zerk / Bst

Casters: Sk / Shm or Druid / Chanter or Bard / + 3 casters of choice (Mage, Mage, Mage / Mage, Mage, Wiz / Mage, Wiz, Wiz, etc etc
 
Warrior / Cleric / Bard / Rogue x3. I am using a persona on the rogues for Mag / Wiz x2 for those rare death to melee encounters.
 
i Like adps. so for that reason I run sk, shm, brd, ranger and 2 rogue. only named I had any issue on is overwatch in spires. SK LS raid geared, sham and one rogue have a few LS raid pieces/weapons, the rest is geared from LS/TB.
 
War/shm/cleric/bard/bst/zerk. Play on Vaniki though and definitely need double healers. Otherwise id switch cleric out for a rogue/monk and you're rockin
 
Any group works, as long as your having fun.
Yes some are more efficient. But at the end of the day have fun with it.
It's almost a meme how often people have to say this (across many games!), but the truth is... It's just the truth. Also, the metric of best group isn't always "most dps". I'm a bigger fan of added utility as time goes on.

Dude who is building his fifth raid group and dude who wants to go expansion by expansion are going to see totally different sides to this.

I think you, a long with hytiek and Birdman really nailed it.

Really interesting to see people sharing their setups though, even if they stray from the original "5 dudes and a merc" question.
 
I believe the tank is the most important part of the group.
Tried a group with SK and still prefer War over Knights. Enjoy the playstyle more than Knights and feel like a real tank!

Then the rest of the group it all depends on your playstyle.
Do you want to wreck everything? Then go for more DPS than utlity etc.

Good starting place for any good group is Tank, Brd, Bst, Heals (Clr/Shm), then 2x DPS.
You could go double caster (Wiz/Mage) or double melee (Rog/Mnk), (Rog/Ber) etc..
 
That is a lot of epics. Great job.

I am about to start my epic journey for my sk/shm/brd/bst/dru unfortunately I'll have to do a couple of those manually... like it's the 1950's
 
I believe the tank is the most important part of the group.
Tried a group with SK and still prefer War over Knights. Enjoy the playstyle more than Knights and feel like a real tank!

Then the rest of the group it all depends on your playstyle.
Do you want to wreck everything? Then go for more DPS than utlity etc.

Good starting place for any good group is Tank, Brd, Bst, Heals (Clr/Shm), then 2x DPS.
You could go double caster (Wiz/Mage) or double melee (Rog/Mnk), (Rog/Ber) etc..
I had always played a caster solo, so when I started to build a group I went SK because I wanted some casting ability and since I liked my mage pets so much I thought for sure I needed a pet class.

Now I think my next team will be based around a war.
 
i Like adps. so for that reason I run sk, shm, brd, ranger and 2 rogue. only named I had any issue on is overwatch in spires. SK LS raid geared, sham and one rogue have a few LS raid pieces/weapons, the rest is geared from LS/TB.
Yep. BRD + RNG add lots of adps to melee characters. The question is whether the adps a RNG adds to the tank and melees more than compensates for the rather lackluster dps of the RNG.
 
like it's the 1950's
Back To The Future Bully GIF
 
Honestly EQ is easy mode! Anything your heart desires.

Tank / Healer / Support + 3 DPS of your choice is going to conquer anything in EQ to its easiest ability. As long as your Tank is geared with proper AAs etc.

95% of peoples favorite option for melee is
SK / Shm / Bard / Rog / Zerk / Bst

Casters: Sk / Shm or Druid / Chanter or Bard / + 3 casters of choice (Mage, Mage, Mage / Mage, Mage, Wiz / Mage, Wiz, Wiz, etc etc
I can attest that it's rather solid even at lower levels, for the SK/SHM/BRD/ROG/ZERK/BST team. Except I have a cleric instead of the shammy, because shams are rather mediocre as main healers before level 100, but again that purely depends on the objective of OP. Shamans are fantastic healers above lvl 100-105+ expansions, but clerics got better healing game for anything below that.
 
I can attest that it's rather solid even at lower levels, for the SK/SHM/BRD/ROG/ZERK/BST team. Except I have a cleric instead of the shammy, because shams are rather mediocre as main healers before level 100, but again that purely depends on the objective of OP. Shamans are fantastic healers above lvl 100-105+ expansions, but clerics got better healing game for anything below that.

