The Spirit Realm

I just came back to EQ after half a year break, so im lacking on slight updates to differnt classes as far spellcasters go. At the moment i have a 75 Zerk with 100 AA's, Gear is pretty well set and windfury katana for weapon. My question is basicly what would go best with a Zerk in solo 2-box style. A druid, Shaman, or Cleric?

Shaman.

Shaman hands down. But besides just saying that, let me explain briefly (and I'm probably grossly over-simplifying).

A cleric or druid will help keep you alive better than a shaman in terms of healing power.
A druid will help get you out of bad situations and ease the stress of hoofing it long distances (evac, roots, ports and the like)
A shaman will make you do a TON more damage and is probably the best CC with VP.

Having the shaman will bring the most DPS, so you can kill more mobs at a faster pace. The healing advantage that clerics and druids have will essentially be negated by the shaman's slowing ability. Also, choosing a duo partner based on bad situations that you MIGHT run into, or simply for convenience probably isnt the best idea. Also, you can get cleric buffs that last a TON longer than shaman buffs. And as a melee DPS class, shaman buffs help quite a bit so it is more useful to have a shaman around at all times rather than a cleric (in terms of buffage).

Anyway, back to work. If anyone wants to give better detail or tell me I'm wrong in an aspect, please do.

Bard or Shaman.

With a bard you'll be relying on burning the mobs down quickly (but the bard's utility will bring you singles, while shaman's do have VP for CC, the bard's abilities are better) and self healing or resting after the fight.

Shaman is the best answer I think. But Bard is good too.

My initial two box was Paladin + Berserker. Yeah, it was awesome. Paladin will tank and heal and Zerker wtfpwns. I picked up a Shaman on a third account but I can only play two right now and boxing the shaman is a lot less work so my berserker is fallen by the wayside until I get another computer.

But Paladins take a lot more work to gear than either Bards or Shamans.

But who is doing the healing? Your model seems to be, pull a mob, burn it down, regen health out-of-combat, repeat. So the only "healing" takes place after the fight is over. That would seem to place a severe limit on what he can do.

To have a decent margin for error, he would want the mob to bring him no lower than, say, 20% health. If the zerk has 15k hp, that means he needs to only fight mobs that do a total of 12k damage throughout the length of the fight. A mob that does 500 dps does 12k damage in 24 seconds.

That looks to me like he has to hunt for mobs that he can kill in 24 seconds or less, that put out 500 dps or less (or mobs on a similar ratio: he can take mobs that put out 250 dps if he can kill them within 48 seconds, and so on). Since a fast pulling group will be burning mobs down in 20 to 30 seconds, it seems unlikely that the zerker's dps will be sufficient to kill equivalent mobs in 24 seconds.

Compare that with a shaman keeping 1200 per tick of HoT running, plus one 4000 hp blast heal every 24 seconds (not very aggressive healing). Over 24 seconds, the 500 dps mob has done 12k damage, but the shaman has healed 8800, so the zerker is not at 3000, but at 11800. A second blast heal within the 24 seconds (or a crit; or a couple of crit ticks) means the zerker is nearly at full health, at the end of that 24 second interval.

The shaman can easily keep the zerker on his feet against this mob for a couple of minutes, while he chews through the mob's hit points. But without heals, he either has to be able to kill it in no more than 24 seconds, or he has to hunt elsewhere.

Shaman was my choice before bard, but is he fighting alone all the time? Or is grouping? I don't know.

Plus I've seen an awesome bard+zerk duo that really worked well. Fighting lt blue mobs they didn't have any downtime at all.

lt blues = crappy XP.

melees partner best with priests, I mean it's how the game works. Now imagine if these mercs could help, then you could mebbi play 2 melees

They killed those lt blues so fast it wasn't even funny though.

And AA per hour > AA per kill.

i used to think that bard gear wasn't important till I duoed with a well geared bard in Bloodmoon. Not only could she tank there, she could also hold aggro with me burning at about 1400 dps. All I had to do was HOT, and langour her.