A little Green advice

[Baler]

shaman levels slow during classic and is gear dependent.

[NegaStoat]

Troll regen is absolutely a solid choice, but folks keep missing the other perks of the race as well.

- Snare necklace if Innoruuk is chosen, or a pair of fear necklaces if Cazic is taken. The Snare necklace is sort of crappy but is an absolute godsend in cramped quarters dungeon delving. Lower Guk comes to mind immediately. The Cazic fear necklaces are very useful for specific solo camps or group options - Trak's teeth undead hunting vs casters comes to mind.
- If Innoruuk is chosen, you have access to a repeatable and EASY to obtain one-shot Halfling illusion. In several quests the religion will still be an issue for faction, but in many other quest hand-ins the illusion will be enough to get the ball rolling.
- Can use the Jaundiced Bone Bracer later on.

In a pre Kunark setting for a character starting off, Shaman are pretty awful for solo play until level 24 at which point they become barely tolerable. Considering how packed the server will be however, There really isn't a reason to NOT be grouping for the early painful levels. Once you reach 34 though, you level like a rocket from 34 to 50 solo with just caster gear. There's zero reason to rely on melee then at all - you'll be moving ahead in experience as fast as a Dark Elf necromancer. Been there, done that.

[DMN]

Maybe 39-50. You don't get venom of the snake until 39.

[stars2heaven]

Thanks for the responses everyone. I've been playing around with a couple different shaman. I started a barbarian before making this post, got him to 15, and have since gotten an Ogre to 7. The stat/stun advantage of the Ogre is a major draw but it hasn't felt like it's made a big difference at the the 1-7 range. Someone gave me one of those steins that drop from Ogre guards that has +10 Sta on it and I was able to see that by level 7 that +10 sta was only adding 3 hp. Obviously that will be much more later, but early on, not so much.

Looking at some other aspects the Feerrot is a much better starting zone for making money. By level 5 I had like 50pp. Never got that much in Everfrost, however, by 5 there I had been able to craft a full set of 10% weight reduction bags and the ogre could not. That said, the extra str made that totally irrelevant.

I like tradeskilling, so looking forward to the cultural stuff the Ogre has it much better. The temper that is needed requires human blood which Ill be able to get in my teens. The one downside is that Ogre shaman are restricted to zek so get the +str items and can't use the +wis items. the Northman armor is much better quality, being lighter in many cases and have additional saves vs cold. But the tempers require components I wont be able to get until my 20s and upper 30s. By then I'm not sure the armor will be relevant anymore.

Also the initiate symbol. The ogre one is 10X harder to get but nearly useless. The barbarian one gives you a very decent magical hammer for free and the quest can be done easily if you can pass through black burrow.

Speaking of Black burrow, the Barbarian gets access to so many great turn in quests like the gnoll fang turn in. I don't know that the Ogre gets anything equivalent beyond the lizard meat turn in which is only good till around lvl 5.

Finally, the ogre is really ugly and doesnt seem to have a lot of thematic style whereas the Barbarian is not as bulky and much cooler looking. He gets kilts and polar bear helmets and can turn into a polar bear.

It's a tough choice.

[NegaStoat]

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

Maybe 39-50. You don't get venom of the snake until 39.

Nah, from 34-35 I didn't melee at all with my Iksar shaman by taking on Iksar Outcasts Swamp of No Hope, but Cazic thule gators would have worked just as well. From 35-42 I blew up guards in West Karana as well. My strategy was to buff the pet with a cheap haste, pull with Shock of the Tainted (Winter's Roar will have to substitute here for vanilla), Root, cheap slow on target, envenomed breath, nuke, sit down and canni, send in pet when target is at 40-45%. Sometimes a 3rd nuke would be required, but every time when the root wore off the pet already had the target down to 15% or less and it was ready to do its death walk.

The point is that I could easily bring the target below half health with a root on for safety and let the DoT + pet do all the rest of the work while I was recovering mana. From level 35 on, keeping two guards dead every 6:30 minutes was completely doable. Level 39 made things much easier of course, but level 36 is where I saw a big difference in resists. As a DE Necromancer I was killing the same targets at the same rate so... I mean I guess I could have killed a bit faster by killing halflings in misty thicket, but those were always camped. There's zero (0) need to melee after 34. There's zero (0) need to melee once you get your animal charm too, probably.

[Verityn]

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

shaman levels slow during classic and is gear dependent.

Pre-kunark they can close the gap to 50 a little better than some other classes by being able to solo from 40 to 50 on things like Ogre guards. Group dependent classes may find it can be slow going in that level range with a lack of supply of level appropriate mobs.