Shaman.. And the Race decisions..

[ShadyNapster]

I will be starting on Green either tonight or tomorrow and haven't played the game in quite a while. I used to almost exclusively play as Iksars, but that will not be available.

100% am making a shaman, although I am hoping for a little input on to be an Ogre or a Troll. I have no interest in playing as Barbarian. I've read on wiki the snare clicky trolls can get + the regen, but how use full is it actually? Then there are:confused: the Hulking Ogres with the stats and no frontal stun.

Any extra input to help me decide one way or the other would be greatly appreciated.


( i generally will only be playing 1-3 hrs at most a day, except occasional weekends that'll be able to binge )

[Tecmos Deception]

Ogres get a significant stat bonus, which is helpful for the first like 20-30 levels when you melee and not a bad thing at higher levels when you have a stam and wis edge over the troll. FSI is cool cause nobody likes getting a spell interrupted by bash or getting stunned from the front. But the things all the people who say "go ogre for FSI" focus on are really, really niche: "casting that clutch gate with 4 mobs beating on you" and "soloing velious dragons bro" and "don't want to get stunned when trying to cast that critical slow!"

Yeah, sure. But that's like 1% of your gameplay overall. Or less.

I went troll with my sham because regen is not to be undervalued on green, imo. Rubicite BP is a small difference. Fungi tunics and staffs, and torpor, will all be a long ways down the road and all be difficult to obtain (even iksar bp isn't going to drop like candy), especially the more casual you are. There won't be mana free epic clicks to help kill stuff for ANYONE for like 1.5 years still, and even then they will no be trivial to obtain. Imo almost all shamans will want as much regen as they can get to canni into mana, especially those who are spending more time in groups or raids and therefore getting even less use out of FSI than a solo-focused sham.

Some people swear by the snare clicky, others just say it is situational and annoying to use. A couple people even swear by the cazic thule undead and animal fear clickies. But again, these items aren't even going to be in the game for quite a while.


You really can't screw up a shaman's race imo. If the 1% situations really call out to you and you like the better stats? Go ogre. If you like the idea of maxing your mana regen out all the time whether you're solo or grouping or raiding, or you love the idea of a couple clickies? Go troll. Or pick based on appearance. Don't worry about the small exp penalty differences.

[LordStraddler]

I played Inny troll when I started on blue. The regen really helped when I started out to reduce downtime and the snare clicky definitely comes in handy when monk duoing etc. The regen also helps when you can't afford ikky bp and fungi etc when they become available they are going to cost the earth. When I hit 60 there was nothing I couldn't solo that an ogre could. I did notice a few occasions where bashes interrupted me, but I think the troll regen is a massive boon leveling up once you have canni unless you have a massive plat bank from a former main. I would personally go troll although I think Ogre is fractionally better in the very end game provided you have topor but the troll racial really helps solobility and canni conversion efficiency in groups (No Ench Breeze pre Kunark either).

[ShadyNapster]

Awesome, I appreciate the replies very much. Kind of helped push me in the direction I wanted to go.

[Snaggles]

Go with what you like the look of. I have a Inny troll on blue and appreciate the perks but frankly could have done just as fine with a barb. The JBB in Kunark is awesome so iksar would have been a longer grind 45-55.

[Sizar]

And don't forget, Polar Bear > Black Bear > Brown Bear

[Bardp1999]

Barbarian wins fashion quest - if you choose anything but a Barb you will ultimately lose the game since at the very high-end fashion is king

[ShadyNapster]

Thanks for the info! leaning towards Troll right now. When will Kunark be released?

[jolanar]

Looks > all. Which is why Troll is the answer.

[ShadyNapster]

Looks > all. Which is why Troll is the answer.

:D:D:D:cool:

[Berendar]

Trolls win fashion quest out of the two. A Fungi looks awful on a Ogre (although the Velious armours are nice).

Having levelled numerous Ogre's and Trolls, one thing to remember about FSI is that you actually notice it more day to day rather than, as many state, only soloing high end stuff.

