Quote:
Originally Posted by Reiker
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Skope gives bad advice. There's no magic 175 wis number. In a top raid guild I don't think I broke 200 wisdom as a Barb until PoP, cause come Kunark wisdom is pretty useless and stamina is the single best numerical stat for a shaman. Ogres get the most stamina, and Barbarians the least, hence Ogre > Troll > Barbarian in regards to starting stats.
Barbarians can solo guardian wurms and shit if they're badasses but it's definitely easier as an ogre.
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Just to clarify, i played an iksar shaman on live and during velious, even as an iksar shaman i was able to solo some of the velious dragons and even lodi (this was without a JBB). Ogre stun immunity is nice, but it is most definitely not required. The "175" number i'm referring to is the number that was thrown around in the shaman boards during kunark/velious and even PoP as an optimal number for your wisdom. With ~175 wis you had enough to malo/slow and toss DoTs/torpors accordingly while still giving you enough room to focus on your ac/hp/melee stats and resists. During kunark reaching that number wasn't difficult and allowed for gear choices (dumping your eboots for tribals, for example).
Don't neglect wisdom. You're a shaman, not a necromancer or druid. Your fights will be prolonged and if you melee you won't have the luxury of sitting down and watching it die. Expect to burn 50-100% mana depending on what you're taking down and if it has lots of HP you'd better believe having enough mana to torpor yourself back up is critical.
As for the barbarian spiritist's hammer...
It's a great weapon. It allows you to put out decent DPS while melee'ing (i've been known to proc 7-8x in a row and frequently steal aggro from tanks =P ). But it brings up a point that hasn't been made: your melee damage sucks. Nearly all of your melee DPS should come from procs. Your melee is there essentially to keep the DoT's working at 100% -- as opposed to the reduced dot damage from a moving or unrooted mob. Weapons like howling harpoon (stun), icewurm fang (~120DD iirc), barb spiritist's hammer (264dd), and blight (procs DoT scourge, 500dmg) allow you to toss in some DPS/stuns without the need to burn mana, allowing you to focus on debuffs/dots and torpor.