Shattered Kingdoms

Auto res until we have the numbers to support the current dynamic again.

Or no penalties for everything except reincarnate would be nice!

Add a generous amount of strong and overpowered wands and scrolls of locate object in light and dark cities, with -atleast- 4 charges please. This change would actually interest me quite a bit. With a player base this small, independence is very attractive.

Idly, on that note, I feel like Shamans should have gotten locate object when Necros/Paladins/Hellions got pieces of enchant/consecrate added to their spellsets.

Would make perfect sense as the Shaman could ask a spirit to go look for a thing, wouldn't actually make the class any 'stronger', and would at least /slightly/ decrease the whole "why in the world would you play a Shaman when you can just play a Priest" thing that is fairly strong with lower playercounts. (Yes, yes, shamans do different things, but still.)

I've always agreed with this logic, it always made sense to me that they should have always had locate + ID.


This logic I don't really understand, outside of consecrate/ gate/ rez. Shamans have always been pretty buff and always quite competent in solo play. I must confess I haven't played a shaman in years, though, and they've undergone a lot of tweaks/debuffs since that time. They used to be quite competent in solo play, comparable or tougher than priests when going toe-to-toe in PvE, especially outdoors. How would you stack Priest v Shaman these days?

Didn't you kind of answer your own question there? Shaman and Priest are both support classes, but priest get gate/consecrate/rez/locate/religion spell whereas shamans get brewed spirit aura, dispel, sleep, maledictions and higher personal tankiness with self-cast spirit aura.

Even with spirit aura being completely unique to shaman, it's a total blowout. You could arguably make the case for sleep/maledictions being useful to cc groups of NPCs or debuff bosses, but that's rarely applicable as most times your mana would be better spent just adding another heal to the tank, given that maledictions aren't guaranteed.

Imagine that I'm building a group for PvE.
If I had to choose between having one shaman or one priest, I'd always choose the priest.
If I had a priest already, and I was given the choice between another priest and a shaman, I'd choose the shaman.
I'd love to see the reasoning behind someone who thinks otherwise.

Yes, Fist can certainly change the conversation, but balancing classes around a lightie-only cabal is improper.

As somebody who /loves/ the shaman class (my most successful non-Sorcs were shamans) and I'd wager I played possibly /the/ best PVPing shaman, the problem is a little complicated.

It largely boils down to lower playercounts.

When the who list is 20-30 and there's always plenty of every sort of class around, Shamans are perfectly fine.

When the who list is 5-10 people and you are sometimes waiting days to encounter a specific class of the right alignment, there is just zero reason for anybody to ever pick Shaman over Priest. I've never personally been a super big fan of that 'tank' shaman thing. It can work here and there, but a merc/barb can do it better and actually output damage while doing so.

You can't really just shrug off not having consecrate, gate, resurrection, locate object, and probably an amazing buff via religion spell, when the who list is 5-10 people. It's entirely possible and very likely, that if you're a shaman....nobody who is logged on can do any of those things. If you were a priest, well bam. And you still mostly do the same stuff.

On a different note, shamans are way more of a PVP class than PVE and PVP is non-existent at the moment. Call Lightning and Voodoo, two of the Shamans "big gun" spells have very little use in PVE. Most high end areas aren't "outdoors" for the purposes of call lightning, and even if they are, there's usually not /groups/ of NPCs. There might be lots of NPCs, but they're not in formation.

A shaman is basically a poor man's priest in PVE, and is less "helpful" to the game in general, due to not having consecrate/locate/gate/rez/religion spell.

Also, maledictions aren't really terribly useful these days, or so I hear. I have no experience personally, really.

I appreciate and agree with your points. I was speaking/thinking more in terms of playing solo for one's own enjoyment, not creating a build for group-play.

Good points throughout your post. In thinking on it a bit, I guess I've only played one shaman in the 17 years since Jalma, who was a Fistie Shaman when shamans + fisties both were probably at their strongest (and she always had supernatural skins). Arguably, consecrate is more important in the game now than it was back then, heal/harm was weaker, voodoo was more frightening, and there was always somebody around to cast locate/gate when I needed it. I've never played a priest who could tank + solo as well as that character, but she wouldn't be as powerful these days, and was nowhere near as useful to others in the game as priests have been.

I'd still love to see shamans get astral projection. And sometimes I still miss the dear old medicine belt spell.

Yeah that's basically the idea. Shamans are great... but not if you have to sacrifice your only priest for one. With the playercount of today, when choosing to play a shaman over a priest you are doing just that.