For a Shaman who wants to melee level, do I need to be Ogre/Troll?

[loramin]

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

This doesn't make sense. If the Spiritist Hammer consistently Procs 4 times in two minutes you did over 1000 damage to a single mob, not including the white damage. Mobs level 20-30 basically have 1000 HP or less. That would kill any level 20ish mob in those areas faster than your DoTs. Four envenomed breaths in the same two minutes would deal 800 damage and cost you a staggering 400 mana, which is a lot for that level. It would be way more mana efficient to melee than to spend at least 400 mana per mob, not including roots or resists. Doing the root/rot method would cause a lot more downtime. Casting two walking sleeps in those two minutes to face tank would only cost 120 mana, and heals also only cost 60 each.

Look you can theorycraft it all you want, but I'm too lazy to theorycraft back. To be clear, that's not saying your theorycrafting is wrong though.

All I can say is that ultimately your theorycrafting didn't line up with what I experienced in the game ... back when procs worked significantly better than they do today.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

Look you can theorycraft it all you want, but I'm too lazy to theorycraft back. To be clear, that's not saying your theorycrafting is wrong though.

All I can say is that ultimately your theorycrafting didn't line up with what I experienced in the game ... back when procs worked significantly better than they do today.

I get that, and I am not trying to claim you didn't have troubles. But I would be willing to bet that was just due to an inefficient strategy or fighting mobs that were too tough, rather than melee being bad. If Spiritist Hammer proced a ton before it was nerfed, and it did at least 250 damage on the lowest end as the wiki claims, you should have been ripping through mobs with the right strategy.

I mostly meleed to my 40s on my Shaman, and I was fighting guards, which tend to be undercons for their level. Melee with slow tanking was quite a bit more efficient than root rotting.

[loramin]

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

I mostly meleed to my 40s on my Shaman, and I was fighting guards, which tend to be undercons for their level. Melee with slow tanking was quite a bit more efficient than root rotting.

Right, but that is a VERY different statement from "Shaman can deal a significant percentage of their damage via melee at level 40."

Again, I think two different things are being conflated in this thread:

A) pretending your Shaman is a melee class and trying to do significant damage from your weapon (which in my experience stopped working around the 20s, on both my Shaman and Cleric) ... vs.

B) tanking (doing melee damage, but doing a lot more damage from DoTing and letting your pet chew on the mob ... which is something even a Shaman with a rusty spear might want to do at any point in their career)

The melee damage you do is only one factor (and I'd argue it's not even the biggest one) in whether you should be tanking, pet tanking, or root/rotting. Many other factors (how hard the mob hits, how many HP they have, how often they break root, what heal/root/slow spell you have, whether the mob summons, etc.) determine the ideal Shaman style for a given hunting spot.

[DMN]

If you planned to melee from 1-60, troll would probably be a significant peg up from iksar largely due to the snare necklace and because of it, you intentionally focus on fighting mobs that flee and save yourself all the mana from the last 20-25% of the HP of the mob. Additionally, relative to iskar you'd also have access to slam... don't matter for damage but would also interrupt casters(big deal if you are facing them in melee) and if you time it right you can also reduce the melee damage you are taking. (count the seconds between swings and bash just before the mobs swing timer is about to come due).

You can certainly level all the way to 60 meleeing and Iksar. I wouldn't describe it as "efficient" however, troll would be significantly better, but Iksar wouldn't be significantly different from any other race but troll. Other than troll racial stuff, it's all going to come down to your gear = efficiency.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

Right, but that is a VERY different statement from "Shaman can deal a significant percentage of their damage via melee at level 40."

Again, I think two different things are being conflated in this thread:

A) pretending your Shaman is a melee class and trying to do significant damage from your weapon (which in my experience stopped working around the 20s, on both my Shaman and Cleric) ... vs.

B) tanking (doing melee damage, but doing a lot more damage from DoTing and letting your pet chew on the mob ... which is something even a Shaman with a rusty spear might want to do at any point in their career)

The melee damage you do is only one factor (and I'd argue it's not even the biggest one) in whether you should be tanking, pet tanking, or root/rotting. Many other factors (how hard the mob hits, how many HP they have, how often they break root, what heal/root/slow spell you have, whether the mob summons, etc.) determine the ideal Shaman style for a given hunting spot.

By necessity the damage dealt would need to be significant, or it wouldn't be more efficient[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] I said multiple times Shaman white damage is better than your DoTs at low levels. Now you could argue stacking all versions of your DoTs may kill the mob faster, but then you would waste your entire mana pool, which ends up being a bad strategy in terms of kills per hour.

The caveat I did forget to mention is Shaman melee needs a good weapon and a haste item. I agree root/rotting is better if you have a bad weapon like a rusty spear. I apologize if that wasn't obvious. In your specific scenario with a hyper procing Spiritist Hammer, your problem was certainly strategy, not melee being bad.

The reason why meleeing works so well 1-40 is because mobs are much weaker in terms of damage, hp, and ac. Most of the factors you mentioned don't really apply to most mobs level 1-40. 40 is where shaman melee starts to fall off because level 40 mobs get a huge boost to damage, ac, and hp. You are incorrect that Shamans are not designed for melee. They have the same skill caps as warriors on their weapons skills until level 50, and they have a line of spells (berserk) for the purpose of melee. Druids and Clerics have a lot lower skill cap for weapons skills, which shows a clear design difference between the priest classes. Shamans also get haste, which is a drastic DPS improvent over Clerics and Druids.

[kuuky]

Seems like someone just can't let it go. HMM where have I read that before?

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

Seems like someone just can't let it go. HMM where have I read that before?

Correcting bad information is what I am doing. Your not contributing at all, just acting silly.

[clacbec]

on red my shm is fsi ogre .

[loramin]

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

In your specific scenario with a hyper procing Spiritist Hammer, your problem was certainly strategy, not melee being bad.

Yup, you've got me. Despite playing a Shaman on live to 65+tons of AAs, when I came here I knew absolutely nothing about playing a Shaman. Despite being given a weapon that was so good it no longer exists I was too stupid to use it properly ... you know, by trying to melee mobs (it's hard!). But you and your theorycrafting genius have uncovered my foolish play, and clearly shown how dumb I was.

/s

[loramin]

P.S. Just so we're clear, I'm not saying Shaman melee damage is completely, 100% meaningless.

What I keep saying is that, because Shaman deal significantly less melee damage than their other two damage sources, it's only one factor in the equation of what style you should use (Shaman tank vs. pet tank vs. root/rot; let's pretend Shaman never get charm).

Look, even if we make up numbers and say pet damage = 1/3, melee damage = 1/3, DoT damage = 1/3 ... you still wouldn't want to melee all the time. Why? Because some mobs will hit so hard that if you melee them to get that extra 1/3 damage, you will need far more mana to heal yourself up afterwards (vs. if you just rooted the mob and didn't melee).

If your options are "do 2/3 damage, only have to cast a root or two, and be at ful HP/50m after a fight", or "do 3/3 damage, but wind up completely OOM and not full HP after", it doesn't matter that you can do more damage by meleeing ... you'll get more/faster XP over time by not meleeing, and saving yourself all the mana you would have spent on healing (and slowing the mob, and hasting yourself, and berserking yourself, and casting AC buffs on yourself).

But again, I very suspicious of the idea that at 21+(ish) melee makes up even 1/3 of a Shaman's DPS output. And regardless, it's not even as simple as "how much do I do in melee vs. how much does the mob do?" There are all sorts of other factors, like whether your pet can tank it (pets heal faster than PCs), whether the mob casts (and you want to interrupt it with melee), etc.