60 Shaman Gear Upgrades

[EdTuBrutus]

Originally Posted by thejester11 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I spend 99% of my time duoing with a Monk, but I assume I should be looking for AC/HP for the occasional off-tanking? My best guess is a full suite of HP/Mana jewelry and then Arctic Wyvern/Matchless Dragon for everything else, but I honestly have no idea.

What is the go-to for most high-level Shamans? Don't really have a limited budget, but I'd like to stay practical and avoid gear that requires raids/MQ. Thanks!

Arctic Wyvern is terrible, the AC is atrocious and its all +Wisdom which you have absolutely no use for. The Dragon shoulder is fantastic but expensive, same for the Chest, the rest is decent AC but lacking in HP, so depending on your trade off ratio, probably isn't worth the huge cost.

Ignoring high end raid drops, you should have :-

Arms - Gladiator Chain Arms - use Jaundiced, Ry'gorr or Giants Scale till you get the drop.
Back - Hierophants Cloak or Lodizal Shell Shield (AC to HP trade off, you make the call).
Chest - Matchless Dragonhide or Fungi. Phase Spider Carapace is decent alternative if you want value (as the Fungi is kinda redundant).
Ear - Black Sapphire Electrum. Gold is worse. Should have two and only use Gobbo Earring indoors, use Black Fur Boots outside.
Face - Crystal Spider Eyes
Feet - Barbed Dragonscale Boots
Finger - Velium Fire
Hands - Coldain Skin Gloves or Barbed Ringmail Gloves
Head - Circlet of Tallon
Legs - Gladiator Chain Leggings - use Oiled Greaves or Ry'gorr or Giants Scale or a cheaper Dragonleg than Matchless till you get the drop.
Neck - any +6 you can duo with Monk (there's quite a few). Necklace of Superiority or Chipped Velium till then.
Shoulder - Matchless Dragonhide. Tattered Mantle for a value alternative.
Waist - Spider Fur Belt.
Wrist - Sentry Bracer or MQ Skyshrine Bracer.
Secondary - Sarnak Battle Shield.
Range - Idol of the Thorned.

Personally, I'd advise you to keep a haste item, so fill whatever slot you want with that. That list will pretty much do you, you can work on some of the quest fillers - Coldain Ring, Sarnak stuff when it drops, Bracer of Benevolence and Talisman of Benevolence, etc.. There's probably half a dozen upgrades you can get from that.

Then you're pretty much done outside of upgrades from ToV.

[Danth]

Brutus's comments seem akin to the norm for a solo-based Shaman. AC, for example, has virtually no relevance to a grouping Shaman who doesn't get hit very often. The wife goes hours at a time, sometimes, between taking hits in melee--AC is thusly near-useless for her. Resists, likewise, lose some value when the only spell damage you're taking is from the occasional area effect spell (outside raids this basically means western wastes). Mana pool, on the other hand, has some real value if you get into a situation where you have a bunch of slow resists and have to keep re-casting while also handling crowd control and heals with no time to stop to canni/torpor.

Brutus isn't wrong by any means, but rather the point is that there's more than one way to run a Shaman effectively, and you want the right gear for the right job. Of course, we're in Velious now, not Kunark, so gearing isn't usually an either-or proposition anymore. Most pieces of equipment worth having come with lots of stats. All but a few of the items listed in the previous post are pretty standard Shaman items regardless of which stats a player might favor. The pieces which aren't (belt, range slot, shield, etc) can be swapped out as desired.

Danth