Stop and think for a second. The best healing class in the game can potentially solo from 1-60 (and definitely 1-53). Doesn't that say something about the strength/flexibility of a cleric? I'd say that's overpowered, and I love it ;)

Spectre camp....

My necro fear kites a spec, takes him maybe 90 seconds with dot stacking and moving around.

My cleric roots the spec, nukes 3 times, and sits back down after about 20 seconds and meds for the next one.

Don't forum lawyer me on clerics being bad or slow soloers, they're not...and there's enough undead at all levels that they don't get "stuck" having to group (until 53 at least).

EDIT: I'd be interested to see a shaman's XP root rotting spectres/festering hags/other undead versus a cleric's DD and how that compares over an hour. I think its safe to say we aren't the "worst caster class" for soloing.

I'm not trying to be an asshole here. I'm just saying that it's misleading to call them immensely powerful soloers when they are definitely slower in EXP per hour than every other caster class. If you like going AFK a lot to med, that's another story. Shaman-wise, they have canni/regen, a pet, and dots which are much more efficient than nukes; it's a no-brainer.

I can't help but stare at the one head banging over and over.

http://i.imgur.com/JgYtRkB.gif

Are you for real? My main on live for years was a shaman, you're not going to tell me that you're full mana after every mob kill are you? You're medding, the cleric is medding.

The difference is the cleric finished his spectre while you're still pissing about with yours on 70-80% with those dots and toothless pet dps without it being able to dual wield. The apparent downtime might seem like longer because of inactivity between kills, but I'm already likely about to pull my 2nd spectre while you're chewing your arm, healing/regenning and getting your mana back up to full.

Try thinking beyond the theory of soloing a cleric and give it a go, you'll be surprised.

Swish, it's pretty simple. Cleric undead nukes are far less mana-efficient than shaman DoTs; on top of that they have free pet DPS and extra mana regen from cannibalize. The result is that shamans can put out far more damage per hour than clerics can. It doesn't matter if that damage comes in the form of a single nuke or in the form of DoTs. You can claim that clerics require less work to solo because you nuke and then you med, but you can't claim that they down more monsters per hour because it's simply impossible; they can't do as much damage per point of mana, and they can't get back as much mana per hour.

If you can down a typical mob with 1 scourge + 1 venom of the snake with no recasts you're doing well.

Shaman

Scourge = 170 mana
Venom of the Snake = 160 mana
Blizzard Blast = 200 mana .....TOTAL = 530 mana per fight (assuming no resists, you cast everything once)
(Malaisement = 100) used or not?

(Chloroplast = 200 mana)
(Talisman of Altuna = 250 mana)

(Alacrity for pet = 115 mana)
(Heals for pet?)

(Guardian Spirit = 450 mana)


Not counting root as both use it.

Cleric

Banish Undead = 225 mana x3 = 675 mana per fight (assuming no resists)

(Resolution = 110 mana)


Cleric spends an extra 145 per fight but isn't worrying about a half dozen other things. Shaman upkeep is higher, shaman fights are longer...

As I say, I'd like to see it in practice...I'm probably being too generous assuming a shaman can work off 2 dots and 1 nuke to finish a mob without having to heal his pet or take some significant downtime to let his mana/pet recharge to full.

If the shaman is using that pet, he is regenning or healing it. That's adding to his downtime (edit: ...and the pet really doesnt add much dps)

I just don't see how canni suddenly makes a shaman more efficient than a cleric.

Resists on shaman spells (disease line and nukes) are greater in my experience than cleric undead nukes have been.

Three casts of Banish Undead does 1755 damage. A cast of Scourge does 544 damage, and a cast of Venom of the Snake does 453 damage. So one Scourge and three Venoms will do a total of 1905 damage, and cost 650 mana. That's 25 less mana than your three Banish Undead costs, and considerably more damage (granted, the monster also regenerates HP, but very slowly).

Now, let's think about the simplest scenario. Forget about cannibalize, forget about regen, forget about the pet, forget about buffs. Just casting those DoTs and rooting, a shaman is already a better soloer than a cleric.

