Shaman question about heavy downtime leveling

[netchayev]

Hi,

I want to start of by saying I started playing p99 two weeks ago, after playing the live version for about 2 days, and I simply love it. I love the old school, hardcore feel from it and also the immersion you get when playing it.
The community is also fantastic, never have I been apart of such an helping and social community before.

Onto my quesiton.
My barbarian shaman has just reached level 15 and I have been grinding the Bandits in WK to try and get some plat for a new weapon. I am currently using a bone wraith hammer but I am in real need of a new one it seems, as I'm starting to have real troubble killing things smoothly.

First of all, I can barely kill a white bandit/creature without being on the brink of dying and having used all my mana for nukes/slow/dot.
When killing blue ones I lose about 30-50% hp and maybe 30-40% mana.
Green ones are really not a problem. A heal or two after a kill and im set (but lost 20-30% mana in the procces)

So after each kill, or maybe 2 max, I have to sit down and med for about 2-3 minutes, to be able to continue killing. Is this normal ?
I am usally just slowing the mob once and then meleeing/tanking it. Sometimes I use my dot or nuke once, but mostly just melee it when its slowed.

Am I doing something wrong here ?
Between having to rebuff myself, wait for mana and untill I have to rebuff myself again, I have the chance to kill maybe 15 bandits. And that takes about 30-40 minutes becuase of all the downtime.
Seems like I'm sitting down more then I am standing/running and fighting.


Thats why I'm saving money for a new weapon, assuming thats my problem.
Or is there something else im missing here ?

Thank you in advance!

[loramin]

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

I have been grinding the Bandits in WK to try and get some plat for a new weapon. I am currently using a bone wraith hammer but I am in real need of a new one it seems, as I'm starting to have real troubble killing things smoothly.

Shaman do the vast majority of their damage through spells, and melee damage is only significant at the lowest levels. I'm not saying you shouldn't melee, but just that if you do 50% of your damage through your poison dot, 40% through your disease dot, and 10% through melee, even doubling your melee damage (and no weapon you can afford will do double damage) won't have much of an impact. And whatever those percentages actually are for your right now, melee damage will become an increasingly lower percentage over time.

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

First of all, I can barely kill a white bandit/creature without being on the brink of dying and having used all my mana for nukes/slow/dot.

Welcome to EverQuest. Honestly I'm surprised you can even survive fighting white con mobs at 15 (it's been a long time since I was that level; I forgot how powerful we Shaman are at lower levels). Most classes have to switch to blues exclusively sooner when soloing.

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

When killing blue ones I lose about 30-50% hp and maybe 30-40% mana.
So after each kill, or maybe 2 max, I have to sit down and med for about 2-3 minutes, to be able to continue killing. Is this normal ?

Yes, welcome to Shaman soloing. If you want to reduce or avoid downtime, try finding a duo partner or group.

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

I am usally just slowing the mob once and then meleeing/tanking it. Sometimes I use my dot or nuke once, but mostly just melee it when its slowed.

Am I doing something wrong here ?

You've got the basic principle right, although at your level slow only slows 25%, which isn't that great, and costs 60 mana. That's almost enough to cast another root (40) and poison dot (40), so really slow might not even be worth it right now. In general though that's one main style of Shaman soloing ("face tanking").

The other two are:

1) "root rot": use both your poison and disease dots on a mob, root it ("100% slow" since you can then step away and not be hit), and then meditate to recover mana while it dies. Downside: no melee damage (but again, Shaman melee damage is minimal), Upside: Less downtime (again, root = 100% slow).

2) "pet tanking": basically the same thing you described, except that your root the mob and step away so that it attacks your pet instead of you. Downside: You have to watch your pet's HP and step in and tank yourself (or root rot) if it gets to low. Upside: Pet deals damage, and pets heal faster than you do (so less downtime).

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

Between having to rebuff myself, wait for mana and untill I have to rebuff myself again, I have the chance to kill maybe 15 bandits. And that takes about 30-40 minutes becuase of all the downtime.
Seems like I'm sitting down more then I am standing/running and fighting.


Thats why I'm saving money for a new weapon, assuming thats my problem.
Or is there something else im missing here ?

Your weapon is not your problem. Again, if you're doing 100 damage every 30 seconds right now, and only 10% (or even 20%) of that damage is coming from melee, than even doubling your weapon damage (not going to happen) will only result in you doing 10 more damage every 30 seconds.

What you're missing is just that EQ is slow, and soloing is slower. Smoke a bowl, watch something on Youtube on your second monitor, or do whatever else it takes to make "the grind" more enjoyable ... or speed things up by playing with others. You may or may not level faster in a group (depending on the group), but it will definitely feel a lot faster since there will be a lot less downtime.

Hope that helps.

[ScaringChildren]

Shaman soloing is considered pretty painful up to level 24.

