Shaman questions

[mgellan]

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

Come POK, shared banking and the bazaar, this point is pretty much moot, but as it is now playing a barb is much more enjoyable for me then any other race.

Since there will never be a POK, shared banking and the bazaar in this server your enjoyment will just go on and on [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Regards,
Mg

PS Agree 100% on your philosophy BTW [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] Barbs FTW!

[Noselacri]

It is, I had three different race shaman up to level 50+ on Live classic (1999-2000). The Iksar had equivalent level armor (most from kunark (seb armor, cant really remember but it had high AC and iksar could wear) and plane of hate iksar only armor). By the time I was level 53 or so my iksar had over 100 extra total AC...for example my troll had 950 AC and my Iksar had 1050 AC. This isn't raw AC it's total. If played right, that 100 extra AC becomes important. It essentially creates more mana for the iksar as he takes less damage and therefore needs to be healed less often than an ogre, troll, or barb.

No, it isn't. It's a widely known fact that iksar AC bonus maxes at 42 points of AC. To this very day on Live, iksar is the best tank races because of that tiny amount, but it's more because noone else gets much of anything now that stats are easily maxed and everything can be compensated for with AAs. The iksar AC bonus was never 100, and you must have been comparing two characters with different gear. You need to compare two naked characters with maxed defense and the exact same agility in order to see it, not just "two chars with similar sort of gear".

I would like to add in that it would be a good debate to see who is the second best shaman: iksar or ogre. It's extremely close, and although I did say iksar earlier I can understand how some will say ogre being the second best shaman (the JBB = free damage).

Come Kunark, ogre is the best. The innate regeneration becomes almost pointless once you have Torpor. Up until you get your high-level spells, it's pretty much a toss-up between ogre and troll, with iksar always coming in third because of their much lower stamina and the plate limitation which will restrict you from using a number of items that you otherwise would have upgraded to throughout your life. It matters less in the end game, but on the way there, a lot of shaman-specific gear counts as plate. Ogre is the only race whose innate abilities never become obsolete or decrease in value.

[Reiker]

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

I'd like to point out that Reiker, or whatever his name is, posted a nice analysis of JBBs a while ago that basically successfully makes the argument that it's often more efficient to spend mana to do damage and then to cannibalize than to use a JBB. He was essentially saying that the item, while useful, is not quite as much of a godsend as people think, particularly as you get higher level. If anyone could dig up the post and post a link here, that would be cool.

Originally Posted by me

There was a "discussion" about the usefulness of JBB awhile ago on this forums. My stance is fairly anti-JBB. I'm also curious why you need to root the mob, you'll never lose aggro over your pet (which is good, shaman pet is a horrible tank compared to the shaman).

Anyways, regarding JBB. This item is very good when you can first use it (45) but after awhile it actually becomes detrimental to use. I see you mentioned Pox, which would assume you were JBBing in PoP, which I don't recommend.

As I mentioned before, the strength of a shaman is no downtime. Any time you're not casting a spell you're wasting time. Every action a shaman takes can be represented in "time efficiency" instead of "mana efficiency." The JBB does 263 damage after an 8 second cast time, or 32.875 dps. The benefit of the JBB is that it's mana free. If there's any class that doesn't care about the mana cost of something, it's shaman. If you weren't clicking JBB above, you could afford to cast spells such as Blood of Saryrn. Blood of Saryrn takes 3 seconds to cast and costs 535 mana. To regain that mana it'll take about 6 cannis, or 30 seconds. Blood of Saryrn cost you 33 total seconds. That may seem like a lot until you consider that focuses, Flowing Thought, AAs, and mana regen buffs will make this even more efficient (but won't affect JBB). Blood of Saryrn does 2324 total damage, or 70.42 dps when considering the time lost to canni back mana. Again note that the time decreases with focuses, etc, increasing the potential dps by a lot.

Basically, the JBB would be an amazing and potentially overpowering item in the hands of any other class besides a shaman. Many use one early and get attached to it, not understanding that it's actually hindering them.

Notes: For whatever reason I confused Pox of Bertoxxulous with Breath of Ultor so I wrote this in the context of PoP, where JBB is fairly bad for the reasons above. Although definitely more useful in Kunark and Velious, I look at it like this:

I generally camp my own JBBs. I love soloing the 4 crypt nameds in seb for the phats. If you can hold that camp, a JBB is most likely not going to help you much. You're better off just DPSing / canning / torporing as normal. Even if the dps is on par with JBB, a JBB interrupt is a lot worse than say a canni interrupt so it's still not as good of an option. One strategy to use with the JBB is to click it immediately after casting a normal spell, since you'll save a couple seconds (item clickies ignore global spell cooldown). Chain clicking defeats this advantage, though. If you're not a top tier shaman or aren't very good at the "shaman gameplay" (which is a lot different than any other caster in some ways) the JBB can seem pretty awesome and is a pretty awesome leveling tool at 45. I'd just much rather farm and sell them for 15k+ a pop.

In Velious they get even less useful, due to better spells (Canni4 is insane) and high cold resists.

[Estu]

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

One strategy to use with the JBB is to click it immediately after casting a normal spell, since you'll save a couple seconds (item clickies ignore global spell cooldown). Chain clicking defeats this advantage, though.

What is chain clicking? Is it some way to bypass the global spell cooldown?

[Noselacri]

What he means is that after casting a spell, you can't cast anything again for like two seconds, but you can immediately click an item with a clicky ability. This effectively means that using JBB right after casting a spell shaves a couple of seconds off the cast time, making it an efficient use of time. Clicking it again then negates this advantage because you could have immediately cast a spell instead which is usually more worthwhile. So you could cast a DoT, click JBB, then cast another DoT without having to spend any time at all waiting, but clicking JBB twice in a row isn't efficient because the second time won't gain you anything as you could have cast a spell instead without waiting. JBB was useful for that kind of thing, but not for chain-clicking, because you would get the same (or more) DPS and efficiency out of just casting your spells and using canni/torpor to negate the mana cost.

[Reiker]

Item clickies used to completely clear GCD too. That was an awesome classic bug. You could chain cast anything as long as you clicked jboots inbetween.

[Reiker]

Honestly, the Iksar AC bonus is least beneficial to (high-end/raiding) Shaman than any other class. They miss out on Jaundiced Bone Breastplate clicky (Bramblecoat: +18 AC, +3 DS).