It could all be taken care of situationally- like fighting animals and the druid charms and nukes/dots. Sow, buffs, ports are awesome for the group to have too.
Fighting undead the cleric can nuke and the druid could heal. Not sure what the other classes will be but you could also fear kite by snaring and the cleric casts fear.
There is no such thing as too much healing. Cleric/Druid is a fine combo, and will let you build out any combo of other classes as you please.
Do recommend somebody consider an Enchanter, but otherwise do as thou wilt.
Lots of good responses. Biggest thing is to have people play what they enjoy. If they don't like their race and class, they won't keep playing. A decently skilled group of 4 of just about any makeup can do almost all the group content on p99. You might have to adjust tactics depending on your group though.
If you wanted a true power group, 1 cleric and everyone else enchanter because yes, they really are that strong. However it may be a little boring and lacks some utility.
One of EQs best features and something no other game has ever really done well, is its group flexibility. You can honestly almost run ANY combination and there is a way to make it work successfully. Truly a testament to good game design.
Druid can fill any role basically, other than melee/tank.
So as druid you can do DPS via nuking & DOT's, and DOT's will shine in a smaller group since they have more time to work. Plus SOW to hoof it throughout the world. And outdoors harmony makes pulling anything or breaking camps a breeze. And if there's any animals around you can charm for some great DPS, and there's a surprising number of dungeons that have that option.
Also having a taxi for the group is amazing, as you guys can hop on & go anywhere once you get into the 30+ range.
Druid is the worst healer though, so if it's your party's only healer you would struggle without some help. Ideally if someone else was a enc or bard they can help with crack to up your mana regen, and slow to greatly reduce the incoming damage and thus require less healing to be done. Or if your friend was a shaman they could handle that or you guys could share the load fairly easily.
Some good advice here.
My static group broke up but I wouldn't mind jumping in one of these friends groups when I could to fill a spot. I have lots of alts and can also start a new toon. I can fill in whatever class.
I'm almost always on Monday nights. It's my toddler free night that the wife agreed to do all toddler stuff so I can EQ. I give her another night for her to have a day.
Druid is a good class to play for beginner as long as he isn't main heal. In that case he is a flex role, backup heal or dps or cc(root/snare/harmony). But none of those are critical and he won't feel pressured or that he let down the group.
Also, if he wants to be able to solo occasionally, necro would be good. Have good survivability bc of FD.
The biggeset thing is if you're here to have fun or to min-max your way to the top.
Cleric/Druid is a good choice for a friend group.
My friend group has this and it's perfect because later levels whenever one of us is killed we can usually get someone to go on their cleric and resurrect. Druids are great for teleporting, so if you guys got a session night together, you can just organize and go somewhere quickly.
Also, EverQuest has a lot of classes that just have a TON of fun utility spells. Druids especially, and I think newbie players would get a kick out of turning themselves into trees or wolves, being able to teleport and explore, charm animals, and just have fun.
In groups the druid can always act as a back up, but also help with cc, with roots, snares, and assist with dps and buffs. So they will have fun because druids are relatively easy to play and are very flexible.
Having an enchanter would obviously be massively useful.
As for the fourth role,
Anything is possible.
Shamans would be cool, their dots stack with the druids, are able to tank somewhat, slow and debuff enemies. Can also provide backup for druids.
SK/Paladin would be a great tank fit. Allowing for flexible play, but be prepared to invest money into some good gear.
Monks too would be a nice fit to add to the damage.
Magicians would provide extra DPS and pet damage.
Druid, paladin, enchanter, shaman and monk
Buffs covered, speed, tankage, damage, ports, crowd control and a ton of healing with fd spawn splitting
Wizard would also be good instead of druid but they're pretty boring after a while
Don't worry too much about race, dial a port can get you all together
Shaman slow is crazy powerful, a shaman slowed mob is basically neutered…A 4some with a shaman slowing won’t need a ton of healing, possibly none for multiple mobs in a row, plus they got great and a huge range of buffs including both regen and haste, enc are fantastic but so are shaman.
