Shaman Builds

[Eeomis]

Because of the many requests in the forums about how people should "build" their shaman, I have decided to put up a sticky about some of the general builds people tend to lean towards, as well as some of the more exotic builds. This is not an exhaustive list but it really gives a good base for understanding how each build performs.

Build Strategies

One of the most contested and argued about things in the Vanguard Shaman world is how to build your shaman. Some will disagree and some will agree with me, but I will go by what I have personally found to be the most viable builds, and some that are borderline. I will try to explain my position and explain how each of the builds can benefit you in some ways, while hurting you in others. There are basically three main builds that a Shaman can do that will make them a viable main healer for a group, which is their intended role in Vanguard. There are many ways to create a shaman but only a few main builds that a true, healing Shaman can go with. I will talk about the main builds first, and then go into specific builds for each Totem.

First off, in case I haven’t mentioned it enough before, Shaman are healers FIRST. Your main two stats in most cases are Wis and Vit. The actual amount of Vit you have doesn’t really matter. What does matter about your Vit stat is that it gives you at least 100% healing average. The higher this number the better but it seems that 120% or so is the average for a true healer build. I aim for 120% and then place points into, and get gear for other areas. After having said that….here we go.

~The Melee Based Shaman~

The melee based Shaman relies on damage from his weapons in combat. Shaman have the ability to use one hand blunt weapons, shields, 2 hand blunt weapons (mainly Great Mauls), and spears. Usually the best choice for a melee Shaman is a Great Maul (as of GU#4), but always consider a weapon’s stats, DPS, and speed when making the final choice. The best way to do this is by increasing Str through point distribution, gear, and racial stat bonuses. Dex will also raise your melee capabilities but only to a small degree compared to Str, because Dex only increases your ranged and critical hit chance. Str raises your outright dmg from melee combat, whether its from autoattack or a special attack. The races that give good bonuses to this stat are Lesser Giants, Thestran Barbarians, Orc, and Vulmane. Lesser Giants get three extra points allocated to Str every level. Thestran Barbarians and Orc get two extra points allocated to Str every level.
Keep in mind that this “Melee Based Shaman” is still a healer first, but chooses to do his damage with weapons rather than spells. Therefore this Shaman will still Max Wis and Vit every level and place any extra allocation points into Str (Place 4 points every level into Wis and Vit and 2 points into Str if you are a non-Human race. If Human place 5 into Wis and Vit and 4 into Str). This should remain constant with your gear as well. If there is a choice between an armor piece with 10 Wis, 10 Vit and 6 Str you should choose that over an item that has 10 Wis, 10 Vit and 6 Int or an item with 10 Wis, 10 Vit and 6 Con. There are other stats that modify your melee damage but this build is focused on healing first with damage as a secondary role.

~The Nuke Based Shaman~

The nuke based Shaman relies on damage from his spells in combat. The best way to do this is by increasing Int through point distribution, gear, and racial stat bonuses. Wis will also raise your nuke capabilities but only because more Wis means more energy, and more energy means you can cast more spells. Int raises your outright damage from nuke combat. Spell damage focus does this as well. The only way to increase this stat is through gear. The only race that gives a bonus to Int, that can be a Shaman, is Goblin. The Goblin race gives one extra point to Int every level but a Human can actually tie the Goblin’s max Int stat (gear aside of course).
Keep in mind that this “Nuke Based Shaman” is still a healer first, but chooses to do his damage with weapons rather than spells. Therefore this Shaman will still Max Wis and Vit every level and place any extra allocation points into Int (Place 4 points every level into Wis and Vit and 2 points into Int if you are a non-Human race. If Human place 5 into Wis and Vit and 4 into Int). This should remain constant with your gear as well. If there is a choice between an armor piece with 10 Wis, 10 Vit and 6 Int you should choose that over an item that has 10 Wis, 10 Vit and 6 Dex or an item with 10 Wis, 10 Vit and 6 Con. Also if you have a choice between an armor piece with 10 Wis, 10 Vit and 6 Int and an item with 10 Wis, 10 Vit and 6 Int and 35 Spell Damage Focus (I will refer to this as SDF from here on out) then you should choose the later.
Here is a quick run down of whether SDF or Int is better for you. The "base" effect for intelligence, is 5.5 * level. That gives 100% effect, with no penalty, and no bonus. Meaning that you need 5.5 points, given by point allocation OR gear, put into Int to actually do 100% damage of your spell. If for instance I cast a level 25 spell, it will "cap" for effect with 450 int (25x18) and 250 (25x10) sdf.
With all that said, for actual effect on your spells, 10 int = 24 sdf, at any level. So that if you have an item that has 10 Int and 24 SDF and an item that has 15 Int and zero SDF, the item with 10 Int and 24 SDF will be “better”.

