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The Official Children of Tunare’s Shaman’s guide to Norrath Chapter 2 Written by : Cymrick Ravenfoot How to write the basic "how to" guide for a shaman? Without getting into specific issues (hunting grounds, etc.), I'll start with skills and spells. WEAPONRY and FIGHTING SKILLS For weaponry we are presented with a few choices: piercing, 1 handed blunt, 2 handed blunt. I recommend that you practice all, if possible, as the real truth is that the best weapon is whatever you can get. That having been said, piercing is probably the best choice for shaman. This was not the case when I started Cymrick, most of the good shaman piercers were added sometime after I started him. Pros/Cons Piercing: There are many shaman only spears in the game -- most of them give wisdom bonuses, a few of them have neat procs and many of them have excellent damage/delay ratios. They are also shaman only... ie. no competition for getting them. Considering that spears are also one handed, allowing you to equip a shield, they are an excellent choice as weaponry. The downside of piercing weapons, there are NO low level spears available (attainable by level 20s). Most of the shaman spears are pulled off of low 30s mobs in dungeons or remote wilderness areas. 1hd Blunt: There are more magical maces and morning stars available to lower level characters. Using an FS Morning Star, Screaming Mace and Cold Iron Morning Star, I advanced through 90% of my levels. Most blunt weapons tend to have good damage/delay ratios, though then tend to be a little slow. No worries there: slow means it is easier to cast between swings. The downside of 1 handed blunt, there are relatively few maces available for higher level shaman. Not a big problem, there are a few blunt weapons that augment wisdom, thus improving our proficiency with our primary weapon, our magic. This is probably a good weapon skill for low levels, moving on to using a Sharkbone or Wraithbone Warhammer at high levels. 2hd Blunt: A useful fighting skill prior to level 30. After that point, all the really whup-ass weapons are hard to acquire. The 4 most common shaman 2 handers are: Bloodforge Hammer, Midnight Mallet, Observer Staff and Gatorsmash Maul. Strategically, 2 handed blunt isn't an important skill to a low level shaman... but in terms of future potential, you SHOULD keep this skill up to date. If you don't plan obtaining any of the above weapons for day-to-day usage, get an Orc Shovel and use it to practice your skill. The late game shaman weapons are all 2 handed blunt and they ROCK. God forbid you get a Mordicator Staff, Blight, Barbarian Spiritualist Hammer, Staff of Forbidden Rites, Granite Face Grinder, etc.. and you can't use it. These are all hard weapons to get however. ARMOR and GENERAL EQUIPMENT Armor isn't a real mystery, you should worship and the twin shrines of AC and wisdom. A short term plan is to equip yourself in full bandedmail armor. This armor is light and durable, it will serve you well. When acquiring equipment remember the following: Iksar -- medium armor only, may not wear 'shaman' plate armor (ie. Totemic, Jaundiced Bone) Ogre/Troll -- large armor only, may not wear Jacinth Scale armor (a Kunark chain-type armor) Barbarian -- medium or large, can wear anything ARMOR CLASS vs WISDOM Try to maintain a parity between your AC and your wisdom. A shortage of either one will noticably hamper your effectiveness in combat. At lower levels, maintaining a decent AC will enable you to survive those occasions when you are the primary healer. At higher levels, you need AC to survive the aggro (movement up the monster's hate list) your powerful debuffs creates. Obviously, you don't want to sacrifice your wisdom either. You should aim for a 150-165 wisdom in total and then try to increase your armorclass as much as possible. TOTEMIC ARMOR Shaman platemail. Our first set of class armor is typically questable once you are in your late 20s. You can start gathering some of the totemic components earlier but the cost of Dufrenite will limit your aquisition of armor pieces. There are 8 pieces of totemic armor: helm, breastplate (BP), vambraces, greaves, bracers (2), boots, gauntlets, cloak. Each piece of armor requires 4 components in order to be crafted: a dufrenite stone, medium bandedmail armor of the same type as the armor piece, 2 other knicknacks. Quest givers for this quest are in the barbarian fishing village in Lake Rathe. The two barb shaman who give the quest are on Temple of Solesk Ro faction. Banded Armor used for the totemic armor quests MUST be medium size (another slap to the jowels of our fatty friends). Medium banded armor is labled only "banded". For example, a large banded helmet is called "Large Banded Helmet" and a medium banded helmet is simply called "Banded Helmet". DON'T use small/large banded by accident. Dufrenite for the totemic quests must be mangled in several ways. The ogres in Lake Rathe will do all the mangling for you. Unless you dumped on your Temple of Solesk Ro faction, the ogres are not KOS to you. Dufrenite costs about 166-180 platinum coins per piece and can be bought in the Innothule Swamp, West Karana or Halas. I will cover the other components seperately, but several of them can be gathered in South Karana, Unrest and Dagnor's Cauldron. A word on what pieces to