Shaman questions

[khailibowen]

I have a lvl 15 Barb Shaman. So far it seems that in each group I have been in, I have been the only healer, which I gather is probably not our main purpose in a group...

That said, I have spent most of my grouping time in NRO and Oasis, since I believe lvl 8. I have yet to be in a group that actually has a cleric and in the rare account of their being a druid, I heal, because well by now, that's what I know how to do lol.

So, I read all this that we should be buffing and debuffing. In the hopeful future that I may be able to be something other then the healer in a group, who should I be buffing? I have mana to buff 3 people, then I become OOM and by then pulling is going strong and I stick at LoM trying to heal. So, I imagine the best people to buff would be the 1 or 2 I tend to heal the most? I also like to give myself the first buff (usually just one as I rarely get touched and I don't have much mana for buffing and healing, it's sort of like my timer, I know when that fades, the others will have theirs fade soon after.) Generally I buff things like feel like cat, spirit of bear, and the like (and sow to the whole group).

As for debuffing, I have never done that outside of soloing because I can't seem to ever find the mana for it. Plus, in these Oasis groups where random things get pulled from all over, the group may be killing 2-4 things at once, with everyone seemingly very random. Any techniques on how this is generally done?

Please forgive my ignorance here, I exclusively solo'd a druid up to lvl 46 on live, never grouped, and other then a few single digit alts my kids like to watch me play, my lvl 15 shaman is my main character, so I have very little group experience.

[baub]

Make sure you're healing with Inner Fire, it's your most efficient heal and you can spam it virtually all day.

As far as buffing I'd say only worry about strength and sow at your level, maybe dex if they have a proc weapon. Agility/AC line are useless and stamina provides a pretty crappy return until you're higher.

Ignore debuffing (other than root), slows are also pretty useless until you get to the togors line and NPCs actually stay alive long enough for them to matter

[Blorris]

Here is a trick I've been using. When sitting, you get +mana from meditation every tick (6 seconds), and inner fire is a 2 second cast. Do the casting dance.. start sitting and wait for your mana to budge up on the meditation tick. Stand, inner fire the person getting hit, immediately sit again. At my current level (18), i get +9 mana a tick, and inner fire costs 10 mana and heals 20. This effectively is like a free 20 regen on your group's tank. It makes a HUGE difference over time. Going from spamming our crappy low heal to the inner fire dance, was the difference from staying LoM / Oom to actually gaining it during normal group play.

Btw, the cast dance between ticks works wonders for the cannibalize line later on. I guess its called the cannidance then. Only cann right after a med tick hits, then you get both.

[phobus]

Skip buffing unless you've got plenty of mana to spare or you're not the main healer. The exception would be sow for the puller at least, and maybe str/dex for one or two people. Your stat buffs don't make much of a difference at that level, and cost mana that could otherwise be used to heal your tanks, which means you could be killing instead of giving out inconsequential stat increases.

Also, Blorris gives good advice about medding between casts of Inner Fire. Do that continuously to keep your group healed, and only break out the Light Healing when necessary. You can stop this at 19 when you get Healing, but until then it's good practice for when you get Cannibalize. To make it easier for you, you can setup a macro with this:

/stand
/pause 30, /cast #
/sit

Substitute # for the spell slot you have loaded with Inner Fire (i.e., if it's in the top slot, you'd put /cast 1). Keep your main tank targeted and just hit that button every at every med tick.

Once you get cannibalize, setup a similar macro for that. That makes the "canni dance" a bit less work.

Either way, you should be busy busy busy when killing. A shaman who's just sitting and medding is usually not efficient.

[Servellious]

Here is a trick I've been using. When sitting, you get +mana from meditation every tick (6 seconds), and inner fire is a 2 second cast. Do the casting dance.. start sitting and wait for your mana to budge up on the meditation tick. Stand, inner fire the person getting hit, immediately sit again. At my current level (18), i get +9 mana a tick, and inner fire costs 10 mana and heals 20. This effectively is like a free 20 regen on your group's tank. It makes a HUGE difference over time. Going from spamming our crappy low heal to the inner fire dance, was the difference from staying LoM / Oom to actually gaining it during normal group play.

Btw, the cast dance between ticks works wonders for the cannibalize line later on. I guess its called the cannidance then. Only cann right after a med tick hits, then you get both.

What he said about inner fire x10. I know its a pain but you can have almost infinite mana if you do this.

Also if i were you i would head to field of bone asap and hop into kurns tower, the burynai armor is awesome for us here, and you can camp the guy for iskar beserker club and a nice shield. I need a few more pieces of armor and the shield myself. Only helpful stuff i can tell you for now cause im pretty new like yourself.

[khailibowen]

Thanks so much!

I didn't get much of a chance to play last week, and I got into 1 group and it was just terrible, with 3 people chain pulling multiple reds, to me (I was highest in group by 2 lvls) and then dieing right and left and blaming me for it, because they would pull when I would say OOM. So, I logged and played my lvl 4 alt for a bit.

