3 Boxing Advice

[Randle]

I'm more or less new to boxing at all, but with a friend of mine at law school I've taken on his mage to compliment my shaman on my 2nd box from time to time. My question is, between the following choices, what are your opinions? My main is an 85 Shaman, his is an 85 Magician, and with a tank/cleric merc I can two box just fine, but lately I've considered adding a third or fourth box to the lineup. I have the following choices (each on their own accounts): Wizard, Bard, or Ranger. Each would need a bit of loving but assuming that each was 85 with around T3 SoD equipment, what would your thoughts be?

[Arslayn]

The Bard for pulling would be my choice he can pull then just stand back twisting songs that enhance the Shaman and Mage spell casting and the few melee things for the pet to tank or even the merc.
@nd would be the ranger due to Harmonious arrow he can also be used as a puller that way, and if the merc tanks primarily he will be decent DPS and both him and the bard offer tracking thou ranger is far superior in that regard.

[dohrian]

I would choose the ranger, very easy pulling with HA.

[Scalia]

One thing to keep in mind is that HA is a relatively new ability, at least compared to Bards' long history of pulling. Given EQ's history, I wouldn't be surprised if HA was suddenly deemed OP and nerfed in some fashion.

[Brohg]

They did nerf it already. It's no more likely to be nerfed at this point than bard abilities.

[Whitman]

I'd say that a ranger demands a lot of attention to be useful for your setup; in a group with three players, a ranger would rock, but as a box, I think a bard might be the better choice, since the bard can boost the others without incessant button-mashing.

[Konazen]

I play Shaman (83 atm w/ merc tank), Mage (83 atm w/ merc cleric) and Ranger (85 raid geared w/ merc cleric). There's almost nothing I can't do. Very high dps 3 box with all the pets and the Ranger being Lynxed. Also, very easy to 3 box as mage and Shaman are 1 hot key operations with spam nukage to taste, which leaves me free to melee and CC/pull with ranger. Merc tank is a little annoying with root parking, but he makes up for it with AoE taunt. I set one cleric merc on reactive and the other on balanced, works great...

Summary: I highly recommend Shaman w/ the other two. With those 3 you will have the optimal experience fetching group. The only achilles heal would be highly packed areas as you are at the mercy of harm arrow's slow refresh and the ranger/merc tank's tanking abilities for the really big game of end group zone named. Also, don't underestimate the Ranger's pulling ability with snare/vinelash with Mage to CoH, a very potent tool indeed.