quest for: vambraces, greaves, gauntlets and boots are all reasonably easy to obtain and provide good AC. They are also all visible armor :). If you have the components, pick up a bracer as well but it is low priority. At higher levels, the totemic bracer will be put aside in favor of other wrist pieces. The cloak is nice but not essential, as the drake scale for the quest is hard to get. Any shaman who is serious about his class should eventially attempt the totemic helm quest. The helm is a nightmare to obtain but is within the realms of possibility. You will not be able to obtain it prior to level 31-32 and I recommend you hunt the glacier bear with a cleric partner. I spent an entire 3 day weekend getting one of the components for this item. I will post a seperate guide on doing the helm quest once a guild shaman is ready to attempt it. The helm is the best piece of totemic. The totemic breastplate is mainly for fashion. It provides a very high AC and some resistance bonuses but is not clearly any better than the Bloodstained Tunic. On top of this, it is the hardest piece to get. You will either have to buy it... or get extremely lucky. Going price is about 2kpp (as of June 2000). Here is a list of totemic components: Kyralynn: Bracer -- m.banded bracer, dufrenite, bull elephant tooth (South Karana), Cauldron Shell (Aqua Goblin Tidal Lord in Dagnors Cauldron) Cloak -- m.banded cloak, powdered dufrenite, driftwood pipe (Isle Goblin Chief in Ocean of Tears), basalt drake scales (Basalt Drake in Rathe Mountains) Breastplate -- m.banded tunic, crushed dufrenite, grizzlenot bark (South Karana, very rare wanderer), lancer fish fin (Lancer fish from Kedge Keep) Helm -- m.banded helm, ground dufrenite, glacier bear pelt (Everfrost cave, rare spawn/common drop), ogreskin chamois (lizard page in Lost Temple of Cazic Thule) Vrynn: Vambraces -- m.banded sleeve, ground dufrenite, ghoul carrion (Unrest), charger hoof clip (centaur charger in South Karana, commonly called 'chips') Greaves -- m.banded legs, powdered dufrenite, permafrost snowball (goblin wizard in Permafrost Keep, dangerous) Boots -- m.banded boots, dufrenite, terror spines (tentacle terrors in Najena), orc chief tongue (orc chieftain in Lesser Faydark) Gauntlets -- m.banded guantlets, crushed dufrenite, mammoth rib (adult wooly mammoth in Everfrost Tundra), griffene downfeather (North Karana) The 2 hardest components to acquire are the glacier bear pelt and the grizzleknot bark. I'm not certain that I would even recognize grizzleknot if I saw him. Enough on totemic. MISCELLANEOUS Food and water. Bandages. Typically I carry 20 days of milk/muffins and summon 5-10 days of food and water every session. Shaman only get summon food and water spells that summon 1 portion per cast. Carry some real food but use your summons to stay trained in Conjuration. Important. Bandages is a personal quirk of mine... take it or leave it. Once you hit level 24 you can easily train in bind wounds and our skill caps at 200. About 50 hit points per bandage. Be all that you can be. SPELL CASTING Finally. More so that any other caster, the shaman's spells are ALL about efficiency. All casters compare mana/damage ratios when trying to determine what magic to use. Enchanters and shaman have to decide on the intangible value of using debuffs and crowd control magic. There is no amount of hit point damage or damage recovery attached to these spells that can be compared to the mana cost. I'll give my impressions of the usability of shaman magics and when they should be used. There are 6 different kinds of spells a shaman uses: buff, debuff, recovery, attack, defence, and utility. Although we are most well known for our ability to buff statistics, experienced shaman generally agree that it is our debuff and recovery that are our strongest suit. Our attack power is also staggering at higher levels. I'll touch on each one in turn. BUFFING: Statistic buffing provides a small, long-term benefit for a moderate cost in mana. With this in mind, you must: a) buff people who will be using the augmented stats the most b) never buff stats in favour of healing, debuffing c) know what stats are good for which people Haste, slow, hit point recovery, crowd control, etc., all have a more dramatic short-term effect than any amount of stat buffs. Use them to good effect, for neither you nor your comrades are going to live to benefit from stats if you slack in the debuff department. Typically, you should buff tanks only. Melee characters make the most use of the statistics we increase. Furthermore, the effect of raising agility or stamina on a caster is small enough to limit the value of stats buffs as insurance. In brief, here is the value of each statistic buff: Strength -- increases attack rating resulting in more consistant hitting and higher maximum damage (but not average). Buff the strength of all melee characters. Better carrying capacity. Dexterity -- increases % of procing weapons, critical hits/crippling blows. Use on warriors and melee characters with good procing weapons. Stamina -- increases hit points and stamina regeneration rate. Very good buff for tanks, particularily warriors. Lesser effect on support casters (such as the shaman). Agility -- increases armorclass by a small amount. Most useful on the primary tank only. If the primary tank gets wounded