Using Inner Fire, did help a bunch, I didn't lose mana nearly as fast, but the tank got mad at me for doing it, I was like more mana efficient, I could even see the difference, but he said the cast time was to slow. I thought that maybe if he wasn't such a terrible tank it wouldn't have been so bad (LOL, but I digress.... :)

I think I will have time this weekend to work to play some more and I will work on that mana dance, that could have helped last weekend! lol. I read about the cannidance or something like that on a shaman guide but didn't realize understand it, and I am to low for those spells, but it's nice to know I can do it in an adapted way now.

FoB sounds fun, I will look into heading over there, for something different. Oasis is overly crowded to the max, and even for an extremely causal player like myself, it's used up most of it's fun.

You guys have been extremely helpful, I really appreciate it. I will go into this weekend's play time with more confidence.

___________________
Jellia - lvl 15 Shaman - Freedom Guard

[skorge]

Here's a bit of advice...solo.

At level 15 go to South Karana and go to the Hermit area (see EQ Atlas for a map). At this spot you will find elephant calfs, there are 3-4 spawns of them. Easy kills for you at 15. Loot their tusks and sell them later for decent gold.

At 20+ you can start doing elephants or move to Lake Rathe. If you go to Lake Rathe start out doing the one single Aviak Guard spawn, which is located on a plank on the stone skeleton island. Move to the Arena area where you can get two birds if you feel you are strong enough. You can do Aviak Guards until 24/25.

At 24+ go to Ferrott and do the bard that spawns by the zone-in there from Inny Swamp. She drops up to 5 plat a kill. This can take you to 29+.

At 29+ go back to South Karana and do gnolls and centuar chargers (wait until you get pet to do them) until level 39/40. Another option is to do halfling guards in Misty Thicket, if you are evil.

At level 40+ hit up the Overthere. You can solo kill here for good exp until level 45.

This takes you up to level 45 soloing. Hope it helps.

Note: I took an ogre shaman up to 50 on Red recently using the above spots (minus the Overthere), with just banded gear and a Gatorsmash Maul.

[mgellan]

From about 35 - 42 you can do Cynthia at the Gypsy camp in RM, 6 min spawn, other gypsys don't assist, very relaxing spot.

Regards,
Mg

[Extunarian]

From about 35 - 42 you can do Cynthia at the Gypsy camp in RM, 6 min spawn, other gypsys don't assist, very relaxing spot.

Regards,
Mg

MG - where the hell have you been?!

[khailibowen]

Soloing is very tempting! I will head over to SK then.

Thanks for the advice!

The thing is that sometimes I want to group lol, maybe I should make a more group friendly class for those times when I want to group :)

_________________
Jellia - Lvl 15 Shaman - Freedom Guard

[Estu]

Soloing is very tempting! I will head over to SK then.

Thanks for the advice!

The thing is that sometimes I want to group lol, maybe I should make a more group friendly class for those times when I want to group :)

_________________
Jellia - Lvl 15 Shaman - Freedom Guard

Shamans are very group friendly. Hang around dungeons - at your level, Upper Guk and Unrest are good.

[Cynosure]

I've chosen a shaman specifically to be a healer. I've been grouping for over 11 levels and have not yet had any problem being the main healer of a group (even when I was using inner fire). I'm sure filling this roll will get harder and harder as I level up, but I will strive to compete with clerics!

Use your slow on mobs that take a good minute for your group to beat down and spam your inner fire heal when needed. I feel that taking time to buff is necessary and increases your group's defense and damage output.

I found soloing to be unbearable after level 12 and it only got harder after that.

I highly recommend Kurn's tower; I received 9-16 there within the matter of a week or two of relaxed play without any dead members of groups (aside from those pulls where they didn't even make it back to me).

[Ciel]

Anyone know when the Indoor-only restriction on Shrink was lifted? HHK used to be one of my favorite zones back on live (for some weird reason...), but nowadays I just tend to avoid it, being a troll shammy unable to shrink. Couple other zones this is annoying in.

[quido]

Like someone already mentioned, debuffs are pretty pointless at low levels. Similarly, the benefit from buffing at low levels can sometimes not be worth the effort. In my opinion, a strength buff is worth it on anyone who is meleeing, but aside from that, I'd only bother with hp buffs and maybe agility/dex on a main tank if you have one designated, and possibly the puller depending on where you are. There are plenty of good exceptions such as an enchanter who is going to be handling some volatile mezzes, but in general, your dps and patch healers don't need hp buffs.

[Deverell]

While leveling, you'll probably be a healer most of the time. You've noticed the shortage of clerics in the lower and mid-levels - this is because the class is so boring to level up that most clerics are just alts and are power-leveled up to the point where they can do more interesting things than sit in Oasis. Expect to be the healer probably until 45+. Another factor in this is that shamans can't really do all that much besides healing until the higher mid-levels. You don't get proper buffs and slow until level 29, and most debuffs besides slow aren't worth the mana in a grind setting. Don't bother casting your disempower line, it's a waste on mobs that die in 20 seconds and when the only risk of death is from trains.

