Best 4 person all caster/priest group

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

I want to point out a couple forms of bias in your argument. To be clear, I'm not saying it's a bad thing to be be biased when arguing a position - I just want to take the time to emphasise that this is a subjective argument, not an objective scoring. I also want to underline that this is not the substantive argument in favor of including a cleric that you deserve, but just a few quick thoughts I wanted to jot down.

structural bias - the top-line points are all about shaman benefits, not mentioning any cleric unique abilities (as compared to shamans). No mention of stun, lull, atone, DA. This is fair for a subjective argument - but not for an objective assessment.

selective bias - level ranges provided are the ones where shamans are comparatively equal on heals. Here's an alternate perspective. From 24-29 clerics will have Greater Healing(290-300) while shamans will have Healing (100hp). Up through 51 shaman is limited to Greater Healing(270hp), while from 34 on clerics have Superior Healing (565-585) - that's double the healing per cast from 34 till 52.

redundancy bias - slows are redundant, but there's an argument about why that's still a point in favor for shamans. Stuns are redundant, but the benefits of that redundancy are dismissed.

healing metric bias - mana efficiency is not the only metric. Time efficiency matters as well.

To re-iterate, everything you wrote is perfectly reasonable as a subjective argument in favor of a position. But we've had a recurring side-discussion on whether this topic is objective or subjective and I thought it was worth noting some relevant thoughts.

You are incorrect about subjectivity. You cannot wave a magic wand and simply claim everything is subjective. Just like you cannot wave a magic wand and make people forget about pocket characters, root/rotting, or anything else that hurts your argument.

Your idea that everything is biased is also just an attempt to undermine what I have said, by repeating the word bias and hoping it sticks. If you want to claim everything is biased, you aren't exempt from that either.

In a game with inbalanced classes, fixed math, and fixes rules, there are objectively better and worse setups for this thread. Attempting to undermine facts and logic by claiming everything is subjective is not a valid form of debate.

My post specifically was about why Shamans are better. It is nonsense to claim that if an argument does not cover every possible scenario, it is not objective. This is just going back to your incorrect ideas about subjectivity. It is an underhanded attenmpt at undermining credibility, instead of going after the substance.

I am leaving it up to you Troxx, etc. to explain your position on Clerics. It is not my job to do your argument for you. I don't think people really care about level 24 healing efficiency to be honest. You need to name camps and scenarios where you think this will be significant enough to choose Cleric over Shaman if you think I missed something.

The only people arguing against spell redundancy are posters like Troxx. Having extra Slows, stuns, etc. is great. But you need to show why the extra cleric stun is significant enough to be a serious point in the debate. Thus far you have not.

If you want to talk about other facets of healing and give example camps where some heals are better than othere, please provide them.

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

1 throwaway line about pet CH, nothing about the DA/ae mez synergy of necro/clr, and of course pocketing. Still no reply on how pocketing a cleric works in ST but whatever. You can only come up with this stuff if you’ve never enc/clr’d

E: to explain, DSMs huge post doesn’t reveal any interest in collaboratively discussing the best 4 man group. He has a conclusion and is now repeatedly arguing for that conclusion. There’s no evenhandedness, there’s no honest pro/con list, etc.

As you can see, foritor cannot rebut any of my points either, and has thus conceded. He cannot explain why Clerics are better. You can't win a debate by saying "im disagree, therefore I win".

[fortior]

You don’t know enough about the game to assume ‘fixed rules’ (whatever that means). It took you guys like two hundred pages to find out about wizard’s alter plane: hate when I mentioned it, and so far your only response to ‘no rez lol’ has been bringing a cleric, but it doesn’t count because you said so. You think extremely highly of your game mastery and unjustly so

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

You don’t know enough about the game to assume ‘fixed rules’ (whatever that means). It took you guys like two hundred pages to find out about wizard’s alter plane: hate when I mentioned it, and so far your only response to ‘no rez lol’ has been bringing a cleric, but it doesn’t count because you said so. You think extremely highly of your game mastery and unjustly so

Thus far I can explain my position, and you cannot. Simply claiming you are right is nonsense. Come back when you can rebut my points.

