Does a fungi "fix" Barb shamans?

[E-Queue]

I know shaman race questions come up like twice a week, but I didn't find this exact question answered anywhere. Apologies anyway for an annoying topic.

I'm considering rolling up a new shaman for some casual fun (mostly solo, limited grouping, definitely no raids). Everyone agrees Barbarians are the worst shaman race, but I just prefer their fashion over the other possible races. I don't wanna gimp myself by rolling the worst race for the class, but it seems the main Barbarian downside is just the lack of regen. Other than that, they're no worse stat-wise than Trolls/Iksar. So... my question to any shaman vets out there is if I am able to twink the toon with a fungi, does that pretty much completely negate the Barbarian gimpy-ness? Or am I still going to regret not being able to stack fungi regen with racial regen?

[Duckwalk]

The top solo shaman is a barb so no you’re not going to gimp yourself.

Barb shaman have plenty of benefits, the level faster and have less faction issues. At 60 with torpor you’re not going to be worrying too much about some extra regen although it will still help. You can’t go wrong putting a fungi on your shaman, you’ll literally be able to melee through the low/mid levels and it will still find use at 60 depending on the situation.

At the end of the day it doesn’t matter, play what you like. If I could change it would only be so that my guardian robe was visible.

[E-Queue]

Thanks for the reply.

It took a few weeks for my new forum account to get posting privileges (volunteer staff is doing a great job - no complaints!), so I ended up rolling a Barb shaman a couple weeks ago. Fungi has trivialized everything through level 19, so I have no regrets! At least not yet. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[ScaringChildren]

Racial regen is really only good at 51+, by then you'll be a powerhouse anyway. The only time you'll really miss out compared to a regen Shaman is when you're 60 and don't have Torp yet.

[Tecmos Deception]

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

Thanks for the reply.

It took a few weeks for my new forum account to get posting privileges (volunteer staff is doing a great job - no complaints!), so I ended up rolling a Barb shaman a couple weeks ago. Fungi has trivialized everything through level 19, so I have no regrets! At least not yet. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You'll be fine. But here's a way of looking at whether the regen is significant or not: you're loving how strong a fungi is, right? Well, iksar/troll regen is an extra half fungi at 60. Does it make or break a shaman? Sometimes. Is it worth it if you'll hate your character? Most likely not.

[loramin]

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

Everyone agrees Barbarians are the worst shaman race

No, everyone does not agree with that (sorry, my Barbarian Shaman main takes offense at that). What everyone agrees is that Barbarians are the worst Shaman race, by a small margin, IF you put in enough time. That's a huge difference. Many (most?) players will never even make it 60 with their Shaman before they quit the server, quit EQ, or switch to an alt, and for all of them the established advice that Barbarians are the worst is 100% wrong.

Barbarians get two advantages that are HUGE, and make them the best Shaman race < 60: good faction and the lowest XP penalty. Both of those let them level faster: the low XP penalty is obvious, but the good faction means you can run to a friendly city, run back to an XPing spot, and get back to earning XP much faster than the Shaman who has to run much farther (or else that Shaman will be much broker than you; either way you have a clear advantage).

Having more levels makes you significantly more powerful than a lower-level Shaman, no matter what your respective races are, and up until they hit 60 a Barbarian Shaman (all else being equal) will be levels ahead of all other Shaman races. Again, that's huge.

Now, Iksar/Trolls get regen, and that's pretty cool for leveling too. It does not make you level fast enough to make up for the higher XP penalty, but it comes close, and it means less downtime. In other words, you might take a little longer than the Barbarian to get to 60, but you get to spend more time playing and less time sitting on your ass. Meanwhile Ogres pretty much just suck (by comparison; they don't really suck) until 60, because while their frontal stun immunity isn't useless when leveling, it almost is compared to regen or a lower XP penalty (although to be fair their XP penalty of 15% isn't quite as bad as the Iksar/Troll 20%).

It's only once you get to 60 (and fix all the factions you care about) that Barbarians become the worst race and Ogres become the best. But at that point the differences between races are much smaller. Yes a level 60 Iksar/Troll Shaman will always regenerate faster than a Barbarian ... but once you get Torpor I can guarantee you won't ever notice the difference. Similarly FSI is cool, but only really for soloing especially hard mobs, and even then it's far from a game-changer: there is not a single mob in the game that an Ogre Shaman can take that a Shaman of another race can't. There's not even a mob that Ogre's have a 4x, 3x, or even 2x better chance of defeating: FSI only gives like a 10% increase in success rate (I made that number up, but I'm sure the actual number is somewhere in that neighborhood).

/rant off

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

So... my question to any shaman vets out there is if I am able to twink the toon with a fungi, does that pretty much completely negate the Barbarian gimpy-ness?

No, it does not, because Barbarians are not gimpy [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] More importantly, Iksar/Troll regen is never a Fungi's worth of regen more than Barbarians/Ogres. As the charts on the wiki show, for the bulk of your leveling (20-49) a Barbarian/Ogre regens 2 HP/tick while sitting, while an Iksar/Troll regenerates 6 HP, a difference of 4 HP/tick. Things get better at the high levels, but the difference never reaches Fungi (15 HP/tick) levels.

