How do Barbarian Shamans and their toys hold up in Velious?

[Splorf22]

So if by Lodizal you are referring to: http://mqemulator.net/npc.php?id=110099

Then he seems roughly equivalent to the Sebilite Protector statwise: http://mqemulator.net/npc.php?id=89001

And you can kite him while you get him slowed. I would feel pretty confident in my ability to solo him with Loraen tonight actually.

[Orruar]

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

This thread's about Velious. You're a nobody shaman who's played on P99 Kunark for a couple months and bragging about soloing HS trash. Congratulations. I'm talking from experience of playing a shaman in a high end raid guild throughout Velious (twice - original/classic and Progession 1.0).

Once again, the things you're saying aren't incorrect per se but they're irrelevant. Yes, if you play a non-ogre you can time things around bash. You're not teaching me some sort of lost nugget of shamanic knowledge here. It also doesn't make your point. It reinforces the fact that ogres are better because they don't have to worry about that bullshit.

When you're working your way up and soloing mobs like Mazi who hit for 200+, AE and dispel, you have way too much to worry about to plan out spell timings around a bash timer. When you're timing your torpor around AE dispels while keeping dots / debuffs online amidst high resist rates, you'll begin to realize the advantages that ogres have when you have very tiny windows to land specific spells. Once you work up to Lodizal/Stomples... forget it.

What class do you play here? I'd love to see you solo HS south with a shaman. With all of your vast knowledge, I'm sure it would not be a problem. Of course, anyone who has been to HS south here knows it's not just "HS trash". Breaking a camp there is probably the toughest thing I can do currently, and I put it well above things like soloing Drusella, which is probably the closest you can get to WW dragons at this point.

I love how your argument morphed from:

Originally Posted by Reikerz

it's impossible to time your spells around bash.

to:

Originally Posted by Reikerz

Yes, if you play a non-ogre you can time things around bash. You're not teaching me some sort of lost nugget of shamanic knowledge here.

It seems you have gained that lost nugget of shamanic knowledge sometime in the last few hours. So now that you admit I'm right about being able to time around bash, surely you must admit that timing around bash and having extra regen is better than not getting stunned by bash with no regen.

I'll admit that if you don't have the multitasking ability to keep track of bashes on top of the other things you have to watch, you should probably play ogre. But troll/iksar offers you the possibility of being more effective, though it requires more work.

[Orruar]

Testing signature

[Sajan]

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

I love how your argument morphed from:


to:


It seems you have gained that lost nugget of shamanic knowledge sometime in the last few hours

lol'd

[azeth]

this thread hurt a lot of feelings! lol for real.

[pasi]

There shouldn't even be a discussion on what's the best race for shaman at 60 post-Kunark. A lot of the stuff in Velious that shamans can do is very difficult to slow for it's high MR and/or high level. Stuff like Huntsman/Scribe (lucrative targets) are MR, but might still be shaman soloable. It's not that bash-immune is required, it just helps more than a bit of regen or AC when you're already hitting the softcap.

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

What else do you suggest in Velious besides Lodizal and Stomples? Vaniki? lol.

Other shaman soloable Velious targets like Klandicar/Zlandicar/Vaniki are out of realm of possibility until later expansions.

Curious, at what point was Vaniki shaman soloable? Obviously, that is without exploiting warring factions. I (SK) was soloing Zlandicar (Trak, Gore, Sev, Talendor as well) in late-PoP, but Vaniki was impossible - the natural regen was way too high.

Also, what's with the fascination of soloing WW dragons? Even most matchless is meh. Given how much better the P99 base is at the game vs what a live server was, PoMischief Cards are likely going to be the cash cow for solo farmers.

Reading the solo thread, it's pretty impressive what people are able to do with some strings and Kunark gear.

Raltaas, Keldor, Dlammaz, and Kromzek Captain should all make solid duo targets.

[Triangle]

I don't want to join this argument by any means. However an important fact has been left out of the equation and must be added: Bash does not always land, and even when it does, it does not always have the stun component.

Now in my opinion this fact adds a bit to both sides. On one side, timing to avoid it is not always necessary at all because sometimes the npc will attempt to bash and it won't work, therefore you have wasted time not casting a spell where one could have been cast.. While on the other side, Ogre's frontal immunity does not come into play everytime an npc 'bashes' because of the same reason, the bash may not have landed/stunned at all on even a barb shammy. I haven ever timed bashes and I am a barb shammy. Consequently there are times when i wish I was ogre =P. Maybe if i had a stopwatch as part of my ui or something.

[Galelor]

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

If you're not using Vindicator BP in Velious you just need to reroll Druid or maybe stop playing the game. I can see wearing Fungi in Kunark because your options suck (JB BP is awful besides the clicky) but Vindi BP is one of the best shaman items in the entire expansion, plus it's so easy to get. I think I replaced my Vindi BP with Bloodlink Chestmail. That Velious BP served me until Gates of Discord.

Stun immunity is not god mode. But it could definitely save your ass. I mained a barbarian shaman for years, do you realize how many times I died because I had a critical spell like torpor or a re-turgurs bashed away? I raged every single time wishing I had rolled an ogre. Yes, most of the time you might get Canni III or IV bashed and it's inconsequential, but Murphy's Law still applies. A bit of regen might make you slightly more efficient. Having a spell stunned can kill you.

The regen and snare neck are tiny bonuses. They're not on par to stun immunity.

+1
This was my barb shaman BP upgrade path on live.
I also had some child like foot stomping rage every time I died due to bash interrupting one of my spells. No matter how good you are, it will happen multiple times if you push the limits. You will rage. Anyone that says differently is wrong. I rolled another barb on p99 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] If only I had free time to play...

Totally off topic, but in response to someone posting that Velious had easy solo encounters I tend to agree. The hard parts of the encounters are related to killing something where the fight takes fucking year to kill it...
That said, I was excited when I soloed Lodi and some of the WW dragons, but it was nothing compared to soloing some of the higher DPS trash mobs in later eq. Memorable moments for me: When I was way under geared during Kunark and soloed a SF worm using pet/rain spells, or later on during PoP when I soloed the Plane of Storm wasps. My favorite and most memorable solo my first undead melee trash giant at the zone in of Frostcrypt during The Serpent's Spine. They were so ass rape that people thought I was bullshitting them when I said I did it lol!

[Galelor]

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

Testing signature

/thread

[Spitty]

Your word choice isn't poor - it perfectly demonstrates how nonsensical your argument is.

You aren't interested in figuring this bash timing mechanism out; that much is painfully clear.

90% of your post is bullshit you made up in your head to strengthen an argument with no foundation, other than having bash immunity is preferable to not having bash immunity.

This makes is delightfully amusing that you've put to use the straw-man term without realizing you've become the walking ideal of that fallacy.

Bash timing isn't rocket science; once you figure out it's a cyclical event, you can time it. Once you can time it, you can work around it. This is something I do every time I solo NG, using the same stopwatch app I use to time the roamer, and usually while watching Netflix.

Obviously I pay more attention when it's a long-term encounter, a solo achievement, a crucial mob; the point you should be taking home is that it's easily applied, at will, once the bash cycle's timing is defined.

This is about as basic as clicking the epic when it hits 154 damage so that you refresh the dot cycle when the next tick hits 165 and clears the effect. I really don't understand why you're still trying to argue against this technique.