Shattered Kingdoms

Staves not to my knowledge. Wands, yes, and it's control weather.

The max art cap for shamans is lower than 12. Not that it matters terribly much. I still find it enough to land most maledictions. Generally, I feel that the class is just fine the way it is. They are excellent tanks, good healers, have a plethora of adventuring spells and can even dish out enough damage if played in a certain cabal/tribunal combination.

Oh, then they should have the ability to have 12 art. I didn't think they capped at paladin/hellion/priest art for some reason.

And, what cabal combination? I've never heard of a specific cabal with overpowered melee damage given to a insane tanking class before that normally deals 1/5 the melee damage. Nor has it ever been abused.

I swear, FIrST I've ever heard of it.

I like how subtle you can be. No, really.

You make it sound like they're a jack of all trades.
Unfortunately, a tank will be too busy spirit hoarding, self healing, and eating the delicious dirt of trip/bash to give any other offensive or group spells. A maledictor will be too busy maledicting to group heal, and a healer vice-versa. They can split their focus between the two, but their build will either withhold the art for a good malediction or the mana for long heals. Shamans can do all of the things you mentioned, but they have to pick one and stick with it.

All of you, on both sides of this argument, make valid points of your own, yet gloss over eachother's. However, this thread is here to discuss a master level form of raise dead that incurs no exp penalty, not the pros and cons of Shamans.

Quite simply, I want a balance between the bodyless, expless resurrections of a priest, and raise dead- which is currently parallel to, of all vile things, breath of life. I want Shamans to be impreferable, but viable life-givers. And I see this as a nice way to do it. So please, oh please oh please, stop bickering about the general pros and cons of Shamans. Believe it or not, they do have pros, and cons, like every class in this usually well-balanced game.

And, yes. <3 the subtley.

Inevitably, when you start a thread discussing possible additions/changes to a class, people are going to look at the entire spectrum, to see whether such a change/addition is warranted and/or balanced. I did not mean to derail your thread.

I think you missed my point too. I wasn't trying to imply that they're 'a jack of all trades', but they are certainly one of the most versatile classes in the game. A shaman is great in whatever position you put him/her in a group. Up front? Tanking. Sitting in the back? Maledicting/healing. Given that in actual PK, at least in 90% of the cases, you won't be on your own (since group-PK is being encouraged by Dulrik's coding), you don't even have to worry that much about getting bashed. Besides, as Sinnoch pointed out, a shaman has an excellent way to bypass that with proper timing. Bottom line: they are a self-sustaining class, with (imo) far more pros than cons.

Back on topic (teehee), I can see where you're coming from. Shamans seem far more versed in meddling with life/death than warlocks. Then again, then xp penalty for 'raise dead' is truly minimal. I currently play a shaman, and I constantly get requests to revive people, even when priests are logged on. I agree that most people would pick a resurrection spell over the loss of that one tick of xp. I just honestly do not think that giving 'raise dead' a buff is necessary.

Actually, Tibbit the gnome shaman mentioned eariler delt quite a bit of dmg as a MC member too and as a tank.

Also, Golg a CoN shaman without any law NPCs delt quite a good deal of dmg.

Oh, and don't forget Eiveira, a keeper shaman when Ardith and I had our keepers, who pretty much flat out solo defended/attacked when she was around.


Fistie shamans aren't the best, espically when bashed.