[Rathnir]

Originally Posted by E-Queue

Apologies anyway for an annoying topic.

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Originally Posted by E-Queue

I ended up rolling a Barb shaman a couple weeks ago. Fungi has trivialized everything through level 19, so I have no regrets!

Glad to hear it! The early levels are a poor expression of what you grow into. Canni and pet are, of course, the big breaks. Fungi gonna keep everything easy mode, especially when you get Canni.

Ultimately I think you'll push 1-54 much faster then the other races. 54-59 might be a toss up - but you got there faster anyway. 60 all the leveling advantages don't matter anymore. As 60 barbarian shaman, I sometimes wonder if I had the regen advantage. Sometimes I wear fungi, and while it helps, it doesn't change what happens a ton. It's a small edge. Racial is the same, just even smaller.

Originally Posted by Tecmos

It was my understanding that 60 shamans only sit if they're lazy or some kind of gaming god who actually catches ticks sitting.

Somewhere on these forums, I saw a bard link a youtube of how he came up with a program to detect, and visually display both server ticks, and personal ticks. I can't find the link, maybe some kind soul would post it, but it was pretty neat. All sorts of applications for knowing exact moment Fear, Root, Charm, HoT spells etc were going to potentially wear off. It was fairly impressive. But in the mean time: any Heal over Time that does 100 HP or more/tick is an indication of your actual tick, and lines up with meditate checking if you are sitting. Cast torpor, sit until it says healed for 300, stand for canni, sit, wait for heal tick, repeat.... gives you 4 guaranteed times to get your meditate tick (possibly 5).

Originally Posted by Tecmos

As I understand it, a 60 sham isn't going to be sitting at 100% hp hardly ever

Good ones aren't. 100% mana doesn't happen either, if you're doing it right.

It's been hashed to death, but if you want to fill your face with a bunch of ranty math:

 

Starting at 54 you have at least Cannibalize 3. You gain 34 mana at the cost of 74 hit points, or a 1:0.46~ ratio. For the sake of math, you never sit, and only have standing regen, which is a 4/tick advantage. If you purely convert this to mana, you gain 1.84 Mana/tick, so slightly under FT2 boots. In the "real world" you wait 19 ticks (1.9 minutes) for your 76 HP, then cast canni 3 for 1.25 seconds to gain 34 mana, fizzles pending.

So, as a shaman, if you play longer then 2 minutes, with less then full health, and less then full mana, at level 54+ as iksar or troll it's like having FT2. Except as Hp. Kinda. At 60, the racial difference is 8 Hp/tick, and you use Canni 4 instead of 3; It ends up being close to 4.4 mana/tick that you didn't have to do anything for. Real world considerations: If I wanna Canni down and AFK, the troll and iksar come back faster. If I canni to 1/2 then run somewhere, troll and iksar heal while I run.

Originally Posted by Tecmos

that regen is helping most all the time even if the amount pales relative to the healing from torpor.

You're correct, Tecmos. As cool as Torpor is, all races get it, so its the same value to all races. The extremely flat answer is racial regen ends up being worth about 4.4 Mana/Tick standing @ 60.
Anecdotal Evidence: How many times do I canni a minute? If I cast Canni 4 ~26 times in 10 minutes, my mana/tick purely from canni and nothing else is around 22/tick (twice the value of C2). I have to torpor 3 times in 10 minutes to heal this damage (3600 + possible extra ticks, of 3,834 canni damage), so a few extra cannis on top of the 26 to make up the difference. Does 3 or 4 canni's per minute average sound low, spot on, or high to you, for a 60 shaman? Sounds low to me, personally - and thats only 22/tick mana, and the standing racial advantage is worth ~22% of that value. Add in Meditating(22/tick), Clarity II (11/tick), POTG(6/tick) you are now comparing 4.4 Mana/tick to 61 mana/tick (~7%) and that is not including bards, FT gear, casting canni more then 3 times a minute.. the efficacy plummets quickly.

