New to SoD

In the Druid vs Shaman vs Cleric Debate, having played my druid and my shaman a bunch and boxing other peoples clerics:

Clerics are good everywhere. Clerics worst place is as a duo, just because they lack dps til high tiers, and even when their dps is worse they let you kill bigger things just because of stronger more efficient heals.

Shamans are INSANE on raids. They aren't that great anywhere else. They're fine as a bad 4th dps in exp groups, but not great excluding abusing broken things (bearform, cough cough). They're good in 6 mans til your guild has big clerics, then there's no reason to take one over a big cleric who can just solo heal it. You can't really ever solo heal a group either, which is problematic for trying to get exp.

Druids are the strongest of the healers for duoing overall. Their utility is through the roof, and high end druids do ridiculous AoE dps. There are certain situations clerics are better (fighting big things that hit really hard) but for the vast majority of situations druids are better. Raid wise druids are not great. Relic Hot is fine, but most of the time it heals for less than half of its healing. Ancient hot is worse than cleric hot, and the small hots in general are not worth casting on raids. The things that are important on raids (group heals, quick heals) druids are just not good at.

As for box setups for any healer

Cleric: Melee dps + cleric in my opinion is the best duo for a cleric. A monk or bard + a cleric is nuts.

Druid: Any Tank. Druid + sk is probably the strongest duo in the game.

Shaman: Tank. The shaman isnt that great for the tank, but for the shaman a tank is your best bet.
 
Thade said:
In the Druid vs Shaman vs Cleric Debate, having played my druid and my shaman a bunch and boxing other peoples clerics:

Clerics are good everywhere. Clerics worst place is as a duo, just because they lack dps til high tiers, and even when their dps is worse they let you kill bigger things just because of stronger more efficient heals.

Shamans are INSANE on raids. They aren't that great anywhere else. They're fine as a bad 4th dps in exp groups, but not great excluding abusing broken things (bearform, cough cough). They're good in 6 mans til your guild has big clerics, then there's no reason to take one over a big cleric who can just solo heal it. You can't really ever solo heal a group either, which is problematic for trying to get exp.

Druids are the strongest of the healers for duoing overall. Their utility is through the roof, and high end druids do ridiculous AoE dps. There are certain situations clerics are better (fighting big things that hit really hard) but for the vast majority of situations druids are better. Raid wise druids are not great. Relic Hot is fine, but most of the time it heals for less than half of its healing. Ancient hot is worse than cleric hot, and the small hots in general are not worth casting on raids. The things that are important on raids (group heals, quick heals) druids are just not good at.

As for box setups for any healer

Cleric: Melee dps + cleric in my opinion is the best duo for a cleric. A monk or bard + a cleric is nuts.

Druid: Any Tank. Druid + sk is probably the strongest duo in the game.

Shaman: Tank. The shaman isnt that great for the tank, but for the shaman a tank is your best bet.
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Man I gotta disagree on about everything you said about Shamans. At high tier I'd take one over a cleric for an XP group pretty much anywhere.
 
Ludovician said:
Man I gotta disagree on about everything you said about Shamans. At high tier I'd take one over a cleric for an XP group pretty much anywhere.
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Long live Diashan!

Shaman only becomes batshit crazy once you get all your class tomes done.
 
Ludovician said:
Man I gotta disagree on about everything you said about Shamans. At high tier I'd take one over a cleric for an XP group pretty much anywhere.
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It depends where you are going... but the most rewarding/challenging exp/$ zones have content that dishes out group damage and/or you pull so much stuff at a time that multiple people take damage. A shaman just cant keep up when the whole group is taking damage, or even if just two people are taking damage. A cleric has sooo much more potent healing, and can keep groups alive through everything... and in an exp group you don't want more than 1 healer if you are being efficient, so... yeah cleric>druid>shaman.

I agree with thade that shaman excel in raids, where their efficient tank healing can save mana on all the clerics for more group heals and quick heals, and when they don't need to spam woundbane they can actually add worthwhile dps to a raid with DOTs and bearform.
 
Nebi said:
Long live Diashan!

Shaman only becomes batshit crazy once you get all your class tomes done.
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Your idea of exping your shaman was farming remnants, which i don't even really consider exping. Try doing FR or rust with lleoc sometime and you'll understand the struggle.

EDIT: I probably should of wrote "on tier exp group" because you can heal easier/lower tier exp groups, but I don't honestly think that counts.
 
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Thade said:
Your idea of exping your shaman was farming remnants, which i don't even really consider exping. Try doing FR or rust with lleoc sometime and you'll understand the struggle.

