Battle Shaman

[Velerin]

Just thought I'd share my findings on my shammy melee style, particularly for that awkward lvl 29-34 range. I know eventually melee isn't worth it but I wonder if some people give it up too fast.
A lot of guides say root rot all the way and melee isn't worth it but I've found meleeing is still the way to go, especially if you pick your battles well. The biggest issue is targeting low blues compared to high blues. (I've got pretty good gear but far from super twink GFG, fbss, iksar bp, banded/totemic mix, focus on AC and hp, very little wisdom.)
I pull with walking sleep 25% slow (lvl 29 spell is double mana for just a little more slow?) and just melee them down and if its a low db they usually don't even outdamage my regen (sometimes I canni during fight) There is a huge difference though if I target a high db (say centaur courser/charger rather than centaur archer) and then I have to root-rot to be efficient.
I also found a great use for the lvl 29 charm. The level range is quite low so it's not very good for traditional charming like with druids but I'll charm a green and it'll last usually full duration (an elephant in SK or a kodiak in Rathe). They won't tank well but if I'm meleeing they add some nice damage over time. 70 mana for possibly 10 minutes of fighting (Kodiaks hit for 32) compared to casting a poison dot for 100 mana per mob that does 27/tick.

[skipdog]

Your method sounds absurdly inefficient. You can pretend you are doing great, but our melee DPS output is pathetic even vs. green mobs with a haste item, GFG, etc. I would strongly encourage you to do some comparative tests between the two methods. I know I tried both while leveling at multiple points when I was 24+, and the melee option was never anywhere close to the efficiency of root rotting. No other class gets the regen+canni combo that we do and our dots are decently mana effecient. We are at our best, when we are sitting on our butts, regenning mana/health, letting our dots kill the mob, and not spending mana on slows.

[iruinedyourday]

Your method sounds absurdly inefficient. You can pretend you are doing great, but our melee DPS output is pathetic even vs. green mobs with a haste item, GFG, etc. I would strongly encourage you to do some comparative tests between the two methods. I know I tried both while leveling at multiple points when I was 24+, and the melee option was never anywhere close to the efficiency of root rotting. No other class gets the regen+canni combo that we do and our dots are decently mana effecient. We are at our best, when we are sitting on our butts, regenning mana/health, letting our dots kill the mob, and not spending mana on slows.

I agree for the most part with the OP. I melee'd up to 33.. at 32 the sisters (for example) in oot are still dark blue (this is the last level however I was meleeing for xp). On this isle you can slow, and kill a merb without needing to cast any other spell, using a pioson wind censor. Its quite relaxing... Slow melee, kill, next, in full rotation og mob spawns as you kill the last one. Its a steady stream of constant XP :)

At 32 I imagine a gfg could get you to 35 at the right camp too using hte same strat.

but that's about as good as I could figure out how to do it, I would love to have tried the CT Winters War procing hammer fro 32+ but I couldnt find any for sale :(

The Yeti's were next, but it wasn't as efficient as the sisters (who are all singles).

Get it, guys? There is an island with a bunch of single ladies looking for love :)

(ps i was wearing blackened iron full visible and was fine)

oh yea pps if you need a PWS to do this on the cheep, send me a PM! ill sell you mine at cost :D

[Velerin]

That's what you'd think, that's what I thought based on everything I read but now actually doing it I have found it not so much.
I'm currently level 31. Yes it wouldn't be efficient if I was fighting lvl 28-30s but fighting ~lvl25 giant skellies in Rathe here's how it goes:
Befriend animal: 70 mana (usually lasts 4-5 fights so ~15 mana/fight)
I pull with walking sleep: 60 mana
Melee mob + pet dps = it dies just before slow wears off 1.2 minutes?
The mob doesn't even outdamage my regen (most fights I canni 1 or 2 times during fight)
I pull the next one right away (casual killing with short afk breaks I get ~1 yellow/hr)

Root/rot (remember shammy dots kinda suck pre-34)
No charmed pet since he'll die too fast
I pull with affliction (70 mana, 6 dam/tick)
I root (30 mana)
I cast envemoned breath (100 mana 27/tick)
Sit and med/canni dance/whatever
Mob takes about 3 cycles of EB to kill, 1-2 more roots (260 mana)
Run off and grab another

Whole lot more mana, whole lot longer to kill. You could root rot multiples but with that crappy root its more trouble than its worth.