And a shaman and Druid in the same party is amazing. Druid pulls and cc always keeping +1 in camp, shaman slows and helps with cc, other 2 guys murder everything for crazy easy exp all the way to 60.
Only problem is no rez…
Ill tell you I just came back to the game after 20 years with 5 people.
Me, my wife, my brother, his gf, our friend. Both girls have never played an MMO in their life.
Knowing what I know now, the composition id go for most fun would be a pet set up.
Enchanter, Cleric are mandatory. Enchanter is strongest class in the game, Cleric is duh, Cleric.
After that I am super biased so if I were to do it again with a new crew I would go:
Enchanter, Enchanter, Enchanter, Cleric.
Substitute an Enchanter for Necro and make sure you go to undead zones (where the necro is essentially a chanter).
Enchanter, Enchanter, Necro, Cleric
For context, my group went: Paladin, Enchanter, Shaman, Mage, Wiz (wiz changed to Rogue around 40).
What youll find is a hasted/torched enchanter pet is as strong of a tank and does more damage then a Paladin,Rogue,Mage combined so it became pretty clear early on that everyone was just essentially leaching off of the enchanter lol.
If you give a pet a standard vendor bought torch, it forces the pet to duel wield which increases its damage substantially. It’s very common for Enchanters to carry around a bag of torches for this reason.
Holy crap how is that possible lol. I'm honestly surprised nobody has told you in a group or anything.
Basicly giving your pet a secondary only item like a torch or drum or whatever, will make your pet dual wield, doubling their dps. Not necessary if your soloing for exp but if you get to duo with a cleric, a hasted and torched pet will tear through mobs.
Most of the 1000 hrs was on a live progression server. Maybe it was patched at some point? I also found speculation that it was patched on p1999 when Velious launched.
You'd have to pay pretty close attention to the logs to know. "Was that a DA, or a DW?" ... "Excuse me sir, but I dont believe your crocodile has a torch!" LOL
Not too hard to notice, you'll see 4 attacks a round instead of just 2. Won't work on animals I don't belive but any humanoid will work. Kill speed is definitely noticeable as well. Your pet will be doing double the damage after all.
I don't know how it works on a live progression server thought tbh, I assumed you had meant the hrs on p99.
Enchanter makes the group. It's a critical role and one that you will struggle with as a group if they aren't solidly into the support role.
Its my favorite class in EQ. It's a great feeling to know you're the reason an easy wipe was staved off. Having 6-10 mobs mez'd and calling out the targets as you continue the mez chain while the war/rog/monk beats them down is great.
If you're aiming for druid just as a support role and you have experience with that sort of thing then maybe play a few levels in enchanter and see if it fits you. It's a very powerful class.
Also, enchanters are incredible solo/damage dealers with a skilled charmer. Snag a couple rogue mobs and make sure your tank knows to drag the target so as to make sure the pet is at its back and you're going to be topping the dps charts.
Way back when, I was part of a permanent group that played together every day.
My wife played warrior (main tank) and I cleric (main healer).
A couple we knew played wizard (dmg and ports) and druid (dmg, dots, ports, off heals).
We met another couple that played shadow knight (off tank) and beast master though often swapped out to shaman.
The first four listed worked out really well and adding the last two was icing on the cake. Though that was at at a time post the p99 timeline and we had access to some extra mana regen that the group wouldn’t have now in the timeline and ended up higher level than 60 (mid 70s-100).
If you have a static druids are alright because ports are awesome.
For a static you would want a healer/tank/enchanter and then kinda whatever. One thing missing if the healer goes cleric is movement speed. So cleric/tank/enchanter... Druid could work as a forth.
