Hello, I'm looking to make another priest character and I want some information on the Shaman classes. I already have a Fury and love it because I prefer to play as a caster as I level up versus melee which is why I'm not interested in the Templar/Inquisitor classes. Can anyone tell me what the play style is like for a Defiler versus a Mystic and if either class can be played more like a ranged caster? I've looked around at various threads and haven't seen anything on this point. Thanks!
Out of the two, defilers are the most ranged caster based shaman. As an aside, templars are the caster based version of the clerics. You're going to find that templars have as much to do with being melee based as furies do to wardens. There are some abilities that both classes share which are melee based, but they still are primarily a caster based priest class. Nearly every ability that defilers get is ranged. Outside of a couple of AA combat arts from the shared shaman tree (Phanlanx, Dazing Bash), every ability they get is spell based. That is not unlike furies, which do get some combat art/melee abilities that are shared with their warden counterparts (Nature Blade, Hierophant Grasp, Thunderspike) Mystics get abilities in their class specific trees that convert many of their spells to combat arts (i.e. like inquisitors and wardens). Defilers, furies and templars lack these spell-to-combat art conversion abilities. Both shaman get a handful of abilities to enhance their auto-attack melee damage output (i.e. multi-attack, base autoattack modifier, accuracy, etc.). All priests, including furies, will always benefit more from melee based auto-attack over spell based auto-attack. Again, this is much akin to the melee autoattack abilities that you'll find in your fury's AA tree, which are shared with wardens. Two major differences you will find between defilers and furies is group utility and DPS output. Defilers are heavily defensive based, and as such do not have the offensive capabilities that a fury does. They also aren't bringing the offensive group utility to a mage group that a fury would. This is much the same as templars are versus inquisitors. Templars are heavily defensive compared to their counterparts and bring more defensive utility to their group versus offensive bonuses. Hopefully that answers your question(s)!
Thank you for the reply Koinoo. This does help me. It sounds like Defiler is the way to go if I choose Shaman. I might also give Templar a shot too. I thought both clerics were heavily melee based so it's nice to know that's not the case and another option for me to try. Thanks again!
You can melee decently as a temp however the diffrence between inquis and temp is they get the ability to spec for melee versions of the spells in their inquis tree...templars cant (bout 2 ca available via cleric aa lines). However played right a templar can bring serious defensive and healing power to bear for their group. Whichever class you pick be sure to seek advice on aa spec and at higher levels prestige...
