A few tips?

[Arkendar]

Well, I'm coming back to EQ for at least a month. Any further than that will be decided at the end of the month.
I decided to not come back to my rerolled 3box (Mage/bard/necro), and went back to my original main..My monk. (Currently 83/ 677 AAs) .
Now, I do have two accounts running, my monk, and then my mage/shaman account.
Mage is lvl 80, 550 ish AAs, shaman is 75, 100 AAs.

Obviously, the most popular box account for a monk is the shaman, but I always have a hard time playing my shaman, even as a box. He was pretty much powerleveled to 75, and the only thing I really know how to do on him is to cast his buffs. His gear is pretty crappy (think he has 10k mana or less), so he doesn't really have the mana to be casting nukes and DoTs all day, however..
My general setup for his spells is to have all of his group buffs that he has.. Think that's the str, agi, haste, Lassitude, Panther, Champion, That..dodge one?, Dire focusing. Then he has a slow, and two others, I can't remember. Only thing I've ever managed to make myself do for him is to cast slow on stronger things (named pulls that will take more than 20-30 seconds), otherwise I just cast group panther and turn on autoattack while my monk has lassitude on.

So he adds a little bit of DPS, never really heals or anything, and I then just get bored of having him around. So I stop logging him on, and end up just soloing on my monk.
It's to the point where if I want to 2box, I'll just log on my mage instead. I actually have fun on my mage because I feel he's contributing something to the group.
However, I also believe having a shaman/monk duo would probably be more..Suitable. Probably works better than having two DPS classes?

So, this post is mostly along the lines of "What the hell can I do on my shaman to make him more than a buffbot?" I don't know the class, at all, especially after numerous breaks. I don't know what half the spells do, or what I should be casting, or when I should be casting it. Any tips or tricks anyone can recommend that might make me want to level/gear him and actually use him over my mage would be much appreciated.
Thanks!

[Kanamori Hitatomi]

First off, level your shaman to 90, do what you can of this before (which is most of it). Shamans have gotten a lot in the way of good healing during the HoT expansion. I commonly duo with a monk (granted he has pretty awesome gear) in T4 with little problems. Your milage may vary depending on your equipment level. In HoT, getting through the mission progressions to T4 is pretty easy. Even with no actual fighting in T4, you can get really solid upgrades for the shaman from the Dream Motes merchant in dream Ferrott. Every mission drops a piece of gear (and there's quite a bit of monk only items in the missions I've noticed) and a spell rune. Those runes are also tradeable, so you can get your Rk 2 spells without ever having done anything in HoT. Prices on these runes will continue to drop in the bazaar. For now, get your shaman into the highest level of defiant gear your can, it will do good for your hp and mana reserves (ya, the defense and heroic stats aren't all that good, but it will suffice for a bot until you can get the gear in T4 HoT). Loot rots commonly in T4, once you've gotten the progression stuff done, go hang out there for upgrades!

Using your shaman as a bot for your monk, the majority of the spells you should be casting are:

which slows the mob for 1 min (note no wear off message) and a fairly large HoT on the mob's target), earlier spell in this line is Healing Counterbias.
this is a great group heal spell that is pretty fast cast. Good for healing the group after AEs. This is a new spell line in HoT.
when needed when low on life on your monk (ie round 30%). It's a very fast cast heal, heals the whole group (based on % they are damaged). I find that it has a good chance to crit heal people less than 30% to 90%+. Earlier spell in this line is Antecedent's Intervention and Ancestral Intervention.
for a defensive proc on the monk. Proc slows the mob and heals the monk a small amount (1k or so). Eariler spells are Languor and Lassitude.
standard heal spell.
standard canni spell.
because everyone likes extra attack. Useful when pet and shaman are melee'ing.
this is your proc DPS. Have a pet up, melee with the shaman and cast this spell. Even with the shaman doing nothing in the dps department, having this on, lets him proc really often at a tune of 900+ damage a proc. Monk and to a lesser degree, the pet, will be proc damage machines. Earlier spell is Talisman of the Lynx and Talisman of the Cougar.
don't forget your pet at the most recent level, it is less nothing dps than before. Mage weapon equipped, I believe fluffy parses at around 600 dps now.
while most shamans don't use this, I find it worth the cast especially with non-tanks tanking.

You say you know about buffing botting, so do that!

Decently mana intensive, but the two new fast dots are good dps for getting the mob down quick. They are and . The top poison and magic dots are worth it, if you have the mana to spare.

Depending on your gear level, at level 90, you can defeat the mobs in Anguish to get your shamanbot an Epic 2.0 globe. The rest of the quest should be trivial.

