Budget Shaman Leveling Gear?

[kainypoo]

Hey everyone,

I was wondering if you all could help me out on a budget leveling set for a Barbarian Shaman. I played the game during retail but I was way too young to really understand everything that was going on, so while I understand most of the mechanics and a lot of the zones, I'm pretty lost when it comes to what items to buy and what not. Currently I'm level 16 and have around 300pp but I'm getting a decent amount of pp from farming bronze weapons so I want to continue farming until 500-1000pp (depending on what you all advise) and go pick up some cheap gear after that.

That being said, I've been looking around the forums and I think that going for a Runewood Great Staff and the Banded Armor set would be a good starting point. Beyond that, I really have no idea and I'm also totally open to being wrong about the aforementioned pieces. I have an Ivory Imbued Collar and a Moonstone Ring already which both seem pretty decent to me but I'm not sure.

Thanks in advance for the help. :)

[RDawg816]

That neck is solid.
Banded is great.
Grab ac/hp rings (platinum is fine for now.)
If you have money left, grab a decent weapon (either a 2hb or a piercer/shield.)
Charred Guardian Shield is a light source. If you don't like being blind or relying on casting serpent sight all the time, it's a good option.

[kainypoo]

That neck is solid.
Banded is great.
Grab ac/hp rings (platinum is fine for now.)
If you have money left, grab a decent weapon (either a 2hb or a piercer/shield.)
Charred Guardian Shield is a light source. If you don't like being blind or relying on casting serpent sight all the time, it's a good option.

What would you suggest for weapons? Most of the ones I see people suggesting are 1000pp+. I was thinking about a Runewood Great Staff because it's relatively cheap (~100pp). Also, how important are weapons relative to the rest of your gear? Would it be worth it to just drop 1k on a Poison Wind Censer and forget about the rest of my gear?

Thanks for your help!

[RDawg816]

In my opinion, I'd stay away from the PWC. Slow-tanking is great for twinks with haste and high ac. I'm assuming that's not you. Having the banded and other items will most likely help you more than a single weapon.
There are several weapons you could look for. You probably won't be meleeing much in groups though. Darksea Harpoon, Slime Coated Harpoon, Beetle Stinger, etc. If you grab the banded, hp/ac rings and a shield you will have enough survivability to get to 30+ in groups. Any weapon is fine to attack with until the tank gets aggro. I usually slowed early because my ac was good enough to take a few hits until I landed root or the tank took aggro.

[Swish]

A beetle stinger (http://wiki.project1999.com/Beetle_Stinger) (from Sebilis) is usually 150ish if you can find one? Not much for damage but it has some not too terrible stats on it and that spear look shamans love :p

Are you planning to solo a lot? Or group?

[DrKvothe]

Here's something I posted a year ago:
Get a runewood greatstaff for practically nothing. Pull with a poison dot or nuke, turn on attack right as the mob reaches you, after first swing cast root, back out of range after root lands and second melee attack, and sit down a couple of feet away. Wait until you see your health/mana regen tick (for full value, since you're sitting), then move forward, hit mob once, then move back and sit down again.

This effectively resets both your delay and mob delay to 60. Since mob delay was normally 30 and yours was normally 40, the mob suffers a 50% dps decrease while you only suffer a 33% decrease compared to continuous fighting. Root is a lot cheaper to cast than slow, and since you'll be hitting every med tick you can toss out more nukes/heals than if you were continuously fighting.

I'd go for: Runewood Great Staff, 5/55 rings, spyglass, and the materials for one of the reclaim pet clicky quests (http://wiki.project1999.com/Vira). Don't worry about armor, imo, because when you're up for it, take a trip to Karnor's Castle and ask around for rotting no-drop gear:
http://wiki.project1999.com/Jarsath_Scale_Armor
http://wiki.project1999.com/Supple_Scale_Armband

Spyglass lets you remove global cooldown between spells (give it an inventory slot and create a hotkey, click it between casts and you can immediately start next spell), although if you're trying to recast the same spell it only works if it's in the number 1 spell slot for some reason. Some people put canni there , others prefer to put root there. Any instant cast infinite charge clicky will do, but spyglass is cheap and available.

Honestly, that's kind of all you need until your epic questline, anyways.

[RDawg816]

Well there's 2 options for you. Go with whichever one seems more appealing to you. Personally, I avoid KC and would never recommend anyone go there other than for a quest piece (canni 2, epics...), or to evac to EJ, but that's just me.

[kainypoo]

A beetle stinger (http://wiki.project1999.com/Beetle_Stinger) (from Sebilis) is usually 150ish if you can find one? Not much for damage but it has some not too terrible stats on it and that spear look shamans love :p

Are you planning to solo a lot? Or group?

I'm probably mostly going to be soloing. Would you advise a 2Her or 1Her for soloing?

[RDawg816]

I'm probably mostly going to be soloing. Would you advise a 2Her or 1Her for soloing?
There are 2 main ways to solo as a shaman. Slow-tanking and root-rotting. If you plan to tank, probably a 2 hander. Root-rotting a shield would be more ac for if you get hit.

[kainypoo]

There are 2 main ways to solo as a shaman. Slow-tanking and root-rotting. If you plan to tank, probably a 2 hander. Root-rotting a shield would be more ac for if you get hit.

Alright, thank you. :)

[TheOutdoorNerd]

Another option that shaman have is to find a steady duo partner. Slow the mobs, pop a sow, regen and haste on your twinked melee partner and watch the exp fly while your partner does the heavy lifting.

You + pretty much every class = a great duo if you play it right.

