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Discussion - DPS selection (1 Viewer)

Joined
Sep 24, 2016
RedCents
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So as a long time player (lurker)- raider at times, super casual at times when I was focusing other titles, content rusher at periods, and now settled down into I play EQ in one way or another almost every day but completely at my own pace. No more raiding or rushing, and I play on live - TLP - and on the P99 servers. In all that time I have seen the rise and fall ( and re-rise at times) of the various DPS classes in game. I raided as a rogue at the end of vanilla and into Kunark - but then fell off in favor of tanking or healing ever since as my focus toons. So overall I have stayed pretty far behind the times so to speak in "meta" dps selections and have kind of picked what seemed interesting or useful to the group. I always run the trinity myself - Tank - designated heals - CC. Then I tend to add an off heal and 2 pure DPS. Mostly just the set up I have had the most success with overall.

Having said all of that - I also run numerous groups as I like to see them advance together and come into their own as a team. What I have noticed as I dig deeper into the forums and other people's group make-up posts, is that the DPS side of the house is almost always zerkers & bst lord. Some times rogues or mage (which I am fond of myself), but I rarely see wizzy or ranger. Occasionally monk comes up. And yes I understand that right now for most group content necro has fallen into slight disfavor because they take so long to ramp up, but are they that bad? Keeping in mind that I am not looking to min-max my groups - but my main discussion question is this:

What criteria do you look at when selecting your DPS'ers? If you are in the double zerker camp - why? what makes them so popular at present?
 
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Tank, 3 Ber, Bard, Shaman is probably the highest dps group in the game. You can replace one with a beastlord but probably a net loss in dps.

Why pick this group ? Shit dies fast.
 
I am in the 2 BER camp, but I was skeptical for a long time.

I run War/CLR/Brd/BST/ber/BER

The burst dps is what I love. Meaning not only can I double the DpS of my group with a mage and monk, but I ramp up so quickly.

I use all silver accounts except the tank. While grinding the type 5s I found that I could start at camp, go do griks and velks mission, then get back to camp all in about 17 minutes. It made grinding those augs so much more manageable just getting in and out twice a day.
 
I have 3 basic group setups i use.
Main- Paladin, cleric, 2xzerk, bard, bst. bard and paly are only ones that are 115 atm and stuff in eq dies in 30 secs or less. I use bst cause combo bst paragons and bard and no one in group every even gets low on mana/end, pulling 2 to 3 at a time constantly, as last one hits 50 i go pull 2 or 3 more

Second group- Warrior, shm, 2x rogue, bard, mage (love the dmg shields) shm is only 115 in group and EW stuff dies in around 50 secs.

3rd group - SK, cleric, enchanter, mage, necro, ranger. all are 111 and stuff in ew dies in around 35 to 45 secs.

i know alot dont like necros, but necro can be a valuable toon if you set it up right. i typically load the 3 hardest hitting (fast) dots, and 4 nukes. i have my ini set to line up the 3 dots on burn only, then nuke, on normal mobs it nukes.

Key to mage/bst/necro dps is the pet. you HAVE to gear it. the better weapons the better dps. As I stated on a different post, i gear my pets in conflagrant visibles/non vis(except cloak, dont want to loose pet focus buff) and t1 tov weapons. Doing this, the pet is basically a 7th player in the group. it does a fairly large amount of dps all on its own then the bst/mage/necro doing their thing just adds to it. Set INI's to use dumbfire pets at 99 then do the rest of thier things. that short duration pet does ALOT of dmg

As you can tell, i play around with my group setup accross all my accounts i have prolly 3 of all class's except monk(never got into monkts) and int he right setup they are all decent to play.

the 2 or 3 zerker setup with bard is uber dps and your only getting 1 weapon per zerker, instead of finding 2x good weapons per toon and with alliance they basically ramp off of each other

IF you woudl like i can PM you with the criteria i have used for each group setup. IE why i choose which toon and to go into which setup. as would anyone else here
 
I run two main groups and sometimes an addon group just for fun.

Group 1
Warrior
Bard
Magician
Magician
Cleric
Necromancer

Group 2
Paladin
Rogue
Rogue
Rogue
Berserker
Shaman

Group 3
Magician
Magician
Magician
Bard
Berserker
Cleric
 
Necros, after the last revamp, can as well deliver notable DPS even if mobs die within 25 seconds.
I have one in my main evening group, and he's often the no. 1 in the parses.

