Iksar Shaman - Solo Challenges?

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Thanks for the reply!

Originally Posted by 7thGate [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Realistically, you get the best gear by raiding. The most effective raiding setup is to actually be raiding, which requires being high level, which requires getting to high level. Being at raid level for a longer period of time is therefore a stronger boost to character performance than any of the other racials.

The time you need to spend on raiding is more based on luck than on leveling efficiency. Drop rate and your guild's ability to consistently kill the targets you want is the biggest factor. You could cheat at the game and get a level 60 instantly, and still spend more time in total getting full BiS gear than another player who took 6 months to level to 60.

Originally Posted by 7thGate [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

None of the other racials have a meaningful impact outside soloing, but soloing is generally not a mix-max approach vs. raiding anyway. Its fine for FSI to be better at soloing, though that hasn't been proven (especially vs. Iksar, with both AC and regen benefits potentially increasing the steady-state damage taken). But that's not a min-max setup even if it is due to lack of contribution to small group content and raiding situations.

So far I have provided a lot more evidence to support FSI is better than Regen at level 60 with Torpor than the opposition. Whether you are soloing, grouping, or raiding, racial regeneration provides little benefit to a Torpor Shaman.

Racials do indeed matter the most when soloing. Shamans are one of the classes that can solo, group, and raid equally well. Many people pick classes like Shaman or Enchanter specifically because they can solo with their character when groups/raids are not available.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq39ybDWx-k - Here is an example of a simulated raid buffing session buffing 10 people. Racial Regeneration would save a Shaman 30 seconds at best for recovery time, which is not going to help the raid in any meaningful way. No competent raid is Shaman buffing 10 people 30 seconds before a big fight.

You can extrapolate these raid results to group play as well. Can you think of a time where you spent this much mana in a 12 minute period in a group? If not, then you would realize that you probably aren't even getting 30 seconds of improved recovery time per hour in a group, as you are more likely to be at full mana and hp. The nice thing about groups is they split the duties.

Originally Posted by 7thGate [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Even solo, you have to have enough cases over the course of your career where FSI saves you in a solo camp situation to make up for the additional time spent being able to solo camp by being at 60 with Torpor earlier. I am extremely skeptical this is the case for anyone, especially anyone who does not play 40+ hours/week.

If FSI causes your success rate on killing Ayllish to go from 78%->81% or similar level of impact, but Barb XP bonus let you hit 60 and camp 25 extra Ayllishes before you would have as an Ogre, you have to do 833 Ayllishes before you pull ahead on the Ogre. At that point you're starting to get into "CHA is optimal warrior starting stats bc DI" levels of Min-Maxery that, while technically true, don't apply to anyone who isn't playing for tens of thousands of hours.

You have to quantify somehow how much this is helping before being able to confidently assert you're actually ahead vs. the Barb XP bonus on a given amount of time invested playing, you can't just say that its better so is obviously superior.

Min/Max is not about how quickly it takes to level. It is about how effective your character is in the endgame. This is because leveling speed is mostly a factor of how you play, rather than what racial bonuses you have. Ogre/Troll/Iksar Shamans have leveled faster than Barbarians due to twinking, play time, effective leveling strategies, etc. If you really want to level to 60 ASAP, there are better ways than simply picking Barbarian when you create your new Shaman.

If you are a casual player who only plays a few hours a day, you are playing the game inefficiently anyway. There is no way you can "Min/Max leveling" by doing this. It doesn't really make sense to say "Barbarians are the Min/Max race for leveling inefficiently". At that point you could make a "Min/Max" for every possible thing a player could do. This would completely destroy the normal definition of "Min/Max", because nobody knows what you are trying to "Min/Max". By default Min/Max means the best possible character you could create, assuming you got to level 60, have the best gear, and have all your spells. Ogre is the best Min/Max Shaman due to FSI.

[7thGate]

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

Min/Max is not about how quickly it takes to level. It is about how effective your character is in the endgame. This is because leveling speed is mostly a factor of how you play, rather than what racial bonuses you have. Ogre/Troll/Iksar Shamans have leveled faster than Barbarians due to twinking, play time, effective leveling strategies, etc. If you really want to level to 60 ASAP, there are better ways than simply picking Barbarian when you create your new Shaman.

