53 Shaman dilemma: sell fungi for epic?
 

At 53, my shaman is struggling to find places to level safely without his epic. My JBB seems to be reaching the end of its useful life, though it has served me well, but I'm still 45k away from buying my epic even if I sell the JBB. My dilemma is this: Do I sell my beloved Fungi Tunic so that I can buy my epic asap? I'm too casual to realistically compete for a Child's Tear through a guild, so purchasing the MQ is my path of least resistance.

Does having my epic at 53 outweigh giving up my Fungi? I suppose root-rotting multiple mobs w/ epic means I'm no longer face tanking, so that might mean I could safely forgo the extra regen during fights?

Thanks for any advice!

From the impression I’ve got with epic root rotting you don’t need to spend as much mana on dots, you don’t get as many broken roots so take less damage and spend less mana that way too.

This suggests to me that with an epic the need for a fungi is diminished.

At level 53 I would sell the fungi to get the epic if it meant you could have it now. Epic is amazing leveling tool. Other posts from the past have had folks outline just how much more dps you get out of the epic than the fungi. For solo play- sell it and get your spear of fate and then farm the cash for torp at 60, then you’ll be good!

Selling your Fungi to buy your Epic is a time-honored tradition here on P99! :)

(Of course it's a travesty as far as classic EverQuest goes, because virtually no one sold any epics in the classic era ... not even the Rogue one! But such are the limits of P99.)

Thanks for the advice. Glad to know I'll be taking the beaten path with this decision. If I sell my JBB + Fungi, I can afford epic and an Ikky BP, which might take some of the sting out of selling my fungi for the time being. Cheers, all!

So... In terms of epic tactics for leveling up, is the idea that epic will provide pretty much all my DPS going forward, aside from pet?

It entirely depends on what you're fighting. With just an epic and root I used to hold down 7 Seafury Cyclops at a time ... back when they were worth doing that for gems. But for XPing, unless you're killing lots of barely blue, or light blue, mobs (so many that you need all your mana for roots), you'll probably instead want to fight normally ... but just use the epic as the first DoT you cast in every fight.

(Except when things go south, and you're out of mana, at which point you can resort to just using the epic to kill without mana ... very slowly.)

Here is my two cents on the matter.

As an Ogre Shaman, I leveled to 60 without Epic. I had:

https://wiki.project1999.com/Fungus_Covered_Scale_Tunic
https://wiki.project1999.com/Fungi_Covered_Great_Staff
https://wiki.project1999.com/Black_Fur_Boots
https://wiki.project1999.com/Jaundiced_Bone_Bracer

JBB is useful up to level 60. Don't think it has run out of steam. I was able to do PoM Rat Maze with this setup, and I was getting 1 blue per hour there at level 59.

The trick to using JBB is you need your pet up for DPS, and you need to focus on one mob at a time. The nice thing about JBB is it does more damage per second than Epic, so it can focus fire mobs down faster.

It has been a while since I was under 60, but here is what I remember for the strategy:

If you have 1 mob, this is the strat:
1. Slow the mob
2. Root the mob
3. Sic your pet on the mob
4. DoT the mob with your best disease spell
5. Spam JBB at the mob
6. Re-root as needed

If you have multiple mobs:
1. Use the strategy above on one mob at a time
2. Root and slow the other mobs
3. If you can, DoT those mobs with your best disease spell

I purposely avoided Malo and poison spells to save mana. There are plenty of mobs out there that don't really need to be Maloed. Until you hit 60, your slow spell has the same chance of landing as your Malo line of spells.

I personally disagree with buying Epic first. This is because Torpor is way better than Epic. You will spend all your money on Epic, get to 60, and be a sad, broke panda for a long time. Instead, you can spend 12k on fungi staff now, and then sell Fungi Staff and Fungi Tunic for Torpor the second you hit 60. Torpor will give you way more bang for your buck than epic.

EDIT: I also hasted my pet with the best haste spell. Do not use Spirit Quickening, it is garbage. Also be sure to get your 55 pet when you get to that level. It is a beast. It can tank almost any mob under 60 when that mob is slowed, and the DPS is pretty good when hasted.

EDIT: I think I actually let my pet build up agro on the mob first. This allowed me to spam JBB without needed to re-root the mobs too much. You root the mob initially, because the slow/disease DoT will set you high on the agro list initially. After a little while, the pet should take over as the top agro. This allows you to spam JBB safely, without re-rooting the mob all the time. This also saved mana. Then you just heal your pet as needed.

I think the main thing missing there is that, even without Torpor, a 60 Shaman can farm plat much faster than (say) a 50 can. Now to be fair, I have never used a Fungal Staff to level a Shaman, so I can't speak to how much it helps vs. an Epic ...

... but what I can say is that when you're doing stuff like the Sebilis King or CE camps (even in groups; you can't solo Crypt until you have Torpor) earning 100k is so much easier than when you're doing ... whatever the best thing is that a 50 Shaman can do for plat. I mean statistically speaking, if you do 6 King camps for maybe four hours each, you'll get a Fungi, and that's like half of Torpor right there (and that's IF you don't win a Torpor by amazing luck at CE).

This assumes you want to do King, or can get a King group. Not everyone has the time to sink on that camp, and you can get horribly unlucky. I myself have spent quite a bit of time there, and have yet to get even 1 Fungi Tunic to drop. No split and no roll when no Tunic drops.

Epic is really only a Leveling/Soloing tool. If you can level to 60 at roughly the same rate with the strategy I described above, there is no real reason to get Epic to level, unless you are an Iksar specifically, due to the lack of JBB. Having Torpor at 60 opens you up to way more money camps, and high level groups. You will also be more likely to get King groups. A Torpor shaman is much more appealing than a 60 Shaman without Torpor but with an Epic at that camp.

Thanks for that perspective, Shamwowi. I suppose my issue with JBB's utility at higher levels is that I can't find too many camps that facilitate this JBB spamming that don't also require splitting a group of high HP mobs that need 2 full minutes of JBB and pet gnawing on their ankles each. After slows and roots, I don't really have mana left for DoTs. I guess the Fungi staff might help in that regard, though I'd still need to figure out how to kill Black Dire for the boots. For instance, I'm thinking of CoM ramparts as one leveling path that might open up to me with epic that I definitely can't split with my current setup. But I certainly take your point that Torpor is the ultimate game changer, but with my current play time availability, it might take me a seriously long time to get to 60.