Shamans are not my main choice either, I love my cleric in group they do so much better for MY case
 
I run with Paladin/Cleric/Druid/Enchanter/Bard/Zerker. Probably the safest group ever, though low on dps
 
Why not Tank/Healer/Bard + 3 tank mercs? I'm still trying to get the Kiss Assist stuff figured out to go 6 box...
tank/healer/bard + 3 rogue mercs (or 2+1heal merc depending on level/content) is a pretty common 3-box (even among the non-mq community).
Once you work the automation out, a f2p account will perform much better, generally, and it isn't uncommon for dudes to use a krono or whathaveyou long enough to farm AA, or purchase expansions and only sub/krono an account once a year.
 
I don't worry too much about the perfect meta group to be honest. Put together a group of characters you enjoy playing. You can min/max all you wish but if you don't like the characters in your group you are going to have a bad time.

For me, thats the magic of MQ. Thinking at that group level and making it work with the automation to achieve your goals in game.
 
Part of the fun in playing this game is experimentation. When you are asking what is the "Best Group", that is highly subjective to a great number of viewpoints as to what is the best group. The best group is whatever makeup is the most fun to you.

It's sad that this game has been reduced to "let's see how fast I can get to max level" sort of thing in a great majority of cases.

My advice. Just have fun. That is what a game is made for.
 
A best group is very subjective to what you like. I ran for years War, Bard, Sha, Clr, Monk, Zerk and then a couple accounts got banned. After the ban I decided to retire the accounts that didn't get banned and made a caster crew since on my server caster gear is very cheap vs melee.

I now run - War, Bard, Clr, Chanter, Wiz X2 and for my 2nd group - Bard, Druid, Chanter, Wiz X3
 
Was just thinking about this this morning over coffee for some reason.... so ... hear me out:
SK/DRU/WIZ/ROG/MAG/BRD. Maybe not the best DPS/Buff team... BUT.... the travel....

SK - Tank/FD (can drop agro easily when pulling/traveling)
DRU - maybe not the best healer but Druid gates... and skin
WIZ - DPS/Wizard gates (not always the same as Druid)
MAG - DPS/CoH
ROG - DPS/SoS (can go just about anywhere unhindered)
BRD - ADPS/Fast travel/easy double invis.

My thinking wasn't about 'best dps' but more about, what team could you use to get just about anywhere as quickly and easily as possible. As a bonus, DPS would be really good, maybe not the best, but definitely up there. If you have others sitting in GH/PoK/GL for buffs (shaman/ranger/bst etc.) even better.

What lead me to this was just thinking about the best team to run around doing tasks/quests etc. like anniversary/special event stuff for example.
 
I think the answer is, it depends on how you play and what you want to kill. For the meele ones, I recommend SK, Shaman, bard and 3 rouges(later on, might want to swap 2 rouges to ranger and bst). For the caster lovers, SK, shaman, bst, bard, and 2 mages. Remember, play what you want to have fun.
 
It really depends on what you want to do. Lately, I've been running without any priests at all, using the paladin in that role instead with a warrior or SK as the tank. Pairing a necro with a paladin effectively turns the paladin into a DPS class as well, and this past 2-3 weeks i've replaced a mage in my group with a necro explicitly to increase the DPS of the Paladin via ignite bones lines as well as the necro being worthy DPS in its own right. However, you face the DoT ramp up issue and on trash mobs, DoTs are awful in the current game. Those mobs will drop in less than 20 seconds once you're geared/AA'd. Heck, I think most of them are dropping in the 12-15 second range now and I haven't even started getting hDEX augs yet. I also find it doesn't much matter what type of group you put together. Moar DPS doesn't matter when fights are that short and missions are keyed around DPS that is more aligned with 30-40 second trash mob fights. It's been that way for a solid 10 years now though and a lot of people will disagree with my assessment, but I'm more of a utility type player in the first place so my perspective may not match yours :)
 
Caster group for me is Pal/sha/ench/mag/bst/dru. Mage will give toys to 3 or 4 of the 6 group members, 3 rezzers, and overall buffs galore. If I am going melee pal/sha/brd/bst/dru/rog. Still 3 rezzers and a corpse dragger if all goes south.

Overall the beauty of RG is the mix and match options. Level up a caster, a melee, and a hybrid group to see what your preferences are. Each expansion has content suitable for all.

P.s. much easier to bypass the Bard 1.0 and go right to the 1.5 pre quest. Getting the skyfire mob to spawn can be ridiculous.
 