10 Int and 24 SDF = 20 Int which is greater than 15 Int

Again though, this build is focused on healing first with damage as a secondary role.

~The "I Only Care About Healing" Based Shaman~

The Healer based Shaman relies on healing and having someone else doing the damage in combat. Because of this Shaman is generally someone that has a group every time he plays, he does not care about weapon or spell damage. However I would recommend using a one hand blunt weapon and a shield/focus item in this combo for added survivability. This build has a max Wis & Vit strategy as the others do and places any remaining points into Con. Although this generally doesn’t matter from levels 1 through 45, it will help a bit in the end game with added health and natural resists. (Place 4 points every level into Wis and Vit and 2 points into Con if you are a non-Human race. If Human place 5 into Wis and Vit and 4 into Con). I estimate that at lvl 50 these extra points will equal over 1000 hit points. This should remain constant with your gear as well. If there is a choice between an armor piece with 10 Wis, 10 Vit and 6 Con you should choose that over an item that has 10 Wis, 10 Vit and 6 Int or an item with 10 Wis, 10 Vit and 6 Dex. This is a path that is rarely followed because Shaman have a great ability to play solo. For this build I suggest a balanced race such as; Thestran Barbarians, Humans, Vulmane, or Qalian Barbarians.
Something else that is very important for this build is the Healing Focus stat. Healing focus is similar to SDF in that it raises your maximum ability to do something; in this case it is your ability to heal. The same principles that I went over for SDF applies to Healing Focus. As for a Totem choice I would choose either Hayatet, for its increased energy regen, or Tuurgin for the Str/Con buffs, End regen, and off tank Bear pet.


Now for some Totem specific builds.........


Tuurgin Build

   1. The Tuurgin Shaman leans towards a balanced build because of the abilities given to it. Because it does not do anything all that well many Tuurgin go with a max Wis & Vit build and place their extra points into either Str or Int, and some do 1 point into each. Realistically Int gives the biggest bang for the buck when it comes to DPS however, Str offers an increase in melee dps as well as a boost to block, which goes right long with the Tuurgin’s abilities of Con and mitigation buffs.
   2. Another viable build is a Str, Dex, Wis build and balance it with Vit and HF gear. This will give a great melee based shaman that will still retain some average healing capabilities.
   3. I have personally gone with Wis, Vit (up to 120% healing average), then Con with my Tuurgin. But then again I have a second set of complete melee gear for the occasion that I need to be either dps or off tank.
   4. Yet another build is the full melee build which I will get into below.


Rakkurr Build

   1. Rakkurr leans towards a melee based build because of the abilities it has. Many Rakkurr go with a max Wis & Vit build while placing any extra points into Int because of the bonus Int gives for spell based damage. Because of SDF the gains can be quite a bit higher than a Str build for melee. Personally I save all my energy for debuffs and heals so I have gone with Str as my 3rd stat choice. A problem many Rakkurr have run into is Endurance usage for their melee abilities. Because of this some Rakkurr use Int as their 3rd stat.
   2. Another Rakuur build that is melee based is the Str, Vit, Wis build, which is a very capable opponent.
   3. PvP based Rakuur have found a Dex, Int, Vit/wis build to be quite effective. Mainly keeping an enemy at range and using nukes and thrown spears to kill enemies.

Hayatet Build

Hayatet leans heavily towards a nuke based build because of the abilities it has. Most Hayatet go with a max Wis & Vit build while placing any extra points into Int because of the bonus Int gives for spell based damage. Some Hayatet take it a step further if they are a Goblin, having a naturally high Vit, and do a max Int & Wis build while placing any extra points into Vit. Loading up on Int and SDF gear can make the Hayatet a very devastating opponent. Personally I have a Goblin Hayatet and I have gone the route of maxing Wis & Int and placing any extra points into Vit. I also have light armor with Wis, Int, SDF gear.


“Other Builds”

  This brief section has some of the more interesting builds possible that I have tried with the Shaman class.

~The Maximum DPS Nuke Based Shaman~

A maximum dps Shaman takes FULL advantage of all of the abilities he has that do damage. The main version I have seen of this maximizes Int, SDF, Wis, and Vit in that order. (I have seen a Shaman with Int, SDF, Str, Dex but because his patron was Hayatet he was unable to use his Str as well as a Rakkurr and therefore his Dex and Str stats were mostly wasted). This Shaman would most likely choose Hayatet as his Patron and a Goblin or Human for his race. All gear on this Shaman would most likely be “light” armor with caster stats. Your best bet for getting the best possible gear with these stats will be “Crafter Made” armor. You can get real nice medium armor with these stats made, but drops from mobs usually have caster OR shaman…not both sets of stats.