EDIT: I probably should of wrote "on tier exp group" because you can heal easier/lower tier exp groups, but I don't honestly think that counts.
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I healed massive pulls on Diashan all the time Thade. I did all of rust robots with almost all of the live side with just diashan healing. like i said it doesnt become batshit crazy until you get your class tomes.

Also have done FR many many times as well.
 
Used to box Diashan and a tank with xp groups in FR all the time. Have pulled tons in rust factory all the time boxing him as the only healer.

I'm not even good at the game and it was easy to not even come close to dying. Shaman healing with Shaman DPS on the side is better than a druid IMO, and close to a cleric.

Gonna stop swinging from his nuts now though.
 
idk how anyone could possibly argue about shamans being bad in exp groups lol. like solo, said if you're pulling trains of bloodfires, you can't just pull a big gheal out of your ass. as much as i hate druids and as much as i love shamans, i'd prefer a druid to a shaman in an exp group.
 
The best part I love about playin
Ezie3205 said:
When I started this server I leveled a monk/shm to 55, then a druid/sk to 55 and finally I made a war/clr duo that are currently my mains.

My opinions of the tanking classes:

Tanking Classes:
SK: Everyone's standard choice, I did not like them. I personally did not like having to med more for the tank than I did for the healer and without casting their spells they don't really do damage. The pro to an SK is that you are probably the least gear dependent of the 3 tanks. You can lag behind in gear a little as an SK and still be able to perform your job and even a little DPS successfully. SKs also get some fun utility, invis, lev, EB, FD and I have seen that fear stance save more than a few groups. TL;DR: Great single target aggro, fair 2-5 target aggro, weak 6+, second best tank mitigation and HP. Don't have to be as diligent about gear but if you aint casting spells, you aint doing damage.

Paladin: The worst or maybe the best, probably the most gear dependent. Leveling a paladin to 30 for me was an ordeal and about as close to not having any fun as I have gotten in this game. As I jumped up in levels on my warrior I saw paladin peers getting rocked by mobs I had no problem with and though "heh, thank god I picked a warrior". At higher levels I have to say I am a little jealous of Paladins, I still tank better but those heals! A really well geared paladin is practically a group onto themselves. With their very powerful self heals and very good group heals, a high tier paladin can take a group to a number of areas without a healer and not have to worry. I have seen a Paladin/Ench box do pretty much all the red trash in Ember and only need a healer for bosses. TL;DR: The strongest of the AoE aggro generators, weakest of the tanks but has utility outside of tanking. Have to be very diligent about gear or you will run oom before those heals do their job.

Warrior: My favorite. Warriors are 100% gear/weapon dependent and as a result you will find times when your progression is held back by the fact that your gear is no longer up to par or more specifically how your weapons are lagging behind. Both of the knight classes have the benefit of a solid portion of their aggro generation coming from spells which allows them to stay competitive in aggro generation even when they lag behind in gear but warriors need to do damage. Weapons are not all that hard to come by for a warrior. There are a number of decent low level quests but if you can scrounge up 50-100p (or contact any of the characters in my signature) for a mithril weapon you will be gold till the mid 40's. After that there are a number of fairly easy quests that I could duo with my cleric in the upper 40's early 50's to get pretty solid weapons till I could farm the cash for some of the better BoEs. Keep in mind with only a handful of exceptions, most BoE weapons are going to ratio cap in the .675 to .75 area. TL;DR: Warriors will need to stay on top of weapon upgrades but they are the best at mitigating damage and dishing it out.


Ultimately, the class you like to play is far and away the best class to pick. There are obviously "good" choices if you had specific goals but if you don't like playing the class, no amount of raiding is going to make you like it. While every guild wants clerics and when asked everyone tells you a mained enchanter is the most desired class, a lot of that is wishful thinking. No guild wants to be short on clerics, but there is nothing wrong with having too many clerics. Guilds want 3 clerics on at raid time, that might mean having 7 active clerics. The reason people want a "Mained" enchanter is because everyone and their mom has an enchanter alt or access to someone's old mained enchanter. Mained enchanters do not stick around. It is hard to quest or solo on an enchanter, they pair well with a few classes for duos but the real fun and action for an enchanter is 6mans/raiding. Personally, I love my enchanter but if you dont have a good Bonds/AoD target groups can be pretty boring if your tank is too good/geared.

My opinion of beastlords is if they can make them feel at 65 how they felt from 9-55, it will be one of the most popular classes.

My personal play-style is to duo everything so a tank/healer was the perfect fit for me. Once you get comfortable with the duo, there are not a lot of things that cannot be accomplished by a determined cleric and warrior team.