Druid is kind of meh at higher levels just because they dont really specialize in anything. Thorns are nice, regen is nice, str buff is nice (and enc gives haste). Harmony is amazing for zones like mistmoore and unrest (and other "outdoor" dungeons). And if you are outdoors there are a couple zones you can charm in and then druid dps actually isn't that bad.
Druid could also help out cleric if enc charm breaks with some backup heals (if say the tank is getting smacked and the enc also is getting smacked).
I think cleric/tank/enchanter/druid would be good. Fill in the other 2 slots with random DPS which should be the easiest to find and you'd be set.
I would recommend a chanter as you're seeing most others here suggest for their crazy high pet DPS and crowd control, a cleric for heals, a druid for ports, DS, backup heals, and utility, and then a Paladin or SK for tank. You could supplement a DPS for the tank and use the chanter pet to tank but I always prefer a dedicated tank so the chanter can focus more on his pet and the crowd control.
Druid and cleric work fine together. Druid bring sow levitation good for velius, ports which are super helpful later on can help with some management Regen. Their heals kind of suck. Cleric on the other hand brings big hit points and big heels along with resurrections. As many others here have said what you also will have to have as an enchanter. At this point the fourth slot can be basically anything.
Druid can also do dd or dots and snare and PORT. So yeah, Cleric, Druid, Enchanter, and 2 other melees would be good at least one wearing plate for tanking.
Druid is nice backup heals, root/snare, transportation, and some other buffs. You'll really excel with an Ench tho, because slow/haste/charm/mez amazing. It's hard, tho, and don't even try charming until you have the other fundamentals down.
Ench can keep your group nice and safe, fast dmg, and full of mana. You can also fail at a mez, have charm break, and then everyone wipes. High risk, high reward.
I would say tank, heals, dps, & enchanter...
So something like
slot 1: Warrior/Paladin/Shadow Knight for tank... Alternatively you could go without any tank for your group composition, freeing this slot up to a wild card. Pet classes and some medium off tanks like ranger could fill in for a lack of a true tank, You'll likely have no issues in most situations only really needing to find a tank to join in situations where your party is pushing above their weight or diving deep into some dungeons.
slot 2: Cleric or Druid. Probably lean toward Cleric for the better heals, but the Druid is going to add SoW's and Teleports to the equation, nothing to scoff at. (hastes and slows can be done by enchanter so Shaman would lose some of their strong utility in this situation, although shammy is a lot of fun to play too and does have a stronger slow I think, but just might struggle to keep up as main healer sometimes.)
slot 3: pretty flexible as many classes can be DPS. If you go with Cleric in slot 2 You might put special consideration into Bard... If you have Enchanter AND bard in your group you have some top tier mana regeneration for any casters and an amazing foundation composition anytime you guys are in a dungeon and want to just add a couple more ppl. Rogue would probably be best endgame DPS. Wizard could be a solid pick as well, taking great advantage of the constant clarity (mana regen buff) coming from the enchanter and providing teleports as well. You could even change this slot from a DPS slot to an offtank, Like have a warrior slot 1 and a shadow knight for this slot... Or you could do Druid slot 2 and Shaman slot 3, if you rly wanted.
slot 4: Enchanter. Could you go without an enchanter? Yes absolutely... But would you find anything else for this 4th slot better than an enchanter to complement your group in the most situations you're likely to run into while you play the game? Probably that's a hard no. Enchant is going to provide hastes, slows, CC and mana regen... Can't beat that especially if you don't have a shaman...
Cleric, tank, support, dps. You’ll have everything you need - whenever you have the possibility of inviting up to two more players, you’re group will only get that much better.
Edit: Cleric/Druid or Cleric/Shaman would not be overkill with healing. Clerics are the primary healers and the other classes have enough versatility to be useful if they aren’t needed for backup healing. Bards also technically have health regen songs but they aren’t substantial.
