75 shm - is it root rot from here?

[Kayleigh]

I play a poorly geared lvl 75 shm. Combination of Elaborate and Gnollish gear. With Gallantry and self buffs, i have about 13k HP. Currently I am root rotting the dark blue drakes and basilisks in Sunderrock. xp is slow but tolerable.

Question is: am I limited to rot root for solo xp from now on? Are there any spots for xp where I can actually tank stuff?

Previous to moving over to Sunderrock, i was in PoStorms and tanking the rock dervishes, cactus, armadillos fine.

But now, even with Steadfast Servant, the drakes and basilisks are just hitting too hard. Any help appreciated.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

get a merc tank.

I am assuming they are available at lower levels? If not, my apologies.

[Kruzar]

Merc Tanks are available at 75 for sure, and I would recommend getting one of those. I have one on my Lvl 75 Shammy, which is pretty much geared similar to you and I am able to keep things going fairly easily. I am currently utilizing the T5 Apprentice tank, since I do not have the Journeyman levels updated as of yet. What I do is pull something in.. have Lassitude on the tank.. let the Tank get in there and mix it up.. send in Dog Dog.. then slow, heal, panther, etc...depending on the mob. The great thing about the Mercs is they are pretty close to acting like a real player, so you can buff them and you can even pre-HoT if you think things are going to be nasty. You can also add in some root rotting with the Tank to keep the mob in one place for him to kill.

The nice thing is if you encounter another player out in the world and want to team up the Tank can either be DPS or can do some tanking for the simple group. I know I am personally really enjoying the mercs with my little duo. I can take out the cleric merc with my Rogue for quick stuff, and can go out with the Shammy and the Tank if there are other things I want to do... but I can take all 4 out if I want to get some real stuff done. I have experimented with a wide variety of things with my little combo. I will admit most of my stuff is older content, but I needed some of that for progression rewards and the like for my shammy. With just my 4-some so far, I have completed a couple of MPG group trials, Gone back and done many many LDoNs, Worked on DoN progression missions, and next on my list is some of the spell arcs that were previously missing for my shammy.

So yeah... there are now some other options than just root rotting. (And if you want to Tank.. get the Cleric merc... they are pretty decent healers and have been able to keep my Rogue up soloing. )

[Cromagnon]

Not sure on your AAs, and the other posts about the mercs (tank and healer) are very good suggestions.

But, if you want to be able to tank solo as a shammy, make sure that you have Combat Agility (General Tab - Avoidance AAs) up to max for level firstly, and secondly that you get Combat Stability (General Tab - Mitigation AAs) up to max for level afterwards.

Good way of remembering is the mantra: Its better to not get hit, than to get hit for less, and this applies to EQ 99.99% of the time.

In any of the newer expansion, not having these, and expecting to be able to evenly / efficiently take damage is just not realistic. The mobs themselves are usually balanced with a certain base defensive AA counts (read combat agility and stability) in mind. You will get the most bang for the buck out of the Combat Agility first, but the stability will help quite a bit as well. Also, ensure that you have the best Improved Dodge focus that is available, you might try aquiring the +5% dodge focus type 3 aug (stacks with Improved dodge ) from the Everfrost LDoN, and just in general working to more of a tanking approach if you get no joy from root rotting, and want to be able to solo mobs heads up tanking.

Just a thought, and g'luck,
Crom

[Macnair]

The merc is good when you are facing a mob that summons and therefore must be tanked, or when you are facing two mobs you cannot split.

Otherwise the best strategy I have found is root rot all the way.

I just don't see any way that a merc plus shaman can match the dps of a root rotting shaman. A lot of your attention must be devoted to keeping the merc alive. Even with cougar on merc and dogdog, you won't add up to the dps of 5 or 6 dots running.

Plus when the mob dies, the merc is going to claim half the experience. You'd have to kill 10 mobs with the merc to gain the same experience that you'd get from root rotting five.

It works different for the multi-boxers, of course, because they have an extra toon or two for dps. But if you are playing just a shaman, I find it to be way more effective to keep the merc in my pocket until the named pops, and bring him out just for that.

[Veril]

tank mobs IN TAH FACE with a merc healer. fun fun fun

[Kayleigh]

Thanks for all the replies. Sounds like mercs are the way to go. Unfortunately i only have 14 out of 15 expansions

I tried the lower level drakes in sunderrock which i did tank ok with steadfast servant. I am just looking for faster kills than just root rot. I might head over to Vergalid Mines once Sunderrock stops being a hot zone. I hear those lotus things just cast.

<edit> One small add on question, when root rotting, what dots should i be using? I put Juju, Breath of Ternsmochin, and Vengeance of Ahnkaul. Are there any other dots that i am missing? Oh for my aa i have up to rk2 Blood tithe.

[Yesak]

People are in love with their mercs, and no doubt they are freaking awesome. However, they do steal XP and it is true that tank merc + dogdog will at best match your DPS output with full DoTs. It is my opinion that you should just stick with root rotting, unless you simply cannot stand it. Solo tanking is an option, but I rather hate it. I only use it when I'm soloing in RSS (good AA while it's a hotzone and I can kill 2-3 or more at once). Still, my DPS and mana consumption and overall safety are MUCH higher root/rotting. Particularly if you have VP, it is a breeze.

