Soloing as a level 13 untwinked Ogre Shaman

[Pyrocat]

Go straight in from zoneline, take the first right, follow the stream. You'll see the crocs (gators?)

[Lhancelot]

For simplicity sake, I always do Oasis at lvl 13.

You can pull solo caimans on the beach to the waters edge away from wandering mobs and solo quite easily here.

The down side is there is no loot to speak of, but the occasional rune or words with croc meat.

When you need to afk, you can run up to one of the large rock pillars and sit/med safely on them.

Another plus is sometimes high levels come and buff lowbies as they pass through.

Oasis will take you to 20 easily, and some people stay till 24.

[kallell]

Anyone have recommendations for solo tactics as a shaman? Root/rot the best bet?

[loramin]

It's been awhile, but yes I think root/rot is usually optimal at that level. You don't have a pet yet, nor do you have a decent slow, so fighting next to the mob just means taking lots of damage in exchange for minimal added DPS. And while you can kite with SoW, you lose so much damage that simply rooting is much more efficient.

There might be some mobs that don't hit very hard (for your level), and against them you might want to go toe-to-toe, but otherwise I'd stick to root/rotting until at least 29. At 29 you get your only charm, so you can charm fight for a few levels (charm an animal, make it fight another mob, cast invis on yourself just before one dies then finish them both off with nukes). Then once you get to 34 you get your first real pet and your slow is around 40%, so that's the point when meleeing starts to make more sense (although against the hard-hitters you'll still want to root/rot).

[Lhancelot]

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

Anyone have recommendations for solo tactics as a shaman? Root/rot the best bet?

I don't think root rotting is that efficient when you low level. I would melee and dot mobs.

This will also give you a chance to keep your defense capped. Throw your lowbie slows on them if you want.

Remember to use your Inner Fire buff to heal yourself for maximum efficiency. Inner Fire is a hp buff, but it acts as a heal in case you didn't know. It's actually more efficient than your healing line till you get Healing at lvl 19.

Grab some hp rings, banded armor, a shield and a decent weapon and you should be able to melee quite effectively for quite a long time. If you can, buy a poison wind censer, it's a 2h weapon but for 500pp it has an awesome ratio.

[dbouya]

IMO unless you have something like a granite face grinder it's never worth slowing mobs you are solo'ing, not until level 51. Slow costs a lot of mana.

That said from level 20-29 I would use a runewood great staff to melee and tank, even untwinked. You can root rot but just also hit the enemies as well, using root rot to break camps of 2 or more. Melee'ing whenever you feel safe.

Whenever you're about to get a new charm or once charm's stop being given to shaman's I'd root rot the rest of the way to 51.

Untwinked though I think shaman's group better than they solo, in part due to dungeon ZEM. Also because hasting and slowing and buffing and healing a twinked melee character will work better than melee'ing alone untwinked. Poison wind censer is slightly better than runewood great staff, if you plan to ONLY solo absolutely shell out the extra $ for that instead. If you just want to solo while LFG the runewood great staff is much cheaper stopgap measure.

It's easy though to solo near where you're LFG as a shaman because you only take a minor hit to power level while alone. A strong group is also just one melee character away. Forming a strong core that makes building groups yourself easy.

[Lhancelot]

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

IMO unless you have something like a granite face grinder it's never worth slowing mobs you are solo'ing, not until level 51. Slow costs a lot of mana.

I only slowed mobs in low lvls when I solo'd, and that was with the lowest lvl slow as its not too mana heavy.

I agree it's not very efficient but I did it more just to practice for gameplay and if my alteration was low due to using Inner Fire as a heal, it was good to use for that also to keep Alteration up.

A key note too is to use lower level spells even as a higher level, they often times are effectiveness enough to get the needed result.

For instance your lower level root might prove more useful than later versions of root as its faster cvasting and uses way less mana.

A lower lvl slow might prove to be effective enough so you do not have to use your highest level slow which costs 250 mana, etc.

Root rotting is a method of combat you can choose as shaman, but until you get more than 1 decent dot, it's pretty slow grinding if thats how you choose to kill mobs.

With a weak root, you will be burning a ton of mana dotting, and using root to hold the mob down. Imo this is not very efficient, and that's why most shaman do melee for additional damage.

[kallell]

Appreciate the responses guys.

[dbouya]

Oh yeah, sometimes I even memorize my lowest level root and highest level root, using the lowest level one on enemies I plan to cast more damaging spells on, then when I plan to go sit, I will use the higher level root (if casting said damaging spell breaks the lower level root.)

IIRC chance to break is the same for all roots, but maximum duration is what goes way way up on higher level roots? that might be false, it's the theory I've always used though.

[kallell]

When slowing, i've just been using the 15% one (it's only 20 mana). I feel with shitty gear, not having a mob attack a few extra times makes a decent difference since I can only have two dots at any given point. Sure, i could save the mana for healing, but since inner fire is the best heal until 19, it's a bit tedious to heal back up. So far kurns is actually been treating me well, still getting 3-4 % exp a solo kill.