After playing an Ogre and then going back to Troll, the stuns in any combat situation from bash become quite annoying. You only lose a few seconds each time but if you like to melee then it is noticeably annoying. If you only root/rot or group then not so much an issue.

[Gatorsmash]

Trolls win fashion quest out of the two. A Fungi looks awful on a Ogre (although the Velious armours are nice).

Having levelled numerous Ogre's and Trolls, one thing to remember about FSI is that you actually notice it more day to day rather than, as many state, only soloing high end stuff.

After playing an Ogre and then going back to Troll, the stuns in any combat situation from bash become quite annoying. You only lose a few seconds each time but if you like to melee then it is noticeably annoying. If you only root/rot or group then not so much an issue.

^ its noticeable even at lvl 5

Regen is pretty OP pre Velious and very noticeable as well. Almost a push between the two.

[ShadyNapster]

awesome, so it seems troll is still winning out in selections.

[illuminary3]

I gotta vote troll as well. The regen is insanely useful while leveling, and the only time is isn't as useful is after fungi, epics, and torpor. All of which are a looooong way off.

[silo32]

Barbarian wins fashion quest - if you choose anything but a Barb you will ultimately lose the game since at the very high-end fashion is king

this is end end game tho

[Wallicker]

Yea it’s Ogre for me and not all really that close, when your first slow gets resisted or you pick up some adds with very high MR, that frontal stun immunity can be the difference in life or death. Sure leveling the troll may be a little faster with the regen, but you will spend a majority of your time at max level.

[DMN]

Yea it’s Ogre for me and not all really that close, when your first slow gets resisted or you pick up some adds with very high MR, that frontal stun immunity can be the difference in life or death. Sure leveling the troll may be a little faster with the regen, but you will spend a majority of your time at max level.


Well if your first slow gets resisted, you should be able to spam root until it lands. Even if its an unrootable mob(incredibly rare) you should be able to get clean casts off between bash time recycling. The 1.5 second stun from a bash that is on a 10 second cooldown, which half the time it won't even be a bash but a kick, and then 75% of the time won't even result in a stun anyway even if it was a bash is going to ever even significantly influence any given fight a shaman may be attempting to solo is absurdly unlikely especially when you consider the vast majority of time you could have just spammed root until it landed and cast outside of melee range amd any race shaman is going to do exactly that. Even when all those things do happen in a fluke, it still has around 30% chance to interrupt you regardless of race anyway.

You either land slow or die, and the chance FSI even has any impact whatsoever on you successfully landing a slow is incredibly low. And if its a long marathon fight, and you do indeed land slow, the only way you now lose is if you are too inefficient with your slows/healing, but guess what, regeneration suddenly has a significant impact on that equation since it's completely free health/mana for you to access. Those numbers will add up over a 10+ minute fight. It's probably just as likely the extra efficiency will allow an additional slow attempt over a long fight and that could prove the difference as compared to FSI having any impact on an initial slow attempt.

At the end of the day it's really choosing if you want something that will always help during virtually 100% of your playtime or something that MIGHT help you 0.001% of your playtime.

[Wallicker]

Having played both a troll and ogre shaman, the difference is night and day. I would choose Ogre hands down, but that’s my opinion and my reasons being that FSI is far more important than regen end game and so is having maximum HP/STA/resists which ogre gets much easier. Ogre has the advantage in a big way during “oh shit” moments, which on a shaman are the only time you will die. If everything goes according to plan it won’t matter.

Bonus: trolls start with -20 FR mod.

[DMN]

Having played both a troll and ogre shaman, the difference is night and day. I would choose Ogre hands down, but that’s my opinion and my reasons being that FSI is far more important than regen end game and so is having maximum HP/STA/resists which ogre gets much easier. Ogre has the advantage in a big way during “oh shit” moments, which on a shaman are the only time you will die. If everything goes according to plan it won’t matter.

Bonus: trolls start with -20 FR mod.


You've stated that FSI is "more important end game", but you have failed to substantiate that claim in any meaningful way.
Bonus: trolls get snare.

[Wallicker]

You've stated that FSI is "more important end game", but you have failed to substantiate that claim in any meaningful way.
Bonus: trolls get snare.