Honestly, if you are as poorly geared as you say, I dont know why you want to tank solo anything. If you want to tank solo mobs, why are you a shaman? It seems that your playstyle and character do not line up very well at the moment. That might change if/when you get better gear though. I'm just curious as to your reasoning.

[Kayleigh]

Hi Yesak, yes I am coming to that realization that my expectations are out of line.

I came back to this game this summer at lvl 65 since i had some spare time. Did a bit of soloing and grouping but concentrated on levelling up and just picked up stuff in baz. 65 to 72 was easy to tank. I think i was in Crypt of Nadox and the stuff there just hits so light. I think at 68 or 69 i moved to PoStorms. The armadillos, cactuses, etc. were also easy to tank. Now at lvl 75 things are different.

I guess it was the way i grew up and the play style I grown accustomed to for 74 levels before. "Tank da face". doggie by your side, click JBB (don't worry, i bagged that bracer long ago LOL). Sigh....i feel so druid-ish now.

[Macnair]

[Kayleigh]

i did not know they stacked. so as an example, for the cursed line, i would stack Juju with Curse of Sisslak?

[Macnair]

Yes.

Stack Juju, Curse of Sisslak, and ... Bane? Is Bane the next one down? I don't remember. Whatever the top three are.

Similarly with the poison dots, stack your best three.

[Kayleigh]

thanks for the advice.....really opened my eyes on this one. Now i am wondering what else i do not know.

[Yesak]

Best way to find out what you don't know is to read these boards or talk/play with some of the guys on here. Some of us are really old skool, some are just old, some are new, wide variety to go through. But almost all of us have at least a good working knowledge of our class. Feel free to ask questions around here too like you did, I might be harsh at times but I mean well

[Veril]

To be honest you will do AA/Exp a lot faster solo that with any sort of a merc.

For root rotting here's what you need:
1) The PoP Legs that have clicky root on them (you can buy the ornate chain in the bazaar, and all the other bits as well).
2) Spells: Hot, Canni, Malis, Load up all the other spell slots you have with dot's. Use top 3 poison and top 3 curse dots.
3) Virulent Paralysis 3.
4) AA Slow.
5) Make sure you have focus effects for your Magic and Poison dots. Tribute them if you need to.

Here are things that are nice to have if you can get them (ideally make them yourself) - the cumulative effect is significant.
1) Detrimental Extension Potions - they last 3 hours (I think III or IV at your level) +1 tick on dots really adds up.
2) Clarity and Spirituality potions.
3) Poison/Magic mana preservation potions.

1) Pull a mob from long range with Malis, and root with root pants as it runs towards you.
2) Slow it when you have time using AA slow inbetween DoT Casts
3) Use AA Canni in-between DoT Casts when it is up and HoT's to keep yourself alive.
4) Apply 3 curse dots, then 3 poison dots. re-root. when curses start to wear off reapply them. re-root. when poison starts to wear off reapply them re-root and then reapply curses (they will have worn off ). re-root.
Loot mob.

VP is your emergency root that will save you when things go badly wrong (i.e. mob keeps breaking root and beating on you, double pulls etc). I reserve VP for that rather than using it as my main root spell.

Get spiritual channelling if you don't already have it. That 5 minutes of infinite mana really helps keeping you going without any downtime for a lot longer.
Then get all your DoT AA's.
Get a bunch more AA's - it's worth getting them at 75 as mobs are a lot less tough and easier to kill at that level than at 80 or 85.

This is how I go about root-rotting. It's worked well for me for hundreds of AA's

[Kumeldar]

I have Duoed a warrior and shaman forever, playing on 2 seperate computer so shaman does get a workout. But doing Beta I realized just how powerful a shaman can be solo. Warrior and merc healer could easily tank and kill mobs in OGH and Blackburrow but it took forever to kill em, using haste potions and just the mercs and self buffs, compared to what I normally do with shaman buffs, haste, Panther and pet and Dots.

Then I took a betabuffed shaman out solo root rotting and I could kill mobs so much quicker solo just using VP and root rotting them.

Made me a sad warrior to realize the shaman has better DPS then I do.

[Scalia]

Disclaimer #1: I haven't played since shortly before the expansion release, so I am not familiar with mercenaries and I don't have any of the new AAs.

Disclaimer #2: I find root/dotting rather boring, so if I don't have a group/partner, I usually tank light blue mobs "in the face" in places like Paw. They hit for 700ish and stay light blue until 80 (for the most part), but the XP is not what you can get with VP.

Having said that, when I root/dot, I usually have the highest level disease debuff (for VP) and Malo* (for DOTs) loaded before I pull. I pull with the disease debuff and then park the mob in a reasonably safe place with VP. I then apply Malos*, use the slow AA (just in case) and switch spells to a straight DOT/HOT lineup. After that it's poison/magic DOTs all the way with an occasional reapplication of Canni and VP as needed. I used disease DOTs at lower levels, but at 80 they didn't seem to make much sense since I had plenty of higher DPS DOTs and mana efficiency wasn't an issue with Canni. YMMV.