The most efficient way to kill Paineel guards on my shaman.
 

Returning player. Forgot a lot how to play this game but wasn't good before I left.

I'm generally killing the 3 skellys around paineel bank on my shammy as it should be chill and semi afk.

With my characters I generally have hotbuttons listing spells.

So I have a list of my current best buffs and duration, so I cast them all on myself longest to shortest.

Then I summon my pet.

Then I switch to my fighting spell set.

My biggest bit of downtime is obviously mana regen

I can canni/canni dance but that requires clicking when I'd kinda like to afk.

Basically if I sometimes end up oom but never too wounded (with ikky and shammy regen) should I forgo buffing myself (other than str to carry more shit)?

Should I just nuke stuff to keep it simple.

Cast order.

Scourge (DOT)
Tagars Insects (slow) (no need for snare they don't seem to flee)
Envenomed breath (dot)
Listless Power (debuff)
DD (winters roar)

They are usually quite dead before I get to the DD, making me wonder if the dots are pointless.

Weakining it with a debuff causes less damage to me? and more damage on it from meele but just saves me hp right? Which I don't need.

Without running some kind of parse what's the best way to do this?

Are dots only good for longer fights? Should I just nuke em down?

Just tested it, nuking leaves me with 67% mana while dots and debuffs leaves me about 58%.

When do dots become usefull? Longer fights where you can't nuke them down to 0% but the dots will do more overall? How do I gauge this?

I'm going to test meeling the greens with no spells.

I never did Paineel guards but I did the Qeynos guards in NK from 34-39 so it was only 3 mobs on a 6min timer.

The biggest reason to use dots is to make sure you're dealing >50% damage so your pet isn't taking 50% of the exp so you want to find a sweet spot of dealing enough damage while also managing your own hp/mana.

You can try this with just rooting if your pet isn't able to rip aggro in a fast enough time to let you med or you can forgo one of the dots for meleeing yourself.

I had a fungi/staff so more HP regen than needed so I face tanked but I also used Walking sleep over Tagars to conserve mana, especially if there's any resists. I don't know how much the melee debuff is helping tbh, might not be worth the mana investment. I'd also recommend getting yourself a decent melee weapon such as Poison Wind Censor or if you can afford it Granite Face Grinder and then keep yourself Hasted.

For buffs I only ever kept Regen, Str and Haste on myself so long as it's enough to kill the mobs then I'm not kneecapped with suddenly needing to spend a chunk of mana on rebuffs to throw off my cycle.

Again it all comes down to how much mana/hp you need to kill the mobs and then recover before respawns so throw in DD's if you've got mana to spare. Don't hold back on Canni'ing during combat, I kept myself at 80% hp just to be sure I was never full hp if I needed to focus elsewhere for a min.

Try using just one dot + slow. And melee with pet. I wouldn't bother with the debuff.
I also always keep myself fully buffed but it's mostly so I have the timers for my pet. Get the jbb pieces for this so it doesn't eat at your mana....also keep haste up on you and pet for the meleeing. If mana is a huge issue just keep hp/sta/str/haste up.

Some higher hp mobs require both dots but usually you'll only need one. I'd also never nuke unless you need to burn something down quick (usually if it's pathing away but almost dead or if you get an add)

dont worry about listless

id pull w/ slow and melee...get a decent weapon like Poison Wind Censer or something

if you have plenty of mana toss in your most efficient (damage per mana) dot

if you're in a safe spot for afk just canni down to super low health and go AFK w/ regen on

disease dots really not gonna be worth it unless you're rotting, i think you'd get much more mileage meleeing and sticking solely with poison dot+slow+pet dps. try your next-best slow a few rounds and see if you come out with appreciably more mana for whatever extra damage you may take. optimally you wanna see the dot end right around the time they're almost dead when ur face tankin at that level. i'd only self-buff w/ strength, haste, and regen and not worry about buffing doggie for more assurance of you getting 100% xp

also yea canni dancing is totally unnecessary, and nuking them will generally be a bad return on mana taken per kill

Thanks everyone for the great advice so far. Been 3 shotting them with nukes and and meeleing greens with just str on me ans pet. Realised I didn't need regen at all.

I can hold down sk blue and yerlash blue and the two roaming bank dark greens.

And that's all very casual without going oom with just sitting and a rare cani.

Thanks for all the advice like cani in combat.

There are some really tough blues and whites, Abbalish in the next area undercons.

Perhaps I'll try those strata you mentioned with 1 dot and slow for him.

I can always keep root and gate memmed if needed.

I tried malaise or whatever but they never resisted anyway so i don't think that's worth it.

If things are going south and I have mana to spare, is it netter to nuke the enemy or heal yourself?

Separate to fighting these specifically i wondered if cani and healing yourself a net gain or net loss mana wise?

Things dont go south. You let them go south. Everything happens slow on a shaman.

But in EQ reducing damage is always a better option than healing it. If things go tits up, root the mob and move. It cant do damage rooted. It'll do as much damage as you're healing most of the time if you try and heal while face tanking.

Ideally, try to find a balanced pace where you're never / rarely direct healing yourself. They're horribly mana inefficient and should be saved for emergency use only.

Regeneration line is your most efficient "heal" - use it well and never be at 100% hp for full value.

Make sure every mob is slowed before going toe to toe.

Can poison DoT line if surplus mana and things are dying quick.

canni + direct heal is 100% meticulously flushing your resources down the toilet

slows are just so much better, just gotta figure out which one is most efficient to use. i stuck with walking sleep pretty much exclusively up until where i'm at now at 39, when the blues start really tearing into you. it's insane how much a togor's will completely neuter a mob now, especially looking at its mana efficiency as a sort of "preemptive heal"