It’s super easy to position yourself where a mob isn’t going to flee, plus that snare is a 6 second cast for 6 ticks of snare, pretty shitty. Plus most likely your mob will already be rooted...Honestly of the clickies I’d rather have fear undead and animal. Allowing you a quick cast interrupt of these species. Being able to interrupt a CH or nasty spell is a better utility than that shitty snare(think soloing seb crypt) or HS(is drusella flagged undead?)

[Gatorsmash]

It’s super easy to position yourself where a mob isn’t going to flee, plus that snare is a 6 second cast for 6 ticks of snare, pretty shitty. Plus most likely your mob will already be rooted...Honestly of the clickies I’d rather have fear undead and animal. Allowing you a quick cast interrupt of these species. Being able to interrupt a CH or nasty spell is a better utility than that shitty snare(think soloing seb crypt) or HS(is drusella flagged undead?)

The snare is amazing and saved my life more time then I can remember camping high end named with those zero room to fight dungeons.

And when it changes to stack with root its magical. You don't realize how important snare is until you don't have it.

[DMN]

It’s super easy to position yourself where a mob isn’t going to flee, plus that snare is a 6 second cast for 6 ticks of snare, pretty shitty. Plus most likely your mob will already be rooted...Honestly of the clickies I’d rather have fear undead and animal. Allowing you a quick cast interrupt of these species. Being able to interrupt a CH or nasty spell is a better utility than that shitty snare(think soloing seb crypt) or HS(is drusella flagged undead?)

Ya, if all you wanted to do with your shaman is farm seb crypt, CT would prolly be a better religion to pick. It's a non sequitur though, because ogres can't pick CT as a god.

And if you have snare it can often be advantageous to keep mobs a place where they might flee and either let root break or not root them at all. You let them run and then hamless drool while snared at low life. In a way it's like starting the fight with all your enemies immediately losing 10% o their life if used correctly.

If you do want to talk purely about long term "end game", snare will eventually stack with root giving you a buffer to re-root dangerous melee mobs who otherwise would get to tear you up before you could reroot them.

[Wallicker]

Like I said arguments can be made either way, my opinion having played both is Ogre Shaman and it’s not close. Be nice if that snare wasn’t a 6second cast to only last a few tics. I still personally believe FSI + superior stats far outweigh the benefits of the regen and clickie at end game.

[Berendar]

It’s super easy to position yourself where a mob isn’t going to flee, plus that snare is a 6 second cast for 6 ticks of snare, pretty shitty. Plus most likely your mob will already be rooted...Honestly of the clickies I’d rather have fear undead and animal. Allowing you a quick cast interrupt of these species. Being able to interrupt a CH or nasty spell is a better utility than that shitty snare(think soloing seb crypt) or HS(is drusella flagged undead?)

I think 6 ticks would be pretty good and make it worth it but on blue anyway, it's half that or was when I used it.

[DMN]

Like I said arguments can be made either way, my opinion having played both is Ogre Shaman and it’s not close. Be nice if that snare wasn’t a 6second cast to only last a few tics. I still personally believe FSI + superior stats far outweigh the benefits of the regen and clickie at end game.

I highly doubt you've played a 60 ogre and 60 troll shaman. And i do recall you also think bards shouldn't put their starting stat points into charisma. That personal experience of yours hasn't done much for your EQ acumen, frankly.

6 second cast time isn't terribly relevant if snare is going to be useful for whatever it is you are doing. like I said it can allow you to win a fight while only really having to deal with 85% or so of the HP of a mob. imagine how useful that would be against any spell caster, especially the summoning variety. It also of course will allow you to more efficiently root rot stuff since you will have time reroot before the mob tears into you often times. You can reposition indoor mobs without them tearing you a new asshole on the journey. it makes fear kiting viable paired with other classes as well as aggro kiting. You can use it to split mobs you would otherwise find impossible to do so by strategically rooting the mobs away from the spawn point, then camping immediately after you land the snare on the furthest one away from the camp. You should be able to log back in and get the one you snared.