Whatever you do to XP though, and there are different methods that will vary in speed, you do it 20% faster on a Barbarian. Its much more debateable how much regen improves things vs. FSI, but the Barb should definitely be much ahead of the Ogre.

Almost nobody reaches actual end game everquest, where you're BIS and have no more progression. End Game for most people is raiding with some mix of high end/BIS pieces, or farming items. You're going to be ahead by some noticeable amount on both of these goals if you're using a Barbarian vs. an Ogre, and it will likely take a very substantial amount of time for the Ogre to catch up.

They will never catch up in a raiding context until you reach BIS, you will always be a fixed amount of DKP ahead on the Barbarian until you run out of things to spend DKP on. If there is a quantifiable difference in farming speed or success rate with having FSI they will eventually catch up with the Barbarian's head start, but it needs to be quantified to see whether it is actually reasonable for that to happen.

As a more concrete example of what I'm talking about, if you ask the question "which race lets me farm the most stuff by 2030 on this new shaman I'm making", the answer is probably Barbarian. I'm really skeptical that the other racials do enough to make up for having potentially weeks of additional time with Torpor.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by 7thGate [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Whatever you do to XP though, and there are different methods that will vary in speed, you do it 20% faster on a Barbarian. Its much more debateable how much regen improves things vs. FSI, but the Barb should definitely be much ahead of the Ogre.

Almost nobody reaches actual end game everquest, where you're BIS and have no more progression. End Game for most people is raiding with some mix of high end/BIS pieces, or farming items. You're going to be ahead by some noticeable amount on both of these goals if you're using a Barbarian vs. an Ogre, and it will likely take a very substantial amount of time for the Ogre to catch up.

They will never catch up in a raiding context until you reach BIS, you will always be a fixed amount of DKP ahead on the Barbarian until you run out of things to spend DKP on. If there is a quantifiable difference in farming speed or success rate with having FSI they will eventually catch up with the Barbarian's head start, but it needs to be quantified to see whether it is actually reasonable for that to happen.

As a more concrete example of what I'm talking about, if you ask the question "which race lets me farm the most stuff by 2030 on this new shaman I'm making", the answer is probably Barbarian. I'm really skeptical that the other racials do enough to make up for having potentially weeks of additional time with Torpor.

Again, Min/Max is not about leveling speed. That isn't the normal definition for any item based game like Everquest where you get to max level and then play the endgame. In a game like Everquest plenty of people play the endgame longer than the leveling game.

Changing the definition of Min/Max to "who can level the fastest" is not the correct way to approach this debate.

[7thGate]

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

Again, Min/Max is not about leveling speed. That isn't the normal definition for any item based game like Everquest where you get to max level and then play the endgame. In a game like Everquest plenty of people play the endgame longer than the leveling game.

Changing the definition of Min/Max to "who can level the fastest" is not the correct way to approach this debate.

The part that seems to be disconnecting here is that "who can get the most done in the endgame" is a reasonable metric for Min/Max. The amount you accomplish in the endgame is a function of the amount of time you spend in the endgame and the rate at which you accomplish stuff.

Several of the racials theoretically help you accomplish stuff better in the end game, like FSI. The XP penalty reduction gives you more time in the end game by getting you there faster. When you're measuring the amount of stuff you're actually going to accomplish in the end game because of your racial, its a solid contender because of the additional time you get.

If making a choice causes you to accomplish less for a character, that's not the min-max choice. Targeting for optimal theoretical end game where you have everything is almost always a bad idea.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by 7thGate [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The part that seems to be disconnecting here is that "who can get the most done in the endgame" is a reasonable metric for Min/Max.

I disagree. One of the main reasons why this isn't a valid metric is because games like Everquest are based more on luck than skill.

If your definition of Min/Max is "who can get full BiS the fastest", there is no strategy you can employ to guarantee being the first person to full BiS gear. This is because it is 100% possible that the item you need to complete full BiS only drops when an opposing guild kills the mob. Someone in the opposing guild, who spent 2 more months leveling than you did, could get BiS gear faster than yourself, even though they took longer to start raiding.

Even if your guild is monopolizing a specific target, that doesn't mean the item will drop when you are there, unless you can make it to every single kill. You also need to consider the possibility you lose the item to someone else bidding more DKP. There are plenty of factors completely out of your control that slow down your progress.