That said, my main boxing team:
SK, Shm, Enc, Mage, Mage, Mage
At the chanter-account I have a max-geared max-aaed Bard, which gets the spot, when I want max DPS in the team.
With the mages in the Team, I don't need to think about an offhealer. If the shd goes down, the pets take over and the various pet-runes + heals together with the shaman's heals get me through bad pulls.

Likely berzerker instead of mages would give more DPS, but the mages pet's allows to survive even bad pulls with mezzimmune mobs.
 
I have 1 group.
SK
Bard
Cleric
3x Zerker

All accounts are FTP. I doubt I’ll ever raid current content so It works pretty well for me. Once I level theM enough to start OMM runs ill switch the cleric for a shaman to improve dps.
 
I've always been a big fan of melee DPS especially if you can augment them with a BRD/SHM. The only thing with stacking zerks is the lack of diversity. I personally would always add one monk for pulling and absorb leather gear that would otherwise rot.
 
First off - thank you everyone for the replies. I always like to hear what other people are thinking/doing in game. I am also noticing a stark lack of wizard DPS on anyone's list so far, I am guessing just having the ports does not outweigh the lack of utility everywhere else? Unless they have some secret squirrel buff at high levels that I am not familiar with. I have a heroic wizzy that I made from the free upgrade last year just to have the extra ports at my disposal, but I have never played him seriously. I have always leaned mage.

And again, this comes from a place of just about perma-leveling. I am not really trying to mix-max, just get a good understanding of what the community is doing and why in this arena. Some of these teams I am guessing do not really come into their own until later in the game? I have never tried a shaman solo healing at lower levels myself, can they reliably handle the role on their own out of the gate?
 
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First off - thank you everyone for the replies. I always like to hear what other people are thinking/doing in game. I am also noticing a stark lack of wizard DPS on anyone's list so far, I am guessing just having the ports does not outweigh the lack of utility everywhere else? Unless they have some secret squirrel buff at high levels that I am not familiar with. I have a heroic wizzy that I made from the free upgrade last year just to have the extra ports at my disposal, but I have never played him seriously. I have always leaned mage.

And again, this comes from a place of just about perma-leveling. I am not really trying to mix-max, just get a good understanding of what the community is doing and why in this arena. Some of these teams I am guessing do not really come into their own until later in the game? I have never tried a shaman solo healing at lower levels myself, can they reliably handle the role on their own out of the gate?
for years i solo healed my war with shm(from mid 20s to 70s, and backup healed on raids when i MT'd.

Wizard is very gear/buff dependant for any kind of dps. yea they can do massive amounts in the right situation, but much harder to get consistent dps out of them specially boxed.

right now clerics are top healer, shm are second, and druid are 3rd and for non raid content all 3 can solo heal a tank. shm just bring added dps/dps assist/buffs/pet.
 
So my primary teams ( I only play one at a time - only 6 accts right now) - paladin - clr - shm - enc - rog - bst ( I have a mage that I swap back and forth with the cleric based on what I am doing - but with the clr was a lot safer for named farming in Fear Itself). The secondary team that I am just bringing up - SK- shm - bard - ranger - zerk - ? ( I have some options here - this team is still leveling/catching up to each other - but for that slot I have rogue - druid - enc - wiz options) I also do not mind having multiples of a class in the stables - the 2 shaman listed above are different. I like being able to put up different teams based on what kind of random stupid I am working on that day. I have a lot of other toons, but these are the groups I am focusing on currently.

The two things that triggered this conversation where two sides of the same coin - when I got into HoT zones my team struggled on names with a single healer. Could have been a bad INI, could have just been under the gear requirement for the content. Sometimes I would win, other times I would show back up in PoK. It's dialing in the inconsistency that I was really looking to repair. So I ended back up with 2 healers - but it seems like very few go that route, which had to mean it was in the DPS section. As stated, not worried about min-max just a very consistent team. But even a consistent team has room for improvement.
 
So my primary teams ( I only play one at a time - only 6 accts right now) - paladin - clr - shm - enc - rog - bst ( I have a mage that I swap back and forth with the cleric based on what I am doing - but with the clr was a lot safer for named farming in Fear Itself). The secondary team that I am just bringing up - SK- shm - bard - ranger - zerk - ? ( I have some options here - this team is still leveling/catching up to each other - but for that slot I have rogue - druid - enc - wiz options) I also do not mind having multiples of a class in the stables - the 2 shaman listed above are different. I like being able to put up different teams based on what kind of random stupid I am working on that day. I have a lot of other toons, but these are the groups I am focusing on currently.