Time to supplement a Cannibalize IV Having 82 mana, or 148 Hp is essentially the same thing to me, with small nuances. Assuming these are equal value:

• 51+ Iksar/Troll standing bonus takes 37 ticks (3.7 Minutes) to equal 148 hitpoints
• Ceremonial Iksar Chestplate takes 30 ticks (3.0 Minutes) to equal 150 hitpoints.
• Tunare earring takes 28 ticks (2.8 Minutes) to equal 84 mana.
• 60 Iksar/Troll standing bonus takes 19 ticks (1.9 Minutes) to equal 152 hp
• FT6 takes 14 ticks (1.4 Minutes) to equal 84 mana
• Sitting Level 60 Trolls and Iksar take 14 ticks (1.4 Minutes) to best their Ogre/Barbarian counterparts by 154 hp.
• Protection of the Glades takes 14 ticks (1.4 Minutes) to equal 84 mana.
• Fungi takes 10 ticks (1 Minute) to equal 150 hp
• Clarity II takes 8 ticks (48 Seconds) to equal 88 mana

Originally Posted by Loramin

Shaman here understand the mechanics of clickies refreshing spells (eg. Shrunken Goblin Skull Earring), and they've realized that it's faster to just spam Cannibalize while standing than to bother with the dance.

FWIW: If you sit on all 4 ticks of Torpor, you gain the 22/tick meditate x4, which is 88 mana - slightly over the value of a Canni 4, as well as not costing the 148 hp to cast the 5th time. Not to mention, even the measly barbarian sit advantage is 3 more/tick sitting. All said and done, Torpor with 4 cannis and 4 sits is: +1200 HP (Torpor) -200 Mana (Torpor) -592 HP (Canni x4) + 328 Mana (Canni x4) + 12 HP (+3 Sitting Regen(Barbarian) x4) + 88 mana (Meditate) for a net gain of: +216 Mana, +620 HP. Or you can Torpor, Cannix5, and never sit: +1200 HP (Torpor) -200 Mana (Torpor) -740 hp (Canni x5) +410 Mana (Canni x5) + 4 mana for a net gain of: +214 Mana, +460 hp. So if you do an extra canni instead of dancing, for one torpor, you lose 2 mana and 160 Hp. This isn't a massive loss to a shaman with torpor, but it is a loss, and the gap widens if you have racial regen figured in. This is 40 HP/Tick value (160 hp on 4 Torpor ticks), and we can slop it around without noticing it - that should be the exclamation point of this post. It's also worth noting that Canni x4 + Torpor takes 5 ticks (1 tick to cast Torpor, 4 more for the full ticks) and we gain 21/tick mana for those 5 ticks, not including meditate, not calculating mana preservation for specializing alteration. While gaining 620 hp (or 124 hp/tick). If all the hitpoints are consumed with 4 more cannibalizes (~2 more ticks) we have a net positive of 656 mana over 7 ticks.

The math begins to break down as you go into specialization checks, fizzles, spell orders, theoretical vs practical application and other such things, but the basic principals and figures should be a a reasonable guide. 4 mana/tick? Any other caster class would pimp their mother out for it. And they should, its massive for them. For shamans? If we make the numbers dance a little - its less then 1% of your capability.

Take away points:

1. Shaman HP -> Mana conversion is outlandishly powerful.
2. Shaman Mana -> HP conversion is outlandishly powerful.
3. Level 60 Shamans regain so much mana and HP with their kit (Torpor + Canni 4) that other forms of mana/hp regen are comparatively weak.

Fungis, Regrowth, Racial regen - these aren't drops in the bucket - they're buckets in the ocean (at 60). Now Pre60, especially 54+, its very enjoyable. But not necessary. And since you already have fungi, it's a very small gap.

TLDR; Mid 50s or above Troll/Iksar Shamans gain the equivalent HP value of somewhere around 1.8 mana/tick to 4.4 mana/tick over Barbarian/Ogre shamans. This value is based on standing regen figures, and improves in the favor of Iksars and Trolls even more when sitting. Sitting or standing, this decently powerful advantage is severely eclipsed by Torpor at 60.