I have both classes, but more experience on the Shaman. Shaman are better healers but both can way overheal in the group game so it doesn't really make a difference. Obviously it's pretty clear at this point that Shaman is melee ADPS and Druids are caster ADPS. IMO the debuffs on both are mostly trivial in the big picture outside of raids, especially since mobs die so fast. Only reason they get cast is because they are fast casting AAs that don't take up spell slots. Where druids are more unique is the fact they have nukes since DoTs are useless in most situations because mobs die too fast for them to be effective. Also, track and ports are very addictive once you get used them. Especially track if you are questing or doing hunter achievements.
And foraging, if you are into tradeskills. My chanter has maxed AA forage and it still horrible compared to a druid.
If you have another melee character in your group then Shaman is great. If not, or especially if you group with casters - then Druid is your best friend. And they both can do great DPS of their own, thanks to the recent insane upgrades to their dots. Oh yeah, foraging! If you are into tradeskills then Druid is priceless.
I box SK, shm, bard. Imo the shm is better. The adps for the group is worth it on its own. For the shm, on Inc: AA malo, counterbias, roar, fast dot. This is 1 key press. Depending on ur kill speed u tab back to the shm and do ur second key press: fast dot, hot, DD, spell canni. You can toss ur epic in there at various intervals or save it for named only. Just keep in mind, if roar is up and it should always be up.. everyone should be meleeing. Using this setup I do eok with no mercs and no direct healing to my sk, the 3 hot on him from this setup is plenty. Good luck
Shm recourse continues to heal after the first cast 3-4 grp heals and can still proc abundant healing on top of that. By the time the last wave hits it's refreshed.
Base dmg of roar is about 13k. That's rk1 it goes to R6 based on tbm progression. Roar can also be focused and crit upwards or 70k+ per proc.
I'm pretty happy with my shaman, but don't know a druid's capability. The shaman provides great melee buffs, though I think roar of the lion is generally overrated. I'm getting about 0.2 lion's roar procs a second on my berserker and 0.17 on my warrior, which only corresponds to somewhere between 5k and 10k DPS. It's enough that it has 100% uptime for my team, but it's not in the same league as other top-tier ADPS abilities. I'd bet that the shaman epic, even with not being 100% uptime, has a bigger impact.
Well right now, my SK is 68, and Shaman is 65. On pull I do Malo, Slow, strongest DoT, turn on Wiz merc Burn or AE depending on how many I grab, heal. Swap back to SK, 1-2 abilities to keep threat generation up, Wiz merc to Burn (always on burn), life tap. Back to the Shaman. I like to pull 2-3 mobs at a time. By the time I switch back to the Shaman, I'm ready for a heal of sorts, and then switch to the next mob and Malo, Slow, DoT.
I spent tonight, with a good shammy, then a druid (and had a clr in the background - just how it worked out) Shaman are bad healers for a warrior (it may be different for the classes that can self heal). Shaman just can't push the hp's into the warrior fast enough. I don't need a slow, I have a belt. If I'm tanking 5 mobs at once in old seb, the shammy just cannot keep up.
This depends on the shm. If they are main healing they should have 5 heals up, plus shear and roar. With the amount ur pulling they should have slug on u and have twin nuke up. Leaving plenty of space to toss dots. To me, it doesn't sound like you had a good shm.
Bigstomp's assertion does seem pretty sketch. Saying "this guy is good" and "this guy couldn't do the job" in the same post is super weird. What /who says a character is, what loot has been piled on the character, over however many years they've muddled through whatever content with goodness-only-knows what sort of assistance is… pretty loosely associated with how good that player is at playing the character, especially when that character has several different roles to fill.
Not too mention the shm oh crap aa heals and guardian etc. It sounds like someone playing a class they are still learning or don't care to become good at. I've played a shm for over 10 yrs, they are by far the superior healer in group content.
