Dr00d and ShamWOW

[MikeXG]

I've been dabbling with toons on my account I have not played, heck they are also stripped of gear. 42 Shaman and a 41 druid. priest is the 1 class I am not currently playing and I was thinking of gearing one out (cleric is not my style). Generally, which is easier/cheaper to gear and which is more viable for solo play. Keep in mind I will never have epic or torpor or any super high end gear on these toons. more for running around, helping friends, farming, AFK camps maybe?

Appreciate all your thoughts :-)

[loramin]

Generally, which is easier/cheaper to gear and which is more viable for solo play. Keep in mind I will never have epic or torpor or any super high end gear on these toons. more for running around, helping friends, farming, AFK camps maybe?

The whole "I'm not going to get an epic or Torpor" thing strongly makes me lean towards recommending Druid. However, Shaman are also a very viable choice. You do not need an epic to solo as a Shaman (it maybe speeds things up 10%? I haven't done the math, but it's really low damage compared to your two spell DoTs)

Even at 60 a Shaman without Torpor is still roughly equal in power to a level 60 Druid. The shaman can solo things that summon, while the Druid can solo animals and things that can be quad kited. Throw either one in the Permafrost bear pits and they'll both do fine. To put it another way, Torpor is like Shaman level 61: even if you never plan to make it to 61, your Torpor-less 60 Shaman won't be worse off than another class.

So yeah, both are viable, but there's a huge difference in how they solo, and I think that should be your key determinant. Go druid to quad (only requires 5k lumi staff) and animal charm (only requires 7k goblin ring), or go Shaman to root/rot (which you could do while wearing rags, but a 90k epic will speed things up a bit) or face tank.

And if you still can't decide, I guess go Druid, just so you don't feel bad about never getting to 61.

[Troxx]

Both are fairly cheap to gear. Druid is more potent solo prior to 60/torpor with animal charm and quad kiting along with ports for mobility. For groups/duo/trio or high end soloing shaman is far more effective.

[Pringles]

The whole "I'm not going to get an epic or Torpor" thing strongly makes me lean towards recommending Druid. However, Shaman are also a very viable choice. You do not need an epic to solo as a Shaman (it maybe speeds things up 10%? I haven't done the math, but it's really low damage compared to your two spell DoTs)

Even at 60 a Shaman without Torpor is still roughly equal in power to a level 60 Druid. The shaman can solo things that summon, while the Druid can solo animals and things that can be quad kited. Throw either one in the Permafrost bear pits and they'll both do fine. To put it another way, Torpor is like Shaman level 61: even if you never plan to make it to 61, your Torpor-less 60 Shaman won't be worse off than another class.

So yeah, both are viable, but there's a huge difference in how they solo, and I think that should be your key determinant. Go druid to quad (only requires 5k lumi staff) and animal charm (only requires 7k goblin ring), or go Shaman to root/rot (which you could do while wearing rags, but a 90k epic will speed things up a bit) or face tank.

And if you still can't decide, I guess go Druid, just so you don't feel bad about never getting to 61.
The bolded is utterly wrong. You will level up much, much faster with the mana free epic to the point of absurdity.

[Baler]

The whole "I'm not going to get an epic or Torpor" thing strongly makes me lean towards recommending Druid.

This, you'll get more milage out of a druid and can save up for ur shammy.

[loramin]

The bolded is utterly wrong. You will level up much, much faster with the mana free epic to the point of absurdity.

I have played a Shaman to 60 here on P99, and beyond that on live. On both I spent a significant amount of time soloing without my epic (I'm pretty sure I didn't even get it on live until mid-Luclin).

The epic is awesome and irreplaceable for certain things. Want to kill seven seafuries at once (albeit slowly), all while only spending mana on roots? You'll definitely need an epic for that. But killing lots of greens at once isn't a way to level quickly.

For normal (blue mob) solo XPing it really doesn't make that much of a difference. Plague does 22/tick and EBolt does 146/tick, for a total of 168/tick without epic. Epic adds 22/tick (on average; it has that weird sloping damage).

