Shaman for the 2nd box?

[Saige]

I'm yet another person who is returning to EQ after a year or 3 away. I'm going to start up a second char/account to box around with but I'm having trouble narrowing down a class. My plan is to have a "main" account and then use the 2nd account to level up my first char, a mage, with and then use that 2nd account to level up other classes in the future.

I've read through lots of forums and posts and the Shaman keeps coming up as a recommendation. Shamans seem well suited towards leveling with or levelling up my other chars with the buffs, slows, quickness line, potions, and even a res spell (wow i've been away long). It looks like the only thing missing is mana regen(for other classes) and early crowd control, apart from ghetto mezzing adds. At any rate, the Shaman just sounds plain fun. I've come to ask the experts... will this class suit my long term goal of helping other classes level up on my "primary" account?

One thought I'm having is trying the old LDONs with a mage, a shaman and adding a healer merc and a tank merc. My only real concern here is the lack of solid crowd control without pacify or mez. Has anyone tried this setup before?

Thanks!

[Sowslow]

I do shaman/mage duo with mercs. With coh pulling it is rare that I get adds unless it might be a wander and then vp works pretty well in that case. LDONS might be hard to start off in, but once you get a room cleared, it should be doable.
I starting off using a merc tank and merc healer, but then I got the em4 aug and the mage pet was a much better tank than my tier 3 tank merc. So I switched to 2 healer mercs and have no problems, but at lower levels the merc tank might be the way to go.
I think a shaman it one of the best combos to help level or power level another char. As you mentioned all the buffs, heals and debuffs will make it easier, but if you choose the ds method, shaman keep aggro pretty well and with hots/lassitude/pots/etc. you can grab a lot of mobs and level up another char quickly.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

I'd say there are quite a few 'ultimate combo' duets. All the ones that come to my mind though have a shaman in them. The only character I ever leveled was a shaman that I started in 1999. Every other character was pled by that shaman, or was Pled by a character that was PLed by that shaman.

What I always thought to be the WIN combo was Shm/Sk. They pretty much had everything covered that I felt were primary required ability.

-dmg mitigation (healing, debuffs like slow etc.)
-Tanking
-DPS (albeit that combo is low compared to some others)
runner control (SK snare)
-res (shm COTW/90% res- more of a nice to have than a primary skill really)
-quantity control (pulling/mezzing/etc)

With the inclusion of mercs in the game, you can drop from your required skills
-tanking
-dmg mitigatinon
-res

That opens up a whole lot of possibilities.
All the pet classes gain from having a shaman present, via our Lynx proc line, so definetely give any pet class bonus points to use as second box.

The shm/mage combo is very VERY strong. Pulling can be a bit tricky but once you get COH pulling down, it works. missing runner control is the weakness I see in that.
Shm/necro would awesome. Again, outsourcing your tanking and primary healing if you want to mercs.
Shm/Sk is still strong and fun to play.
Shm/Wiz - snares are back in but a huge pulling/splitting weakness. add in ease of movement via teleport, and evac skill for OH S**! moments
Shm/dru - as above, weaker DPS but still pretty powerful.
Shm/bard - everything. covered. DPS not great, but I just can't imagine what a Shm/Bard couldn't do. Boxing a bard might be challenging though.
shm/Bst - quite a bit of overlap between the two so I probably wouldn't.
Shm/Ber - lots of skills, pulling weak, strong dps

etc....

I personally can't imagine making a duo without a shaman in it, but that is just me.

[Saige]

Thank you both for the input! That information was exactly what I'm looking for. I still haven't found the mechanics of CoH pulling yet but I'll worry about that when the mage hits the 50's *grin*

I can't believe how much more user friendly EQ has gotten. It seems like I nearly hit 20 on the mage in a couple hours!