I would probably still pick War/Clr if I had to start over from scratch, maybe ranger/cleric. With no money I think a monk/sham will probably be the easiest.
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Id have to agree with this yes and no on the tank. Lower teir warriors are great paladins are meh and sks are ok. High teir Warriors are the better dps of the 3 with good agro. SK's dps is next and have lifetaps and superawsome Singletarget agro. Now to paladins and I could be partial cause I play one but, The survivability of a paladin vs the other two is way better. Being able to control when mobs are stuned for heals to land or even the ablity to hold agro on 12+ mobs at a time safely is just simply amazing. Lets not forget self heals + LoH and group AA heal. lots of oh shit built in to paladin!.. All in all, all the tank class's are great end game and have their benefits/ drawbacks. If you wanna call paladin agro bad compared to the others all I have to say is your groping with the wrong paladin ><!
 
fuwok said:
The only thing I can say about shamans is that it'd be nice if slow was better. Slow gets mitigated down to nothing.
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I agree, slow in this game is so unsubstantial. Hard to change anything at this point, as the game is all balanced around how things are now, but its one of the few things that is just massively different from live. Slow there was so important, and the defining reason shamans were powerful. Shamans are cool here, but for single target heals, dps, and mana regen to keep both of those going. They are not the mob-disabling powerhouse they were in live.

I disagree with some of that tank stuff... SKs are better DPS than a warrior usually, and pallys only have the best mitigation on a solo/duo/exp situation. Warrior mitigation is amazing as a main raid tank, and SKs can self heal about as much as the pally, since the pally spends way more time/mana on agro than the SK. Pallys are amazing for their group HOT though, being a full main tank and still providing significant group healing makes them the premier 6 man tank for a lot of content.
 
Slayer90 said:
The best part I love about playin



Id have to agree with this yes and no on the tank. Lower teir warriors are great paladins are meh and sks are ok. High teir Warriors are the better dps of the 3 with good agro. SK's dps is next and have lifetaps and superawsome Singletarget agro. Now to paladins and I could be partial cause I play one but, The survivability of a paladin vs the other two is way better. Being able to control when mobs are stuned for heals to land or even the ablity to hold agro on 12+ mobs at a time safely is just simply amazing. Lets not forget self heals + LoH and group AA heal. lots of oh shit built in to paladin!.. All in all, all the tank class's are great end game and have their benefits/ drawbacks. If you wanna call paladin agro bad compared to the others all I have to say is your groping with the wrong paladin ><!
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SK dps is vastly better then warrior in high tier, they dps almost as well as real dps until they oom. Ontop of that they are holding aggro through dpsing and self healing through dps. The arguement of paladin ae aggro has become nearly pointless throughout the years. All tanks can get aggro on larger pulls and paladins are the ones who struggle the most with it. Sk have veil and extremely fast cast/recast terrors and warriors have whirl/rampage/lifetap clickies + foelock and if shit hits the fan ae taunt + enrage to foelock/build on the pull. Of course i use the word struggle very loosely as any person on a paladin that isnt horrible can just rotate blind/divine stuns to pick up adds that get loose after the initial ae aggros land.

The biggest single thing that should determine whether you want to play a class or not is if you enjoy it. Both of the guilds I was apart of I joined as the unwanted 3rd monk now look at me mom, I beat SoD.
 
Silosobi said:
I disagree with some of that tank stuff... SKs are better DPS than a warrior usually, and pallys only have the best mitigation on a solo/duo/exp situation. Warrior mitigation is amazing as a main raid tank, and SKs can self heal about as much as the pally, since the pally spends way more time/mana on agro than the SK. Pallys are amazing for their group HOT though, being a full main tank and still providing significant group healing makes them the premier 6 man tank for a lot of content.
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Both knights could be considered a premier 6 man tank depending on the fight. SK self healing is good enough that it probably rivals paladin self healing. But while doing the healing SK are doing near double the damage of paladins and if you're truly doing cutting edge 6 man, which nobody does, the dps difference could make or break a fight/phase. On top of the dps/sustain SK benefit significantly more than other tanks from vah back or curses with spears/touches/taps they contribute a considerable amount more for pushing those important phases than a paladin.

Warriors are quite a bit less desirable for 6 man anymore because they lack the ability to self preserve as efficiently as either knight. All the talk about which tank is best for what is near pointless however because by the time anyone new to the high tier game gets to the point of tanking it they will either get carried by grossly over geared/knowledgeable people or fail miserable with people who are just bad at the game, sometimes both at the same time.

All shards of dalaya boils down to is whether or not you enjoy the class you are playing and the people you are playing with.
 
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Yeah SK dps can definitely help. Those pally HOTs can be just as crucial depending on the fight/setup though.

Warriors are king kong of mitigation, which makes them super valuable on raid bosses that meele hard. 6 man and duo/exp stuff just doesn't hit nearly as hard though, making the self healing of pally/SK outstrip a warrior's mitigation.
 
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