Question - New FTP team, slot five and six advice (1 Viewer)

[RangerDanger13]

I would like to make a new FTP team with three rogues to get a fellowship fire anywhere but I am newer to the FTP team building (capability with non-prestige gear/limitations) and welcome suggestions to round it out. If I did a Warrior, Rogue x 3, would a Bard and Shaman be best to round it out or would you suggest two different classes or different combo for the last two slots? I just don't know how well the Shaman at that level will be to handle the heals on top of slows etc. I plan on gearing them in TOV T1 though and will get them fully AA'd through a krono. Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

 

[Sic]

as i always suggest

enjoying your group > min maxing until min maxing is the more important than enjoying your group.

after that, I suggest ensuring you have the holy trinity covered - Real Tank (sk, war, pal), real heal (clr, shm), and real CC (ench, bard) - I personally like to pair my bard with melee groups and enchanter with caster type groups.

since you have the war and bard and heavy melee dps, I would say that either bard/clr or bard/shm are good choices. nice thing about mercs is you can always pocket a merc healer if you needed one in a pickle or for buffs/rezzes.

shaman are more than capable solo healers in the modern era - but they do have some tradeoffs - only a combat "call" and not a combat rez is one of the larger ones, but you can work around that with a rez stick (staff of forbidden rites). they also don't have as much in their tool kit for "zomg shits going sideways immediadely unsideways everything" like cleric does.

enchanters can work just fine with melee groups, and some folks prefer the broader toolkit for mezzing and the easier time automating that comes with enchanter vs bard - but either one will be just fine for you

 

[RangerDanger13]

as i always suggest

enjoying your group > min maxing until min maxing is the more important than enjoying your group.

after that, I suggest ensuring you have the holy trinity covered - Real Tank (sk, war, pal), real heal (clr, shm), and real CC (ench, bard) - I personally like to pair my bard with melee groups and enchanter with caster type groups.

since you have the war and bard and heavy melee dps, I would say that either bard/clr or bard/shm are good choices. nice thing about mercs is you can always pocket a merc healer if you needed one in a pickle or for buffs/rezzes.

shaman are more than capable solo healers in the modern era - but they do have some tradeoffs - only a combat "call" and not a combat rez is one of the larger ones, but you can work around that with a rez stick (staff of forbidden rites). they also don't have as much in their tool kit for "zomg shits going sideways immediadely unsideways everything" like cleric does.

enchanters can work just fine with melee groups, and some folks prefer the broader toolkit for mezzing and the easier time automating that comes with enchanter vs bard - but either one will be just fine for you

Thanks Sic, pretty much my train of thought, just wasn't sure how at that level a Shaman would do as main healer as I traditionally use clerics but wanted to have the most bang for my buck with the melee toons. I thought about the cleric/chanter piece to trade off some ADPS for survivability.. need to decide which to do. My main/fun group is a hybrid special (war, clr, rng, bst, mage, brd), just looking at a couple different flavor farm team setups. One I made recently is a SK, Clr, Chanter, Wiz x 3 which is fun too (things go boom). I just wanted a melee variant that wasn't necessarily a Zerk special and thought the rogue team would be fun and have an ability to setup anywhere.

 

[Sic]

Thanks Sic, pretty much my train of thought, just wasn't sure how at that level a Shaman would do as main healer as I traditionally use clerics but wanted to have the most bang for my buck with the melee toons. I thought about the cleric/chanter piece to trade off some ADPS for survivability.. need to decide which to do. My main/fun group is a hybrid special (war, clr, rng, bst, mage, brd), just looking at a couple different flavor farm team setups. One I made recently is a SK, Clr, Chanter, Wiz x 3 which is fun too (things go boom). I just wanted a melee variant that wasn't necessarily a Zerk special and thought the rogue team would be fun and have an ability to setup anywhere.

definitely take some thought into the giver/taker aspect of group makeup - 3 wiz is lots of boom boom - but are you gaining more than you're missing out from not having some extra utility from an alternative class like a mage?

rogues are great, but if you're not killing humanoids you can be leaving some stuff on the table - rogues are also "takers" primarily so you need to *give* them stuff so they can reach their potential. this is why i roll with 2 zerks and a bst - 3 zerks is fun, but bst can hang just fine + makes the 2 zerks do crazy stuff PLUS the bst brings paragon and other goodies to the rest of the group + can pick up aggro for a minute if the tank drops. this kind of group can go pretty much forever with minimal/no downtime.

good thing about your healing situation - if you're talking just about non-instanced content, you can always toss an extra heal outside the group with minimal detriment until they get sorted with AA and more stable via augments and stuff.

