In EQ1 the best group makeup was War, Clr, Shm, Brd, Mnk, Rog.
There is absolutely 0 downtime and you never stop killing.
In pantheon I imagine something similar.
War, Clr, Shm and 3 melee dps. Probably 3 rogs unless monks bring something important to the table.
But being pure dps with the ability to mezz is pretty op.
Porygon said:In EQ1 the best group makeup was War, Clr, Shm, Brd, Mnk, Rog.
There is absolutely 0 downtime and you never stop killing.
In pantheon I imagine something similar.
War, Clr, Shm and 3 melee dps. Probably 3 rogs unless monks bring something important to the table.
But being pure dps with the ability to mezz is pretty op.
The EQ1 group i was in most of the time was very similar to this. Only difference was we had a necro instead of bard.
For pantheon i think it will be much harder to find a prefect group. Because it seems like the classes have been worked out to shine in different situations. I am looking forward to trying out the following group in an outdoor zone fighting undead.
Druid, Shamen, Summoner, Enchanter, Ranger and Paladin.
I think druids will be the best healers outdoors and work well in a group with 2 healers, thus the shamen. The synergy betweem summoner and enchanter is interesting. Ranger for the dps and The tank has to be paladin.
My main EQ1 group of friends was: Monk (me), Paladin, Cleric, Mage, Rogue, Enchanter.
In Pantheon we need to remember that, unlike EQ1, Druids and Shamans are meant to be main healers in groups. So having a Shaman and a Cleric in the same group is a redundancy. You might still do it if your fighting really hard content that needs 2 strong healers, but you wouldn't likely run 2 healers consistantly all the time.
Porygon said: But being pure dps with the ability to mezz is pretty op. (re: rogues Smoke and Mirrors)
I also think this seems pretty op, which makes me think that they will likely have some restrictions that limit how powerful this could be. Could be a long cooldown, thus you won't have it on every pull, or could have a 1 target at a time limit meaning you could only deal with 1 add as a rogue. Of course you suggest bringing 3 rogues which would mean you could at least deal with 3 adds, which might be sufficient for most content.
I think you'd likely want to have a caster dps along though since some mobs are dealt better with magic abilities rather than physical. I'm hoping that your average adventuring will have a combination of both. Some enemies with high armour but low resists, and some enemies with high resists but lower armour. You may also need to have range silences or stuns to stop casters at a distance. Also what happens to your 3 rogues when the enemy starts spaming a huge AoE damage.
Porygon said:In EQ1 the best group makeup was War, Clr, Shm, Brd, Mnk, Rog.
There is absolutely 0 downtime and you never stop killing.
My group had the ShadowKnight instead of the Warrior mostly because the SK could get instant aggro and keep it, allowing everyone else to go full out constantly and never pulling aggro.
Porygon said:In pantheon I imagine something similar.
War, Clr, Shm and 3 melee dps. Probably 3 rogs unless monks bring something important to the table.
But being pure dps with the ability to mezz is pretty op.
With this set up, where are you getting your mana regen from? Or are you just resigned to sitting and meditating after every fight?
cromwell said:For pantheon i think it will be much harder to find a prefect group. Because it seems like the classes have been worked out to shine in different situations.
God I hope this is the case. It would be amazing if they actually made 12 (14 with Bard & Necro) individual classes rather than making classes designed to be set up with other classes.
It's ok to have a few classes with an ability here or there that can do this (Paladin / Cleric | Druid / Ranger) but to make classes so they all mix together in perfect harmony sounds boring. Make it so we all have to play our character, not play off some other character.
GoofyWarriorGuy said:In Pantheon we need to remember that, unlike EQ1, Druids and Shamans are meant to be main healers in groups. So having a Shaman and a Cleric in the same group is a redundancy. You might still do it if your fighting really hard content that needs 2 strong healers, but you wouldn't likely run 2 healers consistantly all the time.
I don't know... Shaman and Cleric seem to go really well together. The shaman can focus on support and DPS while keeping HOT's on the tank. Based on everything we've seen so far, I would absolutely run with 2 healers.
Had a lot of fun in EQ2 as a Shadowknight, 3 Wizards, 1 Warlock and a Druid. Unconventional, but really entertaining. Also - Shadowknight, Shadowknight, Necro, Warlock, Assassin, Inquisitor (cleric) or Shaman. We really liked running around with more unconventional groupings.
