Visions of Grandeur

I am asking for some advice concerning my team. I'm trying to decide if it is my team makeup, my healing ini file, or lack of gear.

New lv 65 team with few aa's, (18aa's per char).
Paladin, Cleric, Rogue, Mage, Beastlord, Ranger

Currently my Paladin and Cleric have about half their gear in the 100hp/100mana range. The rest is 20-70 hp/mana from dungeons. The rest of the team is mostly dungeon gear.

I passed the Justice trial. Grummus required another person's team. Terris killed my team when she was at 29%. And I'm getting the feeling that I either need to farm some gear elsewhere or change something in my team make up or healing ini since I run out of mana on these fights.

I am considering a Necro in place of Ranger to pump mana to the Cleric while the pet and some DoT's work on the target. Bst is slowing and though it's 10% less of a slow than a Shaman, I was hoping the pet and Bst melee dps offset what the Shaman brings.

But I am curious about what others who have gone before me are doing in their groups.

Are pet classes good to have, or should I forgo for melee who wont run out of mana and I expect can out dps a pet?
Shaman instead of Bst for the extra 10% slow and heals instead of dsp?
Are you setting up healing to focus on complete heal only for the tank and letting the offhealer care for the group?
Or do I just need to set my sights lower right now and farm up gear and aa's?

Please share your wisdom if you will.

-Deacons Justice-
Paladin

Just a couple of quick thoughts: The course of action really depends on why you're running out of mana. Are you having trouble keeping your tank up or your group alive? Clearly the mana-optimal path is just CH'ing the MT (not that it's always easy to get away with that). Upgrading your tank's gear, specifically AC will help with the first. If your group is taking too much damage, is it because of the adds or ae? If ae, would resists help? (I forget the stats on TT's ae offhand) If adds, then more gear would help, but keeping the adds off the group would help a lot more. Also, adding a necro just for mana seems like a terrible way to go. Better to add a druid as a secondary healer if that's the case.

So I have a different group makeup (War, Rogue, Monk, Bard, Shaman, Cleric), but I think the main principles still apply: I would say work on gearing and AAing up your tank and cleric first and foremost. Maximize your AC (and, secondarily, HP) on your tank, and maximize your mana on your cleric. For tank, I would go for maxxing out Combat Agility, Combat Stability, and Natural Durability AAs first. Those make a *massive* difference in tanking capability.

I would also suggest you get your hands on a manastone for each of your spell casters, if you haven't already. Then make an EQBC hotkey for it on whichever char you run your EQBC operation from during combat. When you can get away with it during a long, mana-intensive fight, mash that hotkey like crazy. Earlier in my career on this server manastone saved me in more than a few long fights.

There are also some AAs the cleric has access to that lower spell cost. I can't remember what they're called, though.

Finally, I would suggest looking into making a bard (maybe over your mage? Mages are dope, but they're like a group unto themselves, and really shine for soloing). I originally ran a chanter because I thought their buffs + mez would be nice to have. But the bard was a huge upgrade. With epic and AAs, the endgame HP/mana regen song is insane. I think my cleric and shaman each regen something like 100 mana per tick, medding (and combat HP regen for my meleers is comparable with that too). And that doesn't take into account the benefits from the other songs he runs.

Thank you guys. I'm making some of those changes and we will see what comes. . . now to start a Bard.