Again, when leveling what's more important is the Iksar/Troll 20% XP penalty, vs. the Barbarian 5%. If a Barb plays for 105 hours, a Troll has to play for 15 more to catch up. As great as their regen is, and as much time as it will save, those 4 extra HP a tick (40 a minute, 240 an hour, 2,400 HP over 100 hours) are probably not going to save them 15 hours of playtime. Oh, and all that assumes no death: the more times you die the bigger of a deal the lower Barbarian penalty becomes.

Quite honestly in my opinion before 60 Barbarian is the best race. But it's hard to measure exactly how much time the regen saves, and even if it's less than the Barbarian lower penalty saves, there's still something to be said for having to sit on your ass less. Plus non-Barbarians can choose to never fix any factions, only camp places close to evil vendors, and not "lose to Barbarians" that way, so if you play them right an Iksar/Troll should get to 60 almost as fast as a Barbarian, and maybe even have more fun doing it.

But I think what you're really wondering about is the long fun, ie. level 60 ...

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

Or am I still going to regret not being able to stack fungi regen with racial regen?

Almost certainly not. See everything above for 1 to 59. Then at 60 you get this spell called Torpor, which is a heal over time. It only costs 200 mana to cast, and you can get that mana back with a couple casts of Cannibalize IV ... but Torpor heals way more HP than Cannibalize takes away, which means every Cannibalize IV you cast after the first two or three is "free mana". When you combine "free mana" with a spell that can heal you from 1 HP to max in only 1-2 casts (at only 200 mana per cast), suddenly the miniscule amount of HP that racial regen gives (or even the 15 HP/tick that the Fungi gives) really stops mattering.


TLDR; You're wrong about Barbarians: they're (arguably, because of the whole "more sitting on their ass vs. Iksar/Troll" thing) the best race until 60. At 60 Ogres are, but the difference between races from 1-59 is much bigger than the differences at 60. Thus, Barbarians don't need to feel "behind" any race until 60, and even then they should only feel slightly behind Ogres. They should never feel "behind" Iksar/Trolls, because their XP penalty > regen when it comes to saving time ... but there's a difference in playstyles between the two so it's not really that Barbs are better so much as all three races are good and the differences are very small.

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

Well, iksar/troll regen is an extra half fungi at 60.

Not quite, but you're close. Iksar/Troll regen at 60 = 18 (sitting) vs. Barb/Ogre regen at 60 = 6 (sitting), for a difference of 12 HP/tick. A whole fungi is a bit more (15 HP/tick), while half of one (7.5) is a fair bit less than the 12 HP/tick difference. But the real answer here is none of it matters once you get Torpor [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Maschenny]

If you feel like Loramin is compensating for something, just know that he chose Barbarian. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[aaezil]

Fungi will make like 20x more difference than race choice. Fungi changes the eary game drastically.

[commongood]

I chose a barbarian due to fashion and faction mainly. It was also my first char on P99 and when I played on live way back when it was on Tallon Zek where you were either a "lighty" or a "darky" and I was always a lighty so just defaulted to that. Didn't know about exp-penalties. Might have been surface-level like aware of a racial regen bonus for iksars. Didn't remember the FSI thing.

Do I regret it now, at 60? Hmm, occasionally the min/maxer in me speaks up and I do wish I had chosen ogre for the FSI. But then I'm immediately reminded of how ugly I find the ogre (and troll) models to be in EQ. And Iksar can't wear jbb - an item I found invaluable for leveling from 46-60 basically.

As mentioned, once you get to scribe Torpor regen almost stops mattering entirely. For instance I never buff myself with Regrowth when doing whatever because having Torpor has made me lazy. It almost doesn't matter. FSI would matter but it's not like an ogre can shaman can solo something a barb shaman can't. I solo quite a bit of stuff and it's extremely rare (read: almost never) that I die thinking "if I'd had FSI there, I would have lived". Will it happen? Sure, but very, very rarely in my experience and a lot of the time it's about managing an encounter and you can avoid getting to a point where it will kill you. At that point it's merely annoying getting stunned at like 60% hp while casting a spell. You're not in risk of dying but you have to start casting that spell again.

While leveling from like level 1-50 I'd say having fungi practically makes it insignificant if your race is iksar, troll or barbarian. The racial regen is puny until 50+. As someone else already pointed out it's a difference of like 4hp per tick. When both chars are wearing fungi that doesn't make a big difference.

[Jimjam]

A shaman is a shaman.

Racial differences are grossly overstated. Even with snare necklace I got bored of my troll shaman in the teens. My barbarian shaman rocketed ahead, making thousands of pp by thirty XPing on permafrost goblins and everfrost mammoths. Did you know there are level 24 mammoths in everfrost and level 24 wolves in permafrost? They make ferocious pets once you hit level 29.

We've not even touched on the greatest aspect of the barbarian yet; he gets to morph in to an icebear! Superior in every way to the poopbears of the other races.