New to the server and seeking advice

[Namegen_Isterrible]

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

Anyone have some idea about when my DoTs start doing a better job than my pet?

Never, unfortunately. The pet xp nerf is easily the stupidest thing ever. It totally breaks the way mages and necros were designed to be played, imo. Wtf is the point of having a pet, of having a spell that hastes your pet, etc., if you can't hardly use it except to finish off runners unless you want to get 1/2 xp at best? Wtf is the point of having dots that last 2+ minutes if you have to chainlifetap/nuke/poison dot everything you pull in hopes of beating your pet's DPS?

50+ necros don't even use their pets solo, really. They have it out to act as CC when they get an add, or to finish off something that is already below 50% from dots. They just root-dot like a druid would but with the added benefit of lich and lifetaps.

Two of the strongest solo classes in the game can only operate at full capacity on this server if they are not soloing (grouping with just 1 other person totally eliminates pets eating xp).

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

Are shaman solo friendly on here?

Shamans are powerful eventually, but they're basically a melee from 1-34 imo, in that they aren't very strong unless you spend some pp on a solid weapon and a haste item and some high AC gear. And even then, you aren't an awesome shaman at 45 unless you have 25k to spend on a JBB, or an awesome sham at 60 unless you have 30k to spend on torpor and quite a bit more for your 55 pet and high-level dots.

[mgellan]

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

Shamans are powerful eventually, but they're basically a melee from 1-34 imo, in that they aren't very strong unless you spend some pp on a solid weapon and a haste item and some high AC gear.

Thats nuts, I soloed my Shammy basically from 1 - 50 (obviously combined with grouping and soloing elsewhere, but my play times were not condusive to being able to play in a group all that often) as follows:

1-9 EF trash, BB teeth
9-19 Kiting mammoth calves with SOW, DOTs
20-34 Kiting mammoths ditto
34-42 Cynthia in RM
42-50 Spectres in Feerott / Guards in Ogguk

This is with very basic (cheap) equipment. At the top end of each level range yes you can melee to add DPS but prior to that a young shaman gets his ass kicked trying to melee. All SOW, root, DOT with disease / poison (and later pet) and run away when root breaks. Rinse and repeat.

Regards,
Mg

[Namegen_Isterrible]

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

Thats nuts, I soloed my Shammy basically from 1 - 50 (obviously combined with grouping and soloing elsewhere, but my play times were not condusive to being able to play in a group all that often) as follows:

1-9 EF trash, BB teeth
9-19 Kiting mammoth calves with SOW, DOTs
20-34 Kiting mammoths ditto
34-42 Cynthia in RM
42-50 Spectres in Feerott / Guards in Ogguk

This is with very basic (cheap) equipment. At the top end of each level range yes you can melee to add DPS but prior to that a young shaman gets his ass kicked trying to melee. All SOW, root, DOT with disease / poison (and later pet) and run away when root breaks. Rinse and repeat.

Regards,
Mg

There's a difference, imo, between being able to solo to 50 and being powerful. I didn't say a shaman couldn't solo 1-50, I just said that they become powerful eventually and that they aren't especially strong without decent+ gear.

A cleric can easily solo to 50, especially with kunark out, entirely naked. But the experience would not probably be described as nuts.

A shaman can easily solo to 50 with very basic gear, but I wouldn't describe one as "especially powerful" or anything like that unless you were at least twinking with jaundiced bone gear and other high AC and HP gear, a poison wind censer, and a JBB at 45.

Shamans, without potent gear, lack the difference-maker spells that a necro or an ench or a bard has. Slow is great, yes, but only if you have enough AC to not get totally obliterated by melee in the first place. Canni is great, yes, but only when you have enough hp regen to have a chance to use it. Etc.

Compared to a necro, whose lich and lifetaps are superior to a leveling-shaman's canni and regen, whose FD and HS and snare and root and mez are all vastly superior to a shaman's CC/survivability tools, whose pet is actually halfway decent, whose dots are superior and more numerous... yeah.

Or compared to a bard, who can kill half of overthere in a single pull at level 30 in 1 hour using only a drum and a horn bought from a merchant for like 2pp.

Or compared to an ench, who can spend as much on gear as the sham does but become a 200+ charisma charming beast with that money.