The Spirit Realm

Okay guys. Not a very normal question. I'm leveling up currently, at level 61. I have a 72 druid friend who I recently went to the arena with...and got slaughtered. He's bazaar geared, not top of the line either. Around 8k mana I believe. Soo, I was wondering if when I level up to around 70 or 71 with some AA's under my belt, if I will be able to take him. Easy, okay, hard? Any stratagies are appreciated.

Shaman are pretty much on the bottom rung of the EQ PvP ladder.

Bleh, that kindof took my dream and broke it..heh. Is it possible if hard to beat a druid?

Resists are key when dueling with a caster. Being 11 levels behind him hurts you big time, not to mention your resists probably aren't too stellar at that level, so I'm guessing that a lot of your spells were bouncing off of him while his were landing on you. So getting those 11 levels is the first step towards having the closest thing to a chance.

Once you're there, you just have to watch out for his DS since few of your spells will land on him anyway and beating on him will be your only way to do damage. Pretty much at that point it's just a question of who can heal the longer.

So to answer your question, is it possible? Yeah, it's possible once you close the level gap, but in all likelihood once you get to that point, I'd imagine both of you will give up when you're two or three hours into the duel and neither of you's managed to get the other less than 70%

I don't think you've got much chance, with an 11-level difference between you; but with even levels and equipment you can take this guy.

In terms of defense, you want a solid layer of maybe 10 unimportant buffs up front, and then you want to put focus and stamina in slots that he will have a hard time cancelling. You also want a couple of instant clickies, like sow boots and coldain ring. You want to make it hard for him to get all your buffs off. In between spell casts, click both clickies, to refill your buff bar with stuff that he is going to have to cancel before he can kill off your important buffs. You also want to keep a HoT on yourself pretty much constantly.

Also in terms of defense, you also want to ask, "what will be his strategy for killing me?" and respond to that. If he decides to try to keep you rooted, so that he can stay away from you and avoid melee, his only way to kill you will be with dots. He is aiming to outlast you, betting that you will run out of mana before he does. If he decides to nuke you, he is aiming to burn you down fast, counting on his damage to overwhelm your healing.

In terms of offense, you want a two-pronged attack: poison dots and panther.

Debuffs. Cancel Magic about every third spell you cast. If he's any good, he will be hitting clickies too, but you hope to get him so busy with heals that he will fail to keep his clickies up, and you will take off all his buffs, including damage shields.

Poison attack. With putrid decay and malos, you can drop his poison resist by 110 points. Your poison dots will probably still bounce several times, but keep casting them. If you land one or two of them, you'll have him pretty anxious. If you land three, you've probably won.

Panther attack. Get close, stay close, keep autoattack on, and keep panther on you and dogdog. Your pet will proc maybe 20 times a minute: that's 8000 hp of damage. That's not much on a 100k hp mob, but it's a lot on a 12k to 15k druid.

Secret weapon. The dogpack can help you win this fight. You can send them pretty early, and then pull your fully buffed pet (including panther) out of your pocket and send him, too: with four dogs biting him, he could be distracted enough that you get most of his buffs canceled, two debuffs landed, and two poison dots running. Or you could save the dogpack for later in the fight, when you are both a bit lower in health and mana, to take over the fight for a minute while you cannibalize and cast a new string of poison dots.

I've beaten a few druids -- but like other posters said, the Shaman is very much at the bottom of the totem poll in EQ PVP. The shaman is extremely strong defensively, but extremely weak offensively.

The biggest advantage you have as a shaman is that you can outlast your opponent. The druid has a finite amount of mana; if you make him use all of his mana then you will win by default.

The trouble with EQ PVP is that at high levels, bothplayers have insane resists and it becomes a truly boring encounter.

The only thing more annoying than a standoff is a fight against a bard. They just suck to fight no matter what class you are.

i fully agree, if the druid and you are the same level and both have decent resists it will be a long fight, and very hard to kill you.

I always foudn the hardest thing about dueling being interupted, and that happens from melees beating on you. So i have never had much issue with being killed by a caster it was just killing them. But panther helped a lot.

dispell and clickies as others said are goodness.

Oak,

If the levels were closer you could easily take this guy... With a few key aa's, it becomes even easier... I have been able to catch a pally off guard and beat him down in a duel... so it is possible...

This thread is ridiculous. I quit the game a long time ago, when 65 was the cap, and then I briefly got my character to 70 and quit again. I doubt the game has changed so much that shaman went from being one of the best PVPers to one of the worst. I didn't even have spirit of the Leopard, my only source of DPS was damage shield and epic clicky; assuming my opponent had at least 200 PR and DR.

If a druid was fully geared, I would never fight them; nobody would win, it would just go on for hours. Healing classes dueling is possibly the most boring thing in the game. Back then shaman had no DPS spells to use in PVP, and that was really our biggest weakness. We are, however, the hardest class to kill in the game. Just make sure to use junk buff clickies likes sow boots or AoN, and dispell them fully before you malos. You really should be able to kill any nonhealing class, besides a really good bard or SK. Though spirit of the leopard may have changed that.

You'd be surprised at how much the game has changed since PoP. I can't speak for PvP, but honestly - it's not as if the other classes have remained stagnant. We gained Lassitude & Panther ... what do you think druids got as improvements?

When you do get around to fighting him again, do it in one of the smaller arenas if you want the fight to be over in a reasonable amount of time. Druids are kitemasters and the big Arena will make you cry.

Meleeing a Druid will make you cry. Fernspike, esp on a proc is majorly harsh.

you will definitly need lvls, and no we aren't the worst pvp class, dealing with a druid or any caster will need tools but is definitly doable, mana tap hammer and such, hell if both toon had it you will probably outlast him anyway, dispel pots are good too ( considering they dispell random slots, philter of major negation ), don't bother using dots or at least don't rely on them too much you have a slight chance of landing it and against a priest that has RC it's close to useless, get your spear nuke up and use it to dish some dmg, meleeing with panther is good as long as you keep dispelling the guy, fernspike is mana intensive and considering our hit rate we won't be smacking him a lot but mostly relying on procs.

priority : get a mana tap hammer ( DoD mission / VT are the two that come on top of my mind ), work on resists some but most druid dots are very hard to resist, so this will be done to prevent nukes to some extent or at least cause them to mitigate, don't use haste when fighting him and make sure you have a lot of insta clicks, those are buffs lifesavers.


worst classes for a shaman to fight in pvp are : shamans / clerics / druids / pallies / sk / ranger, im not saying they can't be killed but with some luck and the right things it can be won, at the high end the loop goes more as follow : zerkers / monks / sk's / rangers, clerics being a no go for pretty much anyone that cant perma stun and nail them down asap.