[Sowslow]

I find myself using Pack of Wurt a lot now when botting as I don't notice the mana drain as much and it adds some extra dps every so often.
Get one of the HoT BP for the Tiger duration increase and try to get the slot 3 augs to help all your HoT spells and then maybe some of the lower ones you might still cast.
Also depending on mob type, Feralescense isn't horrible to add in on top of Cripple. It doesn't work on all mob types so it is really situational but you might find it helps a little.

[Arkendar]

Getting to level 90 for me won't be quite that fast, as I do play casually. only play 3-4 hour streaks and only on my days off, so my xp is pretty slow.

Thanks for tips with spells, though. Does help knowing a bit about any of the spells available, rather than just looking at them and trying to figure out what everything does. Should be able to get him to 80 without too many issues, but that'll wait til after I finish my monk's Bayle's aug (got like 5 more missions and it's just faster for me to be able to flop through to where I need to be). After that, will start working on shaman's SoD progression. Should be able to get him J2, if not J3.

Atm I'm hoping that just getting shaman to 80 will let me take out FoS named to upgrade my monk's gear out of the old Gnollish leather crap he's got. Monk +his cleric merc can take out the trash in FoS, but the named are still a bit too tough (only tried Fluttershade, but I assume the rest are about on par with that one).

Two more questions to throw out there. If I'm duoing monk + Shaman + mercs, and the mercs are not J5, using the monk to tank, would 2x Healer or 1x healer 1xDPS be better? I'm thinking 2x healer would probably be the "Safer" bet for trying to upgrade my gear, but can't hurt to ask.

Also, on spells: I have no characters with SoF factions. However, I notice that the spells aren't nodrop. Does this mean that I can find someone with the factions and have them buy the spell for me? I know I could do that with my SoD tomes (at least Synergy), but can I do it in SoF? I'd rather not spend weeks in SoF farming faction or spell drops (as I'm not the biggest fan of SoF zones).

And okay, a third question, though I said two. Any grinding spots you guys recommend? I know there's always RSS, but I've gotten tired of going there (Plus I hate the run). Would need to be tankable with a ~22k hp, 3.3k ac monk / j3 healer merc. and safe enough for a 10k hp ish 75 shaman to not die every 5 minutes. Any place I can upgrade my gear on shaman (or monk, though that'd probably be too tough atm) is a bonus.
TBS gives 1% a kill for the shaman off the pirates, but after doing the hand aug near twice, just zoning into that place makes me want to log off.

Thanks again

[Kanamori Hitatomi]

Well first off, search the bazaar for any possible upgrades. Defiant armor should be upgrades for most slots I would think if your shaman is at 10k or so. Probably better on focuses too. Remember to check your loyalty merchants for platnium bags if you need extra cash, or other currencies for stuff like augs or whatnot from old epansions. Looking that you're in gnoll gear, you most definatley could use the defiant upgrades IMHO. I think some of the lower attunable (level wise that is) would be an improvement too. Since I know some of the missions drop monk only items, you might be able to get the upgrades on the cheap.

As a shaman main, when I returned to EQ a few months ago, I spent a lot of time in Old Bloodfields root rotting mobs to get up to level 85, honestly didn't take that long. I would think that with a slower/minor healer and two healer mercs, that would be quite sufficient. As a lvl 90 shaman with T1 merc tank, I can keep him up on 3-4ish mobs. So, I would think you'd be able to handle tanking with your monk in most SoD zones. XP in at least the Old Bloodfields was pretty good (1%-ish real xp per kill solo with lessons running), other zones might be plus or minus. At first until you get the hang of it, I'd stick the shaman close to the wall that you pass through and pull with the monk. Most of the non-Kyv mobs are snarable/rootable/VP'able IIRC if things start going not so good! How many classes can claim to have people still using their ornate (as in PoP ornate) clickies!!! I love my root pants.

Another zone that would be quite trivial for earning XP would be the Old Blackburrow instance. It's easy to get flagged for it, if your shaman isn't yet. Kill rates there would be much quicker than other places, but you have to balance that with the much lower XP gain rate. I would avoid UF zones like the plague, and HoT might be a bit rough until your monk and shaman are lvl 85+ with better gear. Mobs there can hit for quite a lot, but most things are root rotable (definately different than UF). Getting together with others if you are so inclined can help on earning dream motes (and missions give 5% real xp per completion along with what you earn in the mission), which based on what tier of HoT you are flagged for unlocks pretty impressive non-visible items (hell I raid and I'm wearing some pieces).

As for spells, SoF spells are droppable for some rank 1s (which the rank 2s are faction locked) and rank 2s (which the rank 1s are faction locked). Overall, pretty easy to get a workable spellbook. I left EQ partially through SoF and never worked faction significantly (probably won't unless I'm working on an alt, the buyable augs from there pale to other expansions).