badly, enhanced agility may prevent him from suffering large AC penalties. Charisma -- increases buy/sell rates, aids with charm spells. Use this on druids, necromancers, shamans, and enchanters who are planning to use charm spells. DEBUFFING: Ahhhh, my favorite. I do so love turning snarling mobs into mewling kittens. Debuffs are the jewel in the shaman crown. Shaman debuffs come in 3 flavours: resistance-reducer, slows, and weakness. When using debuffs, there are really only 2 rules: a) debuff as early as possible b) tailor debuffs to the party/encounter Easy as pie. Make sure you 'nerf' the monsters early, so you get the most use out of your debuff and limit the effectiveness of the monster for the bulk of the battle. Generally, use slow on all melee mobs. Slowed mobs present less of a threat to spell casters and are more easily countered by the party enchanter/cleric. If you are in a caster heavy party that is annihilating foes quickly, switch to using primarily resistance debuffs. RECOVERY: Another one of our primary skills. The ability to heal wounds will save your life and that of your companions. Your strongest heal should occupy a spell slot at all times. If you are the primary healer in a party, make sure to continue using your favoured slow spell on attacking monsters. In order to cope with damage, a shaman needs to prevent damage as well as repair it. Shamans (along side druids) gain regeneration spells. Shamans typically gain them 1 spell tier earlier than their comrades however. Regeneration spells are the prefered way of healing allies during downtime. They are used in a similar manner as DoT and DD spells, try to only use the instant heal during emergencies as the regens are more mana efficient. Shamans may also use spells to cure poison and disease. ATTACK: Shaman attack spells consist of mediocre DD (direct damage) and excellent DOT (damage over time) spells. Whenever possible, use only your DOT spells. They are more efficient with your mana. Practice your evocation skills in the newbie zones (freeze some corpses) and save your ice-nukes for emergencies. Shaman DDs are mostly cold/ice attacks, save for the level 1 nuke. Shaman DOTs come in two flavours: disease and poison. Poison is the more useful of the two. Poison spells do full damage in 42 seconds and our primary line of resistance debuffs reduce poison resistance (malise, etc. -- reduce poison, heat, cold, magic). Disease takes close to 2 minutes to do full damage and a seperate line of resistance debuffs are required to reduce disease resistance (insidious fever, etc. -- reduce disease). DEFENCE: Technically, defence spells are just hit point and armorclass buffs. Shamans get our first hit point buff at 1st level and our first *real* hit point buff at 34th level. Joy. Fortunately, we get an entire line of armorclass buffs that update every other spell level (sometimes more often). Most of the shaman AC/HP buffs are not as nice as the cleric variants, but they are a hell of a lot cheaper. Until level 34, your role is not likely going to be buffing hit points. Once you do get our first Talisman spell, you can stack your hit point buffs with the party cleric's. Talisman is best used on tanks and healers, it will overwrite the shielding series used by casters (Talismans are only slightly better hps than shielding and provide no ac/mr bonuses). Shamans also get a full array of resistance buffs, one spell per resist. There are two versions of each spell (ie. endure magic, resist magic, endure fire, resist fire). UTILITY: The glorious catch-all category. Shamans get some truly wonderful knicknacks. Our divination spells are excellent, we get some personal mana regeneration powers, and pets. Here are some of the highlights: Flash of Light -- great for duels and can work as a 'poor man's fear' spell on NPCs. Cast it on an NPC who is not in melee range and watch him run around for a few seconds. Cannibalize -- used properly, cannibalize will cut minutes of your meditation time and can allow you to rapidly recover mana during tense situations. I will discuss the 'mana-dance' in my next installment. Companion Spirit -- gained at level 34, the shaman's first pet dramatically changes the class strategies. If you can keep him alive, he will inflict nearly unlimited damage. He's not an elemental, but he has a tail and fur. What could be better? Frenzy -- rarely used but still effective, frenzy is a stackable haste, strength, regeneration spell that is self-only and drains mana over time. Good for deuls and tense situations when flight is not an option. Haste -- I could have listed this under buffs. Although we play second fiddle to chanties in this category, shaman haste spells are nevertheless useful. We gain them later in life (29th). Invisibility -- Invis and invis to animals, but not to undead. Gained late, but gotten none-the-less (29th). Gate, Bind Affinity -- both very useful. Serpent's Sight, Ultravision -- also very useful, for a barbarian like myself. Levitation, Enduring Breath, Spirit of Wolf -- travel spells and useful as insurance against all kinds of calamity. SoW almost never leaves my ready 8 spell slots. Summon Food and Water -- a bit of a hassle to use but good for practicing conjuration. Shaman Guide - Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | ||
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