Originally Posted by 7thGate [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Targeting for optimal theoretical end game where you have everything

This is the normal definition of Min/Max for games like Everquest. The reason for this is simple: The goal of Everquest is to complete your character. Get them to max level, get all of their spells, and get the best items. Of course many players never accomplish this goal, but the goal is still there. Unfortunately the luck based nature of games like Everquest make it impossible to build a strategy that guarantees you will reach this goal in a specific amount of time. That is why things like leveling speed aren't really a big factor, unless you level so slowly you never reach level 60 to begin with. If you are dedicated enough to reach level 60 and start raiding, you could reach full BiS gear faster than a person who has been raiding longer than you have.

[7thGate]

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

I disagree. One of the main reasons why this isn't a valid metric is because games like Everquest are based more on luck than skill.

If your definition of Min/Max is "who can get full BiS the fastest", there is no strategy you can employ to guarantee being the first person to full BiS gear. This is because it is 100% possible that the item you need to complete full BiS only drops when an opposing guild kills the mob. Someone in the opposing guild, who spent 2 more months leveling than you did, could get BiS gear faster than yourself, even though they took longer to start raiding.

Making decisions that decrease your chances of success is still bad, even if there's enough luck involved in the game to win or lose regardless. You can die more with FSI than without it because you just got unlucky on slows relative to the other shaman, that doesn't make it worse at soloing things.

You accomplish more faster by being 60 faster, which makes the choice that gets you to 60 faster a strong end game benefit even though it doesn't do anything once you reach 60.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by 7thGate [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Making decisions that decrease your chances of success is still bad, even if there's enough luck involved in the game to win or lose regardless. You can die more with FSI than without it because you just got unlucky on slows relative to the other shaman, that doesn't make it worse at soloing things.

You accomplish more faster by being 60 faster, which makes the choice that gets you to 60 faster a strong end game benefit even though it doesn't do anything once you reach 60.

You are overestimating how much benefit you are getting from the xp bonus.

Lets assume you are playing as efficiently as possible with plenty of twink gear.

In PoM rat maze I was getting 1 level per 20 hours or so. That means going from 56-60 takes 100 hours.

Leveling from 1-50 with heavy twinkage is something like 1 hour per level, which means 50 hours.

200ish hours to get from 1-60 on a twinked character seems reasonable.

A Barbarian gets 40 extra hours of endgame at best, assuming you think FSI and Regen provide no increase in leveling speed.

40 hours is like 5 Ayillish kills due to her respawn timer, assuming you got every kill. That is something like 25kpp over an Ogre, or a bit more DKP.

There is no evidence to suggest 40 extra hours of raiding over a characters total lifespan is enough to guarantee full BiS gear earlier than another player. The game just doesn't work like that.

[7thGate]

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

There is no evidence to suggest 40 extra hours of raiding over a characters total lifespan is enough to guarantee full BiS gear earlier than another player. The game just doesn't work like that.

It very obviously increases your chances of getting to full BIS faster to have earned more DKP or plat, in the same way that FSI very obviously increases your chances of successfully soloing something. While you're correct that its not nearly significant enough to guarantee you get ahead of another shaman with less time, the same thing can be said for FSI; there's no guarantee having it actually results in you succeeding more than a shaman that doesn't have it, it just gives you better odds.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by 7thGate [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It very obviously increases your chances of getting to full BIS faster to have earned more DKP or plat, in the same way that FSI very obviously increases your chances of successfully soloing something. While you're correct that its not nearly significant enough to guarantee you get ahead of another shaman with less time, the same thing can be said for FSI; there's no guarantee having it actually results in you succeeding more than a shaman that doesn't have it, it just gives you better odds.

If you have played in a serious raiding guild, you would know that 40 hours is very little time. This is because most of it may be spent waiting for mobs to pop. Remember that the 40 hours is not "40 hours of killing raid targets when they are spawned and your guild got FTE", it is "40 hours of raiding, including waiting for mobs to spawn, including losing a mob to other guilds, etc."

Realistically speaking you have no evidence to suggest the 40 hours (at best) of extra endgame will end up being better than having FSI for your character's entire playtime.

You have no evidence to support your position, and you are changing the normal definition of Min/Max. I don't see any victory for you here in this debate so far.

[Jimjam]

… you’re the one who is defining a very narrow category of dragons in an mmo as min max.

It’s a mmo - solo has nothing to do with min max.