~The Maximum DPS Melee Based Shaman~

I actually have a Rakkurr with this build. Although it is quite fun and great for solo I would not suggest this build if you ever intend on being the only healer in a group. It will make for a…strained…experience. Rakkurr (could also do Tuurgin) for the Patron choice and either a Thestran Barbarian, Orc, or Lesser Giant for the racial choice. These races also have a racial bonus to Con which is a great bonus. Max Str, Con, Vit for point allocation and gear. Basically grab any ranger gear you can and get some good Wis jewelry. This build can actually be GREAT for adding DPS to a raid, given you have enough healers and are lacking some dps. When raid buffed you will notice the large amount of damage this build can produce....prepare for a nerf bat however as eventually this may not be possible.


Keep in mind that all of these builds are just templates. If your play style leans towards one more than another then use it. Don't think that one is better than the others because each really fills its own niche in the game world.


...discuss...




~Eeom

[Solymnar]

BUILD/PLAYSTYLE CHOICES WITH A RAKURR VIEW
(This is copied with a little editing from my post in the rak section, some of this...well a fair amount...is redundat with the information Eomis posted above)

PET

The rakurr pet does not deal the damage that hyat pets do, nor can it tank like the turg pets do.  This leaves it somewhere inbetween which unfortunately tends to make it fairly ineffective at both.  In terms of pet in most cases (especially if you have a decent weapon) the damage + crit bonus, defensive bonuses and regen bonuses of being in wolf form far outweigh the advantages your wolf pet gives you.  There are exceptions to this, a ranged damage build kiting may benefit extremely well from using your wolf pet's snare ability in some situations (your pet gets this ability at level 25) or if your group despretely needs a snarer.  In nearly all other situations you are best off in wolf form instead of using the pet.

MELEE BUILD

The most common rakurr build and the easiest one to play is going for melee.  In this case your focus on your stats will be a mix of str/wis/vit shifted around depending on how much time you spend healing and how much trouble you have with it or not.

Most people max out VIT and STR first and put the remainder in WIS.  This makes your melee attacks hit pretty hard while giving you strong heals and helps with energy regen and a reasonable energy pool.

Maximizing this build's effectiveness involves staggering heals and melee attacks (your endurance pool temporarily stops regening when you use physical attacks so spamming physical attacks completely drains it and drops you out of a spiritbond "stance" (krigus, nagsul, skamadiz) so ideally you always want to be flipping between Melee attack, spell, melee attack, spell (at the bear minimum wait 1 extra second after using a melee attack so you get one tick of endurance regen).  Sometimes you'll need to simply wait or just focus on spell casting for a bit while your endurance comes back up.   

In this sense tearing claw is a VERY powerful tool both solo and group, it uses very little endurance and deals a pretty good amount of damage with a high str build.  When solo, strike of skamadiz is typically the better choice over vicious bite, any time you are flanking however without question vicious bite is superior.  The debuff from Hammer of Krigus should typically ALWAYS be maintained on your opponents.  It often greatly reduces the damage they deal which means less time spent healing and more time spent busting heads.  This should be the first attack you use in nearly any fight.

Advanced tricks for the melee build:
Macros are your friend, and you can swap out items held in your primary and offhand in the middle of combat.  Getting a healing focus and making a macro on your heal to both equipe the healing focus and switch to krigus stance to boost efficiency can make a big difference, especially in longer fights.  My personal choice is to macro in a sheild of hexes and a good healing focus so that if you get aggro (or are soloing) you minimize the damage you take while healing and are less likely to be interrupted.

Having another macroed attack button to flip back to weapons and scamadiz stance cost you nothing other than being more organized when you fight. 

Pay attention to how long your dots last (tearing claw and spell based, and eventually bite of nagsul etc.) plan to refresh them just after they drop, they are typically the most efficient damage you deal (particularly solo, in groups flanking it will often be vicious bite).  Obviously towards the end of a fight refreshing dots is counter productive and you should use direct attacks (spirit strike, VB, etc.)

Always cast spells or wait one extra second between using physical attacks when reasonable or you will always be out of endurance. 

