Druid and Shaman soloing

[Vidar]

Hi everyone,

This isnt one of those whose better at this or that threads. Im just wondering if someone will contrast druids and shamans for me. I played a shaman on live till 52 but it was with the stupid xp bonus and it took a week to hit 50 so i dont have much experience playing a shaman. What is the actual strategy for shamans and druids with soloing. Druids kite mostly with some root and nuke(right?). Can shamans kite? i dont remember. i want to start an alt that can solo decently well and im going to pick on of these two classes.

Thanks!

[tristantio]

Shaman kiting is different (if you do want to kite) because it will consist of dotting a mob and then running without snare (you at sow speed, him at regular) unless you have a snare item, like Regent Symbol of Innoruuk (Troll worshipping Innoruuk can get this from questing).

My shaman is a troll shaman and with the clicky neck kiting is not that bad (and it allows the pet to do dps without taking damage).

Root/rot as a shaman is nice because you can spend more time medding/canni dancing as your dots wear down the mob and just re-apply root as needed (this is how I did it pre-pet).

With pet (at level 36) I am able to let my pet tank a mob in most cases while I just hit it with a couple nukes to quickly end the fight.

[shuklak]

right now at 25 soloing on the shaman isn't even worth it. I'm not a twink and my gear is probably on par for a "classic" player. the problem is my resists are very poor and dps rather low. after a couple bad roots and a tainted breath resist you start thinking aw crap mana is a real concern now. i elected to group instead and actually stopped playing him for a while because grouping can be difficult if you don't play during prime time.

i imagine druid soloing is supremely easier until shamans get their pet. i believe once a shaman gets their pet the options burst wide open.

[William_Munny15]

1-14 I buffed and DS'd myself and Just melee'd, hit it with a few nukes then med. Once you get sow kiting becomes alot more of a viable option. It's a lonely life as a druid, not many people want you in groups, and most of the time you're root rotting something, then medding for 5 or 10 mins. Life gets a bit more exciting when you start quad kiting, but even that is usually done in an empty zone or off by yourself.

[Hroth]

Shaman soloing has a lot of different options. Up until about level 20, I would usually just pull with a slow and then melee with my 2hb. There's lots of cheap options available for those. I'd either hit the mob with a dot as well at the start, or just mix in a nuke or two in between swings.

I found 20-24 to be a little harder, and spent most of my time grouped there. Our dots seemed pretty weak then, and I was taking too much damage while dealing too little going toe to toe with my Glowing Wooden Crook.

Once I hit 24, I started root rotting with decent success. Resists are definitely an issue, but not bad if you stick to dark blues a couple levels below you. An outdoor zone is pretty important, because you want to be able to have SoW up and have room to run when you have a string of bad resists. More than once I ended up kiting a mob for 10+ minutes when I ran OOM due to resists. I'd get far enough ahead, sit to a med tick, then run some more until eventually I could bring them down. Alternatively, it would be faster to just zone or root them and camp out. I was averaging about 1 yellow an hour solo, and this was untwinked with less than 100 wisdom.

I'd rather group though and only solo when I don't have much time or can't find a group or a duo.

Togor
28th Troll Shaman

[slowroll]

I think it is way easier and more fun to group or duo, but I have also soloed off and on all the way to 51 with my Druid.

How to solo with a Druid.
1) Kite: Snare, DOT, run away, nuke, run really far away, med, repeat until XP. This method takes a lot of mana and I don't recommend this with out clarity.
2) Root Rot: Snare, root, DOT, med. This is way more mana efficient because you get to med while the DOT ticks away, but it does take awhile. If you have a large mana pool you can do this with 2 or 3 mobs at a time.
3) Quad Kite: Snare four mobs, run circles around them until they are all together in a tight cluster, AOE nuke them until dead. This give you alot of XP for your mana, but it can be dangerous until you get it down.
4) Charming: Snare animal, charm, buff animal, sick on another animal. Some people love this tactic, others say charm does not last long enough. Honestly I have not done this tactic much, but it has worked for me when I have.

All that being said, try and find a spot in a good 6 man group that already has a Cleric. Work smarter not harder :P

Slowroll Riverrunner
51 Druid
Peace Pipe

[aresprophet]

2) Root Rot: Snare, root, DOT, med. This is way more mana efficient because you get to med while the DOT ticks away, but it does take awhile. If you have a large mana pool you can do this with 2 or 3 mobs at a time.

If you fight low-dark blues root consistently lasts its full duration (with only the occasional early break) making this extremely efficient. It is, however, very slow. And root-rotting more than one mob at a time decreases efficiency: every missed tick of meditation due to casting/pulling/moving adds up quickly. Best used for slow but steady kills when a better method isn't available (e.g. ice giants in EF)

3) Quad Kite: Snare four mobs, run circles around them until they are all together in a tight cluster, AOE nuke them until dead. This give you alot of XP for your mana, but it can be dangerous until you get it down.

Second-best soloing method but it's limited by the number of viable quadding spots. You can't quad-kite until 34, and at that level your best option for quadding (SK gnolls) is a heavily-contested spot. By 39 you can probably take spectres (I did them at 35 but I had a manastone and 200 wis, would NOT have been able to without the manastone) but they, too, are heavily-camped. Other good quadding options are HGs (heavily camped) seafuries (heavily camped) raptors (pain in the ass to get too and heavily camped) ... you get the idea. Fantastic exp that leaves you with just enough downtime between pulls (one average, 6 minutes) to read a book, do homework, dick around on the internet, etc. Very relaxed and not at all dangerous once you have the hang of it, barring lag and random disconnects.

4) Charming: Snare animal, charm, buff animal, sick on another animal. Some people love this tactic, others say charm does not last long enough. Honestly I have not done this tactic much, but it has worked for me when I have.

Best druid exp in the game, but if quadding is limited this is even more severely limited. Finding equivalent-level animals in a safe fear-kite environment is nigh impossible: at 24 you can do griffennes/griffawns in NK or mammoths in EF, and after 29 when the exp dries up it's basically over until you're 51 and can do raptors (I have successfully charm-killed in the bear pit in Permafrost. I would not recommend it unless you have balls of steel and a bind point outside the zone, and even then there are greener pastures). If you are charming low-dark blues charm will typically last its full duration; with ensnare on (to make recharming easier) you need to use fear to actually kite, but with Feral/Savage Spirit the pets do better and safer DPS than any PC in the game can ever hope to do. The holy grail of druid soloing, but it suffers from (a) limited availability (b) heavy competition (c) significant risk (d) total inefficiency if you have a bad string of resists and early charm breaks and (e) zero downtime to do other stuff. It's high-risk high-effort high-reward.

All that being said, try and find a spot in a good 6 man group that already has a Cleric. Work smarter not harder :P

Druids have the dubious distinction of being more useful to an exp group than a wizard. So there's that. When you get right down to it, regen/chloro/regrowth are the most efficient heals in the game and damage shields are the most efficient damage in the game. You can keep both up while doing a fair amount of DPS and spot-healing depending on the circumstance. You're not useless, you just don't stand out in a group. At all. Most people would rather have a shaman or any other DPS class (even a wizard despite them being lazy useless bitches <3 wizzies).

Then again, if you're fighting somewhere with charmable animals that isn't solo friendly (e.g. bats in SolB) you can put every other DPS to shame. You + enchanter charming pets = mobs die too fast to nuke anyway.

Druids are versatile, remember that. If your preferred solo method isn't available for one reason or another there's always another option.

[tristantio]

For the 20s on my shaman, I really just went for the quickest kill possible on my shaman. This was typically by using a poison dot (not the slow disease) followed by about 4 nukes (Frost strike, 150 damage for 75 mana). It would normally take about 4 or 5 nukes to down a mob (around 600 mana). Then I would just sit afk and med to full (Dot mob, root mob, nuke until root breaks and re-root).

Works great on a stationary spawning mob like a guard or one of the bards (Travis Two Tone).

Shaman was untwinked and just wearing modest mana/wisdom gear gained from good deals in EC.

[Swish]

My main on live was a shaman, iksar, and then a vah shir when Luclin went live. I always found soloing with the pet to be tiresome, inefficient and just not up to the level of experience per hour you'd find in a group.

Shamans being so group friendly, I'm surprised anyone enjoys soloing with them. Personally I think a druid, necro or even a mage is a far more viable solo option :)

[shuklak]

My main on live was a shaman, iksar, and then a vah shir when Luclin went live. I always found soloing with the pet to be tiresome, inefficient and just not up to the level of experience per hour you'd find in a group.

Shamans being so group friendly, I'm surprised anyone enjoys soloing with them. Personally I think a druid, necro or even a mage is a far more viable solo option :)
for me it's less enjoyable, more necessary. it's quite simply hard to find groups if you play off-hours.

[bwe]

For the trolls: at lower levels (~20) how efficient is ghetto fear kiting with Flash of Light / Regent Symbol of Innoruuk compared to root rotting? I tried out fear kiting in SK last night and it surprisingly worked really well, but I'm not sure if it's work it mana/time wise.

[liveitup1216]

i almost entirely solo'd my shaman from 1-50 on p99 as a barb.

1-14: everfrost -> blackburrow farming fangs

14-19: soloing in unrest with some rotting/meleeing

19-27: or 28 i forget, saben in lfay sometimes til like 21-22 then all south karana soloing

29-36: killed wood elf rangers in lfay, started camping ancient croc in guk from 34-36

36-44: i really dont remember what i did here, i think just grouping in lguk/solb, i duo'd with a monk in lguk from like 40-46 i think for retarded fast exp, 45 took like two or three hours or something absurd

44/46-49: solo'd dorfs in butcher, slowed down alot at 49 so i just randomly grouped it to 50

this was all pre-kunark launching here

edit: first toon here, someone passing by when i was level 3 gave me a fine steel spear and 20 plat and it was all fun from there, wish i remembered that person's name.

[quido]

Root-rotting is for when you feel like being lazier. Kiting a mob is more mana efficient, especially if you can manage to sit for some of the med ticks. If you are industrious about sitting for med ticks (it can be confusing sometimes with how numbers jump around) it is an incredible amount of mana.

The golden age for shamans starts at 24 with whatever poison dot that is. If the stuff you're killing is wasting your mana from root resists, you should probably consider kiting.

[liveitup1216]

A big part of increasing my efficiency while just sticking to lazy root rotting was macroing most of my spells. With latency in this game, and depending on your own connection quality, you can /sit before the cast is even completed.

Especially with canni or heals/dots, whats cannis cast time? 2.0? 1.8? i forget, but i know i have my macro set to /cast canni, /wait 1.2, /sit.

gets you medding faster after each canni or whatever spell cast if you force it to sit like half a second before the cast is even up.

[douglas1999]

Once you're high enough to click a jbb, soloing on a shaman becomes hilariously easy. I run around outside karnor's rooting\JBBing basically every non-casting mob. I only use mana to root them (lvl 14 root no less) and heal myself from the occasional slip up. When you spam a jbb its only slightly slower than the damage rate of a dot, but its twice as powerful as envenomed bolt, costs no mana, and it lasts as many "ticks" as it takes to kill the mob =p