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I am about to purchase Red Guides and was wondering what the best make up would be? Would be a group of 5 with one merc.
DPS group?
Raid group

Tried a few things and in terms of raw killspeed and staying power, I haven't been able to beat the trusted melee adps group:

SK - 2.0 required
SHM - 2.0 required
BRD - 2.0 required (btw use the epiclaziness Lua for these!)
ZERK - 2.0 good
BST - 2.0 ok
ROG - 2.0 ok-good but really long

Everything provides adps to every other char's damage output, resulting in a lot of big numbers fast. And the SK epic is functionally invulnerability for each of the 6 for its duration. It is absurdly OP

If you have to drop something to get to 5, guess it's the rogue, sadly because they are very awesome. They do provide the least adps though.. it's debuffs instead of buffs and they don't always get a chance to trigger

Of course, the best thing to do is have 5 chars you are interested in keeping
 
Tried a few things and in terms of raw killspeed and staying power, I haven't been able to beat the trusted melee adps group:

SK - 2.0 required
SHM - 2.0 required
BRD - 2.0 required (btw use the epiclaziness lua for these!)
ZERK - 2.0 good
BST - 2.0 ok
ROG - 2.0 ok-good but really long

Everything provides adps to every other char's damage output, resulting in a lot of big numbers fast. And the SK epic is functionally invulnerability for each of the 6 for its duration. It is absurdly OP

If you have to drop something to get to 5, guess it's the rogue, sadly because they are very awesome. They do provide the least adps though.. it's debuffs instead of buffs and they don't always get a chance to trigger

Of course, the best thing to do is have 5 chars you are interested in keeping
From what I've learned, in today's game the zerk epic is not needed anymore. Iirc if a zerk is over like 3500 or 3700hdex the epic click is useless and causes a dps loss. 3500-3700 hdex is very easy to achieve in today's game as well.

EDIT: Also the rog epic is pretty solid to have. Increase triple backstab by 45% when the clicky is activated.
 
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Here are some lessons learned from my experience of several years of 6 boxing:

  • Bards are super useful in so many situations. On demand movement speed and double invis is just /chef's kiss.
  • If you choose SK for your tank, you will not need a cleric... but cleric buffs are significant. If you go WAR, the cleric will stand out more (this observation is a few years old)
  • Tradeskills: you will eventually run into some class-specific roadblocks. My biggest one, and I made an Enchanter alt for it, was Enchanting different materials for high-end jewelry and as part of other recipes. A forager, like a druid or ranger, helps tremendously. You will also need a lot of bag space, dragon hoard slots, etc.

Here are some things I do not have experience with, but I think I'm right:

  • Necromancers are not optimal for full group play because their damage takes time to build. Group mobs / trash, will die very quickly to a full group.
  • DPS changes almost feel like a pendulum swing. In some expansions, zerkers shine, in others, rogues shine. Wizards used to be the best. Things will change the longer you play.
  • The usefulness of mercs vs. adding another box. I only used mercs in very specific cases, such as leveling up when starting a new char. Just get another box (IMHO)
  • Footprint: I think a caster group still looks a little more inconspicuous vs. a melee group.
 
  • Footprint: I think a caster group still looks a little more inconspicuous vs. a melee group.
when *i* see an all caster group standing in one spot and just nuking with either a: snap facing or b: no facing at all, this says to me "they're obviously botting, and are still using some crusty krufty shit from 1822. other than not sharing space with other folks (being in an empty zone or in an instance) *i* personally think this forever chasing of "what looks obvious" is purely speculative and in 0 ways influence the people who are SOSing around to try and find people to report.
  • DPS changes almost feel like a pendulum swing. In some expansions, zerkers shine, in others, rogues shine. Wizards used to be the best. Things will change the longer you play.
kind of - this is a pretty broad stroke tho, but really embodies the idea that you should play what you like - a full group of just about anything "viable" is going to be able to do all the content you're trying to do

  • Necromancers are not optimal for full group play because their damage takes time to build. Group mobs / trash, will die very quickly to a full group.
meh, while the kill time is longer, you can keep just as many mobs in an area cleared full time as with a melee group, so once you're cookin, it doesn't really mater as much. play what you like


Bards are super useful in so many situations. On demand movement speed and double invis is just /chef's kiss.
bards for every group! wahoo

  • If you choose SK for your tank, you will not need a cleric... but cleric buffs are significant. If you go WAR, the cleric will stand out more (this observation is a few years old)
if you're nervous or new, a cleric is still perfectly ok to run with an SK, gives you some extra security - plus an extra boxed cleric can always come in handy for raids or real grouping (vs like a merc). you can always pocket a cleric merc, and drop a toon and get cleric buffs from the merc and then reform your group. I personally have "bad luck" getting "extra" buffs, causes me to wipe :p

not to derail this thread, but what's up with the BST epic? just useless or harmful as well?
the proc if it does work how it is supposed to, is singular hundreds of dps at absolute best, if it works how a bunch of people thinks it does, it actually prevents some other stuff from firing.
 
Discussion - Best Group

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