Advice for a returning former raiding shaman

[Jaraman]

I originally tagged these questions at the end of the "fairly new shaman" post, but it seems I have enough material to warrant its own thread (I'm assuming that the EQplayers mechanics let you see everything):

AA's
So at 1563 AA's for lvl 77, I've got most bases covered, hopefully. When it comes to getting new AA's, I lean more to these:

1) something novel and important,
2) some improvement on the defensive side (CC, emergency tools, shield block, etc),
3) better healing,
4) better damage.

My question is what to focus on for the next 50 AA's or so...in my mind, the top contenders are, in order: IT, mnemonic retention, more ranks of Ancestral Guard and Shield Block and Combat Stability, healing gift, twincast/twinproc, Tigir's AE slow, last Pact of the Wolf rank, more Fury of Magic, all come to my mind. ..

Not so much on the mind is AA slow (I hotkey TA and use lassi), more ranks of Spirit Call (hear there's a bug at higher levels?), any of the "hastened" lines, abundant healing/gift of mana, any of the "over-time" increasers like healing boon/adept or destructive cascade or such... game is too hard-hitting and fast-paced for these to really be high priority, correct?

Lastly, since I will most definitely be 2-boxing a mage/shaman duo, I'm strongly considering beefing up the pet as much as possible... what say you?

Gear
Don't know where to begin on this one. It's painfully sentimental to even think about replacing all this hard-earned and long=planned gear with new stuff. I hear group gear is pretty solid now, surpassing yesteryear's raid gear. I don't even know where to begin with a long-term strategy on what to replace and in what order, not to mention the quests/camps to get each piece and then how soon they will be outdated by higher levelling. I suppose I should give up any remnant hopes of at least being able to off-tank a bit, and I suppose certain new effects (clairvoyance?) are more of a concern than the old standard of HP/AC then mana that shaman used to have as priorities....sigh...so much to learn, so little time....

Spells

Accursed browser jitter within me reply window, forcing me to type less and get to the point -- bottlomine, frost gift then straight heals after counterbias and AI for emergencies, the rest business as usual, right....?

Quests
Anything spectacularly important to give high priority here to?.... thanks in advance

[Kanamori Hitatomi]

I'm slowly leveling a mage like you (at 65 now) and I find that if you are going to let the pet tank while two boxing shaman/mage, the boon/adept/cascade would almost be necessary to do much of anything. Those dots and hots are important in anything above trivial stuff. As for the AE slow AA, it is limited to 3 or 4 targets max. If you might be in the situation with a really bad pull or respawn, it's just better to have that AE slow/rune spell up (unlimited targets). All of the "gift of" AA line are important IMHO as you can use that gift to cast large mana cost spells (at least until you get to the point that you have so much mana you can't go oom in a battle) like the sting line spells or the proc line spells. It is an AA line though with deminishing returns as you gear up though. Though, I'm sure following xpack spells will factor in that you "should" have 40k mana at the start for tuning . Your mileage will vary on this one I think. As for new stuff, heroic stats, clarivoyance, and the new sympathetic weapon augs seem quite important now. The cleric group heal proc has made it's way to shaman useable weapons, so meleeing when not casting and geting group heal procs at 500 procratemod seems like a good use of your time if not doing anything else.

I'm largely in the same boat as you (with less than half the AAs), I left EQ as beta began for SoD. I'm a former raiding shaman (we were in factory in SoF when I left) that's looking to get back to raiding (perhaps if time/work is going to let me) or working in the grouping game. Thing is, most of my gear isn't just obsolete, it's downright sad for alt gear atm. It was extremely scary at the mudflation when I got back and I'm now OVER 24k HP and about 2.5k AC behind in gear (ya, I know that perhaps 10-15 people in all of EQ has that as a shaman right now). Tank HP has just gotten flat out huge, my non-crit heal wouldn't even move their HP bar, literally). All that is very intimidating. Right now, I'm leveling my zerker and rogue alt accounts so that I can "full" group missions with mercs tanking and main healing for me. At least as far as that will let me go. Might go hang out in Crystallos for awhile and AAXP at 80 and gear up a bit there too. Not gearing up and try to "rely" on a group to directly upgrade to "current" gear is not really an option, AE DoTs/AE nukes/et al have crossed into the grouping game hardcore. I just will not survive there and be of use to any group (and definately in any raid capacity if work allows me to return to that type of play) it really seems like. Perhaps I'm over stating it, but I've heard horror stories of how easy SoD was to finish (thus no one but the occasional alt available for tier flagging missions), but UF sucks bad.