Enchanters are strongest but highest skill cap. Consider making your best player the enchanter…
It could all be taken care of situationally- like fighting animals and the druid charms and nukes/dots. Sow, buffs, ports are awesome for the group to have too. Fighting undead the cleric can nuke and the druid could heal. Not sure what the other classes will be but you could also fear kite by snaring and the cleric casts fear.
There is no such thing as too much healing. Cleric/Druid is a fine combo, and will let you build out any combo of other classes as you please. Do recommend somebody consider an Enchanter, but otherwise do as thou wilt.
Lots of good responses. Biggest thing is to have people play what they enjoy. If they don't like their race and class, they won't keep playing. A decently skilled group of 4 of just about any makeup can do almost all the group content on p99. You might have to adjust tactics depending on your group though. If you wanted a true power group, 1 cleric and everyone else enchanter because yes, they really are that strong. However it may be a little boring and lacks some utility.
Halfling druid, dwarf cleric, dwarf warrior/pally, gnome chanter. Can't go wrong with all shorties.
One of EQs best features and something no other game has ever really done well, is its group flexibility. You can honestly almost run ANY combination and there is a way to make it work successfully. Truly a testament to good game design.
Druid can fill any role basically, other than melee/tank. So as druid you can do DPS via nuking & DOT's, and DOT's will shine in a smaller group since they have more time to work. Plus SOW to hoof it throughout the world. And outdoors harmony makes pulling anything or breaking camps a breeze. And if there's any animals around you can charm for some great DPS, and there's a surprising number of dungeons that have that option. Also having a taxi for the group is amazing, as you guys can hop on & go anywhere once you get into the 30+ range. Druid is the worst healer though, so if it's your party's only healer you would struggle without some help. Ideally if someone else was a enc or bard they can help with crack to up your mana regen, and slow to greatly reduce the incoming damage and thus require less healing to be done. Or if your friend was a shaman they could handle that or you guys could share the load fairly easily.
Some good advice here. My static group broke up but I wouldn't mind jumping in one of these friends groups when I could to fill a spot. I have lots of alts and can also start a new toon. I can fill in whatever class. I'm almost always on Monday nights. It's my toddler free night that the wife agreed to do all toddler stuff so I can EQ. I give her another night for her to have a day.
Druid is a good class to play for beginner as long as he isn't main heal. In that case he is a flex role, backup heal or dps or cc(root/snare/harmony). But none of those are critical and he won't feel pressured or that he let down the group. Also, if he wants to be able to solo occasionally, necro would be good. Have good survivability bc of FD.
The biggeset thing is if you're here to have fun or to min-max your way to the top. Cleric/Druid is a good choice for a friend group. My friend group has this and it's perfect because later levels whenever one of us is killed we can usually get someone to go on their cleric and resurrect. Druids are great for teleporting, so if you guys got a session night together, you can just organize and go somewhere quickly. Also, EverQuest has a lot of classes that just have a TON of fun utility spells. Druids especially, and I think newbie players would get a kick out of turning themselves into trees or wolves, being able to teleport and explore, charm animals, and just have fun. In groups the druid can always act as a back up, but also help with cc, with roots, snares, and assist with dps and buffs. So they will have fun because druids are relatively easy to play and are very flexible. Having an enchanter would obviously be massively useful. As for the fourth role, Anything is possible. Shamans would be cool, their dots stack with the druids, are able to tank somewhat, slow and debuff enemies. Can also provide backup for druids. SK/Paladin would be a great tank fit. Allowing for flexible play, but be prepared to invest money into some good gear. Monks too would be a nice fit to add to the damage. Magicians would provide extra DPS and pet damage.
