The Spirit Realm

Hey all,

Current Trio: 75 enc, 75 clr, 75 Sk. I tried taking on BMK but the fights took so long due to lack of dps.
Planned Trio: Necro, Shaman, Warrior

Reasons why: My guild is currently farming anguish and breaking into demi and we really need a good warrior MT, I also am getting tired of fights taking so long in group content due to lack of dps from enc/clr.

Pro's to current Trio:
Great CC
Strong Heals
96% Rez
Easy aggro control with Sk

Con's to current Trio:
Lack of DPS
Sk will not cut it as raid MT in later content (without a whole lot of work)

Pro's to planned Trio:
Strong DPS
Warrior will do well as raid MT

Con's to planned Trio
Not as good CC (have to rely on VP and necro root/snare)
Not as strong heals (may be wrong on this, I hear Shaman HoTs can keep a tank up quite easy)
90% rez only (but Necro can FD if shit hits the fan, cleric would have had to run back)

I am just wondering if the new trio would be better then just simply re-rolling my Sk into a warrior. I am thinking later expansions as well, the current trio doesn't seem to be able to handle places like BMK, HoS, etc. Would the planned trio be any better?

If there is another trio that I should be considering, feel free to pipe in, my girlfriend plays a Bard (so please no bards in the trio hehe).

Your proposed trio is quite strong. I don't know if I would have the patience to build three new characters to 75.

The necro will give you 93% rez, btw, although with the essence emerald requirement it is of course more costly.

If your guild doesn't have a warrior, you may need to build one. Still -- wouldn't it be easier to recruit one? Alternately, if you started a new warrior on the enchanter account, it would be fairly easy for the cleric and SK to PL the new toon up to 60 or 65 pretty quickly; then you could do the grunt work to level it up from there.

my hubs is necro we group with a war friend often, even with the 3 of us we can do some serious stuff. necro can pull, rez, dps like crazy, snare, even mez/charm/slow certain mobs. Duo the two of us are pretty dangerous... my debuffs /heals/added dps and such make it a crazy combo.

If you are shooting to do hard content with your trio plus the bard, I don't think a shaman could handle the healing by himself... I could be wrong, but these new mobs are hitting WAY harder than I can keep up with (granted my gear isn't very good). So far I like my SK / SHM / CLR combo, the cleric is only 69 and I was able to solo a mob in Fortress Mechanotus (FULLY buffed of course) without help- just some wandering trash, the named would eat me alive really really fast.

With Pally/Shammy/Necro I can take out some pretty damn big stuff... if you gear and AA your shaman accordingly they make a great healer, great ramp tank, and a fair amount of DPS. If you feel you "need" a cleric, chances are your taking on stuff to big for your britches (IE takes to long to kill or to hard to kill for efficent XPing) or you want the hard gear mobs. War/Shm/Nec/Clr would be a good option tho.

The way I see it...

If you want a raid tank, then warrior is definitely the way to go. I will say though, that when grouping I usually have an easier time healing a shadowknight compared to an equivalently geared warrior. Shadowknights have a lot of self-healing abilities that can make a big difference, mostly including lifetaps and epic clicks.

If you can't handle HoS with your current group, you certainly won't be able to with the new group. That sounds mostly like a gearing issue to me.

What you're gaining:

a ton of dps
a raid tank

What you're losing:

healing, from both the shadowknight and the cleric
crowd control (mez) from the enchanter, pulling with the necro might be a little more tricky than pulling with the SK

I think if I were you, and you really need a raid tank, I'd just keep the cleric and enchanter and level a warrior. There's a reason they call it the "holy trinity"

I question the choice of necro for dps. Necros are extremely powerful mains, but without constant attention to pet, FD, clickies, maintaining dots... there are better choices. You already have a cle you can load to rez when that's neccessary, and the bard will be pulling. I think if you're determined to 3box, you should pick a dps class with less attention required. Wizard, berserker. Wizards are more powerful "out of the box", but berserkers will do better in the long run if you have low downtime via chain pulls. Chain pulls mean kill-while-pulling-next, kill-next-while-pulling-third, not kill - pull - kill - pull. A wizard will far outperform any melee in the second scenario due to med time.

in fast paced groups i'd agree, a melee is more effective than a caster for dps.