From what little reasearch I've done, it looks like leveling/gearing up would best be started by doing boomerrang stuff/group legacy stuff. Group legacy missions are going away (at least for a few months, but who knows) in Sept/Oct, so this might not be a real path to do unless you can pound them non-stop due to earning few beer per mission and good group gear is something like 21 or so beers each slot. The merchant is supposed to remain, but the missions will be unavailable for the new xpack release. There's rumors that the missions themselves might not come back (and others saying new missions might be available when he does return), probably due to nerfing the beers earned per mission (gear was entering the world way too quick), leveling newbies/alts very rapidly, gaining obscene amounts of AAs per mission, and the ability to afk xp in PoK/ with mission task adds. I got a strange feeling (along with looking at what is available to be bought) think the mission giver will not return. Haven't heard anything about the boomerrang missions (are they related to the legacy stuff?) going away, so it seems a viable gear up method. There's some great stuff there. Just creating an alt magelo profile with that stuff , it's like 5600HP/Mana+ and around 600 AC above what I have, along with updated focuses to level 85 (of which is really necessary for me, mine are really bad atm).

After that, I'm looking at SoD/UF progression and almost thinking to hold off until the new expansion to see if the gear from these two expansions is necessary to have to get (and I mean is it tradeskill upgrades from the previous armor, from the little I've seen, it is that way with SoD/UF). That and from what I've heard, it is near impossible to find people to go through the flagging stuff to get to where meaningful upgrades to the PoK stuff is. 4 hour missions don't sound fun to begin with and without good groups of raiders, or nearly perfect trifecta groups of real groupers, it sounds nearly impossible to get flagged. This sucks pretty bad for flagging for raiding too (as it doesn't sound like there's any real backflag stuff).

I guess all that means is I need to get back to my job here and create some new damn magelo profiles and figure out where/how/who this stuff is gotten from.

[Brohg]

[Ughbash]

As Brogh mentions (and I said in an earlir psot) get your AA slow. It is WAY better than TA. Get it and don't look back.

You also may want to consider leveling to 80. With 1500+ you have the AA basics covered and level 80 will open up a TON of new gear.

As for quests, Void progression (at least E) to get access to korafax.
Bayles Aug Collection Quest(ocean green theme quests) for the Aug to put in your shield.
Bloody Kithicor Collection quest, for the aug to put somewhere else.

For SoD collection quests and progression I would reccomend

You may also want to get your T8 and T9 flagging done for UF (those will take groups and not sure if you are strictly solo/duo or not).

[Tordail]

[Jaraman]

Thanks bunch, guys, the replies so far are enough to keep me busy for a few months. Looks like Shammyknight and I have a full plate ahead of us...

[Jaraman]

One other thing --- farming. Buying cultural armor sounds like I'm going to need a million plat or so. Jara was never a rich guy, so how woudl he go about getting the funds to purchase Cultural? Thanks.

[Tordail]

On the rare occasion I need plat, I just clean out Dulak's Harbor. /shrug. Um ... I think you can also have good luck selling tradeskill items, like Cosgrove Powder or the Rogue poisonmaking components. Beyond that, I don't know. I'm not a big bazaar guy and don't spend much plat.

[shamy60]

good gears at lv 80+,i can help you there in zones like pelucid grotto,items / clay ,req lv 80 and are about 800+ hp / mana.good start at lv 80.i can do the templates needed for the clay (need template ,vendor sold item (1k plat ) and the clay for the no fail combine ).where i usually kill in pelucid grotto to farm cash / items for alts / friends ,there are 6 nameds ph who are close each others.2 of them drop sellable items (xorux / gyi nameds ) .

[Ughbash]

[Jaraman]

[Ughbash]

[shamy60]

well i have no clue about dps mercs,i never played with someone who had one yet.
i don't know it mage pet would keep agro with the dps merc.
i know i can cast 5 dots and cast sting dd when it's up and don't get agro.
with a merc healer i usually don't check much pet hp,i am going full dps.
against nameds i pull out my 2nd merc healer and sometime on harder named i have to help on heals here and there.
don't get the merc tank,they are weak and dumb.(they might be good on lower levels but at your level 76 +, specially since you will play a mage also,the mage pet will be better tank than the merc ).............

[Jaraman]

Woot, thanks so much to Bobino shammy, Crazyboi monk, and Bobipet mage, Jara now has at long last gotten his FD ring! I know, old school item, old school news, but for someone who played from 2002 to 2007, this is one long unfulfilled goal that is now DONE.

[Ughbash]

[shamy60]

GRATS jaraman

i was a little rusty with my monk since i didnt play him for about a year,but was not too bad hehe ,i forgot to cast some disc here and there tho,used the impenetrable disc to avoid the instant DT here and there .