How is root rotting better at this level if you got decent weapon/good AC?

[Velerin]

I agree for the most part with the OP. I melee'd up to 33.. at 32 the sisters (for example) in oot are still dark blue (this is the last level however I was meleeing for xp). On this isle you can slow, and kill a merb without needing to cast any other spell, using a pioson wind censor. Its quite relaxing... Slow melee, kill, next, in full rotation og mob spawns as you kill the last one. Its a steady stream of constant XP :)

At 32 I imagine a gfg could get you to 35 at the right camp too using hte same strat.

but that's about as good as I could figure out how to do it, I would love to have tried the CT Winters War procing hammer fro 32+ but I couldnt find any for sale :(

The Yeti's were next, but it wasn't as efficient as the sisters (who are all singles).

Get it, guys? There is an island with a bunch of single ladies looking for love :)

(ps i was wearing blackened iron full visible and was fine)

oh yea pps if you need a PWS to do this on the cheep, send me a PM! ill sell you mine at cost :D

Yeah the key is the right mobs. Its amazing how much the mitigation changes for a higher blue versus a lower blue. That charmed pet dps really helps speed it up and pretty much free. Even if it breaks mid fight I can recast easy with both beating on me. But yeah I figure things will be changing in a few more levels.

[skipdog]

You both make good points. It is likely that I didn't try enough different mobs and gave up the melee option too soon.

I may have also not tried at certain 'sweet spot' levels where it would have been most optimal.

[Tann]

Currently Lv.26 and have switched to slow+affliction+melee, I was root rotting at first once I hit 24 but the mana cost is stupid high. Also consider you'll need to re-root at least twice.

With just racial regen and the lv24 regen I usually only lose 10-20% hp doing the above. Using a poison wind censer for reference, 20 less max damage hits then the GFG and no haste/iksar bp.

[Byrjun]

Meleeing is great up until the lower-mid 50s where root rotting stuff in CoM/HS/SolB becomes more efficient (basically try to get your epic, and then switch to root rot). Picking the right targets is important (obviously, this goes for anyone soloing up to 60). Monk/Melee solo guides are useful, bard NPCs are great, so are the nobles in Highkeep.

At first a Runewood Great Staff is pretty great from 20+. Get it anywhere from free to about 100 plat. It's essentially vendor trash level CoM loot. 22/40, 1.818 ratio.

Then save up for a Poison Wind Censer which is 1000-1500 nowadays. You can get that plat easily from Highkeep guards, or even earlier if you do wisps/Nybright sisters/gargoyles while leveling up. 20/28, 1.4 ratio.

Get a Granite Face Grinder if you're a twink. They're dropping to about 7500, maybe even 7000. They're amazing leveling up. 29/36, 1.241 ratio.

Runewood Great Staff and Poison Wind Censer are huge bang for the buck dps purchases that I'd recommend to any soloing shaman under 50 or so.

[iruinedyourday]

Meleeing is great up until the lower-mid 50s where root rotting stuff in CoM/HS/SolB becomes more efficient (basically try to get your epic, and then switch to root rot). Picking the right targets is important (obviously, this goes for anyone soloing up to 60). Monk/Melee solo guides are useful, bard NPCs are great, so are the nobles in Highkeep.

At first a Runewood Great Staff is pretty great from 20+. Get it anywhere from free to about 100 plat. It's essentially vendor trash level CoM loot. 22/40, 1.818 ratio.

