druid vs shammy

[mjrau]

Can anyone shed some light on this question for me? Why does shammy have druid beaten as far as a solo class? I've got them both to level 18 and cant see much of a difference. Does it come into play later on? Does shammy damage out way the ability to port places?

[Calabee]

for 51 + as an example, the sham can slow the mob and tank it / dot / nuke... the druid will get summoned and die badly

shams dots are stronger, druids nukes are stronger
both can buff, while the sham brings way more then the druid on the table as far as that aspect goes

[mjrau]

Do you have to get to 51 before that becomes an effective strategy? Forgive me but Ive never played a shammy before, though ive always wanted to

[blondeattk]

` I've got them both to level 18 `

it comes down to personal preference. I stopped playing dru at 40, as quad kiting didnt appeal to me nor charm kiting.

playing dru is very close to playing a silk class, which isnt cool imo.

shm is very weak tank with a splattering of offensive spells....if you dont wanna melee then dont pick shm.

"to kite or not to kite ...that is the question" <wm Speaksmear, gnome wordsmith>

[SyanideGas]

Shaman is great for soloing as opposed to a druid. Shaman at 60 get torpor (HoT for lots of hp's), they also get slows and dots (free dot with epic that ticks for a ton). They have a higher survivability than druids in the long run.

[quido]

The belief about shamans being better soloers than druids is really a result of thinking about a 60 shaman vs a 60 druid with full spells. Leveling up a shaman, even once you get the good slow @ 51, the druid is still an arguably better soloer by being able to quad-kite dark blues. A non-60 shaman may be able to slow a single summoning mob and tank it better than a druid, but any mob that is summoning is likely too tough for a shaman that isn't 60 with torpor. I'm not saying it'd be impossible, but seeing a 59 shaman solo a Drolvarg Bodyguard would be impressive. Any mob that is summoning is still going to double you for 150 or whatever every 8 seconds. Even in full DoT mode it's going to take several minutes to drop the mob, and I don't think a non-torporing shaman can sustain healing that amount of damage while putting out that amount of dps.

[SyanideGas]

Good point there Jeremy. Definitely a few ways to view it

[Estu]

From level 14 until level 50, the druid is a better solo class than a shaman. Not because of quad kiting but because of charming, which is better EXP than quadding. If you're soloing a druid and you're not charming, you're missing out.

At level 50, shamans can start clicking their epic. Shaman epics are one of the easiest to get, so if you're playing a shaman you really ought to get your epic at 50 if at all possible. Shaman epic is a huge step in shaman solo ability because it gives you mana-free damage, so you can take down mobs with root+epic and spend almost no mana. At this point, shamans become very strong soloers in terms of EXP per hour, although TBH druid charming is still probably superior.

At 60, when shamans get torpor, they completely blow druids out of the water for solo ability (at 60, you're not soloing for EXP, but for loot; your goal is to hold down hard camps by yourself) because they can tank mobs that summon and because they can cannibalize+torpor for as much mana as they want. Add that to the most powerful slows in the game and they become one of the most powerful solo classes in the game. Druids, on the other hand, become rather weak at this point, because animal charming is not going to help you for most cash camps.

So when you hear people saying "shaman is an excellent soloer, druid is a poor soloer", they mean soloing money camps (or just generally hard monsters) at level 60. But in terms of getting TO 60, druid is far superior. And again, this is because of animal charming, not quadding (although quadding isn't bad either).

The ability to port places, which you asked about, is kind of moot. It doesn't have anything to do with how good you are at soloing.

[mgellan]

Obviously Shamans get JBB which is huge when soloing at lower levels to reduce downtime, even when its just a mana free way of burning down a mob thats running at 10% rather than reapplying DOTs. Even though it's not the primary damage engine at 60 I still use mine all the time to add a 250dd every 8s on top of epic for mana free root rotting, all that gets cast is PE. So downtime on shamans isn't required. So for example a druid kiting IGs in EF requires some downtime to med while a shaman can keep all three giants in play indefinitely and med up between spawns even before Torpor makes medding unneccessary. This means more xp thus faster levelling and more pp... well perhaps IGs not a good example since they now resist all cold spells ($%^$!&^@)

The change made to reduce damage on DOTs while a mob isn't sitting still was particularly damaging to Shamans IMHO - I know I spent a lot of 9-18 kiting calfs and 18-32 kiting mammoths before this was patched, now it might now be efficient to DOT if you can't root the mob...

Regards,
Mg

[srgraham69]

I have soloed both classes to 60, depending on how deep your pockets are Druid is going to be much easier and faster to level up as they are not really reliant on gear at all to solo, while shaman is eventually going to be very expensive to become a great soloer, JBB, epic, torpor. But with these items shaman does very well through the 50s and amazing at 60, though charm soloing was still faster on the Druid. So if you are newer to the server I would recommend the Druid since they can solo effectively with little gear and also a great class to make money with.