The Spirit Realm

Any plate tank should work for what you have in mind. You will be limited by healing and DPS.

Warrior DPS is pretty good compared to Knight classes, but not so good as to be a deciding factor. Also, Warriors do have better mitigation, but if the Shaman is the only healer I bet a Paladin will let you take on bigger mobs than the Warrior, as the Paladin can help with healing.

A bard can do most of the things that a Shaman likes having a Shadowknight around for, minus the tanking part. So since you love your bard, a SK doesn't make a ton of sense.

If you have a cleric available frequently the Warrior starts to make more sense as the duplicate healing of the Paladin will not be needed as much and the extra mitigation of the Warrior can really shine. But if you plan to 3-box most of the time I would lean toward the Paladin.

Boleslav

First off, thanks very much for the reply its much appreciated.

So how about if the bard got replaced by a necro? would this work better do you think? im thinking pullling with necro or pet pulling with dogdog, necro certainly doesnt lack for dps and can twitch and suplemental heal and snare etc, would this make the 3box more efficient do you think? oh and rezzes to

Thanks again for the reply and hoping to hear from you again

Bard/shm/war is my usualy hydra crew and I love it. I've made a few million in crystals and DoN cultural drops off of Nest missions with this setup and have done most of the DoD (mask) quests with the addition of a druid and a bst. To do it most efficiently, MQ2 is your friend, especially with the bard, as you can twist without having to worry about interrupts while you tab over to another toon. Set up a hotkey that activates your drum bandolier and HoS + mez to lock an add down, fire and forget mezzing (of a single target, any situation with multiple adds requires a lot of attention or more computer code than I have avaiable to me). I doubt that I'd have put this group together by design, it fell into my lap, but I don't regret it in the least. Bard snare sucks, especially if you're trying to chain pull, but with Call of the Challenge available to warriors, it's not as big an issue as it would have been in days of yore.

Mikey, as Katt pointed out, the reason to box a bard is primarily for unsurpassed single pulling and utility. If you aren't going to do a lot of exploring and dungeon crawls, then a Bard is a weak asset. However, if you want to explore and you plan on breaking difficult camps, then Bard ftw. They can also be quite useful in root/rot camps - unlike some of the more popular tanks to box with a Shaman.

A couple of points of popular wisdom I'd like to contend with, which you might find helpful from someone who regularly boxes a Shaman/Bard.

1) Bard's can tank.

Their innate avoidance and mitigation are modestly better than all the chain classes and they are modestly better at DPS than PAL/SKs. I put them on a rough par with Monks in their tanking ability and consider them roughly equal to PAL/SK in DPS. Of course this assumes that said classes are comparably geared and AA'd. They enable more content than having a chain class melee but you'll probably be limited in what you can tank until the Bard gets geared well. If you plan on having the Bard as your plate tank, then I strongly recommend that you lie, cheat, and steal to get heavy damage proc weapons. Get your Epic and add a damage proc aug. In concert, invest in Weapon Affinity AAs early. These will significantly up your melee DPS. This avenue of heavy procs and Weapon Affinity is better than Combat Fury AAs at 55 for dramatic DPS increases. Yes, Weapon Affinity AA is available at 55. The Epic alone will nearly double your song damage in melee due to the all-instruments mod and obviates the need to switch out instruments and weapons all the time. So we're talking about a single heavy damage proc weapon, your Epic with a damage proc aug and some Weapon Affinity AAs at 55 to dramatically increase DPS. When you look at it, its not that tall an order.

2) Bard's are NOT very demanding to box.

Not for me. I use /melody and hot-key macros (in game hot-key scripts, not ban-able third party automation scripts) to help. But frankly, I don't give a shit if my song twist gets interrupted while I'm casting on my Shaman during the fight. At worst, I loose a few secs of LOW DPS songs while I'm malo/slow/dotting. Big deal. When I switch back, I just restart the /melody. Not to mention that more often than not, it doesn't get interrupted and /melody is happily twisting away. The only time that boxing a bard has required any more attention on the Bard than I would have spent boxing a Ranger or Paladin, is when I had multiples in camp. In short, I have extensive experience boxing with a Ranger, Paladin, Enchanter, and Mage also and I don't spend anymore time on the Bard screen than I did on the Ranger or Paladin screen. I don't aggro kite, chant kite, or charm kite on a regular basis while boxing; I do those only in extremis. Otherwise, I root park and mez to get things back from sideways. Pull, hit auto attack, hit whatever /melody key has your damage twist of choice, switch to Shaman. Thats about the same workload I would have on any other class I've boxed.

Now, a Shaman/Bard bring all the four basic requirements of a balanced group, namely: pulling/tanking/slowing/healing. However, the Bard is weak DPS and not very resiliant as a tank. HP buffing is also weak, but the main thing this team lacks is firepower. DPS. It is also nice if you can add in better HP buffing, or ports, rez and the like, but DPS is what's most needed. An additional limitation is that this third member needs to be as bot-able as possible since you'll have to concentrate your time on the Bard and Shaman. Considering these, there are several classes that fit the bot-able DPS machine category. They are in order of sustained firepower: Mage, Wizard, Necro, Druid, Ranger, Enchanter, BL. (Please feel free to argue my rankings). Any and all of these would be viable and make life grand. The question over which of them to choose comes down to a trade off between firepower and utility/buffing. For example, Druids, BLs, Rangers, and Enchanters are not the DPS you'll get from the aforementioned Mage classes (Mage, Necro, Wiz), but you get much better utility and buffing from them in exchange. I've noticed the point of departure between those who choose the big 3 DPS classes (Mage, Necro, Wiz) verses those who choose the lesser DPS buff/util machines seems to be along the line of high-end powergamers (DPS blasters) and casual raiders with limited play time (lesser DPS buff bots), but that's not hard and fast. I fall into the latter category and I box a Shaman/Bard or duo with the BArd when my wife is playing her (It's her character), and we're looking to add a third. We just can't decide ourselves. The wife has a Mage, Enchanter, Ranger, and a Druid to bring in, but the problem is choosing raw power or more buff/utility.

Hope this helps.

Go Mage. You get way more dps then a tank class can provide. Bard provides the best and fastest pulling without the sweat of worrying how to pull something. Bards will not get nerfed as pullers. Mage pets can tank, sometimes better then my J5 tank merc. Bards are not the best dps but without even watching your bard, the bard can boost dps for your tanks ( pets included ), mage nuke dps and swarm pets which allows the mage to use a special spell to boost his dps even more. Bard and Mage imho is just a win/win class when added to a group and only after using a mage, only other class I would consider is a wizard. Just my two cents.

I run a Shaman with a Melee-DPS mercenary, a Bard with a Melee-DPS mercenary, and a Warrior with a Cleric Mercenary.
Run all mercenaries on balanced during trash. then the DPSers on burn. and the cleric on reactive during named/rares