How are Shamans without the expensive spells and items?
 

I know that Shamans are great farming and solo characters when they're max level and have those big spells like Torpor and items like Fungi Tunic etc. But how well do they do before that point?

How well does a level Shaman solo level / farm things, compared to other classes who solo level like Druid, Necro and Mage etc.?

They're fine for leveling solo. Certainly a fungi makes everything easier for all classes that can wear it.

Big thing for shaman is getting the epic as soon as they can. 100k and a 3-4 hour faction grind is all you need for the full mq. The epic click allows you to root rot 5+ mobs at a time.

If you're completely untwinked and on a shoestring budget, your best bet is to find a twinked melee to duo with.

This, but there's a faster/smarter way to get one also, at least depending on your server. If there's a guild on your server that lets you join at 45 or 50, and they do Fear golems ... join that guild!

I was an idiot and paid a ton of plat for my tear (thanks again Daldaen for the good deal!) because I thought "I don't want to join a guild and raid yet". But, now that I'm in a raiding guild, I realize that golems pop every three days, which means there's a chance for a tear every three days. In our guild you don't even have to spend DKP, it's just a random roll between all Shaman there.

If you just join such a guild and park your Shaman in Feerrott, you will have your tear/epic in no time ... certainly a lot faster than you can farm 100k (again, like I regretfully did).

Gear allows you to make mistakes and continue longer without downtime. If you just want to root and kill guards every 6 minutes you're fine in banded armor with moonstone rings.

As you get more gear you can venture into more dangerous zones like howling stones where being hit by a couple melee mobs with harm touch will leave you no room for error. You won't be making big money taking down solo camps without gear. The ac hp and most importantly resisting big damage spells is necessary or you'll be a root resist or two away from a corpse run.

They're fine.

Arguably quite weak until 34 but they CAN solo through it. After that things will get a lot easier but not exactly great. However, soloing to 60 will be an OK experience, at least in comparison to leveling to 60 on any class using standard methods.

You'll also be able to group. Slow, regen, dex - they all certainly help.

If you're a troll that'll help your downtime noticably at 50+ too.

The challenge is making enough plat to get things like JBB, epic, fungi and torpor. However, once you have torpor JBB isn't as useful and fungi too loses most of its value. Just make sure to get the epic and torpor and you'll be gravy. Epic is hard on any class but not so hard for shamans in comparison to other classes, just get the faction required as you level up and join a decent guild. If you wanna play on Green or Blue you could probably pick up a Vindi BP without TOO much raiding required, it'll beat fungi once you get Torpor. Some guilds will provide dropped spells during raids like torpor for free to anyone who can scribe it.

Like Toxigen said without all the toys they are a better if you find a +1. Even with all the gear they are situationally better than an enchanter or necro but often far worse. I’ve seen some good druids do things that would give most shamans pause.

It’s a great class. It fits a roll. It’s a predictable and plodding farmer. You won’t ever fail a FD or or get murdered by your charmed pet so if you are a dogmatic gamer that alone might tip the scale in its favor.

You can solo fine before getting good gear and torpor. But the kill rate is basically 1 kill per med break. For me that felt very underpowered during leveling, but you can solo to 60 np, it's just not particularly fast.

It's all relative.

First off, I remember doing two per rest break at plenty of spots. But more importantly, even if it is just one, that one starts looking pretty damn nice ... when you have to wait two hours to find a group, and then when you join them they kill 3 mobs in an hour because of deaths/drama/whatever ;)

It was sort of close to two per med break for me as well during some stretches. But, I had a fungi tunic and above avg twink gear.

With fungi epic and jbb I can practically pull non-stop if I only use root, slow, epic and jbb.

Without those toys I’d say 1kill per med break.