Conj Spec for Solo Shaman?
 

I recently resumed work on an Ogre SHM who I intend to be my solo bitch. Was wondering if it might be a good idea to spec him Conj for better mana efficiency while soloing, or if I would be gimping him too much for groups by not speccing him Alt.

If any solo Shammies could share their shamanic wisdom on this matter, 'twould be much appreciated.

Well you, unfortunately, can't have it both ways as a Shaman. You are sort of a solo class, or a Healer class group wise.

Unless you have every killer piece of gear, ergo, JBB, Fungi, Torpor, all the killer DoT spells , Buff spells, ergo again, 300k to 500k worth of stuff, you are NOT going to be a Solo Beast in Velious. And even then I think, well l know, you had better hope you made a Ogre Shaman to boot. LOTS of mobs summon in Velious, and getting off 1 or 2 more hits, or one more spell cas,t can be the difference of life or death solo wise, I don't care what anyone says. :p

Sort of like being the MT in a top guild. Good luck with that probably happening. But you can change your gear high up but not what you have specialized in training without a TON of effort. :eek:

Most of your damage in the 50s while soloing come from clickies (Epic, JBB). Otherwise the only things you'll cast on the regular are Canni, Root spell, Malo spell, and Chloroplast - which I think are all Alteration. The casted dots aren't efficient enough for use while solo leveling, but you will use them on named mobs when soloing for cash/items.

Well..I'll start off with a strong "no" on the conjuration spec, personally.

Conj is your Pet, poison/disease dots, and in velious, poison nukes. So generally speaking, you're only gonna summon a pet once to get rolling (ideally) and then your 2 dots (poison/disease, why would you consider using nukes anyway!) and verrrry rarely bust out your conj-based unresistable disease-only-debuffing "insidious" line of spells.

So, realistically, conj is 2 (types of) spells in your lineup you may use on a regular basis unless you like letting your pet die and causing you to add a 3rd spell to your "common conj" spells

So, to total up Conj:

Disease dot
Poison dot
Tertiary dot (if you for some reason want to use a less efficient low-level dot to increase your DPS in the short-term)
A pet

Lets look at alteration
Alteration is :

Cannibalize
Cure Poison
Cure Disease
Cure Blindness
Agi
Str
Dex
Stam
Cannibalize
Talisman (and focus in vel)
Avatar (Primal Avatar [no emerald cost] in vel)
AC buff
Sow
Cannibalize
Instant heals (Gheal Sheal)
Regen
Torpor
Haste
Slow
Root
Cannibalize
Malos
Your cripple line (-ac/str)
Cannibalize


So yeh, imho you should really go alteration for solo/duo/group/raiding/PLing as a shaman, especially considering the fact that cannibalize will become your #1 most casted spell the higher level you go, AAAAND you get a 100% FREE dot with your epic, and you'll cast even LESS conj-based things than the 2-3 spells you used before.

Maybe I'm missing some big thing but I never understood why anyone would consider conj as a shaman (or druid for that matter) when there's so -few- spells that use it, as well as a low -frequency- of using it compared to the other schools.

Maybe you do solo kill/dot every mob you kill, but I'm sure you'd also be casting at least as many slows/roots/malo/regen/haste(on players and-or pet)/hp buffs, and you'd be casting the latter in both a solo AND group setting, where with the former you'd probably only ever do specifically in a SOLO situation (and once you get epic you could just not use mana dots at all and root-rot 3+ mobs at once and maintain mana easily)

I know you stressed canni there but canni isn't a factor in specialization choice. Alteration is clearly the route to go, as shown by all the other spells.

But specialization only reduces mana on spells. Canni costs 0 mana so it doesn't do anything for that spell.

You can fizzle canni.

Canni fizzles drain mana

Specialization affects fizzle losses

Do you even shaman bro?

How does fizzling a spell that costs 0 mana to cast, make you lose mana?

confused

Not sure, but that's how it works here. Had some long conversation with old players from live that suggest it SHOULD fizzle HP, not mana, but alas, you lose mana here. (I know I'd much rather prefer fizzling HP)

Edit: this is at least true the last time I played here on p99, I can't fathom it being ninja patched in the last month or so.

Even if fizzling canni did absolutely nothing to your hp/mana, I'd spec alt so you'd fizzle it less and save tons of time/med tics/etc in the long run

That would seem like the obvious choice, I dont get it. How much mana do you lose when you fizzle?

It's not huge, but not negligible. It's kinda hard to tell with weird-ass update buggyness.