I was playing my 75 shaman in a group full of melee the other day, and the spirit of leopard group buff damage was absolutely insane. I'm thinking of making a 3box to make use of this, and I'm wondering if this will end up being actually viable or if it's just a cheesy idea. Anyway, I'm thinking: SK/BST/Sham with melee/tank mercs, this gives me effectively 8 melees to proc leopard (9 if i melee with shaman?) with tanking well covered. I know nothing about beastlords, though. Do they bring any extra ADPS, or would I be better off going with: SK/bard/sham? Overhaste is probably more adps, right? Or is this just a completely dumb idea? Thanks!
It doesn't scale nearly as well as you go up in levels. Not to say that you can't make a melee centric group, and that group would definitely love having a shm in it. But leopard procs are going to be a smaller and smaller percentage of that group's total dps as time goes on. Overhaste is good adps, but it does not help proc rate. Procs are normalized to a certain rate per a minute, that takes haste into account. More haste means you have a lower chance per a swing to proc, but your average procs per a minute will stay the same.
Ah, good to know I guess that wasn't clear with my second question. I mean, will the overhaste/whatever bard buffs add more DPS to the group than a beastlord at that point? I'm not familiar with what kinds of ADPS beastlords add to a group, and what overlaps with shamans. Thanks for the response!
Wait until you get Growl of the Lion. You think you're excited about ADPS now, well you're in for a surprise. I myself melee proc without Rabid Bear with Growl for 59k blasts. It does however take off any regen spell you have on and also Rabid Bear takes off your Mammoth Force buff when clicked.
If you are just looking for more ADPS, then no question the bard will offer more than the BST in that scenario. If you are looking for more DPS out of the group, i.e. kill stuff faster, than the BST is hands down the better choice.
