The Hidden Forest

I was a little disappointed that shaman didn't get a new damage over time spell in the t8 spells. On EQ live shaman dots were some of the best and you could throw 3-4 and make a meaningful contribution to an exp group. In tier 5+ there isn't much for the shaman to do aside from buff panther/godly conversion. both of those spells are good of course, but they are buffs not combat casts. The endgame mobs have so many more HP that a dot stack isn't effective. mana recovery click items trivialize one of our class defining spells as well. I don't feel the gains made in the healing department leave the class balanced.

Many of the mobs here are slow immune or nearly impossible to debuff as well so shaman loses out. I would love to see a significant increase in the damage on 1 or 2 of the existing spells. Another option would be to add a short duration, high damage, lower resist dot to either the t8 loot tables or ldon vendor. something along the lines of webtools/spell.php?id=8849 would be ideal.

This move wouldn't turn the shaman into a DPS powerhouse, but would round out the class for solo (yes people still do this) and small group play.

Agree here


and change SHM by Druid in this text and you feel my pain. ( exept druid don't get godly conv )

Well i am glad to see someone agrees and feel the pain of all you druids as well. In a perfect world shaman & druid wouldn't be limited to ~1k DPS from constantly clicking nuke items while similarly geared characters are pulling 12-18k+ DPS. I'm not terribly unhappy with that state of the class and don't want to seem like i am complaining here. I suspect a lot of people are thinking the same thing though. what do the rest of you shaman players have to say?

I agree. I had a friend with a shammy on live and not only could he heal well, but his dps was decent too.

Shm pwn all. Wtb dps increase so I have more of a reason to box one.

I sure could use a reason to actualy take my shaman out of the guildhall. "Buff me you Pretentious Fool!"

I don't see a great reason not to give shaman a continued DoT line. However, to play devils advocate:

you could complain similarly about a lot of classes (dps / balance.) for example, just because i play one in my primary line and they are a similar "support" class, Enchanters. Any clicky nukes out there end up being better than our LDoN point nuke and our dots do some sort of lol 200 dmg a tick (theres a debuff too, but we all know the effects of these are incalculably minute- if they even work.) Granted, you can charm a pet (not too great without donor IMO, with donor it's pretty good [in certain zones.])

Another might be bard, though i dont play one. They have some nukes and DoTs but besides some semi-"meh" melee dmg they dont do anything other than buff the party.

My point is just that not every spell line is balanced all the way through levels 1-70 - early raid - upper raid. If devs want to make that the case though, i have PLENTY of input there

shm's dots ain't worth much here and my shm doesn't have any of the dots loaded 99% of the times. even with an upgrade, i doubt dots will be that useful to me.

how about give the shms/chanters a slow that can slow for 15% for mobs even immune to slow? hell, i'd take a 10% if we get one. If that seems trivialize the contents, I wouldn't mind the dev. bump up the mob dps by 10%. that way we will have more chanters running around too I am sure.

after all, slow is THE ability that shm outshines every other class, imho.

heh Bard dps is pretty good.

lets keep on topic here.

Gytask wrote:shm's dots ain't worth much here and my shm doesn't have any of the dots loaded 99% of the times.

Im glad we can agree here lol.

A bump to dot damage wont impact some of of people using the class for godly conversion 4 buff-bot or as a heal anchor for their tank, monk, ranger, bard group. It would round out the class for many of us though. As someone who actively plays a shaman, i can tell you that there often isn't much to do once the fighting starts:

/pet attack
epic click
watch to make sure the knight heals herself while dishing out 1k DPS (less than my pet) via endgame item clicks.