For those heading to Yelinak

Druids have glamour of tunare which is not good but better than nothing

Clerics can tank just fine. My Agnarr cleric soloes by facetanking Plane of Fire C1 and tables. Of course, the DPS is atrocious and it takes forever to kill anything, just like if I was playing a paladin. BTW, Paladins can self as heal really about as well as a cleric. They really do play very much the same.

With paladins you just have to play into their strengths is all, I am sure clerics could do as well but just find the undead!

Oddly enough this is my complaint about the Shaman class myself. I didn't mind the buffing, once I got the group buffs and even healing could be somewhat fun at times but having to constantly spam canni drove me nuts. I had the same thoughts about the spell as well, "If only it was like Lich" hehe. Heck it didn't even need to be like Lich, just make it so each cast gave back like 300 mana for 400 health by level 30 or something instead of like 30 mana for 50 heath well up into the 50s.

The good news is that by Velious at level 58 casting Canni gets a bit more tolerable. It is something like 140 HP for 120 mana and if you can stick it out to level 65 and manage to somehow score the spell Ancient Chaotic Pain, it is 688 HP for 360 mana. There is also an AA that is a Canni that gives back something like 1000 mana for 1200 life or something. It is on like a 10 min cooldown but it helps.

That however that is a long, long road just to get the whole canni mechanic tolerable.

The biggest issue I see is that where they can play to their strengths is so limited. Sure there are places where they can focus on killing undead but there are so many other places where they outright suck.

I'll probably go mage. I really like playing cleric but it can be hard leaving a group in the later hours sometimes.