In other words, the epic adds about 1/7.6th more mana-free damage. That's is certainly nothing to sneeze at, and it does speed things up ... by about 15% ... but 15% faster is hardly "much faster to the point of absurdity".

[Danth]

Epic adds 22/tick (on average; it has that weird sloping damage).

?? I think you best get that epic into the shop for a tune-up. It's apparently running about 1/4 or less of what everyone else's does.

If you're going to have bad equipment (or not all the spells) forever, I have to assume the character isn't too likely to reach 60, either, or not spend long there before being retired if it even makes it. Anyone who's 60 for awhile can expect to eventually get the basics like Torpor. This means you should probably level the Druid if you've no preference between the two. A sub-60 Druid in mediocre gear has substantial utility in the form of ports, power-level, tracking, and whatnot. A Shaman in the same circumstance is a good group member or decent duo partner and not much else.


Danth

[Zabbix]

I have played a Shaman to 60 here on P99, and beyond that on live. On both I spent a significant amount of time soloing without my epic (I'm pretty sure I didn't even get it on live until mid-Luclin).

The epic is awesome and irreplaceable for certain things. Want to kill seven seafuries at once (albeit slowly), all while only spending mana on roots? You'll definitely need an epic for that. But killing lots of greens at once isn't a way to level quickly.

For normal (blue mob) solo XPing it really doesn't make that much of a difference. Plague does 22/tick and EBolt does 146/tick, for a total of 168/tick without epic. Epic adds 22/tick (on average; it has that weird sloping damage).

In other words, the epic adds about 1/7.6th more mana-free damage. That's is certainly nothing to sneeze at, and it does speed things up ... by about 15% ... but 15% faster is hardly "much faster to the point of absurdity".

Yeah Im not seeing where you are getting thoe numbers from. But anyways I can kill 7 mobs at a time with zero downtime with epic. A shaman without his epic cannot even come close to that amount of mobs killed per say hour. So yes an epic Shaman xping on blues is extremely efficient compared to one without.

[Troxx]

1425 dmg over 1.5 minutes (15 ticks) = 95dmg/tick average

It starts off slow but ramps up respectably

[MikeXG]

I think I am leaning towards druid. Like I said in the OP it is for solo play, if I am grouping I am usually on another toon. I feel solo for Shaman is either slow tanking or root rotting. Druid can kite, quad kite, charm animals, fear animals, root rot(not as well but still viable, or does that not continue in later levels?)

Thanks for all the replies :-)

[loramin]

1425 dmg over 1.5 minutes (15 ticks) = 95dmg/tick average

It starts off slow but ramps up respectably

You are absolutely right, my apologies. Unfortunately my calculator app doesn't keep a log, so I have no idea how I messed up a simple two number calculation, but clearly I did :(

Revised Numbers

Plague: 22/tick
EBolt: 146/tick
Total: 168/tick

Epic: 95/tick (again, on average because of that slope)
Epic as percentage of non epic damage: 57%

So yeah, 57% > 15%. Epic is definitely better than I said.

BUT I still maintain that it absolutely isn't necessary, because I leveled to 60 on live (and I can't remember what level here, but definitely well past 45) just fine without it.

I think I am leaning towards druid. Like I said in the OP it is for solo play, if I am grouping I am usually on another toon. I feel solo for Shaman is either slow tanking or root rotting. Druid can kite, quad kite, charm animals, fear animals, root rot(not as well but still viable, or does that not continue in later levels?)

Thanks for all the replies :-)

Sounds like you found your class :) Druids are an excellent starting class in this era of EQ.

The one correction I'd make is that Shaman also have one other play style: pet tanking. So it's more like both classes can root/rot (Shaman can better), both can animal charm (but Shaman only get one crappy animal charm spell so Druids can way better), Shaman can pet tank (Druids sort of could with a charmed pet but why do that when you can charm fight?), only Shaman can face tank and only Druids can quad kite.