Good to see some off the wall group ideas. I'd prefer it if there was no "best" group composition.
Some of my fondest memories of EQ were from unconventional groups on the Firiona Vie server when it first came out. It had a unique roleplaying ruleset: one character per account, no common tongue- only racial languages. So, you grouped with whoever you could find and communicate with.
As an enchanter, once I was the "healer" of the group... because I was the best at bandaging.
Certainly, the "optimal" group will be there for those who want it.
As for myself, I want there to be room for smart players to succeed without conforming to set roles. I guess my definition of optimal might depend more on the players themselves, not the classes they play.
I remember doing a GOD dugneon with a Paladin, Paladin, Paladin, Paladin, Paladin, Paladin. Was pretty fun. We were wiping in the beginning, but once we figured out a system of changing paladins out from healers to tanks when they were low on mana, we could clear like 3 rooms before we took a med break. We became a machine of consistent pulling with 6 stuns going off and 6 lay of hands to go around and just insane fun lol.
For me, the best party make-up is a group of friends who are there to have fun, class largely irrelevant so long as there's the necessary tank/healer/dps distribution. (Even then, I'm totally down for being "unconventional" in role distribution just for fun. Though now that I say that, I keep thinking of the death penalty and thinking I'm not going to be able to enjoy the risk-taking I normally would... :(
Kittik said:Porygon said:In pantheon I imagine something similar.
War, Clr, Shm and 3 melee dps. Probably 3 rogs unless monks bring something important to the table.
But being pure dps with the ability to mezz is pretty op.
With this set up, where are you getting your mana regen from? Or are you just resigned to sitting and meditating after every fight?
With slowed mobs it should not be very mana intensive to heal.
You should only ever be fighting 1 at a time with maybe another mezzed.
If you get to the point where the cleric runs low, the shaman can take over while the cleric meds.
The clerics role here is to heal the tank, the shaman will take care of the dps
Vandraad said:Porygon said:In EQ1 the best group makeup was War, Clr, Shm, Brd, Mnk, Rog.
There is absolutely 0 downtime and you never stop killing.
My group had the ShadowKnight instead of the Warrior mostly because the SK could get instant aggro and keep it, allowing everyone else to go full out constantly and never pulling aggro.
I also prefer a hybrid tank for aggro, but once you pull the first mob the warrior can switch to the next at 15% or so and you'll never have aggro issues after that. Warrior discs were just so strong that it was hard to have a hybrid at times.
In real life "git 'er done" gameplay - any tank, heal, dps and some form of crowd control with 6 people who all stay at the keyboard and pay attention like 75% of the time. I was in Mistmoore th eother nightand my group fo like an hour was PAL, RNG, RNG, ROG, CLR, CLR. We made it work just fine.
If it was me thinking of 5 friends and myself, thinking of a single group capable of doing as much single group content as possible - WAR, CLR, ROG, BRD, WIZ, ENC.
For pure fun while doing single group content - WIZ, ENC, 4x MAG, or as good: ENC, NEC, 4x WIZ.
Zoltar said: I don't know... Shaman and Cleric seem to go really well together. The shaman can focus on support and DPS while keeping HOT's on the tank. Based on everything we've seen so far, I would absolutely run with 2 healers.
Do not confuse things with EQ1. In Pantheon Shamans are just as much a Healer as the Cleric is, and Clerics are just as much Support as the Shaman is. And the same applies to Druids. All 3 are designed to be main Healers as their primary function with Support and Utility being secondary functions to either compliment the CC/Support class or allow for some support utility when your group can't find a pure cc/support.
Porygon said: With slowed mobs it should not be very mana intensive to heal. If you get to the point where the cleric runs low, the shaman can take over while the cleric meds. The clerics role here is to heal the tank, the shaman will take care of the dps
None of the Healer classes are DPS in any way. Just because they may have some damage abilities they are not going to do much more than a small fraction of the dps that a true DPS class would. Their damage abilities will fall into the utility or support parts of their kits.
With all that said, Pantheon is going to be balanced so that 1 healer can keep a group healed in normal circumstances and it will not be usual for 2 pure healers to be needed in a group outside multi-group (ie Raid) content. One of those Healers would be bored, wasting mana on damage abilities not needing to heal, and doing very minor dps. It will almost always be more normal to use an actual dps in that spot than a second healer.
