Originally Posted by Noselacri
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There's two reasons, really.
1) Mana pool, and the classic caster itemization in general, is shit. It's worthless 90% of the time. The only thing is that most other non-melee classes have nothing else to go for; a wizard can't focus on other stats to any significant extent, for example, so he'll get that great big mana pool simply because nothing else helps him much. At this point in the game, you can't get raw HP in very many slots as a caster, so while that's worth getting, it's not something you can "build" for, and stamina to HP ratios are terrible for casters. Look at how you solo; if you're like most people, you med up to the amount of mana it takes to kill a mob and then you do so, rinse, repeat. You don't med to full between every single kill, and even if you do, you don't use all that mana except perhaps if you're quad kiting. In any group situation, you probably fluctuate between 0 and 50% mana. In other words, that extra mana pool size means absolutely nothing the great majority of the time.
2) You will get hit as a shaman, you can't snare or really CC in any way besides root, and of all the traditional solo classes, you're the one that ends up getting beat on the most. This makes AC/HP more valuable to you than to, say, a druid or a magician. You're also the only caster class that can actually go in and tank a mob for any length of time, so making yourself capable of doing so is a good thing. It gives you an extra option that others don't really have. On top of that, your health translates directly into mana whenever you need it, so that makes health worth more to you than it does to most other classes. And finally, again unlike the other solo classes, you can actually build up an amount of AC that makes a significant difference in survivability. An enchanter can't do it, so he ignores AC altogether because sacrificing anything for the absolutely tiny amount he might gain from going for the few cloth items with decent AC makes no difference. Again it's a matter of having an option that you can strive for, at the expense of very little.
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