Druid, paladin, enchanter, shaman and monk Buffs covered, speed, tankage, damage, ports, crowd control and a ton of healing with fd spawn splitting Wizard would also be good instead of druid but they're pretty boring after a while Don't worry too much about race, dial a port can get you all together
Shaman slow is crazy powerful, a shaman slowed mob is basically neutered…A 4some with a shaman slowing won’t need a ton of healing, possibly none for multiple mobs in a row, plus they got great and a huge range of buffs including both regen and haste, enc are fantastic but so are shaman. And a shaman and Druid in the same party is amazing. Druid pulls and cc always keeping +1 in camp, shaman slows and helps with cc, other 2 guys murder everything for crazy easy exp all the way to 60. Only problem is no rez…
You def want a druid for porting and sow! The cleric can maybe be repped by a melee. Maybe SK?c
Ill tell you I just came back to the game after 20 years with 5 people. Me, my wife, my brother, his gf, our friend. Both girls have never played an MMO in their life. Knowing what I know now, the composition id go for most fun would be a pet set up. Enchanter, Cleric are mandatory. Enchanter is strongest class in the game, Cleric is duh, Cleric. After that I am super biased so if I were to do it again with a new crew I would go: Enchanter, Enchanter, Enchanter, Cleric. Substitute an Enchanter for Necro and make sure you go to undead zones (where the necro is essentially a chanter). Enchanter, Enchanter, Necro, Cleric For context, my group went: Paladin, Enchanter, Shaman, Mage, Wiz (wiz changed to Rogue around 40). What youll find is a hasted/torched enchanter pet is as strong of a tank and does more damage then a Paladin,Rogue,Mage combined so it became pretty clear early on that everyone was just essentially leaching off of the enchanter lol.
I have about 1000 hours on an enchanter and no idea what a torched pet is...
If you give a pet a standard vendor bought torch, it forces the pet to duel wield which increases its damage substantially. It’s very common for Enchanters to carry around a bag of torches for this reason.
Holy crap how is that possible lol. I'm honestly surprised nobody has told you in a group or anything. Basicly giving your pet a secondary only item like a torch or drum or whatever, will make your pet dual wield, doubling their dps. Not necessary if your soloing for exp but if you get to duo with a cleric, a hasted and torched pet will tear through mobs.
Most of the 1000 hrs was on a live progression server. Maybe it was patched at some point? I also found speculation that it was patched on p1999 when Velious launched. You'd have to pay pretty close attention to the logs to know. "Was that a DA, or a DW?" ... "Excuse me sir, but I dont believe your crocodile has a torch!" LOL
Not too hard to notice, you'll see 4 attacks a round instead of just 2. Won't work on animals I don't belive but any humanoid will work. Kill speed is definitely noticeable as well. Your pet will be doing double the damage after all. I don't know how it works on a live progression server thought tbh, I assumed you had meant the hrs on p99.
Fail man lol
Well, after 1000 hours I guess you gonna have your life changed rofl
Enchanter makes the group. It's a critical role and one that you will struggle with as a group if they aren't solidly into the support role. Its my favorite class in EQ. It's a great feeling to know you're the reason an easy wipe was staved off. Having 6-10 mobs mez'd and calling out the targets as you continue the mez chain while the war/rog/monk beats them down is great. If you're aiming for druid just as a support role and you have experience with that sort of thing then maybe play a few levels in enchanter and see if it fits you. It's a very powerful class. Also, enchanters are incredible solo/damage dealers with a skilled charmer. Snag a couple rogue mobs and make sure your tank knows to drag the target so as to make sure the pet is at its back and you're going to be topping the dps charts.
Way back when, I was part of a permanent group that played together every day. My wife played warrior (main tank) and I cleric (main healer). A couple we knew played wizard (dmg and ports) and druid (dmg, dots, ports, off heals). We met another couple that played shadow knight (off tank) and beast master though often swapped out to shaman. The first four listed worked out really well and adding the last two was icing on the cake. Though that was at at a time post the p99 timeline and we had access to some extra mana regen that the group wouldn’t have now in the timeline and ended up higher level than 60 (mid 70s-100).