[fortior]

I reject your points. I categorically disagree with your posts about allowing pocketing, the value of pet ch, and the lack of cleric utility. I’m sure this will cost me points in debate class, but this isn’t a formal debate, and even if it were, you’re not adjudicating anything. Sit down. Play your shaman. Now for the people who actually do this content:

ST trash clear. Enc/clr is clear, do you go 2 encs for 2 newly createds? Necro for FD pull/safety rez? Shaman for malo? Keep in mind the ST key is not soulbound in era, you don’t want to be stranded

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

I reject your points. I categorically disagree with your posts about allowing pocketing, the value of pet ch, and the lack of cleric utility. I’m sure this will cost me points in debate class, but this isn’t a formal debate, and even if it were, you’re not adjudicating anything. Sit down. Play your shaman. Now for the people who actually do this content:

ST trash clear. Enc/clr is clear, do you go 2 encs for 2 newly createds? Necro for FD pull/safety rez? Shaman for malo? Keep in mind the ST key is not soulbound in era, you don’t want to be stranded

OP did not say pocket characters are forbidden, and pocket characters are a common occurrence on P99. You cannot remove them from the discussion, no matter how hard you try. People will simply ignore this made up rule, including myself.

If you want to explain why you think Clerics are better, please do so.

[fortior]

I have done so multiple times.
Shaman upsides: malo, slow, torpor (just the big upsides)
Cleric upsides: rez, fast stun, 2x DA, paci, pet CH
Both have plenty of hp buffs to keep an enchanter safe.

DA gives you the nice and guaranteed trick of letting the cleric pacify (w or w/o donal’s bracer) and DA holding the mobs on a crit fail. The mobs will crowd around the cleric, letting the enchanters ae mez them super quickly and safely. I also value pet CH to preserve particularly valuable pets like in PoHate, SG, seb, PoM, and ST. I also value rez; I understand your idea about pockets but prefer a hard 4 class limit as the thought experiment is more interesting to me this way.

I think sleepers tomb trash and fear are the best areas for this group, aka challenging enough to want to stick together. For ST I can definitely see a place for the shaman just for malo, for fear I can’t. For ST you need pet CH and for both you really need rez. There’s no amount of skill that would make me comfortable in either zone with the theoretical risk of being stranded.

For fear, you need a wizard (unless you pocket that too…) so my team would be wiz/enc/clr/flex. For ST you need an enc/clr, you kinda want malo, you really need pet dps, and a puller would be nice, so I would add shm/nec or shm/enc to the core. If the group makeup has to stay the same, I can only see dropping the shaman for the wizard.

I always thought clerics had limited utility as well. Playing with good clerics (aka, botb winners, bis mains) really made me reconsider that. It’s a super hardy, versatile class with surprisingly good CC in paci/atone and two DAs is fantastic.

I prefer looking at uncommon picks in situations like these, because a lot of times oft repeated wisdom is wrong. That’s why I mentioned the xp/dkp aspect of race selection in the shaman race thread, and why I named druid and wizard in this thread since depending on the situation (is it real world? Is there competition?), mobility is absolute king.

If you wanted to really get fancy, you could use rezzing as a second bind spot by dumping corpses. This could allow you to for example: wiz/enc/enc PoH mini snipe, clr elsewhere with prepped corpses to rez people to. Obviously an edge case but there’s so many creative things you can do.

[fortior]

It’d be super interesting to brainstorm about power groups containing uncommon picks like druid, necro, mage (probably unrealistic, just so nerfed). I’m also interested in the absolute top target killable by this setup. Vindi with charm pets chain blurred to regen them?

[Duik]

DSM. Using the HP values of the dress wearers and a monk tank TOTALLY IGNORES the fact the CH cleric is targetting hasted charms with upwards of 8k. Right in the belly of CH max efficiency.
Sure your lil shaman can "solo" stuff and good on ya.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

DSM. Using the HP values of the dress wearers and a monk tank TOTALLY IGNORES the fact the CH cleric is targetting hasted charms with upwards of 8k. Right in the belly of CH max efficiency.
Sure your lil shaman can "solo" stuff and good on ya.

You aren't getting 8k hp mobs at level 39, or at 52 generally speaking. Those examples were referncing that level range. Of course CH is more effective in the mid to upper 50s, this was already stated. Please read before commenting.

[Troxx]

Thanks for the laugh.

Your points have all been thoroughly discussed in the first few hundred pages of this thread. Ironically … let us circle around to the very first reply of this thread. I wonder who it was:

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

Shaman Enchanter Enchanter Cleric. If you are planning on doing Fungi Tunic camp then probably swap 1 Enchanter for a Necro, so they can pull.

I’m curious on the “why” behind the fundamental shift. Clearly you saw the value of a cleric for this theoretical group. You didn’t even bother to mention leaving cleric off the table until dozens (possibly a few hundreds) of pages in. Actually, you know what? I’m not going to lie … I’m not curious about the why. I already understand it.

You lost the argument hundreds of pages ago. If a cleric is present - the shaman adds little to no value that isn’t redundant. So what’s a DSM to do after losing multiple arguments multiple times? Kick the cleric out of the group and advocate for allowing pocket clerics to be considered to cover the severe gaps in the shaman’s toolkit when managing multiple buzz-saw charm pets.