Shaman points allocation...

[Swish]

Yep I see the enchanter one there, and thought I'd check with the community on what's best for a shaman...

Race undecided, but don't think I'd enjoy an iksar as much as the other 3 choices.

Thoughts? I remember someone saying something about adding 5 AGI for ogres because of an AC penalty otherwise?

[username17]

If you have under 75agi you get an AC Penalty.

Stam is probably more important to you than most casters, but I would say still secondary wisdom.
Stam = HPs which you will use for Canni.
Maybe go half and half?

[baalzy]

For a shaman you may as well just go full out Stam. They're a lot more simple then an enchanter. I also wouldn't be surprised if you get better HP returns from stam then int casters, so its likely more valuable. Plus, when the shits the fan what does a shammy really need to end up doing? An enchanter will need the potentially large mana pool to keep a big group of mobs mezzed long enough to get the situation under control or the higher cha to more reliably charm something.

Shaman won't be doing that, they can heal but if things are really bad a shaman chain healing isn't likely to be the thing that prevents a total wipe. Instead, you're likely going to be more useful slowing/rooting stuff which will lead to you taking hits.

In non-oh Shi moments, you'll be cannibing your hp into mana anyways so your HP acts as a secondary mana pool anyways with the side benefit of improving your surviability.

[Estu]

Make sure your AGI is at least 75. Past that, STA; later on, having a large mana pool won't be important since you will be able to cannibalize indefinitely.

[Prince]

CHA

[soup]

The way I look at it, HP is king, but WIS is better than STA. I personally prefer a full WIS dump which makes it less burdensome to focus your gear 100% on HP/AC and having WIS be a secondary stat as far as gear is concerned.

[soup]

Oh, and Iksar = no JBB = fail

I can't even begin to fathom playing a shammy and not being able to use JBB. I think it's more useful than a fungi tunic (which is obviously a godly item for a shaman) but that does depend on your play style.

[Nagash]

Originally Posted by soup [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Oh, and Iksar = no JBB = fail

I am aware of nothing a shaman with a JBB can do that a shaman without a JBB can't. Sure it's handy, but that's all it is, handy.

[soup]

Originally Posted by Nagash [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I am aware of nothing a shaman with a JBB can do that a shaman without a JBB can't. Sure it's handy, but that's all it is, handy.

It's a hell of a lot more than "handy" when leveling from 45 on.

Past that, it's manafree DPS. I don't know how someone can be like "Oh, manafree DPS, that's neat, I guess" but like I said, depends on your play style. For mine, it's a hell of a lot better than "handy"

[Messianic]

Originally Posted by soup [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It's a hell of a lot more than "handy" when leveling from 45 on.

Past that, it's manafree DPS. I don't know how someone can be like "Oh, manafree DPS, that's neat, I guess" but like I said, depends on your play style. For mine, it's a hell of a lot better than "handy"

Originally Posted by Reiker
There was a "discussion" about the usefulness of JBB awhile ago on this forums. My stance is fairly anti-JBB. I'm also curious why you need to root the mob, you'll never lose aggro over your pet (which is good, shaman pet is a horrible tank compared to the shaman).

Anyways, regarding JBB. This item is very good when you can first use it (45) but after awhile it actually becomes detrimental to use. I see you mentioned Pox, which would assume you were JBBing in PoP, which I don't recommend.

As I mentioned before, the strength of a shaman is no downtime. Any time you're not casting a spell you're wasting time. Every action a shaman takes can be represented in "time efficiency" instead of "mana efficiency." The JBB does 263 damage after an 8 second cast time, or 32.875 dps. The benefit of the JBB is that it's mana free. If there's any class that doesn't care about the mana cost of something, it's shaman. If you weren't clicking JBB above, you could afford to cast spells such as Blood of Saryrn. Blood of Saryrn takes 3 seconds to cast and costs 535 mana. To regain that mana it'll take about 6 cannis, or 30 seconds. Blood of Saryrn cost you 33 total seconds. That may seem like a lot until you consider that focuses, Flowing Thought, AAs, and mana regen buffs will make this even more efficient (but won't affect JBB). Blood of Saryrn does 2324 total damage, or 70.42 dps when considering the time lost to canni back mana. Again note that the time decreases with focuses, etc, increasing the potential dps by a lot.

Basically, the JBB would be an amazing and potentially overpowering item in the hands of any other class besides a shaman. Many use one early and get attached to it, not understanding that it's actually hindering them.

Notes: For whatever reason I confused Pox of Bertoxxulous with Breath of Ultor so I wrote this in the context of PoP, where JBB is fairly bad for the reasons above. Although definitely more useful in Kunark and Velious, I look at it like this:

I generally camp my own JBBs. I love soloing the 4 crypt nameds in seb for the phats. If you can hold that camp, a JBB is most likely not going to help you much. You're better off just DPSing / canning / torporing as normal. Even if the dps is on par with JBB, a JBB interrupt is a lot worse than say a canni interrupt so it's still not as good of an option. One strategy to use with the JBB is to click it immediately after casting a normal spell, since you'll save a couple seconds (item clickies ignore global spell cooldown). Chain clicking defeats this advantage, though. If you're not a top tier shaman or aren't very good at the "shaman gameplay" (which is a lot different than any other caster in some ways) the JBB can seem pretty awesome and is a pretty awesome leveling tool at 45. I'd just much rather farm and sell them for 15k+ a pop.

In Velious they get even less useful, due to better spells (Canni4 is insane) and high cold resists.

Reiker pretty much settled the issue for me. If you want to min-max, thinking in terms of "manafree DPS" isn't a good way to analyze it. You should always analyze it in contrast with alternatives, which is what Reiker did.