[Troxx]

FWIW my lv 60 shaman does not have epic and I don’t feel like I missed out. Same for JBB. I always preferred grouping or duo/trio and my time was pretty well full occupied doing shamanly group things. Most groups mobs will die before your epic slowly ramps up to higher damage. It’s a good leveling tool and nice when doing duo/trio work in places where mobs have higher hp.

Epic stats are clutch. Graphic is good too. Click is actually very nice. Shamans remain potent without the epic though and I had no problems leveling without one. A max summon dog pet properly buffed will do 22-25 dps easily. Epic averages 15.33dps if it is always refreshed on time and always has the ability to ramp up to full damage.

[Teppler]

Once you get epic you can do camps like root rotting half of drolvarg captain spawns. Like 7-8 spawns dotting down at once. Only using mana on roots. Shaman mana dots cost a lot.

[shwally]

Once you get epic you can do camps like root rotting half of drolvarg captain spawns. Like 7-8 spawns dotting down at once. Only using mana on roots. Shaman mana dots cost a lot.

This right here! No you don’t have to get the shaman epic to level to 60, but it makes it so much faster. With epic there is zero downtime while soling since you are only using mana on roots and sometimes Malo if you are soloing higher level camps. I got lucky and got my shaman epic before velious and the patch that changed the fear golems. If I were to have to do it again I would save every last plat I made to be able to buy my epic at 50 or before.

[Snaggles]

I had the same conundrum myself with a 30 troll Shaman and 39 Druid. Mainly as 30 hell was quite annoying. If you can save for a JBB your ability to self-PL is bonkers from 45-low 50’s. I’m 52 right now and could easily grind to 54 where life inevitably slows down. Still if you are into single-target trivially easy kills even a filthy casual shaman is very powerful. A 66% slow at 51 makes root breaks boringly easy to cope with.

If you are into quadding or animal charming the Druid is a great path. If you hate it the Shaman makes way more sense. You will also make for a better duo with most classes even if transportation is more difficult.

[MikeXG]

I had the same conundrum myself with a 30 troll Shaman and 39 Druid. Mainly as 30 hell was quite annoying. If you can save for a JBB your ability to self-PL is bonkers from 45-low 50’s. I’m 52 right now and could easily grind to 54 where life inevitably slows down. Still if you are into single-target trivially easy kills even a filthy casual shaman is very powerful. A 66% slow at 51 makes root breaks boringly easy to cope with.

If you are into quadding or animal charming the Druid is a great path. If you hate it the Shaman makes way more sense. You will also make for a better duo with most classes even if transportation is more difficult.

I think if I had a JBB I would go Shaman. I have the money but Im currently trying to upgrade all of the gear on my main before investing in alts. That is an interesting thought though.... Now I have to have another think haha

[loramin]

Once you get epic you can do camps like root rotting half of drolvarg captain spawns. Like 7-8 spawns dotting down at once. Only using mana on roots. Shaman mana dots cost a lot.

Having never done them I'm curious: are they light blue or blue when you're killing them this way? And how many (1.5 min) curses does it take to kill them?

Because when I did the same thing with Seafuries,

A) they were geen to me
B) four (maybe three but I think four) curses
C) doing 7 would take forever, because I couldn't keep refreshing curses perfectly, it took time to pull, some would break root, etc.
D) after doing 7 greens I'd be low on health and mana, because the mobs can still get hits in before root, after root breaks, etc. plus the roots themselves cost mana (not a lot, but doing 7 mobs with semi-frequent root breaks adds up), heals cost mana, finishing the mob off at the end (if I was impatient at least) cost mana, etc.

So when I did the math on all that it was totally worth it for grinding gems, but even if they had been light blue it wouldn't have been as good of XP as a simple root/rot camp because they took so long to kill that way.

But if you can do 7-8 blue Drovarg Captains at once and not die (7 blue seafuries would have killed me fairly often) then geez, I wish I'd known about that camp when I was leveling up!

