Which AA path for my set up?

[Methica]

I was hoping for some input on what would be best to give some good support damage.

I'm grouping mostly right now with a monk and or mage friend and always my ranger box. We're all about 75. I'm pretty happy with where my group support and beneficial AAs are at for now so I'm trying to maximize the DPS I can add to our set up as it seems to work best under the "kill it before it kills us" mentality. I was wondering if I'd get more benefit out of going down the critical affliction, nuke crit, or even something else path. Right now I just slow and keep melee buffs running, and when GoM procs throw out a sting. I've pretty much decided that it's better to run the melee proc even though it resets swings right now because it's still more damage / mana between the melee types and how quickly stuff dies.

I'm thinking that going for the nuke AAs might be good for my current playstyle. Any input is greatly helpful. I know in the long run you ideally get both but for now what should be my priority?

[Yesak]

Would be helpful to get a magelo or something to let us know what AAs you already have. Just immediate gut reaction, go for nuke crits. You dont have a real "tank" class in your boxing set up so going full in with DoTs means you have the risk of agro, and DoTs are rather time/mana/spell slot consuming, particularly since you look like you're healer for the group as well. However, its really up to you. Do you want to cast 2 DoTs? 3? 4? Do you want to spend most of your attention on shaman or your other toon? Lots of variables we need to know before we can really say anything definitive.

[fendaann]

More DPS can increase Argo

If you dont have the AA - Spell Casting Subtlety
I would get it before increasing DPS but it might not due full affect if your the main healer.


http://samanna.net/eq.shaman/sham.aas.shtml

[Sowslow]

Did they do something to make Spell Casting Subtlety to work on dots and I missed it?

[Yesak]

Not that I'm aware of, even more reason to work on nuke AA rather than DoT AA

[Macnair]

First of all, I don't think nuke crits are going to reliably give you enough help.

But more important, I don't think multi-tasking your shaman this way makes good sense. You have already made the shaman responsible for keeping a secondary tank alive; now you also want to make the shaman responsible for providing enough extra dps to win. That doesn't sound to me like a formula that will enjoy good success.

Given your setup, I would suggest that you want to get all the healing bonus AAs for your shaman, so that you can do your best to keep the "tank" alive. Let the other toons beat the mobs down. If you need more dps, let the dps classes figure out which AAs they need in order to kill the mob faster.

You could also consider making another friend or two, and bring some more dps characters to the party.

Edit: how tired was I that I didn't proofread this better before I first posted it ...

[Naluken]

That as the problem I had with my SK/SHM combo, I could do the healing fine, or the DPS reasonably well, but BOTH was a tough (for me impossible) task. So I made a cleric to heal since I also liked the rezzes and cleric buffs... Then 1 one of my comps pooped out and and I am back to SK/SHM hehe