Cant decide on 3 box with Shadowknight

[Tolior]

Originally Posted by Krand

The zerker needs attention to get good dps in a similar way to a rogue.

I put all fast re-use stuff on one hotkey and just hit it every 12-15 seconds. Yeah I lose frenzy but its probably 90% of my 'whack-a-mole' DPS. No way you could do that with a Rogue that isn't backstabbing every 4 seconds. Rogue is actually really similar to the APM of a Wizard, it takes five times the keypressing and way more attention to hit 90%, if I can even do that with the 3 nuke hotkeys that I have to use for boxing.

Originally Posted by Krand

mobs moving really is annoying as you instantly lose a lot of dps from a zerker.

Set an audio trigger and it's no problem. You lose more hitting the mob from the front, which is nowhere near what a Wiz would lose by being late on a tab-over, missing a fizzle, not managing GoM procs or the tank loses swinging at the air because your ethereal twincast.

[Krand]

Originally Posted by Slein Jinn

Just make mental note of who doesn't parse to validate their impressions and move on.

/yawn - just because I don't need to post parses doesn't disprove. Simply timing average clearance of areas over a number of hours easily proves it.

[Kodaji]

I could be wrong, but I think he was actually referring to Tol and telling you to mentally note him, not commenting on you. Not at all sure how a Wizard would be a harder box than a zerker

[Slein Jinn]

Originally Posted by Kodaji

I could be wrong, but I think he was actually referring to Tol and telling you to mentally note him, not commenting on you. Not at all sure how a Wizard would be a harder box than a zerker

This one's smurt.

[Krand]

I never said I was smart

[Moederneuker]

i can't comment completely here as i dont technically "box" my toons, they all have their own computers, and if i dont feel like loading the 4th computeru p i just box the bard on a/f and melody behind my ranger and 90% of the time never even hit attack with it(bard).

however i will both 3box and 4box depending, and my buddy will 3box or 4box but almost entirely differently. being that we group together this works out nicely as my 3 preferred toons and his 3 preferred together make awesome fullgroup.

that being said: i play sk/dru/ranger/bard, he plays sk/shm/bard/misc(wiz,nec, or rarely:clr) seems to me that because of his preferred 3, he finds it difficult to choose a 4th being that he does actually "box" them vs my hydraing, and as an actual box melees are far mroe difficult due to positioning, so he leans toward casters though with the shm there isnt an added bonus to it. myself, i use druid because of ports and emergency heals (and made her before mercs, but mercs can get stupid so emergency heals are nice) but my main dps comes from sk/rgr/brd with only some from druid even though druid only ehals in emergencies or when we combine groups and she becomes main healer.

to answer the short question about slows however, we play quite differnetly despite our brains functioning quite the same logically in how we go about quests, etc, and dont have to communicate much to get our intentions across. he will play far more melee-heavy on his sk vs casting than i do which may be because of hte long-term boxing of a shaman, and regularly slows every mob bc of focus on shm. myself, though im just as heavy on melee, i focus a lot more on spellcasting than he does and maximize dps via combinations of melee/casting on both sk and ranger rather than either being just autoattack, and conversely i lean away from ever slowing mobs in group-game. last time i did was during UF when i first got my rgr's 1.0 done and wanted to play around with it and imbued-fero aa for guaranteed slowprocs. however the novelty of bothering with that and losing dps etc in the process wore off quickly and i've since never bothered to slow a group mob be it trash or named or with rgr 1.0 or with bard. my personal feeling on teh subject and quite often parsed over especially as all know from swarming, is that slows on a named in group game do not in any way improve your chances of surviving a mob due to the presumed (hopefully) use of sk epic and visage crimson glyph 7ths etc that make the added dps and self-healing from ripostes just as efficient if not moreso for both survival and kill-speed, and moreso when taken itno acct the time taken to put forth the effort to slow said mob rather than add to dps (far as procs etc go) or heal or dps (in the case of shm) or for bards interrupting the adps melody to get slowsong to land. some have argued with this but i invite you to parse it and see.

beyond that, back to original topic: agreed with slein that the combination of a shm and wizard is a waste due to shm's melee adps vs wiz's casting dps. if a healer is wanted other than a merc, with a wizard you're best off with a druid so taht they can have adps for casters via various means, the ports here dont really matter as you have wiz for that though some are diferent zones for a given expac depending on class. having a porter of either class is quite handy for boxing though whichever you choose or why. a 3rd box with sk/shm honestly i'd go with a bard, and then just use 2 rogue mercs and a healer to make use of all the tools you ahve available with that setup.

on a side note, for those that do box melees, i go about this 2 ways for positioning, 1: dynamic camp- keeping melee on a/f makes it easy to position in most cases by moving sk to opposite side of mob then turning around, thereby placing mob between sk and the melee at all times. being that both are meleeing in opposite directions i dont find a problem with push here, though if im also using druid and using nuked with a push at times i have to back sk up a step to keep mob between. 2. stationary camp- just pull the mob itno the right place, if have melee and any casters set facing the same location everytime its not hard to position the mob in teh right place on each pull, and if it's not quite right can juggle with unbridled strike and/or HA

[Massis]

Originally Posted by Moederneuker

on a side note, for those that do box melees, i go about this 2 ways for positioning, 1: dynamic camp- keeping melee on a/f makes it easy to position in most cases by moving sk to opposite side of mob then turning around, thereby placing mob between sk and the melee at all times. being that both are meleeing in opposite directions i dont find a problem with push here, though if im also using druid and using nuked with a push at times i have to back sk up a step to keep mob between.

THis is good shit here. I honestly didn't ever thinking about doing this but it makes perfect sense. I don't box a melee anymore, well rarely, but I will have to remember this.

[Sheitan]

Originally Posted by Massis

THis is good shit here. I honestly didn't ever thinking about doing this but it makes perfect sense.

i always took pride in keeping my pulls at a specific loc and facing my mobs to present a proper target for pets/melee types. it shows consistency, professionalism, and respect to your group. not to mention looting was less of a chore.

[Deccado]

Originally Posted by Sheitan

i always took pride in keeping my pulls at a specific loc and facing my mobs to present a proper target for pets/melee types. it shows consistency, professionalism, and respect to your group. not to mention looting was less of a chore.

I did this before one of my RL best friends came back - he played an ench. That shot everything out the window, which at first annoyed the shit out of me since I'm a perfectionist, but then worked out worlds better. We'd both pull, train ourselves, I'd go crazy on aggro, and he'd charm and mez. In a full group with raid DPS (UF was current), we'd have half of a zone or more locked down.

[Twinkeltoes]

I'm actually thinking about swapping out my mage to my ranger to box with my sk and bard. If i'm not focusing on chain nuking with my mage the passive dps and a couple nukes/dots from ranger seems better w/ bard songs.
They have about equal AA count, and are on the same account and I don't feel like paying money to swap one of them on a new account.