The two things that triggered this conversation where two sides of the same coin - when I got into HoT zones my team struggled on names with a single healer. Could have been a bad INI, could have just been under the gear requirement for the content. Sometimes I would win, other times I would show back up in PoK. It's dialing in the inconsistency that I was really looking to repair. So I ended back up with 2 healers - but it seems like very few go that route, which had to mean it was in the DPS section. As stated, not worried about min-max just a very consistent team. But even a consistent team has room for improvement.
for second group rogue would be good 2 melee dps and a rang dps are good with bard in group
 
My main group I run is SK, shm, bard, and 3 raid gear zerks. Stuff dies fast and I never have a problem with healing using the shaman as a main healer, I've been able to do anything I want in tov.
 
Main team is War (dual-wield when not raiding), Clr, Brd (have enc on same acct I swap depending on mission), Bst, Mage, Ranger things die in about 10-13 secs. Building a farm team with SK, Clr, Enc, Wiz, Wiz, Wiz. Will probably create another zerk farm team (Shaman, War, Bard, Zerk, Zerk, Zerk) once the wiz team is finished.
 
I run pally (115), bard 112 (ftp), zerker 112 (ftp), wiz 112 (ftp), enc 112 (ftp) and 113 clr. The pally and clr are only paid accounts. I know this is not optimal as the bard and enc butt heads a lot, but I just love enchanters and I love the buffs bards add. That being said I mainly took the wiz for porting, but I am not upset with his dps. My enc is good dps as well, nothing like a pure toon, but I handle namers in ToV, so long as I realize its a namer i am fighting. My bro runs sk, bard, zerk, zerk, clr, bst and he kills stuff way faster than me.

I think i will tryout a 3x zerker group to see how it works out. I want to start over anyhow and NOT pl my toons, I can lvl fast enough w/o PLing anyhow, that will be fun, but ill have to use mercs until 85 because no room on tank account to make a new toon.
 
Yesterday I had my group running for around 23000 seconds and combined sustain dps was 1.6 million for the group. I was pretty damn happy with that
 
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So on my 6 sub accounts I have the following 2 group set ups - main = Paladin / Shm / Clr (mage) / rogue / bst / enc - swap for DPS or heals based on named farming or just xping. The second group on the same set of accounts = SK - shm - bard - rogue - ranger - zerker.

But due to this conversation and a few other threads I have kicked up out of curious questioning I am setting a group on 6 new accounts - War / shm / bard / zerk / zerk / rogue - the rogue spot was an area of slight contention - but having someone to grab my corpse when I do a dumb always welcome. Will be a while before everyone is up and going full swing - but double the farm capacity depending on whatever random adventure I set my attention on at the time.
 
I have a question for all. I just registered for the site after losing out on many many groups because everyone I know is boxing. The problem comes in that I only have 3 subscription accounts and due to being on disability am unlikely to pick up more subscription accounts. Does anyone use FTP accounts in their teams? And if so, what classes work best? Of my 3 accounts, the main toons on each account that are 115 and either top of the line raid geared (Ranger) to mostly raid geared (shaman) to quickly becoming raid geared (warrior, 4 pieces in the past week). I was considering adding a bard and two zerkers. Possibly a cleric to let the shammy dps and in battle rezzes. Does anyone use mercs at all? Don't think I've seen that yet.
 
tov 2 or more palys, silver, grp geared + shm, bard, bst, avg life expectancy of mobs 12 to 18s leaning more to the 12s
i love zerks but thats the paly fact of life in tov grp content
 
It has already been said - but I always prefer to keep the tank on a gold account. Even on my new FTP team - I have a chrono to use on my tank once I get him into the 85ish range to bring his AA's way up. Generally I found that if your tank can handle the content then the rest of the group should be fine, if he goes down the rest fall like dominoes. I also agree with using a FTP slot on your chanter / bard - neither of them will bring ground breaking DPS themselves but their buffs / songs / control will make everyone else better passively. I run full groups of 6 all the time now - so I can't comment on mercs past lower levels.
 