Then, we can think about adding canni+regen, which increases your mana regen overall. You can say that regen requires upkeep, but this is not true because it pays for itself. Chloroplast at maximum duration (level 60) heals about 2000 HP for 200 mana, and at minimum duration (level 39) heals about 1300 HP for 200 mana. Canni I gives about 25 mana for 50 HP. So if you cast Chloroplast, you have to spend 400 HP to regain the mana for it, and the rest is free.

Then, we can think about adding the pet. Pets regenerate HP on their own pretty quickly. You can send the pet at the monster, let it do some damage, then back it off and let it regenerate on its own (no buffs, no nothing). This is free damage. You never have to recast the pet if you don't get it killed. If you decide to buff or heal the pet, this might make it better, or it might not be worth it, but if you JUST use the pet at a baseline, it's straight-up free damage.

So the shaman starts out with root+dots already better than the cleric. Then you add canni+regen and he's better still. Then you add a pet with no buffs or heals and he's better still. Then you can think about adding other buffs, or what have you, and improve him further. There's simply no question that the shaman is the better soloer.

You can't choose to ignore buffs that you've got to cast, sorry dude. Flawed logic.

Shaman pets get chewed up, and they don't regenerate as quick as you're making out (at least not unless you're casting a regen... merely doing "/pet sit" doesnt cut it). Flawed.

Shamans not the better soloer versus undead, but cleric standard magic nukes are more mana cost and less damage - making them very unusable.

I'd suggest playing both classes before picking/choosing what you're including to back up your argument. You've clearly never solo'd a cleric at least.

The time differential if nothing else is a factor. You're going to let 3 VotS's tick down? That's a long time. Meanwhile, the cleric is sat there medding up nps, with 2 nukes worth of mana to spare iirc if no resists.

Position maintained... clerics are excellent soloers and certainly not the worst magic user to attempt it as Estu is making out.

You don't HAVE to cast any buffs. As I showed, though, casting chloro does give you a lot of extra mana. Other buffs, they might help, but my point was that shaman beats cleric even without them. If you argue that you need your basic HP buffs (resolution or talisman) or you'll die, OK, but those have such long durations that the difference their mana costs make are negligible.

They regenerate quick enough that they can get in some hits every battle. Again, it's free damage, and the pet isn't necessary at all to out-solo a cleric.

This is exactly what I just showed - that shamans in fact are the better soloer versus undead, because they can do more damage per mana, and regain mana faster, against undead (or anything else).

The time differential is irrelevant. All that matters is how much damage you can put out over an hour (or whatever long period of time). Say your cleric kills 20 monsters an hour. That's some amount of HP damage you're doing every hour - say, 100,000 (this is an arbitrary number). If my shaman can do more damage than that every hour, then my shaman can kill more monsters. Since my shaman, just with roots and dots (excluding added bonuses like regen, pets, and buffs), already does more damage per hour than your cleric, my shaman can kill more monsters.

How do I know I'm doing more damage per hour? Because as I calculated in my post, I can cast four dots and do more damage for less mana than you can with your three nukes. Whether the monster takes longer to die is completely irrelevant. If I'm killing the monster so slowly that I get mana back faster than I spend it, I can grab another monster and kill the two of them simultaneously. If not (and I shouldn't be unless I have something crazy like a fungi tunic), then I'm spending less mana to do more damage, so I'm killing more monsters over time.

Think about it this way. You get a certain amount of mana per hour from meditation. You use all of it to nuke (we're ignoring roots, like you said, because both of us need to root (a minor issue is I might have to re-root a monster, but this doesn't cost enough mana to make the difference)), and do some amount of damage in that hour. I get the same amount of mana per hour (actually more with canni/regen, but again, even without canni/regen, I'd get more EXP), and I'm also spending it all, but I'm doing more damage.

If I do more damage in an hour then I kill more monsters and I get more EXP. That's all there is to it. And if I can do more damage in an hour JUST with roots and dots, then I can definitely do more damage in an hour with canni/regen, a pet, and anything else that improves my killing rate in the long run.