Hello, I just came back from a long break and was wanting to do some boxing. I was curious if the shaman could heal my group effectively or would I need a cleric? I have no desire to ever raid, I just want to take the grind and see the game. My tentative group as of now is War/Brd/Mage/Zerk/shm or cleric. I would even like to see the new zones and new expansions at some point. I have nothing but time. What is my best bet as far as heals? And if you have a better idea for a box group please feel free to throw that at me too. I would love any advice I can get. Thank you.
If boxing 5 characters, make one a cleric and then your shaman will barely have to heal, for group content.
I thought about that but would that be too much healing and thus taking a spot for some DPS? I figure the cleric could heal the group fine alone but I hear how great the shaman is and how much they bring to a group...
He's saying the shaman wouldn't have to heal in those situations, and could DPS. With their new dots, it should be pretty good DPS. Not to mention the effective adps they could add for melee. Then, when you are going up against a really tough mob, you can have the shaman heal. I recently started grouping again, for the first time in about 10 years. The tank has a healer merc he's used to using, and that's fine with me, I like dpsing better. But, if we get a bad pull or have a tough named, I just start healing, and it usually works out pretty well
Depends on how good you are boxing. Shaman are very capable healers, but require a bit more finesse to heal at the same ease level as a cleric. If you are not as good of a boxer, I'd go with a cleric. More heal/cures, more emergency heals, epic/divine arbitration, healing support AA, larger variety of heals which means you can react slower or deal with a situation that gets out of hand, or better heal multiple tanks if several people are taking damage. Alternatively, you can use druid/shaman both and use them as combined healing/dps/utility and divvy up jobs as needed based on your content needs and skill level.
Well it has been a long time, so long that I am clueless what all of the AA do but like I said, I have nothing but time. I know the cleric would be much safer but I also want to kill the mobs in a decent amount of time...
If it's been a long time, and you've been able to get a lot of AAs through auto-grant, I'd recommend opening up all your hotbars, and making sure you have lots of empty slots. Then, open the AA window, and select the drop-down for "activatable". Now you'll only see the AAs which need to be activated, i.e. they need hotkeys. Now you can make a hotkey for each one, and add them to all those hotbars you just opened up. Go through each tab in the AA window. Now, once you've got all your AA keys, you can learn more about what they do, and start organize them however you wish.
I box with sk,cleric,wiz and switch between either a shaman or bard. The thing that helps me is hot keys and socials. Another thing I did was bind a key to spam all the spells I need. For instance, on my cleric I use my E key to spam my 5 heal spells and that same key for my Sk is agro and lifetaps, then the same key on my wiz nukes. I don't use [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software] but I do use 4 monitors so soon as I move my cursor to the other screen it's active and all I have to do is hit whatever buttons I have set. Please keep in mind this may not be the ideal thing to do when alt+tabbing on a single display. Learning how to do keybinds and making socials will help a ton.
If you pay attention a shaman should be fine in all group content as the sole healer, especially if you put a back-up sixth slot as a merc healer. A cleric will give you more "oops" forgiveness, between DI and easy battle rez.
Things to just keep in mind. Shaman are good at boosting melee dps (not caster). Your current setup does have a tracker (bard) but no porting capability which can be really useful. A druid could provide heals as well as tracking and ports. But may not be the best makeup with your group members. Think of how much you want to play each class and that can help decide if you should make any swap outs. And remember, mercenaries come in rogue, warrior, wizard and cleric type options as well.
thanks for the advice...with my setup, could the earth pet tank everything I want to do from the current expan on down with a shaman or a druid healing and a cleric merc backing him up? I was thinking of trimming the box group down to 4...is that possible or am I dreaming?
Frankly, if not using illegal programs, boxing with caster centric dps is ideal, because of the elimination of mob positioning issues with melee toon. Since you now talking about pet tanking, personally, I feel mag, enc, dru, shm is just about the perfect box crew. All have very respectful DPS and synergy, mediocre to decent utility, and with a healer merc, dru, and shm all healing the pet, plus slows and chanter debuffs, the pet can tank even the toughest encounters. The ability for dru and shm to swap between DPS and healing is invaluable. DPS on light content, heal on tough stuff, some of both on medium stuff... Almost any 4 box crew will be able to take on all but the very worst of missions, just gonna be tougher with some than others. DPS is king though, don’t let anyone tell ya otherwise . With enough DPS, you don’t have to tank, or heal, long
The base healing of a shaman and cleric are relatively the same (the only real difference is shaman will take damage while healing). The AAs and melee mitigation is what really sets a cleric apart from a shaman, but you really won’t utilize them in a group setup. If you’re going to 4 box, fill slots with dps, and use 2 merc healers.
ah that is good to know about the cleric vs shaman. So, what would you recommend for dps then in the 4 group? Wizzy and Shaman? I figure the bard/chanter is mostly for pulls with bard being a melody bot as well...
I never thought of a druid and a shaman...I know the shaman have respectable dps with the dots now but can the druid do ok dps for being in a box crew but still be able to take out tougher mobs?
Druids currently out DPS Shamans by a large margin. I'm not sure how that translates while boxing, but they can put up some serious DPS when they want to. More then likely with a good weave combo hotkey Druids can do nice DPS as a box.
thank you for the info...I appreciate it. Sounds like the druid is in for sure then. I read the druid attack debuff is very nice as well.