I run a bunch of groups these days, I've ended up streamlining my accounts so I have a Tank account (War, Pal, and SK) Healer account (Clr, Dru and Shm) CC account (Brd and Enc) then 3 accounts each with every DPS class on them

This allows me to basically run every type of group.

I've found that the best DPS group is SK, Shm, Brd, Zerk Zerk Zerk. It pretty much beats everything else hands down, but meh, no challenge = no fun.

I personally prefer this group, SK, Clr, Enc, Wiz, Rog, and Zerk. I just seem to have more fun with this group, I also like a nice pet group as it can be a lot of fun and now necro's are somewhat better I like to run SK, Clr, Enc, Nec, Bst, and Mag.

Ultimately with how easy it is these days to level up a group I personally suggest you go with what works for you, what's fun, don't get trapped into thinking that DPS > all, it's not, fun > all is what matters.

The only class I'm still super disappointed in Ranger and maybe Druid, they both seem to have been left and forgotten by Darkpaw/Daybreak/SOE and seem lost in the current game meta, sad times since my oldest and most played char is my druid :(
 
Warrior, Shaman, Bard, Beastlord, Monk, Ranger. More than 1 zerk you lose out on the synergy, the monk increases the bard's DPS significantly (through monk synergy, rogue works here too but they do less DPS than a monk and their AE potential isn't as strong, plus Swift Tails' makes zerkers/bards have much more endurance). The goal of this group is purely AE and pull timings work around Rampage & Scarlet Cheetah Fang. Every 20 minutes, pull 20-30 mobs, pop Fort, War Sheol's, Vehement on Warrior, pop Cheetah, get zerker burns going and all of the mobs should be dead in about 5 seconds. After that, just standard pulls (2-6 mobs each to stay under bard AE cap) until cheetah comes back. I've yet to find a 6 box group do more DPS than me, though I have really good gear.
 
I'm still working on this myself. I've always run the same 4 toons, and since 1 was a bard and 1 a Dru, I figured I could kick my mercs and add some melee dps. I didn't so much decide as look at other accounts I already had, where I found a pair of rogues who had great Synergistic(I had to) names, made them years ago. If it'd been a pair of zerkers, or 1 of each, I'd just go with that. Never been a fan personally of pure classes, but to up the DPS and bc I can use this to do it, I figure it's easier than dealing with squishy manadraining casters.

Will see as I move them all up in content(2 are too low to be useful yet but rest are ToV levels) I'll see just how bad a Dru healer is or isn't, and whether or not I should swap for a heroic shm I have on another account, but he'd have to be levelled too. Levels mean a lot in my experience, when you're talking autogranted aas in a healer since the base heals typically match the damage output for mobs their level, and running a much lower healer could be disastrous. I've always know a lot of shaman players so I never bothered to learn it or level one myself.

At least I did the bard part right lol. Some do and some don't use rangers, tank choice seems to vary, and no one seems to like Dru healers, but hopefully the added rogues will help make up the difference by killing the mobs before my druid kills me :-)
 
At least I did the bard part right lol. Some do and some don't use rangers, tank choice seems to vary, and no one seems to like Dru healers, but hopefully the added rogues will help make up the difference by killing the mobs before my druid kills me :-)
Druid healers are good for SKs (Black Wolf + Harm Touch baby). And SKs & Paladins don't *really* need a healer to keep themselves alive, so the druid is free to pet wolves or whatever druids do while regening mana. Warrior + Druid healer is AWFUL. Secretly level up some clerics so your druid doesn't feel bad because you 100% are going to need it (unless you like your tank doing subpar DPS with a shield instead of DW/2H).
 
Druid healers are good for SKs (Black Wolf + Harm Touch baby). And SKs & Paladins don't *really* need a healer to keep themselves alive, so the druid is free to pet wolves or whatever druids do while regening mana. Warrior + Druid healer is AWFUL. Secretly level up some clerics so your druid doesn't feel bad because you 100% are going to need it (unless you like your tank doing subpar DPS with a shield instead of DW/2H).
couldnt pay me to play a warrior (as I mentioned, I hate pure classes, i.e. warrior, cleric, ..wizard..and monks more than the other melees. too boring, I like my hybrids as long as they're not pet classes lol. Never thought of the black wolf/HT thing though (ive played SK since day 1, and we always put drus in our caster groups in raid back when I still did such)
 
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