[DrKvothe]

That's good advice; you should try duoing with every class you can, for the experience. Pretty much every class has something to offer you if you're clever. I duo'd HS ent + basement last night with a cleric, which is a combo I never really gave much thought to. Rather than root/rotting 4 at a time, we were doing 6, and we managed to keep the open area of basement and the entire entrance of HS clear pretty efficiently. It wasn't better exp than solo, but it was a lot more fun. We probably should have gone into one of the wings instead, which I'm still not able to do safely by myself. In addition to the fun, it pays dividends to make lots of friends. You'll get rezes with less waiting around, and you'll regularly get invited into groups for loot camps and dungeon crawls.

Slow tanking is crap if you're not twinked to the gills with an amazing weapon, haste item, and fungi tunic. You need to be sitting at least briefly once every 6 seconds to get any decent amount of mana regen at all. Until you get canni, root jousting as I described is significantly more efficient than root/rotting, because it's the best way to use your hp in place of mana. Also, use your nukes. Killing fast means less mana waste on roots, additional dots, etc. 1 poison dot, root jousting, and maybe a nuke is all you need to kill something. Disease dots last much longer than a mob should live, if you're killing it efficiently. For example, it takes affliction about a full minute to do more damage than spirit strike for the same mana, meanwhile you're spending extra mana on roots. It'll take a lot more time and mana to kill something just with dots, and for many levels you'll be using dots you got up to 9 levels ago. For example, you don't get any dots at 29 at all. This changes as you level when mobs get more hp and your dots become more mana efficient. You should be root-jousting until the damage you take versus the damage you deal is less efficient than using another nuke spell and canni'ing for the mana. Canni 1 initially provides 20 mana for 50 health, while your lvl 24 nuke deals 137 to 149 damage for 100 mana. So if you can do 137 damage without losing 250 health root jousting, it's still more efficient at 24 than just using canni to fuel your damage.

I also frequently use burst of flame (lvl 1 nuke) to pull at 59 because it's cheap and has good range, or to break poorly placed roots early if I'm worried about patrols. Having decently high evocation skill can save your life.

[Cawas]

This effectively resets both your delay and mob delay to 60. Since mob delay was normally 30 and yours was normally 40.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm trying to understand what these numbers represent; it sounds like something different from weapon delay.

[mgellan]

The banded is a great idea, make sure you get LARGE (ie it lists OGR TRL BAR) banded so you can use for your Totemic armor quests, which you can do as you level. These quests result in nice armor that has a plate look and will do you into your 30s, and they're pretty fun to do.

Regards,
Mg

[DrKvothe]

You step in for one attack per meditation tick, so that's once every 6 seconds. Your opponent also gets one round of attacks against you every 6 seconds. Normally, mobs swing every 3 seconds, while you swing at a per second rate of your delay divided by 10.

[Jimjam]

The banded is a great idea, make sure you get LARGE (ie it lists OGR TRL BAR) banded so you can use for your Totemic armor quests, which you can do as you level. These quests result in nice armor that has a plate look and will do you into your 30s, and they're pretty fun to do.

Regards,
Mg

isn't it regular 'medium' banded for totemic, absolutely not 'large'?

[Cawas]

The banded is a great idea, make sure you get LARGE (ie it lists OGR TRL BAR) banded so you can use for your Totemic armor quests, which you can do as you level. These quests result in nice armor that has a plate look and will do you into your 30s, and they're pretty fun to do.

Regards,
Mg

The wiki says they only accept medium banded armor for the turn-ins. Can you confirm large works, at least for the plus-sized races?

You step in for one attack per meditation tick, so that's once every 6 seconds. Your opponent also gets one round of attacks against you every 6 seconds.

That makes sense now. Thanks.

[kainypoo]

Is there any reason to get large armor over medium armor on a barbarian? As far as I can tell, they can use both but large armor weighs more.

[leftharted]

isn't it regular 'medium' banded for totemic, absolutely not 'large'?

yea, wiki says medium only; but if someone can confirm large works please do ;)

As a lowbie shaman with little to my name I plan on doing a few pieces of totemic In the mid levels; but assumed I would need to purchase the medium banded to do so. Hoping that I can use the large im wearing.

[Trollhide]

Large doesn't work for totemic quest turn-ins, it must be medium size banded

[DrKvothe]

A very fun alternative to banded is blackened alloy, which you can find in runnyeye. It's comparable in terms of AC, it looks slightly better (different color, visibly darker), and you can find it yourself! Giant scalemail armor is much better than both and still runs in the relatively dirt cheap range.

But seriously, why pass up on an adventure and free armor? Jarsath scale is just going to rot, you could go to KC at lvl 1 and get a set.

[Dinbin]

I'd go for: Runewood Great Staff, 5/55 rings, spyglass, and the materials for one of the reclaim pet clicky quests (http://wiki.project1999.com/Vira).
Wait... what? Shaman can quest and use that item to reclaim their pet?

Here's my current loadout:

Bruuk (http://wiki.project1999.com/Magelo_Blue:Bruuk_IceFlinger)

Aside from a few purchases (Rygor, veil, RMB) all of my gear has been looted or quested. The waist/shoulders are obviously my next items to upgrade... can anyone make any recommendations for priorities beyond that?

Edit: OMG, they can use it. I'm an idiot for not doing that quest! Last night I summoned 7 pets (thank goodness for clarity) to get a blue one. Will start quest tonight!

[applesauce25r624]

But seriously, why pass up on an adventure and free armor? Jarsath scale is just going to rot, you could go to KC at lvl 1 and get a set.

plus a supple scale armband. yeah, i'd hit it up

[Dinbin]

What is the drop rate on forest loops? I've killed giants at the FM fort all the way through 35 (so... probably a hundred) and haven't seen anything but the junk drops.