This has been confirmed by Chris 'Joppa' Perkins that all 3 of these healers should be able to adequetly keep a group healed even if their kits are designed to bring a different style of healing (source: https://youtu.be/4vebn1AN6KY?t=671 )
Any synergy that may appear between Healers will likely only be needed or useful in multi-group raid content. Stacking healers in a 1 group setting will just be overkill on healing and just means you are sacrificing dps in order to make your healers lives boring.
Your optimal group will almost always be: Tank, Healer, Dps, Dps, Dps, CC/Support. (The Quadrinity as VR refers to it).
Right now you have 3 options for Tank (Warrior, Paladin, Dire Lord), 3 options for Healer (Cleric, Druid, Shaman), 5 options for dps (Monk, Rogue, Ranger, Wizard, Summoner), and 1 option for CC/Support (Enchanter). Joppa has said he is pretty confident Bard will also be ready for launch and will fill the Crowd Control/Support. (source: https://youtu.be/4vebn1AN6KY?t=129 )
Porygon has already brought up the point that with some of the other classes having CC type abilities this seems to invalidate the need for the Enchanter or Bard in the group, so we will need to wait and see how VR decides to balance this kind of thing so that the CC/Support class is truely required.
GoofyWarriorGuy said:Zoltar said: I don't know... Shaman and Cleric seem to go really well together. The shaman can focus on support and DPS while keeping HOT's on the tank. Based on everything we've seen so far, I would absolutely run with 2 healers.
Do not confuse things with EQ1. In Pantheon Shamans are just as much a Healer as the Cleric is, and Clerics are just as much Support as the Shaman is. And the same applies to Druids. All 3 are designed to be main Healers as their primary function with Support and Utility being secondary functions to either compliment the CC/Support class or allow for some support utility when your group can't find a pure cc/support.
Porygon said: With slowed mobs it should not be very mana intensive to heal. If you get to the point where the cleric runs low, the shaman can take over while the cleric meds. The clerics role here is to heal the tank, the shaman will take care of the dps
None of the Healer classes are DPS in any way. Just because they may have some damage abilities they are not going to do much more than a small fraction of the dps that a true DPS class would. Their damage abilities will fall into the utility or support parts of their kits.
With all that said, Pantheon is going to be balanced so that 1 healer can keep a group healed in normal circumstances and it will not be usual for 2 pure healers to be needed in a group outside multi-group (ie Raid) content. One of those Healers would be bored, wasting mana on damage abilities not needing to heal, and doing very minor dps. It will almost always be more normal to use an actual dps in that spot than a second healer.
This has been confirmed by Chris 'Joppa' Perkins that all 3 of these healers should be able to adequetly keep a group healed even if their kits are designed to bring a different style of healing (source: https://youtu.be/4vebn1AN6KY?t=671 )
Any synergy that may appear between Healers will likely only be needed or useful in multi-group raid content. Stacking healers in a 1 group setting will just be overkill on healing and just means you are sacrificing dps in order to make your healers lives boring.
Your optimal group will almost always be: Tank, Healer, Dps, Dps, Dps, CC/Support. (The Quadrinity as VR refers to it).
Right now you have 3 options for Tank (Warrior, Paladin, Dire Lord), 3 options for Healer (Cleric, Druid, Shaman), 5 options for dps (Monk, Rogue, Ranger, Wizard, Summoner), and 1 option for CC/Support (Enchanter). Joppa has said he is pretty confident Bard will also be ready for launch and will fill the Crowd Control/Support. (source: https://youtu.be/4vebn1AN6KY?t=129 )
Porygon has already brought up the point that with some of the other classes having CC type abilities this seems to invalidate the need for the Enchanter or Bard in the group, so we will need to wait and see how VR decides to balance this kind of thing so that the CC/Support class is truely required.
Your forgetting that the enchanter can do this and not sacral ice much other than mana regen, and a slight bit of dps as for the other classes that form this kind of cc sacrifice pretty much everything to keep it cced either it be rooted stunned or mezzed, so enchanter to me is essential plus when they can keep nuking to the mana regen going that could also lead to him keeping the healer healing to keep your grp alive by itself