Shaman tips?

[fugazi]

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

As a troll, head over to The Feerrott and grind on the skeleton camps - they spawn in groups of 3 or 4, with the occasional zombie, and are dark blue.

They frequently rusty weapons which you can sell or skill up on, not to mention bone chips, the other white meat for necrii.

You can easily do 10-11 there, at 12 they start wearing thin, but you can take your earnings, buy your spells and move to SRO.

PS: <3 Trolls

Thanks, we'll try that out. We got our asses kicked by 3 lizards, seeing as the mystic always blinds one of us. And yes, blind in EQ means your entire screen turns black. Who ever thought that up?

Btw, when you turn in a rabid pelt, the questgirl also casts cure disease on you [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Estu]

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

Well, it's perfectly possible to cast an Inner Fire between ticks. I did that all along. Wait for a tick, stand and cast Inner Fire on the tank, and sit down before the next tick. Just like canni dancing. It is by far the most effective way to heal, to the point where it's pretty much the only way for a low-level shaman to be a group's only healer without constantly having to ask for med breaks. It's almost twice as mana efficient as Light Healing - 20h:10m vs. 30h:25m.

As for kiting, it takes forever. Absolutely forever. Sicken ticks for 5 and Tainted Breath ticks for 8, so taking down even a dark blue mob is going to take minutes that way. If you can get a weapon with a reasonable dmg/dly and have banded armor, soloing by slapping on dots and tanking'n'spanking is much more effective until level 19. It's also generally safer than having to kite a mob around half the zone.

As for the spells, agility is a pretty worthless stat and absolutely not necessary to buff. I listed the spells you need, in case there's not enough money for all of them. It's not like you can give up any of the listed spells in favor of an agi buff. Walking Sleep is sort of an alright spell, but at the level you get it, it's too costly and the mobs too weak for it to be crucial. Slowing generally isn't worth it until you get the insect line; it still causes huge aggro, still costs 20% of your mana, but when mobs hit for 15 and die in a dozen seconds, slowing them is not at all important, probably not even worth it. I venture to claim that you'll get more net value out of casting the six 20hp heals you're exchanging in favor of a single cast of Walking Sleep.

RE casting Inner Fire between med ticks: there is weird lag between the server and client for medding, so I'm not sure how you'd determine exactly when the med ticks are. You can see this lag from your hp/mana jumping up and down every tick, or from you being at 0-ish mana, medding a tick, starting to cast a spell, and it saying the spell was interrupted because you didn't have enough mana, and your mana suddenly jumping down. This is because that tick you saw wasn't the actual tick on the server. If you manage to figure out when the actual server tick is and then time your inner fires that way, I'll grant you that it's a better way to heal, but that's a pretty involved process and for a player just starting out it might just be better to light heal and med.

I've had more success dot kiting yellows than tanking and spanking blues to get from 9 to 14. Just sayin'. I was in South Ro, where you can easily find safe places to kite, you don't need "half the zone" at all, you just need to run in a small circle. You take hits when recasting your dots, that's it. The yellows give you a lot more exp than the dark blues, which makes up for the extra time spent. Of course if you're killing dark blues it's better to tank them because you'll be taking a lot less damage from them. I'd also note that I was making use of the fact that my ogre shaman couldn't get spell interrupted from the front, which since the last server restart he can, so that might make it a bit tougher to do this. I just think that the original poster should try both methods and see what works better for him.

Agility is not at all a worthless stat if your base agility is below 75 and you are not twinked. You get a huge AC penalty for having agility below 75, and so Feet Like Cat can eliminate that penalty and give you a big AC boost. For someone that advocated getting Banded as an important thing, I'm surprised you're ignoring this big AC boost. This is just as important in groups when your tank has agility below 75, which untwinked low level tanks may well have.

You're probably right about the low level slows not being worth it, although I'd argue that it depends on the kinds of mobs your group's taking down; if you're taking down a tough red mob instead of a bunch of easy blue ones (or if the red is a boss mob in your camp of blues), it's going to be dealing a lot of damage and the group may well get annoyed at you if you don't have a slow in your spellbook.

[Noselacri]

I like to think that most people know about the <75agi penalty, and very few races are even subjected to it. It's a bit of a stretch to call a spell crucial on that basis, so while it isn't the kind of spell that you'll literally never cast (like True North) I would never list it as a "if you can't afford most spells, at least get these".