PLUS with mq2 - you can never have too many accounts / toons / mouths to feed AND its pretty quick getting a toon caught up (outside of progression/quests) to hang with your group once you have a setup.

so definitely explore and find out what works best for you

 

[Sum1]

If you're going to go with a shammy as primary healer (which you totally can, by the way) and want to keep the entire group F2P (which will be hard, but not impossible), then I would go with a shadowknight instead of a warrior. The reason is the SK will get spells/taps to help keep themselves healed, but the warrior will not. The warrior and SK both are extremely gear dependent, but the SK's ability to tap to help keep themselves alive might offset some of that gear dependence (for your purposes).

Regarding the three rogues... remember that rogues are the only class that I know of that have an alliance disc that can be triggered by other melee classes using poison proc potions. So, one rogue using alliance can have their ability fulminated by zerkers, rangers, monks, beastlords, etc. You don't 100% need to have three rogues. Honestly, rogues are great dps, but I would probably swap one rogue for a zerker and consider swapping another rogue for a beastlord or ranger (for adps purposes). Rangers melee in ToV outside of when they're using their big bow disc (pureshot), so they can get up to good numbers if you have a decent .ini.

Forget all of the above about the rogues if all you want them for is dropping campfires. If that is the case, just get them high enough to get the max SoS AA's and then roll other toons on the same accounts to create the group you actually want to run 100% of the time.

Just my very cheap 2 coppers

 

[RangerDanger13]

If you're going to go with a shammy as primary healer (which you totally can, by the way) and want to keep the entire group F2P (which will be hard, but not impossible), then I would go with a shadowknight instead of a warrior. The reason is the SK will get spells/taps to help keep themselves healed, but the warrior will not. The warrior and SK both are extremely gear dependent, but the SK's ability to tap to help keep themselves alive might offset some of that gear dependence (for your purposes).

Regarding the three rogues... remember that rogues are the only class that I know of that have an alliance disc that can be triggered by other melee classes using poison proc potions. So, one rogue using alliance can have their ability fulminated by zerkers, rangers, monks, beastlords, etc. You don't 100% need to have three rogues. Honestly, rogues are great dps, but I would probably swap one rogue for a zerker and consider swapping another rogue for a beastlord or ranger (for adps purposes). Rangers melee in ToV outside of when they're using their big bow disc (pureshot), so they can get up to good numbers if you have a decent .ini.

Forget all of the above about the rogues if all you want them for is dropping campfires. If that is the case, just get them high enough to get the max SoS AA's and then roll other toons on the same accounts to create the group you actually want to run 100% of the time.

Just my very cheap 2 coppers

Thanks for the reply and good point about having them to drop fires but then swapping out once the camp is set, I think I may do that as Sic pointed out, it is so easy to have a bunch of different F2P to tool around with, can use the extra dps out of group even.

 

[Draknocht]

I saw @Sic only mentioned Cleric and Shaman, did something happen with druids not being decent healers anymore? With me just now returning and starting up 4 new toons to start with, (SK, Rog, so far) haven't decided on the healer, was thinking Druid for the TP's and for CC leaning to the Bard, but I really loved my enchanter back in the day. they were real pain in the ass to level til they got up over level 30 or so, when the charm got better. Guess I may have to rethink my boxing strat and go to 6 if the laptop can handle it. Wish @Maskoi had finished with his boxing guides, they were very well written and was looking forward to seeing the others.

 

[RYN227]

I like threads like these to help me think of things for my own groups so I'll throw my strategy out there and maybe it will help someone think of something too.

I have 8 accounts total and can produce various combinations:

Drivers (Silver Account)	Healers	CC/Pet	CC/Pet	DPS	DPS	DPS/Travel	DPS/Travel
WAR	CLR	BRD	ENC	BER	BER	MNK	NEC
SHD	SHM	MAG	BST	ROG	RNG	DRU	WIZ
PAL

I like RGMercs but use some CWTN in there for some select classes too.

I run SHD, SHM, BRD, BST, BER, BER currently as my primary group.

I have a secondary group of WAR, CLR, ENC, MAG, ROG, and one spot open thats currently under consideration. I am levelling a MNK, RNG, NEC, and WIZ to potentially throw in there. The thought was for some variety I could tag out one of the BER from the primary group for a ROG, MNK, RNG, NEC, or WIZ as needed.

I also liked the Maskoi boxing guides and wished there were more!

 

[Slade the Magician]

enjoying your group > min maxing until min maxing is the more important than enjoying your group.

.......

I personally like to pair my bard with melee groups and enchanter with caster type groups.

On both points: