Shaman 101

Discussion in 'Priests' started by Nnewg Kahnzerson, Apr 26, 2013.

  1. HalorFrostvalor New Member

    TIP: Set one of the extended target slots (I use first slot) to Group Tank, or Raid Assist 1, whatever the designated tank is, then you can make a general macro to target him, assist him, etc. /xtarget 1 and /cast # and /xtarget 1 then /assist, etc so you don't have to worry much about who it is or where he is for those fast needed heals, etc.
  2. Sowslow Elder

    I like but think it needs some tweaks
    Not sure why you mention AGI, but unless you are low level (<60 maybe) putting any AAs toward AGI is a waste of points. I wouldn't put any AAs towards AGI ever.

    crippling apparition is not crowd control but a debuff

    naddox is not a mana free dot, I am not even sure what AA you are referencing. Some shaman like languid bite for some extra dps, although small. I don't use it and if going for any extra dps, I like pack of dogs spells, since the two don't stack you have to chose one.

    If you are really able to DPS on a raid, the two "quick" dots are better replaced with other more powerful dots. It may be odd wording, but you can stack many more than 2 of each kind and usually replacing 2 disease for magic and poison adds more DPS.

    You mention group wolf adding dps, but it does not as long as the group already is hasted through another spell. Also, Lion and Spire are less dps than your top DOT, so if there are free buff slots on the mob, a DOT is greater to overall dps than Lion and Spire.

    Overall I like the writeup, should be helpful to many.
  3. Nnewg Kahnzerson Journeyman

    You not putting points into AGI is a choice, like I said in the opening statement, there is no "Right" way to play a shaman. However, I run raid buffed over 9200 AC, and a quick click of Spirit Armor, Ancestrial Guard, Preincarnation, Armor of Experience, infusion of Faithfull, Blezons Recourse and my Sceptor of Veeshan's Rune proc with mellee and I can tank just about anything for about 20 seconds, which is all thats needed most times. I like my AC, because I play an aggressive shaman who tends to sit high on the aggro list. And being able to take a punch is far superior to having extra mana or hit points imho.

    Crippling apparition causes mobs to become less dangerous for a short period of time..... because it BLINDS them. It is our version of a stun. Although it is a dead line at this stage of the game sense current expansion mobs resist it.

    Dont get it confused with Crippling Spirit which is the AA version of Cripple, which is useless on raids if chanters are doing their jobs.

    The Blood of Naddox line of AA enhances or quickens the ability to lower resistance to poison disease etc... and becomes a useless AA once you move past that spell onto more powerful ones, and the Dot added to slows is just bad all around unless you want to break mez's and increase aggro. And that is never a good thing. The Swarm pets AA and the Swarm Pet Buff both will not break root or mez's and is more DPS in the end game.

    And the Group Wolf also adds HP's and Mana, which is a good thing, especially when combined with Lion, Spire, Circle of Power and Epic to a group with a Bard, Zerker, Monk, Ranger and Beast Lord or Rogue. The DPS output they get from me hitting those things is far superior to any of my dots.

    And with the groups and raids I play with, nothing lives for more than 4 ticks, so long duration dots are senseless. And Short Duration Dots without crits and mods have their base damage do about 14K dmg in two ticks. Our top end Poison, Magic and Disease do about 22K over 7-9 ticks.

    Doesnt take alot of strong math to figure out two short duration dots and our Poison and Ice DD is the best combo for quick DPS output if you have the spell slots available.

    Now when we go back to lower tier boss mobs that are long duration fights, and my group and the tank has no real need for my healing services, am I able to stack up 9 or 10 dots and DD's and hit Intensity and Spire and do a sustained 28K DPS for about 5 minutes........ sure. But that is a rare occasion. As an example, in VoA if we went back and did argath or valley to back flag alts or something...... I could play around a little bit.

    But our roles on raids is healing, and enhancing mellee DPS output, quick buffing of the dead, slowing/debuffing mobs.
  4. Nnewg Kahnzerson Journeyman

    Oh, and we did some comparrisons last night grinding out non stop SL mission for lesson burns. Sustained DPS over a hour for a shaman, with no healing responsibilities and minimal debuffing, I was sustaining (combined the hours worth of fights) about 8500 DPS. And that is with non stop mouse work casting non stop for an hour.

    So as a class we are middle of the road for DPS output, but we are there to reduce the mana use of the clerics (they heal less with debuffed mobs) and put more mobs away in that time frame by increasing the output of the DPS classes in the group, and being able to backup heal on a named/boss.

    Classes are always bragging about their DPS, but even the best DPS classes average over an hours worth of non stop pulling less than 12K. Mana, Disc etc.. all come into play. Its easy to "Burn" but too many folks dont understand that some classes are better DPS'rs than others when it comes to group grinds.
  5. Nnewg Kahnzerson Journeyman

    That works for groups, but in raids I simply run down the raid window and populate my hot target bar. The top warriors, sk's and pallies in my guild already have buttons built in. Makes for easy targetting for Fatigue rounds.

    Also as a habbit we assign duties for extended target window. So at the beggining of the night I know which Palliies, SK's and Warriors fall under my "Umbrella" for the evening and they stay on my extended target. Not sure how setting up a macro would help that system. Plus you are relying on people assigning Tank/MA roles in group and raids. And well those can change regularly or as deaths happen.
  6. Sowslow Elder

    I don't think you know how AGI works then and putting AAs into it to raise it past 235 or so is a waste. You should have hit the cap for AGI around lvl 60 with defiant gear and adding any more to just doesn't do anything.

    Ok you got me on this one as I have no idea what this is. You sure you got the name right?

    Epic does greatly enhance group dps, but lion and spire are no where near what you are describing. One of the top poison or magic dots will do more dps than lion and spire on one group. If you happen to cast lion on 3+ groups then maybe it will be greater dps.

    I have a tough time following your logic so I might have to bow out after this post.
    Most raid adds/trash mobs and all recent raid boss mobs reduce the damage from "quick" dots to under normal poison or magic dps. So even if they don't last the duration, they do more damage.

    28K DPS for a 5 min encounter would be extremely good for almost any class but I am assuming that is on an encounter that requires no healing, adds to deal with or other mechanics that would delay dps, which is almost non-existent in the raid game.
  7. Nnewg Kahnzerson Journeyman

    Please dont bow out, this is how I learn new things, and everyone benefits from a different perspective. And yes, the 28K was stacking all our dots while swapping spell sets on the fly and casting non stop DD's while pet and swarm pets where flying on all the bells and whistles where going off and a bard and necro in the group. Was in Valley and I started in on him before he even got to the pit, we had low DPS with all the ALTS and I just kept the dots and DD's flying furiously. But that was a one off, on my typical burn now with no Bard I can maybe do a 17-20K 3 min fight if I get lucky with the crits etc... But thats under raid conditions where I have the luxury of stacking 6 Disease, 3 Magic, 3 Poison 2 Short Duration and 2 DD's, which requires flipping spell sets etc... its not a normal thing.
  8. Nnewg Kahnzerson Journeyman

    Lady Nevederia on 4/29/2013 in 341sec

    Total
    --- DMG: 185950980 (100%) @ 545311 dps (542131 sdps)
    --- DMG to PC: 3998617 @12008dps

    Moldar + pets Ranger
    --- DMG: 9069463 (4.88%) @ 28166 dps (26442 sdps)

    Nnewg + pets Shaman
    --- DMG: 7741912 (4.16%) @ 23969 dps (22571 sdps)
    --- DMG to PC: 249023 @841dps
    --- Special: 7

    Eroku + pets Monk
    --- DMG: 6755912 (3.63%) @ 21864 dps (19697 sdps)


    Snarfling + pets Ranger
    --- DMG: 3232988 (1.74%) @ 10135 dps (9426 sdps)

    Mildiil Ranger
    --- DMG: 2703966 (1.45%) @ 8530 dps (7883 sdps)

    Wanlaian Bard
    --- DMG: 2113894 (1.14%) @ 6711 dps (6163 sdps)


    Thats with intensity, Spire, max AA and casting 89 spells during the fight

    Banescale and Ethsrops (Short duration)

    Nector and Phase Spider (poison) Enam and Banescale (magic)

    and DD of Speedspitter (poison).

    Thats the group I was in, not a typical makeup, but close to it. They got the Leopard, Epic etc... but I got the spire. If I had hit Third Spire instead I guarantee you our groups DPS output would have been hire than with me using First on myself only. But dotting is fun every once in a while on a raid. Keep in mind the parser didnt catch the Rangers true DPS since they where not under belly.
  9. Sowslow Elder

    That is pretty good dps, but an outlier for raid targets as you can get the full benefit from "quick" dots on the dragons. Most raid targets mitigate the damage from those dots. Still, on burns it is not too hard to get close to 30k or over without using them.

    Back to the crippling apparition reference, I still don't know what you are talking about. The new aa called this is just a PBAE version of crippling spirit. There is no blind aspect to it. There are really old blind spells that I guess can be called crowd control, but none that I know of called this.
  10. Iila Augur

    You should take a read through this thread http://www.evilgamer.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7760 particularly the bits on displayed AC vs real AC.
    All Agi does after some number well under 500 is make an arbitrary number go up. hAgi does provide actual benefits to priests, though. In general, non-heroic stats in EQ are worthless beyond some small amount of extra hp and mana from sta and int/wis.

    Like Sowslow said, swiftdots should never be used on raid bosses, they deal roughly 1/3rd damage against anything flagged as a boss. That's what the "exceptionally strong targets" mentioned in the spell descriptions are.
  11. Nnewg Kahnzerson Journeyman

    Well thanks to both of you, I was unaware that SOE mitigated short duration dot's on raid bosses. I have learned something new.
  12. Nnewg Kahnzerson Journeyman

    Bump, back in the game and will be updating this to bring it up to 105 and adjust for game changes
  13. fransisco Augur

    I wonder if shamaning gets better with the upcoming agro fixes to dots
  14. Raccoo Augur

  15. kinadafz Augur

    Good info! I have a baby 95 Shaman I'm replacing a bard in my box crew with - killing is slower, but I expect it to increase as he gets higher. And, I've already saved a handful of wipes having the shaman.
  16. Mehdisin Mahn Augur

  17. nicoftime New Member

  18. Brohg Augur

    does it take half the spell bar? multiple of the dots are only cast once every two or even three minutes, it seems like those spots could be rotated into more active use
  19. Mehdisin Mahn Augur

    lol quality use of caps lock. +1
    I haven't updated my doc for RoS at all yet. i'm a slacker.
  20. Nylrem Augur

    Lol, I just about flamed this write up, reading only first page, til I saw was posted in 2013... I read spamming slow heal during raids, and smacked my forehead...

    An updated write up of this would be awesome! I occasionally box a shaman, and looking for tips from masters :)