As for tanking, I think you're just going to have to attempt a few named to get an idea how taxed your merc(s)/shaman are on healing you. If they're ending the fights fairly high in mana, you might consider going to a DPS merc. Melee DPS mercs are fairly decent and never really seem to run out of endurance on burn mode. Just not as good as a person of course!

[Arkendar]

Only one issue with using bazaar to buy upgrades is that I play on the test server. There're generally like two traders up. Makes it somewhat amusing trying to find a specific item.
Hrm, think I'll start off in FoS soon as I finish my Crest. Won't hurt to get a few pieces of 500-600 hp visible gear if I can take out the named. But for now, yeah.. Crest needs done, I have trouble enough trying to loot things. Oh the joys of having an inventory full of pieces, but not having all the pieces for any combines.

I know my monk could tank Warrens with one healer merc, one tank merc, and a lvl 80 mage. It was close going at times (I died the fourth pull. Though that was because my merc freaked out) but doable. Perhaps throwing another healer on will help a bit more. Probably do more than the tank does, at the very least. was laughable when I flopped aggro to the tank merc and it pretty much instantly died.

It's so odd thinking of using these zones that the last time I played were off limits due to crappy gear. Last trip to game, my monk couldn't even tank Old BB. Now I've gotten a handful of pieces of HoT gear (weapons, mainly), and he's tanking Warrens.. Should be entertaining seeing what happens when I upgrade further.

I'd be playing today, but of course Sony decides the Test server must be down all day on my one day off.. Joys.

[Kanamori Hitatomi]

Yes, HoT gear is that good compared to expansions past. Hell HoT T4 weapons are pretty close to T6 UF raid weapons IIRC.

Being on Test, heh, that could cause a bit of problems finding gear. Meh. Mobs perhaps can drop that defiant stuff perhaps in the mobs you're killing atm.

For all the huge number of subcombine pieces you have in inventory, there is a guy in the guild lobby fairly near the LDoN porter that will store (you sell the items to him) for 1 chronobine per piece. Not sure if he'll buy other items, but all the parts/pieces related to SoD I know are able to be sold to him. That'll help massively IMHO.

[Arkendar]

I remember forever ago them saying something about maybe putting that in. Had no idea it had actually come to pass. Thanks! Will save me a ton of inventory room.
As far as defiant goes, I do occasionally get a piece, but so far I think I've only managed one piece of chain. Upgraded a couple more pieces of monk's gear today, so should help a bit.
I mention that to bring in yet another question.

Buying all these pieces of gear pretty much scraps all my cash, and what I get from killing for the crest, while it adds up over time, isn't the best. Currently don't have money to move augs, much less swap mercs on my shaman. So, anyone know of a decent cash farming spot? I remember TBS could occasionally streak a nice set of cash with the diamonds and things. OMMs were good, but I don't 3box anymore, so would have a bit of trouble picking up the reward, plus I just don't want to do OMMs. BoT is another "Streaky" one, in my memory.

Basically just need something that'll pay for shaman's spells, any merc things I need, and perhaps the occasional upgrade (Which tend to run ~5k on test server). Already used my loyalty stuff to buy a bag of plat for both accounts, and taht cash is gone.
Any ideas? Bonus points if I actually get xp while pulling in the cash, obviously. Only real rule is it pretty much has to be vendor loot, and not "Go farm this and sell in baz". Odds of me selling anything in bazaar are rather slim on test.

[Brohg]

All of Planes of Power is good for strictly cash farming, because the mobs have so few hp compared to the value of their drops. As long as you loot the mobs you're killing, though, basically only Gates of Discord was bad for accumulating plat while farming. If you bottom out on plat to spend, that's just a sign to get out there and play some more. Do some flags, camp some upgrades, or just sit & farm AA if that's your thing.

[Arkendar]

Well, finished my Bayle's crest after 5 hours of foraging for maggots. Shaman will have to wait for that one, I think.
Got shaman to 76, as well.
Think I'll be hitting FoS tonight, hopefully can take out a named or two.
Thanks again for all the help, guys. And start wishing me luck on it actually working.

[Brohg]

maggots are rare forage in Oceangreen Hills, common forage in Bertox Temple. 20-30 min tops to get them in there. Click in through the rocks in Oceangreen Village

[Arkendar]

I was in the temple for 3 hours, actually. and I only got 2 of the maggots there. Ended up buying one off of someone because I was tired of waiting.
The other I got in OGH while trying to get the pinecone / grass

[Brohg]

Hm, poor luck. New recommendation, then: AutoFire 0.4

[Arkendar]

Know of a link where I can get it these days? most places I try don't load anymore.
As far as FoS goes, didn't get much done today. killed for like 30 min, but left before any named spawned. Working on monk's alcohol tolerance instead, as he just got a new charm. I had forgotten how ..interesting..being drunk on EQ was..

[Scalia]