1. Both classes can heal well enough to do 99% of the content you're actually going to be doing. 2. Shaman slow vs druid debuff. It isn't that the druid debuff is so amazing, it's that the shaman slow is so crap, because everything mitigates most of it. The end result is, they mitigate about the same amount of damage. In any content post about level 75, they are pretty close, the only difference being that the druid debuff lands on almost everything including named. I've run both extensively in 3 box teams, the differences really are close to a wash. 3. The druid and shaman will both benefit your party with added DPS in various ways, depending on 3rd box character and mercs chosen. Sk/Druid/Chanter with 1 cleric and 2 wiz mercs on burn = dead stuff fast. People also overlook the druid damage shield, especially if you don't have CC in the group and are fighting multiples. The 2nd mob is usually down at least 25% by the time I get to it, just from the DS. At the end of the day, druid and shaman ends up being a wash, in quite a few comparisons. For me personally, port to bind in a box group >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> than anything else a shaman does. Needing to a daily that DBGs decided should be as far as possible from a port, and as big of a pain in the as possible to get to. This seems to be pretty much every hotzone/daily etc. Being able to port your entire crew instantly to a hot zone is priceless. Not only does it save the pain in the behind of running 3 characters through multiple zones, but you'll be finished with the daily on the druid team, before the shaman box team even gets there. If shaman had ponies that shot lasers out of their eyes, I'd still take the druid for port to bind, and just ports in general. Exodus has saved my box team more times than any other ability will. Theory craft warriors always approach these threads with min/max analysis of what this % of slow is going to do for you etc, but in the real world, especially when boxing, evac and port to bind are just simply awesome to have. /shrug. It's hard to argue against a druid as one of the boxes in *any* box team, regardless of size. They just bring too much utility to the party. They aren't the best at anything, but you don't need that, you need a toolset, and druids have the best one in the game for a box team.
Some of the druid DS's (the short term ones) are pretty nice. But I am guessing riposte is far more responsible for the 25% than the DS. Of course SK's love DS of any sorts too.
Sustained wise the shaman epic doesn't add nearly 10k dps to either my Paladin or Beast Lord. Especially since the nerf.
Yes, repostes that magically disappear when I run a shaman instead of a druid or mage DS. I've run 3 box teams for years, I've run every possible combination you can imagine. I actually spent 2 years on test doing nothing but trying various 3 box combinations. As far as wiz vs druid in a box team, I'll take a druid 100% of the time. The difference in DPS is no where near worth having a backup healer for when things go wrong. All the theory crafting that goes on on these forums, a lot of which is obvious people have never actually tried any of these things, has nothing to do with the realities of actually running a box team in game. You don't need min/max damage, you don't need min/max buffs and debuffs, the game just isn't that hard. What you need is flexibility, convenience, and adaptability. Druids are impossible to beat on a box team, /shrug, do what you like, no skin off my nose. I just get tired of the druid bashing that goes on in these forums from min/max theory crafters. Also...having a wiz instead of a druid on your box team. The druid buffs + 2 wiz mercs will vastly outdamage having a wiz on that team instead. Want a great box team? SK/Chanter/Druid Cleric merc + 2 wiz mercs. You can do anything in game.
I always find these discussions to be interesting since there are so many different angles and perceptions that can be included. For ease of debuffing, shaman win in my opinion since their AA do double duty casting slow and cripple, and malo also does some other debuff that escapes me at the moment. Druids need to spend more time to use all of their good debuffs and it requires more spell gems. For general and ae/group healing, I find shaman have the better tool set. Using reckless heals, surge/swell, hot, recourse, intervention you don't have to use the shaman "light" spell of mending. Druids on the other hand, with the longer recast and shared recast of their faster heal spells have to use their "light" spell of -vida which is noticeably worse in terms of healing rate when push comes to shove. They also lack the variety of potential group healing that shaman have at their disposal. They just come up lacking in the healing department compared with the other 2 healers. I would be tempted to say Paladins could out-heal druids, but I don't have enough experience with Paladins to make that assertion with accuracy. Druids win in terms of options for dps with their dots and their direct damage options. Also druids have had a much better set of burn/support AA for their dps than shaman have had for the vast majority of the game with twincast, natures's fury, spires, blackwolf, aura etc. It was only a fairly recent development that shaman got anything to add to their spell burst damage with fleeting to add to their singular spire that would usually get forfeited to use the group support spire instead. While shaman have had some perks with rabid bear and a few other melee oriented AA, it really never compared in my opinion for usefulness. Druids also win in the nice to have utility that doesn't add directly to mob encounters with evac, ports, snares, tracking, forage etc. Shaman have some good roots, and their epic is on another level versus the druid epic, but its hard to compare the usefulness of the abilities without defining a situation first. I love both classes, and I think both can do great things in a box team, and both are great classes to play as a main as well.