[Tortok]

I guess seafuries have huge HP for their level due to being giants?!
For example, I did 59 on my shm in rat maze in PoM multi-clicking 5 to 7 rats at a time and exp was fantastic. Never could have gotten similar exp with spending any mana on dots. Don't remember how many dots it took per rat though.

Especially once you got Paralyzing Earth at level 56 it gets fantastic. With Enstill have to root often.
But root dotting 5 to 7 blue cons with epic at 56+ is easily possible for shamans.

[Danth]

Having never done them I'm curious: are they light blue or blue when you're killing them this way? And how many (1.5 min) curses does it take to kill them?

Dark blue, although they start to green out by the upper 50's. I don't remember how many clicks it took to kill them; it's been a long time since the wife was leveling her Shaman (that would've been late 2012). I do remember this for the drolvarg captain area:

5 was preferred for the sake of simplicity.
6 was doable but annoying solo.
7 was the maximum, and it left the shaman about out of mana at the end of it. Fighting that many or more consistently would most likely warrant either much better equipment (not too hard with Velious out) or additional mana regeneration from clarity or a fungi tunic, and preferably all three.

Note that this is one area where it appears P1999 might not be fully classic. There's significant evidence that root from a single player should not hold on more than four targets at once. I can't recall ever having done that sort of thing in the original game so I have no personal memory to confirm or deny such claims.

----------------------------------------------

Although glossed over, it should be reminded that the Jaundiced Bone Bracer allows for fairly easy leveling for only modest (and re-sellable) expense.

Danth

[loramin]

Note that this is one area where it appears P1999 might not be fully classic. There's significant evidence that root from a single player should not hold on more than four targets at once. I can't recall ever having done that sort of thing in the original game so I have no personal memory to confirm or deny such claims.

The same here. I used to practically live in the Shaman's Crucible, and I never remember anyone doing anything like that either. Heck, even the upper levels of CoM thing was completely new when I first heard about it here, although that requires a certain amount of knowledge/hacks so even if it was on live it still might not have been common knowledge.

But man, all that aside, the broken leveling possibilities just described almost make me want to farm 90k then start another Shaman alt ... almost.

[Teppler]

Having never done them I'm curious: are they light blue or blue when you're killing them this way? And how many (1.5 min) curses does it take to kill them?

Because when I did the same thing with Seafuries,

A) they were geen to me
B) four (maybe three but I think four) curses
C) doing 7 would take forever, because I couldn't keep refreshing curses perfectly, it took time to pull, some would break root, etc.
D) after doing 7 greens I'd be low on health and mana, because the mobs can still get hits in before root, after root breaks, etc. plus the roots themselves cost mana (not a lot, but doing 7 mobs with semi-frequent root breaks adds up), heals cost mana, finishing the mob off at the end (if I was impatient at least) cost mana, etc.

So when I did the math on all that it was totally worth it for grinding gems, but even if they had been light blue it wouldn't have been as good of XP as a simple root/rot camp because they took so long to kill that way.

But if you can do 7-8 blue Drovarg Captains at once and not die (7 blue seafuries would have killed me fairly often) then geez, I wish I'd known about that camp when I was leveling up!

It's been a while but I'm pretty sure that's what I did at level 58-59(I distinctly remember finishing leveling to 60 by soloing hand room) and it was a very very fast level. You can do 4 dark blues very easily this way. 5 pretty easy. 6 my guess starts to get challenging and 7 becomes a balancing act I believe. When you get to a certain point you're just rooting and epicing with no down time and you get mana over time from canni and hp from regrowth and hopefully fungi. So you need that tool as well to do the higher number of mobs effectively or else they will wear you down.

[Teppler]

Another thing about KC is that there's almost always a chanter at ent or in one of the court yards to get clarity 2 from. I'm sure that was a factor as well.

[Tortok]

When you get to a certain point you're just rooting and epicing with no down time and you get mana over time from canni and hp from regrowth and hopefully fungi. So you need that tool as well to do the higher number of mobs effectively or else they will wear you down.

Being a troll it worked well without fungi, can't speak for lesser races obviously :cool: