pDid a video using your "expert" strategy of using Bane and Pox in a WW Dragon fight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD-PCJ4tCII

It saved... no time at all! Compare the video above to this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEgFcImQ9XU . The reason for this is simple, there are other things in Everquest besides DPS. There is a thing called mana, and you need mana to cast DPS spells. Realistically speaking you cannot keep both DoTs up while also maintaining safe levels of HP/Mana.

So you are just factually wrong here about assuming you could increase my DPS. I wonder what else you have been wrong about?:)

As a Torpor Shaman I am running out of mana casting these DoTs, but for some reason you think a level 55 Shaman without Torpor is just going to spam Bane of Nife on easy mobs being killed in a group lol. I am not sure how you are playing this game, but I don't think you are doing it right.

Pox is factually superior to Bane in most situations, which is why you should prioritize it over Bane. The other expensive spells like Malo and Torpor are also superior to Bane, which is why Bane basically ends up at the end of the list. You certainly should buy Bane, it just isn't a high priority compared to your other spells.

Situations I'd use Bane over Pox in all pretty much boil down to low-resist mobs that I need dead faster, at the cost of mana efficiency. A good example would be trying to break the Pawbuster camp in KC. That's 4 mobs that you have to manage and the faster you can get them down, the easier it will be to deal with the ones remaining.

My experiences are similar to DSM when it comes to WW dragons, in that Pox gets resisted less than Bane, but I do throw in Insidious Decay there. However, I think Bane landed more often than Pox on Cliff Golems for me so maybe it's a wash.

Oh yeah, there are definitely situations where Bane is useful, and where you would want to use Pox and Bane to kill mobs faster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS3uoIHTu_c

This is an example of soloing in Chardok. Since those mobs don't have a lot of innate HP regen, but are quite dangerous, it is a good idea in this situation to just burn down the mob ASAP. I haven't done Pawbuster solo, but that sounds right since Kunark mobs generally don't have a lot of HP.

If Z's regularly doing even the easier WW dragons, solo, within the span of a single malo cast (what is that, 12 or 13 minutes?) I want to see because I don't know of any solo'ers who can regularly kill them so quickly. As a duo the wife and I can usually kill them within a slow duration, but adding a second person usually more than doubles killspeed on those since much of the first person's damage dealt is going to countering their regeneration.

As for Pox vs. Bane, mostly I'd advise someone looking to buy 'em to buy whichever one he happens to find for sale first since it can be spotty at times finding a seller. While they're distinct spells, I consider their overall impact pretty close to each other and I think of them mostly as a pair.

Danth

Yeah I would love to see a video of Z being an amazing Torpor Shaman and showing us how it's done. Somehow I don't think we will get this video sadly.

As long as you're doing the 4-neck dragons, Getting em dead with just Pox, Epic, and pet DPS is pretty reasonable within one Malo cast. Though I go Malo, Slow, then Malosini right after just for the added resist debuff.

The reason why I Malo again at 50% Dragon health is simply because sometimes it takes me a while to pull the dragon from their position to the kill spot. This is especially true with a dragon like Bravatar. I always Malo when starting the pull, so Malo is burning while I am attempting to Slow and pull the mob back to the kill spot.

I made this second Malo a habit, even for easier to pull Dragons like Hechaeva, because it doesn't affect my kill speed, and guarantees Malo throughout the fight. A long pull + unlucky resists can lead to the fight taking long enough for Malo to wear off.

Not all WW Dragon fights go quite as smoothly as my posted videos. Sometimes a WW dragon will resist Pox 3x times in a row lol. That is a lot of mana to recover.

Interesting. Yeah obviously we all mean 4's, nobody's solo'ing a 6'er all that quickly. Pet must make the difference for that; the folks I know (myself included when I've done 'em) don't bother using the pet on those. Does this assume use of the water pseudo-sploit to cheeze the AE's? Obviously eliminating Ae damage would save more mana and time for offensive action. be interesting to see the fastest practical speed for a shaman to solo one of the 4's.

This is true too, RNG will RNG. Even in a duo, sometimes we get through one without me needing any outside heals, sometimes I might need one, sometimes RNG frowns on us and I might need a few torpors.

When soloing the pet is very good for WW Dragons. The pet basically does just enough damage to mostly stop it's regen, so your Pox + Epic DoT can just tick down the Dragon. I don't even haste my pet for the first 80% of it's health bar, because that causes the pet to push the dragon out of the water faster, and thus increases the chance of getting AoE'ed.

That'd be irrelevant in my case; out of personal preference I completely refuse to use that tactic; I regard it as something of an exploit. That is not a knock on the folks who use it--it's been known by the P99 staff long enough that it has defacto official sanction since they've neither commented nor altered it. I'm just doing stuff for fun rather than "efficiency" and I don't have as much fun when I feel like I'm being cheap.