I'm looking into Druid or Shaman for solo play. (May duo up with a friend if either of us need help, but will primarily be for solo) Most of what I read about the differences relates to end-game or which is better "melee" etc. I won't be raiding or grouping much if at all so this should be based on leveling/solo aspects only. I admit I have almost zero knowledge of the shaman class in general. All I know if they use wards to prevent damage Do most people soloing with Warden and Mystic go a "melee" route with them? Are the Fury and Defiler the better solo choices? I'm leaning towards a melee Mystic probably. What would be the reasoning behind choosing a Defiler over a Mystic for solo play? Is gear choices different when playing these classes more melee oriented? Edit: Changed last question didn't make sense before.
I have both a mystic and warden and the warden seems easier to solo with. While the mystic has the dog and much cooler debuffs, the wards take forever to cast and seem to constantly get interrupted, which is extremely irritating. The warden has a faster sow, evac, and ports, so it's much quicker to get around and do stuff.
Thank you for the response. What about a Fury? What would I be missing out on choosing a Fury over the Warden? Is the best (more fun [I understand my opinion but I want your opinions too!]) way to solo a Warden by going melee oriented? Are Furys able to go a melee direction as well? Or would they be best as casters? I usually only see talk about CA Wardens but not too much Fury. Mystic is appealing cause it has a little of everything... some melee, offensive spells, have a pet to help a lil, heals, wards, SoW. Of course, as you said Druids have evac and ports for quicker moving around... I'm searching around for more info and probably will play each one up some anyways, but I like getting thoughts from others.
I've never played a fury so my knowledge of them is gimpy. They have the ports but no evac, not sure on sow. I assume they have it. Wardens have the melee CA tree in the warden tree, similar to mystics. The strength line is completely intended to be used by wardens IMO, and the intelligence line is meant for furies. You'll see wardens running around with the intelligence line occasionally and I think these people are absolute scrubs for doing so but meh, that's just me. Show me a fury speced with the strength line and I'll flame them for being just as much of a scrub.
The Fury is a rather easy but enjoyable class to solo with (went all the way to lvl80 by soloing). Fast casing, easy to move around (portals), and most of it, a really decent damage output, at least from lvl23 onwards. You also get decent runspeed and temporary runspeed buffs (which easily get you up to 100% for a short time). Main thing for soloing to put all AA you earn into damage, you healing output is more than enough anyway. You can even get a pet, even tho those are rather useless. Btw: Speccing the STR line on a Fury for soloing isn't a stupid idea. Natural Boom + Animal Form ftw. Ardra
Mystic lost all when SF came out, they used to have 100% melee crit early (around 20aa), to be really strong (str helped tremendously their dps before SF). Low levels waden are now immensely superior to mystic, they have high focus, fast heal and their CA reload faster. The balance that did exist before SF has been destroyed. In the high end it's the same, the nerf on mystic mythical, the low crit bonus on ward, poor AAs are really making the mystic inferior.
The Fury is an awesome solo class. You can do significant levels of damage after investing in the INT line and the Energy line on the Fury tree. Fully realized at the high end and you have Furies doing better damage than some scouts and casters. (not the real DPS, more the utility DPS like Enchanters and Bards).
StaticLex wrote: Flame on... It's almost pointless to take the STA tree on a decently geared fury unless you're too lazy to buy and use the Stun/Stifle potions from your Guild vendor...plus freedom of mind potions, plus the half dozen procs for stun/stifle immunity you can get from gear. This is, of course my opinion, you're welcome to your own. Str spec helps when your damn guild can't keep an Illy for the caster group too...makes meh proc animal form a hell of a lot more efficiently. Can also get an additional 1500-2k dps out of it on trash crap. If I run into a boss where I absolutely must have serenity...it's only a two minute trip to the ole home away then CoV back to the raid. Edit: Furies don't get upgraded sow. We can get an AA to buff our own in-combat speed off our animal shapeshift, though. And we have Pact of the Cheetah which with the master and a couple of AAs is about 45 seconds of 96% in-combat run speed for the group, plus a root/snare break that can be cast while moving or getting punted away on a knockback. And yes Natural Boon is the awesomesauce. T-shell+Melee with the scouts and it's absurdly easy to keep the group at 100%, especially with stormcaller's renewal proccing like mad on any AE fight. One last edit...that extra 1.5-2k dps is with my crappy enervated. I'd love to get a nice 2-hander for fighting trash. As it is our single target dps is crap compared to our ae dps, and I'd like to be able to keep my sustained a lot higher on single targets.
Ferunnia wrote: Please tell me where half a dozen items fall at that proc these immunities I only have the Bg piece for the neck but def need more being interrupted and stifled at the end of casting my group ward is frustrating and seems like the mobs wait for me to almost finish casting before they interrupt me . I hpw they are not raid only ... but if you could mention some of the instances where these half dozen items can be found it would be much appreciated .
Ferunnia wrote: This is all valid and good info, but it doesn't really matter to someone who says he specifically wants information on soloing. To the OP... sounds like druid is the way to go for you, if you like the melee aspect and single target damage then warden, if you want to aoe and use spells then fury.
Im sure my response will be outdated because of how old this post is from the OP. But Ya I wanted to respond to staticlex on how they would call a warden a scrub for picking Int line (wich isnt really specifically Int anymore) Infact way back when before the consolidation of the wisdom stat ... It was very advantageous to pick the Str line and Int line together (If you had 100+ AA) Keeping a 5-3 ratio Str-Int ... was imho the best for solo. Now with the consolidation of the wisdom stat .... It makes more sense to fully go down the old int line and get Infusion /pick all the CA's , and maybe put a few pts into the old str line. This is also better from a pvp stand point ... skipping anything except the haste attack(just for one more hit) that effects your auto mele. From a fury stand point .... I could see the old str line being useful for the 2 added CA's and heal proc.
