Answer my complex questions?

[Swish]

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

Three casts of Banish Undead does 1755 damage. A cast of Scourge does 544 damage, and a cast of Venom of the Snake does 453 damage. So one Scourge and three Venoms will do a total of 1905 damage, and cost 650 mana. That's 25 less mana than your three Banish Undead costs, and considerably more damage (granted, the monster also regenerates HP, but very slowly).

Now, let's think about the simplest scenario. Forget about cannibalize, forget about regen, forget about the pet, forget about buffs. Just casting those DoTs and rooting, a shaman is already a better soloer than a cleric.

Then, we can think about adding canni+regen, which increases your mana regen overall. You can say that regen requires upkeep, but this is not true because it pays for itself. Chloroplast at maximum duration (level 60) heals about 2000 HP for 200 mana, and at minimum duration (level 39) heals about 1300 HP for 200 mana. Canni I gives about 25 mana for 50 HP. So if you cast Chloroplast, you have to spend 400 HP to regain the mana for it, and the rest is free.

Then, we can think about adding the pet. Pets regenerate HP on their own pretty quickly. You can send the pet at the monster, let it do some damage, then back it off and let it regenerate on its own (no buffs, no nothing). This is free damage. You never have to recast the pet if you don't get it killed. If you decide to buff or heal the pet, this might make it better, or it might not be worth it, but if you JUST use the pet at a baseline, it's straight-up free damage.

So the shaman starts out with root+dots already better than the cleric. Then you add canni+regen and he's better still. Then you add a pet with no buffs or heals and he's better still. Then you can think about adding other buffs, or what have you, and improve him further. There's simply no question that the shaman is the better soloer.

You can't choose to ignore buffs that you've got to cast, sorry dude. Flawed logic.

Shaman pets get chewed up, and they don't regenerate as quick as you're making out (at least not unless you're casting a regen... merely doing "/pet sit" doesnt cut it). Flawed.

Shamans not the better soloer versus undead, but cleric standard magic nukes are more mana cost and less damage - making them very unusable.

I'd suggest playing both classes before picking/choosing what you're including to back up your argument. You've clearly never solo'd a cleric at least.

The time differential if nothing else is a factor. You're going to let 3 VotS's tick down? That's a long time. Meanwhile, the cleric is sat there medding up nps, with 2 nukes worth of mana to spare iirc if no resists.

Position maintained... clerics are excellent soloers and certainly not the worst magic user to attempt it as Estu is making out.

[Estu]

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

You can't choose to ignore buffs that you've got to cast, sorry dude. Flawed logic.

You don't HAVE to cast any buffs. As I showed, though, casting chloro does give you a lot of extra mana. Other buffs, they might help, but my point was that shaman beats cleric even without them. If you argue that you need your basic HP buffs (resolution or talisman) or you'll die, OK, but those have such long durations that the difference their mana costs make are negligible.

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

Shaman pets get chewed up, and they don't regenerate as quick as you're making out (at least not unless you're casting a regen... merely doing "/pet sit" doesnt cut it). Flawed.

They regenerate quick enough that they can get in some hits every battle. Again, it's free damage, and the pet isn't necessary at all to out-solo a cleric.

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

Shamans not the better soloer versus undead

This is exactly what I just showed - that shamans in fact are the better soloer versus undead, because they can do more damage per mana, and regain mana faster, against undead (or anything else).

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

The time differential if nothing else is a factor. You're going to let 3 VotS's tick down? That's a long time.

The time differential is irrelevant. All that matters is how much damage you can put out over an hour (or whatever long period of time). Say your cleric kills 20 monsters an hour. That's some amount of HP damage you're doing every hour - say, 100,000 (this is an arbitrary number). If my shaman can do more damage than that every hour, then my shaman can kill more monsters. Since my shaman, just with roots and dots (excluding added bonuses like regen, pets, and buffs), already does more damage per hour than your cleric, my shaman can kill more monsters.

How do I know I'm doing more damage per hour? Because as I calculated in my post, I can cast four dots and do more damage for less mana than you can with your three nukes. Whether the monster takes longer to die is completely irrelevant. If I'm killing the monster so slowly that I get mana back faster than I spend it, I can grab another monster and kill the two of them simultaneously. If not (and I shouldn't be unless I have something crazy like a fungi tunic), then I'm spending less mana to do more damage, so I'm killing more monsters over time.

Think about it this way. You get a certain amount of mana per hour from meditation. You use all of it to nuke (we're ignoring roots, like you said, because both of us need to root (a minor issue is I might have to re-root a monster, but this doesn't cost enough mana to make the difference)), and do some amount of damage in that hour. I get the same amount of mana per hour (actually more with canni/regen, but again, even without canni/regen, I'd get more EXP), and I'm also spending it all, but I'm doing more damage.

If I do more damage in an hour then I kill more monsters and I get more EXP. That's all there is to it. And if I can do more damage in an hour JUST with roots and dots, then I can definitely do more damage in an hour with canni/regen, a pet, and anything else that improves my killing rate in the long run.