As a rakurr you have good runspeed, combine this with winter's roar to give you quick distance in a bad situation and hopefully give yourself time to heal and or ideally root your opponent and then heal.  (you can move while casting, not fast but sometimes it matters, physically turn around and run away to max your runspeed when healing on the run, moving backwards or sideways is slower than running forward.)


HYBRID BUILD

So...you have to either wait or use spells between melee attacks in order for your endurance pool to regen anyway, might as well make the most of it right?  That's the hybrid philosophy for Rakurr.  This build usually (helps with healing and energy regen) maxes out vit and takes a mix of int,str and wis.  You won't hit as hard as a pure melee rakurr but your spells pack a harder punch.  The best way (I feel) to do this is to essentially make a melee build but put enough points into your int to keep it around 95% spell damage, when you equip most types of spell focus (especially player crafted ones) it will give you enough int to bump it up to 100% and hopefully max out  your spell damage focus...which means you need YET ANOTHER macro...to swap out two spell damage foci when casting damage spells and flip to nagsul stance.  Doing this essentially puts your spell damage (ideally) up to 130i%ish which is a pretty sweet deal for so few points spent on int.  When choosing gear finding things that have decent energy regen on it will be helpful for this build as you will try to use your energy pool for both healing AND damage spells.

Advanced tricks of the hybrid build:

The hybrid build kites pretty decently as your spells do fair damage, however as a hybrid to make the most of things you will "joust" instead.  This involves kiting your opponent from range with spell dots until you are full health and endurance and then rushing in and blitzing with melee attacks, hitting winters roar and going back to kiting while healing, reapplying wards and letting your endurance pool come back up.  It can be both tricky and dangerous but is often a great way to take down opponents that you could never handle having beat on you for a sustained durration in a reasonable time span.  Usually this = rushing in and hitting krigus, tearingclaw, bite of nagsul, winters roar and run away.  At later levels it will often be some variation of nagsul, hamstring (assuming you have it up), tearingclaw, throatrip, winters roar and as you run away GB for some rediculous dot damage. 

The pure melee build can joust as well but is far more reliant on the damage of their melee dots than any spells they can levy durring the kiting portion.

In either case finding the right pace of things is the whole key.

RANGED BUILD

Takes advantage of rakurr's high combat run speed or the pets snare ability (once you get it) to harrass opponents from a distance with spells and spears.  (player crafted spears in particular pack a pretty decent hit if you have high dex and for a rakurr crit pretty often)  Having high spell damage and a large pool to work with are pretty important with this build, you won't be getting hit much so you won't need strong heals solo, but the energy regen from vit is still handy.  Lastly the more dex the harder your spears will hit when not casting spells.  There are ultimately two ways or persuing this, you can focus on caster healer stats which will allow you to be a great healer and have excellent spell damage but your spears will hit like fluffy pilllows.  This build you max your Int and Vit and put your remainder in wis.  With two good spell damage foci your spells hit pretty damn hard but are also your only solid source of damage, you do have spears and melee attacks to use when your energy pool is running low but they are fairly gimped.  On the flip side your healing with a good healing focus is going to be pretty solid, especially if you have some good energy regen gear to help suplement your heavy dependance on your energy pool.

The other route you can take is a high dex int vit build where you use spears and spell dots to bury your opponents.  You don't need as big of an energy pool since you are not purely using spells for your attacks.  Build is typically a mix of Int, dex, and vit sometimes with wis added in or not depending on the person's preference.  The basic idea is that you keep your spell dots up and chuck spears for good damage inbetween, using a relatively small amount of energy while dealing constant damage to whittle away your foes from a safe distance.  The downside of this build is that you may not have a good enough energy pool for healing through long hard battles.  The upside of this build is you could kite something just about forever and not run out of resources.

Advanced tricks of the ranged build:

When solo, given enough room, you can kite and kill things you have absolutely no right to be fighting  On the flip side it can also be very dangerous and frustrating bearing in mind a few things.

If I can stress the importance of nothing else be extremely mindful of your surroundings, knowing where mobs are and where they wander is key, you need room so figure out what your pattern of movement will be BEFORE you attack.  If there are weak wanderers or other such obsticals take them out to boost your saftey margin and remember that eventually they'll respawn.  This is one of those situations where sneak may in fact be useful to you...think of it as solving a puzzle.

Kind of a "duh" but some mobs have decent ranged attacks, know who they are and never have too many on your aggro list...if possible just avoid them entirely, the less damage you take kiting the more energy you can put into damaging your foes.