Then save up for a Poison Wind Censer which is 1000-1500 nowadays. You can get that plat easily from Highkeep guards, or even earlier if you do wisps/Nybright sisters/gargoyles while leveling up. 20/28, 1.4 ratio.

Get a Granite Face Grinder if you're a twink. They're dropping to about 7500, maybe even 7000. They're amazing leveling up. 29/36, 1.241 ratio.

Runewood Great Staff and Poison Wind Censer are huge bang for the buck dps purchases that I'd recommend to any soloing shaman under 50 or so.

:D cool blog :cool:

[harnold]

use the proc weapon for shamans that proc the lvl 34 shaman dot at lvl 30 for the best shaman meleeing in this lvl range

[iruinedyourday]

use the proc weapon for shamans that proc the lvl 34 shaman dot at lvl 30 for the best shaman meleeing in this lvl range

which one is that? I was trying to get my hands on the CT hammer but couldnt by the time it was too late.

http://wiki.project1999.com/Barbarian_Spiritist%60s_Hammer

I believe it would wrek at 30 :)

[Tann]

which one is that?

http://wiki.project1999.com/Blight,_Hammer_of_the_Scourge

[Jimjam]

Levelling up a barbarian cash route:

decaying skeletons to gear out in cloth and maybe grab a 2 handed hammer. look out for necros killing giants to sell bone chips to, perhaps for a FS 2 handed hammer. Also kill polar bear cubs for their pelts to turn into bearhide armor from qeyhills and maybe a polar bear cloak in everfrost.


Level two or three head to qeynos hills and kill rabid wolves. Fill your bank with diseased pelts until neither wolf gives xp. Kill gnolls too for fangs/xp. You can add in the rabid grizzly to your rotation till he stops giving xp. This is a good time to hand in the pelts for loads of plat and xp.

Next head to north karana and kill wisps until they stop giving xp and then turn in the GLS (just hand in the regular lightstones as you kill as they aren't as good xp and will fill up the bank too quick... or just vendor them).

Should have a tonne of plat by now. If your still under twenty kill sisters/bandits for bronze or doing the sash quest.

Not only is this route good cash for the level it is pretty fast xp too! In the unlikely event you still need more money to bank roll a decent melee weapon head to gargoyle island in OOT, which can carry you to mid/late twenties but sadly doesn't have an attached xp quest. Alternatively try to create a group scene in HHK killing goblins. The left ears sell well or can be sold tk players for decent plat.

[brecon]

If you roll Barbarian, then the Barbarian Spritist's Hammer does absolutely tear through mobs. The strategy is (1) put on regen and dex buffs, (2) pull with slow, (3) melee and wait for 256 DD procs.

At 35, with an Iksar Ceremonial BP and a Fungi Stick (so 20 regen / tick total), I was able to solo MM CE, Canni during the fight, and still regen HP, once I broke it. Of course, at 34 I got dog dog.

With this strategy, I was also able to solo CoM entrance and duo with rogues or monks at CoM stables starting at level 39. I slow-tanked CoM until I hit 50, when I moved to solo epic dotting.

Of course, you're looking at about 45-50k in gear to do that. But it is all resellable, and once you hit 50 and tactics change, you can use the proceeds to acquire something else. But at a minimum, if you can get a Barb Spiritists Hammer at a cheap price (I got mine for 3k, though I think 8k is more normal), you can do the same thing, and just need to recover a bit between pulls.

[justin2090]

Your method sounds absurdly inefficient. You can pretend you are doing great, but our melee DPS output is pathetic even vs. green mobs with a haste item, GFG, etc. I would strongly encourage you to do some comparative tests between the two methods. I know I tried both while leveling at multiple points when I was 24+, and the melee option was never anywhere close to the efficiency of root rotting. No other class gets the regen+canni combo that we do and our dots are decently mana effecient. We are at our best, when we are sitting on our butts, regenning mana/health, letting our dots kill the mob, and not spending mana on slows.

