[Weekapaug]

To the OP....I quit reading closely after about the 3rd "my classes' cock is bigger than yours" post but if you read back through all of this there is good info in this thread, especially the stuff about indoor versus outdoor. I wouldn't pay too much attention to the bickering, though. Both are great classes both for soloing and grouping...Loving your class and playing it well are more important than class choice IMO....I played a shaman live into the 70s as well as another to 50....My first druid past 20 is here on P99 and is my highest toon so far here, at 40. I love the shaman and I love the druid both.

My answer to your question: It depends on what you want to do and how you like to play.

First, the simple stuff...Druids regen mana the old fashioned way, by sitting. Shaman regen mana by cannibalizing and creating mana. Canni means that shaman will recover much faster on a kill-by-kill basis. This means that Shaman will kill faster overall, which means they will be more effective in tight spots (i.e. indoors). But canni requires work. You have to cast it, sit, cast, sit, etc to get the most bang out of it. Canni rules. But if you are the kind of soloer that likes to kill a mob and afk to do the dishes, watch tv, etc in between kills, the downtime of the druid may be better suited to your tastes. Also consider that to balance out Cannibalize, shaman spells tend to require more mana to do the same things. It's still a siginificant advantage that Shamans have, but like everything in EQ has downsides. Canni isn't just an advantage for shamans...it's pretty much required for them to run optimally, so if cast/sit/cast/sit during your downtime rather than being able to afk is a factor, bear all of that in mind.

That, to me, is really the big thing....how you would prefer your downtime to be and if you are soloing for easy kills outdoors or for the challenge of soloing indoors. BTW, despite what some other posters say, Kunark brings lots of outdoor soloing opportunities with it including good drops....But it's dungeons are awesome as well.

Some other random thoughts to consider that I don't think have come up in the thread....

Not all dots are the same. Shaman get some big beefy ones, but the main lines are poison and disease based, and there's an aoe line that can be stacked on top of them as well as the epic dot, assuming you get it...In a practical sense, at any given time you will have 2 maybe 3 dots you can stack. With the exception of the epic dot, as far as I recall all shaman dots have a DD component to them, which means they are likely to break root more often. Druids main line of dots are magic based with no DD component (they dont break root) AND they all stack with all the others within that line. This is pretty awesome (and the biggest most pleasant surprise I've had playing the class, honestly) because by being magic based, they tend to not be resisted. At all. By anything. I think I've had a magic based druid dot (the fire ones are another story) resisted by mobs maybe a handful of times at this point, and I've played around with kiting crap 10-15 levels higher than me at times. Even if you cant stick a snare on something you can still dot and haul ass...If you are well geared and have Clarity. I was in average gear at the time, but with a fresh clarity I soloed the HG in North Karana at level 24 or 25 with my druid. It took 20-25 mins and I had to run for my life the whole time but I did it. I've found since that if a mob can be snared and there is room to kite, I can pretty much kill it, regardless of level. All of that said, I'm pretty sure the shaman dots pack a bit more of a punch later on, but I'm not entirely sure about that.

Shamans will kill things and recover faster but they also have to be a race with an experience pentalty. On the flip side of that, those large races that they all have to be (eventually iksars are added but they aren't large) all get racial Slam, which is basicly like a free chance to interrupt a caster if you are in melee range and it refreshes just like shield Bash. Trolls get the worst exp penalty in the game but they also get racial regen that stacks with items and spell regen.

Druids are much easier to gear up (my druid is 200 wis untwinked at 40 and the only significant piece of gear I have is a PKT which I got lucky with the drop on running thru dagnors one night) and the races they can be have higher starting wisdom. Shamans can make mana with Canni, but until they get amazing gear they tend to have a smaller mana pool (and spells that require more mana). My 200 wis druid also takes 10 mins 37 seconds to regen a full bar of mana (8:52 with clarity) at level 40. That could be a good or bad thing depending on how you play.

A couple of the druid races get racial hide. I LOVE my hide on my druid. You can kite something, hide, and afk for as long as you want, knowing that you are pretty much safe...couple this with long duration wolf form and the self buff and all you have to do is kite something and hide between afks.

I enjoy soloing. I enjoy raiding. I play EQ to group, ultimately. If this is a factor, bear in mind that in all 3 of those areas, the druid increasingly takes a backseat to other classes in most respects. It really is a jack-of-all trades class ultimately. Shamans get increasingly better in addition to being THE buffers and THE slowers.

When I solo with my druid, I miss slow, good buffs and canni. When I solo with my shaman I miss snare, ds, track. Playing a porting class spoils you, it goes without saying.

When I solo my druid I feel like I own the outdoors...I've felt this way on my bards also. When you play your shaman you will, at some point, feel like superman.

All in all, I feel that the druid gets better utility than the shaman does. But I feel that the shaman is overall more effective.

I play a 21 shaman here with my girlfriend's necro and I decided the other day that it's seriously in danger of becoming my main toon here. On that very same day I told her something like "If there is ever another classic server, please smack me in the side of the head if I start with any class other than a druid." I'm a melee-dps/bard at heart, with priests/healers coming in a close second, if that offers any perspective on my tastes. It's really hard to beat that druid utility, but I know in my heart that the shaman is probably the better choice for main character in the long haul past original classic-era.

Figure out what's best for you....indoors vs outdoors, root/rot vs kiting, long med times vs canni. Is this toon purely for solo or do you plan to group/raid also? Is it your main?

It's really a matter of what you want to do and how you want to play.