If you are tight on space and the mobs are snarable use your pet in combination with winter's roar.  It greatly reduces the space you need to kite effectively, using a combination of pet snare and winters roar will allow you to kite a mob back and forth in a relatively small hallway for example.  Kite up to the northeast end of the hallway, root with winter's roar, dart around the mob and kite back to the northwest end of the hallway keeping it along the one wall etc.  Winter's roar can be used like this when kiting in wolf form also, take advantage of it.

If the mob is immune to both winter's roar root effect AND snare you will need A LOT of room, if you don't have it consider to plan on taking hits as part of your run pattern cycle (pay attention to how many times you got hit so you know when to refresh your ward).  If you can't afford those hits you are in most cases better off not messing with things, chances are you will either die or the mob will teather and go back to full hps.  In either case its a waste of your time.

When in groups and not applying krigus etc. keep at max distance, you get a "free" reduction to your aggro the further you are away.

When using spears bear in mind that although they do not use endurance they DO interrupt endurance regen just like melee attacks.  When you get bosrid and decide to use it when kiting be mindful of this or you will quickly find outself tapped out of endurance.




In all builds its really up to you to balance things to your play style these are general guidelines and you should play however it makes the game fun for you.  If you find that your favorite thing is to be able to heal beyond anything reasonable then it makes sense to really focus on gear that boosts vit and caps your healing focus when you have a healing focus item equipped etc.  If you drool over high damage hits on your vicious bite then a great 2handed spear or maul plus gear that focuses on strength and damage is your mantra etc.  If you like the challenge of kiting or blowing things away with spells (especially GB finishers) then keeping a reasonable amount or outright focusing on having a high int and good spell damage is key.

If you like a mix then balance accordingly.  If you want to max your effectiveness learn to love macros to take full advantage of your gear and the different shaman spirit bonds. 

[Eeomis]

You beat me to the copy and paste lol

[Mare]

... On both my rakurr and my bear shaman are despite playing on a  pvp server pve oriented -  I did split the points between vit/str/con - str as besides the obvious dps increase - the main reason was for me atleast the increase "block"-chance as my gear used to be very defensive oriented- and using a shield was usually when recommend soloing "boss" mobs or 5+dots up - but then I havent bother to solo / farm anything for ages due to the many changes lately- and I prop would use my Spear of Devotion on "normal" bosses now ... but the overall alot of the changes made me lose "fun" and they did indeed manage to reduce my play times from alot to "raid-only" and now even to maybe once per week... but thats life... waiting for a VQ-Vision (for the game and shamans) and "improvements/content/..." is getting old.

So for "melee" based shamans that want to "solo" 5-6 dots - get a good shield and put points into STR/CON...(and forget about int/wis)


APW-gear got enough vit/wis to allow atleast for me as a man from Lomshir (str,wis,con-racials) to put no points into wisdom what so every and still have a decent size mana pool...but thats "late" game...

[Silverfang]

Offensive Balanced build - (The one I use)

Race: Any
Stats: Wis first, Vit 2nd, str, con, int, dex balanced

Abilities: all.  For this build to be viable, you must have all six quick slot bars available with your abilities.  Set it for endurance based melee atks, then energy based attacks, then totem based attacks, and follow that order.  This sets the auto attack while you cast spells.  You will regenerate each pool as you use the other pool.  This balances the use of both your pools effectively.  This is built to take full advantage of your shaman and it's abilities, both physical AND spell wise.

Gear: Renewal based.  Here is why: It does not matter how much energy you have if you use it all and cannot regenerate it.  Take a minor hit on the energy pool and go all out energy regeneration.

Weapon gear: 2 handed or 1hb/shield. It's up to your preference.  Try to avoid using focuses if you will be using a weapon.  If you have to use a focus, use it with a shield.

This build can be difficult to play, as it requires your full attention.  Once you have it down, you can solo everything up to and including a 5 dot mob 4 levels lower then you.  This is a similar build of Sol's/Cas's Hybrid mentioned above, however it is all short ranged and includes full out short ranged combat.  With this build I can take out all classes in PVP, including the fully decked out mitigation heavy tanks. (war/pal/dk)

Warning: This build is VERY dangerous and may not be for you, as there is little defense considered in this build.

[SpiritWind]

Good post.

On my level 50 Vulmane Rakurr I maxed WIS and VIT with the extra to INT.

On my level 20 Varanjar Tuurgin I max WIS and VIT with extra to STR.  Will respec the STR to CON at 50.

In raids, the primary function of a Shaman is heals & buffs.  If you have time to get off some debuffs and dots, that's great, but most often you will be too busy healing.  In regular groups you get more time to dot, debuff, nuke, and melee, but even so, a Shaman's dps doesn't compare to a true dps class.