I have been boxing a Shaman and Warrior (currently lvl 25) and was noticing lately that the Shaman is not hitting as often or as hard as he used to. Been fighting mostly reds and yellows. I had read somewhere that at higher lvls in group content the Shaman should debuff and dot and med, the idea being not to slow the group down by causing them to wait while the Shaman meds. However I find it convenient to use the Shaman to pull mobs off the cleric by casting spells. Also it dose not seem to require too much more to keep the shaman healed up while he is tanking 1 or 2. So to what lvl should I keep the shaman up on the front line?
With Rabid Bear, shamans should never stop meleeing. And since when do shaman ever need time to med?! Conq
What you do will change with every group, it depends on the overall group makeup. Sometimes you might heal, other times you might off tank, other times crowd control. You need to understand how every other class works and what they are bringing to the table. Don't waste your time doing something another class in the group might do better. #1 though, learn to canni dance. macro it up, and do it, always. You should never sit to med, even with KEI etc. As a shaman you should be active, in some way, constantly in the group. You don't get to go AFK.
OP welcome to EQ. As you level and play you find the shaman is very flexible. As box, as you learn, you will setup different hot marco hit box that work for you. As main, the shaman is very powerful and flexible to what group needs. As zap said its adjust to group. To the point, you want meele as often as possible, often you have a bard with you, and combo that with shaman stuff, alot to like meele wise. As you level and grow the demand for more mana, and MORE HP will be important to every shaman, and imho active levels go up so does fun factor. Maybe as box, you 3 trick dog and never learn more, but the main shaman are pretty kewl watch. I personally lend towards healing focus, but i understand dps is role and shaman can do it well. CC is super nice with AE root circle recast. As build up HP off tanking if have is optional and dogdog dont suck too bad either. Good news Bads. Shamans have alot of options and picking one is hardest part when adjusting. Play have fun enjoy, repeat. Tip the strippers, drink the beer, and sleep well tonight your a shaman.
Thanks everyone! I was being lazy with my Shaman. I had actually bought the canni spell but never used it. Casting regeneration and then cannning gave me more mana than meditating. I did some crowd control by rooting and then moving the warrior. I realized that not only dose what a Shaman should do change with every group it also changes with the same group in different zones. For example you can split mobs that are near each other with root so for this situation the shaman should pull, some mobs run at low health and need to be rooted before than do, while other mobs fight to the death. Figuring out how best to use the Shaman's abilities is making the game much more enjoyable!
Most people don't realize just how LITTLE extra mana regen comes from meditating. Back in the day before OOC and before tons of AA ranks which added more mana regen, and when the only mana regen buff came from enchanters, medding actually made a decent impact. Now? It's such a small drop in the bucket, it's hardly worth even considering. I only sit to med when OOC, since you still have to sit to get the OOC regen, even though it's not tied to the medding skill. I haven't used a mount while fighting in years, because the small amount of medding regen doesn't outweigh the higher food use and delay when trying to move quickly. (though, the fact you can swap/mem spells without sit agro is a plus, but I rarely need to do that.) EDIT - for those who don't know, meditating at max skill adds about 40 mana/tick. My main druid, with just self buffs and a chanter crack buff is well over 600 mana/tick standing (i.e. not medding). If you have a situation where you have other buffs (BST, BRD, etc), your standing mana regen can be much higher than that. And then, medding would still be adding just 40/tick.
