Troll Shammy or Ogre Shammy?

[Phallax]

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

I can't imagine there'd be many situations where meleeing with the hammer is better than spam-clicking JBB, except for the fact that the hammer procs earlier. You could maybe do something sneaky like standing up between ticks to swing at the mob, but that's pretty situational. For straight swing-swing-swing DPS, there's no way you'll get a high enough PPM for it to rival the guaranteed 8-second cast on the bracer, and your plain melee damage is pretty unimpressive without double attack and with a lower weapon skill cap. The hammer is nice, but once you can use JBB, the two become kind of mutually exclusive because you can't really use both at the same time.

Leave auto attack on, between casts youll swing and possibly proc. Its what all shamans do with torpor tanking(or should be doing i should say). Use a proc weapon and just equip the epic to cast the dot then re equip the proccer

[Orruar]

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

I can't imagine there'd be many situations where meleeing with the hammer is better than spam-clicking JBB, except for the fact that the hammer procs earlier. You could maybe do something sneaky like standing up between ticks to swing at the mob, but that's pretty situational. For straight swing-swing-swing DPS, there's no way you'll get a high enough PPM for it to rival the guaranteed 8-second cast on the bracer, and your plain melee damage is pretty unimpressive without double attack and with a lower weapon skill cap. The hammer is nice, but once you can use JBB, the two become kind of mutually exclusive because you can't really use both at the same time.

As another posted pointed out, you can swing between JBB casts to get extra damage. Also, if you do the math, it's more dps to forgo the JBB altogether and canni/dot more, on mobs where you can canni nonstop without killing yourself.

[Slave]

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

The journey to 34 is painful, though, god damnit. I leveled a shaman to 27 before the Affliction nerf and it was a breeze. Leveled another one to 30 in the past couple of weeks and it was pitiful. Until 24, your best DoTs tick for 6 and 8. You just can't root-rot with that, and it's only because I geared correctly and was able to melee to 24 that it was at all tolerable. You can always group, but that's equally dreary when you don't get your group-centric spells until 29. The shaman class doesn't really become decent until 29, and doesn't become good until 34. Then it just keeps getting better and better, of course.

Good information in here.

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

Boils down to wether you wanna be a dragonslaying plate-and-chain-mixing veritable badass (ogre) or a leather-cloth-donning buff-vending-machine (barb). Or something inbetween the two that has an extra limb protounding from either it's rear or above it's upper lip.

Hilarious, I get it!! Iksar tail or troll nose! :P

[Orruar]

As for stun immunity, have any of you who are championing ogres actually played a shaman? Slowed mobs bash once every 20 seconds or so. If you have such a severe case of ADHD that you can't figure out how to cast around that bash, which will miss half the time anyway, ogre is probably a good choice for you. For the rest who want to be as effective as possible in both solo and group situations, go barb. Troll is 2nd best option.

[PurelyElf]

What's with all the min/maxers? Pick a race you think is cool, not one that has a very slight advantage over the others.

[Orruar]

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

What's with all the min/maxers? Pick a race you think is cool, not one that has a very slight advantage over the others.

Some people think being as effective as possible is cool. Or are you saying we should only consider what our character looks like?

[Phallax]

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

As another posted pointed out, you can swing between JBB casts to get extra damage. Also, if you do the math, it's more dps to forgo the JBB altogether and canni/dot more, on mobs where you can canni nonstop without killing yourself.

Its not effective at all to canni/dot when youre tanking stuff like WW dragons and such.

[Orruar]

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

Its not effective at all to canni/dot when youre tanking stuff like WW dragons and such.

Did the ADHD kick in? Could you not keep focused long enough to read the second half of my sentence?

[greatdane]

And the game is just littered with cheap barb spiritist hammers that come up for sale every few hours at prices any leveling shaman can afford, right? Regen becomes significantly less valuable, in fact almost irrelevant, once you have Torpor, so it's only really an asset while leveling. Barbarians is a terrible race unless you have that one item, and it isn't even that amazing now that they've reduced proc rates across the board and introduced shields with awesome stats that are accessible to anyone. Frontal stun immunity is always useful, often great, and you strongly exaggerate how inconsequential bash is for a caster that often has to tank things. There are many scenarios where it'll save your life, the whole group's life, or just make leveling more efficient because you didn't have to take two extra rounds of melee damage from being stunned while trying to get off a spell. Mobs have the same cooldown on bash as players do, and it isn't 20 seconds when slowed. Being immune to it is a huge benefit, moreso while leveling, and when you're 60 and soloing dragons, regen won't help you very much anyway. It's also just as likely that the occasional bash (or having to maneuver your casts around bash) will cost you as much DPS from JBB-spam as you would have gained from the hammer's base PPM of 1, which is less than 5 DPS and assumes that you're constantly auto-attacking, so more like... 2 DPS or something if you're just swinging once between each spellcast? Add the raw melee damage of your swings and the slight increase in PPM from dex and I'm guessing the ability to swing your barb hammer once between each cast adds maybe 5 DPS at the very most, and less in the lower levels when you can't buff your stats a bunch.

[Orruar]

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

Mobs have the same cooldown on bash as players do, and it isn't 20 seconds when slowed.

[Sat Jul 30 21:13:51 2011] A goblin depredator kicks YOU for 19 points of damage.
[Sat Jul 30 21:14:23 2011] A goblin depredator kicks YOU for 11 points of damage.
[Sat Jul 30 21:14:55 2011] A goblin depredator kicks YOU for 20 points of damage.
[Sat Jul 30 21:15:27 2011] A goblin depredator kicks YOU for 11 points of damage.

You're right, it isn't 20 seconds. It's 32. This would indicate that the base delay on slam/bash/kick is 8 seconds. So I spam clicked slam to see if that's the case.

[Sat Jul 30 21:21:57 2011] You must first click on the being you wish to attack!
[Sat Jul 30 21:22:05 2011] You must first click on the being you wish to attack!
[Sat Jul 30 21:22:13 2011] You must first click on the being you wish to attack!
[Sat Jul 30 21:22:21 2011] You must first click on the being you wish to attack!

8 seconds apart.

So even on an unslowed mob, you have time between bashes to get any spell cast that you need to. And once it's slowed, you have 32 seconds between bashes to do whatever you need to.

I'll do some parsing later or sometime tomorrow to similarly destroy your 8 dps from hammer hits claim.