Level 55 thru 60 Shaman Spells

[Danth]

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

...While it's technically true that "All these spells are nice to have and WILL see a lot of use but they're luxuries, not strict necessities", that's a little misleading...

Fair. I didn't necessarily need to list Pox and Bane (or the 55 pet) since they're important spells a Shaman WILL want--which is outside the real purpose of this thread. I mentioned them since they're a little lower priority than a few other spells if a Shaman's working on a limited budget.

Insidious decay, I didn't mention that one only because I forgot it's a quest spell and not vendor-bought. Its relative use depends on what you fight. The wife and I fight a lot of high-HP, long-lived, high-level resistant opponents where both Insidious Decay and Malo see regular use. A different player who fights different things might not use it at all. I'll call that one situational to specific players' needs, but it's so cheap that there's little reason not to buy it regardless.

Danth

[dbparden]

A lot of great information here. Thanks for the input everyone!

[derpcake2]

the stat buffs can be stacked with focus, i feel that makes them pretty important, i'm guessing you don't group with people with maxxed melee stats often

the 55 pet is a decent upgrade over the 49 one

dots aren't important unless you are going to solo, and if you are, you need a pretty large manapool to use them reliably, it is far easier to weave e-bolt into a canni-torpor rotation then it is to do bane due to its high initial cost

insidious decay is great for mobs like yeldema, like danth said

you want both canni III and canni IV, since cycling those two gives significantly faster manaregen then recasting canni IV, this is the difference between a wipe and a win

[Darkatar]

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

Likewise if you lack the top AC buff (Shroud of the Spirits) you can keep using the older one.

I feel like I should point out that shaman AC buff is inferior to even a paladins AC buff, you're not missing much either way.

[derpcake2]

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

Also, I've never in my entire Shaman career used the disease debuff, but I've also never had problems landing Pox. Maybe Jacobi was doing some very disease-resistant mobs at that level?

Yeldema resists at least 15% of pox casts without debuff.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by derpcake2 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Yeldema resists at least 15% of pox casts without debuff.

There you go: in the entire time I've played on P99 I've never soloed Western Wastes dragons (my guild does them after HoT raids sometimes, so I already have my +6 necklace and never had a need to go back and solo them). But I have been meaning to (for fun) at some point, so now I've learned a valuable lesson: I'll need my disease debuff [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Still, I don't think many Shaman leveling to 60 are soloing WW dragons.

[Danth]

Originally Posted by derpcake2 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

you want both canni III and canni IV, since cycling those two gives significantly faster manaregen then recasting canni IV, this is the difference between a wipe and a win

Using a cooldown reset item a Shaman keeps up with Torpor selfheals using just slot1-Canni4. This is confirmed via a glance at the cast time and health consumption rate: You can cast Canni4 twice per Torpor tick, and two casts of it consumes a Torpor tick. As such mana cannot regenerate more quickly since self-healing is already maxxed out. Why use Canni III? Are you doing it straight, without a cooldown reset?

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Loramin: West Wastes dragons aren't that much fun to solo, I don't think. Takes a Shaman the better part of half an hour to whittle them down. Wife and I duo those (her Shaman, my SK) a fair bit, lot more fun with 2 or 3 people than fighting 'em alone. Maybe go out and do it once just to say you did, as a Shaman rite of passage. If you do, and choose not to cheese the AE (I refuse to do so on general principle), keep about 4 junk buffs up in slots 1-4. That'll protect you from dispell acceptably well. resisting the AE also resists the dispell, so resist gear is useful. Yeldema doesn't have an AE and doesn't flee until about 3% life if you want to do it more easily (good one to start with), and he's an easy pull too.

Danth

[loramin]

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

Maybe go out and do it once just to say you did, as a Shaman rite of passage.

Yes, it's exactly that [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] And thanks for the tips, will definitely use them!

[derpcake2]

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

Using a cooldown reset item a Shaman keeps up with Torpor selfheals using just slot1-Canni4. This is confirmed via a glance at the cast time and health consumption rate: You can cast Canni4 twice per Torpor tick, and two casts of it consumes a Torpor tick. As such mana cannot regenerate more quickly since self-healing is already maxxed out. Why use Canni III? Are you doing it straight, without a cooldown reset?

of course you use a clicky in between

how much you regen doesn't matter, its perfectly fine to canni faster then torpor heals, it frees up cast time which is huge

try it when solo shm at a raid or something

[Danth]

Originally Posted by derpcake2 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

of course you use a clicky in between

how much you regen doesn't matter, its perfectly fine to canni faster then torpor heals, it frees up cast time which is huge

try it when solo shm at a raid or something

Allright, I went ahead and tried alternating. The wife's Shaman (Lendia) has 3154 mana, no fungi tunic but had regrowth and other standard selfbuffs (stamina, focus, etc) on. Using Torpor and Canni4 alone, starting from full HP zero mana I was able to regenerate to full mana and near full health (> 90%) in 3 minutes 18 seconds. When I alternated between Canni3 and Canni4 it took me 3 min 37 seconds to do the same thing. In either case my spellcasting uptime was effectively 100%. In neither case could I canni significantly faster than Torpor heals.

Doing the same thing using only CanniIII, it took me 5 minutes 18 seconds to reach full mana and near full health. This could be improved upon somewhat (I got some "spell recovery not met" messages), but even with optimum timing it would be very much slower than using either above method.

To be frank I was surprised the alternating method kept up as well as it did, being only about a third of a minute slower to full/full. As it stands, alternating Cannibalize spells amounted to doing significantly more work for somewhat less return, and it sacrifices an additional spell gem slot, too. Anyhow, if you feel like I'm doing something incorrectly or mistaking what you're trying to say, let me know. I'm always out to learn new ways of doing stuff. Within my present knowledge any play style, canni4 seems to replace all previous canni spells in all situations.

Danth