Getting a Poison Wind Censer can alleviate things, but it's still going to be a pain.

Root rotting mobs (root + dots/sit and regen) will probably be your most efficient route right off the bat.

Luckily Shaman are sought after for groups, so you always have that option too.

[Shodo]

Instead of getting an objectively better weapon, try getting a cheap 2hander that's "worse" overall but has higher damage, then use it to root joust between med ticks. I thinked runed great staff is an example (could be a bit off on the name) with around 20 dmg and 40+ delay. Or just don't melee at all, but I found the jousting strategy effective at low levels.

[Shodo]

Edit: After posting I realized it sounds like you're just about brand new to EQ so you might not be familiar with root jousting or some of the mechanics involved (which are useful to know for other parts of EQ as well), so i'll give a bit longer explanation. If you're already up to speed on this stuff you can just ignore it!
----------------------

Basic principle: the server only updates health and mana regeneration every 6 seconds, so do as much as you can in between that then sit back down.

How to root joust:
1) Root and/or DoT the mob in the order of your preference.
2) Sit down out of melee range and wait a few seconds.
3) When you see your mana increase, that means the server ticked, so you have about 6 seconds to do your thing until it happens again.
Unfortunately there can be multiple ticks due to desynchronization so this sometimes takes practice to find the "real" one, but i'm not sure how
to describe that better.
4) After the tick, stand up and run just barely into melee range of the mob, then turn on auto attack for a single hit, then step back out and sit
down.
5) If you were fast enough, you should be sitting again before the next server tick and get full mana regeneration. Repeat 2-4 as needed (and #1
when spells wear off).

Why would you do this?
NPC melee tends to outperform PC melee as levels increase, especially if you aren't a pure melee class. So anything you can do to give yourself an edge is great. Slow and haste one approach to leveling the scales, but they cost a lot of mana so they aren't always feasible - especially at low levels when their percentages aren't great to begin with. Root, however, is typically pretty cheap as spells go so you can use this to turn the course of combat to your advantage.

At your level, mobs are probably hitting you for the 20-24 dmg range (the equivalent of wielding a 10-12 dmg weapon), and their unhasted delay is something like 25-30 - call it 12/30 to keep things simple, a 0.4 ratio. Your weapon is a bit worse at 8/26, or about a 0.3 ratio. Add to that the fact that you're a priest class and the math turns against you pretty quickly - even with your 25% slow the mob is doing as much or more melee damage to you than you are to it.

Now, assume you swap out that 8/26 for a Runewood Great Staff at 22/40 and dirt cheap (probably ~50p in EC, around the same as your hammer). Now you're beating the mob's melee ratio by a little for now (not accounting for them possibly dual wielding etc), but not for long. However, if you root joust as described above, both parties are only attacking each other about every 7 seconds. So now the mob is effectively attacking with a 12/70 weapon while yours is 22/70 - winning by a much larger margin.

This isn't always the best strategy - if you're really just getting beaten to death it's probably better to just root, dot and wait for them to die. But at least through the 20's I found this to make things go a bit faster, and it breaks up the monotony a little. Watching for server ticks is also good practice for canni dancing, and you can make it a pretty effective strategy at 30+ with a Barbarian Spiritist's Hammer.

Tldr: In Everquest, unlike most MMOs, you will almost never be outperforming the enemy toe-to-toe unless you're heavily twinked out. So you have to root/kite, use mechanical quirks to your advantage, or group up with friends.

[Tortok]

Shaman start as not the best soloers, and Barbarians even worse since they got lower Str and Sta then the fatties (Troll, Ogre) and no regen like Iksars and Trolls.

Milestones will be 24 with Canny (Loose HPs, get Mana) and Regen and 34 with doggy pet. If you re not twinked root rotting (see above) might be best since you meditate for mana while the mob is taking damage, reducing downtime after fight.

Your shaman will get more powerfull though and in the end (all spells, epic, level 60) you will fight Enchanters for top of the food chain spot depending on camp for solo stuff. For duoing (with monk) you will be on par with Ench/Cleric and groups will still love you.

[Bummey]

Also, be wary of any damage over time spells that deal direct damage, because direct damage spells (nukes like Spirit Strike, dots like Tainted Breath) have a chance to break root effects when they first land.

http://wiki.project1999.com/Tainted_Breath

2 : Decrease HP when cast by 10

That's the kicker. Some dots will do that, and some won't. You either have to plan to follow up with another root in case they break it, or cast dots first, take a few melee hits, then root the mob. Which path you take will depend on what and where you're fighting, and simple luck of the random number generator.

edit: I lazily scrolled the shaman spell list. It looks like all your dots do that. I was thinking from a necro's point of view where some do, and some don't.

