I am about to start playing Everquest again. I will be starting 2 accounts, but one is definitely going to be a druid. The other is what i can't seem to make a decision on. Either a Beastlord or a Necro. What do you guys think would go good with my druid? I am looking for a decent tank/decent caster. Something that can be somewhat of a tank and has decent DPS and/or DoTs as well as a decent melee. Also i would like to know which pet is better. keep in mind that this one will always be grouped with a druid. =)

My main and favorite class is a Necro. Second favorite class is a Beastlord. Which you choose should be based on what you want out of the class. If you need a tank then bst is the way to go. Not that a bst is a realy good tank or anything but surely better than a necro.

Solo the difference would be in how fast the Necro or Beastlord can kill the mob. I would say that a level 60 Beastlord can kill a level 40 mob faster than the same level Necro. However the Necro would be able to take a higher level mob than the Beastlord. Of course the Necro wouldn't do it head to head like the Beastlord would attempt, the Necro would slow the crap out of its movement rate, fear it, send in its highest level rogue pet, and then dot the hell out of it. Things can go wrong realy fast with that strategy and a Beastlord is going to have more HP's for tanking such an incident. Necro's have FD but it sucks to have to FD and watch your pet get slaughtered. You could run but if you are fighting a mob that summons whats the point.

There are a lot of pluses and minuses for any class, what it boils down to in the end is the style of play you want. My main, happens to be a Necro, is level 61 now and my pet can barely tank (no buffs but haste from me, only gear fists, no other help from me) a Crystaline Devourer in Velks, battle usually ends with pet at like 20-30% health (depends on actual level of mob and most of those are still dark blue con). A Beastlord pet at the same level (haven't tested this) would probably finnish the battle with like 50% health if not better. Don't quote me on the percentages but its gona be pretty close if a comparison is actually done.

No one can realy say, go with a Necro or go with a Beastlord. If they do its going to be a bias opinion. Ohh, did you know that Necro's have a pretty heavy experience penalty just for being a Necro?

Edited, Wed Mar 29 12:57:55 2006 by NexroFeliak

Wow, didnt know that about the experience penalty for necro's.

well theres no useless high end class (except a monk) each has something to offer the group/ raid. bsts offer alot to themselves and a group/ raid, you got hp buffs, slow, incap,mana/ hp regen and theyre dps is good.

But as for what a bst and a necro offer high lvl mobs:

bst: can slow and tank with proper healer, givin said mob isnt extremely hard. bsts are good soloers to a certain extent

necro: can kite 20 of said mob bst is going to be tanking provided the mob dont summon. necros are the best soloers in eq, you can solo mobs that summon but that can be difficult.

Also nexrofeliak theres an aa to make your pet fd also.

I box a lvl 70 necro and a lvl 70 bst, ive put each pet head to head with the same focus's and the lvl 70 necro pet kills the bst pet everytime, ive tried the bst pet hasted and procced and the necro pet (hasted) won still about 80% of the time, its the lifetap proc that keeps it alive. when both are hasted and bst pet is procced its a very very close fight.

when 65 was the cap i had a beasty friend whom i'd duo with many a night. one night we let our pets duel... and mine wooped his pets arss... so to say beast pets are better tankers may not be all that true. i know this first hand.

/agrees with xirkit

Edited, Aug 23rd 2006 at 7:54pm EDT by darhkv

I dont' know whats wrong with your friend, but my 62 Iksar beastlrod can solo 2 of those trolls, he solos 3 Vessels in Veksar np as well.. at 62 so your friend must be extremly EXTREMLY Gimp

I'd have to go with the necro/dru combo. They have desently complementary spell sets and can be used in similar soloing styles so you can get away with alomost treating them as a single toon when playin.

I know this is an old post, but the discussion is what interests me at this point.

I thought about this for a while. It is a very interesting 2-box combination. A druid with class X that is not a pure tank. What a hard one to pick. When any class reaches 50+ or even 40+ the mobs start hitting harder and require good healing and/or good slowing if straight up tanked.

The OP limited severly the choices.





A necro can't melee and his pet can tank *maybe* up in the 50's with the druid healing. A Bst is his answer.

But that doesn't matter really. I'm interested in the viability of a Dru/Bst combo. I would think that it could work as the standard tank/healer ruitine up and possibly through the 50's. I don't think it would really be worth it 60+. What do you think?

I'm more interested in how a Dru/Nec combo would work. I have a nec in the low 60's and have duo'd with druids before. I think it is one of the best, if not the best, duo's in the game for xp/hour.

My first thought would be to find a safe place to kite and a safe place to sit the druid in one spot. I am taking the stance that the nec is the one with more aggro. The necro kites and the druid does support and dots, but not enough to draw the mob's attention from proximity. Is this a reasonable possibility? Will doing something like this be more efficient than any other combination? Please let me know what you think. I have the necro and another account. - thanks

if you want grouping potential, I'd go beastlord to join with the SK / Druid. That way you have a slower (post 65 it's a pretty decent slow, as well). Tank/Slow/Heals... what more could you want?

Duo, botting 2 kiters could be difficult, I'd almost always go for a melee + priest as a combo, rather than 2 casters. 2 melees is doable, but can get frustrating if there's alot of push going on.

my friends and I all have boxed toons. The duos being:

Cleric(or druid)-Warrior
Shaman-Paladin
Cleric-Monk (me)
Druid-Beastlord

The guys with slow can take on much more painfull creatures than those without, although the cleric's CHeal goes a long long way to making up for it. Druid/Beastlord definitely does well, with snare as well as slow. Runners are definitely my personal bug-bear.

Beastlords do alot of damage, my monk and the beastlord guy both parse out about the same damage in any given fight, though he's got more dps AA's than I have currently. I like their atk buffs, too. Though I don't know what the stacking issues are for SK atk taps etc are. Haste, SV, slow, ferocity, kittycrack... nice buffs (well, less so the crack for monks, but you get the idea).

Both me and the beastlord can offtank for most of what our group (Cleric, Pally, Shaman, Beastlord, Monk, and druid/cleric/warrior) does. None of us are raid geared.