I melee'd mobs till lvl 45 then switched to jbb. It's pretty absurd how good slow it. Specially when your fungi'd with fungi staff.

[loramin]

If you roll Barbarian, then the Barbarian Spritist's Hammer does absolutely tear through mobs.

Not anymore :( I have one myself and ever since they "fixed" the proc rates the hammer now procs once a fight, maybe twice if the fight's on the long side. That's still 1-2 free winter's roars per fight, but it doesn't "absolutely tear through mobs" the way it used to.

[brecon]

A Spiritish Ancille in MM has 1200hp. If you have max dex, the weapon has 2 procs per minute on average. That is ~520 DD, or a little under half its hp from procs alone, on a weapon with a pretty decent ratio to boot. Not to mention that the procs occur per minute, so if you canni or cast while in melee range, you don't lose that damage, while you do lose the damage from normal swings on the melee weapon.

You could run stats and see if that is better than a granite face grinder, depending upon how often you think you cast. But for someone on a thread called 'Battle Shaman,' it's a good suggestion for something to look for. Very few classes are able to solo MM CE at Being said, I wouldn't roll a barbarian just to use it, but it's a nice toy that will be useful for slow tanking if you invest in one.

[Tann]

a bit related, at what point do I start using Tagar's instead of Walking Sleep? Right away? or at Lv.29 is it around 30% of a slow already?

[loramin]

A Spiritish Ancille in MM has 1200hp. If you have max dex, the weapon has 2 procs per minute on average.

Here's the thing:


even a twinked shaman won't usually have much Dex gear, so most often you'll only see one proc per fight

you're at the mercy of the RNG, so sometimes you won't even get one proc

at the same time sometimes you'll get three procs, but because you can't control when that 2nd or 3rd proc happens, the mob will usually be close to dead anyway when it happens

the more you level the more HP mobs get, and thus the BSH damage becomes less and less noticeable over time

since you still have to do the rest of the damage with dots, and you still need to slow, the BSH doesn't wind up saving mana (just HP because the fight ends faster)


So, as someone who's owned a BSH for pretty much my entire P99 career, all I'm saying is anyone thinking about purchasing one should understand that "tears through mobs" is a bit misleading.

I do totally agree though that it is:

a nice toy that will be useful for slow tanking if you invest in one

[loramin]

a bit related, at what point do I start using Tagar's instead of Walking Sleep? Right away? or at Lv.29 is it around 30% of a slow already?

It's a pretty safe bet that you always want to use the newest slow you can (or for that matter the newest spell of any line, with a few exceptions). If my math is correct, it works out like this:

Walking Sleep goes from 23% at 14 to 35% at 60, ie. it increases 0.26% per level. So, by level 29 it should be at almost 27%. Tagar's on the other hand starts (at level 29) at 34%, plus it lasts longer.

There is a 65 mana difference between the two, so if you're fighting a very weak-hitting mob and your tank is super-twinked out and has high AC then maybe it might be more efficient to use Walking Sleep ... but even then I kinda doubt it.

[Byrjun]

In a group setting:

Slow is all about preventing damage, so it needs to be compared against whatever heal you have. At this point it's Greater Healing. So it roughly comes out to: if Walking Sleep will prevent between 150-300 damage, use Walking sleep; if Tagar's Insects will prevent 300+ damage, use Tagar's Insects. Otherwise it's more efficient to just use Greater Heals over any type of slow.

Given how quickly groups can go through mobs, the "no slow" option is more efficient more often than you'd think.

It gets a bit better at 39 because Togor's Insects is a bit more efficient.

But since this is a melee solo thread, you'll probably be best off using Tagar's Insects most of the time. It depends on the mobs you're fighting (the damage you're taking), and your DPS (the length of the fight). There could probably even be an equation written where you input the mob's DPS and the length of the fight in seconds to determine which spell is best to use. But like I said, it's probably going to be Tagar's Insects unless you're fighting weaker mobs.