Once you enter the harder dungeons (basically 50+ content really) it starts to become beneficial to have a dedicated slower and/or a backup healer. That's where the shaman fits in, also because your buffs will be great by then. Right now you can barely buff, but after the 44 and 49 spell levels, you can really make a difference. A shaman can fill one of two roles: main healer or buffer+debuffer+backup healer. You generally can't do both at the same time (maybe at 60 with Torpor) and since you can't debuff much and don't need to at your level, that just leaves healing. Throughout your 20s and 30s, shaman is the best healer in the game for a chain-pulling exp group due to canni and the fact that clerics don't have their unique heals yet at that point. Greater healing has almost the same mana efficiency as superior healing, and regen-canni is basically free clarity (that stacks with actual clarity, in case there's a chanter around).

The shaman class is a late bloomer, but it becomes one of the best classes in the end.

[godbox]

Anyone know when the Indoor-only restriction on Shrink was lifted? HHK used to be one of my favorite zones back on live (for some weird reason...), but nowadays I just tend to avoid it, being a troll shammy unable to shrink. Couple other zones this is annoying in.

i always carry a few 10stack shrink pots because a) I can b) I alwasy wanna be shrunk

[mwatt]

Shamans are miserably underpowered from about level 15 to until at least 24. Just grit your teeth and get through these levels as best you can.

In the end, though you will be called upon to heal now and then, it is not your primary strength and not something that you should be happy to have assigned to you. As a grouper, a Shaman is typically a buffer of melees, a slower, and a smattering of one or all of the following:
* back-up healer
* CCer
* light DPS
These are desirable, though not critical capabilities for most groups.

As for soloing, A Shaman can solo all the way to max levels - one of the best classes for doing so.

Again, 15 to 24 simply suck - either solo or group. Do your best to leave it behind ASAP.

[Polyphemous]

I have been the only healer... I have yet to be in a group that actually has a cleric...



This is explained by the following being a common experience:

I got into 1 group and it was just terrible, with 3 people chain pulling multiple reds, to me (I was highest in group by 2 lvls) and then dieing right and left and blaming me for it, because they would pull when I would say OOM. So, I logged and played my lvl 4 alt for a bit.

...but the tank got mad at me for doing it, I was like more mana efficient, I could even see the difference, but he said the cast time was to slow. I thought that maybe if he wasn't such a terrible tank it wouldn't have been so bad (LOL, but I digress.... :)



Welcome to the wonderful world of the healer, where people who don't know how to do their job are experts at telling you how to do yours!

"Dude, just like click a button so I stay alive even when I pull at OOM how hard is that broseph?!"


edit: another reason for the shortage of clerics at your level is that 99% of those not being PLed will spend lvl 12-35 in Unrest.

[Estu]

A nice way to stay in control of pulls is to only heal people if their % hp is lower than your % mana. So if you're at 40% mana they're going to be at 40% HP and will maybe think twice about running and aggroing five mobs.

[Swish]

I try not to do it, but pull the "AFK" trick if you're oom and they're not listening when you say you need to med :p

EQ101 subtley states that if the healer is afk, you have to hold the pulls...and nobody wants to die :)

[Cippofra]

Grouping at all can often be a pain and even more so for a healer class that cant heal (until 53). And the server is just full of twinks that think they're only people in the game with a fungi and COF. This results in them believing they deal such massive dps that your group can handle anything. Money cant buy skill

[trukk]

Here is a trick I've been using. When sitting, you get +mana from meditation every tick (6 seconds), and inner fire is a 2 second cast. Do the casting dance.. start sitting and wait for your mana to budge up on the meditation tick. Stand, inner fire the person getting hit, immediately sit again. At my current level (18), i get +9 mana a tick, and inner fire costs 10 mana and heals 20. This effectively is like a free 20 regen on your group's tank. It makes a HUGE difference over time. Going from spamming our crappy low heal to the inner fire dance, was the difference from staying LoM / Oom to actually gaining it during normal group play.

Btw, the cast dance between ticks works wonders for the cannibalize line later on. I guess its called the cannidance then. Only cann right after a med tick hits, then you get both.


Quoted for truth.

Back when I played Live 97-2000 (beta- kunark), I never new this trick. Once you get Meditate, you can basically act like a pretty good regen spell on your tank by Fire-Dancing, and not drain much mana at all. Really opened up a new Shaman mechanic to me. Our heal spells are so mana inefficient, but Fire-Dancing is AWESOME!

Have to yell at everyone to remove thier other shield spells (stone skin, reso, etc.), to get the lowbie Inner Fire to stick, but once you prove it to your group they are believers.

-Chris