[Wallicker]

I highly doubt you've played a 60 ogre and 60 troll shaman. And i do recall you also think bards shouldn't put their starting stat points into charisma. That personal experience of yours hasn't done much for your EQ acumen, frankly.

6 second cast time isn't terribly relevant if snare is going to be useful for whatever it is you are doing. like I said it can allow you to win a fight while only really having to deal with 85% or so of the HP of a mob. imagine how useful that would be against any spell caster, especially the summoning variety. It also of course will allow you to more efficiently root rot stuff since you will have time reroot before the mob tears into you often times. You can reposition indoor mobs without them tearing you a new asshole on the journey. it makes fear kiting viable paired with other classes as well as aggro kiting. You can use it to split mobs you would otherwise find impossible to do so by strategically rooting the mobs away from the spawn point, then camping immediately after you land the snare on the furthest one away from the camp. You should be able to log back in and get the one you snared.

Bards shouldn’t put their starting points into charisma lol, and I have leveled 3 bards to 60 solo, duo/trio, full grouped. camping takes 30 seconds plus reload time by then snare is worn off for sure, explain to me how it’s useful for splitting if you said combining it with sky FD clickie I’d bite. Again it’s personal preference but I feel ogre is superior to troll as an endgame shaman. Shaman killing is attrition warfare if you can get a mob down 85% you can do the other 15%. FSI + Greater stats > Regen + long cast short duration snare clickie imho.

[DMN]

Bards shouldn’t put their starting points into charisma lol, and I have leveled 3 bards to 60 solo, duo/trio, full grouped. camping takes 30 seconds plus reload time by then snare is worn off for sure, explain to me how it’s useful for splitting if you said combining it with sky FD clickie I’d bite. Again it’s personal preference but I feel ogre is superior to troll as an endgame shaman. Shaman killing is attrition warfare if you can get a mob down 85% you can do the other 15%. FSI + Greater stats > Regen + long cast short duration snare clickie imho.

Yes, I'm well aware of your incredibly bad bard tips on character creation. Anyway, the idea is that the extra tick of snare time will create enough separation between the mobs so when you log back in you can grab the furthest one away from camp without aggroing the others. it's 30 seconds to camp and 36 seconds of snare. You can sometimes do this with just root on a non-troll but you need a much, much larger area to park/stagger the mobs and is usually not viable in dungeons. For trolls it is viable even in dungeons.

And it doesn't sound like you have played a shaman at 60 against high end content. The idea the last 15% of health is meaningless because you managed to get it that low is completely idiotic. It's very easy to start getting a bunch of resists on your slow and easily get fucked over by running out of mana/health shortly thereafter.

[Wallicker]

We will have to agree to disagree on both points, for the bard I’d rather have my 75 extra hp at lvl 50 or 100hp at 60. For shaman I’d rather have FSI and more HP/Mana/20 more FR vs Regen/FSI(I will admit in classic it’s probably a wash, but once torpor is an option I heavily prefer the Ogre).you have your reasons and I have mine, that’s why this game is so great many different ways to play. Glad to have an educated discussion and not just name calling, I think we are wrapped up here. Probably why the poll is split.

[Kpaz]

Barbarians are beloved all over Norath resulting in a much calmer and stress free player who will always cast the right spell at the right time. Definitely not the type who would bash other races.

[Danger]

I have an epiced troll and ogre shaman. I rerolled my troll to Ogre after testing FSI and seeing if it worked while using illusions (bear, AON, it carries thru) and whether FSI is really noticeable. I've used the clinging darkness necklace on the troll and used a JBB on both so heres my take.

FSI is fantastic, and it is noticeable but it does not make you immune from interrupt from melee push so FSI really shines if you stand in a corner. With that said FSI isn't so good that if you really like trolls to go Ogre. JBB is really great but starts to lose its potency as u climb beyond level 54ish or fight velious mobs.

If I had to do it all over again I'd go Iksar just for the convenience of not being huge

(yes I make my own shrink pots but it sucks burning through those bad boys constantly or if you camp/zone hop/get dispelled a lot as one does on my server, red)

Iksars get the fashion quest of the Robe of the Azure Sky which no other shaman can have. The AC bonus is basically negated by a Jaundiced Bone BP click usable by everyone else.

