Is a Mage + Shaman a Good duo?

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

In no scenario except your imagination is a shaman tanking 100% of the time. Have fun holding aggro on a 100+ dps rogue when disease aggro is broken and root breaks happening with jbb spam. We’re not even at high MR mobs yet either.

To discount the addition of a mage who can chain summon 3k hp+ pets with ease shows your lack of vision for high performant duos. Mixing in roots slow torpor jbb patch heals on rogue it’s just not gonna fly all of the time. There’s really nothing you gain with a rogue duo except maybe some extra static dps when the rogue is geared to the teeth. None of it I see worth giving up a mage for. Rogues fill one role in a duo, dps. Mages are more than that in a duo. This is why rogues start to shine when you get more people in group such as a tank and superior healing. If we are talking about the best 4-6 man group, I would probably include rogue in there.

It's quite easy to hold agro with a Rogue. With root whomever is closer to the mob gets the agro. If you are having problems with root breaks there are two solutions: 1. Cast JBB less, the Rogue is doing more average DPS than the Mage anyway. 2. Use Blind instead of Root. Most encounters in a duo situation shouldn't last more than a minute or so, so using Blind 2-3 times is going to end up costing roughly the same amount of mana as using 1-2 roots. You can also use low level slows to build agro.

For your point about chain summoning, let's just take a look at a Mage/Shaman duo that is in their mid 50s, so no Torpor.

Here is a video of a 56 mage, so we can get some DPS numbers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhm9K-ePJAk

Vocarate: Earth costs 300 mana, takes 10 seconds to cast, and another 15 seconds to click your burnout pants. That means your pet costs 380 mana, because you are losing 4 ticks of meditate. Every time your pet dies, you must recast Cadeau of Flame for 155 mana + losing 1 tick of meditate for 175 mana. The HP ratio of this chain summoned pet is 555 mana to 2800 HP, which is a ratio of 1 mana to 5 HP.

A Shaman's Chloroblast spell is a ratio of 1 to 2.2 in terms of mana to HP. On paper it sounds like a Mage chain summoning pets should be more effective in terms of mitigation.

However, you are not taking into account DPS loss. In the video I showed above, it takes 86 seconds for the mage to kill Oosa Shadowthumper who has 4000 HP. This means the mage is doing a total of 46 DPS, roughly speaking. The damage shield did about 1100 damage, and the mage did about 200 with scars of sigil. This means the pet's DPS is 31 DPS. A backstabbing Greater Vocaration: Water is doing 60ish DPS. I don't have the DPS numbers for Vocarate: Water, but let's say its doing roughly 20 more DPS than the Earth Pet. If you throw in a single Scars of Sigil due to not being required to chain summon pets, that is another 5 DPS on an 86 second fight.

With the Shaman tanking instead of the pet, you are almost doubling your damage, which means the encounter is going twice as fast. If you would normally take 1000 damage per encounter, you are now taking more like 600 damage per encounter. You would add that HP to the ratio of Chloroblast, which makes Chloroblast act as a 175 mana for 785 heal, which is a ratio of 1 mana to 4.5 HP. While this is 0.5 HP less than chain summoning, you are also clearing mobs a lot faster, which means you have more time to recover per cycle.

Chain summoning pets and having the pet tank has quite a few costs that people generally do not take into account. If the Shaman has Torpor and/or Fungi Tunic + Fungi Staff, their mitigation easily surpasses a chained summoned pet when taking into account DPS loss.

Finally, the point about high resist mobs is kind of weird. A Shaman duo would not be fighting mobs that are immune to slow, that wouldn't really be productive as it goes against one of the strengths of this duo: slowing.