Melee as shaman

[Webeporting]

Pretty much what everyone said, but let me make it concise. For your budget of 10-15k, purchase the following

Jade Mace-700-800pp. Will last until damage cap comes off at 20.
Poison Wind Censor-1kpp- Use this when you ding 20, don't use it before, a lot of dps will be going to waste because of the damage cap.
Silver Chitin Hand Wraps-2500- Cheaper version of FBSS.
Iksar BP-8-10k- i cannot state it enough how this will change your experience playing a shaman, buy this item, it's a must.

These items all together will allow you to melee your way(as you wanted to with your ranger) to lvl 35-40. If you have any questions you can PM me, I have played like 7 shamans. Think i have a pwc rotting somewhere too.

[Teppler]

Shaman melee is better than a lot of chars. Save up 1-2k for Poisoned wind censar. Awesome weapon. If you're rich get a fungi and haste item and you'll be good to go up to 50 with meleeing.

[BarackObooma]

PWC is 650-800pp

[isoka]

You are better root rotting while converting hp saved into mana through canni dancing imho. That being said, if you want to melee, go through it.

[goofball_jones]

I just leveled to 24 with dotting and then meleeing, and it's worked out pretty well. But now that I'm 25, I don't melee that much at all until they start running. I pull with Malaise then Root them. Then hit them with both my dots and let them go down...then I start nuking when they're half way, re-Rooting when need be. Then they just go down.

I'm not getting the crap beat out of me and they go down quicker than if I was melee with them. Granted, I don't have a ton of high-end gear because unlike most on this server, I don't have ultra-high level characters with tons of plat on them, but it's decent gear.

But, I guess it just suits my style better, while others like to melee more. But if I wanted to melee, I'd just play my monk. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[HalasHermit]

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

Depends on the level range. Again remember, in what I described, a lot of your actual DPS comes from procs on the Barb Spiritists Hammer (250dd). That procs at 35. Assuming max dex, you are only going to do 500damage/minute from that. Pet is probably like a 35 damage / tick dot, so like 850 damage a minute plus whatever melee damage you deal. When mobs have like 2k hp, that's competitive: 2 minutes for a solo kill. When mob HP steps up to 6khp, you're looking at a 6 minute solo kill. But at that point if you have an epic, a 6-minute melee kill makes no sense.

The problem with grouping in this is that procs are very unreliable. Maybe you get two right away and steal aggro from the tank. Maybe you get none until the mob is at 1%, in which case you waste most of the damage. Because of the variability in procs and the aggro issues, most DPS classes don't rely on proc weapons. At 50 Rangers get a proc weapon that is a 1-hander and does 688 damage per proc. But I don't see rangers use that, because (1) procs are unreliable, and (2) because of aggro problems, and (3) I'm assuming someone has parsed it out and found that a solid ratio 1-hander is better, but I'd need a ranger to chime in here.

Again, where this works is if you are a group tank. Slow is going to give you a lot of initial aggro. From there you can attack with the Hammer and hopefully generate procs. With a mob shaman slowed, a wizard could tank it. You can canni a bit during the fight and get topped off by the healer if mana runs down. And if you have a JBB, you can corner cast, spam JBB, and still get procs off the barb spiritist hammer. I don't see nearly enough Shaman tanks and I kind of think it's a shame, but it's understandable why.

Barb Spirit Hammer procs at 30 unless they have changed it since winter/spring '15.

[Noselacri]

It stops being any good around level 20, and becomes completely futile at like 30. The exception is if you have some kind of proccing weapon or something, like Barbarian Spiritist Hammer.

[Shamanics]

Does anyone know if iksar ceremonial chestplate (worn) regen stacks with the regen (spell) cast? Would both of those regens also stack with fungal regen (clicky) from the fungal staff?

[jolanar]

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

Does anyone know if iksar ceremonial chestplate (worn) regen stacks with the regen (spell) cast? Would both of those regens also stack with fungal regen (clicky) from the fungal staff?

Worn regen stacks with spell regen. The regen from the chestplate is worn, but the regen from the fungi staff is spell regen because you click it and it gives you a buff. But it's still a lot better regen than you can cast on your own until the 50s and even then it's mana free.

[vouss]

Every shaman is a melee shaman. If you are killing anything worth killing it summons and you cannot root rot it. You are fighting it in melee range. Your melee DPS sucks. Get something that procs or don't even bother.