How long your root lasts depends on the target's spell resistance. Their spell resistances are calculated in two major ways: their actual resist stat and your level compared to their level. Your Malaise line of debuffs that apply broad resist debuffs will statistically increase the chance that your spells will not be resisted outright, root spells will last the full duration and not break early, and direct damage spells will land for their full damage. The largest contributing factor to a mob's overall spell resists is your character's level compared to the mob's level. The greater the level difference between you and the mob (in either direction: you lower, them higher or you higher, them lower) will dramatically affect spell resists. It's almost always the most efficient to fight mobs that are blue cons but just on the border of going green, since they will have lower hp totals requiring less mana invested to kill and your spells will be at their most effective. As you level up, the level gap between white con and green con will widen, so you will have a larger pool of low blues to fight. At your level that window will be maybe 2-3 levels, while at level 60, blue cons are 45-59.



Another thing to consider is the mana to damage/healing efficiency of your spells. If the values aren't listed on the wiki's page, divide the total damage (or healing) by the mana cost to get the efficiency ratio. The duration of the fight should be a prime consideration in which spells you cast. You will have fast, inefficient dots, and slow, efficient dots. Poison dots generally deal their damage quickly, but cost a lot of mana, while disease dots are slow but have a more efficient ratio.

Say you have a mob that's fleeing at 10% health; if you cast a 400 damage nuke to deal the 100 damage required to finish them off, that's 300 damage worth of mana wasted. If a dot takes 2 minutes to run its full duration but the fight only lasts 1 minute, there's a full minute's worth of dot mana that disappears into the ether.

This is a somewhat outdated necro guide, but its words about dots, their duration, and mana efficiency can apply to any mana using class. You don't have to fully min/max your dots like this if you don't want to, I'm the kind of turbonerd that is way into this shit, but it can give you some ideas about how to get the most out of your mana and minimizing downtime. http://wiki.project1999.com/Sesserdr...ciency_and_You


90 edits later...

[Danth]

The Shaman isn't that great at low levels, it's a class that grows stronger as it levels up. Each spell set from 24 onward represents a fair jump in power, but you have to get there first. The teens, especially, feel rather dreary.

Danth

[Penish]

Let me help. Now that everyone has addressed the mechanics.. Go to EC, if your familiar with buffs.. Get those.. POTG / Talisman / Symbol / Regrowth / Gift of Pure thought / SoW / Augmentation (Higher level SoW is faster, wow unbelievable) Now that you have 1500hp, massive regeneration in the HP and Mana department. Take your new found skills and throttle the living fuck out of mobs for 20 minutes...

Gate back, rebuff.. do it again. (Your never to far away from EC to get mega buffed to the tits)

If this doesn't help and you want to wear chain and solo with 150hp and 100mana, that's cool too.

Enjoy the game how you want.. but I mean.. this is how you get shit done.

[Jimjam]

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

Hi,

I want to start of by saying I started playing p99 two weeks ago, after playing the live version for about 2 days, and I simply love it. I love the old school, hardcore feel from it and also the immersion you get when playing it.
The community is also fantastic, never have I been apart of such an helping and social community before.

Onto my quesiton.
My barbarian shaman has just reached level 15 and I have been grinding the Bandits in WK to try and get some plat for a new weapon. I am currently using a bone wraith hammer but I am in real need of a new one it seems, as I'm starting to have real troubble killing things smoothly.

First of all, I can barely kill a white bandit/creature without being on the brink of dying and having used all my mana for nukes/slow/dot.
When killing blue ones I lose about 30-50% hp and maybe 30-40% mana.
Green ones are really not a problem. A heal or two after a kill and im set (but lost 20-30% mana in the procces)

So after each kill, or maybe 2 max, I have to sit down and med for about 2-3 minutes, to be able to continue killing. Is this normal ?
I am usally just slowing the mob once and then meleeing/tanking it. Sometimes I use my dot or nuke once, but mostly just melee it when its slowed.

Am I doing something wrong here ?
Between having to rebuff myself, wait for mana and untill I have to rebuff myself again, I have the chance to kill maybe 15 bandits. And that takes about 30-40 minutes becuase of all the downtime.
Seems like I'm sitting down more then I am standing/running and fighting.


Thats why I'm saving money for a new weapon, assuming thats my problem.
Or is there something else im missing here ?

Thank you in advance!

That's the game.

Be selective in what you buff;

Dex won't particularly matter unless you have an incredible proc or you are trying to level a new weapon skill.

Sta doesn't provide much improvement at low level.

Agi is only worth buffing if you drop below 75 (this causes your avoidance to drastically worsen).

AC can be awesome or worthless depending on what you're wearing or fighting.

Hp only helps in close fights/might let you squeeze out an extra fight before your med break.

Doing more damage will shorten your fights and will lower your damage taken. Short fights increase your available med time. Don't be afraid to use poison or even a nuke to cut fights you can already win even shorter.