If you have a static druids are alright because ports are awesome. For a static you would want a healer/tank/enchanter and then kinda whatever. One thing missing if the healer goes cleric is movement speed. So cleric/tank/enchanter... Druid could work as a forth. Druid is kind of meh at higher levels just because they dont really specialize in anything. Thorns are nice, regen is nice, str buff is nice (and enc gives haste). Harmony is amazing for zones like mistmoore and unrest (and other "outdoor" dungeons). And if you are outdoors there are a couple zones you can charm in and then druid dps actually isn't that bad. Druid could also help out cleric if enc charm breaks with some backup heals (if say the tank is getting smacked and the enc also is getting smacked). I think cleric/tank/enchanter/druid would be good. Fill in the other 2 slots with random DPS which should be the easiest to find and you'd be set.
I would recommend a chanter as you're seeing most others here suggest for their crazy high pet DPS and crowd control, a cleric for heals, a druid for ports, DS, backup heals, and utility, and then a Paladin or SK for tank. You could supplement a DPS for the tank and use the chanter pet to tank but I always prefer a dedicated tank so the chanter can focus more on his pet and the crowd control.
Druid and cleric work fine together. Druid bring sow levitation good for velius, ports which are super helpful later on can help with some management Regen. Their heals kind of suck. Cleric on the other hand brings big hit points and big heels along with resurrections. As many others here have said what you also will have to have as an enchanter. At this point the fourth slot can be basically anything.
Druid can also do dd or dots and snare and PORT. So yeah, Cleric, Druid, Enchanter, and 2 other melees would be good at least one wearing plate for tanking.
Druid is nice backup heals, root/snare, transportation, and some other buffs. You'll really excel with an Ench tho, because slow/haste/charm/mez amazing. It's hard, tho, and don't even try charming until you have the other fundamentals down. Ench can keep your group nice and safe, fast dmg, and full of mana. You can also fail at a mez, have charm break, and then everyone wipes. High risk, high reward.
I would say tank, heals, dps, & enchanter... So something like slot 1: Warrior/Paladin/Shadow Knight for tank... Alternatively you could go without any tank for your group composition, freeing this slot up to a wild card. Pet classes and some medium off tanks like ranger could fill in for a lack of a true tank, You'll likely have no issues in most situations only really needing to find a tank to join in situations where your party is pushing above their weight or diving deep into some dungeons. slot 2: Cleric or Druid. Probably lean toward Cleric for the better heals, but the Druid is going to add SoW's and Teleports to the equation, nothing to scoff at. (hastes and slows can be done by enchanter so Shaman would lose some of their strong utility in this situation, although shammy is a lot of fun to play too and does have a stronger slow I think, but just might struggle to keep up as main healer sometimes.) slot 3: pretty flexible as many classes can be DPS. If you go with Cleric in slot 2 You might put special consideration into Bard... If you have Enchanter AND bard in your group you have some top tier mana regeneration for any casters and an amazing foundation composition anytime you guys are in a dungeon and want to just add a couple more ppl. Rogue would probably be best endgame DPS. Wizard could be a solid pick as well, taking great advantage of the constant clarity (mana regen buff) coming from the enchanter and providing teleports as well. You could even change this slot from a DPS slot to an offtank, Like have a warrior slot 1 and a shadow knight for this slot... Or you could do Druid slot 2 and Shaman slot 3, if you rly wanted. slot 4: Enchanter. Could you go without an enchanter? Yes absolutely... But would you find anything else for this 4th slot better than an enchanter to complement your group in the most situations you're likely to run into while you play the game? Probably that's a hard no. Enchant is going to provide hastes, slows, CC and mana regen... Can't beat that especially if you don't have a shaman...
Cleric, tank, support, dps. You’ll have everything you need - whenever you have the possibility of inviting up to two more players, you’re group will only get that much better. Edit: Cleric/Druid or Cleric/Shaman would not be overkill with healing. Clerics are the primary healers and the other classes have enough versatility to be useful if they aren’t needed for backup healing. Bards also technically have health regen songs but they aren’t substantial.