People say Torpor (when/if you get to scribe it) makes racial regen useless but I disagree, when not torpored and running around the regen is always with you, FSI works only as often as you get bashed, with that said if you land a slow mob bashes occur pretty infrequently and can be worked around. There is nothing an Ogre shaman can solo that a Barbarian couldn't.

The innoruuk clinging darkness necklace is basically worthless between the casting time and duration of the spell. The quest allows you to repeatedly quest a 5 minute halfling illusion clickie so there may be SOME potential to use that to gain faction a troll or ogre may not otherwise be able to but the innoruuk deity faction hit pretty much renders it moot either way.

[Danger]

https://i.imgur.com/6CRyFD7.png

[Wrekt]

Barbarian wins fashion quest - if you choose anything but a Barb you will ultimately lose the game since at the very high-end fashion is king

drunk

[Christina.]

I'd just like to add..the necklace is ass.

Clingling Darkness is a necs first snare at level 4, and it honestly doesn't change a mobs movement speed for shit lol. I also vote ogre, Ive seen that stun immunity clutch way to many times not to lol.

The brown bear part sucks though..

[kjs86z]

polar bear 4 lyfe

[OuterChimp]

Gnome Shammies for teh win!

[BlackBellamy]

https://i.imgur.com/6CRyFD7.png

lol

guy says he has limited play time and you're showing him rare loot from the top VP mob

[Christina.]

lol

guy says he has limited play time and you're showing him rare loot from the top VP mob

I think he just posted the picture to show the guy the robe he was talking about that iksar shamans could wear.

[fastboy21]

is there a race that makes it easier to load a trillion buffs for ingrates and ignoramuses that don't even know what buffs they need...but they sure know how to bitch if you don't give it to them. what race is that?

[tsuchang]

is there a race that makes it easier to load a trillion buffs for ingrates and ignoramuses that don't even know what buffs they need...but they sure know how to bitch if you don't give it to them. what race is that?

[Insert snarky comment here]

I had to delete all the ones I had so not to offend, you decide.

[fastboy21]

[Insert snarky comment here]

I had to delete all the ones I had so not to offend, you decide.

snark all you want.

anyone who has ever been a real grping shaman or a raid shaman knows how it is...and it isn't impacted by race at the char select screen.

[Midoo]

SHM main here

Ogre FSI has very niche uses for a Shaman (clutch gate/root) and I very vividly remember one of the forum users on here conducting a study that showed it doesn't even work half the time and lots of spells still get interrupted. Their stats would be excellent on a warrior/SK but past level 30 Shamans are purely magic users in the support role who won't need the extra STR/STA. This is because of the level cap and their subpar scaling with melee stats among other things.

Troll on the other hand has phenomenal regen that stacks with chloro and is very helpful for keeping your red bar up while you're cannibalizing (i recommend canni dancing to make the most of it) plus they get neat clickies.

TLDR ogre's natural warrior stats becomes useless on a shaman past a certain level and their FSI is overrated, while troll regen helps a lot with canni

[fastboy21]

Troll shaman gets snare. IMO, the best thing about rolling Troll over Ogre.

[Cillaz]

I played a barb sham then re rolled to Iksar once kunark was out.
Iksar was way easier to level due to the regen. The difference it made was massive.
I cant really remember too many times when i have died due to being stunned (and even less so once i got torpor), and i have 3 man grouped WW dragons, 2 man lodizal, 6 man grouped hate/fear where i was getting beat on alot etc
The regen makes a difference ALL the time, where as the FSI is situational and as you get higher and have more hp and regen/torpor to deal with things you will die less and less from stun.
You say you play for 1-3 hours a day, i would say you will spend most of your time levelling and not high end raiding - so regen will make the difference for you - go Troll.

I agree that in high end raiding and when soloing/duoing high end content that FSI is a big factor and it becomes a tougher decision - but in this case, for this person - regen would make the most difference.